No One is Coming to Save Us

The first chance voters had to weigh in on abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade was in the reliably conservative state of Kansas. And, despite all odds, Kansas voters rejected the GOP-led effort to restrict abortion. Gloria gets the details on the big victory for abortion rights from Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom. Gloria and Rachel discuss...

Gloria takes a look at what it’s like on the ground in a state with some of the country’s most restrictive anti-abortion laws alongside Project Say Something founder Camille Bennett, whose organization confronts anti-Black racism in Alabama. They discuss how Camille is still able to help women in her state, what else conservative politicians want to enact to make life difficult for women in Alabam...

We rightly celebrated people like health care workers, teachers, and grocery store employees during the heart of the pandemic as the essential workers who kept our country going. But Angela Garbes, author of “Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change,” tells Gloria that we need to think of parents, and especially mothers, as essential workers, too. They get into why we devalue the labor of mothe...

Gloria is joined by Jessica Arons, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, to talk about the decades-long legal battle by abortion rights opponents to overturn Roe. They discuss how we got here, what’s being done to get our rights back, and what the Dobbs decision will mean for our already inadequate child care system. Plus, Jessica tells the personal story of what made her devote her life’s work to fi...

Gloria unpacks the decades-long struggle for reproductive justice in America with Marcela Howell, president and CEO of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda. They discuss the barriers to reproductive freedom for Black people, how the Hyde Amendment makes abortion access even harder for low-income individuals, and why we need to focus on state legislative elections to...

As we continue to investigate what life looks like for pregnant people and parents in a post-Roe America, Gloria sits down with an abortion clinic nurse who was in the middle of a procedure when the news broke about the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. They talk about what it was like in the clinic that day, what this decision will mean for the country’s remaining abortion providers...

Gloria is joined by author and activist Lauren Rankin to outline everything you need to know in the wake of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Gloria and Lauren talk about what’s happening right now as a result of this ruling, how and why this decision will disproportionately hurt Black and brown people, and what you can do to support those who need help accessing abortion care. C...

It’s not easy for anyone to return to work after becoming a mother, and child care is often the hardest aspect for families to figure out. Track and field star Allyson Felix experienced that firsthand and is determined to make things easier for her fellow athlete moms. And when Allyson sets a goal for herself — whether it’s becoming the most decorated U.S. track and field athlete in history or cha...

Gloria digs into a devastating report on how the pandemic has affected women and their families with Fatima Goss Graves, President and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center. The numbers in this NWLC report, “Resilient But Not Recovered,” are sobering. There are 1.1 million fewer women in the labor force today than there were in February 2020. More than 2/3 of the net jobs lost since the pandemic...

Mom guilt is no joke. You feel it when you drop your kids off at child care, when you check your email during their softball game, when you ask your partner to wake up early with the little ones so you can get a little more sleep on Saturday. But it doesn’t have to be that way! Gloria digs deep into mom guilt, timeouts, separation anxiety, and so much more with Dr. Becky, clinical psychologist and...

There are so many skills young kids need to learn, but what can parents and caregivers do to teach them? First, Gloria learns about the seven essential life skills every child needs with the researcher who developed them: Ellen Galinsky, Chief Science Officer at the Bezos Family Foundation. Ellen tells Gloria that even though games like Simon Says may not have been conceived as a way to teach youn...

Gloria begins the show with her reaction to the unimaginable tragedy in Uvalde, Texas. Then, as America’s infant formula crisis continues, Gloria is joined by Caron Gremont, Director of Early Childhood at the No Kid Hungry Campaign. They discuss the toll that hunger takes on kids, how many childcare workers also face food insecurity, and what you can do to make “no kid hungry” a reality.   Follow...

Gloria breaks down everything you need to know about the future of child care policy alongside Julie Kashen, senior fellow and director for women’s economic justice at The Century Foundation. They get into the who/what/when/how/and why of child care reform: who is going to pay for it, what will this package include, when can we expect action, how do we get legislators across the aisle on board, wh...

Gloria calls up Liz Tenety, co-founder of Motherly and host of the Motherly podcast, to compare notes on balancing work and child care with a COVID outbreak in the home. The two of them talk about prioritizing self-care, acknowledging when you need help, and giving yourself permission to not do all the things. Plus, Liz tells a rage-inducing story about how her husband had to battle his own HR dep...

Gloria starts with an emotional reaction to the leaked Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Then, she calls up Wendoly Marte, the economic justice director at Community Change, to talk about the organization’s upcoming event, A Day Without Child Care. Wendoly tells us what they’re fighting for, what will be going down on May 9th, and how you can get involved in this national day of acti...

Gloria calls up Camille Bennett, an activist, child care center owner, minister, and the founder of Project Say Something, an organization confronting anti-Black racism in her home state of Alabama. Camille paints a picture of child care in the Deep South – one that includes staffing shortages, a broken subsidy system, structural racism, child care deserts, tears, stress, and teachers and parents...

Gloria calls up an old friend, the actress/author/activist Sara Gilbert, best known for playing Darlene on the hit shows Roseanne and The Conners, to talk about how they balance child care with demanding careers in the media. They get into Sara’s experiences with solo parenting, what it’s like bringing an infant onto a Hollywood lot, and how her family approached finding LGBTQ-affirming child care...

Gloria sits down with Deb VanderGaast, the Iowa woman running for state senate on a child care platform. Deb, a mother, activist, and child care director, recounts the harrowing story that caused her to leave her stable nursing job to start her own daycare center (despite her family’s warnings not to do so). Plus, she tells Gloria what made her decide to run for office and what her top priorities...

Gloria outlines actionable steps for building a better child care system with author and policy expert Elliot Haspel. They discuss how we can work together with businesses to invest in a better system, why we need to reframe child care as a collective responsibility, and what you (yes, YOU) can do to get connected with child care advocates in your community. And if you thought that expanding the p...

Gloria explores the child care labor crisis with Dr. Lea Austin, Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley. They get into why so many early educators are leaving their jobs, where they’re going to get better wages and benefits, and what we can do to improve pay disparities and racial inequities within the field. Plus, Lea reve...

Gloria explores how the child care crisis is impacting the people living it every day by talking to a parent and teacher at Ellis Early Learning in Boston. In the second part of our 2-part premiere, she calls up some familiar faces from last season – Shane Dunn and Kiya Savannah. Shane, a parent at Ellis, tells Gloria about how his family has balanced child care and full-time work over the past ye...

Gloria is back and ready to tackle America’s child care crisis head-on. To kick off season 2, she calls up Lauren Cook, CEO of Ellis Early Learning in Boston. We met Lauren back in season 1, where she walked us through the nitty gritty of how much it costs to operate a child care center. This time around, Lauren tears up as she talks about how nationwide labor shortages are reverberating through t...

If you’re paying attention to the news these days, you’ve seen that childcare is front and center! Congressional leaders are nearing a Halloween deadline to pass two separate bills tied to President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. One measure, known as the reconciliation package, could dramatically (and instantaneously) change how families approach childcare and early childhood education. To bet...

Childcare doesn’t just happen out in the world. It also happens in each and every home where a child lives. In this bonus episode, we hear from Eve Rodsky, the author of Fair Play (Reese’s Book Club October ‘19), about how to create more cooperative homes and families. “While we're waiting for systems to change and fighting for policies, we can also take agency to make things better in our home -...

Gloria chats with Elizabeth Warren about how we transform our country’s broken childcare system into one that’s accessible for all. “This is the moment to raise your voice. We have this opportunity to do it, but it's going to take all of us to push until it gets done.” Then, we meet a ragtag group of activists in Portland, Oregon fighting for a free, high-quality, universal preschool program in th...