The Mother Of It All

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.com Sarah and I check in about how summer is treating us so far. We wonder about nostalgia for imagined summers of the past where kids were a certain kind of sweaty, dirty, healthy bored rather than annoying-whining-and-begging-for-screens bored. Is long, lazy, shapeless summer within reach for parents in 2026? If...

The author of The Cut’s Brooding column returns to roll out version 2.0 of “friction-maxxing,” the term that went viral earlier this year and earned her her first Wikipedia page. We talk AI, why she will die on the “turn off location your sharing” hill and the “slurrification” of time to which we are all passively consenting. Plus, the lies we tell ourselves about sleeping arrangements at the AirB...

As part of a feature series with local bay area radio station KALW, Berkeley-based poet Rachel Richardson joins Sarah and Miranda for a LIVE recording of The Mother Of It All podcast. We talk about the state of the cultural conversation around motherhood in general, whether poetry about motherhood counts as serious poetry, and celebrate our 100th episode. This is a public episode. If you'd like to...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.com Did you hear?! We’re recording our 100th episode LIVE in San Francisco on May 8th as part of a series with KALW (91.7 FM). Get tickets your here! We will be joined by Berkeley-based poet Rachel Richardson, and KALW will be airing excerpts from our show all week long leading up to the live event. In this episod...

A quick announcement: We will be recording our 100th episode LIVE in San Francisco on May 8th at 7pm. Poet Rachel Richardson will join us for a conversation about the legitimacy of motherhood as a serious topic for artists, academics and writers. We have room for 80 people, and we’d love to have you there. Click here to get your ticket! In this episode, author Julia Cooke joins Sarah and Miranda t...

Sociologist Nina Bandelj, author of the new book Overinvested: The Emotional Economy of Modern Parenting , joins us for a wonderful, perspective-altering converstation about how and why modern parenthood feels the way it feels. She unpacks for us how raising kids has become a project, how kids became ‘human capital,’ and what it means that parenthood is privatized, economized, and (a new word for...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.com Paid subscribers, this one’s for you! We explore the question of whether or not we do too many things from many angles. If you find yourself responding to PTA emails at 3 in the morning, does that mean you’re 100% for sure doing too many things? What if it doesn’t!? Should we consider switching to AI friendshi...

Kaitlyn Teer joins us again! This time, she’s here to talk about her new book, Little Apocalypses; Essays on Motherhood, Climate Change, and Hope at the End of the World . The book is kaleidoscopic and specific all at once, and we both loved it, even though it’s full of heavy stuff about climate grief and how much we’ve already lost. In this episode, there are so many moments of discovery, includi...

We welcome Amil for her THIRD Mother of it All appearance, where she gives a moving eulogy for the career ambition that has died out for her as she’s gotten older and had more kids. We also talk shitty teenaged jobs, perimenopausal sex drive, what we think our kids are learning about money and work, and the new Muppets Show . Links: * Life After Ambition by Amil Niazi * Want to Change Careers? Thr...

Dr. Megan Prior is a parent and a board-certified pediatrician in DC who serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Early Childhood . A lot of us know her from her popular social media account, Itty Bitty Revolution , where she describes herself as a pediatrician and mom with a policy obsession. We love her work and were thrilled to have her on the show to chat about the real, massive...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.com In this subscriber-only episode (you can become a paid subscriber by clicking here ), we explore something we’ve been wondering about for a while: Why do we care so much about what other parents do? Why are we inclined to examine other parents choices? What should each of our b****y, judgy alter-egos be named?...

We sit down with the whip-smart UK-based American journalist Stephanie H. Murray (a contributing writer for The Atlantic ) to talk about the flawed baseline logic of American parenthood, freedom, control and the sacrifices we make to be part of a community. Murray explains that finding community may mean that we can’t “overindex” every little parenting decision, why ‘freedom’ as parents and kids m...

Dr. Jack Schneider, Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor at UMass Amherst and and host of the Have You Heard podcast about education policy, joins us to break down the recent “schools are bad” media bonanza (links below). Dr. Schneider digs in to what’s flawed about the panic-inducing articles about the state of American public education, and shares tips on what to say to the person next to us...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.com Happy New Year, sweet paid subscribers! Thanks for making us rich! Just kidding. Thanks for keeping the lights on, though. Your support means a lot, and we’re filled with gratitude as we cruise into 2026. 2025 was quite a year for mom movies AND dad movies and we’ve been dying to talk about it. Sarah saw most...

In this episode, Sarah and Miranda Rake kick things off with some Mariah Carey karaoke and a rundown of their favorite “laundry folding films.” Then journalist Courtney Martin joins to talk about the messy, tender, and often overwhelming realities of caring for aging parents while raising kids—the ultimate sandwich generation hustle. Courtney shares what it’s been like to relocate her whole family...

Welcome to our ✨Holiday Special✨! In an episode that is ostensibly about Elf On The Shelf (or Mensch On The Bench — for Sarah), we explore our collective annual search for meaning and self with the great Meaghan O’Connell, author of And Now We Have Everything and noted Elf On The Shelf apologist. Pressing items interrogated lightly include: Should Elf On The Shelf be a Dad thing? Does holiday ma...

We’re joined by science journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer , author Hello, Cruel World! Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times . Melinda’s work has long been a trusted source for parents, and here, we talk a little bit about a lot of things that are on our minds right now. Melinda shares thoughts everything from Botox and dying our hair to resilience & kids, to nervous...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.com In this bonus episode for paid subscribers, Sarah and Miranda go long on the PTA (Sarah is this year’s PTA President for her school—something she thought she’d never do) — balancing anxiety about your kid with collective goals and getting involved without losing your boundaries. Also radio nostalgia and whethe...

Sarah and Miranda are joined by guests Christie George and Jihii Jolly to discuss how motherhood and creativity fuel or constrain one another, and how we navigate life as mothers who also want to make art, or artists who want to mother. Links: * Christie George ’s Practice Practice * Jijii Jolly ’s Time Spent * Christie’s book, The Emergency Was Curiosity * The Mother Artist by Catherine Ricketts...

With the (yes, weird to make it a footnote but) footnote that the global environmental, cultural, social and real human costs of AI are massive, today we are zeroing in on just one question about AI: the impact of AI on kids and parents. How will the coming ubiquity of AI tools in our homes, schools and workplaces impact child development, parenthood and the world our children will inherit in thei...

To celebrate ADHD Awareness Month, Sarah is doing a little read aloud for us. Her essay, Call Me By My Name: How I Studied ADHD for 15 Years and Didn’t Know I Had It , remains one of the most read pieces on her newsletter. Listen to an audio recording of the essay — about identity, relationships, and what getting a diagnosis does and doesn’t do for us — read by Sarah. Links: * Call Me By My Name o...

Sarah and Miranda are joined by Taylor Harris, the author of a new column, You’ve Always Been This Way , about her later-in-life AuDHD diagnosis. We talk Autistic burnout, empathy for the neurotypical parent, the Enneagram, RFK, and sneaker deals. Links: * Taylor’s column (McSweeney’s) * This Boy We Made (Taylor’s book on our Bookshop storefront) * Holotropic Breathwork * Climbing inside a Tauntau...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.com Hey hey paid subscribers! This one is for you! It’s just the two of us, today, your trusty hosts with the mosts, Sarah Wheeler and Miranda Rake, chatting about what’s on our parent-minds. We meander our way into deep and not-so-deep topics like: Self-perception, dirty floors, recent parenting challenges, neuro...

Sarah and Miranda talk to journalist Abigail Leonard, author of Four Mothers: An Intimate Journey Through the First Year of Parenthood in Four Countries , about the social, cultural, and political forces that shape what it unfolds when women become mothers in Kenya, Finland, Japan, and the U.S. Would Leonard have had a third child if she hadn’t been living in Japan at the time? What is it about Fi...

Kathryn Van Arendonk is a critic at New York Magazine who writes about TV and comedy, and I (Miranda) have loved her work for a long time. I was watching a lot of Bluey when I first started realizing that all my favorite TV reviews on New York Magazine’s Vulture site were written by the same person, and that person was Kathryn! It felt like magic when she started writing about Bluey and like even...