The Mother Of It All

Sarah and Miranda move through their own climate change cognitive dissonance with the help of Elizabeth Doerr, author of the Cramming for the Apocalypse project. We discuss how parenting lends itself to climate action, how facing the climate reality can actually make you less anxious , and how mothers can give prepper stereotypes a much-needed makeover. Links: * Scribente Maternum * Cramming for t...

Katie Beck is a Policy Fellow at the London School of Economics where she helps municipal leaders design more child-friendly cities.  She joined us to chat about what child-friendly, care-centered city design really looks like, and who is doing it well. We talk about Bogota’s revolutionary ‘care blocks,’ what happened when Athens experimented with using a few parking spaces as a park instead, and...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.com Sarah & Miranda kiss winter break goodbye with a chat about resolutions, witchy solstices, cyclical time, Pamela Adlon, school start times, time jelly, and more! This episode is for our beautiful *paid subscribers* (thank you!) and could also be called Winter Break: The Good, The Bad & The Either Way It's Almo...

Author Mac Barnett and author and illustrator Jon Klassen join Sarah and Miranda to explain what makes a great picture book and why kids might be better readers than adults. Plus, preschoolers with hammers, Where the Wild Things Are is a true story, the sad blunting our “keenness” as we age, and why we still love our bullies. LINKS: * Looking at Picture Books * The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell (M...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.com In this bonus episode, Sarah and Miranda talk the best parenting advice for kid explosions and their reactions to the new Nightbitch film. Also, Sarah offers a “Hannukah Surprise,” the Nightbitch theme song she’s been working on for a year. Links: * Dan Siegel and the “Flipped Lid”

Poet and author Nancy Reddy joins us to discuss her forthcoming book, The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom ( pre-order it now! ). In it, Nancy explores the historical, cultural, and scientific roots of many of our modern ideas about ‘goodness’ + motherhood, like attachment parenting. Spoiler alert: they’re pretty sketchy. Links: * Take our survey about parents...

If any season is movie-watching season, it’s now. When we knew we wanted to make a Christmas movie-focused episode, 2008’s A Christmas Tale and 2005’s The Family Stone sprang to mind right away: These are matriarch-centric Christmas movies that take the whole mom-at-Christmastime thing to the Nth degree. Each in their own way, they put the intense time we spend gathered together with our families...

Feminist writers Tracy Clark-Flory and Amanda Montei join Sarah and Miranda for Part 2 of our discussion on relationships between men and women (listen to Part 1 here). We talk about the post-election landscape of gender relations — including the rise in both misogynistic rhetoric interest in boycotting men. Is this a gender war or a war on women? Is feminism responsible for the young male Trump v...

In Part 1 of our jam-packed conversation with feminist writers Tracy Clark-Flory and Amanda Montei , Sarah and Miranda attempt to unpack why this has been such a big year for examining sex in hetero-marriage, the specter of patriarchy haunting all of our marital beds, and whether or not good sex is possible anymore in a hetero-marriage. Links: * Amanda Montei’s “Can a Sexless Marriage Be a Happy O...

Writer Janet Manley joins us to break down her recent piece, “ Pity the Dadfluencers: Their content is for men, but their audience is all women .” We dig into all of our favorite -isms: sexism, feminism, social media-ism ( just roll with it ), parasocial relationships, plus Wild Robot , Nightbitch , and what the heck you’re supposed to do with all those baby teeth. Links: * Chelsea Conaboy on The...

Sarah and Miranda are checking in the morning after the election on what’s going through our minds, how we’re thinking about motherhood and our kids, and whether it’s too soon to do silver linings. With a special appearance from Nellie, three-year-old witch. Links: * Amanda Montei says “It’s not the economy, it’s misogyny.” * Witch podcast on BBC * Seven Year B***h is the today’s soundtrack This i...

Miranda and Sarah are joined by actor and comedian Lauren Lapkus and actor and filmmaker Nora Fiffer to talk about their tender, hilarious new film, Another Happy Day . We discuss the isolation and absurdity of early motherhood, taking care of care-takers at work, and why Hollywood should be just as saturated with postpartum movies as it is with World War II movies. Links: * Another Happy Day on A...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.com *This is a paid-subscriber only episode. To become a subscriber, click HERE and sign up for any level of paid membership. P.S. If you subscribe as a “founding member” we’ll send you a snazzy Mother Of It All tote bag. Join us as we hash Halloween out. Do we believe in the Switch Witch? DIY costumes: Y/N? Shoul...

No one wants to think about school shootings. But nearly every day in our country, a gun is fired on a campus. Often, when that happens, entire student bodies are then traumatized by spending hours in lockdown. David Riedman of the K-12 school shooting database — an unparalleled collection of data about school shootings that has been used as a resource by publications like The Economist and New Yo...

What if we considered care to be a sacred practice? What if the everyday tasks of parenting were backtracked by the dramatic score of the British Baking Show ? Elissa Strauss , author of When You Care: Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others joins Sarah and Miranda to mull over what it would mean to value care as a society and in our personal lives. We talk about trusting others with your children,...

Author and editor Kaitlyn Teer (you may know her as the editor of Joanna Goddard’s Big Salad newsletter ) joins Sarah and Miranda to chat about how weirdly hard and wonderful it is to have hobbies as a mom, and the unique joy of being new (even bad!) at something. We get into such pressing questions as: What is “contaminated leisure time,” and how can we carve out ‘uncontaminated’ time to explore...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.com Sarah and Miranda check in on Miranda’s daughter’s very first day of big kid school (even though she claims she’s “still little”), watch the just-dropped Nightbitch trailer in real time, discuss Sarah’s impending move after 15 years in the same apartment, and talk hetero-exceptionalism and Sarah Manguso’s “Lia...

We are thrilled to kick off season 2(!) with a bang in the form of a meaty, rich conversation with Eloise Rickman , author of It’s Not Fair: Why It’s Time For A Grown-Up Conversation About How Adults Treat Children. We hadn’t thought about children’s rights much before reading Eloise’s book (have you?) and now it’s all we want to think about. What are children’s rights? How can we think about them...

Sarah & Miranda shoot the breeze, talk about some back-to-school feelings, drop some hints about what we'll cover in season 2, and nerd out about THAT EPISODE of The Bear. We had so much fun with Phil Maciak on our Screen Time episode (our most-listened to episode, BTW! thanks for that, friends) that we had to bring him back to talk about * crunch crunch crunc h* : the 39 minutes of prestige TV th...

It’s summer, which means Sarah’s rocking a 3-cone-per-day ice cream lifestyle, and Miranda is guzzling $1 slushies by the pool. And work is …. still kind of happening. The brilliant, hilarious Claire Zulkey of the Evil Witches newsletter (which you need to subscribe to , if you don’t already) joins us to talk about the various joys and perils of summertime parenting and yes, of course, the perpetu...

Canadian writer and The Cut columnist Amil Niazi joins us to discuss what happens when an entire generation follows their dreams, whether our feelings of economic instability are real or imagined, and having children (even a third!) while fighting against upgrade culture. Also, we stan Better Things , and we ask: Even if it’s not really OK, what if it is all going to be OK? Links: * MOFITA summer...

Sarah and Miranda are joined by Ruth Whippman, author of Boymom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity to talk about how boys need more but get less, the boys who are dying to talk about their feelings, and the radical power of a board book about a boy and his bags. Plus, do we say “no” to toxic-masculinity media or just say “yes” to better things? And a special round of “Marry,...

A juicy, earnestly silly over-think of Mamma Mia and Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again (Sarah’s preferred Mamma Mia ) in which Sarah’s friend Garrett Bucks joins us with a spicy-hot take on the three ( three! ) dads of Mamma Mia. When Bucks is not thinking about the rich, layered texts that are Mamma Mia and Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again, he keeps busy doing Dad Stuff, as well as working as an anti-ra...

Sarah flew to Iceland, only to be immediately taken down by a stomach flu. Meanwhile, back at home a Covid-like virus knocked Miranda’s family out for 14 days. So we called an emergency recording session of Mother Of It All just to vent about it all together. Why can’t parents have nice things, like occasional vacations or a week or two without absolutely disgusting viruses? Is every virus we get...

Sarah and Miranda host their first dad, cultural critic Phillip Maciak, and dig into screen time, shame, nostalgia, hugs, and multi-level marketing for second-graders. Links: * Phil’s book, Avidly Reads Screen Time * Phil on Instagram * Phil’s review of Season 2 of the Bear in The New Republic * The NOLA Pelicans’ King Cake Baby mascot * The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt * Stephanie Murray’...