Podcast: The Feminist Present

Welcome to The Feminist Present, the first podcast from the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Hosts Laura Goode and Adrian Daub welcome a range of feminist scholars, journalists, creators, activists, and more. Please join us as we use the gift of feminism to figure out what’s going on right now.

 

Announcing: A New Podcast

In Bed with the Right

In Bed With the Right is a new podcast from the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, launching July 2023. Hosts Moira Donegan and Adrian Daub welcome a range of scholars and critics to analyze right wing ideas about gender, sex and sexuality – and to plumb the ways in which these ideas persist in and shape our present moment. Please join us as we take deep dives into some old ideas that are unfortunately upending lives right now. 

The first few episodes will stream with The Feminist Present. To continue, listen or subscribe directly to In Bed With the Right.

Hosts

Adrian  Daub

Adrian Daub

In fall 2019, Daub became the Barbara D. Finberg Director of the Clayman Institute. A Stanford professor of comparative literature and German studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences, Daub was Stanford’s director of the Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from 2016 to 2020. 

Laura Goode

Laura Goode

A lecturer in Stanford's Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, Goode is Associate Director of the Graduate Humanities Public Writing Project. She writes about feminism, intersectionality, female friendship, motherhood, and culture in TV, film, and literature; she is especially interested in the contemporary feminist first-person essay, the female gaze in image-making, critical whiteness studies, and performances of gender in "prestige" television.

Producer

Megan Calfas

Megan Calfas

Megan Calfas is a playwright, journalist, and podcast producer. She recently directed a sold-out run of the live storytelling show Crushing in New York City and is in the process of developing an original musical about youth climate activists in the Bay Area. Previously, she reported on the environment for the Los Angeles Times, investigated maternal mortality in Zanzibar, and once convinced Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne to perform in a musical alongside personified, dancing peanuts. 

New episodes in 2023

Episode 49: Lyz Lenz RETURNS!

Author and self-described "soccer mom Simone de Beauvoir" Lyz Lenz makes a triumphant return to the pod to discuss her new book THIS AMERICAN EX-WIFE with Laura and Adrian. (Please refer to TFP Episode 7 from December 2020 for Lyz's first mid-derecho podcast appearance!) Her third book in five years, THIS AMERICAN EX-WIFE brings Lenz's characteristic blend of incisive sociological research and searing personal commentary to a highly relevant post-pandemic issue: divorce. Discussion topics include how Laura and Lyz just missed each other in the early-2000s Twin Cities, why the movie Fargo is the Beetlejuice of the Midwest, and what we really talk about when we talk about women and divorce.

Listen now: 

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Episode 48: Nicole Chung

After a stunning revelation about a life-changing moment THE Dr. Roxane Gay offered Laura, Adrian and Laura join acclaimed memoirist Nicole Chung to discuss her second book, A Living Remedy. Following the contours of A Living Remedy, this discussion travels through the national tragedy of American healthcare, what an elite education and successful writing career can and can't do for class mobility, and much more.

Listen now: 

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Episode 47: Linda Kiesling

Laura interviews novelist Lydia Kiesling about her second novel Mobility. Related discussion topics also include the astrology of The Sopranos (Laura and Lydia are both Christopher suns, Mobility's protagonist Bunny Glenn is more of a Meadow rising), the '90s in girlhood, the time Lydia joined a panel Laura organized at Stanford with a newborn on her chest, how mothers write whole books in stolen moments, and what we really talk about when we talk about girlbosses in the oil and gas industry.

Listen now: 

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Episode 46: Aliens

Laura and Adrian embark on their new series: feminism and the horror genre. We dedicate the first episode of this series to two favorites of ours: Hollywood treasure Sigourney Weaver and slimy aliens with acid for blood. A discussion of 1986’s Aliens, horror and motherhood, and dueling queens.

Listen now: 

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Episode 45: Deadloch with Moira Donegan

This episode is basically a PSA: if you’re not watching the Australian feminist crime show Deadloch, then Laura, Adrian and guest Moira Donegan have one question for you: why not? Depressed industrial towns, toxic masculinity, lesbians, a four-hour movie called ‘Poseidon’s Uterus’: this show has everything, and we’re here for all of it.

Listen now: 

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Episode 44: A Guestless Catch-up-isode Spectacular

After a few months of absence, your trusty co-hosts return to tell you about new projects, new episodes, and new friends of the pod! Live from cyberspace, it's ... a guestless update spectacular!

Listen now: 

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