Explore every episode of the podcast Babes in Bookland
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| BONUS TEASER: Good for Her, Not for Me // Amy Poehler’s Memoir "Yes Please" | 23 oct. 2026 | 00:13:53 | |
Does a celebrity memoir owe us its vulnerability, or can it simply be a pleasant afternoon with a funny friend? In this bonus episode, we finally tackle Amy Poehler’s Yes Please, the book that was almost the very first episode of Babes in Bookland. Colleen joins me to talk about why the audiobook won her over on a second listen, the behind-the-scenes SNL stories that sent us straight back to our childhood living rooms, and the title line we want on a poster in every daughter’s room. We dig into Plain Girl Versus the Demon, Amy’s mantra of good for you, not for me, and why we loved that she named and thanked the nannies who helped raise her kids. We also get candid about what fell flat for us, from a divorce chapter that never quite goes there to an apology chapter that felt more about Amy than the person she was apologizing to, and we ask whether funny women carry an extra burden to stay likable on the page. Plus, Colleen shares how she has navigated thirty years as a businesswoman in a male-dominated industry. Share this conversation with the friend who always says yes, please. "Saying 'yes' doesn’t mean I don’t know how to say no and saying 'please' doesn’t mean I’m waiting for permission." -- Amy Poehler's "Yes Please" Thank you for supporting Babes in Bookland! xx, Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Jowita Bydlowska on Her Memoir "Unshaming" | 20 oct. 2026 | 00:54:19 | |
What if every relapse was also a moment of hope? In this episode, we sit down with Jowita Bydlowska, author of the groundbreaking memoir Drunk Mom and her new hybrid memoir, Unshaming. Jowita takes us into the part of the recovery story most books skip: what happens after the happy ending, when relapse returns and shame becomes its own addiction. We talk about why women authors are always asked if their fiction is secretly true, how Drunk Mom began as a novel until an agent asked how much of it was real, and why rigorous honesty gave her more freedom than any secret ever could. Jowita opens up about the lie behind the bike accident that opens Unshaming, rereading her own story through the lens of postpartum, and the ongoing conversations with her teenage son about what she shares. She also reflects on Clifford, the little chihuahua who saw her without judgment, and why recovery is so much more than a medallion. Darkly funny, deeply generous and radically honest, this conversation is a reminder that shame gets smaller the moment we say it out loud. Share this conversation with someone who has ever confused silence with strength. "Maybe I’ll leave myself alone now that I’ve given addiction the last thing I valued. Now that I’m free. Would freedom mean I’d stop or I’d just get worse because there was nothing left to lose" - Unshaming, Jowita Bydlowska Books referenced: Connect with Jowita: Instagram: @jowitabot Substack: Unshame Support the show: Subscribe on Apple Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| How to Save Yourself // Sarah Polley's "Run Towards the Danger" | 13 oct. 2026 | 01:11:54 | |
What happens when the moments you've spent years avoiding are the very ones you need to face? This week, my friend Nadia returns to discuss Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory, Sarah Polley's 2022 essay collection about the transformative power of returning to the past. We start with Sarah at fifteen, playing Alice on stage with a curving spine, a newly broken heart over her mother's death, and a father whose fascination with Lewis Carroll shaped far more of her childhood than it should have. Nadia shares her own experience losing her mother to ovarian cancer and the unexpected gift her mother gave the family by facing her death head on. We talk about why we can hold compassion for Sarah's father and still call his parenting a failure, how lawyers can believe women and still warn them not to come forward, and why a NICU nurse's line about martyrs and mothers stopped us both in our tracks. Then we get to the essay that gives the book its name: a concussion, three lost years, and a doctor who told Sarah to do the opposite of everything she'd been taught. Together we wrestle with the line between knowing your limits and setting them too soon, and why growth almost always lives on the other side of the thing that scares us. Share this conversation with the friend who has been listening to her body a little too closely and is ready to run towards something. "So much of coming to terms with hard things from the past seems to be about believing our own accounts, having our memories confirmed by those who were there and honoured by those who weren’t. Why is it so hard for us to believe our own stories or begin to process them without corroborating witnesses appearing from the shadows of the past, or without people stepping forward with open arms when echoes of those stories present themselves again in the present?" - Sarah Polley | Run Towards the Danger Books referenced: Run Towards the Danger by Sarah Polley Support the show: Subscribe on Apple Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Captain Nia Gilliam on Her Memoir "Cleared for Takeoff" | 06 oct. 2026 | 00:55:51 | |
What does it take to climb back into the cockpit after one of the most traumatic days in our nation's history? This week we sit down with airline captain Nia Gilliam, author of CLEARED FOR TAKEOFF On September 11th, 2001, Nia was a first officer on the runway at Newark when the South Tower was hit, and her plane became the last to take off from that airport. Her memoir braids that morning with the story of a little girl near O'Hare who watched airplanes and wondered where they were going. We talk about how a writing class, a documentary interview, and a 2022 breast cancer diagnosis finally pushed her to tell this story, and why she says writing was harder than flying a plane. Nia takes us to space camp in Huntsville, to the funeral she skipped school to attend for pioneering aviator Janet Harmon Bragg, and to the moment she met Stacey Harris, the first living Black woman pilot she had ever seen. We get into the pressure of being the only woman and the only Black person in the room, the marriage and motherhood she stepped into while she was still grieving, and the line from her mom that changed everything: safe can be a place to heal, but it's nowhere to live. We also talk about Sisters of the Skies, the nonprofit Nia co-founded to increase the number of Black women pilots in professional flight decks, and the joy of being called Captain Mom by her son, who is now a pilot too. Share this conversation with the friend who put a dream on hold and needs a reminder that she's still cleared for takeoff. "I wasn't the only one who didn't have tidy solutions for what haunted her.” - Captain Nia Gilliam (excerpt from her memoir, Cleared for Takeoff) Books referenced: Cleared for Takeoff by Captain Nia Gilliam The Body Keeps the Score Connect with Nia: Support the show: Subscribe on Apple Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Friday Fiction: Jessica Knoll's "Helpless" | 02 oct. 2026 | 00:57:11 | |
What happens if we pay attention to our darkest fantasies? This week Ashley and I sit down with Jessica Knoll, author of Luckiest Girl Alive and Bright Young Women, to talk about Helpless, her newest novel and a sexy, uncomfortable, deeply intelligent erotic thriller. Jessica takes us from the lifeguard chair where she snuck pages of The Hours on rainy afternoons, to the Cosmopolitan offices that taught her to pull stories from the headlines, to the screenwriting professor whose stranger than fiction death became the opening of Helpless. We talk about why she named her daughter after a Final Girl, why she can't stand the do-gooder heroine, how motherhood has made her more private, and how her horny reading era led her to write the book she couldn't find on any shelf. "That was the first time I realized that not only will wealthy people pay to live like they’re poor, but they’ll call it a vacation too.” -excerpt from HELPLESS by Jessica Knoll Connect with Jessica Knoll Books Referenced: Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll The Hours by Michael Cunningham A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief by Pauline Boss Support the show: Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| BONUS TEASER: Redemption or Just Lip Service? // Lisa Rinna's "You Better Believe We're Going to Talk About it" | 30 sept. 2026 | 00:13:38 | |
Is reality TV ever really real, and what do the women who star in it owe us? This week, Brett joins me for a bonus episode on Lisa Rinna's memoir, You Better Believe I'm Gonna Talk About It, a quick, entertaining listen that we both enjoyed without ever feeling blown away by it. We talk about why this book landed as more filtered than the Lisa Rinna we know from television, and what that says about why she wrote it now. From there we get into the parts that stuck with us. Lisa's advocacy for older women not stepping aside for the next generation, her honesty about nearly going broke while living a very public Hollywood life, and the story of her father's death by assisted suicide and her mother's survival of a violent kidnapping decades earlier, a story Lisa doesn't fully connect back to her own parenting. We spend real time on the Kathy Hilton drama, the question of whether Bravo protected Kathy at Lisa's expense, and why Lisa stops short of saying outright what she says she witnessed. We also talk about her conflicting statements around disordered eating, her daughter's eating disorder, and what it means to take real accountability in a memoir versus performing it. We close out asking the bigger question this book keeps raising for us: when a memoir reads like a comeback attempt versus one written by someone who's truly done with Hollywood's opinion of them, and why that difference matters so much for how honest the book ends up being. Please note that this conversation includes discussion of disordered eating, assisted suicide, and a serious violent crime. Share this conversation with the friend who knows all about Puppygate. Subscribe on Patreon or Apple Podcasts to access the full episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| The Cost of Girl Power // Melanie Chisholm's "The Sporty One" | 29 sept. 2026 | 01:26:53 | |
What did the Spice Girls teach you about being a girl, and what did it cost the women who taught it? This week, Page joins me to talk about Melanie Chisholm's memoir The Sporty One: My Life as a Spice Girl, a long, diary-like book that doubles as Mel C's thank-you to the people who carried her along the way and her chance to reclaim her own story. We start with why the group meant so much to us growing up, from our favorite songs and favorite Spice Girls to the way five distinct personalities showed a generation of girls they could be more than one thing. From there, we follow Mel C from a working class childhood and a lonely stretch of neglect to a dance school in London, a flyer that changed everything, and a band that first called itself Touch. We talk about Michelle, the almost Spice Girl, Emma's arrival, and the moment the group decided to write their own music instead of accepting a man's version of what young women wanted to say. We also get into the Spice names, which were handed to them rather than chosen, and why Scary Spice gave us pause. We also talk about the harder parts of the book, including the comment about her thighs that sent Mel C spiraling, the culture of thinness the group both absorbed and promoted, and a management style of divide and rule that pulled apart a band singing about friendship. Mel C writes openly about disordered eating, depression, and the long road to getting help, and we talk about why asking for help is so hard for so many of us. Along the way, we swap stories about work ethic, imposter syndrome, working mom guilt, and more. Please note that this conversation includes discussion of childhood neglect, disordered eating, and depression. We came away from this book with a lot of love for a woman we thought we already knew, and a reminder to applaud ourselves more. Share this conversation with the friend who still knows every word to "Wannabe." "As far back as I can remember, I set my sights on being someone. Someone that mattered. Something that stood out. I wanted, neededattention and I worked out at a very young age thatthe stage was the place to get that. But the attention and adoration came at a price. I got everything I wanted but I had never felt so lonely. I became ill- physically, mentally, and emotionally. But I survived.” - Melanie Chisholm aka Sporty Spice (excerpt from her memoir, The Sporty One) Books referenced: The Sporty One: My Life as a Spice Girl by Melanie Chisholm Support the show: Subscribe on Apple Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| HERstory // Kamala Harris' "107 Days" | 23 sept. 2026 | 00:51:46 | |
Who was the first female politician you ever became aware of? My friend Ashley encouraged me to pick up Kamala Harris' 107 Days-- despite knowing how it all ended, because it's important to read Kamala's account on her own terms. We talk through the emotional whiplash of 2024, from the moment Biden dropped out of the race to Election Night itself, and the ways Harris was sidelined by the Biden administration long before she became the nominee. We get into the details that surprised us most, from the Fourth of July confrontation at the White House to a small, telling moment involving a birthday gift from her husband Doug Emhoff, and why we think Kamala's candor about the Bidens matters even when she stays gracious about it on the page. From there, the conversation widens into the double standards women in politics face, the King's College London study on Gen Z men's views on marriage and gender roles, the role legacy media played (or didn't) in the campaign, and the case for and against the electoral college. We also dig into Tim Walz, the white working class voters both parties have left behind, and why Alex closed the book with a sense of hope while Ashley... didn't. This episode is about why women's accounts of their own history matter, especially now, while attempts to rewrite that history are already underway. “Throughout my career I’ve maintained that people in positions of power must be required to ask of themselves: Who am I not hearing from? Then make it their business to seek those folks out.” Support the show: Subscribe on Apple Xx, Alex Share this conversation with a friend who needs to reread this book, or finally pick it up for the first time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Maeve Dunigan on Her Memoir "Read This to Look Cool" | 22 sept. 2026 | 00:47:12 | |
Do you ever look back at everything you did to seem cool growing up and just have to laugh? This week I sit down with Maeve Dunigan, author of Read This to Look Cool, a memoir told in essays that had us laughing out loud on one page and completely choked up on the next. Maeve got her start writing sketch comedy in college before publishing satire in the New Yorker, and she brings that same sharp, funny voice to essays covering everything from straightening her hair within an inch of its life to a ruptured appendix at McDonald's to her deep, unwavering love of One Direction. We talked about the sad clown theory of comedy, why she considers chronic lateness a personality flaw, and how she learned that the version of herself she was always trying to be is usually just who she is when she stops trying. We also got the scoop on her already finished second book, a satirical murder mystery about a boy band trapped in a hotel with a killer in their midst. This one made us laugh so much we almost forgot how much heart it has too. Share this conversation with the friend who was also burning her hair with a straightener in high school. "I’m trying not to let my insecurity muffle my curiosity." - Maeve Dunigan's essay collection READ THIS TO LOOK COOL Connect with Maeve Dunigan: Books Referenced: READ THIS TO LOOK COOL by Maeve Dunigan Support the show: Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Nadia Bowers on Her Memoir "Dear Dealer" | 15 sept. 2026 | 00:51:55 | |
What do you do when the person who destroyed your family is also, undeniably, a human being? That's the question at the center of Nadia Bowers's Dear Dealer, and it's the question we sit with for this entire conversation. Nadia's sister Sasha died in 2015 after taking drugs laced with fentanyl, and rather than write a simple story of a villain and a victim, Nadia spent nearly a decade writing directly to the man who sold them to her. We talk about the letter that became a This American Life episode in 2018, the moment a producer emailed her that JJ Abrams wanted to option it as a film, and the year she spent unweaving a seven hundred page draft written entirely as letters before finding the structure that let the book breathe. Nadia talks about reading Truth & Beauty, Ann Patchett's memoir about her friendship with Lucy Grealy, years before Sasha died, and tucking away the idea that grief could be written about honestly and lovingly at once. We get into the specific stigma that surrounds women and addiction, the friend whose book on losing loved ones to the opioid crisis helped Nadia think about radical acceptance, and the moment her husband suggested her sister might have been closer to the dealer's side of the story than either of them wanted to admit. This is a conversation about what we owe the dead, what we owe ourselves, and how you write your way into forgiveness without forcing it. Share this conversation with anyone who has ever loved someone impossible to hold onto. "I think maybe grief doesn't grow up, doesn't wither. It stays stubborn and young, rooted in the moment it was born." - Nadia Bowers, Dear Dealer Books referenced: Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett Support the show: Subscribe on Apple Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Ariel Lawhon on "The Pirate Queen" | 08 sept. 2026 | 01:20:58 | |
What does it take to reclaim a woman's story when history itself was written by people who had every reason to erase her? That's the question at the center of our conversation with Ariel Lawhon, bestselling author of The Frozen River and her newest novel, The Pirate Queen, about the real life Irish chieftain Grace O'Malley. We talk about why Grace doesn't appear anywhere in official Irish history, and how the only record of her survives in the snide, grudging English state papers written by the empire that feared her. Ariel explains that she's drawn again and again to subversive women because women have always had to be subversive, and because for most of history, only the literate got remembered, which meant most women simply didn't. From Nancy Wake to Martha Ballard to Grace herself, she talks about borrowing personality and instinct from the women in her own life to fill in the gaps history left behind, sometimes literally turning a character into her own mother. We get into her process too, how she became a devoted plotter out of necessity after having four sons in five years and learning to write in stolen thirty minute increments, and how she still treats a deadline with the gravity of its original meaning, a line you did not want to cross on a battlefield. There's a genuinely magical detour into the children's book she read in an abandoned two room schoolhouse in New Mexico decades later and found sitting in a pile on the floor, the exact copy, waiting for her. And we spend real time on the moment in The Frozen River that readers talk about most, when Martha Ballard delivers her own kind of justice, and what it means that women are so often expected to pull their punches in fiction the way men never are. Ariel and I talk about intuition, the knowing, and trusting it, sometimes because it's the thing that keeps you alive. Share this conversation with the woman in your life who needs a reminder that the world has always underestimated women like Grace O'Malley, but Grace still soared. “Because men will never respect you if you try to be like them.” Gráinne lifts her head and meets her mother’s gaze. “Then how will they respect me?” “They won’t,” Maeve says with a shrug. Then she takes her daughter’s face in her hands and brings it close. Until their noses touch and their breath mingles. “Not unless you make them.” -excerpt from THE PIRATE QUEEN by Ariel Lawhon Connect with Ariel Lawhon: Books Referenced: THE PIRATE QUEEN by Ariel Lawhon THE FROZEN RIVER by Ariel Lawhon CODE NAME HÉLÈNE by Ariel Lawhon FLIGHT OF DREAMS by Ariel Lawhon WAIT FOR ME, WATCH FOR ME, EULA BEE by Patricia Beatty CHRONICLES OF NARNIA by C.S. Lewis LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolken WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams BARRIERS TO ENTRY by Ariel Lawhon (short story) Support the show: Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Emilee Hackney on Her Memoir "All That's Unseen" | 01 sept. 2026 | 01:01:21 | |
What does it cost to love a place and a faith that shaped you, even after they've hurt you? This week I sit down with Emilee Hackney, author of the New York Times bestselling memoir All That's Unseen, to talk about growing up in Tazewell, Virginia, and the long, winding path that took her from a Pentecostal church pew to Harvard Yard to a bestseller list. We talk about the church she grew up in from age five, the engagement she entered as a teenager, and the slow, painful process of questioning beliefs she'd never been taught to question until she left home for Harvard. Emilee is remarkably generous about her younger self throughout our conversation, and that same compassion runs through every page of her book. We get into the isolation she felt as an Appalachian student surrounded by people who saw her as, in her words, an exotic creature from a shameful corner of the country, and how spite became an unlikely motivator for her education. Of course... politics come up too. Emilee doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable truths in her research, from Trump's proposed defunding of the Appalachian Regional Commission to his rollback of coal dust health protections, even as she pushed back against easy judgments of the people who voted for him anyway. We talk about fear as a political currency, about algorithms that feed conservatism to anyone who engages with Appalachian content, and about the quiet apathy Emilee believes both parties have shown her home region for generations. We end with hope, opossums, and the strange, permanent tension of loving a place you can never quite be happy in or without. This is a memoir about reckoning with faith, class, and identity, and Emilee brought every bit of that nuance into our conversation. Share this conversation with anyone who grew up somewhere they had complicated feelings about leaving. "A personal essay, as it turned out, was about more than the people and places I knew. It was about how those people and places affected me: how I saw them, how I interpreted them, how I understood them in my greater understanding of the world." - Emilee Hackney's memoir ALL THAT'S UNSEEN Connect with Emilee Hackney: Books Referenced: ALL THAT'S UNSEEN by Emilee Hackney STOLEN PRIDE by Arlie Russell Hochschild Support the show: Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Friday Fiction: Rachel Hochhauser's "Lady Tremaine" | 28 août 2026 | 00:50:09 | |
What if the woman we've been taught to hate for six centuries was just doing what it took to survive in a world that gave her almost no options? That's the question Rachel Hochhauser sat with long before she ever sat down to write, and it's the question that turns into her debut novel, Lady Tremaine, the instant New York Times bestseller and Reese's Book Club pick that reimagines Cinderella's stepmother as a woman worth understanding rather than a woman worth fearing. Rachel and I talk about how the idea found her at the hardest possible time, scrolling her phone in a hospital while her husband recovered from emergency brain surgery, suddenly a single parent overnight, when an image of Lady Tremaine stopped her cold. She walks me through the years she spent away from fiction after her first manuscript didn't sell, the puzzle company she built in that gap called Piecework, and what it meant to come back to her desk and have it feel, in her words, like coming home to herself. We get into her research process, including a deep dive into falconry that started with a pandemic hotel workshop and turned into Lucy, the peregrine falcon who becomes one of the book's most vivid characters. And we talk about Ellen, her version of Cinderella, and why Rachel chose to make her one of the more complicated, less immediately likable Cinderellas in the canon, and why that complication is the point. We also get into the line Rachel calls her favorite in the entire book, the one she was writing toward long before she knew how she'd get there, and what it means that the book ends up being a message from a mother to her daughters instead of a fairy tale ending at all. Share this conversation with the friend who still has strong feelings about Ever After. “Goodness is always contextual.” ― Rachel Hochhauser, LADY TREMAINE Connect with Rachel Hochhauser: Books Referenced: LADY TREMAINE by Rachel Hochhauser Support the show: Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Mallary Tenore Tarpley on Her Memoir "SLIP" | 25 août 2026 | 00:59:53 | |
What if recovery was never meant to be a finish line? Mallary Tenore Tarpley spent over twenty years writing and rewriting the story that became Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery, and what she landed on upends how we're taught to think about healing. She calls it the middle place: the space between acutely sick and fully recovered where most people actually live, and where almost no one gives them permission to stay. Mallary story starts at eight years old, when her mother died of metastatic breast cancer. In the wreckage of that loss, an idea took root that if she could keep her body the same size it was when her mother was alive, she could stop time and stay close to her. That thought, formed by a grieving child in a health class learning about good foods and bad foods, spiraled into anorexia and five hospitalizations at Boston Children's, followed by seventeen months in residential treatment. It is a reminder that eating disorders are rarely about vanity. They're about control, grief, and a body trying to speak what a person cannot yet say out loud. We talk about why Mallary built her memoir as reported journalism as much as personal narrative, weaving in the voices of 700 survey respondents and 175 interview subjects specifically because she didn't want her story, as a thin, white, middle class woman, to stand in as the only face of this disease. We get into what it was like reading her own childhood journals, calorie counts and self-loathing tucked inside Winnie the Pooh covers, and the moment she caught herself slipping back into old behaviors just from transcribing them. We talk about the staggering gap in medical training, the history of women being excluded from clinical trials, and how diet culture, GLP-1 drugs, and AI beauty filters are reshaping an old danger into something that feels newly urgent. And we talk about what it means to write an ending that refuses a tidy bow, because pretending to be fully healed would have made her, in her words, an unreliable narrator. If you've ever felt like you were failing at recovery because you weren't finished with it, this conversation is for you. Share this conversation with someone who needs permission to be in progress instead of fixed. The National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline is 866-662-1235, open 9:00am–7:00pm EST Monday–Friday. It's not a 24/7 crisis line — for after-hours support, they direct people to 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline) or text "NEDA" to 741-741 Connect with Mallary Tenore Tarpley: https://www.mallarytenoretarpley.com/ @mallarytenoretarpley Books Referenced: SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating-Disorder Recovery by Mallary Tenore Tarpley Articles Referenced: We Keep Arguing About Ariana Grande's Body. We're Missing the Bigger Story When I Lost My Sense of Taste to Covid, My Anorexia Stepped In (gifted) Support the show: Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| TEASER: UnReliable? // Jodie Sweetin's Memoir "UnSweetined" | 24 août 2026 | 00:11:14 | |
Is a sobriety memoir still honest if the author was relapsing while she wrote it? That's the question Suz and I couldn't shake after reading and listening to Jodi Sweetin's "UnSweetined", and it's why we brought this one back as a bonus episode. We dug into Jodie's story from Full House's beloved Stephanie Tanner to the meth addiction she hid for years, and we couldn't agree on much except this: the book is fascinating, fast paced, and also strangely hard to trust. Jodie wrote most of "UnSweetined" while she was actively using, only getting sober once she became a mother, and we talked about what that means for a memoir that's marketed as a redemption story. We got into the newer audiobook forward Jodie recorded sixteen years after the book's original release, where she updates listeners on two more marriages, another child, and a version of sobriety she never quite defines for us. We also spent time in the good stuff, the Full House trivia we didn't know and the way the cast really did seem to love each other. But we kept circling back to the same tension. Jodie is disarmingly honest about her own manipulation and dishonesty, and yet there's a lack of accountability running underneath all of it, a scapegoating that never quite resolves. We talked about what we expect from addiction memoirs, whether humor can be armor, and whether a book like this would exist at all if she weren't famous. Share this conversation with someone who grew up watching Full House, or with anyone who's ever wondered what a redemption arc actually requires. "I still don't know what it was that I was so unhappy about. To some people it probably looked like I had it all. If I had to sit and list what was bothering me at the time, I don't think I could have done it. All I knew was that I didn't want to be me." - Jodie Sweetin Thank you for supporting the show! xx, Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| BSB: Isabel Klee's Memoir "Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I've Cried About" | 21 août 2026 | 00:16:30 | |
What happens when a book gives you everything you want on the surface and still leaves you wanting more underneath? I'm back with a mini review of Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I've Cried About, the debut memoir from Isabel Klee, the writer and content creator behind the dog-rescue account @simonsits. The book chronicles Isabel's twenties in New York City: a string of complicated boyfriends, a tight community of women figuring life out alongside her, and a parade of foster dogs she helped rehabilitate and rehome, including her first true love, a rescued pup named Simon. I dig into what worked and what didn't, and along the way, I share my own dog story, adopting my scrappy one-eared rescue terrier during my first stretch of living alone, and make the case for solo living as one of the most underrated things you can do for yourself in your twenties, lease restrictions and all. Share this conversation with someone who has a rescue dog story of their own. Please rate and review the show and share this conversation with someone who grew up in the church and is still working out which parts of their faith are actually theirs. "Love and patience could heal a broken dog, but, most of the time, it wasn't going to heal a broken man." - Isabel Klee Connect with Isabel Klee: @simonsits on instagram Books Referenced: Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I've Cried About by Isabel Klee Support the show: Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod xx, Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Ariel Fitz-Patrick on Her Memoir "Imma See for Myself" | 18 août 2026 | 00:54:51 | |
What happens when you finally stop believing something just because you were told to, and start asking if it's actually true? TikTok creator, singer, and now memoirist Ariel Fitz-Patrick joins me on Babes in Bookland to talk about her new memoir I See for Myself, which takes her viral catchphrase and turns it into a full reckoning with faith, family, and growing up in a strict Pentecostal household. Ariel opens up about being raised by Caribbean immigrant parents in Quebec, the birthday party she wasn't allowed to fully attend, being thrown into a French-language school with zero support at fourteen, and the moment at twelve years old when she realized she didn't actually know God, she just knew of him. This conversation moves through doubt, poverty, spiritual warfare, and what it actually means to build a faith that's yours instead of one you inherited. Please rate and review the show and share this conversation with someone who grew up in the church and is still working out which parts of their faith are actually theirs. "I'm telling you to be intentional about how you trust to help you walk through this difficult, confusing, frustrating, maddening thing we call life." - Ariel Fitz-Patrick Connect with Ariel Fitz-Patrick: @Ariel.fitz (tik tok) Books Referenced: Imma See for Myself by Ariel Fitz-Patrick Support the show: Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Women Taking Care of Women // Dr. Mary Fariba Afsari's Memoir "Labor" | 12 août 2026 | 00:57:39 | |
What is your ripple effect? This week I'm joined by bookstagrammer and journalist Ashley Kritzer (@ashleykrtizer on instagram!) to talk about LABOR by Dr. Mary Afsari, a memoir Ashley championed hard-- and once I read it, I understood exactly why. In under 200 pages, Mary tells two intertwined stories: her own path as an OBGYN pushed to the edge by burnout, policy, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and her search for the truth about her grandmother's death in Iran. The result is a book that is medically intense without ever being gratuitous, and that manages to be both deeply personal and urgently political. Ashley and I dig into what makes the memoir work: its restraint, its refusal to wander into subplots that don't serve the story, and the dual timeline that lets Mary's family history illuminate her present-day fight for women's healthcare. We talk about the hardest case in the book, a child patient whose story exposes how broken the systems meant to protect her really are. We talk about Mary's decision to build a mobile OBGYN practice out of an RV, entirely self-funded, because the traditional system wasn't serving the women who needed her most. And we talk about the eerie, direct line she draws between the crackdown on women's rights in 1979 Iran and what's happening in America right now. We land, as we always seem to, on the same idea: women taking care of women is one of the most beautiful things. Grab a copy of LABOR by Dr. Mary Fariba Afsari, then come back and listen. Share this conversation with someone who needs the reminder that women taking care of women is still one of the most powerful things in the world. "My belief that we were doing the right thing as the right time is what kept me going." - Dr. Mary Fariba Asfari Connect with Dr. Mary Fariba Asfari: Connect with Ashley Kritzer: Books Referenced: LABOR by Dr. Mary Fariba Asfari Support the show: Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Claire Stapleton on Her Memoir "Don't Be Evil" | 04 août 2026 | 00:56:42 | |
What happens when the company that promises to change the world asks you to disappear into it? Claire Stapleton spent twelve years at Google, first as the internal voice known as the company's Bard, then as one of the organizers of the 20,000-person walkout that made international headlines. In this episode, we dig into her new memoir, Don't Be Evil, tracing her journey from true believer to whistleblower, and what it actually cost her to tell the truth about a company that built its entire identity on a promise it couldn't keep. Claire opens up about the corporate language that slowly ate her own voice, the manager who pushed her off her team while she was pregnant, and the strange psychological architecture of a workplace designed to feel like a religion. She talks candidly about grief, motherhood, and the brother she lost early in her career, whose old Gchat messages became some of her most important source material while writing this book. It's a conversation about power, complicity, and what happens when a woman decides she's done playing the good girl. Send this episode to the friend who still can't quite explain why she left her dream job, or the one who's trying to figure out how to keep her voice inside a company that would rather she didn't have one. Connect with Claire Stapleton: Support the show: Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Books Referenced: Don't Be Evil by Claire Stapleton Careless People The Managed Heart by Arlie Hochschild Other Links: CNN Business — "One year after the Google walkout, key organizers reflect on the risk to their careers" https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/01/tech/google-walkout-one-year-later-risk-takers The Guardian (via Yahoo News) — "Demoted and sidelined: Google walkout organizers say company retaliated" https://news.yahoo.com/culture-retaliation-google-employees-punished-222552257.html Gulf News / AFP — "Google walkout organiser quits, citing retaliation fear" CNBC — "Former Google activist Claire Stapleton is starting an advice newsletter for frustrated tech workers" https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/28/ex-google-activist-claire-stapleton-starts-advice-newsletter.html Mashable (via Yahoo News) — "Google employees reveal the hidden costs of speaking out" https://news.yahoo.com/google-employees-reveal-hidden-costs-195821971.html Grokipedia — bio/timeline overview (useful for quick-reference dates and the full organizer list, though not a traditional outlet, so worth double-checking against primary sources) https://grokipedia.com/page/claire_stapleton Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| TEASER: Almost a Reckoning // Hayden Panettiere's "This Is Me" | 31 juil. 2026 | 00:10:05 | |
What happens when a memoir promises a reckoning but delivers armor instead? In this Babes in Bookland bonus episode, I'm joined by my friend Lizzie to dig into Hayden Panettiere's memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning. Lizzie listened to the audiobook first, and warned me it was painful, so I braced for a gutting, Christina Applegate style read, and came out with a completely different experience of the same book. That gap between the two of us became the real story of this episode. Hayden rose to fame before she was old enough to understand what fame meant, from Remember the Titans to Heroes to two Golden Globe nominated seasons of Nashville, all while quietly carrying the pressure of being Hollywood's It Girl. Her memoir promises postpartum depression, addiction, domestic abuse, and loss, and we both went in rooting for her. What we found instead was a book that kept circling its own most painful moments without ever landing on them, a codependent relationship with her mother that never gets fully named, and a custody decision that's never quite explained. We talk through what worked, why the cover and author photo tell you almost everything you need to know before you even open the book, and why they both think the deeper, more vulnerable version of this memoir is still a few years away. Listen to the full episode to hear us work through it, and let us know: would you recommend this one, or wait for the sequel? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Sarah May on Her Memoir "She Journeys" | 28 juil. 2026 | 01:06:58 | |
What does it take to finally name the thing that happened to you? Sarah is the author of She Journeys, a memoir about a military marriage that devolved into betrayal, a helicopter crash, and years of numbness before she could even recognize her own trauma for what it was. We talk about leaving an abusive relationship, the therapist who validated her martial rape, rebuilding faith on her own terms, and the solo road trip across the country that became the beginning of an entirely different life. Share this one with the friend who's in the in-between place after a loss, and the friend who needs to hear that starting over is possible, even when it feels impossible. Links: Instagram: she_journeys Book: She Journeys Support the show: Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| BSB: Janet Fash's Memoir "Lifeguard: A Love Story" | 25 juil. 2026 | 00:22:12 | |
What happens when the person hired to keep you safe is fighting a system that would rather look the other way? This week's bite-sized episode dives into Lifeguard, A Love Story, the memoir from Janet Fash, one of the first female lifeguard chiefs in New York City history, co-written with Cleo Chang. I read through Janet's decades on Rockaway Beach, from her start as a hazed rookie lifeguard in the debauchery-soaked 1970s to her years-long battle against entrenched union corruption at the top of the Parks Department. It's part coming of age story, part exposé, and I break down where each half succeeds and where the blend gets uneven, plus why that slow first third might test even the most patient reader. I also gets into the harder threads running through the book: the tragedies Janet survives along the way, the sexism and harassment she faces climbing the ranks, and the quietly devastating stakes of what happens when a beach safety system is run for power instead of people. It's a messy, imperfect memoir about what it actually costs to be the one person willing to keep pushing when everyone else has made peace with looking away. Give this one a listen, then let us know if you made it past that first third. Like, review, and share Babes in Bookland with a friend who needs a stubborn woman in their life this summer. Links: Book: Lifeguard: A Love Story Support the show: Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Gaelynn Lea on Her Memoir "It Wasn't Meant to be Perfect" | 21 juil. 2026 | 01:06:30 | |
What happens when the world tells you no, and someone decides to say yes instead? Gaelynn Lea is a folk musician, Broadway composer, and Tiny Desk Contest winner whose memoir It Wasn't Meant to Be Perfect is as funny and warm as she is, even when she's writing about near-death experiences, medical dismissal, and growing up disabled in a world that wasn't built for her. We talk about gatekeepers versus gate openers, the teacher who adapted a violin instead of saying no, sexuality and disability, and the one sentence from a mentor that changed how she thinks about making art at all. Share this one with the friend who's scared to put their creative work out into the world, and the friend who could use a reminder that adapting isn't the same as giving up. Links: Website: violinscratches.com Substack: gaelynnlea.substack.com Instagram/socials: @gaelynnlea Facebook: Galen Lee Creates Book: It Wasn't Meant to Be Perfect Support the show: Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Yesteryear // Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Pioneer Girl" & "Little House on the Prairie" | 15 juil. 2026 | 01:09:24 | |
What if the coziest story of your childhood was only cozy because someone decided what to leave out? This week Brett is back for a book club chat on Little House on the Prairie and the real manuscript behind it, Pioneer Girl. We get into how Laura Ingalls Wilder's actual life story got rewritten by her daughter Rose into something sellable for Depression-era kids, what got cut along the way (a dead baby brother, a murdered family friend, an entire year of their lives), and the Osage history the books erase almost entirely, land that was never actually free, a removal that happened right past their door. We also talk about Pa, who gets remembered as the moral center of the whole series and maybe doesn't deserve it, and about Yesteryear, this year's buzziest book club pick, where a trad-wife influencer wakes up living the 1855 life she's been selling on Instagram. This is a conversation about which parts of our history get to be cozy and which parts get quietly left out, and who decides. If it resonates, subscribe, leave a review, and send it to a friend who loved these books as a kid too. Books & Sources Mentioned Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography The full Little House series (Laura Ingalls Wilder) The Rose Years series (Roger Lee MacBride) The Caroline Years series (Maria D. Wilkes & Celia Wilkins)Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser Frances Kaye, "Little Squatter on the Osage Diminished Reserve," Great Plains Quarterly (2000) Osage Nation historical documentation (referenced re: 1869–70 removal) PBS American Masters piece on Laura Ingalls Wilder Coming Up Next Week! Author chat with Gaelynn Lea on her memoir It Wasn't Meant to Be Perfect — a folk musician, Broadway composer, and disability advocate on embracing every kind of body. Thank you! xx, Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Author Chat: Libby Ward's Memoir "Honest Motherhood" | 08 juil. 2026 | 00:59:38 | |
What happens when the "honest mom" finally tells you the parts she's never posted? This week I'm talking with Libby Ward about her memoir, Honest Motherhood. Libby built an audience of over 2 million by naming the mental load, the mother wound, and the impossible pressure to be everything. But the book goes further than any caption ever could: her rural church upbringing and the deconstruction that followed, the chaos of her own childhood and the long, complicated work of rebuilding a relationship on her own terms with her mother, and the exact moment in a minivan when she realized she'd become someone she never wanted to be. We talk about trusting her own voice after a lifetime of trusting everyone else's, why she turned down a book deal with a major agent because it wasn't the book she wanted to write, and why writing this one nearly broke her even though the book tour feels like a vacation by comparison. We also get into the humor running through the whole thing, because Libby is proof that funny people usually have a little trauma to thank for it. This is a conversation about permission. Permission to stop performing wellness, to hold boundaries and actually keep holding them, and to feel proud of your own work without waiting for someone else to say it's okay. If the conversation resonates, subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with any mom ready to break out of survival mode. “Being honest about what I needed didn’t feel brave— it felt unnatural. No, scratch that. Disappointing other people made me want to peel my skin off.” -- Libby Ward Connect with Libby Ward: Support the show: On Patreon. This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex 00:00 — Intro + episode teaser 01:30 — Welcoming Libby, gushing over the book 04:00 — What she's never shared online: her mom, her childhood 07:30 — Her deconstruction journey and leaving the church mindset 11:00 — Why she started sharing online in the first place 14:30 — Turning down the wrong book deal 18:00 — Finding her voice: editors, coaches, and saying no to a ghostwriter 21:30 — Balancing content creation, motherhood, and ADHD ("rubber ball brain") 25:00 — Writing the book was "the seventh layer of hell" 28:30 — How she wove humor into heavy topics 32:00 — Learning to actually feel proud of herself 35:30 — Becoming a mom she didn't want to be 40:00 — The granola bar moment: her breaking point 43:00 — The "ball of yarn" metaphor for untangling trauma 46:30 — Her mother, going no contact, and why 50:30 — Boundaries, hope, and rebuilding the relationship 54:00 — What society needs to change ("men need to enter the chat") 58:00 — Rapid-fire: favorite word, staying hopeful, weirdly competitive 1:01:30 — Where to find Libby + outro 1:02:30 — Next week preview: Pioneer Girl / Little House / Yesteryear with Brett Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod xx, Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Babes in Bookland's 2nd Birthday! | 01 juil. 2026 | 00:48:11 | |
Thank you for being here! Today, we look back on a few of my favorite clips from the past three seasons! xx, Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Trans Joy // RE-RUN: Geena Rocero's Memoir "Horse Barbie" | 23 juin 2026 | 01:09:05 | |
How can you reclaim your truth and your power? We’re diving into Horse Barbie, Geena Rocero’s radiant and illuminating memoir that shows her journey from a one-room home in Manila, Philippians, to trans pageants, from the perfume counter at Macy’s to New York fashion sets, and from private, suffocating, fear to a TED Talk that reframed transness as power. Along the way, we discuss her father’s complicated love, her mother’s unwavering belief and reflect on what can spark when the people who matter most tell you there’s nothing wrong with you.
Geena’s story and memoir widens from personal to political: pre-colonial history without gendered pronouns, the costs of documentation that doesn’t match your face, and the power of her viral TED Talk to turn shame into strength. We sit with the big questions: Why is femininity seen as a threat? How do entertainment and policy diverge? What changes when a community moves from visibility to rights? By the end, Horse Barbie reads like a manual for courage. It shows how story becomes strategy and how one woman’s voice can help many step out of the shadows. If you care about trans rights, immigration, pageant culture, modeling, or the way love can change a life, this conversation brings nuance, warmth, and a clear takeaway: policy matters, family matters, and stories move hearts faster than arguments ever will.
If the conversation resonates, subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who needs a hopeful, human lens on trans life and advocacy. For the extended discussion of this episode (an additional 24 min), subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Patreon. Support the show: Other Links: This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Special thanks to my dear friend, Jaime! Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Timestamps! 00:21: Intro Buy Geena Rocero's Memoir Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Author Chat: Dorothy Roberts' Memoir "The Mixed Marriage Project" | 16 juin 2026 | 01:06:22 | |
What questions should you be asking the people you love while you still can? That's the thread running through this conversation with Dorothy Roberts, whose memoir The Mixed Marriage Projectstarted with a stack of boxes. After her parents passed, Dorothy opened them and found nearly 500 interviews her white father had conducted with interracial couples in Chicago, beginning in 1937, almost two decades before he married her Black mother. Inside were wild parties, a nudist camp, a turn-of-the-century club for mixed couples, and a file labeled number 224 that turned out to be about her. We talk about the interviews her father never published and the book contracts he kept walking away from, why she hid her father's whiteness from her Black classmates at Yale, and the painful stereotypes that surfaced even inside a club devoted to interracial marriage. We get into the big question at the heart of the memoir too: whether love, the everyday intimate kind, can actually dismantle racism. Spoiler, it's complicated. Dorothy Roberts is a scholar, professor, and author of five books on race, gender, and the systems that devalue Black women and mothers. The Mixed Marriage Project is her first memoir, built from the nearly 500 interviews her father left behind. If this conversation moved you, share it with a friend and leave a review and rating. Purchase The Mixed Marriage Project Support the show: Subscribe to the Babes in Bookland Substack Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Thank you for listening! Xx, Alex Timestamps! 00:01 — Intro: The Mixed Marriage Project 02:22 — Finding the form: memoir as history and social analysis 04:09 — What was the Great Migration 05:55 — Interracial marriage laws, North vs. South 08:00 — The interracial couples' club and its blind spot on Black women 10:56 — Race, racism, and why the questions never get asked 12:19 — Choosing which couples made the book 14:00 — The Albertis: a lifelong family friendship hidden in the interviews 15:22 — Researcher, daughter, or both 16:53 — The twist: her father started this before he met her mother 19:51 — Her father's anti-racism, and the brother who disowned him 23:19 — The India trip that shaped everything 25:06 — Questions she'll never get to ask her parents 26:24 — Writing alongside her sisters, Helen and Evelyn 28:00 — The Bachelor chapter: the nudist camp, the wild party, the sister who wanted it cut 31:40 — A loving memoir, not an attack 33:22 — Her own "bachelorette" stories 34:21 — What her kids might find in her own papers one day 35:37 — Being recorded, being remembered — the podcast as legacy 38:36 — Her father's thesis: can interracial marriage end racism 41:29 — How her views shifted while writing 47:30 — Her father's first interview, 1937, and the racial caste system 49:17 — The book he never finished 51:28 — File 224: discovering she was one of his research subjects 55:59 — Hiding her father's whiteness at Yale 59:04 — Ashamed isn't quite the word 61:06 — Racial identity is made up — and hers is hers 63:06 — Favorite word, staying hopeful, Marvin Gaye Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Objectify Her // Lauren Fleshman's Memoir "Good for a Girl" | 10 juin 2026 | 00:54:41 | |
What would it mean to build women's sports around women's bodies? This week, my friend Becca returns to discuss Lauren Fleshman's memoir "Good for a Girl". What starts as a running memoir quickly reveals itself as something far bigger: an investigation into the science of female puberty and athletics, the eating disorder epidemic inside women's collegiate and professional sports, and one woman's relentless fight to change a sport she loves from the inside out. We discuss Lauren's unconventional path to running, the ways puberty has been treated as "the one injury a girl can't come back from," the NCAA's staggering lack of policy around eating disorders in women's athletics, Lauren's famous Nike "Objectify Me" campaign, and the ways female athletes are still being failed by the systems built to protect them. This episode is for every woman who was ever told she was good — for a girl. The runners, the former athletes, the moms of daughters in sports, and anyone who has ever felt their body was working against them instead of for them. If this conversation resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with a friend who needs to hear it, and rate and review the show wherever you listen. It makes a huge difference! Other Links: https://www.milesplit.com/articles/211759/dear-younger-me-lauren-fleshman (Lauren's letter to her younger self) Follow Becca's bookstagram: @bookedwithbecca and her new running account: @run.with.becca Support the show: Subscribe to the Babes in Bookland Substack Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Thank you for listening! Xx, Alex Timestamps! 00:00 — Intro: Lauren Fleshman's Good for a Girl 01:02 — Why did Becca pick this book? 03:33 — The book's dedication and opening lines 03:57 — How did Becca's running journey begin? 05:15 — How do you stay safe on solo runs? 07:05 — What would you tell your younger self? 08:09 — "You can do anything, Lauren" — her dad's voice in her head 09:58 — How do we hold space for people who shaped us for better and worse? 11:35 — "Dad was a wild tide, but mom was our shore" 12:08 — How do parents give equal love and attention in a big family? 13:44 — Beating the boys, and not questioning it 17:03 — Why do we still say "good for a girl"? 17:51 — Middle school dominance, then puberty hits 19:00 — Do we tie our identity to winning? 19:50 — Becca's Lauren Fleshman sighting on a race course 20:25 — Why are girls quitting sports by 14–17? 22:37 — Why does puberty help boys and hurt girls athletically? 23:32 — The clash between athletic function and the male gaze 25:39 — Finding her running form and making the team 27:20 — When did you first realize the boys were pulling ahead? 29:30 — How did Title IX change the culture of effort? 33:04 — "Puberty is the injury you can't come back from" — what did the captain mean? 34:20 — Why are eating disorders so prevalent in the running world? 35:53 — Why does the NCAA still have no policy on eating disorders? 39:06 — Stanford, Jesse, and asking the hard question up front 40:07 — "What made great women possible?" 41:19 — Body image and the college uniform 42:41 — Equity vs. equality — why "same" isn't fair? 43:16 — Why do female athletes peak in their late 20s and 30s, not their teens? 45:08 — Going pro on a $60K Nike salary 46:04 — Coming heartbreakingly close to the Olympics 47:01 — What happened when she emailed Nike's CEO? 47:46 — The "Objectify Her" campaign — reclaiming the gaze 49:19 — How do you let anger fuel advocacy instead of consuming it? 49:56 — Why did she start her blog? 50:49 — The granola bar company 51:04 — Why did Nike treat her pregnancy like an injury? 51:33 — What real change would actually look like for young female athletes? 52:20 — Final thoughts: what are we taking from this book? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Author Chat: Jessica Zucker's Memoir "I Had a Miscarriage" & "Normalize It" | 03 juin 2026 | 00:50:55 | |
What would change if women stopped being silent about the hardest parts of their lives? This week, I sit down with psychologist, author, and advocate Dr. Jessica Zucker, the woman behind the viral #IHadAMiscarriage movement, to discuss her memoir I Had a Miscarriage and her newest book Normalize It: Upending the Silence, Stigma, and Shame That Shape Women's Lives. TW: Infant loss, pregnancy loss Jessica shares the story behind her 16-week miscarriage, how it deepened her already decade-long clinical work in women's reproductive and maternal mental health, and why she felt compelled to bring that conversation into the public sphere. We also dig into why so many women default to self-blame after pregnancy loss, how our culture has taught us to minimize our grief, and why avoiding painful emotions can be far more destructive than actually feeling them. Plus these big questions: Can pleasure and grief coexist? What does it mean to truly honor a loss? And why do the people who most deserve joy so often feel the least entitled to it? Come for the conversation about pregnancy loss and women's shame. Stay for the moment Alex and Jessica unpack why grief avoidance, not grief itself, is what really derails us, and the simple, no-excuse practice Jessica recommends for anyone who doesn't have time to fall apart. Warm, honest, and full of gentle permission slips, this conversation is for anyone who has ever shrunk their pain to make others more comfortable — which is probably all of us. Purchase Jessica's Books: Find Jessica! Dr. Jessica Zucker's website: drjessicazucker.com Her Instagram: @IHadAMiscarriage Support the show: Subscribe to the Babes in Bookland Substack Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Thank you for listening! Xx, Alex Timestamps! Timestamps! 00:00 Welcome and intro to Dr. Jessica Zucker 01:48 The origins of I Had a Miscarriage and Jessica's background in reproductive mental health 03:08 Jessica's own sixteen-week miscarriage while home alone 04:06 Why shame and self-blame follow pregnancy loss 05:28 Miscarriage as a normative outcome, not a curable one 07:14 Alex opens up about her own miscarriage 09:04 Building composite patient stories across both books 11:44 The #IHadAMiscarriage hashtag going viral 14:19 Letting grief wash over you instead of running from it 15:33 Grief avoidance, numbing, and what actually ruins us 16:09 How being the specialist made her own grief harder to navigate 18:57 Two weeks after the book came out: a breast cancer diagnosis 20:43 Small daily check-ins for people without access to therapy 25:01 Grief doesn't shrink, your life just gets bigger 26:08 Naming Olive and the grief rituals she witnessed in Tokyo 30:14 Can pleasure and grief coexist? Joy as resistance 31:35 The backstory of Normalize It and how it came together during cancer 35:20 Why women carry so much shame 38:04 Can shame ever be a useful tool? 39:35 Talking to her son and daughter about bodies, periods, and sex 44:11 The bravery of a text that just says "thinking of you" 45:52 Mirror or manifesto? 46:38 Body image after breast cancer 48:29 How Jessica stays hopeful 49:02 Where to find Jessica and her books Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| TEASER: Missed Opportunity // Lena Dunham's Memoir "Famesick" | 01 juin 2026 | 00:19:27 | |
This week, Brett is back for a bonus episode and we are getting into "Famesick", Lena Dunham's new memoir about illness, ambition, Hollywood, and whether any of it was worth it. Brett isn't just any reader here — she worked closely with Lena during the Girls era at United Talent Agency, which means this conversation comes with some serious behind-the-scenes context that you are not going to get anywhere else. We break down what the book actually delivers versus what it promises: the health journey, the name dropping, the rise-to-fame years, the rehab chapters, the wildest dedication page we have ever read, and the moment with Barbara Walters that has been making the rounds for good reason. We also get into what the memoir conspicuously leaves out — her friendship with Taylor Swift, the wording of the November 17th statement — and why those omissions say just as much as what she chose to include. The big question we keep coming back to: is "Famesick" a genuine reckoning, or is it a very calculated, self-serving reframe of a career and a public image? If you loved Girls, hated Girls, or have ever had a complicated relationship with a woman who is clearly brilliant... but also kind of a lot — this episode is for you. Thank you so much for supporting the show! Xx, Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| BSB: Belle Burden's Memoir "Strangers" | 26 mai 2026 | 00:21:00 | |
Belle Burden's divorce memoir, Strangers, is the book everyone's talking about! She's a Harvard-educated lawyer, a Vanderbilt heiress, a hedge fund husband, and a life that unraveled with a single voicemail. But why are we so obsessed with this woman's problems? On this Bite-Sized Babes, I break down the instant #1 NYT bestseller with some hot takes: the transformation the book promises vs. what it actually delivers, the anger that never quite shows up on the page, and the uncomfortable question of whose pain we choose to center in literary culture. Plus, a fascinating comparison to Jen Hatmaker's Awake, the memoir telling nearly the same story with a completely different energy. Come for the book review, stay for the bigger conversation about women, wealth, divorce, and who gets to fall apart in public. Buy Belle Burden's "Strangers" Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Xx, Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Beyond Survival Mode // Parvati Shallow's Memoir "Nice Girls Don't Win" | 20 mai 2026 | 01:11:51 | |
Can nice girls win? You know her as one of the most iconic players in Survivor history, but Parvati Shallow's memoir, Nice Girls Don't Win, reveals the story behind the strategy. My friend, Diliana, joins me as we dive deep into Parvati's remarkable journey from growing up in a cult-like commune called The Ranch, to winning Survivor twice, to finally doing the hardest thing of all: healing. We explore the four Fs — fight, flight, freeze, and fawn — and how Parvati spent most of her life cycling through them without realizing it. We talk about the performance of being "the good girl," what it costs women to be likable, and why the villain edit she carried for years says so much more about our culture than it does about her. And along the way, we get personal about growing up in survival mode, about not wanting to be a burden, about the belief systems we inherit from the people who raised us, and the long, non-linear work of unlearning them. This one is for anyone who has ever shrunk themselves to be loved, wondered why they can't just get over it, or needed a reminder that the mess and the healing are both part of the win. Purchase Nice Girls Don't Win by Parvati Shallow Other books mentioned: Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott Thank you for supporting the show! Xx, Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Author Chat: Cassidy Gard's Memoir "Cosmic Goodness" | 12 mai 2026 | 01:05:44 | |
One good choice can re-route an entire life, but only if you trust yourself enough to make it. I sit down with memoirist Cassidy Gard to talk about the real story behind her healing memoir, "Cosmic Goodness: Surrendering the Shadows to Live in the Light." We also get delightfully specific about book cover decisions, permissions, and why the right quote can set the emotional tone for a chapter. From there, we go deeper into the heart of her message: “cosmic goodness,” a grounded kind of spirituality she defines as "courage meeting clarity." Whether you love the woo or you hate it, the point is still practical and universal-- Your life changes when your daily decisions match the life you say you want. Cassidy shares the exercises that helped her shift her inner world, including conscious sobriety, writing-based practices for anger, and a commitment to alignment that keeps her open to the right conversations and opportunities. We also talk about the hard truths that shaped her. Growing up poor with an alcoholic father, shame that settles into the nervous system, imposter syndrome, and the surprising moments that made her feel seen. Motherhood brings another layer, including postpartum anxiety, postpartum rage, and the long road to forgiving yourself after a terrifying accident. The conversation ends with a nuanced take on separating art from artist and how we can outgrow what once carried us. If you care about memoir, intuition, healing, spiritual growth, postpartum mental health, and rebuilding a life with intention, press play. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| TEASER: The Lie? // Amy Griffin's Memoir "The Tell" | 08 mai 2026 | 00:15:06 | |
A glossy, star-studded book launch. A memoir that rockets past 100,000 copies. Then a wave of silence from major reviewers, an investigative report, and a scientific debate that refuses to stay theoretical. We’re talking about Amy Griffin’s The Tell and the chaos that followed its triumphant debut, where celebrity endorsement meets the most contested questions in trauma psychology. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts for all bonus content Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Author Chat: Alexandra Grabbe's Memoir "Seeing Joy" | 05 mai 2026 | 00:47:01 | |
Is it possible to see joy in life's hardest moments? I sit down with memoirist Alexandra to talk about her memoir, Seeing Joy: A Story of Life, Death, and What Comes Next. We dig into how Alexandra’s story began as a caregiving blog in 2006, written first for friends and family and then embraced by strangers who recognized their own fear and tenderness in her honesty. She shares what it took to transform that real-time writing into a publishable memoir, including years of rejection from traditional publishing and the creative breakthroughs that came from adding family letters and her mother’s own unpublished manuscript. If you’ve ever wondered how memoir gets made, this is the unglamorous, deeply human version. Purchase Alexandra Grabbe's "Seeing Joy" Purchase Alexandra's father's memoir "Émigré" Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| FRIDAY FICTION: Kate Quinn, NYT Bestselling Author! | 01 mai 2026 | 01:08:43 | |
Kate Quinn has a rare talent. She can drop you into another time period so completely that you forget you’re reading, then hit you with a detail that makes you realize how much of women’s history has been ignored, softened, or simply left out. In our first Friday Fiction episode, I sit down with the New York Times bestselling author behind her newest release, The Astral Library, The Briar Club, The Alice Network, The Rose Code, and my personal favorite, The Diamond Eye to talk about where that power comes from and what it costs to do it well. Thank you! Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Author Chat: Andrea Leeb's Memoir "Such a Pretty Picture" | 27 avr. 2026 | 00:59:52 | |
Some stories don’t just break the silence, they explain how silence gets built in the first place. This week, I’m joined by author Andrea Leeb to talk about her memoir Such a Pretty Picture, an account of surviving childhood sexual abuse, living with complex trauma and CPTSD, and finding a path back to yourself that isn’t linear or tidy but is real. Purchase Andrea Leeb's "Such a Pretty Picture" Resources: Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| AUTHOR CHAT: Kerry Docherty's "Selfish" | 21 avr. 2026 | 00:45:17 | |
Are you selfish? “Selfish” is supposed to be the insult that ends the conversation, especially for women who were raised to be helpful, agreeable, and endlessly available. We sit down with author Kerry Docherty to pull that word apart and rebuild it into something sharper and more useful: self-awareness, honest boundaries, and the courage to admit what you want before you burn out trying to be “good.” Her memoir, Selfish, becomes the jumping-off point for a raw talk about what it costs to keep giving yourself away and why telling the truth can be both selfish and deeply generous. We dig into the trap of likability and the ways girls learn early to smooth everything over, including their own anger and ambition. Kerry reflects on privilege and what she has learned from people who have had to live more openly because the world already judges them. We also get practical about modern “self-care,” from doomscrolling dopamine to the quieter work of choosing what actually makes you feel alive, plus what it looks like to model emotional language and bodily autonomy for your kids. If this conversation makes you uncomfortable, we think that is the point. Subscribe for more author interviews, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with the one boundary you are ready to set next. Purchase Selfish by Kerry Docherty Support the show: Subscribe to the Babes in Bookland Substack Thank you for listening! Xx, Alex Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Timestamps! Here are chapter timestamps for the Kerry Docherty episode, in your voice: 00:01 Welcome and intro to Kerry Docherty and Selfish 00:37 Pub day nerves and why Selfish had to come out into the world now 03:32 Landing on the title, from The Lazy Wife to The Selfish Wife to Selfish 05:19 The double meaning of "self ish" and who Kerry is still becoming 06:26 Kerry's editor telling her she needed to be more likable, and why that felt like a compliment 08:46 Unpacking the pressure to be likable and who gets to be free of it 11:58 Teaching her daughter not to shrink to fit 13:14 The two wolves story and turning the lights on in the dark basement 15:20 What's actually so wrong with being selfish? Reframing it as choosing what makes you feel alive 16:36 Setting boundaries with parents and the real cost of protecting yourself 17:53 Watching her mom move to India to become a yoga teacher, and what that shift revealed 19:26 Modeling selfishness for her kids by naming her own emotions out loud 21:10 The lie of selflessness as the path to a perfect life 22:00 Filling your own cup while the laundry piles up, and letting go of the shame math 25:36 Founding Faherty with her husband Alex and brother-in-law Mike, and the psychic who called it 27:20 Couples therapy over salary negotiations and the strain of family business 29:39 Meeting Bo at Coachella and the years-long emotional entanglement that followed 31:38 Longing, fantasy, and the unawakened artist Bo mirrored back to her 32:00 Did she ever consider leaving Alex? On survival mechanisms and always keeping an escape route 33:04 Reframing marriage from a contract for life to choosing each other every day 34:45 Selfishness and privilege, and why the white wellness industry got self-care wrong 36:04 The self is not an individual, community as the real antidote to loneliness 37:41 Early feedback on the book and what "brave" really means 38:31 Alex reading the book, and the intimacy that came from being fully seen 41:36 How Kerry stays hopeful 42:16 Her emotional support bad habit (dead things on the beach) 43:47 Where to find Kerry and how to buy the book Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| The Low and the High Notes // Brandy's "Phases" | 15 avr. 2026 | 01:09:09 | |
Brandy Norwood’s memoir, Phases, is the kind of celebrity memoir that makes you grateful for the music and furious about the machine behind it. My friend Kate and I revisit Brandy’s cultural landmarks like Moesha, Cinderella, and “The Boy Is Mine,” then zoom out to the bigger question: what happens when an industry profits from a “good girl” image and leaves no room for a young Black woman to be human, messy, or still becoming. The takeaway is not that Phases answers everything, but that it opens the door to better questions about artistry, survival, and what reclaiming your narrative really costs. Support the show: Thank you for listening! xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| AUTHOR CHAT: Linda Rhodes' "Breaking The Barnyard Barrier" | 08 avr. 2026 | 01:07:44 | |
She graduates near the top of her veterinary class and still couldn't get hired... because she’s a woman! That’s where our conversation with memoirist Linda Rhodes begins and it only gets more vivid, entertaining, and frustrating from there. Purchase Linda Rhode's "Breaking the Barnyard Barrier" Support the show: Other links: Thank you for listening! Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| AUTHOR CHAT: Katya Dunko's "I Drank From the Nile" | 31 mars 2026 | 00:58:13 | |
Is life destiny or choice? "Drink from the Nile" is a phrase in Egypt that promises if you drink from the Nile river, you’re destined to return. Katya Dunko's memoir, named for this phrase, is her refusal to let destiny be controlled by generational trauma. She broke the chain. We talk about the real story behind her jaw-dropping book: growing up in post-Soviet Ukraine, being stowed away on a train as a child, surviving a decade of opioid addiction, and later fleeing an abusive marriage in Egypt with her daughter. Katya doesn’t frame herself as flawless or “inspiring” in a neat way. She names the shame, the people-pleasing, the desperate search for love, and the terrifying moments where her safety is on the line. If you care about women’s memoir, addiction recovery stories, trauma healing, and what it takes to rebuild after emotional abuse, this conversation goes there with honesty and heart. We also get practical about the craft and the aftermath: what it’s like to spend seven years writing a trauma memoir, why she chose a pen name, how self-publishing forced her to learn everything from editing to marketing, and why narrative therapy helped her reframe her past into resilience instead of ruin. The biggest takeaway is simple and hard: pain spreads unless someone breaks the chain. Listen, then share this with a friend who needs a reminder that a clean slate is possible. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us what “real strength” means to you now. Purchase Katya Dunko's "I Drank From the Nile" Support the show: Subscribe to the Babes in Bookland Substack Thank you for listening! Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Timestamps! 0:00 Introduction & about "I Drank from the Nile" 2:30 Why write a memoir instead of a novel? 5:30 Did writing it surprise you? 9:00 How did you mother yourself through writing this? 11:00 What does "I drank from the Nile" mean? 13:30 Why did you self-publish? 17:30 Can you set up your childhood for us? 22:00 How did you get from Ukraine to Alaska? 25:00 What were you internalizing about your own worth as a child? 29:30 Did anyone ever notice what was happening at home? 32:00 How did your mother first introduce you to opioids? 36:00 Why couldn't you stop for a decade? 40:00 What does the physical need for opioids actually feel like? 42:30 What made you decide to quit cold turkey? 46:00 Was there any mental health support available in Egypt? 48:30 Did you actually process the pain when you got sober? 53:00 Do you still have a relationship with your mother? 56:30 What did these men make you feel about yourself? 01:00:00 Who was Lucas and why did he matter so much? 01:05:00 Why Egypt of all places? 01:09:00 How quickly did you realize Egypt was dangerous? 01:13:00 Who was Rami and how bad did it get? 01:17:00 How did you meet Amir? 01:21:30 Did Amir ever actually want to go to America? 01:26:00 How did you escape Egypt with your daughter? 01:32:00 Was it Sophie who finally gave you the strength? 01:36:00 How have you capitalized on your clean slate? 01:40:00 What is narrative therapy and how did it help? 01:43:30 How do you stay hopeful? 01:45:30 What book has changed your life? 01:47:00 Next week: Linda Rhodes' memoir Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| BSB: Liza Minnelli's Memoir "Kids, Wait Till You Hear This" | 24 mars 2026 | 00:18:45 | |
How do you break free of one legacy to cement your own? We’re back with a bite-sized Babes in Bookland mini review of Liza Minnelli’s memoir “Kid, Wait Till You Hear This,” and it’s equal parts warm, jaw-dropping, and quietly devastating. I went in expecting old Hollywood stories and iconic name-drops. I got those... but I didn’t expect a brutally honest look at what fame can cost a family behind closed doors. SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357) (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service), or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations. Also visit the online treatment locator, or send your zip code via text message: 435748 (HELP4U) to find help near you. Purchase Liza Minnelli's "Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!" Support the show: Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| AUTHOR CHAT: Ayana Lage's "Missing Me" | 17 mars 2026 | 00:54:27 | |
Author Ayana Lage joins the show to talk about Missing Me, her memoir of postpartum psychosis and the long road back. Purchase Missing Me by Ayana Lage Support the show: Thank you for listening! Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| True Colors // Christina Applegate's "You with the Sad Eyes" | 10 mars 2026 | 01:05:00 | |
A memoir can feel like a mirror you didn’t ask for. Purchase Christina Applegate's "You with the Sad Eyes" Support the show: Thank you for listening! Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Pain into Power // Demi Moore's "Inside Out" | 04 mars 2026 | 01:23:40 | |
Think you know Demi Moore? Think again. My friend, Mackenzie, and I peel back the tabloid myths to trace a far more gripping arc: a child who found safety in hospital routines because home was chaos, a teenager forced to protect herself when the adults failed, and an artist who spent years equating value with a number on the scale while breaking box‑office ceilings and cultural taboos. Guided by Demi’s memoir Inside Out, we connect the dots between early trauma, addiction, codependence, and the relentless body scrutiny of Hollywood—and how those patterns transform when you finally choose yourself. Support the show: Link to this episode’s book: Demi Moore's "Inside Out" Other links: Demi Moore's Vanity Fair cover & article Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| BONUS: Elyse Myers' Memoir: Humor, Hype, and Lots of Holes | 27 févr. 2026 | 00:54:09 | |
Ever picked up a buzzy memoir and felt the heart was missing beneath the hype? I sit down with Ryley from the Little Miss Podcast to unpack Elyse Myers’ debut: the charming illustrations, a few resonant lines on anxiety and connection, and the recurring moments where the story stops just shy of reckoning. We wanted the hinge points—the cause, the cost, the change—and too often found stylized vignettes that try to entertain when they should have revealed. Hit play, then tell us: what do you expect from a life story—and from the people you follow? Subscribe, share with a friend who loves book talk, and leave a review with your favorite memoir recommendations. This Bonus episode is available for free this month! Thank you for supporting the show <3 Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| BSB: Gisele Pelicot's "A Hymn to Life" | 23 févr. 2026 | 00:21:06 | |
What does it mean to move shame back where it belongs? We dive into Gisele Pelicot’s A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides—a memoir that confronts sexual violence, courtroom language, and public accountability while fiercely protecting the survivor’s right to joy. I trace Pellicot’s path from the shocking discovery of years of drugging and assault to the rare choice of an open hearing and the powerful moment when all fifty-one perpetrators were found guilty. Along the way, we sit with hard questions: how do institutions perpetuate harm through euphemisms, how can families process conflicting truths, and what does healing look like when love and betrayal share the same house? Support the show: Link to this episode’s book: If you care about survivor justice and the cultural work of shifting blame off victims, this conversation is for you! Press play, reflect with us, and share your thoughts. If the episode moved you, subscribe, leave a review, and pass it on to someone who needs to hear it. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| AUTHOR CHAT: Deborah J. Cohan's "Welcome to Wherever We Are" | 18 févr. 2026 | 00:46:18 | |
Can you hold two truths at once? As we trace the book’s path through a pandemic launch, Deborah explains why a sociological lens makes memoir more than confession. She connects the dots between family dynamics, gendered expectations, healthcare systems, and the invisible labor that daughters and partners shoulder. Her years counseling violent men at Emerge, the nation’s oldest batterer intervention program, sharpen her insights: behavior can change, accountability matters, and empathy does not erase harm. That background also deepens her own reckoning with a brilliant, creative, and often wounding father. Rather than preaching forgiveness, Deborah argues for something braver: ambivalence. Holding two truths—love and injury—without flattening either. We talk about staying present at the end of a complicated life, advocating from a distance, and confronting the limits of what one caregiver can do under debt, time pressure, and grief. Along the way we surface practical takeaways for anyone navigating eldercare, emotional abuse, or family estrangement: document patterns, set sustainable boundaries, recruit support, and learn the language that makes the unseen visible. We close with the fuel that keeps Deborah moving—art, nature, movement, laughter—and a glimpse at her next project on her mother and creativity. If you’re searching for thoughtful conversation on caregiving, gaslighting, domestic violence education, and healing family patterns, this one offers tools and tenderness in equal measure. If the conversation resonates, tap follow, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs a little more language for their story. Support the show: Link to this episode’s book: This episode is produced, recorded, and edited by me. Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| AUTHOR CHAT: Amanda McCracken's "When Longing Becomes Your Lover" | 10 févr. 2026 | 01:02:44 | |
What if the high you’re chasing isn’t love at all, but the thrill of uncertainty? On pub day, we sit down with author Amanda McCracken to unpack limerence (the obsessive, anxious fixation that can masquerade as romance) and how naming the pattern helped her trade fantasy for reciprocity. We connect the dots between anxious-avoidant dynamics, social media ambiguity, and the dopamine hit of anticipation that keeps us hooked on “what if.” Amanda shares how purity culture shaped her choices, why “safe” once felt boring, and how a later-in-life ADHD diagnosis helped things click. Support the show: If you have any comments or questions, please connect with me on Instagram or email babesinbooklandpodcast@gmail.com. I’d love to hear your suggestions and feedback! Link to this episode’s book: Other links: Special thanks to my new friend, Amanda. Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||