Relationscapes

Like a lot of American women, Aubrey Hirsch grew up trying to channel her own rage into other emotions. Maybe she wasn't mad, she was really jealous. Maybe she wasn't pissed off, she was actually sad. Eventually, Aubrey realized she had been suppressing something vital. Sometimes being angry is the main thing she should be. Instead of always running from her outrage, now she channels it into informative, funny, sometimes furious feminist comics.
Aubrey joins us to talk about how she uses illustration to call out sexism, why rage can be a powerful force for collective change, and how we can channel it individually right now to change some things for the better. Her new book is called Graphic Rage: Comics on Gender, Justice, and Life As a Woman in America. 
 
Show Notes
Aubrey Hirsch, "Taking Back the Streets," The Nib, March 22, 2019.
Eat the Damn Peach, and Other Love Stories (with Mary Catherine Starr)
 
About the Guest
Aubrey Hirsch is author of Graphic Rage: Comics on Gender, Justice, and Life As a Woman in America. She is a writer and illustrator living in New York. Her stories, essays, and comics have appeared in The New York Times, Vox, TIME Magazine, American Short Fiction, Black Warrior Review, The Rumpus, The Nib and elsewhere. She is author of a short story collection, Why We Never Talk About Sugar, and a flash fiction chapbook, This Will Be His Legacy.
She has taught writing at Oberlin College, The University of Pittsburgh, Colorado College, Georgia College and State University, and Chatham University. She is recipient of a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in Literature, an individual artist award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Daehler Fellowship in Creative Writing from The Colorado College, and The Meek Award for Graphic Nonfiction from The Florida Review. 
Subscribe to her (free!) Substack and follow her on Instagram @aubreyhirsch.

Are men “naturally” violent? Are they hardwired to provide and protect? Does their DNA demand they stray? These questions persist in debates about masculinity, but they’re often answered with lazy biology.
In this episode, anthropologist Matthew Gutmann dismantles biologically grounded gender essentialist myths.
Drawing on decades of research—from fatherhood in Mexico to gender shifts in China—Gutmann shows how culture, history, and politics shape what we call “masculinity.” We talk about the dangers of blaming “male nature,” how fatherhood gets redefined across cultures, and why understanding men as human beings first opens the door to more freedom and accountability.
His book is called Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short.
Full transcript available at relationscapes.org. 
 
Show Notes
“Detoxing Masculinity,” with Ronald Levant and Shana Pryor
“Black and Beyond the Binary,” with KB Brookins
“Masculinity, More Liberated and Free,” with Frederick Joseph
“Learning about Today’s Masculinity from the Ancient Romans," with Mike Pope
About the Guest
Matthew Gutmann is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Brown University. His research and teaching has focused on studies of men and masculinities; public health; politics; and the military. His latest book is Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short.
 
 

What does it mean to parent in a world that wasn’t built for you? Writer and disabled parent Eliza Hull joins us to talk about her groundbreaking anthology We’ve Got This: Essays by Disabled Parents.
These essays challenge ableist assumptions, confront stigma, and spotlight the resilience and pride of disabled parents. Their stories aren't about about pity or inspirational “overcoming”—they are about identity, ingenuity, and reimagining parenthood through unapologetically disabled experiences. 
Full transcript available at relationscapes.org. 
About the Guest
Eliza Hull is an award-winning musical artist, writer, journalist, and disability advocate based in Victoria, Australia. Her edited collection is called We've Got This: Essays by Disabled Parents.
 

Happy 50th Episode! To celebrate, I invited Lauren Passell, a podcast hero of mine, to revisit a Relationscapes episode she recommended on her excellent Podcast The Newsletter.
As a newly adoptive white mom of a child who is Black, Lauren was thrilled about Angela Tucker's interview.  Tucker is an incredible advocate for transracial adoptees.  Lauren opens up about the joys and challenges of raising a child in an open adoption, exploring questions about race, family, and community.
Full transcript available here at relationscapes.org. 
ABOUT THE GUEST
Lauren Passell (she/her) is the founder and CEO of Tink Media, Podcast the Newsletter, Podcast Marketing Magic, and is the producer of Feed the Queue. She writes about podcasts for Lifehacker. She has spoken about podcast marketing for SXSW, Podcast Movement, Podfest, London Podcast Festival, The Podcast Show, and has taught classes for Harvard, Columbia, and more. She is a judge for The Webbys, Signal Awards, The Ambies, and the International Women's Podcast Awards. She lives in West Philly with her cat, husband, and daughter, and loves Disney.

For decades, public schools have been a cornerstone of American learning and civic life. But far-right groups have worked for years to turn these institutions into battlegrounds, pushing to control curricula, ban books, and restrict the rights of marginalized students, while whitewashing history and steamrolling over accessibility. The battle is reaching fever pitch today. 
In her book School Moms, education journalist Laura Pappano takes us inside the world of parent activism, revealing how partisan actors mobilize to dismantle public education, enforce narrow ideological agendas, and silence dissent.
This episode exposes the high-stakes struggle over the future of schools and what it means for students, educators, and communities across the country.
Full transcript available at relationscapes.org. 
About the Guest
Laura Pappano is an award-winning education journalist, author, and founder of The New Haven Student Journalism Project. Her latest book is called School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics and the Battle for Public Education. She is a former education columnist for The Boston Globe, and has published work in places like The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Salon, The Washington Post, USA Today, Slate, The Atlantic, and The Christian Science Monitor. 
 

When Anne Pinkerton's brother unexpectedly died alone in an extreme sport accident, she faced the same question over and over. People would always ask, "Were You Close?" They asked out of concern, but the question felt almost impossible to answer.
In some ways, Anne and her brother David weren't close—they lived in different states, he was more than a decade older. But that distance seemed beside the point when she considered all the ways they were close. And after his death, she set out to find new ways to be closer. In this episode, Anne Pinkerton joins us to talk about how grief over the loss of a sibling is one of the most overlooked griefs people can experience. 
Full transcript available at relationscapes.org. 
About the Guest
Anne Pinkerton is an essayist, memoirist, and poet. Her work often circles around grief and loss, as well as coping with these painful realities in our lives. Her memoir is called Were You Close? a sister’s quest to know the brother she lost. Visit her at annepinkertonwriter.com.
 

What if the image the world loves you for is the one that’s destroying you?
In her memoir Fetishized, Kaila Yu deconstructs "yellow fever," exploring how pop culture and Western beauty ideals shaped damaging stereotypes about Asian women—and how she once embodied them herself. After spending years in the pinup and import modeling world, auditioning for film roles steeped in dehumanizing tropes, touring globally with her all Asian American girl band, and altering her body to match impossible standards, the emotional costs became too much. So he began a new journey to reclaim her identity, beauty, and self-worth.
Full transcript available at relationscapes.org. 
About the Author
Kaila Yu is author of Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty. She is a freelance writer for the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, Business Insider, Conde Nast Traveler and more. Formerly, she was a model and the lead singer for the all–Asian American female rock band Nylon Pink. Fetishized is her first book. You can find Kaila online @kailayu.
 

In this candid and funny conversation, artist and author Mary Catherine Starr talks about her viral comics on motherhood, marriage, mental load, and more. From the story of the infamous peanut butter jar to the deeper patterns of household inequality, Starr explores how social expectations, internalized roles, and everyday choices shape parenting partnerships. Through humor and heartfelt honesty, she reveals why moms need to "eat the damn peach"—and why it's never just about the peach.
Complete transcript available at relationscapes.org. 
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
Mary Catherine Starr is an artist and graphic designer. Her popular Instagram account @momlife_comics explores motherhood, marriage, and the double standards of parenting through funny, relatable, and sometimes maddening comics. She lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with her husband, their two children, and her son’s large collection of plastic dinosaurs.

Most people who experience the death of a parent come to understand that grief isn’t something you get over—it's something you try to learn how to live with.
That's what author Maddie Norris discovered after losing her dad at seventeen. Instead of looking away from the pain, she studied it—through the lens of her father's own work as a medical researcher on the science of wounds. 
Maddie joins us to talk about her debut book The Wet Wound: An Elegy In Essays, weaving together the history of wound care and the rituals of mourning. Maddie challenges the idea that healing means letting go. She asks: what if grief is more like tending an open wound—something tender, and ongoing, and sometimes even joyful?
Complete transcript available at relationscapes.org. 
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
MADDIE NORRIS is author of The Wet Wound: An Elegy in Essays. She is a visiting assistant professor at the Davidson College in North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her award-winning work has been named as notable in Best American Essays.

About 11 million kids serve as their family's interpreter in the US today. In this episode, Olivia Abtahi joins Relationscapes to talk about her beautiful new picture book celebrating these kids: The Interpreter, inspired by the lives of real kids navigating bureaucracies, burnout, and belonging.
We talk about how adults can better support children in this role and what it means to write a book that resonates in two languages at once. Olivia also shares how the chaos of a politically charged moment of xenophobia impacted her creative process.
Whether you’re a parent, teacher, former child interpreter, or someone trying to better understand cross-cultural relationships, this conversation will stay with you.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Growing up in the DC area, Olivia Abtahi devoured books and hid in empty classrooms during school to finish them. Her debut novel, Perfectly Parvin, was published in 2021, receiving the SCBWI Golden Kite Honor, YALSA Odyssey Honor, and numerous starred reviews. Her sophomore novel, Azar on Fire, was published in August 2022 and is a SLJ pick. Olivia's third novel, Twin Flames, is a New Visions Award winner and published in August 2024. The Interpreter is her first picture book, receiving four starred reviews. She currently lives in Denver, Colorado, with her husband and daughters.