Relationscapes

One of the most consequential moments in American civil rights history has been almost entirely forgotten. It was 1978. Conservative politicians wanted to ban gays and lesbians from working in California public schools. The outcome of that statewide initiative would have huge repercussions for the rest of the country, and young gay activists knew it. The battle was on.
And although it's been almost fifty years, their victory has surprising and urgent relevance for LGBTQ+ communities today. Journalist Christina Cauterucci tells the incredible story as host of season 9 of Slate's podcast, Slow Burn: Gays Against Briggs. 
 
Complete transcript available here at relationscapes.org. 
 
SHOW NOTES
Slow Burn, season 9: "Gays Against Briggs."
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
Christina Cauterucci is a Slate senior writer and a host of Outward, Slate's podcast on queer life.
 

The top reason most news coverage about trans people is misleading and harmful is because journalists don't include the perspectives of actual trans people. Journalist Nico Lang was frustrated by how often reports talked about trans people without trans people. This is especially true for younger folks. 
Nico wants people to hear directly from trans teenagers. So for their groundbreaking new book, they spent a year traveling the country documenting the lives of trans, nonbinary, and gender fluid teens and their families. The book is called American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era. And it puts perspectives of gender diverse teens front and center, where Nico says they always belonged.
 
Complete transcript available at relationscapes.org. 
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
Nico Lang is a nonbinary award-winning journalist with over a decade of experience covering the transgender community’s fight for equality. Their work has appeared in major publications, including Rolling Stone, Esquire, the New York Times, Vox, the Wall Street Journal, Salon, Harper’s Bazaar, Time, The Washington Post, and the L.A. Times. Lang is the creator of Queer News Daily and previously served as the deputy editor for Out magazine, the news editor for Them, the LGBTQ+ correspondent for VICE, and the editor and cofounder of the literary journal In Our Words. Their industry-leading contributions to queer media have resulted in a GLAAD Media Award and 10 awards from the National Association of LGBTQ Journalists (NLGJA). Lang is also the first-ever recipient of the Visibility Award from the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (TLDEF), an honor created to recognize their impactful contributions to reporting on the lives of LGBTQ+ people.

Before becoming disabled, Jessica Slice was building a business, running miles every day, and chasing perfection. Parenthood didn’t fit into that life, especially because Jessica was sure she’d never measure up. But when her physical health collapsed at 28, everything shifted. Disability stripped away the life she knew, and uncovered something unexpected—she wouldn't have to be perfect to be a mom. But unfortunately, she would have to fight to become one in a world designed to exclude her.
Her new book is called Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World, and she joins us to talk about why we must work to make the future of parenting more accessible, and why everyone will benefit when we do.
 
Complete transcript available at relationscapes.org. 
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
Jessica Slice is a disabled author, speaker, and essayist who earned her master's of social work degree at Columbia University. Her new book, Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World (Beacon, 2025) has been shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Prize. Her other books include Dateable: Swiping Right, Hooking Up, and Settling Down and This is How We Play, with more books on the way. She has been published in Modern Love, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Alice Wong’s bestselling Disability Visibility, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan. 

When journalist Amanda Hess got pregnant, the internet met the moment with a flood of baby ads, influencer moms, and algorithmically curated advice. But when her pregnancy became medically complicated, the warm glow of digital support gave way to something much darker.
In her new book Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age, Hess explores how the internet can warp our most intimate life experiences, steering us toward strange and even troubling ideas about care, control, and personhood.
 
Complete transcript available here at relationscapes.org. 
 
SHOW NOTES
Victoria Lucas, "Reclaiming Nemo," Ouch! It's a Disability Thing, BBC (Aug 19, 2004)
Amanda Hess, "Natural Woman," excerpt from Second Life in Marie Claire
Amanda Hess, "My Son Has a Rare Syndrome. So I Turned to the Internet," excerpt from Second Life in The New York Times
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
Amanda Hess is author of Second Life: Having a Child in the Internet Age. She’s a critic at large for the New York Times writing about the internet and pop culture, and contributes regularly to The New York Times Magazine. Hess has worked as a columnist for Slate Magazine, an editor at GOOD Magazine, and an arts and nightlife columnist at the Washington City Paper. Other publication sites include ESPN the Magazine, Wired, and Pacific Standard, where her feature on the online harassment of women won a national magazine award for public interest.

When marriage equality was finally achieved, Karl Dunn thought life couldn't be better. He had a husband, a dream job, and a beautiful life in LA. But then, as everything unraveled through a contentious divorce, Karl discovered just how unequally the system treats same-sex couples.
This crisis sent Karl on an urgent journey of self-rediscovery—from heartbreak in LA to healing in Berlin and beyond. In his memoir How To Burn a Rainbow, Karl explores what liberation really means when he stopped chasing personal perfection.  
SHOW NOTES
Karl Dunn's Substack
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
Karl Dunn is author of How to Burn a Rainbow: My Gay Marriage Didn't Make Me Whole, My Divorce Did. He formerly served as Global Creative Director on several world-famous brands like MINI Cooper, Levi’s, and ASICS. He spent over two decades as a multi-award winning advertising creative working in Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe, and America. His career culminated as the Director of Innovation for a powerhouse global advertising network.
Karl is a keynote speaker on Reconnecting A Divided World. Living between LA and Berlin, he also works as a freelance advertising consultant to brands.
Full transcript available here at relationscapes.org. 

Katelyn Burns, journalist and podcast host of Cancel Me, Daddy. Katelyn was the first openly transgender Capitol Hill reporter in U.S. history and she continues to be a leading voice among journalists on trans issues. It’s not the cushiest job there ever was, especially right now. I wondered how she was holding up under our excessively transphobic regime.
 
SHOW NOTES
Cancel Me, Daddy podcast
Katelyn Burns, GUEST COLUMN: The current ‘mindf*ck’ of being a trans journalist (The Handbasket)
The Flytrap 
Assigned Media, Evan Urquhart
Erin In the Morning, Erin Reed
Nico Lang's Queer News Daily on Instagram
Eris Young, “Nonbinary Thinking”
Abi Maxwell, “The Challenges of Parenting Trans Kids”
Laurie Lee Hall, “Trans In the Latter Days”
Kyle Lukoff, “A Haunted Trans Story”
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
Katelyn Burns is a freelance journalist based in New England. She was the first openly transgender Capitol Hill reporter in U.S. history. She hosts the Cancel Me, Daddy podcast and co-owns the Flytrap.
 
Full transcript available at relationscapes.org.

Frederick Joseph grew up without a father, and he's wondering now whether he wants to be one himself. As a child, he loved Broadway musicals when everyone else expected him to be into sports. Today he resists the suffocating expectations placed on him as a Black man in America through his poetry and essays, inviting men to break the mold of masculinity and embrace the full range of human emotions—sorrow, anger, love, and joy, and more.
Frederick's latest book is a collection of poems called We Alive, Beloved. He joins us to talk about the intersections of race and masculinity in America.
 
SHOW NOTES
Frederick Joseph's Substack
Order Frederick Joseph's new novel, This Thing of Ours
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
Frederick Joseph is the award-winning two-time New York Times bestselling author of The Black Friend and Patriarchy Blues, in addition to writing other books. His latest is a collection of poems called We Alive, Beloved. His first novel This Thing of Ours comes out in May 2025. He was a 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 list maker, and was included in The Root’s top 100 most influential African Americans. He’s also worked in advertising, activism, and philanthropy.
Full transcript available here at relationscapes.org. 

Puberty has changed a lot since we were kids. It starts earlier and lasts longer. And it's still as awkward as ever to talk about. Luckily, Dr. Cara Natterson and educator Vanessa Kroll Bennett are here to help.
They joined forces to explain the latest science on puberty, and to help caregivers, parents, and teachers navigate puberty conversations with confidence, humor, and connection. Their book is called This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained. 
 
SHOW NOTES
This Is So Awkward podcast
Less Awkward resources
Socks for stinky feet and other products geared to ease the pain of puberty
 
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Cara Natterson, MD, is a pediatrician and the New York Times bestselling author of The Care and Keeping of You series (more than seven million copies in print), Guy Stuff, and Decoding Boys. A graduate of Harvard College and Johns Hopkins Medical School, Dr. Natterson founded Order of Magnitude, a company dedicated to flipping puberty positive. Vanessa Kroll Bennett is the founder of Dynamo Girl, a company focused on building kids’ self-esteem through sports, puberty education, and parent workshops. A graduate of Wellesley College, Vanessa holds an MA from the Jewish Theological Seminary. She lives in Northern Westchester with her husband and four teens.
Together they co-host This Is So Awkward podcast, co-write The Awkward Roller Coaster Newsletter, and co-wrote This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained.  
 
Full transcript available here at relationscapes.org. 

Staying up to date with the news is a huge part of David Pakman’s job. As one of the most popular progressive political pundits on the internet today, he’s spent years navigating the media landscape. And that can really wear a person down! He's not immune to burnout caused by local and global crises covered in today's nonstop news cycles.
In this mini episode, Pakman confesses his own exasperation about modern politics, emphasizes the importance of media literacy, and offers ideas about how we can stay engaged without losing ourselves in the chaos. 
In this mini episode of Relationscapes we're talking about our relationship to the news, digging in to David's new book The Echo Machine: How Right-Wing Extremism Created a Post-Truth America. 
 
SHOW NOTES
Watch The David Pakman Show on YouTube
David Pakman interviews Shirley Phelps-Roper of the Westboro Baptist Church in 2011
David Pakman's appearance on Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
David Pakman is the host and executive producer of The David Pakman Show, a popular podcast and YouTube channel with more than 3 million subscribers and more than 2 billion total video views. With a focus on economic and cultural issues, he has appeared on more than 100 media outlets, podcasts, radio and television shows, and in written interviews. 
Full transcript available here at relationscapes.org. 

When Nancy Reddy had her first child, she approached the situation like the overachieving PhD student she was at the time: She went to find the best research on parenting, studied it, and then tried to apply it so that everything would work out perfectly. The problem is, a lot of that research about caregiving and attachment turned out to be based on flawed lab studies, sloppy research, and so much misogyny.
Nancy joins us to talk about the problems she found and to offer alternatives that can benefit parents today. Her new book is called The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas about How to Be a Good Mom.
 
SHOW NOTES
Watch Harry Harlow's monkeys here. 
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
Nancy Reddy is the author of The Good Mother Myth. Her previous books include the poetry collections Pocket Universe and Double Jinx, a winner of the National Poetry Series. With Emily Pérez, she’s co-editor of The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. Her essays have appeared in Slate, Poets & Writers, Romper, The Millions, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Stockton University and writes the newsletter Write More, Be Less Careful.
Full transcript available here at relationscapes.org.