341. Amanda Montei and Kristi Coulter with Gemma Hartley: Ambition, Women, and Work

341. Amanda Montei and Kristi Coulter with Gemma Hartley: Ambition, Women, and Work

Author: Town Hall Seattle November 23, 2023 Duration: 1:03:28

Many parents struggle with the physicality of caring for children, but even more with the growing lack of autonomy new moms may feel in their personal and professional lives.

Join us for an evening with Amanda Montei, author of Touched Out: Motherhood, Misogyny, Consent, and Control, and Kristi Coulter, author of Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career. Moderated by Gemma Hartley, author of Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward, Montei and Coulter will discuss the state of ambition for women, the often hidden labors of both parenthood and gender, emotional labor in the workplace and mental loads at home, and much more.

Amanda Montei is the author of Touched Out: Motherhood, Misogyny, Consent, and Control, out now from Beacon Press, as well as the memoir Two Memoirs, and a collection of prose, The Failure Age. She has an MFA in Writing from California Institute of the Arts and a PhD from the Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo. Amanda's work has been featured at New York Times, Elle, The Guardian, The Cut, Slate, Vox, HuffPost, Rumpus, The Believer, Ms. Magazine, and many others.  She lives in California.

Kristi Coulter is the author of Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career and Nothing Good Can Come From This, a Washington State Book Award finalist. Her work has also appeared in The Paris Review, New York Magazine, Elle, Glamour, The Believer, and many other publications. She teaches writing at Hugo House and lives in Seattle and Los Angeles.

Gemma Hartley is a freelance journalist, speaker, and author of Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women and the Way Forward. She has spoken on the topic of invisible labor around the world, from corporate conferences to festivals at the Sydney Opera House. Her writing has been featured in outlets including Harper's Bazaar, Women's Health, Glamour, The Washington Post, CNBC, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Teen Vogue, and The Huffington Post. She is passionate about creating a more equitable world in which invisible labor is valued and supported by both personal partners and public policy alike.


Recorded live from a historic venue in the Pacific Northwest, the Town Hall Seattle Civics Series podcast brings the stage to your headphones. Each episode captures a vital conversation from Town Hall Seattle's ongoing programming, where experts, activists, and thinkers grapple with the ideas shaping our collective life. You’ll hear historians reframe our past, legal scholars dissect constitutional questions, and community organizers explain the mechanics of emerging movements. This isn't just theoretical discussion; it's a direct engagement with the policies and cultural shifts that touch our neighborhoods and the wider world. Tuning in feels like finding a seat in a thoughtful, often provocative public forum. The series operates on a belief that an informed community is an empowered one, and this audio archive makes that process accessible to anyone, anywhere. By focusing on the substance of live civic dialogue, this podcast provides the context and depth often missing from daily headlines, fostering a deeper understanding of how society functions and changes.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Podcast Episodes
357. Susannah Fox with Sally James: Rebel Health [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:14
Anyone who has fallen off the conveyor belt of mainstream health care and into the shadowy corners of illness knows what a dark place it is to land. Where is the infrastructure, the information, the guidance? What should…
356. Dr. Rajiv Shah with Eric Liu: Charting a Course for Change [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:16:34
Ever wondered how a leader orchestrates large-scale change on a global scale? In his new book, Big Bets: How Large-Scale Change Really Happens, Rajiv J. Shah, President of the Rockefeller Foundation and former administra…
355. Barbara McQuade with Jenny Durkan: In Search of Truth [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:06:51
The subject of disinformation is a well-known part of political rhetoric, but it has implications even outside of the sphere of democracy. From the electoral system to schools; from the workplace to hospitals, the conseq…
354. Michael J. Gerhardt: The Law of Presidential Impeachment [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:09
Have you ever wondered how impeachment really works? As a witness and consultant in the impeachment trials of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, legal scholar Michael J. Gerhardt has collected a lifetime of scholarly researc…
352. Boldt at 50 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:20:50
Commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Boldt Decision, a pivotal moment in civil rights history and tribal sovereignty. Centered around Charles Wilkinson's posthumously acclaimed work, Treaty Justice, a panel will discu…
351. Ijeoma Oluo with Michele Storms: Be a Revolution [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:28:07
Ijeoma Oluo's #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want To Talk About Race (book tour event at Town Hall in 2019), offered a vital guide for how to talk about important issues of race and racism in society. In Mediocre: T…
350. Tamara Payne with Glenn Hare: The Life and Legacy of Malcolm X [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:10:35
In 1990, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Les Payne embarked on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X. His goal was ambitious: to transform what…
349. Tim Schwab with Ashley Fent: The Problem with Philanthropy [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:28:48
Journalist Tim Schwab is no stranger to investigative journalism that scrutinizes power structures and questions how private interests intersect with public policy. With funding from a 2019 Alicia Patterson Fellowship, S…
348. Ganesh Sitaraman with Paul Constant: Why is Flying so Miserable? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:16
It is among the most classically joked about modern grievances, air travel. Between flight cancellations, delays, lost baggage, increased prices, crammed planes, and the general downtrodden gloom that accompanies flying,…