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
334. Michael Waldman with Prof. Liz Porter: Courting Controversy [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:03:40
What do we do when the Supreme Court challenges the entire nation? The 2021-2022 term of the Supreme Court was arguably one of the most tumultuous in U.S. history. Over three days in June of 2022, the conservative superm…
333. Sonali Kolhatkar with Sunnivie Brydum: Media in Color [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:22:09
While people of color have been more widely represented in media in recent years, most of that media is neither created nor consumed by them — white Americans still comprise the majority of content creators and storytell…
332. Naomi Klein with Mike Davis: A Trip into the Mirror World [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:27
What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? Not long ago, activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had an unsettling experience—she was co…
331. Jocelyn Simonson with Emily Thuma: The Power of the People [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:06:05
How can we fix the problems in our criminal justice system? In a feat that can seem insurmountable, a common approach is to leave the solution to experts and technocrats. But what if, instead of deferring solely to their…
330. James Brosnahan: A Lawyer's Career Through Groundbreaking Cases [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:48
To study history, we often look at court cases as representations of the societal issues and debates of their day. With landmark cases like Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe v. Wade, Brown v. The Board of Education, we see how the…
328. Chris Guillebeau: Finding New Pathways to Prosperity [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:41
If you consider yourself a Millennial or part of Generation Z, chances are you've felt a little jaded by the usual dusty office job. According to bestselling author and Town Hall veteran Chris Guillebeau, you're not alon…