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
325. Simon Johnson: Can AI Power Up Progress? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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With today's emerging technologies, including things like artificial intelligence, are quickly becoming mainstream. AIs like ChatGPT, the chatbot that can produce answers to questions and write essays and poems, have bec…
325. Raja Shehadeh: A Portrait of a Palestinian Father and Son [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:47
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323. S. C. Gwynne: The Tragic Tale of British Airship R101 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:27
Airships, those airborne leviathans that occupied center stage in the world in the first half of the twentieth century, were a symbol of the future. The British airship R101 was not just the largest aircraft ever to have…
320. Gregory Smithers with Hailey Tayathy: Decolonizing Gender [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:09
Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by aakíí'skassi, miati, okitcitakwe, or one of the hundreds of other tri…
319. Nate G. Hilger with George Durham: The Parent Trap [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:13
Few people realize that raising children is the single largest industry in the United States. Parents are expected not only to care for their children but to help them develop the skills they will need to thrive in today…
318. Nate Gowdy: The Insurrection in Photos [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:08:19
Nate Gowdy had previously photographed 30 Donald Trump rallies. He thought he was fully prepared for what should have been the grand finale, but the events that unfolded on January 6th, 2021, were more than anyone could…