"She's probably the most resilient person I know." -- Emma Walton Hamilton For the holidays, we're revisiting Katie's conversation with Emma Walton Hamilton , daughter of the extraordinary Julie Andrews, about her mom's difficult childhood and her determination to give her own children stability and, above all, constant love. Julie Andrews's two memoirs, Home , and Home Work , are at once heartbreaking and awe-inspiring. While reading the books in preparation for the interview, Katie toggled bet...
Dec 25, 2020•36 min•Season 3Ep. 5
Gurki Basra knows a thing or two about dating. She even starred in Season One of the Netflix show Dating Around , in which she went on a famously bad date. Her mother, Tanjeet Basra, on the other hand, had never been on a date, right up to the day she got married when she was 22, which also happened to be the day she met her husband for the first time. Katie talks to Gurki about her parents' wedding and marriage, and the wisdom Gurki gained in watching the ultimate blind date evolve into a lovin...
Dec 06, 2020•27 min•Season 3Ep. 4
[Note: This episode is dedicated to the late poet (and editor non pareil), David Corcoran. We miss you, David.] In this strangest of holiday seasons, when so many of us are missing our extra limb of extended family, I’m not so sure it’s just cheer we could use. As we turn this final page on our dark 2020, we might need something that transports us in a different way. The wisdom of the poet and philosopher David Whyte , especially when it comes to the wonderful relationship he had with his mother...
Nov 28, 2020•39 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Updated Jan. 21, 2021 Alison Aucoin doesn't seem like the type of person given to making profane gestures. But after her mother, Lynn Evans, contracted Covid and died last April in New Orleans, Alison -- livid with anger -- posted a photograph to Facebook that quickly went viral. Alison's post, a raw rant straight from the heart, was directed at Donald Trump and his egregeious mishandling of the pandemic that killed her mother. Katie interviews Alison about her mother's life, their mutual devoti...
Nov 22, 2020•38 min•Season 3Ep. 2
When I started this podcast just before Mother's Day 2020, my main goal was to shine a light on extraordinary mothers. I figured the world was plenty sated with books, articles, films, blogs, and podcasts about ways in which women fell short as mothers, and, given that we could use some uplifting stories, devoting attention to those who were simply great mothers seemed like a good idea. In other words, narcissistic/dysfunctional/dud mothers need not apply. Which brings me to Ariel Leve's story. ...
Nov 15, 2020•32 min•Season 3Ep. 1
"Yoo hoo! Look what I found down here!" Who could possibly could resist a mother's call to investigate? Elizabeth Mushinsky Mitchell came by her parenting instinctively. She lost her own mother when she was eight, but had a feel for what it took to be a great mother: true engagement, genuine pathos, and a generous dose of inventiveness. From 1992, she was coordinator of the Gold Key tour guide program at Choate Rosemary Hall , and was admired and beloved by the students there. She died in 2015. ...
Nov 08, 2020•36 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Some people are just plain born with moxie. Meet Elizabeth "Betta" Dixon MacCarthy Ehrenfeld , who left her hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1942, at the age of 16, got on a train -- by herself -- and headed north. Her first stop was Bronxville, N.Y., and Sarah Lawrence College. By the time she was barely 21 she had a law degree from Yale. Back then, women with law degrees were considered top candidates for legal secretarial work. But Betta would have none of that. She went on to pract...
Nov 01, 2020•32 min•Season 2Ep. 11
She's considered Brazil's "Pope of Fashion," and to most people in the fashion world she is known simply as Costanza. Costanza's parents, Gabriella and Michele Pascolato, emigrated from Italy to Brazil in the aftermath of World War II, and in 1948 they started the Santaconstancia textile company, which became a fixture in Brazil's world of fabric and fashion. By the age of six, Costanza had already developed her own sense of style. Now 81, she remains an icon of fashion and style, her signature ...
Oct 25, 2020•32 min•Season 2Ep. 10
A self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” Audre Lorde had a poem for every occasion, says her daughter, Dr. Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins, in this week’s conversation with Katie Hafner. Lorde's lifelong love of words led her to a life as a renowned poet and author of more than a dozen volumes. Her poetry is unflinching, raw and filled with rage against social, racial and sexual norms. In 1978, Lorde was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a radical mastectomy. Her experiences an...
Oct 10, 2020•34 min•Season 2Ep. 9
"She is probably the most resilient person I know." -- Emma Walton Hamilton This week, Katie talks with Emma Walton Hamilton , daughter of the extraordinary Julie Andrews, about her mom's difficult childhood and her determination to give her own children stability and, above all, constant love. Julie Andrews's two memoirs, Home , and Home Work , are at once heartbreaking and awe-inspiring. While reading the books in preparation for the interview, Katie toggled between listening to Julie's narrat...
Oct 04, 2020•35 min•Season 2Ep. 8
What with the country in total turmoil, and people doing a lot of fretful handwringing, it might be time to take a breather and celebrate someone who's brought an abundance of solid joy to the palates of so many. Katie talks with Fanny Singer, the daughter of famed chef and farm-to-table trailblazer Alice Waters, who in 1971 started her Berkeley, Calif. restaurant Chez Panisse intending to feed her community of 60's friends and fellow activists. In the process, she created an entire culinary mov...
Sep 27, 2020•33 min•Season 2Ep. 7
In the wake of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, Katie takes a close look at the influence her mother, Celia Amster Bader, had on her daughter. Katie interviews Jane Sherron de Hart, a historian and professor emerita at UC Santa Barbara. Celia was the daughter of immigrants who came to the United States in 1901 to flee the pogroms that were taking place across Eastern Europe. Celia and her sister, Sadie, were deprived of a college education not just because of a lack of money, b...
Sep 21, 2020•39 min•Season 2Ep. 6
In this era of uncertainty and anxiety, some things are a reliable fixture. Exhibit A: The tenacity of Erin Brockovich, who took on PG&E for its water contamination, won a mammoth settlement for her clients, and inspired an Oscar-winning film. In the eponymous role, Julia Roberts was plenty feisty but by many accounts she wasn't as in-your-face fiery as the real Erin Brockovich, a self-described "foul-mouthed, short-skirted blonde woman from Kansas." Brockovich has a new book, Superman's Not...
Sep 13, 2020•29 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Our series commemorating the 19th Amendment ends with the second segment on the first female Vice Presidential candidate, Geraldine Anne "Gerry" Ferraro (August 26, 1935 – March 26, 2011). In this conversation with Ferraro's daughter, documentary filmmaker Donna Zaccaro, Katie takes a closer look at Ferraro The Candidate. When Walter Mondale chose Ferraro as his running mate on the Democratic ticket in 1984, Mondale's campaign got an immediate boost. The mood inside the convention hall was elect...
Sep 06, 2020•25 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Our series commemorating the 19th Amendment continues, with the third and final installment. The subject: Geraldine Anne "Gerry" Ferraro (August 26, 1935 – March 26, 2011) In the first of a two-part interview with Ferraro's daughter, the filmmaker and producer Donna Zaccaro, Katie explores the late Congresswoman and vice-presidential candidate's early life and first years in Congress. Ferraro was just 48 years old when Walter Mondale chose her as his running mate in the 1984 presidential electio...
Aug 30, 2020•33 min•Season 2Ep. 3
It's a big week for the history of women's rights. August 26 -- Women's Equality Day -- commemorates the 1920 passage of women's suffrage in the U.S., with 19th Amendment Centennial Day. This episode is the second in a three-part series celebrating the centennial of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. Katie speaks with Coline Jenkins, great-great granddaughter of famous suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who in 1848 led the Woman’s Rights Convention, the Seneca Falls, N.Y. conven...
Aug 24, 2020•34 min•Season 2Ep. 2
This is the first of a three-part series published over the course of three weeks, honoring the 100th anniversary of the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. A Woman's Place is in The House (the title refers to Abzug's famous campaign slogan) celebrates Bella Abzug, a lawyer, Congresswoman and leader in the fight for women's rights. She was Gloria Steinem's mentor, and worked as a labor and civil rights lawyer. Fresh out of Columbia Law School in 1945, she spe...
Aug 18, 2020•34 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Part Two of the conversation with Nina Lorez Collins about her mother, the late filmmaker, playwright, and writer Kathleen Collins. Nina talks about THE TRUNK, what it was like to be the shepherd of the many works her mother left behind, and the instrumental role Nina played in seeing to it that her mother's big talent find its rightful place in modern American literature. Katie and Nina also play film and literary critics with a small selection of Collins's complex and highly autobiographical w...
Aug 08, 2020•32 min•Season 1Ep. 14
In this, the first of two parts, Katie talks to Nina Lorez Collins about her mother, the groundbreaking filmmaker and writer, Kathleen Collins. Collins died of breast cancer in 1988, when she was just 46. She was one of the first Black women to direct a feature film. In this episode, Nina talks about her mother's childhood in New Jersey, her stormy relationship with Nina's father, a White man she met while studying French cinema in Paris in the 1960s. And Nina talks about her mother's cancer, an...
Aug 02, 2020•35 min•Season 1Ep. 12
What are you to make of it if your mother isn't demonstrative with her love? She doesn't hug you or kiss you or tell you she loves you. But still, you know at your core that she loves you truly, madly, deeply. But how do you know? Katie explores the phenomenon of invisible love with the writer Will Blythe, whose mother was too shy and reserved to express her love for her four children in ways you might expect of a loving mom. She did other things instead to show her feelings. One of those ways w...
Jul 26, 2020•28 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Chuck Yeager didn't have anything on Lillian Yonally. Sure, Yeager was a record-setting test pilot, the first to exceed the speed of sound. But Yonally broke through a different barrier: gender stereotypes. Yonally, a World War II pilot, was one tough woman. She served in the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP. The WASP picked up the slack at home when all the male pilots went overseas. Yonally's main job as a WASP was flying B-25 bombers with a target in tow, while new recruits on the groun...
Jul 12, 2020•30 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Katie talks with Erin Brockovich (yes, that Erin Brockovich), who attributes her doggedness and fearlessness to her mother's own unwavering determination, wrapped in a lifelong embrace of encouragement, love, and faith. Erin's childhood memories are of unalloyed happiness and optimism. Betty Jo Pattee, born in Ponca City, Oklahoma,raised Erin and her siblings to see things through, however tough it gets. She was spiritual without belonging to any particular denomination. B.J. was the first to pi...
Jul 05, 2020•29 min•Season 1Ep. 9
This week, Katie talks with Danielle Mika Nagel, Director of Mindfulness at Lululemon, about her mother, Michiko "Miki" Gorman, the first American woman to win the New York City Marathon, in 1976. Four decades passed before another American woman won that race. Gorman arrived in the U.S. from a small Japanese village in 1963, at age 28, took up running in her 30s, and never stopped. She was so accustomed to running 100 miles at a time that a marathon was a relative cinch. She won the New York Ma...
Jun 28, 2020•28 min•Season 1Ep. 8
For a Father's Day change of pace, Katie speaks with Dr. Talmadge E. King, Jr., a world-renowned lung specialist and Dean of the Medical School at the University of California, San Francisco. In the 1960s, Dr. King's father, Talmadge King Senior, born in 1922 in the segregated South, was recruited by the small community of Darien, on the Georgia coast, to serve as the city's first African American police officer. Mr. King instilled in his five children a sense of doing better with each successiv...
Jun 21, 2020•41 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Katie talks with Zeke Emanuel about his mother, Marsha. Marsha raised three incredible sons in the 1960s: Zeke, now a prominent physician and health policy expert; Rahm, President Obama's Chief of Staff and former Mayor of Chicago; and Ari, a famous Hollywood Agent. Instead of Boy Scout meetings and Little League practice, Marsha Emanuel took her three little boys to Civil Rights marches and anti-war protests. Zeke and Katie explore what it was about Marsha's out-of-the-mainstream approach to ch...
Jun 17, 2020•34 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Athena Linos , 68, a highly regarded Greek epidemiologist, has been called that country's Anthony Fauci. She was born and raised in a small Greek village, the daughter of the town's baker. Athena succeeded in Greece's patriarchal society because her mother did all she could to see that Athena had a chance for academic achievement that had been inaccessible to her. All of Athena's four daughters have succeeded in their own right, as has her son. Katie interviews one of those daughters, Natalia Li...
Jun 07, 2020•31 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Katie interviews Marya Stark, founding executive director of Emerge America, about Marya's mother, Helen, who lived for most of her life with a debilitating lung condition that left her with 25% of normal lung capacity. Helen had nine children, and somehow managed to make each believe that that one child was her favorite. Katie and Marya dig deep into how Helen might have managed to pull that off. Our Mothers Ourselves is an interview podcast that celebrates extraordinary mothers from all walks ...
May 31, 2020•25 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Katie talks with art historian Peter Chametzky about his mother, the feminist poet Anne Halley, whose family fled Nazi Germany for the United States in the 1930s. Halley's Holocaust poems are haunting and precise. Her "housewife" poems are by turns funny and searing. Our Mothers Ourselves is an interview podcast that celebrates extraordinary mothers from all walks of life. Please share the one word that best describes your mother on the Mother Word Cloud ....
May 24, 2020•32 min•Season 1Ep. 3
UPDATED NOVEMBER 9, 2022 Katie interviews Dr. Shirley Weber, California Secretary of State whose mother, Mildred, raised eight kids in L.A. in the 1950s and 1960s, after she and her husband, David, fled a lynch mob in rural Arkansas in 1951. Mildred's philosophy of life: Keep your hand open in order to give. Dr. Weber , a retired San Diego State University professor, became a member of the California State Assembly in 2012, and was the head of the Legislative Black Caucus. On Tues., Nov. 8, 2022...
May 17, 2020•29 min•Season 1Ep. 2
In this inaugural podcast of Our Mothers Ourselves, Katie Hafner talks with Ellen Fitzpatrick, a professor of 20th century U.S. history, about her mother, Mary. Mrs. Fitzpatrick was for many years a favorite math teacher at Amherst Regional High School. She majored in math at U Mass in the 1940s, and went on to raise six kids while working full-time. Widowed suddenly in 1975 at age 52, Mary Fitzpatrick carried on. Hers wasn't a flashy life, but it was a meaningful one, leaving a deep impression ...
May 10, 2020•22 min•Season 1Ep. 1
