Podcasts about jessamine chan

Today we're ditching the drama on Earth and talking about K2-18b, an exoplanet 120 light-years away. K2-18b recently made headlines after researchers claimed to observe possible “signs of life” in the planet's atmosphere. So, did we find aliens? Michaela Musilova, an astrobiologist and analog astronaut, said it's too early to tell. On the show today, Musilova breaks down the debate over K2-18b, why better telescopes are needed to find definitive proof of life on another planet, and why President Trump's proposed funding cuts to NASA could disrupt this search. Plus, what's it like to be an analog astronaut, and what do they actually do?Then, why a healthy reading diet contains both “broccoli” and “chocolate pie” books. And, Jessamine Chan, author of “The School for Good Mothers,” answers the Make Me Smart question.Here's everything we talked about today:"Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet" from The New York Times"Does exoplanet K2-18b host alien life or not? Here's why the debate continues" from Space "Experts alarmed as White House proposes 'largest single-year cut to NASA in American history'" from Space "NASA's Don Pettit Shot 220 Days of Amazing Photos From the I.S.S." from The New York Times "What's in Trump and Republicans' giant tax and immigration bill?" from The Washington Post"Republican Tax Plan Boosts SALT Deduction, Ends Green-Energy Breaks" from The Wall Street Journal Got a question or comment for the hosts? Email makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

Today we're ditching the drama on Earth and talking about K2-18b, an exoplanet 120 light-years away. K2-18b recently made headlines after researchers claimed to observe possible “signs of life” in the planet's atmosphere. So, did we find aliens? Michaela Musilova, an astrobiologist and analog astronaut, said it's too early to tell. On the show today, Musilova breaks down the debate over K2-18b, why better telescopes are needed to find definitive proof of life on another planet, and why President Trump's proposed funding cuts to NASA could disrupt this search. Plus, what's it like to be an analog astronaut, and what do they actually do?Then, why a healthy reading diet contains both “broccoli” and “chocolate pie” books. And, Jessamine Chan, author of “The School for Good Mothers,” answers the Make Me Smart question.Here's everything we talked about today:"Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet" from The New York Times"Does exoplanet K2-18b host alien life or not? Here's why the debate continues" from Space "Experts alarmed as White House proposes 'largest single-year cut to NASA in American history'" from Space "NASA's Don Pettit Shot 220 Days of Amazing Photos From the I.S.S." from The New York Times "What's in Trump and Republicans' giant tax and immigration bill?" from The Washington Post"Republican Tax Plan Boosts SALT Deduction, Ends Green-Energy Breaks" from The Wall Street Journal Got a question or comment for the hosts? Email makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

In honor of Mother's Day, Natalia, Sara, Shannon, and Melissa are discussing books centered around motherhood. Titles mentioned include:Kelly Rimmer, Truths I Never Told YouLinny Mack, Changing Tides (Cape May #1)Jessamine Chan, The School For Good MothersJennifer Chase, Find My Daughter (Detective Katie Scott #13)Kristan Higgins, Out Of The Clear Blue SkyBrittainy C. Cherry, If You StayedNefertiti Austin, Motherhood So White: A Memoir Of Race, Gender, And Parenting In AmericaJanet Fitch, White OleanderChristine Pride & Jo Piazza, You Were Always MineSarah Lyons Fleming, World Departed (Cascadia #1)Michele Filgate, What My Mother And I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break The SilenceGillian McAllister, The Good SisterYou can always contact the Book Bistro team by searching @BookBistroPodcast on facebook, or visiting:https://www.facebook.com/BookBistroPodcast/You can also send an email to:TheBookBistroPodcast@gmail.comFor more information on the podcast and the team behind it, please visit:https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/book-bistro

On this inaugural edition of the Horror From the High Desert "Book Club," Bram Stoker Award-winning author Christa Carmen ("The Daughters of Block Island," "Beneath the Poet's House") returns to the podcast to talk with Scotty about Tracy Sierra's superlative home-invasion thiller "Nightwatching" (2024, Pamela Dorman Books). They discuss the novel's unique horror elements, its disconcerting use of "unreality," Sierra's powerful command of subtle details to create suspense, and more. WARNING: Spoilers begin at 20:25. Christa can be found online at https://www.christacarmen.com Tracy Sierra can be found online at https://www.tracysierraauthor.com You can buy "Nightwatching at https://bookshop.org/p/books/nightwatching-tracy-sierra/20080533?ean=9780593654767 Other recommendations from Christa: • “A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara • “The Push” by Ashley Audrain • “The Girls” by Emma Cline • “Recursion” by Blake Crouch • “Florida” by Lauren Groff • “Hour of the Witch: A Novel” by Chris Bohjalian • “The School for Good Mothers” by Jessamine Chan • "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley Be sure to tune in to Daniel Braum's YouTube series "Night Time Logic." The series focuses on the strange, weird, and wonderful side of dark fiction through readings and discussions with diverse authors from around the world. You can tune in on Daniel's You Tube Channel, which is his name DanielBraum or @danielbraum7838. https://www.facebook.com/groups/429777132474382 https://www.youtube.com/@danielbraum7838 This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight is a sharp coming-of-age journey set in a glamorous world of high academia, old money and one eccentric upper-class family. Knight joins us to talk about how she crafts her characters, themes of friendship and motherhood, her literary favorites and more with guest host, Allyson Gavaletz. This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Allyson Gavaletz and mixed by Harry Liang.                     New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight Orbital by Samatha Harvey My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan                            

Spaudos publikacijų apžvalga.Ką mokslas jau žino apie Marsą ir ką siekia išsiaiškinti?Pasaulio Kultūros žiniasklaidos apžvalga.Eglė Baliutavičiūtė apžvelgia N. K. Jemisin knygą „Penktasis sezonas. Suluošinta žemė, 1 knyga“ ir Jessamine Chan distopija „Gerų motinų mokykla“.Visą savaitgalį tęsis dvidešimtoji Šiaurės vasara Biržuose.Rugpjūčio 16-ają, minint pasaulinę švyturių dieną, uostamiestyje pirmą kartą vyks „Laisvės švyturių naktis. Klaipėda”.Menininkė, Nacionalinės premijos laureatė, Eglė Rakauskaitė Anykščių rajone kuria namus savo tėvo, vieno ryškiausių Lietuvos fotografų Romualdo Rakausko, archyvui.Kaip atrodo fotografo darbas olimpinėse žaidynėse?Vievyje esantis Lietuvos kelių muziejus išgyvena renesansą - kuriamas naujas identitetas, planuojamos naujos veiklos.Ved. Marius EidukonisNuotr. autorius R. Lukoševičius

“A premissa era incrível, mas a concretização desiludiu.” — quantas vezes já nos ouviram dizer isto? Tantas, que aproveitámos a sugestão de uma ouvinte e decidimos falar de premissas e concretizações. Trouxemos exemplos de boas premissas e execuções não tão boas, mas também há boas surpresas. Livros mencionados neste episódio: - Coisas de Loucos, Catarina Gomes (1:55) - Love in the Big City, Sang Young Park (2:52) - The Fair Botanists, Sara Sheridan (3:24) - Notes on an Execution, Danya Kukafka (9:53) - Black Cake, Charmaine Wilkerson (11:14) - Love in the time of Serial Killers, Alicia Thompson (13:10) - The School for Good Mothers, Jessamine Chan (15:03) - The Roughest Draft, Emily Wimberley e Austin Siegmund-Broka (18:16) - The Midnight Library, Matt Haig (19:54) - The Final Girl Support Group, Grady Hendrix (22:30) - You've Reached Sam, Dustin Tao (25:23) - The Power, Naomi Alderman (27:16) - All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (29:30) - Romantic Comedy, Curtis Sittenfeld (32:00) - I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, Baek Se-hee (33:50) - Cursed Bread, Sophie Mackintosh (36:32) - The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern (38:43) - The Prisioner, B. A. Paris (40:22) - Girl in White, Sue Hubbard (42:28) - Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn (43:48) - To the Wedding, John Berger (45:36) - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman (48:01) - We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson (50:18) - Mayflies, Andrew O'Hagan (52:18) - We Were Liars, E. Lockhart (54:27) - Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (55:38) - The Flatshare, Beth O'Leary (56:57) - Sinopse de Amor e Guerra, Afonso Cruz (58:20) - Attachments, Rainbow Rowell (59:47) - Tom Lake, Ann Patchett (1:00:58) - Ready Player One, Ernest Cline (1:02:18) ________________ Enviem as vossas questões ou sugestões para livratepodcast@gmail.com. Encontrem-nos nas redes sociais: www.instagram.com/julesdsilva www.instagram.com/ritadanova twitter.com/julesxdasilva twitter.com/ritadanova Identidade visual do podcast: da autoria da talentosa Mariana Cardoso, que podem encontrar em marianarfpcardoso@hotmail.com. Genérico do podcast: criado pelo incrível Vitor Carraca Teixeira, que podem encontrar em www.instagram.com/oputovitor.

Vocês vêem Livra-te D'Ouro no título e já sabem o que significa, certo? Está na altura de vos apresentarmos os melhores e piores livros que lemos este ano — com o nosso convidado especial, o Senhor Deboche. - As Coisas Que Faltam, Rita da Nova (6:34) - The Dinner List, Rebecca Serle (7:18) - Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano (7:55) - Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield (8:57) - A História de Roma, Joana Bértholo (9:54) - The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood (12:11) - Foster, Claire Keegan (13:11) - The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai (14:24) - The Wolf Den, Elodie Harper (15:58) - You Again, Kate Goldbeck (18:29) - Almond, Won-Pyung Sohn (20:00) - Talking At Night, Claire Daverley (21:17) - The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V. E. Schwab (22:10) - Ask Again, Yes, Mary Beth Keane (24:02) - On Writing, Stephen King (25:05) - Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi (26:53) - Tom Lake, Ann Patchett (28:21) - We All Want Impossible Things, Catherine Newman (30:24) - Babel, R. F. Kuang (31:55) - Spare, Prince Harry + Love, Pamela, Pamela Anderson + Paris: The Memoir, Paris Hilton (35:50) - Encontro, Natasha Brown (37:37) - The Pact, Sharon J. Bolton (38:55) - You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty, Akwaeke Emezi (40:01) - Romantic Comedy, Curtis Sittenfeld (44:55) - Nora Goes Off Script, Annabel Monaghan (46:38) - Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (48:58) - The Emissary, Yoko Tawada (49:51) - Love in the Time of Serial Killers, Alicia Thompson (51:56) - The Prisioner, B. A. Paris (53:38) - Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert (55:06) - Songs in Ursa Major, Emma Brodie (55:30) - The School for Good Mothers, Jessamine Chan (56:43) - Cursed Bread, Sophie Mackintosh (57:12) ________________ Enviem as vossas questões ou sugestões para livratepodcast@gmail.com. Encontrem-nos nas redes sociais: www.instagram.com/julesdsilva www.instagram.com/ritadanova twitter.com/julesxdasilva twitter.com/ritadanova Identidade visual do podcast: da autoria da talentosa Mariana Cardoso, que podem encontrar em marianarfpcardoso@hotmail.com. Genérico do podcast: criado pelo incrível Vitor Carraca Teixeira, que podem encontrar em www.instagram.com/oputovitor.

Yolanda Skeete, an avid reader and co-host of Thrillers by the Book Club SoCal, is back on the show with our book club pal Vanessa Vicente. Yolanda and Vanessa are both bookstagrammers living in Southern California who love to review thrillers, nonfiction, romance, and other genres. As mothers ourselves, we have a lot to say about the 2022 Science Fiction novel “The School for Good Mothers” by Jessamine Chan. In this episode, we talk about our experiences, hardships, and joys as mothers, and the discussion ranges from KidLit to Black Mirror to Michelle Obama to questions like “Why aren't moms allowed to be sexy??”   Host: Julie Strauss Website/Instagram    Guest: Yolanda Skeete Instagram    Guest: Vanessa Vicente Instagram Join the Best Book Ever Newsletter HERE!   Subscribe for FREE to receive weekly emails with complete show notes, photos of our guests, and updates on what Julie is reading on her own time.   Support the podcast for just $5/month and you'll receive the weekly newsletter AND a monthly themed curated book list.   Become a Founder for $100 and you'll receive the weekly newsletter, the monthly curated book list, AND a personal thank you on the podcast, AND a Best Book Ever T-Shirt in your favorite color and style. Discussed in this episode:   The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2022 Maribel's Year and Others by Michelle Sterling Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds Creepy Pair of Underwear by Aaron Reynolds Creepy Crayon by Aaron Reynolds The Couch Potato by Jory John The Bad Seed by Jory John Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling Harambe Black Mirror TV Show The Sitting Month The Drowning Woman by Robin Harding Gone Tonight by Sarah Pekkanen The Wife Between Us by Sarah Pekkanen Judy Blume Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. Movie Whalefall by Daniel Kraus Drowning by T.J. Newman   (Note: Some of the above links are affiliate links. If you shop using my affiliate link on Bookshop, a portion of your purchase will go to me, at no extra expense to you. Thank you for supporting indie bookstores and for helping to keep the Best Book Ever Podcast in business!)

Was zeichnet eine gute Mutter aus? Völlige Selbstlosigkeit und gänzlicher Verzicht auf eigene Bedürfnisse, heißt es in Jessamine Chans dystopischem Roman „Institut der guten Mütter". Eine Lektion, die die alleinerziehende Heldin Frida Liu in ebenjenem Institut lernen muss, will sie ihre Tochter Harriet je wiedersehen. Rezension von Oliver Pfohlmann. Aus dem Englischen von Friederike Hofert Ullstein Verlag, 400 Seiten, 22,99 Euro ISBN 978-3-55020-133-2

O mês de Maio foi uma vitória no Clube do Livra-te. Dois livros que nos envolveram, nos divertiram e nos deixaram cheias de coisas para dizer. Como já é habitual, falamos ⚠️ COM SPOILERS ⚠️ e revelamos as nossas expectativas para as escolhas de Junho (e o entusiasmo não esmoreceu). Sobre os livros de Maio: - Stone Blind (O Olhar da Medusa), Natalie Haynes (1:36) - Other People's Clothes (Na Pele dos Outros), Calla Henkel (16:39) ✨ Livros de Junho do Clube do Livra-te: ✨ - The School for Good Mother (Escola Para Boas Mães), Jessamine Chan (28:23) - Every Summer After (Cada Verão Passado), Carley Fortune (30:55) ________________ Enviem as vossas questões ou sugestões para livratepodcast@gmail.com. Encontrem-nos nas redes sociais: www.instagram.com/julesdsilva www.instagram.com/ritadanova/ twitter.com/julesxdasilva twitter.com/RitaDaNova [a imagem do podcast é da autoria da maravilhosa, incrível e talentosa Mariana Cardoso, que podem encontrar em marianarfpcardoso@hotmail.com]

What does it take to be a "good" mother?Join us as we dive into the dystopian world of Jessamine Chan's  The School for Good Mothers, and talk about her take on the destructive nature of the idea of perfect motherhood. This novel illustrates how an everyday, normal thing like motherhood can be pushed to the limits of imagination and become something terrifying.We venture into a different realm with Henry Herz's nonfiction picture book, I Am Smoke, and examine how this mesmerizing book entertains and educates by taking the unique approach of telling the story from the point of view of smoke.And yes, we do take a mini left turn into celebrity authors and whether they are taking resources from other writers and ultimately, not earning it back.This week's Hot Tip is - lean into being educated about publishing and save yourself from potential stress and hardship later! Support the showWebsite: https://www.writerswithwrinkles.net/Threads: @WritersWithWrinklesInsta: @WritersWithWrinklesTwitter: @BethandLisaPodSupport Writers With Wrinkles - become a subscriberEmail: Beth@BethMcMullenBooks.comWriters with Wrinkles Link Tree for more!

“You don't know the power you have over me. One word from you, one look, and I'm four years old again.” We discuss the The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan, Wayne Wang and a mountain of mom feels with the wonderful Jessamine Chan.You can find Jessamine (and her book The School for Good Mothers) online here!You Are Good is a feelings podcast about movies.You can buy a Vulnerability Kink shirt here!You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Patreon and Apple Plus.This episode was made possible by your support! Thanks to everybody who supports us on Patreon and Apple Plus.Multitude handles our ad sales!The Music of You Are Good, Vol. 1 is here.Miranda Zickler and Carolyn Kendrick edited this episode!Fresh Lesh produces the beats for our episodes.Liz Climo designed our logo!

A palavra do dia é Hype. Pegamos em alguns dos livros mais falados em todo o lado e dividimos em duas caixas: aqueles que lemos e não corresponderam, e os que ainda queremos ler. Livros mencionados neste episódio - The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood (2:30) - Romantic Comedy, Curtis Sittenfeld (3:10) - Desire, Haruki Murakami (4:37) - Happy Place, Emily Henry (4:55 & 12:41) - People From My Neighbourhood, Hiromi Kawakami (6:46) - E Se Eu Morrer Amanhã?, Filipa Fonseca Silva (7:21) - Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes (9:35) - Tis is the Season for Revenge, Morgan Elizabeth (14:47) - Os Meus Dias na Livraria Morisaki, Satoshi Yagisawa (15:35) - Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi (16:30) - Icebreaker, Hannah Grace (18:18) - Kim Jiyoung Born 1982, Cho Nam-Joo (19:21) - How to Kill Your Family, Bella Mackie (21:18) - The Roommate, Rosie Danan (22:04) - The Midnight Library, Matt Haig (23:40) - They Both Die at the End, Adam Silvera (25:02) - Shipped, Angie Hockman (26:21) - The Spanish Love Deception, Elena Armas (27:13) - Everything I Never Told You, Celest Ng (29:06) - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin (30:39) - Beach Read, Emily Henry (31:49) - All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (33:42) - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong (36:43) - My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Otessa Moshfeg (38:03) - Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo (38:50) - The Atlas Six, Olivie Blake (39:04) - Saga Lovelight, B. K. Borison (41:24) - Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi (43:02) - Love and Other Words, Christina Lauren (43:32) - Every Summer After, Carley Fortune (44:33) - Thins We Never Got Over, Lucy Score (46:14) - Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell (47:40) - Bliss Montage, Ling Ma (49:11) - School for Good Mothers, Jessamine Chan (50:25) - Lonely Castle in the Mirror, Muziku Tsujimura (51:29) - The Poppy War & Babel & Yellowface, R. F. Kuang (53:12) - The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker (55:38) ________________ Enviem as vossas questões ou sugestões para livratepodcast@gmail.com. Encontrem-nos nas redes sociais: www.instagram.com/julesdsilva www.instagram.com/ritadanova/ twitter.com/julesxdasilva twitter.com/RitaDaNova [a imagem do podcast é da autoria da maravilhosa, incrível e talentosa Mariana Cardoso, que podem encontrar em marianarfpcardoso@hotmail.com]

Bentornati in Bookatini - il podcast per chi è ghiotto di libri. L'episodio 56 è dedicato alla festa della mamma. Nell'episodio di oggi abbiamo chiacchierato approfonditamente di questi libri Tempo di neve, di Jessica Au, Il saggiatore editoreCos'hai nel sangue, di Gaia Giovagnoli, Nottetempo editoreAbbiamo anche citato questi libri, che abbiamo ma non abbiamo letto: La scuola per le buone madri, di Jessamine Chan, Mondadori editoreMaternità, di Sheila Heti, Sellerio editoreIl lavoro di una vita, di rachel Cusk, Einaudi editoreUna donna, di Annie Ernaux, L'orma editoreL'invenzione della madre, di Maerco Peano, Minimum fax editorePotete contattarci, scrivere commenti, suggerimenti, domande e condividete con noi le vostre letture su questo tema contattandoci nella pagina Instagram Bookatini_podcast, dove potete trovare anche le nostre live, in onda di mercoledìSe volete sostenerci e godere di contenuti aggiuntivi, potete unirvi a 4 possibili livelli di Patreon che trovate al link: https://www.patreon.com/bookatiniLa sigla di Bookatini è scritta e suonata da Andrea Cerea

O Livra-te Airlines passou por Londres por um fim-de-semana e trouxe um episódio curto, mas recheado. Traz review sem spoilers da adaptação para peça do A Little Life, um pequeno book haul de livrarias londrinas e um blind date caseiro. Livros mencionados neste episódio: - Happy Place (Lugar Feliz), Emily Henry (2:33) - Desire, Haruki Murakami (3:30) - Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield (3:54 & 16:58) - A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara (6:25) - Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel (17:26) - Last Summer in the City, Gianfranco Calligarich (18:10) - Girl Meets Boy, Ali Smith (19:50) - The School for Good Mothers, Jessamine Chan (20:48) - The Pachinko Parlor, Elisa Shua Dusapin (21:18) - Pod, Laline Paull (21:45) - All the Lovers in the Night, Mieko Kawakami (22:46) - Atalanta, Jennifer Saint (23:33) - Romantic Comedy, Curtis Sittenfeld (24:35) - Foster, Claire Keegan (26:18) - French Braid, Anne Tyler (26:59) - True Biz, Sara Nović (28:32) - Girl Friends, Holly Bourne (30:25) ________________ Enviem as vossas questões ou sugestões para livratepodcast@gmail.com. Encontrem-nos nas redes sociais: www.instagram.com/julesdsilva www.instagram.com/ritadanova/ twitter.com/julesxdasilva twitter.com/RitaDaNova [a imagem do podcast é da autoria da maravilhosa, incrível e talentosa Mariana Cardoso, que podem encontrar em marianarfpcardoso@hotmail.com]

In Episode 138, author Rebecca Makkai discusses I Have Some Questions for You, her latest novel that explores societal issues such as racism and wrongful incarceration through the lens of a crime story. This was a five-star book for me and looks to be *the book* of 2023 so far! Rebecca shared how she engaged with readers using click-bait style headlines and created a sense of intimacy through the second-person point of view. She also goes behind the scenes of how she pitches her new book ideas to her agent and publisher. Plus, Rebecca gives us her book recommendations! This post contains affiliate links through which I make a small commission when you make a purchase (at no cost to you!). Highlights A spoiler-free glimpse into her latest book, I Have Some Questions for You. What inspired her to start writing the book, including the initial wave of the #MeToo movement and the public's fascination with true crime. Insider knowledge about when she shares her work with agents and publishers. How she blended elements of crime within her literary fiction novel. How she uses click-bait style headlines to draw readers in from the opening of the book and throughout the story. Why Rebecca used the second-person point of view and how that created an intimate connection between readers and the protagonist. How she used student testimony and gossip to shape the narrative and delve into issues such as racism, sexism, and abuse. How she reconciled the viewpoints of the '90s with modern perspectives in her novel. A sneak peek of what Rebecca has planned next, including a hint about her upcoming book, and learn about her 84 Books Project. Rebecca's Book Recommendations [30:43] Two OLD Books She Loves The Door by Magda Szabó | Amazon | Bookshop.org [30:57] We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson | Amazon | Bookshop.org [33:32] Two NEW Books She Loves If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga | Amazon | Bookshop.org [36:34] The Guest Lecture by Martin Riker | Amazon | Bookshop.org [40:06] A Book With Which She Has a Complicated Relationship London Fields by Martin Amis | Amazon | Bookshop.org [42:11] One NEW RELEASE She's Excited About Maddalena and the Dark by Julia Fine (June 13, 2023) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [47:52] Last 5-Star Book Rebecca Read Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali | Amazon | Bookshop.org [49:09] Other Books Mentioned The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai [1:05] The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai [1:58] The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai [2:01] Music for Wartime by Rebecca Makkai [2:02] The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht [7:01] All That Is Mine I Carry With Me by William Landay [9:43] When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain [12:09] The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson [34:29] The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson [34:39] The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan [42:02] Time's Arrow by Martin Amis [42:47] Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy [45:39] The Upstairs House by Julia Fine [48:02] The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb [48:51] The Ensemble by Aja Gable [48:53] About Rebecca Makkai Website| Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Substack Rebecca Makkai is the author of the novels I Have Some Questions for You, The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, and the story collection Music for Wartime. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, The Great Believers received an American Library Association Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors, and was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2018 by The New York Times. A 202 Guggenheim fellow, Makkai is on the MFA faculties of the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe and Northwestern University, and is the artistic director of StoryStudio Chicago. She lives on the campus of the midwestern boarding school where her husband teaches, and in Vermont.

Hello to all of our friends and family!Below you will find the list of books, tv shows, and/or movies as they are mentioned in this episode! We thank you for sticking around and are so happy to have you as a listener! I leave you with a little question to ponder over; Do you DNF a book if you aren't enjoying it? If so, does it fill you with a newfound sense of freedom in your reading life? If you don't DNF books, ever...why not?Stay Happily Booked! 10:00 - The Rookie TV Show 15:20 - Sense And Sensibility by Jane Austen16:06 - Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen - Audio Dramatization on Audible16:35 - Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell17:52 - Alluding to Anne Of The Island by L. M. Montgomery & Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami22:55 - DNF'ed - The Vicarage Murder: Monica Noble Detective, Book 1 by Faith Martin24:22 - Ever After 1998 Movie25:18 - Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling26:35 - The Eye Of The World by Robert Jordan 32:14 - A Court Of Mist And Fury by Sarah J. Maas34:13 - Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrick Backman36:17 - The Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman (Mentions The Golden Compass)37:41 - The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (Mentions The Handmaids Tale)38:38 - Malorie by Josh Malerman (Mentions Bird Box)40:31 - Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer40:55 - Soul Riders: Darkness Falling by Helena Dahlgren42:35 - Real Men Knit by Kwana Jackson44:26 - Love In Case Of Emergency by Daniela Krien45:47 - The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James46:08 - Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix48:55 - New Moon by Stephenie Meyer, The School For Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan, A Court Of Thorns And Roses by Sarah J. Maas, & A Man Called Ove by Fredrik BackmanSupport the showBe sure to keep yourself Happily Booked! Becky's Homestead Etsy Page: bobwhitehomestead.etsyInstagram/ TikTok - happilybookedpodcastFacebook - Happily Booked PodcastLikewise - BrookeBatesHappilyBookedGoodreads - Brooke Lynn Bates Storygraph - brookebatesratesbooks / magbeck2011 THE Sideways Sheriff - Permanent Sponsor Insta/ TikTok - Sideways_sheriffFacebook - Sideways SheriffYoutube - Sideways Sheriff

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan by Anna and Em

Our bookshelf episodes are the ones where we kick back and talk about the books we've been choosing for ourselves outside of our book club reading. And so join us as we get swept away by the French Revolution and Hilary Mantel's spellbinding book A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY, consider myth and storytelling with a surprisingly feminist slant thanks to Salman Rushdie's latest novel, VICTORY CITY, see another side to New York with our guest Phil Chaffee and Chang Rae Lee's book NATIVE SPEAKER, plan an architectural tour of Norwegian Stave churches thanks to THE BELL AND THE LAKE by Lars Mytting, which Laura reports is a tale of love and drama set among a remote community in 18th-century Norway. We also catch up with Barack Obama's summer reading pick THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS by Jessamine Chan – with a brief aside to celebrate Kate's new-found love for Richard and Judy's book club here in the UK. Phil reports back on the FT's business book of the year, CHIP WAR by Chris Miller, which turns out to be a thumping page-turner, plus we quick fire through a stack of other books we couldn't bear not to mention. Book list A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate) VICTORY CITY by Salman Rushdie (Penguin) NATIVE SPEAKER by Chang Rae Lee (Granta) THE BELL AND THE LAKE by Lars Mytting (Hachette) THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS by Jessamine Chan CHIP WAR by Chris Miller (Simon & Schuster) Plus THE PEARL by John Steinbeck SHADOW AND CLAW by Gene Wolff CHARLOTTE by David Foenkinos ROSES IN THE MOUTH OF A LION by Bushra Rehman (published in the UK in January 2023, from St. Martin's Press)   Notes Browse the newsletter archive of Three Lives & Company booksellers, New York.  Our  Emily's Walking Book Club episode # 76 The article Phil mentioned is The 25 Most Significant New York City Novels from the Last 25 Years  

Barack Obama called Jessamine Chan's The School for Good Mothers one of his favorite reads of 2022. The NYT bestseller comes out in paperback on February 7. Every year, thousands of children are removed from their parents' custody by the state, often for good reasons, but not always. Set in a dystopian future not so far from now, The School for Good Mothers follows Frieda's tortured journey after losing her daughter following “a very bad day.” Jessamine joins Marrie Stone to talk about the 20 years she spent writing before the book was published, and how one inspiring day of writing changed everything (spoiler alert: don't try this at home). She talks about writing in longhand, over-writing and learning to cut, how visiting her setting changed the feel of the book, naming her characters and other craft insights. She also discusses MFAs and writing residencies, finding an agent, the long editing process after the book was sold and more. For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. (Recorded on January 25, 2023)  Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettCo-Host: Marrie StoneMusic and sound design: Travis Barrett

Are there any circumstances under which it's ok to leave a young child alone? What should the punishment be? In Jessamine Chan's The School For Good Mothers, such recklessness demands you spend time being re-educated as a parent by the state. Joining Richard and Judy, Jessamine tells the real life story that inspired her semi-dystopian novel, and they wonder whether parents are subject to more judgement now than ever before. Simply head online to whsmith.co.uk to browse the Winter Book Club collection, and use the code WINTER22 for a 10% discount.

Lisa discusses her favorite and least favorite books of 2022:  Her favorites: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint SmithI'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdyThe Swimmers by Julie OtsukaThe School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan  Her least favorite books she read in 2022: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a fictional Holocaust middle-grade book by John Boyne. Lisa had an episode about this book in 2022.  The Thursday Murder Club By Richard Osman  The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Lisa had an episode on this book.The Help by Kathryn Stockett The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Lisa discussed this book in this episode. For more information, find Lisa on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and her website. *The book titles mentioned include affiliate links. You can support the podcast by purchasing a book with the links because the podcast receives a small commission. 

Jessamine Chan talks to Neil about her debut novel The School For Good Mothers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda and Chelse talk about happenings at the Allen County Public Library and discuss what they are reading. Programs MentionedTouch the TruckThe Graveline Tour, October 14 and 15 from 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm. Program on L & N Depot by Dr. Mark Huntsman preceding Graveline TourStrings and Things: Crafting Holiday Dishcloths.Youth - Trick O' Treat Parade:  Friday, October 28 at 10:00 amBooks Discussed: Something Borrowed by Emily GiffinMeant to Be by Emily Giffin I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdyThe Body by Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan, Catherine Ho, et al. 

This week, accompany the three remaining non-mothers of the squad for a discussion of “The School for Good Mothers” by Jessamine Chan. We discuss the way the book explores the intersection of race, motherhood, and the legal system, officially coin the term “low scifi,” and fantasize about casting Oscar Isaac in the upcoming adaptation. Plus: we finally read Jordan's listener feedback! Join us for our next episode on 10/17 when we'll talk “Hocus Pocus 2” with Melanie Anderson and Lisa Kröger – authors of “Toil and Trouble: A Women's History of the Occult” — and don't forget to read along for our next bookpisode on “Our Wives Under the Sea” by Julia Armfield on 10/31, because nothing says Halloween like sad lesbians. We DARE you to send us your feedback to thesquad@booksquadgoals.com! TOC:30– Welcome! A light icebreaker9:48– Book intro10:53– Meaning and themes45:36–the dolls! 53:22– the ending1:00:19–casting thoughts?1:05:38– ratings1:10:57– Listener feedback time! 1:14:04– What's on the blog? What's up next? Links: https://pen.org/the-pen-ten-jessamine-chan/ https://deadline.com/2022/01/jessica-chastain-adapt-jessamine-chans-the-school-for-good-mothers-tv-jude-weng-1234903726/

On this week's chit chat Jeff's is accosted by 2 young hot Mormon missionaries as he arrived to record the pod.  The hotties in black and white got a little more than they bargained for, stopping Jeffrey.  Sam watched a league of their own, and the do revenge.  Jeff is doing the reading this week, wholly enthralled in The Missing American.  Sam finally reads a book that Jeff read A school for good mothers by Jessamine Chan.Do RevengeThe Missing American - Kwei Quarty

Oh listener, why did you have to go and make a fool of death with your (insert noun here)? This week, the Squad discusses Akwaeke Emezi's romance novel “You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty,” and that last sentence was just a little taste of all the bad jokes we make about this title. We also get into genre tropes, grief, and the instantaneous orgasm, and we even make time to read some Goodreads reviews. What did you think of this book? We'd LOVE to hear from you, so please drop us a line at thesquad@booksquadgoals.com! Don't forget to tune in for our next episode on 9/19 with special guest Clay McLeod Chapman where we'll talk with him about his new book, “Ghost Eaters,” after a review of the 1973 horror classic “Don't Look Now.” Then, read along for our next bookpisode on 10/3 where we'll cover “The School for Good Mothers” by Jessamine Chan.TOC:30–Intro q8:45–Goodreads summary 11:09–the title 18:55–how the book explores grief 26:23–how is this working as a romance?34:14–how did we feel about these characters?43:28–what about the art in the book?49:30–casting thoughts?51:50–goodreads reviews 1:13:00–ratings1:14:48–what's on the blog? What's up next?

Better late than never, our August featured read was The School For Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. This is a spoiler free chat so all listeners welcome!!

We spoke to US author Jessamine Chan right after her novel, The School for Good Mothers was just revealed to be on Barack Obama's Summer Reading List. She chats with Robin about bucking expectations of what the book is about, writer's who've inspired her, avoiding parenting advice and they both try and not give away any of the twists and turns of the novel. Hear an extended version and support the show at patreon.com/bookshambles

This week we are joined by Shelley Sackier who has had an interesting literary journey. She is a young adult fiction writer who has recently published a book about scotch whisky called Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky. It is part Scotch history, a love letter to the country itself, and part memoir about how her love for the spirit developed especially after she completed an internship at a Scottish distillery. Over the course of 20 years, it has changed the trajectory of her life. Shelley works as a whiskey educator at Reservoir Distillery in Richmond, Virginia. You can follow Shelley Sackier on Instagram @shelleysackier or at her website www.shelleysackier.com For shownotes for any episode go to our website www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. We are also on Instagram @perksofbeingabookloverpod and on FB Perks of Being a BookLover Books Mentioned in This Episode: 1- Make it a Double: From Wretched from Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky by Shelley Sackier 2- The Monsters of Rookhaven by Padraig Kenny 3- The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier 4- A Season to Taste: How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found My Way by Molly Birnbaum 5- The Babysitter: My Summers With a Serial Killer by Jennifer Jordan and Liza Rodman 6- The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

This week we are joined by Shelley Sackier who has had an interesting literary journey. She is a young adult fiction writer who has recently published a book about scotch whisky called Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky. It is part Scotch history, a love letter to the country itself, and part memoir about how her love for the spirit developed especially after she completed an internship at a Scottish distillery. Over the course of 20 years, it has changed the trajectory of her life. Shelley works as a whiskey educator at Reservoir Distillery in Richmond, Virginia. You can follow Shelley Sackier on Instagram @shelleysackier or at her website www.shelleysackier.com For shownotes for any episode go to our website www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. We are also on Instagram @perksofbeingabookloverpod and on FB Perks of Being a BookLover Books Mentioned in This Episode: 1- Make it a Double: From Wretched from Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky by Shelley Sackier 2- The Monsters of Rookhaven by Padraig Kenny 3- The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier 4- A Season to Taste: How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found My Way by Molly Birnbaum 5- The Babysitter: My Summers With a Serial Killer by Jennifer Jordan and Liza Rodman 6- The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

In this episode, Niki, Natalia, and Neil discuss the history of third parties in American politics. Support Past Present on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pastpresentpodcast Here are some links and references mentioned during this week's show:  Andrew Yang, Christine Todd Whitman, and David Jolly have announced their formation of the Forward Party, the newest entry in a long history of third parties in American politics. Natalia referenced Jamelle Bouie's New York Times critique of the idea. Neil referred to this PBS piece on the prevalence of third parties even today.   In our regular closing feature, What's Making History: Natalia recommended Jessamine Chan's debut novel, The School for Good Mothers. Neil discussed Derek Thompson's Atlantic essay, “Why The Old Elite Spend So Much Time At Work.” Niki shared about the Foreign Agent podcast.

[REBROADCAST FROM JAN. 20, 2022] Frida is a dedicated mother who had one very, very bad day. And that one day leads to the removal of her child and Frida's induction into a new government reform program for "bad mothers." This is the plot of a new debut novel from Jessamine Chan, titled The School for Good Mothers. We speak with Chan as part of our new series highlighting first-time authors, '2022 Debuts.'

Lisa highlights her favorite books so far that she has read in 2022 and the books that have disappointed her this year. Some of these books were published in 2022 and some were published earlier. ·      The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka: this was written in 2022 ·      The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan   ·    Yinka, Where is your Huzband? By Lizzie Damilola Blackburn ·      In Pursuit of Disobedient Women: A Memoir of Love, Rebellion, and Family, Far Away by Dionne Searcey  ·      Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill A few books Lisa has been disappointed in that she is reading this year are: ·      The Christie Affair by Nina De Gramont, which she discussed in this episode on the podcast·      The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne that was discussed in this episode this episode For more information, find Lisa on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and her website.*The book titles mentioned include affiliate links. You can support the podcast by purchasing a book with the links because the podcast receives a small commission. 

Kayla and Taylor discuss the themes and major beats of Jessamine Chan's 2022 novel The School for Good Mothers. Topics include what it means to be a good (or bad) mother, lifelike dolls, and The Audacity of it all.This week's drink: Bad Thoughts via Tipsy BartenderINGREDIENTS1 ½ oz reposado tequila½ oz bergamot orange liqueur2 dashes Peychaud's bitters2 dashes aromatic bittersAbsinthe sprayGarnish: grapefruit peelINSTRUCTIONSChill a rocks glass with crushed ice or put it in the freezerCombine ingredients in a mixing beaker and stir well with iceStrain mix into the chilled serving glass and garnish with a grapefruit peelCurrent Reads and Recommendations:Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley TucciFollow us on Instagram @literatureandlibationspod.Visit our website: literatureandlibationspod.com to submit feedback, questions, or your own takes on what we are reading. You can also see what we are reading for future episodes! You can email us at literatureandlibationspod@gmail.com.Please leave us a review and/or rating! It really helps others find our podcast…and it makes us happy!Purchase books via bookshop.org or check them out from your local public library. Join us next time as we discuss Interior Chinatown by Charles YuHere is the cocktail recipe for the upcoming episode if you want to drink along with us!Lychee Margarita-Tini (name taken from the novel, recipe put together by our very own Taylor!INGREDIENTS:1.5 - 2 oz vodka.25 oz orange liqueur½ TB lychee syrup; more or less depending on desired sweetness (store bought or make your own - see below)Juice from ½ limeSalt (for glass rim)Lychees for garnish (optional)INSTRUCTIONS:In a shaker with ice, combine the vodka, orange liqueur, lychee syrup, and lime juice. Shake well until chilled.To make the lychee syrup: Boil 1 can of lychee fruit (retaining juice if desired) with equal parts water and sugar - ½ to 1 cup each. Boil for 10 minutes, pressing down on lychees to release juice. Store in a container or bottle.Pour into a martini glass with a salted rim. Add lychees and lime for garnish

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! We have another Comfort Food rerun for you this week. Hopefully, by the time you’re listening to this, I have turned in my book manuscript, and I am taking this week to chill out. It’s the first week of July and we’ve got family visiting. My whole goal for this first week is to just spend a ton of time in my pool and my garden, and let my post book brain melt. There’s a stage in book writing where you just feel like you have used all the words. There is nothing left and you have nothing to say. But don’t worry, it’s temporary! It always comes back. And I will be back in your feeds next week with a brand new podcast episode, so make sure you’re subscribed to get that in your podcast player.In the meantime, we are revisiting the Comfort Food archives again. This is episode 53 which aired on December 5, 2019. Our guest on this episode was Jennifer Berry, who is a feeding therapist and founder of Thrive by Spectrum Pediatrics. I’m a huge fan of Jeni’s. I first met her when I was reporting a story for the New York Times Magazine in 2015. I mean, we go way back. I spent a lot of time reporting on the approach that Jeni and her colleagues take towards child-led weaning off feeding tubes and child-led feeding therapy in general—or responsive feeding therapy, as it’s now known. Jeni is just a really trusted source on all questions related to family feeding, all the dynamics, how to think about the different skills, the emotional development piece of it, and the nutrition piece of it.This conversation is about why nutrition is much less important to successful family meals than we think. I know that may feel uncomfortable for a lot of us. We hear all the time that our big responsibility as parents is to feed our kids a healthy diet and more fruits and vegetables and all of that. But that so often gets in the way of feeling good about how you’re feeding your family. So we talk about how to set aside your nutrition anxieties at the family dinner table and how that might improve some of the struggles you’re having there. But Jeni is a trained therapist with a strong research background. I’m a health journalist. So we also talk a lot about the way that nutrition science gets done, and how flawed and misleading both the studies themselves can be and the media coverage of nutrition science. We talk about how to interpret what you’re seeing in the media and by media, I mean mainstream media outlets and I also mean social media. When you see people throwing out statistics throwing out these really broad claims about different foods, or making claims about “healthy” eating in general. So I think this is another super useful episode! Keep sending in your questions for Virginia’s Office Hours! If you have a question about navigating diet culture and anti-fat bias that you’d like to talk through with me, or if you just want to rant about a shitty diet with me, you can submit your question/topic here. I’ll pick one person to join me on the bonus episode so we can hash it out together.And don’t forget: Next Wednesday, July 13 is our first Burnt Toast Book Club! We’re reading The School of Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan and wow is that book even more of a gut punch now than when I picked it. CW for child endangerment, prison abuse, foster system abuse, mother shaming (to put it mildly) and psychological torture… but also know that this book is compulsively readable, heart-breaking, and thought-provoking in all the best ways. I’ll post the book club thread at 12pm Eastern on Wednesday, and be on there live for the hour. (But if you can’t join us at that time, feel free to join the discussion later—that’s the beauty of a thread chat!) Episode 50 TranscriptVirginiaHello and welcome to episode 53 of Comfort Food! This is the podcast about the joys and meltdowns of feeding our families and feeding ourselves.AmyThis week we’re talking about what to do and everything you know about nutrition is starting to make you a little crazy. Because sometimes what you know about nutrition seems to not be true depending on the day. So we’re gonna brainstorm some ways you can find a better balance for yourself and your family with a very special guest.VirginiaI’m the author of The Eating Instinct: Food, Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America. I write about how women relate to food and nutrition and our bodies in a culture that gives us so many unrealistic expectations about all those things.AmyAnd I’m Amy Palanjian, a writer, recipe developer, and creator of Yummy Toddler Food. And I love helping parents to stop freaking out about what their kids will and won’t eat and also about nutrition news because lately it’s been like every week, there has been something in the news that is just…VirginiaIt’s been kind of crazy. So this week, we are so happy to have Jennifer Berry of Thrive by Spectrum Pediatrics back on the podcast. Jeni, welcome.JeniThank you. Hi! How are you guys doing today?VirginiaWe are good. We are so excited to be talking to you. You are a fan favorite on the podcast and our listeners mostly will be familiar. But for folks who are new to the podcast, let’s remind them or tell them who you are and what you do.JeniSo I am an occupational therapist by trade and a feeding therapist by specialty. And I’m the owner, as you said, of Thrive by Spectrum Pediatrics. We work with families near our headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, but also all over the United States and beyond, helping families help their children overcome feeding challenges. We work with kids that are feeding tube dependent, helping them wean from their feeding tubes, we help kids that have severe feeding aversions, motor problems with eating, all the way through the kind of everyday common hurdles that families face at the table.AmyAnd for listeners who want to know more about Jeni and her approach to food, check out episode 28, when she was on last. We talked about what to do when your kids just don’t eat dinner.VirginiaA perennial problem. So, today’s episode came out of an email conversation that the three of us had after Jenny listened to episode 46, where we talked about the new nutrition guidelines from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation saying that kids should not drink chocolate milk or juice before age five. So, we were then talking afterwards with Jenny about how hard it is to balance the “knowledge”—and I put that in quotes because, as Amy said, the information can change so wildly. We have all this information these days about nutrition and what we think our kids and we ourselves need to be eating. But how do you incorporate that into just being present with your families at meals. And Jeni had this really beautiful analogy, comparing it to yoga. So Jeni, tell us about that?JeniBecause I’m so immersed in this world, both as a mom who feeds kids, and also as a feeding therapist who looks at these studies that you’re talking about, that have so much different information, some of it good, some of it competing. It occurs to me that we get so caught up in that information. The yoga analogy was, if you’re learning a yoga pose, for example, you have to first learn all the technical aspects, like the posture and the breath, positioning—all of that is really important. You can’t do without the technical knowledge. But in order for it to be like truly yogic or in order for you to experience the pose as it was meant to be, or this probably applies to sports and other performance, and other areas of life. But in order to really experience the yoga pose the way that it was designed, you kind of have to take all of that technical knowledge, and set it aside and be in the pose. I tend to look at feeding kids in the same way. We have all of this information on the macro level. We are really fortunate to have access to all of this information that floods us every day about what foods we should feed our kids and why. And then not let it seep into everyday decisions because it takes us away from our kids. I feel like it also leads to a really unhealthy kind of dynamic for us as parents and between our kids that we can get really stuck and overly focused on doing things the right way. The trick is to have the knowledge and then to let it go and then be with your kids and try to make decisions. I don’t know that it’s easy. I know it’s not easy for me. But I think it is possible to work towards that and have a little bit more freedom for you and your child.AmyIs this something that you see your clients struggling with often?JeniIt’s universal. Yeah, not only my clients but my friends that are parents. I don’t really know many parents that don’t struggle with it, honestly.AmyI was thinking, as you were explaining that, the other night we went out to dinner and it happened to be a restaurant that had calories listed on the menu. I was like, oh!VirginiaIt’s everywhere in New York, but I think it varies by state.AmyIt really threw me because I’m not used to having that information when making food choices. I feel like I’m a pretty informed person and I feel like I usually can push that stuff aside, but I was really stuck.VirginiaBecause it’s right there in front of you! And then it feels like, oh wait, is every decision I make around the meal supposed to focus on this one aspect? But, you know, of course not! Especially when you’re trying to like help your three year old decide what to have for dinner.JeniAnd keep your sanity.AmyAnd keep the three year old from climbing underneath the table.VirginiaThat ship has sailed at my house.JeniI think that’s a great example of the burden that can come with information. I do think it’s really hard to negotiate and that’s a really concrete example. But there’s lots of really subtle ways, too. We want our kids to be healthy across the board, not just around food, and so it carries a lot of weight with us. I do think it’s a real challenge. I think it can be done, to kind of hit that just right balance between having the knowledge and using it at the right time to make decisions.AmyVirginia, could we just pause for a minute, so that you can tell us like some examples of where we might be getting this information just so that we can be a little bit more clear with our listeners about what we’re talking about here?VirginiaAs someone who’s been a health journalist for 15+ years now, I both experience this as a consumer of media, like we all are, but also this is what I do day-to-day, putting these messages out there. For a long time, this is what I did. So what we’re talking about is the nutritional information you get when the morning news is talking about how everything you know about red meat is wrong. Or, the New York Times reports on it. Then it gets distilled further, because it comes not just from these news sources, but also from a meme on Instagram or Facebook or a thread on Twitter where everyone’s weighing in. A lot of them maybe are experts, and maybe they aren’t. We’re getting our knowledge about nutrition from a lot of different sources these days. And the problem is these sources are definitely not all created equal. Just because somebody puts it on a pretty graphic on Instagram does not mean they bothered to look up the study that was done or actually evaluate the quality of the research to see whether it’s a useful tidbit to share. This is not just to put Instagram on blast, although I do think it’s a huge issue there and Pinterest, and other places where this gets disseminated. But I think it can be useful to know a little more about how to actually evaluate the information when you get it.Some strategies that I use as a journalist that I think are not hard to learn—I think anyone can do this—always, when you’re given a new piece of nutrition news, figure out the primary source for it. Don’t just trust the Instagram meme. But also don’t just trust the New York Times or any media reiteration of it. Because that means a journalist—it’s like a game of telephone. You’re that much further away from the source. What is really useful to do is to go look up the actual study they’re reporting on. In newspaper articles, especially if you’re reading online, they’ll usually hyperlink to it. Or, if you Google the researcher’s name and the study topic, you’ll find it pretty quickly. You may only be able to read the abstract, which is the research summary, because often you have to pay to read full research papers. But even the abstract, you can get a pretty good sense of how robust it was, this research. It’s important to know, especially with nutrition research, it’s very difficult to do high quality nutrition research. It’s very expensive and time consuming. So, a lot of small studies come out that are done much more quickly and the data is just not as robust.So, a couple of things to look for when you’re dissecting and abstract. Start by looking at how many people were involved in the study. If it was a study done on 16 people, it’s not very relevant to anybody’s lives. It’s a case report. It’s interesting, but it’s not. If it’s data collected on 1,000 people and they were a nationally representative sample where they tried to make sure that 1,000 people in the study have characteristics—age, socioeconomic status, gender, race—that are representative of the United States, or wherever you are, that’s more of a useful population. Or if it’s a study done on 50 year old men and you’re a 30 year old woman, it’s not going to be relevant to you, particularly. You want to look at research that was done on a population that’s comparable to you and your family.You also want to look at how long they were followed. So often, this is happens all the time with weight loss studies. They’ll see a big result after about six weeks of following some program. But they won’t bother to follow up with people at six months, 12 months, two years, five years. And you really want to know what happened at that point. How long did they see this benefit? Whatever big takeaway they’re claiming about the study, did it really last?And then the other thing with nutrition research, because it’s expensive for researchers to make food and feed people directly for two years, usually they’re just having themselves report what they ate. And people are not very reliable with that. So that’s another one to really pay attention to. Because if it’s all self reported data, it’s probably not as ironclad as if they sat in the lab for two years. On the other hand, if they sat in the lab for two years, it’s not real life. So that’s a drawback with that kind of research.AmyJeni, do you have other strategies that you would want to add here?JeniJust to just to reinforce what Virginia’s saying, those same tips I would use. The two that stand out to me are the length of time. We often get a study about a certain nutritional ingredient or a certain way of feeding a child—an example would be in my feeding therapy world, there’s ways of feeding kids and they have a protocol, they apply it to a small group of people, and then they examine them, they see how the kids are doing with eating, expanding their food choices for kids that have a limited amount. They’re using a behavioral approach. This is the example I’m thinking of right now, where they’re kind of rewarding the kids for eating it. And what the study shows, in the study that I’m thinking of, is that the kids eat more. What the study doesn’t do—it’s just good to know what’s not there, and I think you’ve pointed that out, Virginia. What it doesn’t do is show what impact it has to reward kids for eating in two years, four years, five years. There is research out there about how we feed kids that has been out there for a long time that does follow kids more longitudinally, over long periods of time. But so to me, the biggest one that affects most parents in the work that we do, is that they’re looking at short term studies or studies that don’t follow them. And then this other thing that came up in our email exchange that we were referring to, which is the correlation versus cause.VirginiaYes, this is really, really big. Jeni, explain this, because this is critical to understand about nutrition, all kinds of research, really.JeniWe often, as consumers who are not sitting around in a research lab and analyzing data, it’s really easy to to see a study and think that one thing is linked to another. In the example that we were talking about after the the last episode, about the chocolate milk and drinks, there was a study that said that kids who are exposed to different flavors, had an increased incidence of being more willing to eat flavors, or having a broader diet later. And they were exposed when they were babies. So lots of different flavors, it was a predictor of more choices or variety later on. And while that may be true, it wasn’t saying that that’s why. It wasn’t saying that the reason that the children were eating more foods later in life was only the food choices that they tasted or were exposed to. So I just think it’s helpful to point that out, because there are lots of factors that go into it. And in that that example, in particular, what’s more important to look at is the big picture. If the children were forced to eat those foods in wide variety, forced or coerced to eat them, my guess would be that the results of the study would be very different. Based on what we know about responsive feeding and lifelong healthy relationships with food. I just think it’s super important that we not mistake, something being correlated or a predictor of another thing as being the black and white answer of what’s causing it. Those are different things.VirginiaIt’s easy for parents to misinterpret that and think, I have to get my baby to eat tons of different foods.AmyThis is why there are like, if you Google “baby food chart,” there’s all of these charts of 100 foods to give your baby before they turn one because if you do that you won’t have a picky eater and it’s just not true.JeniThen the moment your child throws number three on the list on the floor, you’re left questioning yourself and it’s stressful. And then you’re less likely to offer those foods in the future. To take it back to the longitudinal aspect of things and looking at things in the long term, there actually is a lot of research, but also just information about the long view, and what we know works best for kids. What we know is what you guys talk about in most episodes. Which is that if kids are taught healthy messages about their own bodies; if they’re not being subjected to messages that are negative about their parents or other’s bodies; if they are not having foods that are viewed as unhealthy restricted completely from their diet or shamed for eating them; if they’re not being pressured or forced to eat foods that are viewed as healthy by the people that are feeding them; and then if they’re allowed to read their cues for fullness and hunger, which is not always easy—but if that happens, there is a lot of weight behind those things in the research. But also in my clinical practice, you can just see those kids become more confident, healthy eaters in the long run.Then, if I may just go back to that study about exposure, because that’s what prompted our whole conversation. Exposure is super important. It’s really important that we expose our kids to different foods, but that exposure doesn’t necessarily mean it goes in their mouth. We can expose kids to a wide variety of foods while honoring their bodies, while not forcing them or having them silence any fear or discomfort or disinterest they have around a food. We can expose them to it by eating it ourselves, by having them be involved in the preparation of it, by taking them to the grocery store. There are lots of ways to expose kids, in a healthful way, to a variety of different foods without putting that insane pressure on ourselves, that they have to eat that huge list that you saw on Instagram or Pinterest. And so I just like to keep reminding parents of that, that our job isn’t to dictate what goes in.AmyI think a lot of times that the exposure issue gets misconstrued as your child needs to taste this thing 20 times before they will like it. That’s just not that’s not the way that that works.JeniNo, it’s not the way kids work. So there’s an actual thing out there called “neophobia,” which you guys have talked about on here before, which is that it’s a developmentally appropriate around preschool age for kids to be afraid of trying new things. So it’s not that that’s going to make them like it, it’s for them to feel comfortable enough to try it, the newness has to go away. And the newness doesn’t go away in two offerings or five offerings and often not in ten. Your kids need to see things consistently, in different settings by different people. That doesn’t mean you should be like having a notebook next to your table with and checking off how many times you’ve offered sweet peppers or whatever. But it does mean that it takes a minute. It’s normal that your child doesn’t try things in the beginning and that when they try them, they reject them. That’s a typical part of development.VirginiaThat is super reassuring to hear. And I think again, framing it around not getting too literal about how we interpret this research is really helpful.JeniWe try to coach parents that when you’re just making decisions about how to feed your kids, you’re not making big decisions about whether you’re doing it right or big shifts in how you’re doing it in the moment when your kid is throwing the food on the floor. You’re going to do it away from the mealtime. You’re going to do it in a time where things are relatively unstressful. We call it checking in with yourself or checking in with your partner about how the mealtimes are going. You make the decisions about what your kids eat at the grocery store and when you decide who you surround them with, what school you send them to, and then whether or not you decide to team with those people and collaborate with them in a trusting way. And then when you’re assessing if it’s going well, a meal, it hasn’t to do much with what goes in their mouth. It has more to do with the internal drives to eat. And the internal drives to eat are not just hunger. Hunger is a big one, but togetherness is an internal drive to eat. Curiosity is an internal drive to eat. Novelty is a natural internal reason that kids want to eat. And comfort! Here we are talking about comfort food, but those are the those are the natural drives in childhood for learning to eat.So if you step back, and try to keep those at the forefront of your mind when your child is eating. At the meal or at the party or wherever it is where you’re feeling conflicted about what choice to make, try to just think about those. And if you’ve got one of them, things are going okay. If your child is enjoying time together around food with a peer, then one of the internal drives to eat is being met and that’s important and valuable. Even if it’s just comfort, there’s a time and a place for that those are really important things and we’ve talked about that before. And it’s also okay, occasionally, if those things aren’t present. because we all know that that does happen occasionally and we have to give ourselves a break. It doesn’t mean that if you mess up, or if a situation comes up, there’s a surprise or whatever, somebody said something unfortunate at a birthday party to your child about their food choice, that doesn’t unravel everything else you’ve done. It doesn’t erase it. The message is about what you’re sending on the whole. It’s a more of an umbrella message that you’re sending that matters, that stays with the kids versus those tiny, little individual episodes.VirginiaThat is a really helpful perspective. I love that it.AmyAnd it can for sure be hard to do that in the moment. But I think the more that you practice this sort of the easier that it gets.JeniEverybody’s different in terms of the way that they need to be reminded about things or the way that they learn or help themselves through tasks that are difficult. I’ve had parents write down the internal drives to eat and keep them on the refrigerator or have a list of them on their phones.VirginiaOh that’s a great tip!AmyI guess we’re gonna be making a little printable for everybody. Unless you have one that you want us to share.JeniI don’t! Make it, it sounds great. I want one.So that is one strategy that people use. I think another one that people have used is really looking at your child and how they’re doing in other areas. Health is about more than food. Health is about the whole child. If they’re happy, and participating in school, and if they’re affectionate and emotionally doing okay, if they’re able to be themselves and they are meeting milestones and they’re progressing, then we’re in a good spot. We don’t have to have it be all about the food all the time.I’m a developmentalist, by training. And so I look at development, but in childhood, we don’t expect kids—or adults for that matter—to perform at their best 100% of the time. Mastery we consider when we look at developmental milestones is 80% of the time. 20% of time, it is not going to be happening. So a decent meal, not their best meal, is going to happen 80% of the time. It doesn’t mean that everything’s going to be easy. It doesn’t mean what your kid is eating, it means these other components.VirginiaHow well the overall meal experience goes.JeniBased on these internal drives to eat, which includes togetherness. 80% of the time, if you’re there, you’re doing it, because that’s human nature. That’s the nature of learning to develop and figuring things out. Nobody’s at 100%. And there’s a lot of pressure at 100%. If we’re expecting ourselves and our kids to do their best and to be in the moment and we’re as parents incorporating all of this information that we’re being bombarded with, not just about food, but about how to plan a birthday party, and how to be the best parents and juggling our work and our home lives, there’s no way that we can do it at our best 100% of time. And we also are then setting our kids up with unrealistic expectations.They need to be able to go out into a world where there is non-responsive messages being sent all the time around food. If we if we create a world for them around food where they only are experiencing the messages that we really want them to experience, those responsive messages as I call them, then what’s going to happen when they need to learn how to contend with the non-responsive things, too? And that’s what we’re here to help them do that as parents.VirginiaThat’s so interesting. Do you find that the percentages change when kids are struggling with something else? And the reason I’m asking is, on last week’s podcast episode I talked about both my girls, their list of safe foods had gotten a little shorter recently. Beatrix just turn two, so neophobia arriving. And then with my older daughter, when she’s going through different periods of stress in her life this is the area where we often see she’ll get a lot more particular about food. She’ll get much less adventurous again. I’m wondering if that’s something that people might commonly see and you might zero in on feeling like food is the problem, but is it helpful to sort of look more broadly at like, oh, well, they’re just learning to read or they’re mastering potty training or something else is going on that’s maybe causing meals to sort of plateau a little bit. Does that make sense?JeniYes, it does make sense. Absolutely. Yeah. These are more like umbrella averages for the big picture of how our years and our months are going. The literature that shows—although we have to, again, be careful about these studies—but what we know is that when a child learns to walk, sometimes they talk a little bit less or vice versa. We have a finite amount of energy and bandwidth on certain things. And so, of course, it makes sense that if you’re going through a challenge in one area, you’re going to hunker down at a different level than you might have the week before in another area of development. So yes, that’s absolutely true with food, too. It’s true across areas of development.VirginiaAnother reason not to get so hung up on the nutrition piece. If you take a more holistic look at your kid and think about why broccoli is less interesting this week, it might not have anything to do with the broccoli.JeniExactly, it probably doesn’t. I hesitate often with families to ever talk about numbers, honestly, because so much of the most important predictors of how well kids are going to do with food feeding challenges, but then how well they’re going to relate to food later, has to do with qualitative stuff. And if we focus on anything with a number, it takes us away.VirginiaPeople are suddenly calculating.JeniAs long as you’re changing your the framework that you’re assessing things by. Is your child thriving? Are they growing? Are they meeting milestones? Are they relatively happy? And then, are you looking at those internal drives to eat: togetherness, curiosity, hunger, novelty and comfort. You know, if those things are there 80% of the time, you’re good. And I think we’re hard on ourselves. I think they are there most of the time. I think some of those components are present in most of the meals. I think you’re there, most people that are listening are probably already there. It’s just because we have all of this other information, we get lost. We get distracted from what’s the most important and what is truly the best predictor of a child feeling safe and comfortable around food. And now and then later, which is, which is these more qualitative things.AmyOn that note, I did want to just remind everyone that when you’re seeing headlines, from news organizations or websites, like I put myself in this list, all of these sites are making money from people being on their site. So they have a very real reason to make you want to click on that link. The headline may be completely misleading. And it may be completely taking whatever the study was out of context. So just take a minute to realize that someone is trying to make a dollar.Virginiaand don’t email the author of the article and yell at her because we don’t get to write our own headlines. The editors do that to us. Anyways, Jenny, thank you so much! This was such a great conversation. This was super, super helpful. Will you tell our listeners where we can find more of you?JeniOh, sure. We can be found at Thrive With Spectrum and we can be found on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We’d love to hear from people.AmyAnd we’ll have all of those links in the show notes. And if anyone has follow up questions for this or wants more information on anything we talked about, you can either send us a message or comment on our show notes.VirginiaAll right now coming up. I have some breaking news on the Beatrix bottle, so stay tunedUnrelatedAmySo, Virginia, the other day you had posted something on somewhere—I can’t remember where—how about you put Beatrix to bed without a bottle!VirginiaIt finally happened, you guys!AmySo we’ve been talking about this since the spring, I think?VirginiaYes, Episode 37. It was the end of season two, was when we went like deep dive into milk weaning and that is like our most popular episode ever. So I have a feeling I’m speaking to a lot of you right now. Because people really like to talk about milk weaning. We talked about both breastfeeding weaning and bottle weaning. And this was a journey for me, because I’ve talked about the traumatic feeding experiences with my older daughter and how cathartic It was to be able to first breastfeed Beatrix successfully, and then make the decision around four or five months that I was ready to just go over to formula and really embrace that. And I just derive so much joy out of feeding her. I mean, that’s not breaking news to anyone who listens to this podcast, feeding babies is great. When it works well, it’s really wonderful.I am not someone who is super sentimental about losing the baby stage. Like my husband and I basically throw a party on every birthday like, oh my God, our lives are finally getting easier. I don’t ever want another newborn in my life. I like other people’s, but I don’t want to have one. But the bottle was the one thing that I was sentimental about. This was a big stage. So I think a lot of this was me needing to be ready as much as her needing to be ready. But she’s also a kid who loves her bottles.So what we did last spring, I think it was like her 18 month checkup, our pediatrician was like, “Yeah, you have got to get started on this. There’s no medical or physiological need for her to have a bottle.” We had switched, when she turned one, over to regular milk from formula. And she was still, around 18 months, she was still on like five bottles a day. And it was like, how are we going to do this? So I talked in those episodes—you can go back to Episode 37 and hear how we dropped down to just having a 4-6 ounce bottle before nap and before bedtime, and we were able to pretty seamlessly drop the daytime bottles. Then we just, we just stayed there for a while. We were like, it’s fine. We’re going to just hang out with these bottles because they were part of her bedtime routine and they were really comforting. And we were all, both me, Dan, and our babysitter were all like, “Oh, this is not gonna go well.” So then when we had her two year checkup, the pediatrician was like, Aren’t you done? Which, you know, pediatricians, I feel like they just think it’s this really easy thing. And they forget how emotional this is. It’s not just like I want to just put it away and be done with it.AmyMy pediatrician asked me at our nine month checkup if meals had been replacing nursing sessions, and I was like, What? No, he’s a baby. How long has it been since you’ve had a baby? Because I feel like that’s really out of touch.VirginiaIt’s really out of touch. That’s really weird.So anyway, we kind of hemmed and hawed about it. And so we have taken this very gradual approach. And I don’t know, maybe if we had just put all the bottles away at 18 months, it would have been fine. That is entirely possible. I think that works great for a lot of kids. So when I’m talking about what we did, guys, I’m not saying anyone needs to do it the way we did. But, if you are feeling ambivalent about this, or have a lot of emotions to process, I think a gradual approach can be helpful because it gives everybody time to get there. So after her two year checkup, we decided, Okay, we’re gonna take the pre-nap, pre-bedtime bottle, which at that point was four ounces, and we’re gonna take it down to two ounces, which sounds really silly. But I’m really glad we did it, because it gave her a few days. She was mad about it, like she would finish it, and she would be like, let’s go back downstairs, I need more bottles. There’s not much milk here, Mommy. She was very straightforward, like, you didn’t put enough in. Then I would say, “Nope, that’s all we’re having today.” And she would throw the bottle and be mad about it. And it just let her let out some of the feelings about it.We did that for a full week. On Sunday and Monday of that week, she was furious. It was like a thing. And by Wednesday, she was sort of like, ugh fine. And by Friday, she was barely finishing the two ounces. It just gave her that time to work through it and accept the change in routine. The other thing we did, not deliberately, but looking back I think was helpful, was we kept everything else very consistent and down to the books that she wanted to read. I think we all read Curious George and the Dump Truck 900 times that week. We just kept reading the one book that she was most reassured and comforted by over and over and over. So I think that helped reinforce not that much is changing. You’re still getting your snuggles you’re still getting all the cozy bedtime reading and everything, just a little less milk in the bottle. That’s it.And then Sunday night. So, we never want to mess with weekend naps because you know, obviously. So we kept it over the weekend, the two ounces, so she would still nap and we would have our break. But then Sunday night bedtime, I was like Okay, let’s do it. We went upstairs and I had this last minute thought, I was like, Oh, maybe a toothbrush. Let’s brush your teeth, which we had a miss on at bedtime. And we went and got her toothbrush, which was super excited about and then she brushed her teeth the whole time I read the story, and she didn’t even ask about the bottle at all. It did not come up. She was totally happy.AmyWow. Had you been giving her a bottle before nap time?VirginiaYeah, we had had both. That’s why I’m saying, over last weekend we didn’t drop the nap time bottle, so that bedtime was the first time because I didn’t want to lose that two hours of unconscious toddler. I didn’t want her to not nap. So I waited until the bedtime to do it. And she still didn’t even really reference that.Now, the next day, Monday, she did remember. When our babysitter took her up to nap, she remembered about the bottle and she asked for it. And same when Dan put her to bed that night. And there was maybe, both times, five minutes of feelings. And then she was happy to sit with the toothbrush brush her teeth while being read a story. And last night when I put her to bed, it was like on the way up the stairs, she was like, “no more bottle.” And I was like, “that’s right.” She does this thing where she puts her head down and she goes, “it’s gone forever.” She’ll say this about anything, though. She said this about her baby gate. The baby gate is gone forever. She’ll finish her Cheerios, it’s gone forever. So, it’s like just her way of acknowledging. And then I was like “yeah, you’re a big girl now, you know, isn’t that exciting? Let’s go get your toothbrush.” And she was fine.AmyThat’s so sweet. You had also mentioned something about saying goodnight to all the..?VirginiaOh, yeah, that was the other thing. She has actually been building that herself—I think it’s bedtime stalling. It’s definitely a bedtime stalling tactic. We’ll get halfway up the stairs and she’ll go, “I need to say goodnight to the playroom.” We’ll go back downstairs and she’ll go, “Goodnight playroom, good night trampoline, goodnight sofa, goodnight pillow.” She’ll just like pick random things she needs to say goodnight spoon. And so we did that as well. That and the toothbrush combination seemed to just give her the touchpoint she needed. She has other ways to self soothe, that was just one option. I don’t feel like this has in any way undermined her sense of security with anything. So that was my goal.I think the takeaway is there’s no right way to do this. It’s going to be different for everyone. There’s this kind of myth out there that like you have to rip it away and it’s going to be brutal for two weeks, and then it’ll be fine. And I don’t know that it has to go that way. I think you can find a gentler approach and that can be good too.AmyYeah, and there’s no timeline that works exactly the same for everybody.VirginiaAnd honestly, if I felt like she was still really clinging to it, I would have waited a little longer even. I was not like just because the pediatrician said she turned two we need to do this. But we could generally tell her fixation was lessening. She was more interested in the stories than she was the bottle. Her whole bedtime energy had changed, like she’s running over to pick out a book. She’s been like getting distracted with a toy. She’s wanting less to be held like a little baby. She’s transitioning into more of being a toddler, so it felt like the right time.AmyThank you. Thank you for sharing that. It’s very sweet.VirginiaIt’s a big milestone. I’m excited. Yeah, I’m excited. It’s good stuff.Thanks so much for listening to Burnt Toast! If you’d like to support the show, please subscribe for free in your podcast player and tell a friend about this episode.Consider a paid subscription to the Burnt Toast newsletter! It’s just $5 a month or $50 for the year you get a ton of cool perks and you keep that’s an ad- and sponsor-free space.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti-diet journalism. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

Jordan talks with Jessamine Chan about the ways having a kid changed her writing, about the difficulties mothers face in America, and about the one very good day of writing that led to The School for Good Mothers. MENTIONED: "Where is Your Mother?" by Rachel Aviv (The New Yorker) Cost of Living by Emily Maloney SCOTUS draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization The Ragdale Foundation Jessamine Chan's debut novel is The School for Good Mothers, an instant New York Times bestseller. Her short stories have appeared in Tin House and Epoch. A former reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, she holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Brown University. Her work has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Wurlitzer Foundation, Jentel, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Anderson Center, VCCA, and Ragdale. She lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All three hosts got together to fangirl over Jessamine Chan, the bestselling author of The School For Good Mothers. Jessamine's bookTHE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERSSupport the show

On this episode of The Writer and the Critic your hosts, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond,  are tired and cranky but still manage to preamble only briefly in the murk of COVID-19 and bad segues before getting to the point of it all. They think. The books up for discussion this month are two novels: Devotion by Hannah Kent [5:20] and The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan [35:20]. The review of The School for Good Mothers that Kirstyn mentioned was this one by Ilana Masad in The Washington Post. If you've skipped ahead to avoid spoilers, please come back at 109:30 for brief final remarks. Next month, the two books on the slab will be: Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin Read ahead and join in the spoilerific fun!

Show notes: May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and we thought it fitting to share with you our favorite books by Asian authors. Plus, Mia shares why she has a personal connection to this month. If you've been around our show before, you know that we try to read widely and diversely and love checking out “own voices” books especially - and the 10 books on this list do not disappoint. Get your TBRs ready, you know what to do! Click here to join us on Patreon to get an exclusive bookish goodie every single Friday. With fun bonus episode series like: Books We Both Love, Monthly Overflow Books, Bookish Conundrums, and The New Books in Our Lives plus a private community for RTL Book Nerds only, you're going to love being a part of our Patreon. Not only that, but you're helping to support our show by saying I LOVE WHAT YOU DO.  Find the time stamped show notes below with links to all of the fun things we mentioned.   Bookish Goodies: [7:18] Mia - Artemis by Andy Weir [9:09] Sarah - It's Okay to Be a Unicorn by Jason Tharp Books by Asian Authors: [13:05] Mia - Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See [14:32] Sarah - Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng [16:07] Mia - Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford [17:53] Sarah - A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara [18:52] Mia - The Leavers by Lisa Ko [20:03] Sarah - To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han [20:58] Mia - Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin [22:07] Sarah - The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan [23:54] Mia - Saris and a Single Malt by Sweta Srivastava Vikram [25:31] Sarah - Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hashimi [26:48] Bonus books: Mia - These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong Mia - The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang Mia - In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park Sarah - The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka Sarah - The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd Sarah - Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen Sarah - Such Big Dreams by Reema Patel Sarah - That Kind of Mother by Rumman Alam Related episode: Listen to episode 26, 18 Books We Love by Black Authors   Follow us on Instagram: @readingthroughlifepod Follow Sarah: @thekindredvoice Follow Mia: @miasutton55 * The books noted above contain affiliate links. This means that we may get a small kickback if you purchase through our links, at no additional cost to you.

In this episode, Melanie and Dawn talk with featured writer, Jessamine Chan, about her New York Times bestselling novel The School For Good Mothers, publishing your first novel after 40, writing envy, motherhood, art and social change, “unlikeable” women in fiction, and more!Join our Patreon at the $5 Prickly Pear level for access to an upcoming bonus segment from this episode, in which Jessamine talks in more detail about her novel (with spoilers!).CW: forced parent child separationJessamine Chan's short stories have appeared in Tin House and Epoch. A former reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, she holds an MFA from Columbia University. Her work has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Wurlitzer Foundation, Jentel, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Anderson Center, VCCA, and Ragdale. Her first novel, The School for Good Mothers, is a New York Times bestseller and a Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club pick. She lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter. LinksJessamineChan.com“Where Is Your Mother?” by Rachel Aviv: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/02/where-is-your-motherWriters to ReadChloeCooperJones.comCatherineChung.comRachelJYoder.comLearn more about Plume at PlumeforWriters.org! 

 Lisa delves into the topics of Mothers and Daughters in this Book Bits episode released days before Mother's Day 2022.  Rather than offering up cheery Mother's Day books, she shares five books that deal with the complexities and messiness of motherhood.  Books Discussed that delve into complex motherhood topics·      Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner ·      Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell·      The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan·      The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See·      The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix Here are romantic comedies delving into motherhood: ·      Ties that Tether by Jane Igharo·      Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto ·      Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. SutantoFor more information, find Lisa on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and her website. *The book titles mentioned include affiliate links. You can support the podcast by purchasing a book with the links because the podcast receives a small commission.  

For episode 14, we're discussing “The School for Good Mothers” by Jessamine Chan. This is a disturbing story about a mother who has a very bad day and leaves her toddler at home for a few hours, all alone. Frida, our main character and mother of Harriet, is then sent to a correctional facility where she will be “taught” how to be a good mother in order to regain custody of her daughter.This is a story of resilience and pain, but more importantly, of what our society demands of mothers and the ways in which they are shamed, criticized, and ostracized for failing to meet society's rigorous and often unrealistic standards. Frida is a symbol for the imprisoned, the victims of injustice, and those who society believes should be reformed. It is heartbreaking and tough, but unbelievably intriguing, specific, and inspiring.We paired this book with Mas Martinet Priorat Martinet Bru, whose winemaker Sara Perez not only runs successful wineries but is also a mom who balances her needs with her children's needs.

We are BACK baby! This episode covers the first section of Honor by Thrity Umrigar. Next week, we are reading chapters 9-19! --- Other books mentioned in this episode: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess Sooley by John Grisham On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson Pure Colour by Sheila Heti Stay and Fight by Madeline Fitch Educated by Tara Westover Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura Milk Fed by Melissa Febos Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune Haruki Murakami (author) Verity by Colleen Hoover The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

Today, we're continuing to get to know Olivia as she's answering your questions!    She answers questions including how she met her husband (and dog!), what she was like as a kid, her typical workday, her go-to airport snacks, her niche interests, her childhood celeb crush, and her favorite way to eat a potato.    She also shares her book hot takes, her favorite past BOP book club pick, and a book from childhood that made her a lifelong reader.   If you're looking to get to know Becca a little more, check out our Grace interviews Becca episode!   Obsessions  Olivia: Laneige Lip Glowy Balm Becca: Somebody Somewhere on HBO Max   What we read this week! Becca:  Wahala by Nikki May Sister Stardust by Jane Green Olivia:  A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan.   This Month's Book Club Pick: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir   Sponsors: Out of Office: Download the Out of Office app and follow us at @beccafreeman and @oliviameunter to see our recent recommendations! Better Help: Get 10% off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com/badonpaper. Uncommon Goods: Get 15% off your next gift at uncommongoods.com/BOP.   Join our Facebook group for amazing book recs & more!  Like and subscribe to RomComPods. Available wherever you listen to podcasts.  Follow us on Instagram @badonpaperpodcast. Follow Olivia on Instagram @oliviamuenter and Becca @beccamfreeman.

Summary: Holly and Devin dive into books about mothers, what they go through, and how authors portray them. While some tropes about motherhood can be worn out and uninteresting, they both agreed that a fresh and nuanced perspective on mothers can bring a lot of richness to any book.  Topics Discussed: The Heart (1:36): Devin discussed Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen. A financially strapped professional photographer Rebecca Winters finds herself leaving Manhattan for rural New York in an effort to save money. Once there, she not only uncovers a new community but a new perspective on herself, her family, and her future. Her key takeaways were: While set up as so many Hallmark movies are, with the Big City Woman going to find a Small Town Fella, Quindlen's empathy and creativity around each character adds a depth that creates profundity while the reader also gets to enjoy the coffee shop banter and peacefulness quintessential to daytime TV rom coms.  While our protagonist is a mother herself, a key exploration of the theme came in her art; Rebecca initially became famous for a series of photographs from domestic life and the messiness therein for mothers, as well as photos of her infant son.  The 3 generations of family portrayed by the Winters clan (Rebecca's mother, Rebecca, and Rebecca's son) gives a nuanced and important portrayal of parenthood, trauma, and the past's impact on present-day choices.  The Dagger (20:29): Holly discussed The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. Our protagonist Frida is struggling through a divorce with a one year-old little girl to take care of. One bad choice brings her in front of Child Protective Services, and lands her at the School for Good Mothers, where she must prove that she is capable again of having custody of her daughter, Harriett. Holly's key takeaways were:  Chan works to expose society's lack of support for mothers, racism, and unhealthy expectations for parents via an extreme scenario: forcing those who have made mistakes into a cruel rehabilitation program. This dystopian novel is close enough to reality that the added layers at the School of Good Mothers are especially disturbing and impactful. There is an unexpected sci-fi element and the novel called to mind others like The Push and Klara and the Sun. This book will give the reader even more empathy for mothers and to critically analyze their own biases and judgements of parents, motherhood, and portrayals on social media.  Hot On the Shelf (41:38): Devin: One Italian Summer by Rebecca Searle Holly: The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James What's Making Our Hearts Race(45:01): Holly: Inventing Anna on Netflix Devin: Turning Red on Disney+ Instagram: @heartsanddaggerspod Website: www.heartsanddaggerspod.com If you like what you hear, please tell your friends and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify so that we can find our perfect audience. 

Alex and Lindsay talk with Jessamine Chan (The School for Good Mothers) about writing and rewriting her novel, her love of experimental fiction, Lydia Kiesling as our fave parent influencer, the silent scream inside gentle parenting, being an instant bestseller, and more! Jessamine Chan's short stories have appeared in Tin House and Epoch. A former reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, she holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Brown University. Her work has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Wurlitzer Foundation, Jentel, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Anderson Center, VCCA, and Ragdale. She lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm not crying, YOU'RE CRYING. Okay, we're all crying. WHEW this book got us right in the heart. in this episode, we cover the last section of The School for Good Mothers. We are then joined by the author Jessamine Chan to talk about the themes of this book! Follow us on Instagram: @booktok_podcast Follow us on TikTok: @booktokpodcast Shop our Bookshop.org storefront: https://bookshop.org/shop/booktok --- Other books, articles, and an influencer mentioned in this episode: Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Mosfegh New Yorker Article: Where is your Mother by Rachel Aviv New York Times Article: Foster Care as Punishment: The New Reality of ‘Jane Crow' by Stephanie Clifford and Jessica Silver-Greenberg Motherhood by Sheila Heti Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear by Kim Brooks Man v. Nature by Diane Cook Vladimir by Julia May Jonas Motherhood So White by Nefertiti Austin The Rock Eaters by Brenda Peynado Elsewhere by Alexis Schaitkin The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron AlliePal - Subscribe to her newsletter! Girlhood by Melissa Febos There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn

Debut novelist Jessamine Chan joins Zibby to discuss her book, The School for Good Mothers, which is now a Read with Jenna pick and an instant New York Times best-seller. Jessamine shares which parts of the book changed when she became a mother herself, the shocking research she conducted into family separation that inspired elements of the story, and how her physical isolation while writing bled into her work. Purchase on Amazon or Bookshop.Amazon: https://amzn.to/3qQVKGpBookshop: https://bit.ly/3IXZeNASubscribe to Zibby's weekly newsletter here. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jess and Lauren spent March reading books written by women in celebration of Women's History Month, so in this month the pair close out the month by recapping some final reccos they loved, including a Buddy Read they both enjoyed, and two solo reads. Books Mentioned in this Episode: Single Carefree Mellow by Katherine Heiney, Thirty Things I Love About Myself by Radhika Sanghani, Careering by Daisy Buchanan, Love Marriage by Monica Ali and School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. Competition Time: We have partnered with Books That Matter to gift one lucky listener a free Books The Matter gift box! To be in with a chance of winning, all you have to do is subscribe, rate and review this podcast. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts leave a review and put your Instagram handle as your 'Nickname', if you're listening on another platform, subscribe then share our podcast on your instagram story and we'll track your entry that way. Each month a winner will be selected at random and informed via Instagram. Get in Touch: Instagram: @bookreccos Email: bookreccos@gmail.com Jingle written and produced by Alex Thomas licensed exclusively for Book Reccos

Oh boy we are STILL not feeling good! This episode covers chapters 9-14 of The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan! Next week, we are finishing the book and we will be joined by the brains behind this book, Jessamine! We cannot wait!!! In this episode, we also announce our next book club read, Honor by Thrity Umrigar. Grab you copy from a local bookstore, library, or Bookshop.org. We start reading on April 17th. Follow us on Instagram: @booktok_podcast Follow us on TikTok: @booktokpodcast Shop our Bookshop.org storefront: https://bookshop.org/shop/booktok --- Other books mentioned in this episode: A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Mosfegh The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch Girlhood by Melissa Febos Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

School is in session and we are Not Feeling Good about it!!!!! In this episode, we are discussing chapters 5-8 of The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. Next week, we are reading chapters 9-14. Follow us on Instagram: @booktok_podcast Follow us on TikTok: @booktokpodcast Shop our Bookshop.org storefront: https://bookshop.org/shop/booktok --- Other books mentioned in this episode: Vladimir by Julia May Jonas The Power by Naomi Alderman A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum Wahala by Nikki May

I Am Autistic by Chanelle Moriah. A New Zealander who has written an interactive and informative guide to autism – as they say, by someone diagnosed with it. It explains a huge amount about autism – why autistics sometimes behave in the way they do, how they see and interact with the world, and really helps with better understanding. I think it's been done both for the interested reader, like me, (and parents, siblings, workmates etc) but also very much for fellow autistics (whether diagnosed or not) who may see themselves in these pages and have some sense of belonging – there are spaces to write notes and it's a very useful package. The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. This is Handmaid's Tale territory. Frida is a solo mother, struggling to hold it all together and when she one day leaves her child alone for a few hours while she ducks into work to pick something up and gets distracted – she's eventually sentenced by the court to attend a School for Good Mothers where women who have transgressed – sometimes in the slightest of ways – are removed from their children and sent away for a year's re-education. The narrative about what this entails is spooky and awful. Of course, there is a parallel School for Good Fathers nearby but the men aren't subject to nearly the same level of oppressive rigour and as always women are held to a much higher standard. She does her 12 months and then when she gets out finds that the nightmare doesn't end. It's darkly dystopian but in a way that you feel could be just around the corner, the way the world is going. 

Abby Kincer is a reader and a bookstagrammer, a fun person, an enthusiastic consumer of bookish socks and t-shirts, a user of filters, a wearer of glasses, a possessor of many tote bags and—that’s what I know about her! Because her Instagram is bookstagram through and through, and that’s why she’s here. We asked Abby everything we ever wanted to know about bookstagramming, from how she got started to how she chooses books to how she prefers to interact with authors (kinda not much!). Abby on:Instagram: @bookmarkedbyaGoodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/90454496-abby-kincer#AmReading: (none for KJ)Abby: The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan “I loved it and I wanted to throw it out the window.”The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie WaltonThe People We Keep by Allison LarkinSarina:The Silent Patient by Alex MichaelidesThe Other Woman by Sandie JonesI just finished Author Accelerator’s book coaching course and submitted my materials—and let me tell you, I learned a ton. If you’ve been listening for a while, you know I spent five years as an editor with The New York Times—but I still had a lot to learn about helping writers through the process of taking a book from idea to manuscript, and I loved learning it with the Author Accelerator team. What they taught me has changed my approach to editing completely. I didn’t just learn how to help a writer move from one stage of the process to the next—I learned how to help them appreciate how far they’ve come and feel excited about what’s coming next, see their strengths and how they can build on them and trust me to guide them into the hard work that lies ahead. If you’d like to learn more about coaching fiction or non-fiction, you need to visit https://www.bookcoaches.com to learn more. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

TW: Racial Hate Crimes I am interviewing the incredible Jessamine Chan about motherhood and her new debut novel The School For Good Mothers (an instant New York Times Bestseller)! The School For Good Mothers is released in the UK on 3rd March 2022 and I would definitely recommend it! Find Jessamine Chan on Twitter and Instagram. Thanks to Media Hive for the opportunity to connect with Jessamine Chan. Thank you so much for tuning back into Yellow Bee Pod - why don't you send this podcast to a friend? Get in touch on Twitter, Instagram or by email! Follow on Twitter https://twitter.com/yellowbeepod Follow on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/yellowbeepod Email: YellowBeePod@gmail.com Yellow Bee Pod explores the highs and lows of the East and South East Asian diaspora experience. Hosted by Natalie, a British Chinese Londoner.

Already a hit in the US, The School for Good Mothers tells the chilling story of a single lapse in judgement that lands a young mother in a government reform programme where so-called “bad mothers” are corrected and where the custody of her child hangs in the balance. The book's author Jessamine Chan joins Miriam

We are talking all about one of our favorite recent reads, The Power by Naomi Alderman. This episode is divided into two sections, first an unspoiled discussion of the themes of this book (the first 26 minutes) and a second section where we get to gab about specific plot points and that ENDING! Next week, we start reading our next book club book - The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan! We are reading chapters 1-4 in the first week. The first episode will come out on 3/13! --- Other books mentioned in this episode: Bad Muslim Discount by Syed M. Masood Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez There, There by Tommy Orange Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart Midnight Library by Matt Haig Milk Fed by Melissa Broder Under the Whispering Doors by TJ Klune

An interview with Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers (Simon and Schuster, 2022), a debut novel about the current and future terrors of state-disciplined forms of motherhood. Jessamine and I discuss the genesis of this near-future dystopia, and how she never considers genre when writing. We talk about the deep well of ingrained ideologies about the mothering and protection of children against unseen dangers, the complicated layers of the novel's Philadelphia settings, including the real-life campus that inspired the fictional school, surveillance of racial minorities by police and child protective services, and so much more. Jessamine Recommends: “Where is your mother?” The New Yorker “Foster Care as Punishment” The New York Times Kim Brooks, Small Animals Liz Moore, Long Bright River Katie Gutierrez, More than You'll Ever Know Ling Ma, Severance Alyssa Songsiridej, Little Rabbit Chloe Cooper Jones, Easy Beauty  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An interview with Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers (Simon and Schuster, 2022), a debut novel about the current and future terrors of state-disciplined forms of motherhood. Jessamine and I discuss the genesis of this near-future dystopia, and how she never considers genre when writing. We talk about the deep well of ingrained ideologies about the mothering and protection of children against unseen dangers, the complicated layers of the novel's Philadelphia settings, including the real-life campus that inspired the fictional school, surveillance of racial minorities by police and child protective services, and so much more. Jessamine Recommends: “Where is your mother?” The New Yorker “Foster Care as Punishment” The New York Times Kim Brooks, Small Animals Liz Moore, Long Bright River Katie Gutierrez, More than You'll Ever Know Ling Ma, Severance Alyssa Songsiridej, Little Rabbit Chloe Cooper Jones, Easy Beauty  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

An interview with Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers (Simon and Schuster, 2022), a debut novel about the current and future terrors of state-disciplined forms of motherhood. Jessamine and I discuss the genesis of this near-future dystopia, and how she never considers genre when writing. We talk about the deep well of ingrained ideologies about the mothering and protection of children against unseen dangers, the complicated layers of the novel's Philadelphia settings, including the real-life campus that inspired the fictional school, surveillance of racial minorities by police and child protective services, and so much more. Jessamine Recommends: “Where is your mother?” The New Yorker “Foster Care as Punishment” The New York Times Kim Brooks, Small Animals Liz Moore, Long Bright River Katie Gutierrez, More than You'll Ever Know Ling Ma, Severance Alyssa Songsiridej, Little Rabbit Chloe Cooper Jones, Easy Beauty  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

An interview with Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers (Simon and Schuster, 2022), a debut novel about the current and future terrors of state-disciplined forms of motherhood. Jessamine and I discuss the genesis of this near-future dystopia, and how she never considers genre when writing. We talk about the deep well of ingrained ideologies about the mothering and protection of children against unseen dangers, the complicated layers of the novel's Philadelphia settings, including the real-life campus that inspired the fictional school, surveillance of racial minorities by police and child protective services, and so much more. Jessamine Recommends: “Where is your mother?” The New Yorker “Foster Care as Punishment” The New York Times Kim Brooks, Small Animals Liz Moore, Long Bright River Katie Gutierrez, More than You'll Ever Know Ling Ma, Severance Alyssa Songsiridej, Little Rabbit Chloe Cooper Jones, Easy Beauty  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

“Well behaved women rarely make history.” What does that really mean? On this edition of The Weekly Reader, we review two new novels about women who rarely behave and suffer the consequences: Vladimir by Julia May Jonas, and The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

GEORGIA!!! Okay I'm officially out of guesses for where this book is going. But we'll try anyways?! Next week, we are finishing the book and we'll be joined by the author of The Perfect Ruin, Shanora Williams! We also announce our next book club read in this episode - next up, we are reading The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan! Follow us on Instagram: @booktok_podcast --- Other books mentioned in this episode: Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez The Magnolia Palace by Fiona Davis All the Young Men by Ruth Coker Burns and Kevin Carr O'Leary Milk Fed by Melissa Broder Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different by Chuck Palahniuk

Harley Rustad's new book, “Lost in the Valley of Death,” is about an American adventurer named Justin Alexander Shetler, who went on a quest in the Himalayas that ended in his disappearance. One of Shetler's heroes was Christopher McCandless, whose story was told in Jon Krakauer's “Into the Wild.” On this week's podcast, Rustad discusses Shetler's life, including his use of social media and how that dovetailed — and didn't — with his spiritual journey.“He was a very good-looking guy. He's somebody that could be potentially quite easy to roll your eyes at and write off. There are a fair amount of shirtless selfies on his Instagram account,” Rustad says. But that curated image, the author says, doesn't necessarily reflect the full truth. Rustad continues: “I think there was something that he was deeply trying to search for. And his social media accounts, while they gave him a platform to potentially inspire people — something that he really, really longed for and struggled with was solitude. And right now it's almost impossible to achieve that true solitude in this world of deep, profound connectivity. And so as much as he validated and found value in that platform, it also was impossible; it created this barrier for him to achieve something pure.”Jessamine Chan visits the podcast to discuss her debut novel, “The School for Good Mothers,” which imagines a future where parents (mostly women) get sent to government-run reform school.“The standards in the book are purposefully set up to be impossible,” Chan says, “to draw attention to the way that our culture and society and government sets up such punishing standards for moms. So if the moms do succeed, it's really by chance.”Also on this week's episode, Alexandra Alter has news from the publishing world, and Gregory Cowles and John Williams talk about what they've been reading. Pamela Paul is the host.Here are the books discussed in this week's “What We're Reading”:“Mercy Street” by Jennifer Haigh“After Me Comes the Flood” by Sarah Perry“Our Mutual Friend” by Charles DickensWe would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review's podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

In a perfect world, the specter of that perfect, white, thin, cishet mom wouldn’t be there at all. We wouldn’t be tasked with defining ourselves against that ideal because she wouldn’t be the biggest thing in the room. You’re listening to Burnt Toast. This is the podcast where we talk about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. Today I’m bringing back Sara Louise Petersen for another installment of momfluencer talk. Sara is a writer based in New Hampshire, and currently working on a book called Momfluenced. She came on a few weeks ago and you folks had a ton to say about that episode! Hearing your thoughts and questions made us realize there is a lot more to discuss here. This might become a new subgenre of the Burnt Toast podcast.If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe, rate and review us in your podcast player! And subscribe to the Burnt Toast newsletter for episode transcripts, reported essays, and more.Also! I’ll write more about this in a newsletter soon, but I’m very thrilled to announce that I’ve started a Burnt Toast Giving Circle with The States Project. We will be raising money to help flip a state legislature Democratic this November because radical right wing state governments are dismantling free and fair elections in swing states, suppressing the right to vote, denying people quality, affordable healthcare and eradicating our right to choose. But we can take those states back! And early money matters. I’d love if you could make a donation of any size; Burnt Toast will match the first $1000 we raise. We’ll talk soon about which state to support and the issues on the table. Stay tuned! And: The brilliant folks behind the Sunny Side Up Podcast spent this episode talking about Instagram and how we feed kids, inspired by this essay of mine. Great companion listen to today’s Instagram deep dive! Episode 30 TranscriptVirginiaSo today we want to talk about whether it is possible for momfluencer culture to diversify, and to represent different types of moms. And w e’re also asking: Should that even be the goal? SaraThere totally is room to follow moms that do not subscribe to cishet, white, normative, nuclear family ideal. So many moms have disrupted that narrative and have used their platforms in really cool, energizing ways to form really needed communities online. They have a different vibe than the stereotypical beachy waves, white momfluencer, the the type that we were talking about in our last episode. It feels like a totally different world.VirginiaI want to read this really great email I got from a listener after your episode because she is articulating the problem in a way that I hadn’t quite thought about before. So this is from Tori, and she writes: I noticed that at the beginning of this missive you mentioned that you and Sara are both cis, straight moms with varying levels of thin privilege, who gave birth, and at the end, you say that the next “phase” is seeing non-thin, non-white, non-straight, non-cisgender moms shifting the narrative. That struck a nerve with me. I’m a white, cis, lesbian with a non-binary partner (she gave birth to our child.) Our kid is four and does not call either of her parents mom, in my partner’s case, because that word is feminine, and my partner is transmasculine. And in my case, mostly because even as a femme lesbian, I didn’t want to embody the culture of motherhood that has been pretty toxic in my life and it didn’t feel right for me. I read today’s newsletter with some distance, because I have found that even engaging with these momfluencers by critiquing them gives them too much space in my brain. I feel lucky that I do not generally feel mom guilt. I do not buy into most of the cultural pressures that straight, white moms often struggle with. And I think that’s because I had a way out from the beginning. The queer parents I know just don’t even talk about it and we don’t compare ourselves. We talk about the absurd things our kids do, and arguments with our partners, and we share gossip about queer celebrities, but we do not really participate in this aspirational stuff. I am grateful to queer people for offering that pathway out of straight, white mom culture, and also from the fatphobia of that culture. Many lesbians are fat and I’m grateful to my people for showing me how to love other women’s interesting bodies as I learn to love my own. I guess I just want to gently suggest that all of this is optional. White moms—because I do think this is a whiteness problem—can stop putting their eyeballs on the momfluencers. I know that as a cultural critic, they’re available for you to talk about since Instagram is a visual medium, etc. And there’s comments and captions to analyze. But even the critique feels like adding fuel to the fire. I just want to offer up that focusing on people who do things differently (the ones you spoke about at the end of your conversation) is an even more powerful way of shifting around the way we talk about bodies. As a journalist, I’m sure you’ve engaged with the concept of de-platforming. And this is sort of a mini version of that. You have influence yourself and lifting up the alternatives rather than continuing to reinforce white dominant culture, even by picking it apart, is especially effective. We’re out here doing it differently and a whole other parent culture is possible.Tori, thank you. Reading this, I had a moment of feeling like, oh, right, it is optional. It is easy to get just sucked into feeling like this is the paradigm we’re in. SaraI also loved that email. It reminded me of a conversation I had with Rebekah Taussig, who wrote a book called Sitting Pretty. We were talking about this “ideal mother” that we’re all defining ourselves against or aligning ourselves with or comparing ourselves to. She said, in a perfect world, the specter of that perfect, white, cishet mom wouldn’t be there at all. We wouldn’t be tasked with defining ourselves against or in opposition to that ideal because she wouldn’t be the biggest thing in the room. There would be freedom to define our own parenting journeys, separate from the fetters of that looming ideal. That whole notion feels so radical to me because the ideal, white, cishet mom does loom so large in our culture.For me, I think it is still valuable to dissect where this ideal is coming from and to look at who has the power in this narrative. Where is the power coming from? You can’t look at any of this without examining whiteness, first and foremost. I think we have to keep asking ourselves how are we approaching this cultural criticism? Which voices are we centering? VirginiaFor those of us who are white moms and who do check more of those boxes, this is also our work to do, to hold the other privileged white moms accountable. We can’t completely eradicate whiteness from motherhood—or maybe that is what we should be doing, but that feels very difficult. So as we consider the process of doing that, can we ask more of our fellow white moms? Can we ask each other to reckon with these biases and to name these problems? That’s not work I want to ask parents with marginalization to do. It’s not their job to come in and fix the white moms. And Sara and I are the white moms, so we have to be doing this work. But also, I’m really here for the idea of how do we make space for these other voices? SaraThe popular narrative about how we talked about momfluencer culture is “Oh, I’m just sick of comparing myself to the perfect mom in her perfect house.” That is a really small concern in the grand scheme of things. A lot of marginalized moms, like, they don’t give a s**t. Their biggest concern is not having a kitchen that matches up to momfluencer standards. So, there is a way that white moms do perpetuate the ideal of whiteness, in holding ourselves to those standards and prioritizing those standards as worthy of our emotional and mental energy.VirginiaEven in prioritizing our ability to separate from those standards. There’s a strong parallel here with what we see in the fat community versus the “body positive” community. “Body positivity” has become reduced to this project of loving your body. Aubrey Gordon writes about this so well: loving your body doesn’t do s**t for fat rights. It doesn’t do s**t for narrowing the pay gap or making clothing more accessible or stopping discrimination on airplanes. Body positivity doesn’t actually address these larger systemic ways that fatphobia is baked into our culture. This is a perpetual problem of whiteness and of white women, that we take what is really this larger systemic  issue and we make it all about like ourselves and our feelings. How does her clean kitchen make me feel? I feel like a bad mom. That’s not what it’s about at all.SaraTotally. That’s a classic tenet of specifically white feminism. When you’re looking at intersectional feminism, you’re looking at the the the community that is suffering the most and the most marginalized and working up to concerns about the clean countertops. Like, that’s not where we start. VirginiaWe’ll do a quick shout out here for Angela Garbes’ new book Essential Labor. She articulates the problems with white motherhood so well, and I think it’s a must read for all white moms. I had a lot of moments reading that of looking in a mirror in an uncomfortable but necessary way.Sara I also love her first book Like A Mother. Best book on pregnancy I’ve ever read. She looks at pregnancy from all different angles and it’s a beautiful, beautiful book.I’m also going to plug Koa Beck’s White Feminism. It was absolutely earth-shattering for me in terms of dismantling everything I thought I knew about feminism. VirginiaOkay, so we are going to talk about some case studies like we did last time, and this time, we really are focusing on momfluencers who are not in that traditional skinny-white-mom box at all. SaraSo should we start with Nabela Noor?VirginiaShe’s not technically a full momfluencer yet because she’s pregnant with her first child. She comes from the world of YouTube beauty influencers. I did not know about her until she wrote a children’s book this year called Beautifully Me, which I love. I actually interviewed Nabela on the @Parents Instagram a few months ago. And my younger daughter is obsessed with Beautifully Me. It’s a great kid’s book. (I also talked about it here.) And yet, there is also this continual emphasis on the importance of beauty, both in the book and in Nabela’s work. Her aesthetic on Instagram is all neutrals. Everything in her house is white and brass handles and beautiful flower arrangements. There’s a lot of emphasis on her look and her makeup. There’s this tension between the way she is challenging norms—but then there is some upholding.SaraI’m looking at her feed, and just the aesthetic tropes—she’s checking all the boxes. The all white everything, interior design-wise. The caressing her pregnant stomach, with a beautiful dress. Hyper-feminine imagery. The ultrasound photos, the very joyful, domestic Goddess Mother-vibe.But I wonder how fair or even productive it is to critique someone for adhering to those norms when she didn’t create them. It feels like critiquing a fish for swimming in the wrong water or something. Do you know what I mean? It’s tricky. What do you think?VirginiaI see that. The belly caressing in particular really moved me because she started caressing her belly like that when she was, like, nine weeks pregnant. To see this woman, who has a belly, caressing her belly without apology with so much joy and reverence for it, at a time when there’s often still a lot of negativity about the belly. We’re conditioned not to really celebrate the bump until it’s like the perfect basketball bump on your tiny body. And she’s never gonna have that perfect basketball bump on a tiny body. That’s not how she’s built. There was something very radical and moving to me to see her being so proud of that. That does feel powerful for me in terms of representation of pregnancy that doesn’t look like the way we’re told pregnancy needs to look. And yet, it does unsettle me to then see her grasping at holding up every other possible standard of perfect pregnancy. It’s like she’s only allowed one out or something.SaraYeah, that’s so interesting. Mia O’Malley went viral for sharing her own pregnancy photos and she wrote an essay accompanying them. This was, I think, three-ish years ago, and she still gets comments and emails from other moms saying they never even considered taking pregnancy photos because they had so internalized that this was a thin person thing to do. Like the basketball bump—if you don’t have that, your pregnancy is not worth celebrating or beautiful or whatever. The mere fact of representation is really powerful.VirginiaAnd for someone who reaches such a wide audience who haven’t reconsidered their feelings on fatness or beauty, she is asking them to do that. SaraYeah. If a mom disrupts any part of the stereotypical ideal—like in this case she’s disrupting thinness and whiteness—that’s a net positive.VirginiaYes, I agree. But I do think of what Tori was talking about in her email. Nabela is not opting out. She’s opting all the way in and saying, “I belong in this room.” SaraWell, and I think back to what you were saying before. The responsibility and the onus should be on white moms, with the most privilege, for them to opt out.VirginiaI agree with you. I think if anyone’s going to be making the big momfluencer bucks off the endorsement deals, I’m glad it’s Nabela. What else do we want to say about Mia? SaraIn addition to her main feed, she has a baby wearing feed. She became a babywearing consultant because when she was pregnant and when she had her newborn, every time she was shopping for a baby swing or a baby wrap, it was modeled on a thin model. Did you ever baby wear?VirginiaI was really uncomfortable babywearing and size was definitely a factor in that. SaraRight. I didn’t babywear until my third baby because I was just generally overwhelmed. Those wraps are like a mile long. They’re hard no matter what kind of body you have. But to have a body that’s never represented or to not have tutorials that speak to your particular shape is a real barrier to entry. It’s like, is this even going to work? Is it even going to be safe? VirginiaYeah, and I do have one fat friend who like came over with her Moby Wrap and helped me figure it out. That was very helpful, but I remember envying mothers for whom it felt effortless. It did not feel effortless for me, ever.  We’re making babywearing into something that you’re supposed to innately know and understand at a time when your body is a complete stranger to you.SaraAnd the baby’s a complete stranger!VirginiaThey’re very small and squishy. It’s very disorienting. SaraThere are a ton of fat moms and plus size moms who are creating networks of healthcare providers who don’t have anti-fat bias. This world of momfluencing is worlds away from the one we talked about last week. VirginiaThat is the real potential and promise of mom influencers, to help break down barriers and create communities that can share information. PlusMommy is another one who’s awesome in this space. She does really great advocacy, helping moms know what questions to ask at prenatal appointments. She also talks a lot about being a fat mom going to Disney World or being a fat mom at the playground. Our physical spaces are not built for larger bodies very often, and particularly our parenting spaces. SaraI want to bring up Andrea Landry, who runs the account Indigenous motherhood. She points out that indigenous mothers have always created their own communities, calling each other and saying, “don’t go to this doctor, you’re gonna face discrimination and racism at this practice.” But since Instagram, that community-building has a way broader-reaching impact.And in terms of looking at issues that maybe white moms should be focusing our attention on more than clean countertops, Andrea and I were talking about the huge amount of Indigenous children that are placed in foster care. They are removed from Indigenous communities, which is further colonizing these communities and preventing them from learning their traditions and languages. She was saying that even up until the early 2000s, Indigenous women were still experiencing forced sterilization. In Saskatchewan, they would wake up from C-sections having had hysterectomies without their consent. These things are still happening. It’s not helping us to stay in our bubble and it’s certainly not helping the greater motherhood cause.VirginiaShould we talk about disabled motherhood? SaraI mentioned Rebekah Taussig. She has really educated me on the structural issues impacting disabled moms that non-disabled moms are probably not aware of. In 30 states there are still discriminatory laws that mandate that custody can be removed from a disabled Mom on the basis of their disability. Like, not having the burden of proving that there was neglect or child endangerment or abuse. Just on the basis of the disability. VirginiaWow, this is a great country. I’m really proud.SaraIt’s so f*****g bad! It’s bad for all moms, but it is so much f*****g worse for marginalized moms. Okay, Daniizzie. So, she has twins. And yeah, a movie is being made, a documentary about her experience. She’s really cool. She posts a lot about access, in terms of specifically parent-related activities. Yeah, like inclusive playgrounds.VirginiaShe uses a wheelchair and she’s parenting twins. And yeah, of course, how would you play on most playgrounds with your kids? The ground is gravel. There are so many instant barriers. SaraReal safety issues. You have to follow your toddler up the huge curly slide or whatever.VirginiaI mean, sidebar: I hate playgrounds. Until my children became old enough to play independently on them, I just viewed them as parent punishment. But I will also fully acknowledge the privilege in that. I didn’t want to get up on the slide, but I could do it.SaraOh, I just discovered KC Davis. She has a book called How to Keep House While Drowning. She has a post about laundry where she has a bunch of photos of beautiful laundry rooms, and all she says is, “This is a hobby.” VirginiaThis is blowing my mind a little bit right now.SaraIt is an actual task that we must do to keep our family in clean clothes. But we’ve also internalized that it should look good and be pretty.VirginiaAnd is that actually going to make the task of laundry more enjoyable? Is it more delightful to stain treat skid marks in a room with shiplap? No, it would still be gross. And there’s then the added labor of trying to make the room continually look like that photo. Because it will not. The whole point of a laundry room is to be filled with dirty laundry. So it’s never going to look good unless you’re not doing laundry in it.SaraI think so much about this. I’m really into pretty houses and s**t, but I am constantly thinking about how it’s only pretty if it’s clean. The biggest battle is the actual domestic labor.VirginiaHer account is strugglecare. And before people who have beautiful laundry rooms all DM us, she says: There’s nothing wrong with being someone who likes this. Just call it what it is. This is a hobby. It’s a fine hobby to have.  There’s a great parallel here with diet culture because I often think about fitness in the same terms. Fitness is a great hobby! But somebody loving to train for triathlons and having the “triathlon body” doesn’t make them better than people who don’t like to train for triathlons. It’s the same weird infusion of hobbies with moral value because they relate to thinness and whiteness. This kind of laundry room personifies a certain kind of mom, that’s why we’re making it “better” than other laundry rooms.SaraI really want to talk about Cia. They identify as queer and non-binary. They have a lovely, illuminating post about gender dysphoria in regards to breastfeeding. They talk about how breastfeeding in our culture is so wrapped up in the image of a beautiful white mother luxuriating in her femininity. Cia talks about feeling really good about feeding their child and bonding with their child, but also feeling like they don’t fit into this prescribed norm of what breastfeeding should look like.VirginiaYeah, this is a really important conversation. I think about, for non-binary folks going through pregnancy, the importance of communities around that. Because the body changes could be so dysmorphia-inducing. But also, you deserve to be just as proud of what your body’s doing as anyone else. It’s ridiculous that they aren’t included in the conversation.SaraWell, and the reason it feels disorienting and not great is because, again, of the ideal.VirginiaRight, right. It’s the thin white mom taking up way too much space in this conversation. I’m also loving all the normalizing the body changes in this feed, like there’s a lot of photos of their belly, and their postpartum belly. Yeah, this is very cool. When we were talking earlier about disabled mothers losing custody rights, it also reminded me we were going to talk a little bit about The School for Good Mothers and process our feelings about that book. We’re going to try to do it without plot spoilers, because people may want to read it. Although, it’s very important to know that you don’t have to read it. Sara read it and wrote a piece about it. And I was like, “Oh, I’m reading it right now!” And she texted me to say, are you? Do you want to stop? And then I was texting her at 6am when I finished it, in tears. But! We wanted to bring it into this conversation because it articulates the ways that the standards of white motherhood creates these huge disparities and very real trauma.SaraRight now, I can only watch basically like tea and crumpets television. So, if you’re in a space like that, maybe wait a hot second on this book and read it when you’re feeling a little less tea and crumpet-y?VirginiaI would say when the world is better, but I don’t know when that will be. SaraMaybe when there’s more sun?It just hits close to home, which is why it’s such a harrowing read. Just the very arbitrary ways we define good mothering—mothering, specifically, because I think it’s important to note that mothers are held to a different standard than fathers. There is one character who isn’t harrowing—I find her hilarious. So, she has basically a momfluencer character in the book named Susanna. She’s not a momfluencer, but she follows all the like, you know, “essential oil will heal all things.” VirginiaShe is the new girlfriend of the ex-husband of the main character. So the main character’s daughter is now being raised by this new girlfriend and the father. So, she’s watching her child be parented by a momfluencer, basically, and it’s kind of your worst nightmare.SaraAt one point this wellness-y, culty momfluencer removes carbs from the toddler’s diet.VirginiaYes, it’s like, who’s the child abuser? Obviously, it’s not good for a two-year-old to not eat carbs. That’s science. Meanwhile, this woman of color whose parental rights have been terminated over a very minor issue, is watching this happen. Jessamine Chan does such a good job of articulating how the system continually rewards and reinforces Susanna’s style of parenting, even when it is patently bad, like with the decision around the carbs. But there’s a totally different set of standards used to measure mothers of color.SaraThe standards are funny in that they are so over the top. Like the teachers at the school test them on their hugs. This is the hug you give when your toddler is having a meltdown about sharing and is the hug seven seconds too long? Are you doing the bedtime hug? Are you communicating the right kind of maternal warmth through this embrace? VirginiaSo much in there comes out of parenting influencers and the parenting advice that we see on social media. You might have to come back and we’ll do a whole episode about parenting influencers because the way that positive parenting is pushed on social…Butter For Your Burnt ToastSaraSo I have a tortilla recommendation. Do you know the podcast Home Cooking with Samin Nosrat?VirginiaYes! It was everyone’s coping strategy during lockdown.SaraShe recommended these tortillas and I immediately bought them. You put them on a super hot pan for 15 seconds and they balloon up into this crispy, delightful, salty... It’s so good. They’re so good.VirginiaThey have pork fat tortillas, duck fat tortillas, and avocado oil. This sounds amazing. I will be getting them immediately.SaraYeah, I got the duck fat and avocado oil. They were both good. VirginiaWe do a lot of tacos because it’s one of the few meals my family can agree on eating. So I would really like to up our tortilla game. Thank you! I am also going to recommend a food. So, as people know, I had COVID. By the time this airs, I’m hopefully over it. But as we are recording this, I am on day seven and I’m still testing positive. For the first few days I couldn’t even move. But as the fog began to lift, I was like okay, now I need comfort food so I have to bake something. We had a bunch of bananas going brown on the kitchen counter, so I made this banana bread recipe. I did not think I had strong opinions about banana bread. I thought that it was a food that you could just Google any banana bread recipe and it would all turn out the same. Yep, no, no, this is the best banana bread. It is smitten kitchen’s the ultimate banana bread recipe and she is correct. It has this amazing, thick crust and then the inside is still really squishy and gooey. Just make it. Thank me later. It’s very easy to make, too. There’s not a lot of ingredients. I mean, I made it while still having COVID and not being able to stand for more than fifteen minutes at a time. I ate it all week and no one else in my family wanted it and I was so happy. Well, Sara, thank you so much for doing this again. Remind us where we can follow you. SaraOkay, so I’m on Twitter and Instagram.VirginiaThank you for being here.SaraThank you, Virginia!The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti-diet journalism. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

You probably know Spotify as a streaming music juggernaut, but its business model has grown far beyond just music. Last year, the company paid a reported $100 million dollars for exclusive distribution rights to the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. But now Rogan's penchant for interviewing controversial guests, some of whom propagate disinformation about Covid vaccines and climate science, has riled up Spotify users and artists alike. Prominent musicians like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and India Arie said they would pull their music from the streaming service unless Spotify dumped Rogan.  This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior writer Kate Knibbs joins us to talk about the big Spotify dust-up. We also offer some advice about how to manage your streaming music library across platforms … just in case you might want to take your playlists to another service. Show Notes:  Read Kate's story about the Spotify and Joe Rogan saga. Read Adam Speight's story about how to move your Spotify playlists to Apple Music. Reece Rogers has advice about getting started on YouTube Music. Recommendations:  Kate Knibbs recommends the novel The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. (Read her review of it here.) Mike recommends the sci-fi show The Expanse. Lauren recommends an REI Nalgene water bottle with a small mouth.  Kate can be found on Twitter @Knibbs. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Now, Tom welcomes to the show an author whose literary debut is getting a lot of buzz. Her debut collection of stories centers on two Taiwanese American women who have been best friends since the second grade. As adults, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen lead very different lives, but there is a poignant and complex bond that binds them together, through good times and bad. Author Jean Chen Ho  writes with compassion, insight and authority. Her new book is called Fiona and Jane. Jean Chen Ho joins us on our digital line from Los Angeles. _______________________________________________ Jean Chen Ho will be part of an on-line panel with the authors Jessamine Chan and Weike Wang sponsored by the Asian American Writers Workshop on Friday, February 4 at 7:00pm. For more information and to register for the event, click here. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Iqaluit-based multidisciplinary artist Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory discusses how climate change permeates all aspects of her art and life in the North. Our books columnist Jael Richardson fills us in on Jessamine Chan's debut novel, The School for Good Mothers. Canadian geneticist and broadcaster David Suzuki talks about bringing science into our living rooms for more than 40 years. Pianist Daniel Clarke Bouchard reflects on his early life as a child prodigy and his upcoming virtual concert series with Canadian soprano Measha Brueggergosman.

Jessamine Chan joins us to discuss her debut novel The School for Good Mothers (Simon & Schuster, Jan. 4), a brilliant social satire centering on one Philadelphia mother's “very bad day.” Kirkus: “An enthralling dystopian drama that makes complex points about parenting with depth and feeling” (starred review). Then our editors join with their reading recommendations for the week, with books by Ruth Behar and Devon Holzwarth, Bernardine Evaristo, and Julia May Jonas.

In conversation with Liz Moore Co-sponsored by Blue Stoop A former reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, Jessamine Chan has published short stories in Tin House and Epoch. She has received residencies and fellowships from various organizations, including the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Ragdale Foundation. In The School for Good Mothers, praised by Carmen Maria Machado as ''a timely and remarkable debut'' novel, Chan tells the story of an otherwise dedicated mother who, due to a single lapse in judgment, finds herself pitted against the government and in danger of losing custody of her child. Liz Moore is the bestselling author of Long Bright River, The Words of Every Song, Heft, and The Unseen World. A creative writing professor in the M.F.A. program at Temple University, her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Tin House and The New York Times, among other places. (recorded 1/27/2022)

In

Frida is a dedicated mother who had one very, very bad day. And that one day leads to the removal of her child and Frida's induction into a new government reform program for "bad mothers." This is the plot of a new debut novel from Jessamine Chan, titled The School for Good Mothers. We speak with Chan as part of our new series highlighting first-time authors, '2022 Debuts.'    

A new year = new books, and there are plenty of brilliant new stories to look out for this year. To get your 2022 reading list started, we've brought together five of this year's most exciting debut novelists. Speaking to Isy Suttie, they introduce us to themselves and their books, and give us some insight into their inspirations and aspirations. From a darkly comic dystopia to sumptuous historical fiction to a subversive take on modern womanhood and more – there's something for everyone amongst our pick of 2022's must-read debuts.In this episode, we hear from:Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers, Nikki May, author of Wahala, Susan Stokes-Chapman, author of Pandora, Claire Alexander, author of Meredith, Alone, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, author of When We Were BirdsDon't forget to follow the show so you never miss an episode, and please do leave us a review as it really does help. Finally, to find out more about the #PenguinPodcast, visit https://www.penguin.co.uk/podcasts. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“One thing that I was interested in doing is making literal the surveillance that parents feel every day, because there is the sense that you're being watched and judged and shamed all the time.” Jessamine Chan joins us on the show to talk about her debut novel, The School for Good Mothers (think The Handmaid's Tale meets Klara and the Sun), writing a Chinese American main character that she wanted to read, making sure her satire is laced with humor, how a self-proclaimed Luddite came to write a book like this one, and more. Featured Books: The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan, Plainwater by Anne Carson, Karate Chop by Dorothe Nors, Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls, Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell, The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado and How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee. Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional bonus eps Saturday).

Jessamine Chan, the author of The School For Good Mothers, is on top of the literary world right now. Her debut a Today Show book club pick, was just optioned by Jessica Chastain, and has glowing reviews coming from every direction. She joined the podcast to talk about being a mother, writing about mothers, and her career path that led to 2022's first literary smash hit. Follow the author: www.jessaminechan.com www.instagram.com/jessamine.chan www.twitter.com/jessaminechan Follow Debutiful: www.debutiful.net www.instagram.com/debutiful www.twitter.com/debutiful

Xochitl Gonzalez joins us to discuss Olga Dies Dreaming (Flatiron Books, Jan. 4), the hotly anticipated debut novel Kirkus calls a “warmhearted but tough-minded story of a sister and brother grappling with identity, family, and life goals in gentrifying Brooklyn” (starred review). Then our editors join with their reading recommendations for the week, with books by David Valdez, Nikole Hannah-Jones & Caitlin Roper & Elena Silverman & Jake Silverstein, and Jessamine Chan.