Podcasts about rebel eaters club

Virgie Tovar (she/her) is a well-known body positive and fat liberation activist. In this episode, she candidly shares her journey to activism from her traumatic and abusive childhood (that led her to go ‘no contact' with her family 5 years ago), to a boyfriend in her 20s who loved her exactly as she was, to her rebellious and loud activism, to now. As with all things Virgie, her storytelling, authenticity, and boldness are pure joy.Virgie Tovar is an author, lecturer, and leading expert on weight-based discrimination and body positivity. She is a contributor for Forbes where she covers the plus-size market and how to end weight discrimination at work. She started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight in 2013 and in 2018 gave a TedX talk on the origins of the campaign.Tovar edited the anthology Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion and she's the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat, The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color and her new interactive book, The Body Positive Journal. Her Webby-nominated podcast, Rebel Eaters Club, is now in Season 3. Mentions in this episode: NAAFA, Flare Project, ED Parenting podcast, Moonology book, artist Gina Contreras.Please connect with Virgie on her website, Instagram, Forbes, and her newest book.This episode's poem is called “Let Me Begin Again” by Major Jackson.Hello lovely, Sophia here! Virgie Tovar is ah-mazing! And, there's bonus content for you through Apple Subscriptions or Patreon. Producing a weekly podcast takes time and resources from several wonderful people, and paid subscriptions will make continuing our work possible. My dearest wish is to also offer an honorarium to my guests, centering and supporting marginalized voices in this space. So, as you're able, please consider subscribing to “Some Extra Fat Joy: 10 Qs” where each guest answers 10 unexpected questions. Want to know what Virgie's biggest dream is?Please connect with Fat Joy on our website, Instagram, and YouTube (full video episodes here!). And please also give us a rating & subscribe.Our thanks to AR Media and Emily MacInnis for keeping this podcast looking and sounding joyful.

This week, Karin welcomes Virgie Tovar, author, lecturer, and leading expert on weight-based discrimination and body positivity, to the show for, ”You Have the Right to Remain Fat.”Tune in for a discussion on fat discrimination and oppression from diet culture, dissecting the meaning of fat phobia, weight discrimination facts, the ways body size shapes gender roles and stigma, self-hatred as a barrier to finding self-love, recovering from fat phobia in a culture steeped in stigma, behind-the-scenes of her 2018 TedX talk, and more!Virgie Tovar is an author, lecturer, and leading expert on weight-based discrimination and body positivity. She holds a Master's degree in Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender. She is a contributor for Forbes where she covers the plus-size market and how to end weight discrimination at work. In 2018, she gave a TedX talk on the origins of her #LoseHateNotWeight campaign.Virgie is the author of "You Have the Right to Remain Fat", "The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color", "The Body Positive Journal", and host of "Rebel Eaters Club". Begin your healing journey with Karin and her team now!

I am SUPER excited to introduce this weeks guest - the fierce and fabulous Virgie Tovar! Virgie is an author of some really amazing books (which you'll find linked in the transcript below), activist, and expert on weight-based discrimination and body image. Virgie also has her own pod called ‘Rebel Eaters Club' and has her own column at Forbes, where she writes about plus size fashion and also how to end weight discrimination at work.This conversation went in a totally different direction than I had expected it to, but in a really interesting way! I'm super excited for you all to hear this one, but we do talk a little about childhood abuse and eating disorders so if you don't think you're up for it right now, maybe shelf this episode for another day. Find out more about Virgie here.Follow her work on Instagram here.Follow Laura on Instagram here. Can I Have Another Snack? is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Here's the transcript in full.INTRO:Laura: Hey, and welcome to the Can I Have Another Snack podcast where I'm asking my guests who or what they're nourishing right now and who or what is nourishing them. I'm Laura Thomas, an anti-diet registered nutritionist, and author of the Can I Have Another Snack newsletter. Today I'm talking to Virgie Tovar, and for the 1% of my audience who don't know who Virgie is, she's an author, activist, and expert on weight-based discrimination and body image.She holds a master's degree in sexuality studies with a focus on the intersection of body size, race, and gender, and she's a contributor for Forbes where she covers the plus-size market and how to end weight discrimination at work. Virgie edited the anthology, Hot and Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion, and she's the author of You Have The Right to Remain Fat and The Self-Love Revolution, Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color, which I will 100% be featuring when I cover body-affirming books for teens on my newsletter.In this episode, we talk about the work Virgie is doing to heal her inner child. I really love how Virgie contextualizes this work as mothering work as part of her wider project of maternity, as she calls it. And that's where she's exploring whether she wants to be a biological parent and the layers of grief, social conditioning, and reconciling her own childhood that she has to go through in order to process.This is not at all what I thought we were gonna be talking about today. Virgie kind of took this in an unexpected but really interesting direction. I really hope you enjoy it, so much juicy stuff in here, and I think you're gonna love this episode. But just a heads up that there is some mention of childhood abuse and eating disorders. We don't go into lots of detail, but if you're not in a good place today, then maybe sit this one out and come back when you're feeling a bit more up for it. And while you're here, just a reminder that if you're not a fully paid-up member of the Can I Have Another Snack community then you're missing out on so many great benefits like our Thursday discussion threads, Snacky Bits, where we're having smart conversations away from the noise and the fat phobic trolls of social media.You'll also get access to my Dear Laura column where this month I'm answering a question from a stepparent about parenting a fat child. Plus you'll get access to my Anti Parenting Downloads Bonus podcast episodes and lots more. It's five pounds a month or 50 pounds for the year, and your support allows me to pay a podcast editor, a copy editor for my long-form essays, and it pays for the hours and hours of research and other labor that is required to produce thoughtful writing. I figured this out earlier and five pounds a month works out as paying me 55p per article. So if you think that these articles are worth at least 55p, then please consider becoming a fully paid-up member of the Can I Have Another Snack community. And if you already are, thank you so much.And if you fancy gifting a subscription to a friend, I would super appreciate that. Thank you. And if you need a comp subscription for any reason, then just email hello@laurathomasphd.co.uk with ‘snacks' in the email header, and we will hook you up - no questions asked.And one last favour to ask. If you're listening to this in Apple Podcasts, please go and leave a rating and review. We haven't had any reviews yet, which is a total bummer because it really helps more people find the podcast and hopefully feel held and supported by these conversations.And I know you all are listening, so please just drop a quick comment or leave five stars. I would really appreciate it. All right, team. Here's Virgie Tovar.MAIN EPISODELaura: Alright Virgie, can you tell us who or what you are nourishing right now?Virgie: When I think the, I mean, I think I'm nourishing a lot of things, but the first thing that comes to mind is, really nourishing my child self who is, has a, just has a lot of trauma and has a lot of, um, you know, like I, I started therapy about a year ago and it's been this really interesting kind of process of like almost trying to, you know, untangle something or figure out a puzzle or just like learn a whole new way of, of thinking, but it, it's just become really clear that my little Virgie self is super terrified. There's like all of these things that she doesn't like and she's really scared of and so just kind of not only understanding that she deserves and needs a lot of attention and care, but at right now, as, as a 40 year old person who is considering biological maternity, but probably not, not going to be a mother. Um, biologically, certainly. And I think kind of going through the grief process of letting go of that narrative, which is a cultural narrative. And it's also kind of an internal narrative and just recognizing that, you know, I think I learned this from a friend recently, or someone actually someone I follow on the internet who I'm hoping to work with on this topic. But, you know, really understanding that the project of that inner child who didn't really have a childhood, it is a legitimate form of maternity, is a legitimate motherhood project. And so I think it's like, what's what I'm nourishing is that kid, that inner kid. And also the sense that that in fact it is true, that raising her and caring for her is its own maternity project. And it's a legitimate maternity project, even if it's not recognized by the culture.Laura: Oh my God. I feel like I'm gonna cry. I was not expecting you to say any of that, but that is just, it's so beautiful and there's something in there I probably need to take to my own therapy, but it really resonates with me and I just love this idea so much of, of mothering. You know, I, I love any conversation that talks about mothering outside of the parameters that society has dictated for us, which are usually, as we were just talking about, off mic, you know, heteronormative relationships, between a, a cis man and a, a cis woman and, you know, da da da. We all know that story. And so, yeah, just to think about different ways of mothering and tending to, and caring for parts of ourselves as, as being encompassed within that. Like, that's just, I mean, I think that's just a stunning thing to think about regardless of, you know, whether or not you have biological children or, you know, are, are a parent in some other kind of like, however you became. . all of that was just to say, I love his idea. Like, tell me more. What is this work looking like for you? How are you nurturing, you know, little inner child Virgie?Virgie: Yeah, I mean, I, a lot of it is just slowing down, like giving her the time to have a feeling, and to recognize the feeling and to sort of ask like, what do you need right now? So I, I think I, the, the, the temporal piece is the piece that really stands out. I mean obviously we, we sort of, I think that we live in a world, at least I feel like I live in a world in the United States and California, where, time is, you know, time is considered sort of this extremely limited resource. And I think that there's a real, obviously a premium on productivity and things like that, but it's become really clear to me that emotional processes are happening on a totally different timeline. Like even just, I mean, noticing. So for example, the other day, I, this is kind of a, a, an inter, like, it's a bit of an involved story, but I think it's useful in sharing what the nurturing looks like.Laura: Yeah. Let's do it.Virgie: Because it's not exactly like what you'd expect maybe. Okay. So the other day I was out shopping and I ran into a neighbor and I said, Now how are you doing? And she said, You know, I'm honestly not doing really well. She was having a really hard time. Her apartment had gotten flooded and then the landlord was sort of, her landlord was trying to evict her and she takes care of her 81 year old grandmother with a chronic illness and there was a lot going. And so, and so what's happening as this is, um, so for me, like there's two sort of people in the room as I'm listening to my neighbor, there's grownup Virgie who's like having compassion, thinking about, what I can do to help thinking about what resources I can deploy and how I can help her feel comfortable and safe for even just a few minutes as we're together.And then there's little Virgie who is extremely parentified, who grew up with parents who were sort of, you know, essentially like emotionally immature. So I constantly had to take care of them. I constantly had to parent them. I constantly had to sort of worry about their emotional state, and that because it was an inappropriate role reversal, it was very traumatizing.So grownup Virgie is having a totally great, very, you know, I would say like adult appropriate response to hearing this from her neighbor. Little Virgie is like, terrified. Little Virgie is really, really, really scared that an adult is having a really difficult time and that she doesn't have all the resources she needs to save her from her situation, you know?And so I'm just sort of deeply aware of that, that sort of sense of terror is rising within me and so taking care of little Virgie in that moment looked like actually a number of different things. One was sort of being like, you know, recognizing, I know you're afraid. And there's sort of a term called flooding for people who have developmental trauma. It just, like flooding is really when all the emotion, they're just flooding in, you know? And it's really difficult to tell what your boundaries are, to tell what your needs are. And I sort of, you know, can have a difficult time separating myself from the person who's having little Virgie does.Um, so I'm like, Okay, little Virgie, you're totally afraid. And that's okay. And so I'm kind of, you know, as I'm listening to my neighbor and being present for my neighbor, there's also a part of me that's sort of like, Okay, don't worry. We're gonna take care of your boundaries. Let's think about it, cause little Virgie is like, Okay, so I'm terrified, but let's have her move into our apartment can bring her mom and her two dogs and, um, everything's gonna be fine. And you can just cook for her and clean for her and like, comfort her and make sure that she's not afraid. And, you know, and so like little Virgie's just trying to save her. And so, and I'm like, Okay, I know you wanna do that. Um, but actually, right, like let's only offer the resources that we know aren't going to threaten our ability to be okay because, And so I'm just talking to her and being like, What's another, instead of, instead of that little Virgie, like what are some other options?Like maybe we can drive her home, maybe we can check up on her over the phone in the next couple of days. Maybe we can ask our friends what they might do and they have some ideas and some of them work in fields where that might be useful. Um and what if, you know, like you actually have the resources to offer to pay for a hotel or to offer her some gift cards or whatever if she wanted to book an Airbnb, if it gets too rough, like, and little Virgie was like, Ah, yeah, that sounds way better than what I was thinking. Um, and so, and I think the next couple of days, cuz emotionally flooding is so overwhelming, I was like, little Virgie is gonna be exhausted, little Virgie is gonna take longer to do tasks.Like, it's just, she's just really tired because even though it was just like a seemingly small moment, you know, she is, she felt like it was a really big moment. Um, and so it's like, it's like all of those things are kind of, that's how that looks like, you know?Laura: Wow. I'm, yeah, I'm trying to even figure out where to go from here. There was so much in there that I kinda wanna go back to. I thought we were talking, I thought we were gonna talk about ballet, dude, like. But this is good. This is like, this is really good and. So I hear what I'm hearing you say is that little Virgie, because she was so used to having to care for people in a way that was so out of her depth, that was so, you know, beyond anything that should be asked of a child that that ended up becoming a traumatizing experience. And so whenever you encounter someone who's in crisis, or even if it's not crisis crisis, even if it's like things are a bit shit, then like little VIrgie sort of armors up and is like, All right, ready to go into battle, like, what do I need to do? And it takes like, you have to talk her down and remind her that she's safe. It's okay. We have other ways of dealing, like dealing with this that won't compromise yourself, that won't compromise your wellbeing, and your safety.Virgie: Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, yeah, that, that's, that's exactly what, what's happening. And I think there's a lot of, you know, I mean, I just, again, going back to the, to the project of maternity, it really is like all of those little moments. I mean, you know, as a mom, like, you know, and that, obviously there's all of these little moments and I think children really do experience the world through, through emotion, you know?And so it's like, you know, just kind of being like, okay, like whenever there's, and again, the stakes sometimes are high, sometimes they're relatively low. And she's perceiving, right? And I think this is all connected to a conversation about food and body and all of this understanding, right, that like, at the end of the day, the stakes to her are acceptance, which is basically, you know, to a child, the difference between life and death.Right? And so I think that the stakes can feel extremely high, especially when you start getting messages about all kinds of things as a kid. Like, I mean, I was recently, this is, this is a little bit of a, of a, of a more, I think more specific to the, to the topic of the podcast. But like, you know, I've, I've had many moments where I'm realizing that the fat phobia that I also learned as a child at the age of like four or five years old, that, uh, you know, I'm, I was always a bigger kid and I'm a bigger adult.And so, you know, like being, being a fat kid and experiencing fat phobia, I still have to nurture that, that part of little Virgie too. Like, you know, I think about like the way that I learned fat phobia was that, you know, if you stop being fat, then you will be saved from other people's abuse.And the way that you become not fat is through restricting food. So to me, restricting food really did become connected to a sense that if I do this correctly or I do this hard enough, then I won't be abused by other people. And really at the end of the day, like this is kind of the dilemma that anybody who's experiencing or afraid of experiencing fat phobia, that's really the, the crux of what the equation and what the decision is really about, you know? And so learning those kinds of messages as a kid that I could, you know, hurt myself in order to be safe for, from people who were abusing me. I mean, it's the, like the, those are lessons that are still, like, even as somebody who's well practiced and anti diet and is more than 10 years into that work, there are still ways in which it kind of rears its head around self-harm essentially.Laura: Oh, again, like, just so many things I wanna, I wanna pick up on there. But I think what was coming up for me there, Virgie, is this idea that I know has been a, a critique of the anti diet space is just how we sometimes overlook, how deeply ingrained, or maybe not even deeply ingrained, but how much dieting is often used to seek out safety, to, because that has been a coping mechanism, from childhood to protect yourself from being vulnerable, from being hurt, from pain, physical, emotional pain. And yeah. So I, I really just wanted to thank you for kind of like pulling that thread out. And also I'm curious to hear, because I, I'm guessing that listeners are gonna be curious to know for you when, you know, when little Virgie is feeling the threat of anti-fat bias of fat phobia, how are you taking care of yourself? Like what again, would you, do you have like an example of what that looks like for you?Virgie: Yeah, I mean, I think, It kind of goes back to the temporality piece, kind of just like slowing way down. I mean, the example that comes to mind is actually, um, the start of the pandemic. And it brought up former anorexic behavior that, and anorexic thoughts in particular, that I thought were gone. I thought that those thoughts were sort of buried in the ground, in the past, whatever. But I mean, right. Like, you know, we don't, like humans don't kind of work like that, right? But obviously we, I think we get better at, practicing things that matter to us. I think that we get better at practicing things that we practice.Um, and I also think that we have realizations and are literally our mind and our spirit changes as we have these, as we do these behaviors, and we have these moments of, Oh wow, I did that thing differently and it really blew my mind. And so, but at the end of the day, right, I'm, I'm having this, I'm in, right, we're in the unknown. So, Right. Like, I'm literally the, the start of the pandemic for, for me and I think for a lot of us was, I'm terrified. I don't know what's going to happen and it doesn't seem that anybody else around me who's an authority person, seems to know what's happening. So I went right back to that child place of seeing food as fear objects. I learned as a child that food and abuse were connected, you know, Visa v fat phobia. And in this moment where there's a lot of the same conditions, right? Like I was being brutally emotionally abused as a kid for being fat. And it was obviously destabilizing, terrifying. And this sense that no point of authority was gonna step in and end it. So it's the same conditions, but it's a pandemic. And so I'm, my child brain was like, we just have to stop eating food. It's gonna contaminate us and it's bad and it's wrong and it's scary.And so I was just like, I allowed myself the time to be like, Okay, wow. I'm really surprised that, I mean, again, like this is all about slowing, slowing, slowing down. So like, I'm really surprised about how I'm reacting to this, but it's okay that I'm reacting like this. And then I was like, Okay, Virgie, what we're gonna do is like, I'm like, I hear you and I know that you're having this feeling and I know that you're scared.And I also know, as grown up Virgie, that if you don't eat food, you're gonna get even more anxious. And I know as adult Virgie and little Virgie, you can trust me when I say that food isn't bad and food isn't scary and food isn't going to contaminate us. It's actually really good and it tastes good and it's good for us.And so I just kind of was like, Okay, cool. So we had that pep talk. Amazing. So let's go into the fridge and Virgie, like pick the things that you love the most. Like only pick the things that are like the most delicious right now. It's like, whatever you're really excited about, that's what we're gonna put on the plate. So I let little, again, time to like do that discerning process, time to go through everything in the fridge and all that. Um, and she's like, Well, I want, you know, I think at that, on that, the day that I'm thinking of it was, I think it was mostly cheese and maybe a couple of other things. And then, and then I sat down. I was like, Great job. And here we go. Like, I'm so excited about this meal. It looks really delicious. So we sit down and little Virgie's having a really hard time eating at a normal pace. Eating at the pace that I'm used to eating at, little Virgie is like really? And so I'm just like, It's okay. We can take as long as we need. Like, if we need to take a few hours, that's okay. If we need to take a break, that's okay. The important thing is that we have food in our body and we're taking care of ourselves. So it took a very long time to eat this plate of food. I would normally eat that food in probably like five minutes, something like that. And it took like two hours or something to eat everything on the plate, just because she was really freaked out, you know? And so I was like, All right, like it again, it's just kind of like that sense of like, I know that you're having all, like, you're having all these feelings and this, but we're just gonna like, take our time and we're gonna do this scary thing together because it's the right thing to do. It's the meaningful thing to do. So I think, like, you know, that, I mean obviously that's a very specific example, but I think it's just kind of that it's like that non-judgmental parenting, you know, instinct or, I mean, and it's not even an instinct, right? I mean, We have to learn respectful parenting or like parenting that's about respecting desire and boundaries and stuff like that. Again, I don't have biological kids or any kids. Um, but I'm aware of the school of thought called Respectful Parenting. And I respectfully parent my inner child who has all this stuff going on. Um, and the respectful parenting thing to do would be like, what do you want? What are your limits? But you know, as the grown-up here, who's like looking out for your safety, you can trust me 'cause I've done the work. and I'm gonna tell you that like we need food to have thoughts and to feel okay to have like, you know, have better thoughts and to feel OKLaura: Yeah.Virgie: And so, you know, anyway, so it's like that, that's kinda like an example of what that looked like in that.Laura: Yeah. And I, I really connected with this idea that you of, of like respectful parenting your inner child, and I think there is something to pull out of that in terms of, How we parent our kids around food and bodies. And I want, I wanna kind of come back and talk about that in a second but before we get to that, I, I wondered if it would be okay to go back to something you said right at the beginning and it's around, you know, what you've called, like, the project of, of motherhood and kind of exploring what that's gonna look like and be like for you. And the word that came up right at the beginning was grief and that you're processing that. And I wondered if you'd be comfortable sharing a little bit more around, you know, where you're at with that.Virgie: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, so I spent most of my life largely sort of like pretty comfortable with like, I'm not having kids. And I think there was, there was always a little part of me that was like, hmm, that was aware that this decision was informed to some degree, and I wasn't sure to what degree, by my own childhood and by how poorly I was mothered. And so, you know, I was like, Okay. I was like, okay, at the end of the day, maybe it doesn't really matter to what degree my experience, my childhood experience impacted this decision. Because at the end of the day, like I either have the desire or not, right? Um, and so, and I'm, I'm a believer in that overall philosophy. But I think that as when I turned 40, you know, as I, I think it probably started to happen, you know, really in my mid-thirties where I was starting to sort of, I, I, I noticed there was sort of a part of me that was looking for around me, like conversations about people who had gotten pregnant later in life. Like I started, I sort of started was I was looking for examples of, you know, let's say that I don't, that I don't wanna do this now, but at some point in the next decade, like, are there, do I have people around me who are getting pregnant when they're in their late thirties or their forties? So I started to notice that opening up in me and then when I turned 40 it was like this really interesting, the grief really came in, in a lot of different sort of ways. Like I think the first grief was, the potential that, uh, you know, that this might not, that bio maternity might not happen. And there's a part of me that's kind of sad because it's just sort of a cultural narrative and it's, it's sort of a gender narrative. And I also think the grief came around like still being a bit of a question mark.And I think, like, again, what was fascinating was my whole life I was like, I'm pretty much, I'm between 80 and 95% sure that this is a no for me. And I think that that varying degree of like 5% of doubt, 15, 20% of doubt, I was really comfortable with that because I thought really 80% is quite, is a quite compelling number, and that's your best day. But as I was turning 40, all of a sudden that margin sort of blew up in my mind. I was like, Wow, you know, that 5%, Like that sort of, it went from, I'm 80 to 95% sure that I'm a no to, like, wow. I'm still fine to 20% question mark. Yes. And think that the, the focus shifted from the yes side of the pie to the no side of the pie at 40, because it just sort of felt like the stakes had changed. Um, and I think, frankly, here's another funny part that I just realized. I'm also, so, yeah, again, it's the, the grief is complex. I'm kind of getting into sort of the texture, the motivation for the grief. So I would say another new part of the, a part of the grief that I just learned how to articulate was the grief of not having the option anymore.Laura: This is something like, I have a couple years until I'm 40, but it is definitely something that I think about, you know, that runs through my mind that like the, the, prospect of having anymore kids to just like shutting down and what, what name do we call that or give to that and yeah, how do we work through, um, yeah, the, the grief associated with that. So all of that was to say, like, I resonate with where you're coming from. Virgie: Yeah. I mean, and I think that going deeper into that specific brand of grief, it was like, I was like, Oh, I'm not, I'm grieving that I don't have, I'm grieving this sort of like the ability to postpone the decision that I had in my twenties and I had in my, in most of my thirties. Um, so it's like a very specific loss of not caring. It's like the grief of, the grief of losing, meh. I have, you know, I have a lot more time to think about it. And I think it was specifically also the grief of losing the sense that it was, it was, that I had the choice, you know, like that grief of like the loss of kind of a very specific kind of freedom that's associated with like bio maternity in particular. And so, there's that, and then I got deeper into like, I was like, What else is in here? Like, what other grief are you feeling? And it was really interesting that another part of the grief was actually specifically around being a fat woman in a fat phobic culture where, um, where like I, you know, for most of my life, I felt like a gender imposter, meaning I felt wasn't a quote unquote real woman.And I think that maternity, like, you know, pregnancy and having biological children is a way in our culture that you can affirm your gender if you are a woman. And so I think there was grief around like, You know, basically, basically like letting go of that really important social marker of femininity, which is a pain point for me as a fat woman. So like there's that component where it's like, okay, like what does it look to kind of stand in this decision and know that it's like yet another moment where you're feeling that sense of gender imposter hood or something like that. And then I think that there's other sort of like other, the other parts of the grief are, you know, a lot of them are really, truly, um, I'm, I'm aware that they're socialized. Like, I'm okay, you're grieving because you've been told this is how the story ends. You find a person. Right. And I think specifically as someone who has a lot of trauma, there is a really interesting, um, narrative journey that I think a lot of straight women around me go through where it's like, okay, you had a horrible childhood. You had this like addictive, you know, you had an eating disorder and you had unresolved addiction issues, unresolved mother wounds in your twenties. You go to therapy in your thirties and then of course you find like an amazing, wonderful, well partner. And then you realise after all this that you actually do want to be a mother. It's a very specific and very alluring narrative. And I think the other, another part of the grief for me, and I'm just, this is just me being really, honestly very vulnerable. But another part of it is like, I, I'm aware that I have a narrative in particular as like a fat woman of color. I've been able to kind of create my own career and a meaningful life and a happy life. And like, you know, I, I've, I've been able to do a lot of things frankly, that the culture really values and also breaking all of the rules, you know, And I think that that's a big part of my identity.And then this whole idea that this, like, this sort of, almost like the crown jewel, right? Of kind of, you know, like you're, you're getting what the culture wants, but not on the culture's terms in many ways. Again, I think if you're a straight, cisgender woman and I, and I am, um, that kind of baby piece is like the ultimate and being like, and then I had a baby and I also broke all the rules. And guess what, being a parent isn't hard. And guess what? I don't have to suffer and it isn't isolating. And all the stuff the culture said, that's not true. And this is obviously very, like, I can hear like, this is like my child, my little bratty child voice, right? And so I can hear it. And so like, it's like the, it's like the wounded part of me that's like you rejected me. Well guess what? I got all the stuff you guys are killing yourselves for and I got it my terms. It's like a very, you know, I mean it's like a very specific narrative around, uh, being marginalized and reacting to being pushed out of society. Right? So anyway, like the whole, the child piece is like kind of, you know, I think there is that, that allure to kind of like, You gotta finish the story. The story finishes with you being some kind of radical woods dwelling fairy mom who's like completely defying stereotype and expectation of motherhood and your kid is thriving and they're so happy and you all are so happy. Look at the pictures of you and this well dude that you met in your journey. You guys are like completing the picture of what the culture says success is, but you did it on your terms. And I think like, we're sort of resisting, resisting the allure of that is, um, really difficult. So like the grief of being like, you know, that whole rebel, hurt, hurt, marginalized person, fantasy, just, just like being like, Yeah, but that part doesn't work for me. Like, there's a lot of, there are culturally normative things that I do that I like, you know, like a meaningful relationship, like having a home that I like. These are also culturally normative things that I also happen to want, but this is one of those things where I'm like, this is not something that I want. And so letting go and, and grieving kind of the fact that that, again, that wounded fantasy isn't going to be complete in that very specific way that I'm not going to, you know, have that moment, um, culturally and I mean, frankly, right? Like, I don't even know, again, as a plus size person, as like a plus size woman of color. I'm not sure how many of those, like cultural touchstone moments around like, you know, being pregnant, being visibly pregnant, you know, having a child where I don't even know how much of that would be, in fact mediated by things like cultural and medical fatphobia. Um, because we don't really get to see much of that narrative in the public.So it's like, you know, all that to say like, I don't even know if, like the cultural piece were really motivating me to the point that I was acting on it. I don't know how much of those fantasy, quote unquote moments would even be happening because of the level of fat phobia and racism in our culture, you know?Laura: Yeah. Oh my God, again. Wow. Just knocking my socks off. I do wanna say for the record, Virgie, if for the fact that it weren't a trauma response, I would very much be here for your particular brand of radical parenting . Cause that is something I think the world would be a better place for because there are, as you know, like we were talking about, toxic mom, mommy culture tropes, before we started recording, there's, there are so few options available to people who want to become parents that aren't just, you know, a rehash of the same old story, the same old, you know, thing that has, has been prescribed to us, which is a very narrow portrayal of what parenting and motherhood is or can be. So yeah, like not that that's a good enough reason for you to go and have a kid, but yeah, that would, so that, that's just kind of a side note. But yeah, I'm hearing that the grief is, it's not one specific kind of grief. It's so layered and so textured as to, you know, all of the things that you're sifting through and unpacking.And what I'm, I'm really hearing as well is just you trying to parse out, okay, what is really for me and what I want and in line with my needs and my values and my wants, versus what is a narrative that I have internalized that actually doesn't belong to me and doesn't fit with the life that I am creating for myself.Virgie: Yes, a hundred percent. I mean, and I, I love that kind of, and I think for me also like. There's like, um, like I, I was telling a friend, I was talking to you with a friend about this the other day and um, you know, I was like, Okay, so, you know, if you have a question about whether or not motherhood is something that, I mean, I'm like, I'm someone who's like, does is bio maternity in line with my values, desires, and also my actual physical capabilities, right? Like my actual body can do. And I kind of, and I was like, you know, it was, it was interesting. I was like, Okay, so let's start the negotiation as we're deciphering whether or not, like, as we're sort of parsing through this question, let's start with the matter, the issue of sleep, right? I'm like, okay, I'm someone who's really, I do think that my ability to be the person I am in the way that I am, and like, I think there's certain, even like, I'm also very aware of, for me, sleeping, I mean for all of us. Like I'm very, I'm hyper aware for me that sleeping is very connected to some of the work my body is doing in healing various traumas, and other things that are going on. So I'm like, okay. I actually, I'm, I'm like a 10 to 11 hour sleeper, like I really do feel like my mental health and my quality of life begins to go down very rapidly after just two daysLaura: You are talking to the parent of a two year old right now.Virgie: Yes. I'm like just on that negotiation point alone, like, I'm like, am I willing to do the work to change that? No. Am I willing to make concessions? No. And I'm like, ok, we don't even need to go to any of the other negotiation points. Like we've already ended the negotiation internally. So it was just kinda, I'm just like, I'm thinking about, you know, specifically for me, I'm like, what do I need to be the person that matters to me? Like one of my values is being my best self and being able to enjoy the world fully in that space. And I'm like, that's probably my highest value. It's a higher value than parenting. And so it's just, it's just one of those things where it's like, it doesn't like, you know, I think there's a lot of, romanticism that gets kind of thrown into, and a lot of this is coming from cultural pressure, the romanticism that's sort of culturally produced about like basically the integral role of like the reproductive heterosexual family, to the reproduction of our society as we know it. Right. This is, this is not to say that like I think there are absolutely people for whom parenting is like a genuine, real desire. And or it's a very highly placed value, and I don't wanna de-legitimize that.I think for a lot of people who are on the fence, that what's thrown into the mix is this cultural pressure that is really like, it's really the romanticization of reproductive heterosexuality. And it's like, I think it's important to kind of like when, when you are on the fence to kind of break it down to its barest place. Where does the motivation to romanticize this very specific kind of existence, like, you know, parenting and bio parenting in particular. It really at its cultural core comes from a very fraught legacy and a very fraught idea of like creating a very specific kind of nation and a very specific kind of world. And so, and I, and I mean really con, I mean for me, contextualizing like, like I, you know, the United States, like I live in a culture in which there's a wage gap, in which there's no subsidized medical care in which, um, there's patriarchal norms that pervade how mothers are treated both by their children and by society and by their partner. I still live in a world in which women are the disproportionate, like food providers and caretakers of children. Like I'm literally, I would be entering this fully knowing that like I would be, this is under the context of capitalist hetero patriarchy, which is like a very, it's a compromise I think, and like obviously, All of us are already in this soup. Like I make decisions already, always in this soup. I think what matters is, like, what I'm thinking about is this for me, and I'm not sure, it's important for me to kind of recognize like, where am I getting gaslit about this issue? Where is the stickiness? Where is my pain point? And really going deep in that, like, why, what am I afraid of? And then just kind of going because, because, because, because I'm afraid of this, because this, I'm afraid of this because this, I'm afraid of this because this, and what really it comes down to, I think for, for me in particular, and my therapist is like, Would you do it if you were on a deserted island? Because if you, if you wouldn't do it on a deserted island, then that means it's cultural influence. It's probably like really in the mix here,Laura: That's such, is such a good like that. It's so simple. But that's such a great way of thinking about it and helping parse this out. And also I want your therapist number.Virgie: Yes. I mean, I love, I love the deserted island test of like all desires. But, yeah, I mean, I think like, and I think that there's a, there's a big question about desire and consent in all of it, right? And I think like, I, I mean, I don't, like, for instance, I don't know that if we lived in a less patriarchal culture or if we lived, if I lived in a country with subsidized medical care, if I wouldn't have a different decision or if I lived in a country that had like, or a world where there was less fat phobia, like all of these things are sort of floating around. And I think it's very specific to say in this very specific context, in this moment in time, considering what I know about the world and myself, this is where I land. And I think that that's a very grounded way to kind of approach a decision that you're not a hundred percent into. You know what I mean?Laura: Yeah, no, I, like, I, I'm, I kind of wish that we'd had this conversation like three years ago, . Not that it, not that it has changed my mind about having a child, but, what feels so kind of vital to me are conversations that kind of reinforce this idea that you can be a whole complete person, you know, with or without a child. Right. In both directions. Because I think there is also, you know, that narrative that when you have a kid. And, and some of it is true because of, of cultural programming that you have to give so much of yourself to the child that you don't get to have your own identity anymore or your identity gets reduced down to mother, which, you know, that's a whole thing in and of, in and of itself. There was something else. I was gonna say Virgie, but I've, I've.Virgie: No, we've covered so much ground. I think the last thing I wanna share that's like, I think just, just like a life tip, um, it's like, it's like, you know, I made the decision a long time ago because I think another big question mark in the conversation of motherhood for people who are, you know, having that questioning moment, um, really is like, will I regret the decision? And I basically, one of my, one of my life rules which I adopted many years ago, is never make decisions based on the anticipation of an emotion in the future that you may or may not have. So never make decisions based on anticipatory regret. That's like one of my, and honestly, right? Like, it has liberated me in so many areas of my life because that's such a cultural trope of like, you're gonna regret if you, if you do that thing, you're gonna regret it. Right? Like, and I, I really feel like there's this kind of almost, I mean, it really is almost like a religious shame induced, like kind of, um, Kind of like, I'm like, you should not be moti, you should not be making major life decisions based on a future self that you don't know, based on an emotion that you may or may not have. And so like that, that's a, that's a big one for me. Like that that one is like, um, I just wanted to put that out there as like, I just don't, don't make decisions based on the anticipation of regret. TheLaura: What you are basically telling is everyone is get the tattoo, dye your hair, do theVirgie: I meanLaura: Do the thing that you are wanting to do. Virgie, this has been incredible. There's, there's one other thing, there's one other like, sneak question, but hopefully it's a fun one to answer. Which is, what are you snacking on right now? And that can be a literal snack. It can be just something that you're really into at the moment. A book, a TV show, a podcast, like a thing, like anything. What are you kind of into right now that, like a recommendation that you wanna share? Virgie: Well, I mean, I'm basically like, I'm in, I'm so into fall and it's October right now, so I'm like snacking on anything fall like, so, like if it has a spice blend that includes like cinnamon or pumpkin or apples. I went apple picking the other day. And what's funny that apple picking is that you end up getting a lot of apples and you have to, and it's like, wow. I'm just like making, it's like, it's like another, another batch of apples, apple cinnamon muffins, you know, like, and so it's been so fun to basically have like this basket full of apples to make like endless amounts of spicy apple muffins. Um, so I feel like that's the thing. I've been snacking on so many muffins and so many like fall inspired muffins.And then I'm excited about something. I'm gonna like give one more thing, which like thing that I'm excited about snacking on is, This week I'm going to a spooky bakes little party. We're gonna watch Halloween Baking Championship and bring our spooky bakes, and I'm making like aLaura: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're going to watch what?Virgie: It's called Halloween Baking Championship. It's so good. It's so fun.Laura: Oh my God. Is it like, is it, Is it on Netflix? Netflix. Do, can I watch it here?Virgie: Well here, it's on Prime.Laura: Oh, Prime. Okay.Virgie: Amazon Prime. Yeah.Laura: I generally don't condone anything to do with Jeff, Jeff Bezos, but I do have Prime.Virgie: Yes. Oh, I know. I mean, maybe you can get it from some other outlet, but it's really fun if you like Halloween and they have like all these creepy cakes and it's so good. So I'm making like a witch hand with like, with like cake pop eyeballs. And I'm going to be snacking on thatLaura: Oh my God. I wanna see pictures of that. First of all, I'm gonna link to that in the show notes if you've made it in time for this episode to come out. That sounds amazing. Okay, so my snack is gonna sound really, gonna sound pretty sad in person. It was also a little snack, but it was, so I don't think you're gonna get these in the US but, I found these, like they're basically honeycomb dipped in chocolate and, um, they're by Doisy and Dam and they're, for anyone who's like, has any allergies or is vegan, then they're a good option cuz they don't have any milk in them. I think they maybe have soy, but apart from that, they don't have any other allergens. And like I, they're just new and I tried them the other day and they were delicious, so that was gonna be my thing. But they, um, cake pop eyeballs sound way better. So let's go with that.Virgie: Ooh. But I love, I love a chocolate dipped honeycomb, this kind of, Yeah, yummy. I mean, I feel like my introduction of this was like in New Zealand where there's just a lot of honey products. Yeah.Laura: Um, yes. Yeah. And what I like about it as well is like, and this is like, just like a thing that I, that I have where, um, I like, like snack bag kind of like, sizes of chocolate. So there's like another one that's like all these like mini peanut butter cups that has just come out, that's a Pip & Nut one.Like this was a very good week for new chocolate in the UK. Um, so that you can like, you know, you can just like grab a couple of pieces, rather than opening a bar and then like dealing with the folding up of the bar and all of that stuff, like, I like the grab bag option and you can just dip in and out of it. That's my vibe.Virgie: Ooh. Yes. I love a snack bag. Yes. Grab bag,Laura: Yes. Okay. Virgie for the, like 1% of listeners who don't know, because really you are an icon in the body liberation space. So, but yes, tell us where we can find you and get more of you.Virgie: Yes, um, I am, I have a website, virgietovar.com. I'm also really active on Instagram @virgietovar. I have a podcast called Rebel Eaters Club, which you can find anywhere you get podcasts. We have three seasons, so you can just sort of do some, like, fun listening for a couple days or spread it out however you want. And we basically talk about, well, it's like a food-positive, fat-positive show about ending patriarchy one corn dog at a time, and I also have a column at forbes.com where I write about plus size fashion and also how to end weight discrimination at work. And I have, there's a few self-guided online classes that I've co-written with some amazing people. If you're interested in any of that, it's all virgietovar.com. You can find all my books and stuff like that. My most recent book came out earlier this year and it's called The Body Positive Journal. It has stickers, it has cute, like larger body people doing cute, fun things. And it's some of my, it's like about developing some of my favourite tools in changing our relationship to food and body.Laura: Yes, and I'm so excited to include that in an upcoming, like I've been doing roundups of books, like Body affirming books for different age groups and I'm, that one is gonna be top of the list for teens, so I can't wait for that. Um, Virgie, I'm gonna link to everything that you talked about in the show notes, like all the places to find you and your social media and all of that stuff. But thank you so much. Like totally unexpected conversation, but loved every second of it. And yeah, just really love you. So thank you for being here.Virgie: Oh, thank you for having me.OUTRO:Laura Thomas: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Can I Have Another Snack? If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review in your podcast player and head over to laurathomas.substack.com for the full transcript of this conversation, plus links we discussed in the episode and how you can find out more about this week's guest. While you're over there, consider signing up for either a free or paid subscription Can I Have Another Snack? newsletter, where I'm exploring topics around bodies, identity and appetite, especially as it relates to parenting. Also, it's totally cool if you're not a parent, you're welcome too. We're building a really awesome community of cool, creative and smart people who are committed to ending the tyranny of body shame and intergenerational transmission of disordered eating. Can I Have Another Snack? is hosted by me, Laura Thomas, edited by Joeli Kelly, our funky artwork is by Caitlin Preyser. And the music is by Jason Barkhouse. And lastly Fiona Bray keeps me on track and makes sure this episode gets out every week. This episode wouldn't be possible without your support. So thank you for being here and valuing my work and I'll catch you next week. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit laurathomas.substack.com/subscribe

This week's conversation is with Virgie Tovar: author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts on weight-based discrimination and body image. She holds a Master's degree in Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender. She is a contributor for Forbes and she's written several books. Her podcast, Rebel Eaters Club, is now in Season 3 and is Transmitter Media's first original production. Virgie has been featured by the New York Times, BBC, MTV, Al Jazeera, NPR, and many more. Part 2 features the end of our over-two-hour Zoom conversation as well as clips from previous conversations and a special guest, our mutual friend Isabel Foxen Duke.If you missed Part 1 last week, be sure to tune in: Virgie and I cover dressing rooms, letting go of a normative timeline, control, markers of success, happiness research, and more. Show Notes:- Follow Virgie on the Web | Instagram- Check out Virgie's Books | Podcast: Rebel Eaters Club- Take the friendship breakup survey from me and Kayleen Schaefer here- The Let It Out Kits are 32% off with the code 32- Sign up for the waitlist for the re-imagined Creative Underdogs/In Process (coming soon)!- Subscribe to our newsletter to get show notes + essays, etc. sent to your inbox- Follow @letitouttt on Instagram. I'm @katiedalebout- Let It Out is looking for a paid editing intern! Email me at katie@letitouttt.com if you're interested in applying or know anyone who might be interested! If you liked this episode, try out:Episodes 367 & 368: Seasons of Overwhelm with Christy HarrisonEpisode 385: In the Weeds: Herbalist Vanessa Chakour on Our Earthly Bodies Sponsors:Magic Mind: I started drinking these little green productivity shots and I love them so much. For 40% off a subscription or 20% off a single purchase, go to magicmind.co/letitout and use code LETITOUT20 at checkout!

This week's conversation is with Virgie Tovar: author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts on weight-based discrimination and body image. She holds a Master's degree in Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender. She is a contributor for Forbes and she's written several books. Her podcast, Rebel Eaters Club, is now in Season 3 and is Transmitter Media's first original production. Virgie has been featured by the New York Times, BBC, MTV, Al Jazeera, NPR, and many more. We met a few years ago through our mutual friend Isabel Foxen Duke and I'm lucky to call her a friend. This is her second appearance on the podcast. We recorded a conversation last summer and I've been eager to talk to her again ever since. We talked over Zoom for two hours and our conversation covered dressing rooms, letting go of a normative timeline, control, markers of success, happiness research, and more. Show Notes:- Follow Virgie on the Web | Instagram- Check out Virgie's Books | Podcast: Rebel Eaters Club- David Foster Wallace's "This Is Water" speech at Kenyon College- The Vox podcast episode I mention about sea shells & mollusks- Take the friendship breakup survey from me and Kayleen Schaefer here- The Let It Out Kits are 32% off with the code 32- Sign up for the waitlist for the re-imagined Creative Underdogs/In Process (coming soon)!- Subscribe to our newsletter to get show notes + essays, etc. sent to your inbox- Follow @letitouttt on Instagram. I'm @katiedalebout If you liked this episode, try out:Episodes 367 & 368: Seasons of Overwhelm with Christy Harrison Sponsors:Magic Mind: I started drinking these little green productivity shots and I love them so much. For 40% off a subscription or 20% off a single purchase, go to magicmind.co/letitout and use code LETITOUT20 at checkout!

Virgie talks with disability justice advocate Alex Locust (aka Glamputee) about dating and intimacy. They discuss what fat liberation and disability justice teach us about interdependence, and Alex shares why they have started saying they're "horny for healing."Topics include:The Intersection of Fat Liberation and Disability Justice [04:20]Unpacking Hook Up Culture [05:40]Hiding Yourself for Others [09:09]How To Become “Horny For Healing” [14:45]What Is Access? [17:08]A Different Way to Date [20:50]The Tool of Shedding [24:24]Future Sex Love Sounds [28:32]For more of Alex's work, follow them @glamputee on social or head to their website glamputee.com. Follow @virgietovar and @transmitterpods to stay up to date on all things Rebel Eaters Club, and make sure to visit rebeleatersclub.com to download your starter kit!  

Virgie and Summer talk about fat erasure from fitness spaces, the new (fat positive!) rules of hiking, and the simple joy of petting moss. Topics include:Empowerment through Hiking [02:40]“Fat Time” [05:05]Nature/Body Parallels [07:36]Fitness Trauma [10:58]How Summer Reclaimed Nature [13:22]Fat Girls Hiking [17:59]Redefining “Hiking” [19:45]The Fat Girls Hiking Community [23:30]The Tool of Being in Nature [25:19]For more of Summer's work, follow her @fatgirlshiking and buy her new book "Fat Girls Hiking." For more Rebel Eaters Club, follow @virgietovar and @transmitterpods for updates! And be sure to visit rebeleatersclub.com to download your starter pack if you haven't already! 

Vishinna Turner tells Virgie about growing up fat, Black, and punk in Fresno, CA. Spoiler alert: it wasn't easy! But Vishinna also shares how art and friendship saved her life and helped her on the path to self love.Topics include:Creme Brulee [01:58]Pressure to Fit In [04:37]Growing Up In Fresno [06:57]Finding Yourself with Punk Music [10:01]“Being Yourself at the Buffet” [14:54]Fat Representation [16:34]“Fat Girl Tears” [19:15]Being True to Yourself [27:05]Learn more about Vishinna's band Fatty Cakes & the Puff Pastries and listen to their music at fattycakesband.com. And check out Vishinna's other band Squid Ink! at squidinkband.bandcamp.com. Follow @virgietovar and @transmitterpods to stay up to date on all things Rebel Eaters Club. And make sure to visit rebeleatersclub.com to download your starter pack if you haven't already! 

Virgie and Laurie unpack harmful happiness myths like "the perfect body" that contribute to diet culture, and Laurie tells Virgie how the science of happiness can be used to fight them.Topics include: Harry & David Pears [01:20]City of Angels (1998) [03:54]The “Arrival Fallacy” [11:38]Hedonic Adaptation [17:50]Science of Happiness [20:38]The Tool of Self-Compassion [31:34]You can find more of Laurie's work on social media @lauriesantos or through her podcast ‘The Happiness Lab.' Follow @virgietovar and @transmitterpods to stay up to date on all things Rebel Eaters Club. And make sure to visit rebeleatersclub.com to download your Rebel Eaters Club starter pack! 

Signe talks to Virgie Tovar about why anger is an integral part of self-acceptance, boundaries as the most powerful B-word, tips for bad body image days (BBIDs) and body positivity as a relationship value. Virgie Tovar is an author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on weight-based discrimination and body image. She holds a Master's degree in Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender. She is a contributor for Forbes where she covers the plus-size market and how to end weight discrimination at work. Tovar is the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat,The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color, her new book The Body Positive Journal, and she's the host of the Rebel Eaters Club podcast, just starting season 3. Virgie has been featured by the New York Times, Tech Insider, BBC, MTV, Al Jazeera, NPR, Yahoo Health and the San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in San Francisco. To learn more about Virgie Tovar, visit https://www.virgietovar.com

In this week's episode of Head and Heart Work Conversations, Sam and Sierra talk to Virgie Tovar, an author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on weight-based discrimination and body image. Follow Virgie on Instagram, buy her books, and subscribe to her podcast Rebel Eaters Club. Join us on Patreon and get an extra episode each week, a back catalog of 100+ episodes, and video! SUBMIT: justbreakuppod.com FACEBOOK: /justbreakuppod INSTAGRAM: @justbreakuppod TWITTER: @justbreakuppod BLIND DATE: Crime Scene Kitchen Original music, recording, and editing by Spencer Wirth-Davis Advertise on Just Break Up!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week I spoke with Virgie Tovar. She's an author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on fat discrimination and body image. She is the founder of Babecamp, a course designed to help women who are ready to break up with diet culture. We met through our mutual friend Isabel Foxen Duke and became fast friends. In this episode we cover fashion and identity, the intersection of fatness and sexuality, and the wisdom of trusting our own bodies.Show notes:- Find Virgie on the Web | Instagram- Listen to Virgie's podcast, Rebel Eaters Club- Sign up for the IN PROCESS summer session here and get on the waitlist for our fall semester here- Check out Katie's one-on-one Creative Clinic- You can book a free consultation with Katie here, and if you don't see a time that works for you please email her at katie@letitouttt.com- Subscribe to our newsletter to get show notes sent straight to your inbox- Full show notes here If you liked this episode, try out:Episode 185: Isabel Foxen Duke on sanity around food, surrender, diet culture, fatphobia as a social justice concept & so much moreEpisode 78: Isabel Foxen Duke on emotional eating, binge eating, body image & intuitive eating

Virgie Tovar is an author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on weight-based discrimination and body image. She holds a Master's degree in Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender. She is a contributor for Forbes where she covers the plus-size market and how to end weight discrimination at work. She is the founder of Babecamp, a self-guided online course designed to help people break up with diet culture. She started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight and in 2018 gave a TedX talk on the origins of the campaign. Tovar edited the anthology Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion (Seal Press, November 2012) and she's the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat (Feminist Press August 2018), which was placed on the American Library Association's Amelia Bloomer List, and The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color (New Harbinger Publications 2020). Her podcast, Rebel Eaters Club. In 2018 she was named one of the 50 most influential feminists by Bitch Magazine. She has received two San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Commissionsas well as Yale's Poynter Fellowship in Journalism. Virgie has been featured by the New York Times, Tech Insider, BBC, MTV, Al Jazeera, NPR, Yahoo Health and the San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in San Francisco. We discuss topics including: Tools from Virgie's new book The Self-Love Revolution Creating Boundaries Say “no” once per day Decoding language _____________________ If you have any questions regarding the topics discussed on this podcast, please reach out to Robyn directly via email: rlgrd@askaboutfood.com You can also connect with Robyn on social media by following her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review on iTunes and subscribe. Visit Robyn's private practice website where you can subscribe to her free monthly insight newsletter, and receive your FREE GUIDE “Maximizing Your Time with Those Struggling with an Eating Disorder”. For more information on Robyn's book “The Eating Disorder Trap”, please visit the Official "The Eating Disorder Trap" Website. “The Eating Disorder Trap” is also available for purchase on Amazon.

Virgie Tovar is an author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on weight-based discrimination and body image. She holds a Master's degree in Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender. She is a contributor for Forbes where she covers the plus-size market and how to end weight discrimination at work. She is the founder of Babecamp, a self-guided online course designed to help people break up with diet culture. She started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight and in 2018 gave a TedX talk on the origins of the campaign. Tovar edited the anthology Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion (Seal Press, November 2012) and she's the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat (Feminist Press August 2018), which was placed on the American Library Association's Amelia Bloomer List, and The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color (New Harbinger Publications 2020). Her podcast, Rebel Eaters Club. In 2018 she was named one of the 50 most influential feminists by Bitch Magazine. She has received two San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Commissionsas well as Yale's Poynter Fellowship in Journalism. Virgie has been featured by the New York Times, Tech Insider, BBC, MTV, Al Jazeera, NPR, Yahoo Health and the San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in San Francisco. We discuss topics including: Virgie's interest in studying “fat people” Traps in education The lack of space to study fat phobia Take stock of what happened to you Body image and race with women of color and in high schools Racism and Misogyny _____________________ If you have any questions regarding the topics discussed on this podcast, please reach out to Robyn directly via email: rlgrd@askaboutfood.com You can also connect with Robyn on social media by following her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review on iTunes and subscribe. Visit Robyn's private practice website where you can subscribe to her free monthly insight newsletter, and receive your FREE GUIDE “Maximizing Your Time with Those Struggling with an Eating Disorder”. For more information on Robyn's book “The Eating Disorder Trap”, please visit the Official "The Eating Disorder Trap" Website. “The Eating Disorder Trap” is also available for purchase on Amazon.

Virgie Tovar on how we lose our sense of body belonging, then how we can make our way back.   In this episode, Virgie shares what fat phobia and diet culture is and how they are linked, the many ways healthcare professionals can bring themselves and others closer to body justice, how people lose belonging of their bodies, the first thing we need to do in the unravelling of fat phobia and diet culture and meaningful lessons from her own journey back to her body.   As mentioned in the podcast: Fatphobia and Diet Culture With Virgie Tovar‬ on The Laverne Cox Show Study about restriction, hunger, long term decisions – Glasgow Scotland *did you find this Fi? Dr Cat Pausé, PhD MPH (she/her) Anti-Fat Attitudes Test (AFA) More about Virgie:  Virgie Tovar holds a Master's degree in Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender. She is a contributor for Forbes where she covers the plus-size market and how to end weight discrimination at work. She started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight and in 2018 gave a TedX talk on the origins of the campaign. Tovar is the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat (Feminist Press August 2018) and The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color (New Harbinger Publications 2020). She is the host of the podcast, Rebel Eaters Club. Connect with Natasha: Website Instagram Books Podcast

If you've ever second guessed yourself, hated yourself or harmed yourself because you weren't a certain number on a scale.  If you've ever been humiliated because of your size or praised when you shed kilograms in a hope to fit in and be good enough.  If you've ever deluded yourself that living a life of deprivation makes you somehow more virtuous, more desirable, more worthy - then you've absolutely landed at the right episode.Virgie Tovar started life as an effervescent, confident child who adored her body until the word, the insult, the denigration of being FAT was poured all over her like a torrent of shame.   Well, she's taken back the word.Virgie is a fat activist; podcast host of Rebel Eaters Club; the author of 'You Have the Right to Remain Fat' & 'The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color'; and she's one of America's leading experts and lecturers on weight-based discrimination and body image.Virgie received the Yale University's Poynter Fellowship in Journalism; famously started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight and in 2018 gave a ground-breaking TedX talk on the origins of the movement.Virgie's making a real difference in a world that tells our children every second of their lives that they'll be more acceptable in society if only they tweak this, or shed this, or enhance this.This is Virgie's storyBUT BEFORE YOU GOFind out more about Virgie hereListen to Virgie's Podcast hereFollow Virgie on TwitterFollow Virgie on InstaBuy Virgie's remarkable book “The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color” hereBuy Virgie's remarkable memoir “You Have the Right to Remain Fat” hereFind out more about Tam hereFollow Tam on InstaFollow BRAVE JOURNEYS on InstaJoin the conversation and chat about the episode hereNEED MORE INSPIRATION?Find other BRAVE JOURNEYS episodes hereCREDITS:Creator, Host & Executive Producer: Tammi FaradayWith thanks to my special guest: Virgie TovarAudio Editor: Zoltan FecsoWith very special thanks to George Weinberg. BRAVE JOURNEYS acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we record this podcast on, the Yaluk-ut Weelam Clan of the Boon Wurrung who are part of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respect to their Elders, both past, present and emerging and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cu

In this episode, Nicola and Florence receive American award-winning author and leading expert on weight-based discrimination and body image, Virgie Tovar. Virgie evokes her memories of growing up in a larger body, and internalizing toxic cultural messages about her ultimate responsibility to become thin. In her early twenties, she was introduced to fat activism while studying for her Master's degree in Sexuality Studies. Together, Virgie, Nicola, and Florence explore the 3 levels of fatphobia and how fatphobia leads to serious discrimination in many areas including wages and medical care, resulting in higher weight people avoiding going to the doctor. Fatphobia also affects fashion, with the industry doing its best to keep higher weight people outside of stores, although about 70% of the population is actually plus size. Fat discrimination is in fact considered legal in most US states. Although we know from research that  a higher weight person is less than 1% likely to ever become an average size person according to BMI. And that scientifically, dieting is correlated with depression, anxiety and an increased likelihood of developing an eating disorder. Not with weight loss.Virgie unpacks the term "diet culture" for Florence and Nicola and explains it is not coincidence that it was was born at the same time as capitalism, puritanism, and colonialism. Virgie also evokes internalized gender inferiority in women and its links to self-objectification. with the works of John Berger and Phyllis Chessler.  She reminds us that everything we can turn to for pleasure in our society is heavily regulated and shamed, including hunger. She mentions a study on subjective hunger affecting long term decisions. And the podcast ends with simple ways anyone can fight fatphobia.You can find Virgie Tovar through her website, Instagram account or "Rebel Eaters Club" podcast. You can sign up for her upcoming Eating and Walking tour of Italy in 2022. To find support in your HA recovery:Get the "No Period. Now What?" book at noperiod.info/book.To make an appointment with Dr Rinaldi and get individual support to get your period back or improve your fertility, please go to noperiod.info/appointmentsTo make an appointment with Florence Gillet and get help with the body and mind changes happening in recovery please visit www.beyondbodyimage.comYou can find us on social mediaNo Period, Now What? on InstagramNo Period, Now What? Recovery Support GroupBeyond Body Image on FacebookBeyond Body Image on InstagramAmenorrhee_fr  (HA recovery 100% in French) on InstagramEmail us  via allin@noperiodnowwhat.comIf you enjoyed this podcast and found it helpful, please d

Welcome back everyone!! We are so happy you could make it! We are so excited to present to you the second part of our look at what to do when confronted with fatphobia. This week we continue our discussion on how we've dealt with this as described in the article by Virgie Tovar who has a wonderful podcast called Rebel Eaters Club and you should check it out!! We also have a week in review AND it was Carly's birthday this past weekend, so that's pretty cool!!! As always, thanks for listening! Don't forget to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast distribution outlet center and leave us a 5 Star review if we earned it!! If you want to share your thoughts, ideas, comments, questions or concerns, send us an email or slide into our DM's on Instagram! If you want us to read your note on the show, please let us know in the message!! Source Material: 10 Common Instances Of Fatphobia, And How To React To Them by Virgie Tovar Email: 8monthspodcast@gmail.com Instagram: 8monthspodcast Title Card by Rudy Schultz --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/8monthspodcast/support

Virgie Tovar speaks on her experience with the negative effects of weight discrimination, discovering self-love, and balancing health with body acceptance and positivity. Tovar holds a master's degree in Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race, and gender. She's a contributor for Forbes where she covers the plus-size market and how to end weight discrimination at work. She started the hashtag campaign #losehatenotweight. In 2018, Tovar gave a TEDx talk on the origins of the campaign. Tovar is the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat, and The Self Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color. She's also the host of the podcast, "Rebel Eaters Club." "Plus sized women in particular, tend to get funneled into more physically laborious, lower paying jobs, care, jobs that involve caring for children, caring for elders, etc. And thin women tend to are likely or more likely to be funneled into jobs that are client facing and more sedentary, that involve a better higher paying." In this episode, you will learn about: negative effects of weight discrimination balancing health and self-acceptance Tovar's book, "Self-Love Revolution" Keynotes: [0:56] Tovar talks about experiencing "fatphobia" from others growing up. [2:02] She explains how she discovered "fat activism," and her experience with data methods society uses to keep people a certain size. [4:29] The negative consequences of weight discrimination at the doctor's office. [6:31] Tovar talks about black women experiencing racism and sexism at the doctor's office. [7:51] Plus-sized people experience weight discrimination at work and school. [9:31] Tovar explains how society is structured regarding weight expectations, especially with people of color. [11:45] How weight discrimination affects a person, physiologically and physically. [13:07] The data behind "a normal weight," and accepting that data. [17:11] Tovar talks about her book, "The Self-love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color." Connect with Virgie Tovar! Instagram https://www.instagram.com/virgietovar/ Twitter https://twitter.com/virgietovar?lang=en Website https://www.virgietovar.com/ Podcast https://www.rebeleatersclub.com/ Connect with Yumlish! Website https://yumlish.com/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/yumlish_/ Twitter https://twitter.com/yumlish_ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/yumlish/?tn-str=k*F LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/yumlish/ Go to the Yumlish Facebook and Instagram to enter into the giveaway of Virgie Tovar's latest book, "The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color." Check her out on Amazon and order her book today! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/yumlish/message

Writer, fat activist and podcast host Virgie Tovar teaches us about the roots of fatphobia and the many pitfalls of diet culture. She and Laverne cover everything from discrimination to health care, white supremacy and social policing. Even if you've never been on a diet a single day in your life, this is for you, too.  Virgie Tovar is the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat and The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color. She is a contributor for Forbes.com, where she covers the plus-size market and how to end weight-based discrimination at work. Her podcast, Rebel Eaters Club, investigates the North American relationship to food and body.  Rebel Eaters Club podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rebel-eaters-club/id1495401238 You Have the Right to Remain Fat audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/You-Have-the-Right-to-Remain-Fat-Audiobook/B08G1T4LGZ The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color https://www.amazon.com/Self-Love-Revolution-Radical-Positivity-Solutions/dp/1684034116 Babecamp: Break Up with Diet Culture E-Course https://bodypositiveschool.teachable.com/p/babecamp  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Gretta Cohn is the founder and CEO of Transmitter Media. Gretta's experience runs the gamut of all things audio, from public radio and ringtones, to producing chart-topping podcasts. We discuss her time touring with the band Bright Eyes, being hired as the first production executive at Midroll Media and Earwolf, and starting her own podcast company with only $7,000 of savings. Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com--EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders. Gretta Cohn:I thought I would take the more productive path, the one where I didn't leave podcasting and I made this decision in December of 2016 to myself and then spent the next couple of months just tucking away money. And when I say I saved money before starting the business, I saved $7,000. Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Gretta Cohn, the founder and CEO of Transmitter Media. Now, Gretta's experience runs the gamut of all things audio. From being a touring cellist with the band, Cursive, to teaching radio workshops at NYU, to working in audiobooks, ringtones, and most recently podcasts. And Gretta's done some groundbreaking work along the way like turning Freakonomics Radio into an omni channel media brand, launching the number one podcast show, Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People and helping build Howl, which eventually became part of Stitcher. But Gretta's career transformed in 2017 when she decided to do podcasting on her own terms. So with only $7000 of savings, Gretta founded Transmitter Media and quickly began producing premium podcasts for clients like, TED, Spotify, and Walmart. Today, Gretta is focused on scaling her Brooklyn based team and creating more, as she describes, beautiful things. Chris Erwin:Gretta's love for her craft and team is so genuine and her story is a great example of how sheer will and passion are the ultimate enablers. All right, let's get into it. Chris Erwin:Tell me a little bit about where you grew up. I believe that you grew up in New York City. Is that right? Gretta Cohn:Well, I grew up in the suburbs, so I grew up on Long Island. My mom is from Queens and my dad is from Brooklyn and there is a sort of mythology of their meeting. My mom's dad was a butcher in Queens and my dad would always tell us that they didn't have toothpaste growing up and he'd go over to my mom's house and just eat. Yeah, they moved out to Long Island after they got married. Chris Erwin:Nice. And what part of Long Island? Gretta Cohn:Initially I grew up on the eastern end in the town called Mount Sinai and then when I was 13 in a very traumatic move at that age we moved to Huntington, which was more like smack in the middle of the island. Chris Erwin:My cousins are from Huntington. That's where they grew up, but then I think they moved to Lloyd's Neck shortly after. Why was that move so traumatic at 13? Gretta Cohn:I think it's that really formative age where you are sort of coming into yourself as a human, as a teenager and I remember writing my name on the wall in the closet because I wanted to leave my mark on that particular house that we grew up in. But then we moved and I made new friends and it was fine. Chris Erwin:Everything is scary at that age. It's like, "Oh, I have my friends and if I move to a new high school or middle school, I'll never have the same friends again." Gretta Cohn:My best friend at the time, Alessandra, never to be talked to or seen again. Chris Erwin:What was the household like growing up? Was there interesting audio from your parents? I mean, I think you mentioned, remind me, your father was a butcher and your mother was... Gretta Cohn:No, no. Those are my grandparents. Chris Erwin:Those are your grandparents. Got it. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. No. My parents were both teachers in the education system. My dad was a teacher his whole career life. He taught shop and psychology classes and computer classes. And my mom ended up being a superintendent of the school district on Long Island. She got her start as a Phys Ed teacher and then became an English teacher and worked her way up to superintendent. The sort of interest in audio they instilled in me and my two brothers extremely early. We all started learning to play string instruments at the age of three through the Suzuki method. Chris Erwin:The Suzuki method? Gretta Cohn:Yeah. Which is like an ear training style of learning music. So you essentially at three years old, you cannot possibly understand how to physically play an instrument and I remember a lot of time spent in those early group lessons just hugging the cello and singing this song, I love my cello very much, I play it every day and crawling up and down the bow with spider fingers, that's what they called it because your fingers kind of looked like spiders crawling up and down the bow and we all started playing string instruments at that age. I played cello and then the brother who came after me played violin, and the brother who came after him also played cello. Chris Erwin:Wow. And did you parents play instruments as well, string instruments? Gretta Cohn:No. My dad loves to say he can play the radio. Chris Erwin:I respect that. Gretta Cohn:I think they are educators, they are really invested in the full education of a person and so I think that they thought it was a good teaching discipline and it certainly required a kind of discipline. I can recall really fighting against practicing because I had to practice probably every day and I would rebel and not want to do it, but it was not really an option and I'm glad that ultimately I was pressed to continue to play because playing music has played such a huge part of my life. Chris Erwin:Clearly. It led you, which we'll get to, into founding a podcast production company and network and so much more. So very big impact. But, I get it. I began playing the alto saxophone in fourth grade and my twin brother was playing the clarinet and it was lessons with Mr. Slonum every week, an hour of practice every day and it was, when you're putting it on top of sports and homework and academics, it's a lot and it's intense and there's moments where you really don't want to do it and it's not fun and then there's moments where you're very thankful for it. And I think a lot of the more thankful moments came later in my life, but if you can get some of those early on, it's meaningful. When you first started playing, did you really enjoy it or was it just like, uh this is what I'm just supposed to do? Gretta Cohn:I remember enjoying it. I remember in particular being able to do little recitals every so often and I know there are photographs of myself in recital that I've seen even recently and there is such a joy in that and I think that showing off something that you've done and your family claps for you, it's a good job. Ultimately, what it feels like to play in a group, in an ensemble, it's pretty magical. I played in orchestras starting in grade school all the way up through college and there is something really amazing about the collective and your part and you can't mess up because it's glaringly obvious if you're the one out of the section of 12 cellists whose got their bow going the wrong direction or the wrong note playing. But it's also really beautiful to play in a group like that. Chris Erwin:Yeah. It's a special team sport, right? You rely on other people and people rely on you. When it comes together, it's an absolutely beautiful event, for you and the audience. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. I also played soccer growing up, speaking of team sports. Chris Erwin:Okay. What position? Gretta Cohn:I was defense. They would enlist me to run around and shadow the most powerful player on the other team. I don't know why, but I remember that. Chris Erwin:I was very similar. I started out as a recreation all-star like a forward and then got moved to right fullback, which is defense. That was my soccer career. All right. So interesting. So yeah, speaking of studying music, I think that when you went to university, you almost went to study music at a conservatory but you ended up going to Brown instead. What were you thinking, because were you going down a path where it's like, "I want to be in audio, I want to create music." What was your head space there as you started to go through advanced education, beginnings of your career? Gretta Cohn:I remember collecting fliers for conservatories. I was interested in conservatory, I think though that as I began to really think about what that would mean, I don't know that I was thinking really broadly, like oh... No one at 17 or whatever really has a full picture of what those choices ultimately mean but I'm glad that I didn't go to music school. I was always the worst player in the best section. So I remember I was in the New York Youth Symphony and I was definitely not the best player in that section, but it was really hard to get in. One summer I went and studied at the Tanglewood Institute in Boston, which is, again, extremely competitive and hard to get into but I was definitely not the best player there. Gretta Cohn:And I think that thinking about what it would mean to devote oneself entirely to that, I had other interests. I wasn't so completely focused on being a performer that it didn't ultimately feel like it would make a lot of sense because I wanted to study history, I wanted... And obviously, you go to conservatory, you have a well-rounded education ultimately, I would imagine, but it's not where I think I ultimately wanted to go. That was not the direction I ultimately wanted to go. Chris Erwin:Yeah. It's a really big commitment going from good to great, but I mean, you are great. You are getting into these elite orchestras but to be the first chair, that's a level of dedication practice that's really tough. It's funny, I actually read a David Foster Wallace article about the sport of tennis and he played and he was very good and I think he could have even gone pro, but he's like, "I'm good, I put in enough hours and I have fun with it, but for me to go to the next level..." He's like, "It's not fun to me and I don't want to do that." It's not for him. So you make a decision and you go to Brown. What's your study focus at Brown? Gretta Cohn:I ultimately was in the American Studies Department, but I had a special sort of crossover with the music department so I took a lot of music classes, I took a lot of American Studies classes which is basically like cultural history, social history, history through the lens of various social movements or pop culture, which I think is really fascinating and I wound everything together so that my senior thesis was about cover songs and the history of sort of copying and the idea of creating various versions of any original work and the sort of cultural history and critical theory lens of it, but also just I selected three songs and I traced their history over time from a performance perspective but also from like, how does this song fit into the narrative of music history? Chris Erwin:Do you remember the three songs? Gretta Cohn:I think I did Twist and Shout. Chris Erwin:Okay. Gretta Cohn:I Shall Be Released and I can't remember the third one. But I had a lot of fun writing it and I really liked the bridging between the music department and the American Studies department. And strangely, there are so many journalists who came up through American Studies. There are several producers on my staff who were American Studies students in college. I think it just gives you this permission to think about story telling in the world from just this very unique cultural vantage points. Chris Erwin:Did you have a certain expectation where you had an idea of what that story was going to be over time or were you surprised and as you saw how the narrative played out with the original song and recording and production and then the covers, anything that stands out of like, "Oh, I did not expect this, but I found this very fascinating."? Gretta Cohn:I don't really remember at this point. Chris Erwin:Sorry for putting you on the spot, it's such a long time ago. Gretta Cohn:The thing was like more than 100 pages and it's probably a door stopper now at my parents house. I remember that I put a big picture of a mushroom on the last page. John Cage wrote a lot about mushrooms and so I wove some of his work into the thesis but this idea that the mushroom takes the dirt and crap and stuff that's on the forest floor and turns it into this organic material, the mushroom. So yeah, I don't remember the specifics. Chris Erwin:Yeah, no. All good. My thesis was on the Banana Wars and that is... It's not even worthy of being a door stopper. That's just straight to the trash. But I did, for a music class, I think I did break down a song by the Sex Pistols. Gretta Cohn:Cool. Chris Erwin:I can't remember specifically which one, but I think I dove deep into the lyrics and I think I was pretty disappointed. I expected to find more meaning and have more fun with it, and I think it was maybe my young mind, I couldn't go deeper than I thought I could. Anyway... So fast forward to 2001 and as I was going through your bio, this really stood out and it hits close to home. You become a cellist for some alternative rock bands including Cursive, The Faint, and Bright Eyes. And I just remember The Faint, I think a song from 2008, The Geeks Were Right. I remember listening to that shortly after college. So tell me, what was that transition going from university to then moving, I think you moved to Omaha out of New York to play in these rock bands? Gretta Cohn:So when I was in college, I continued to play in the school orchestra, but I also met some friends who became collaborators and we would just improvise in the lounge like, bass drums, guitar and cello. And that was really freeing for me. Growing up on Long Island, I had such easy access to New York City and for whatever reason, I was really given a lot of freedom to... I would take the Long Island Railroad into Manhattan and go to concerts all through high school, like rock concerts. Chris Erwin:What was some of your earliest concert memories? Gretta Cohn:Purposely getting to an Afghan Whigs show and planting myself in the front row because I wanted to be as close as possible to the stage. So I used to go to concerts all the time and I was really, really interested in... I wasn't only a person who thought about classical music at all and so I met this group of people and formed this little group together and so I was playing music in college, eventually joining a band mostly with locals in Providence and we became the opening act for a lot of bands that were coming through. Chris Erwin:And what type of music were you playing, Gretta? Gretta Cohn:It was arty rock. Chris Erwin:Arty rock. Okay. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. Some of it was instrumental, but then some of it was like pop. I think one of the bands that I was in was called The Beauty Industry and it was probably a little bit reminiscent of Built to Spill and The Magnetic Fields and a little bit like Poppy. So in that band we would serve as the opening act for a lot of artists that were coming through and through that I was able to meet the folks from Saddle Creek from Omaha, Nebraska. And I didn't know that I made an impression on them, but I did and after I graduated I moved to New York. I didn't really know exactly where I was headed. I got a job working in the development office at Carnegie Hall and I didn't love it. We had to wear suits. And one day the folks from Omaha called my parents home phone and left a message and asked if I would come out and play on a record with them and I did. Chris Erwin:When you got that message, were you ecstatic, were you super excited or were you just confused, like, "Hey, is this real? What's going on here?" Gretta Cohn:Yeah. I think I was like, "Huh, well, that's interesting." Like, "I didn't expect this." So Cursive is the group that invited me out to record. Just sort of like come out and record on our album. And I didn't actually know Cursive. I had met Bright Eyes and Lullaby for the Working Class when I was at Brown, but I hadn't met Cursive and my best friend, who is still one of my best friends was a Cursive fan and dumped all of their CDs and seven inches in my lap and was like, "You need to listen to them, they are so good." So I did and I sort of gave myself a little Cursive education and then I started to get really excited because I felt like there was a lot of interesting potential. Yeah. Gretta Cohn:Moving out there was not an easy decision. It was very unknown for me. I love New York City and I always imagined myself here and I had never been to the Midwest so I didn't know what my expectations were and I didn't... Also at that time Cursive was a fairly well-known band but it wasn't understood that I would move out there and that would be my job, right? I was moving out there to join this community and play in Cursive and do Cursive stuff, go on tour, record records, but at that point there was no promise like, "Oh, I'm going to live off of this." And so I went to a temp agency and I did paperwork in an accountant's office and- Chris Erwin:While also performing with Cursive? Gretta Cohn:Yeah. Yeah. I will also say though, after the first year, things really took off after The Ugly Organ and I would say at that point I was no longer working in the temp office and we were going on long tours and when I came home in between stretches on tour, I was recovering from tour because it's quite exhausting and working on the next thing with the bands. Chris Erwin:Were you touring around nationally? Any international touring? Gretta Cohn:Yeah. National and international. We went all over the States, Canada and then European tour is like often... Cursive was very big in Germany so we would spend a lot of time in Germany, Scandinavia. We went to Japan once. Chris Erwin:What an incredible post university experience! Gretta Cohn:It really, really was incredible. Chris Erwin:Playing music because of a skill that you formed very early on and then working in New York at Carnegie Hall and a job that you weren't too excited about and then you just get this serendipitous phone call. And you started listening to Cursive records in seven inches and you're getting more and more excited and all of a sudden you're traveling the world. That's like a dream scenario. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. It was pretty dreamy. And I think I recognized at the time. I mean, those first tours, we were sleeping on... I had my sleeping bag and we would be sleeping on hardwood floors, end up in like a row and someone's apartment in like Arlington. And I remember some of those first tours internationally, like in Germany, you would play the show and then everyone would leave and they would shut the lights off and we would just sleep on the stage. And in the morning the promoter, like the booker would come back and they would have bread and cheese and fruit and coffee. And it was just this beautiful... But we were sleeping on the stage. Chris Erwin:I mean, you're all doing it together. So it was cool. Right. You just were a crew. Gretta Cohn:Yeah, yeah. It was great. I loved it. I really, really loved it. Chris Erwin:I look at your work timeline between 2001 to 2010, which includes, you're a touring international artist, but then you do a lot of other things in audio. Like you study with Rob Rosenthal at the Salt Institute, do some time in Studio 360, and then you go to radio and then audio books. So what are the next few years? How does this audio adventure start to transform for you? Gretta Cohn:While I was in Cursive, there were other parts of me that I felt needed feeding and so I started writing for the local alternative weekly in Omaha. And I was doing like book reviews and reviewing art shows and doing little pieces, which sort of opened up to me, this understanding that journalism was something that I was really interested in. And while I was still essentially based in Omaha and still, essentially based out of Saddle Creek, I came back to New York for a few months and did an internship at The Village Voice because I just really wanted to sort of start exploring these paths of what would potentially come next. I didn't necessarily think that I was meant to stay in Omaha like for the rest of my life. When I first moved out there, I thought, "Oh, I'll give it a few years. See how it goes and then probably come back home to New York." Gretta Cohn:And then things really took off and so I didn't want to leave. And I was really having a great time and loved it and loved everything that I was doing. And I think that at the time that chapter was coming to a close, it was sort of like naturally coming to a close and I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to do next. I was interested in journalism, I was interested obviously in... still thinking about music and audio although I think I needed a break from music after that time. Like when you're so intensively working on something like that, you just need a minute to let everything kind of settle. Chris Erwin:Yeah. It's all encompassing. Right. You're just living, breathing, eating music and the band. It's a lot. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. So I took a couple of years and started to figure it out. Actually, something that's not on your list is I worked at a ringtone company for a bit. Chris Erwin:It is audio based. So I'm not surprised. So yeah, tell me about that. Gretta Cohn:It was just a job that I got. Actually, looking back now, I think that it was a company that was founded by two classical musicians. They mostly had contracts with major record labels and I remember turning Sean Paul's Temperature into a ringtone in particular. It was just like chopping things into little eight seconds and looping them and mastering them and- Chris Erwin:Were you doing the technical work as well? Gretta Cohn:Not really, you spend time in the studio and so you learn and you pick up things. I wasn't recording the band, but that was the first time that I got my own pro tools set up and so I had my own pro tool setup, like was using it for my own little projects at home, but I was not technically involved with the making of any of the records that was on now, except for playing on them. Chris Erwin:Yeah, you were dabbling in pro tools then pretty early on. Gretta Cohn:Yeah, yeah. I had the original Mbox, which is like this big plastic, weird alien looking object with just like a couple of little knobs on it. I finally got rid of it a couple of years ago. I held onto it for a long time and now you don't even need it. Chris Erwin:So you're dabbling and then I know that you spend time as a producer at The Story with Dick Gordon, North Carolina, and then you went to audio books. Is that when things started to take shape for you of knowing kind of what you wanted to do? Gretta Cohn:I think as soon as I went to Salt to study with Rob Rosenthal is when I knew that that's what I wanted to do. I took a few years after Cursive to kind of reset a little bit and then I started working at the ringtone company and began to have conversations with people about where all my interests collided. Like I loved working in sound, storytelling and journalism were really important to me. I don't think at that point that... There was a whole lot that I was exposed to apart from NPR, This American Life and Studio 360 were sort of the major outlets for audio storytelling that I understood and spent time with. And I just remember having a meal with someone who I don't recall his name, but he's done a lot of illustrations for This American Life and public radio outlets and he was like, "There's this place, it's called salt. You can learn how to do this there." And so I just decided that I was going to step down this path. Right. Chris Erwin:Yeah. And Salt is based in Maine, is that right? Gretta Cohn:Yeah. So I moved to Maine for six months. I was very excited. I got a merit scholarship to go there. Chris Erwin:Oh wow. Gretta Cohn:Yeah, and I basically... There's so many fundamentals that I learned there that I use every single day now still. I think Rob Rosenthal is absolutely brilliant and he has trained so many radio producers. It's insane. Chris Erwin:Of all the learnings from Rob, just like what's one that comes to mind quickly that you use everyday? Gretta Cohn:I don't know that this is one I use every day, but it's one that's really stuck with me, is he really counseled to be really mindful when thinking about adding music to a story. He used the phrase, emotional fascism. Essentially, if you need to rely on the music to tell the listener how to feel, then you haven't done your job in sort of crafting a good story. So like the bones of the story, like the structure, the content, the sort of stakes intention and the character you've chosen, like all of that have to clear a certain hurdle and then you can start thinking about adding music, but if you're relying on the music to sort of create tension or drama or emotion, then you've kind of missed something. Chris Erwin:Yeah. That's very interesting. What a great insight! I like that. Emotional fascism. Gretta Cohn:I'll never forget. Chris Erwin:So after the Salt Institute, what's next? Gretta Cohn:I got an internship at WNYC at Studio 360. At that time the internship system at New York Public Radio was like largely unpaid. I think I got $12 a day. So I interned I think three or four days a week and then I had like two other jobs. Chris Erwin:Just to make ends meet, to make it work. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. I worked at a coffee shop, like most mornings. And then I worked at a Pilates studio many afternoons and on the weekends. So it was like a lot, I was really running at full steam, but I really enjoyed the internship there. And then that was my first real glimpse into what it was like to work in a team to make impactful audio storytelling and I learned a lot there too. The team there was really amazing. Yeah. So Studio 360 was fantastic. And then a friend of mine had found out about this gig at The Story with Dick Gordon. It was a short term contract producer role, like filling in for someone who was out on leave. And I got the job and I moved down to Durham, North Carolina, and found an apartment, brought my cat and worked on that show for a few months, which I think was a pretty crucial experience to have had, which helped open the door into WNYC. Chris Erwin:Why's that? Gretta Cohn:So this was in like 2008, 9 and there weren't like a whole lot of opportunities in the audio storytelling space. Like your major opportunities were at public radio stations and public radio stations were highly competitive. It didn't have a lot of turnover. They understood that they were the only game in town if this was the career path that you were interested in going down. So having had a job at a radio station on staff on a show was such a huge opportunity. I don't know that I was like chomping at the bit to leave New York or move to Carolina, although I loved it there. And I had friends who lived there that I knew from the Saddle Creek community. So it was really great. I moved down there and I didn't have to... I can't recall ever feeling lonely. Right. Like I immediately had this community of people, which was amazing, but that gig was only three months. Gretta Cohn:And so I came back to New York and basically spent the next couple of years banging on the door to get back into WNYC, which is when I went to the audio books company where quite a few radio producers worked. Like that's how I found out about it. There were folks who had passed through Studio 360 or elsewhere. And my boss at the audio books company is David Markowitz, who is now currently working in the podcasting department at Netflix. And he previously was at Pushkin and at Headspace and he... So he and I, although our paths crossed at that moment, because our paths have continued to cross over and over again since that time working together with the audio books company. Audio books wasn't my passion, but while I was there I got the idea to pitch the podcast to the audio books company, which they agreed to let me do. And so I had this outlet to just do a little bit of experimenting and to grow some skills and also have just like an outlet to doing this kind of work that I wanted to be doing. Chris Erwin:Had you ever pitched a project or an idea before to any place that you worked at? Gretta Cohn:I pitched stories to Studio 360, but to pitch an idea for something that had not existed before, no. Chris Erwin:It becomes, I believe, The Modern Scholar podcast, is that right? Gretta Cohn:Yeah. You've done like a really deep research. Chris Erwin:Look, it helps to tell your story. Right. So you pitch, and then you get the green light, which must feel validating. It's like, okay, this is a good idea, but now it's got to be more than a pitch, you had to execute. Was that intimidating or were you like, "No, I'm ready to go I got it." Gretta Cohn:I was ready to go. They had an audio book series called The Modern Scholar. Professors would come in and record like 10 hours worth of like Italian history. And so what I did was just have a one hour interview with the professor who was the author of this series and talk about their work, go into detail on something really specific. I will say at that time that like I applied for a mentorship with AIR, the Association of Independence Radio, they gave me a mentor and I had like a few sessions with him and it was great. Like I had someone... I had an editor, right. I wasn't totally on my own kind of like muscling through. And so he really sort of helped refine the ideas for that show and that was a great help. So I'm lucky that I was able to get that. Chris Erwin:What I'm really hearing Gretta is that you moved around a lot and participated in and developed all these different music and audio communities around the US and even the world from like Omaha and international touring and Scandinavia and Europe, and then the Salt and Maine and North Carolina and New York and more, and I'm sure, as you said, with David Markowitz, that these relationships are now serving you in your current business. So it feels like that was like a really good investment of your time where the networking was great, but you also learned a lot and were exposed to a lot of different thinking and ideas. Is that right? Gretta Cohn:Absolutely. Definitely. Yeah. Chris Erwin:After dabbling around a bit for the first decade of the 2000s, you then go to WNYC and you're there for around six years, I think 2008 to 2014. And you work on some cool projects. You're the associate producer at Freakonomics and you also work on Soundcheck. So tell me about what made you commit to WNYC and what were you working on when you first got there? Gretta Cohn:At the time there weren't a lot of options for people doing this work. And WNYC obviously is an incredible place where really amazing work is done, really talented people. It basically was like the game in town, right? Like there weren't a lot of other places where you could do audio storytelling work in this way. There was a pivotal moment that I think could have gone in a different direction, but I had applied for a job at StoryCorps and I applied for the job at Soundcheck. Chris Erwin:What is StoryCorps? Gretta Cohn:They have a story every Friday on NPR that's like a little three minute edited story and it's usually like two people in conversation with each other. It's highly personal. And they're very well known for these human connection stories. It's I think influenced in part by oral history and anthropology, but it's basically this intimate storytelling. And I did not get that job, although I was a runner up and the person who did get the job is now one of my closest friends. But at the same time was an applicant for Soundcheck and I did get that job. And I think it was... That was the right path for me because I have such a passion for music. Right. My background kind of really led me to have an understanding of how to tell those stories. Chris Erwin:What is the Soundcheck format? Gretta Cohn:It changed over time. But when I joined Soundcheck, it was a live daily show about music and really open, like wide open as far as what it covered. So in any given episode, you could have like Yoko Ono there for an interview, you could have the author of a book about musicals from the 1920s, and then you could have like a live performance from Parquet Courts. So it was really wide ranging and varied and super interesting. And there's so much about working on a daily show that's I think extremely crucial to building up chops as a producer because every single day you have a brand new blank slate, you have to work extremely quickly and efficiently. Working in the live setting can create so much pressure because not only are you keeping to a clock, like the show went from like 2:01 to like 2:50 every day, and there had to be certain breaks and you have an engineer and you need the music to cue in a certain place. Gretta Cohn:And so you're like, "Cue the music." And you're whispering to the host like, "Move on to the next question." You're like this master puppeteer with all these marionettes and it's pretty wild. It's really fun, super stressful. You go off stage and it's like- Chris Erwin:It sounds stressful. Gretta Cohn:You can't fix it. You just have to move on and you learn a lot. Chris Erwin:It feels like something, you do that for maybe a couple of years or a few years and then it's like, ah you need a break from that. It's amazing that people who work in like live video or live radio for decades, like kudos to the stamina that they build up. Gretta Cohn:And that's exactly what happened is I needed a break from it. And that's when I went to Freakonomics. Chris Erwin:Got it. Before we go into Freakonomics, you also helped create Soundcheck into an omni-channel media brand where you were launching video and live events and interactive series. Was that something that had been happening in the audio industry or were you kind of setting a new precedent? Gretta Cohn:Our team was tapped to reinvent Soundcheck. So it had been this live daily show for quite some time and I think that WNYC wanted to reshape it for a variety of reasons. So we were sort of tasked, like we pulled the show off the air and kind of went through this like sprint of re-imagining, what the show could be, how it would sound, what it would do. And actually, I remember that I pitched this video series that was a lot of fun. I can't remember the name of it now, but we worked with a local elementary school and we would have three kids sitting behind desks and we would play them clips from pop songs- Chris Erwin:Whoa. Gretta Cohn:... and they would review them and- Chris Erwin:That's a really cool idea. Gretta Cohn:... it was awesome. It was so much fun. We did a lot of live performances and I started producing sort of like more highly produced segments and storytelling for Soundcheck at that time, because there was more space to try and figure that out. Ultimately, what it turned into was like a daily delivery of a show that I think ultimately resembled the old show in many ways, but it was not live anymore. And there were all these other tasks. I also created a first lesson type series for Soundcheck at that time where we would like stream a new album before it came out and I would write a little review. It was really fun. When we pulled the show off the air and we were tasked with re-imagining it was like a sandbox that you just kind of could plan, which was great. Chris Erwin:It's a wide open canvas that you can paint to how you desire. I get that why you were burnt out after that. So then you change it up and you become an associate producer at Freakonomics and you work with the fame, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt. How has that experience? Gretta Cohn:It was great. It was challenging. I think that show has incredibly high standards and there's a particular kind of brain that I think works extremely well at that show. At the time, there were two of us who were the producers of the show, myself, who has this background in music and in production. And then the other producer was an economist who had been freshly graduated from economics school. And so we were this pair and I think what ultimately happened was that where I shown where these like human stories and where he shown was like distilling econ papers into sort of understandable stories. And so I think the two of us together really complimented each other. One of my favorite episodes that I worked on was about the Nathan's hotdog contest and one of the sort of like champs who had come up with a particular system for how to win- Chris Erwin:Dunking them in water and all that stuff. Yeah. I remember watching some of those segments online. In a minute they put back like 47 hotdogs. It was something crazy. Gretta Cohn:Yeah, it's wild. Chris Erwin:After Freakonomics, you decided to depart for Midroll and Earwolf. What was the impetus for that? Gretta Cohn:My time at Freakonomics was sort of like naturally coming to a close. I think that while my strength was in this sort of human sort of storytelling, I think the show needed someone who had a little bit more of that like econ background. And so I started to look around the station at WNYC, of other places where I could land, right? Like I'd moved from Soundcheck to Freakonomics, like what would be the next place for me to go? And I couldn't find it. I spent a little bit of time in the newsroom helping to look for a host for a new health podcast and I had conversations with people around the station about various other shows. I think I talked to the folks on the media and this producer, Emily Botein, who ultimately founded the Alec Baldwin podcast and a host of other really great shows there, but it didn't seem like there was space or a role that really made sense for me as far as like the next step is concerned. Gretta Cohn:At that time, Erik Diehn who's now the CEO of the Stitcher empire was in the finance office, I think at WNYC and he left to go to Midroll/Earwolf. Chris Erwin:I didn't realize he was also WNYC. Bannon was also WNYC who's now the chief content officer over there? Gretta Cohn:Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chris Erwin:Wow. It was a feeder to that company. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. So Erik Diehn left WNYC and I remember the note that went around, he's going to this company, Earwolf/Midroll. And I was like, kind of filed that away. And then it was probably a few months later that they put a position, they were hiring for a producer. And I sort of leapt at the opportunity. I thought that the shows on Earwolf were awesome. I had not worked really in comedy. Although I think that there's so much crossover in Soundcheck. We really had a lot of license to have basically like whoever on the show, like I booked comedians, I booked authors. Like I booked anyone who had a passion to talk about music, which is like 90% of the world. And so I think that that was really of interest to them. And I had a couple of conversations with Erik and the job was mine. I mean, I went through- Chris Erwin:You make it sound very easy. Gretta Cohn:... a proper vetting and interview process. And there were other candidates, but they gave it to me. And I was really, really excited because I think I was ready for a fresh start and I was ready for something new, something a little bit unknown. I think that I tend to find... Typically, I think if you look over the course of my life, like every few years, I'm like, "Okay, what's the next thing?" And I think that I still feel that way except now I have this entity of Transmitter in which to keep iterating and playing, but I was just ready for the next thing. And it was at that time, a really small company, I was the first New York based employee, like Eric was living in New Jersey. So it doesn't count as a New York employee. There was no office. Chris Erwin:I remember that Jeff Ullrich was the founder and it was bootstrap, didn't raise any venture capital and started I think in the early 2000s, if I remember correctly. Is that right? Gretta Cohn:I don't know the dates, but that sounds right. Chris Erwin:Okay. A little context for the listeners. And Earwolf is a comedy podcast network. So there's a slate of comedy shows and Midroll was the advertising arm of the business that would connect advertisers with the podcasters. But no, please continue. So you're the first New York hire. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. Which was really exciting to me. I was the first producer hired by the company. They had a few really amazing audio engineers out in LA who ran the recordings and they did editing, but there had never been a producer on staff. So it was really this like wide open field. And Jeff at that time, I think had taken a step back from the company, but the moment that I was brought in is when the idea for Howl came into the picture and Howl was a membership subscription-based app that has now turned into Stitcher and Stitcher Premium, it was folded in, into Stitcher and Stitcher Premium. But at the time there was like this real push to create a subscription-based app with like a ton of new material. And one of my first jobs was to work extremely closely with Jeff to figure out what was going to be on this app, who were we going to hire to make material? What producers, what comedians, what actors? There was an enormous spreadsheet, like one of the most enormous spreadsheets that I've ever spent time with. Gretta Cohn:So that was my first task and alongside, which was to sort of from a producer's perspective look at this later shows on Earwolf and start to think about what would a producer bring to the network? What would a producer bring to the hosts, to the way that things were made, to new ideas to bring to the network? And so those two things were sort of happening concurrently. Chris Erwin:The producer role was not defined. You're the first producer there. So it's you coming in saying, "Here's how I can enhance the slate. Here's how I can enhance the content strategy of where we're headed concurrently with we're launching Howl, which needs a lot of content, both from partner podcasters and probably owned and operated and then filling..." So creating a new slate, that's going to fill that. That's going to make people want to buy the membership product or subscription product, which are big questions that Spotify and Netflix and the biggest subscription platforms in the world have huge teams to figure out. And it's like you and Jeff, and maybe a couple more people? Gretta Cohn:There was one developer. Chris Erwin:Wow. Gretta Cohn:It was intense. It was a lot of work. I remember because at that time too, I was the only New York based person. Eric was in New Jersey. I think Lex Friedman came along. He was either already there or came along shortly thereafter, also based in New Jersey. Chris Erwin:And Lex was running sales? Gretta Cohn:Yes. And he's now with ART19, but there was no office. I was working from my kitchen table, much like I do now. It was great. I think what really excited me was like the open field of really sort of figuring out what everything was going to be and it was like off to the races. Chris Erwin:So I actually reached out to a few people that we mutually know to just get like, oh, what are some stories I can have Gretta talk about from the early Midroll/Earwolf days. So I reached out to Adam Sachs who was also on this podcast earlier. He's a childhood friend of mine that was also the CEO of the company when it sold the scripts, as well as Chris Bannon, who I consider one of the most like delightful humans on the planet. I think he was the chief content officer while you were there and he still is now under Eric as part of this new Stitcher Midroll combined empire. And what Chris said is that, like you mentioned Gretta, no office for the first six months and that you were taking meetings, I think in sound booths as well. And that when you finally did get an office, it was so small that you were taking turns sitting down. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. Well, we put our own furniture together. I learned so much from my years at Earwolf that have completely guided and shaped a lot of how Transmitter kind of came into being. Yeah, we put all of our furniture together ourselves in this first office. Chris Erwin:That's good training for you launching Transmitter where it's lean budgets, you're funding from your savings. You probably had to set up your own furniture yourself too. So that DIY attitude persists. Gretta Cohn:Yeah, yeah. And it was exciting. Whereas a place like WNYC is this like well oiled machine, it's also like a big ship that in order to turn 30 people have to be sort of moving things around and like, is the sky clear? There are just like so many little tiny steps that have to be taken to make a decision. Whereas what working at that early stage at Earwolf meant was like you can just make decisions, you just do it. Eric and I went around to see like five different offices. We decided together, "Oh, let's take this one on Eighth Avenue." This is the furniture. All right, let's put it together. I remember walking into the office when the furniture was first delivered and it was extremely dusty and we were wearing dust masks and trying to figure out where's the studio going to go? And it was just really exciting. It's really exciting to sort of pave your way and build something from the ground up. Chris Erwin:I like what you're saying too, is that you can just get things done very quickly. And that's actually one of the things that Bannon brought up about working with you is you guys launched good shows I think in just a matter of a few months or less, like Bitch, Sash and Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People, which was a number one hit on iTunes. And that now making shows like that, if you're at a bigger company with all the bureaucracy and the approvals can take over a year, but you guys were getting stuff done fast, there was no alternative choice. Gretta Cohn:Yeah, we were working very quickly. Chris Erwin:So I'm curious to hear like Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People. That's like an iTunes topper. Was that the first big podcast hit that you had in your career? Gretta Cohn:I would say so. Yeah. I'm trying to remember what if anything came ahead of it, but I'm fairly certain that some of my first meetings after joining the team at Earwolf were with Chris Gethard and working with him on sort of early prototypes of Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People. And he's a remarkable person. He's a brilliant comedian. He's such a good human being. He's an amazing collaborator. And yeah, it was the two of us for a while just, I think the first call that we took, which was sort of just the prototype, the pilot for the show. We're like, "We don't know what's going to happen. Is anyone going to call?" And yeah, I mean, it was really awesome working on that show. And also it was such a departure from the kinds of projects that I had worked on previously, which were extremely buttoned up like very highly produced in the sense that every single step that you took in the process was regimented, right? Like making a Freakonomics episode, making an hour of Soundcheck, thinking about that live daily experience. Gretta Cohn:Like you can't have a minute on the clock that's not accounted for in making those things. And here's a show where we just open a phone line and see what happens for an hour. And it's so freeing to be sort of separated from that regimentation and working with Chris Gethard, I think taught me that you can make something that's really compelling and that's really good. And it was highly produced. Like a lot of thought went into it. There's a lot of post-production, but it didn't need to be the kind of thing where like every single minute of that hour was a line on a spreadsheet. And I love that show. I think that we're all like voyeurs of other people's experiences. Right. And I think it's super interesting the way that people are willing to call and sort of like bare their souls to Chris and working on that show was fantastic. Gretta Cohn:And it was really gratifying and really rewarding when we realized that people were paying attention and they were going to listen. And for that to be one of the first projects of my tenure at Earwolf was great. It was great. Chris Erwin:That's awesome. What a cool story! Bannon even mentioned you work on, I think Casey Holford's Heaven's Gate, which is now an HBO Max series. I think that just came out this week or something, some big projects. All right. So look, in 2015, Midroll/Earwolf sells to Scripps, EW Scripps. Then I think in 2017 is when you start Transmitter Media. I'm curious to hear that after this fun sprint at Midroll and the sale and launching the shows and launching Howl and Wolfpop and all the things, what got you thinking about becoming a founder, which is a very different experience than what you had done for the first 10, 15 years of your career? Gretta Cohn:So after the sale, I think that Adam Sachs kind of offered me the opportunity to reshape my role a little bit. So I had been overseeing the Earwolf shows, developing and producing brand new shows and Howl was in the rear view at that point for me, I believe. I think this is like a classic situation. They're like, "We're going to split your job into two, which half do you want?" And I was like, "This is great." Because it had been a lot to be developing new shows, to have this sort of slate of shows at Earwolf requiring my attention. And I picked the path of new development and that's when they went out and found someone to executive produce the Earwolf network. And in my new role, I needed to build a team and a division. Gretta Cohn:So I had to hire really quickly about six producers to form a team. And there wasn't really a human resources and so it really fell on me to read every application that came in and kind of vet all of the candidates and begin that process of selecting who to talk to. And I probably spent about six months just interviewing. I think that I learned a lot from that process and I think it developed in me like a little bit of an eye for how to spot talent and people that I want to work with, but it also was like supremely exhausting. And at the same time, I think that the company was in a real state of renewal and flux and change following the sale to Scripps, which I think is probably common in any situation where a company is acquired by a company that has a different POV, like maybe doesn't understand podcasting, has its own goals that are separate from what the goals had been at Earwolf. Gretta Cohn:So there were just a lot of strategy shifts that I did my best to kind of keep up with, but ultimately found myself thinking like, "Well, if I were setting the strategy, what would I do? If I were re-imagining sort of the direction that this company was going in, what would I do?" And I looked around and Pineapple Street had been around for a few months, maybe six months. And I went and had some chats with them about sort of like what they were doing and what they wanted to do. And I went over and had a chat with the folks at Gimlet thinking like maybe there would be a place for me there, but ultimately out of my conversations with all of those people, was this kind of clarifying feeling that there was something that I wanted to do and that I wanted to do it differently. I would say it was definitely like burnout that kind of led me to thinking about what I wanted to do next, because it felt like where I was at was like a little bit unsustainable. It was scary. Gretta Cohn:I definitely spent a month sort of quaking with fear on the couch. Like, is this something that I'm going to do? What does it take and what do I need and are there like, long-term consequences that I can't really think of yet? Because I'd always had a job, right? Like I always worked for someone else and enjoyed the freedom, frankly, that that gives you, right? Like you show up, you do the work and then you leave and you can go and take care of whatever. So I just spent a lot of time thinking about it and talking to friends, my close friend who gave me the Cursive records back in the day has run a press, a small press for nearly as long as I've known him. And it's a small non-profit, but it requires the same levels of sort of like entrepreneurship and sort of like- Chris Erwin:Discipline in a way. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. Discipline. That's exactly the word. And so I talked to him a lot about he figured out what he was doing. My brother has had his own post-production business for film for more than five years, so I went for dinner with him and talked about... His business relies on film clients who come to him with a movie that needs mixing and sound effects and sound design. So we talked about that and my husband was acquiring a business. He purchased a retail shop in our neighborhood around the same time too. So there was like a lot of this around me where I had just a lot of conversations about this and I decided to do it. I decided that like the fear was not a good enough reason to not do it. And my alternate path to be quite frank was to leave podcasting because I just couldn't see where my next step was going to be. Gretta Cohn:And so I thought I would take the more productive path, the one where I didn't leave podcasting and I made this decision in December of 2016 to myself and then spent the next couple of months just tucking away money. When I say that I saved money before starting the business, I saved $7,000. Like this is not an enormous coffer of like startup money, but it was enough to pay for an office space and to pay for myself for a couple of months to just see what would happen. And I gave extremely early notice at Midroll and I started to look for clients before I left. So I set it up so that by the time I finally left Midroll in the end of March of 2017 and walked into my office, my new office for Transmitter Media, on the 3rd of April of 2017, I already had clients. So this also gave me that added security of like, "I'm not just walking into this empty pit of like who knows what? Like I have work to do." Chris Erwin:Look, that's just like an amazing transition story, but a couple of things stand out. One it's like double entrepreneur household. A lot of couples that I talk to will say, one will start a new venture business that's risky while other has like W2 salaried income. But your husband had just bought a local retail shop in the neighborhood. You were launching Transmitter Media. So you were smart about mitigating risk of landing of clients in advance. Yeah, it's a lot to take on. And the second thing I heard that I think is really interesting is you felt that there was no path for you to stay in podcasting unless you started your own business. So it's either get out and do- Gretta Cohn:It felt that way. Chris Erwin:Yeah. Get out and do something totally different or commit and go deeper with this incredible network and skillset that you've built up for a decade and a half and start your own thing. You committed to it. And yeah, whether it was meager savings of $7,000, it was enough. And you had the confidence. And I think in the early days, confidence is everything that you need. Tell us about what is Transmitter Media or what was it at that point? Gretta Cohn:Transmitter Media was born as a full service creative podcast company, meaning primarily working for clients who needed podcasts production. And it's really 360 ideation. There's like a paragraph that explains what they want the podcast to be and then we figure it out from there. Like it's quite rare that someone comes in the door and they have like a fully fleshed out idea for a show that has all the episodes outlined and the guests and then this and then that. So it's really starting with a kernel of an idea, figuring out how to make it, what it needs, what's the format and executing it all the way up to launch and continued production. And I think that I saw what Pineapple Street was doing. I respect Jenna and Max from Pineapple Street so much. Gretta Cohn:And it felt like the right model, essentially doing what film production companies do or in a way kind of like what advertising agencies do. You have clients, your clients have a story that they want to tell and as a production company, you figure out how to tell it and how to tell it really well. And I think that for me, having a focus on craft was really important quality over quantity and taking the time to really figure out creatively, what does something need was how I stepped into it. Chris Erwin:Clearly as the industry is growing, in terms of more audio listenership, more brands wanting to figure out the space and still early, I think in 2019, the ad market for audio was like 750 million. So you started the company is like two to three years before that, when you look at the total advertising landscape, which is like over, I think, 600 billion globally. But brands are leaning in, they want to figure it out and you have a knack for audio storytelling, and then you commit. And so who are some of the early clients you work with? I think they were Walmart and Spotify. And what did those first early projects look like and had you had experience working with brands before? Or was it like, "All right, I have a skillset, but I kind of got to figure this out on the fly too."? Gretta Cohn:So it was Walmart, Spotify and TED I think were the three sort of major clients at the very beginning. I hadn't worked directly with brands. I understood working with other media institutions. I understood working with hosts. I also understood developing new shows because that's what my team did at Midroll, Stitcher, Earwolf. Before I left, an entire year of just coming up with ideas and piloting them and throwing them at the wall and kind of running them through PNLs and doing all of that. And so I understood all of that. So we have worked directly with brands, but with Walmart, it was running through an advertising agency full of really great creative people and so we were interfacing more with them. And I think that I learned through them a little bit more about how to work with a client like Walmart. Gretta Cohn:But I think also that everyone we were working with at that time was also trying to figure it out for themselves in a brand new way. So we've now been working with TED for over three and a half years, but at the time the show that we developed with them, WorkLife with Adam Grant, I think was their first sort of step into the sort of slate of podcasts that they have now. They had TED talks daily. It was sort of concurrently like I know what the steps to take and the people that I am making these podcasts for don't, they've never done it. And so I think I learned a lot in those first few projects about how to deliver, how to communicate what we're doing clearly. But it's not like I hadn't already done that before. Like I had the skills, it's just was like refining them and putting them into this really particular box. Chris Erwin:Yeah, just a little bit of a different application. Makes sense. Gretta Cohn:Yeah, exactly. Chris Erwin:When we were talking about having to build a development team at Midroll and Earwolf that you said that you had like a unique sense of how to identify good people. So then you start building your own team at Transmitter and it seems that you've built a pretty special team there. So what was your, like when you think about, if I need great people to make Transmitter a success, what type of people were you looking for and what has like your culture become at your company? Gretta Cohn:I love my team so much. I agree. I agree I think they're really special. I think independent thinkers, people who have a really unique creative spark, people who surprise me. Right. I think that what I learned in doing all this interviews at Midroll was like, I prepare a lot for interviews, kind of much like you prepared for this. I would do deep dives. I would listen to a lot of work from the people who were coming into... had applied for the roles. I also like over the years, there are certain producers who I'll just kind of keep in touch with, or follow their work and be excited by their work and hope that one day they might like to come work at Transmitter. And so I also am really keen on people who have a collaborative spirit. So an independent thinker who's down to collaborate, who doesn't necessarily need to put their fingerprints all over everything and it's like cool if their fingerprints kind of merge with other people's fingerprints and we've got this really sort of group dynamic where we're really, everyone is contributing towards something. Gretta Cohn:And people own projects, people own stories, people own episodes, but ultimately, I think that we have a very collaborative team environment. And we're also a group of people who like to celebrate our successes, even like the teeniest tiniest ones. And so we spend a lot of time like talking about the things that go well and I think that creates a lot of pride in work. And I'm interested in working with people who have that same sense of craft as I do. It's not necessarily about perfection, but it's about doing really good work, making something sound as good as it can possibly be. We have an episode that on Monday I got an email about, saying, "This is in its final edit. I'm not looking for any big edit changes. I'm only looking for a notes on music." And I listened to it and I was like, "Ah." Chris Erwin:Is this from a client? Gretta Cohn:"How did they get editorial note?" Chris Erwin:Yeah, was this a client email or internal? Gretta Cohn:No, it's internal. I have a big editorial note and here's why, and I know that you thought you were almost done, but it's going to be so much better because of this. And typically as a group, we come to that agreement very quickly that it's going to be better and our goal is to make work that sounds very, very good. Chris Erwin:I think that's how you build a great company and also become successful and are fulfilled in that. Like yesterday's win or yesterday's excellence is today's baseline and you just keep upping the threshold. My team calls me out for doing that all the time, but I always say, "Yeah, I hired you guys because men and women, you're incredible and I'm going to hold you big." And that makes for a fun work environment. And it's all in our mutual best interests. So I like hearing you say that Gretta and you just talked about celebrating wins often. What is like a recent win that you guys celebrated, big or small? Gretta Cohn:I mean, earlier today we recorded an interview where the host was in a studio in DC, our guests was in her home under a blanket fort in New Jersey. We had a little bit of a technical mishap before it started. One of the newer producers on our team was managing that. And I know that that could have been a situation where she got so stressed out that she could have been paralyzed by the overwhelming sort of urgency of overcoming this technical mishap, but she was calm and she kept us informed of what she was doing and she figured it out and the interview started late and it went long, but that was fine. And you got to give someone a thumbs up for that. Like that was hard and you figured it out. Gretta Cohn:And another recent win is we are about to launch season two of our podcast, Rebel Eaters Club and we have a promotions team working for us this time, we're making new artwork and we've got the episodes of the season in production. It's just exciting for me when all the pieces start to come together and we're like a month away from launch and it's not done and it will get done. But right now it's just this like ball of energy and that feels very exciting. Chris Erwin:This is your first owned and operated podcast where- Gretta Cohn:Yes. Chris Erwin:... your business has helped create audio stories for a variety of different brands and marketers and publishers and now you're investing in your own IP, which is really exciting. And so what is the general concept of Rebel Eaters Club for people who want to check it out? Gretta Cohn:Rebel Eaters Club is a podcast about breaking up with diet culture. Chris Erwin:Ooh. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. Our host is, her name is Virgie Tovar, and she's sort of one of the leading voices on breaking up with diet culture because it's extremely harmful. It is a huge industry. It's a debilitating thing that is, fat discrimination is something that's like not very often discussed, but such a huge sort of point of discrimination in our culture. And I have learned so much from this podcast, it's funny, it's a weird,

Today on the podcast I have the incredible Virgie Tovar! Virgie is an author, activist, podcaster, TedX Speaker and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on weight-based discrimination and body image. Virgie is the woman behind the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight, the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat and The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color and the amazing podcast Rebel Eaters Club. Virgie and I have an epic conversation on: Weight discrimination Fatphobia Diet culture Body positivity Radical Self-Love Plus much more. You won't want to miss this one! If you enjoyed this episode please be sure to rate and review! For more on Virgie Tovar Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/virgietovar/ Website: https://www.virgietovar.com/ Podcast Rebel Eaters Club (New Season Jan.5, 2021): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rebel-eaters-club/id1495401238 TedxTalk Lose Hate Not Weight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZnsamRfxtY Victoria Evans Intuitive Eating and Body Image Coach To apply for 1:1 Coaching: https://www.victoriaevansofficial.com/coaching To sign up for my NEW FREE Food For Thought Daily Email Program: https://www.victoriaevansofficial.com/food-for-thought-sign-up To follow me on Instagram: @victoriaevansofficial https://www.instagram.com/victoriaevansofficial/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/victoriaevans/support

In this meal support episode, Jillian and Josée offer a grounding tool and chat about autumn, halloween and Longbottom the Corgi. Check out the takeaway resource: Rebel Eaters Club by Virgie Tovar Find us on Instagram: @joinourtablepodcast Make sure to subscribe and a leave a review!