Relationscapes

Angela Tucker is a Black woman who was adopted by white parents as a very young child. Angela says transracial adoptees like her grow up wrestling with complicated feelings of gratitude and love, but also rejection, loss, and confusion about their heritage. 
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
Angela Tucker is author of “You Should Be Grateful:" Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption. Her family story was featured in the documentary Closure. She has over 15 years of experience working within adoption and foster care agencies, mentoring over 200 adoptees as founder of the Adoptee Mentoring Society. In addition to producing the podcast The Adoptee Next Door, she consulted with NBC’s This Is Us.
 
Full transcript available here at relationscapes.org.

When Jessi Hempel came out of the closet she had no idea her whole church-going family had been hiding in there with her. And things got complicated fast when the closet door kept swinging open.
 
SHOW NOTES
Jessi Hempel, "My Brother’s Pregnancy and the Making of a New American Family," TIME (Sept. 12, 2016).
 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jessi Hempel is author of The Family Outing: A Memoir. She is also host of the award-winning podcast Hello Monday, and a senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn. Her features and cover stories have appeared in Wired, Fortune, and TIME. She has appeared on CNN, PBS, MSNBC, Fox, and CNBC, addressing the culture and business of technology. Hempel is a graduate of Brown University and received a master’s in journalism from UC Berkeley. She lives in Brooklyn with her wife and children.
Full transcript available here at relationscapes.org.

One hundred years ago, a bright new age for children was dawning in America. Child labor laws were being passed, public education was spreading, and more. But Adam Benforado says America stopped short in its revolution of children's rights.
Today, more than eleven million American children live in poverty. We deny young people any political power, while we fail to act on the issues that matter most to them: racism, inequality, and climate change. That's why Adam is calling for a new revolution for kids.
He joins us to discuss his book, A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All.
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
Adam Benforado is a professor of law at the Drexel University Kline School of Law and the New York Times best-selling author of A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All and Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice. His research, teaching, and advocacy is focused on children’s rights and criminal justice. A graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, he served as a clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and an attorney at Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C. He has published numerous scholarly articles, and his popular writing has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Scientific American, Slate, and The Atlantic. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and children.
 
Full transcript available here at relationscapes.org.

Your family is...loving? Your family is...hurtful? Your family is...all this and more? If you feel overwhelmed when you think about your family, this episode will help you understand your anxiety and give you evidence-based tools to repair it. 
Dr. Mariel Buqué is a leading specialist in trauma psychology. She says our physical and mental health challenges can be rooted in family trauma passed down through the generations—not just culturally, but even biologically. 
We're talking about her new book, Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma.
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
Dr. Mariel Buqué is an Afro-Dominican psychologist who received her doctorate in counseling psychology from Columbia University, where she also trained as a fellow in holistic mental health. She is a world-renowned intergenerational trauma expert.
 
Full transcript available here at relationscapes.org.

Cat Bohannon says for far too long the story of human evolution has ignored the female body. Her new book offers a sweeping revision of human history. It's an urgent and necessary corrective that will forever change your understanding of birth and why it's more difficult for humans than virtually any other animal species on the planet. 
Her best-selling book is called Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, and we're talking all about it in this episode. 
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
Cat Bohannon is a researcher and author with a Ph.D. from Columbia University in the evolution of narrative and cognition. Her essays and poems have appeared in Scientific American, Mind, Science Magazine, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Georgia Review, The Story Collider, and Poets Against the War. She lives with her family in Seattle.
 
Full transcript available here at relationscapes.org.

Welcome to Relationscapes!
The way society thinks about family, love, and identity seems to be evolving faster than ever. In our hyperconnected world, these changes feel more urgent, and as we're seeing every day in the news, it's sparking backlash. So what can we do? 
I didn't have to worry much about that before as a white straight cisgender guy. But I realized that the less I knew about people who were different from me, the less I actually understood myself and the world. And the truth is, relationships have always been evolving.
I'm journalist Blair Hodges, and I'm inviting you to join me on a podcast journey called Relationscapes. I interview the best guides who can help us navigate the shifting terrain of relationships—exploring who we are and how we connect with each other.
Together we'll walk in the footsteps of best-selling authors and award-winning researchers from all kinds of backgrounds to get the lay of the land on all kinds of topics—family building, feminism, gender identity, masculinity, racism, intergenerational trauma, equal partnerships, sexuality, and more.
It can be hard to keep up with all this stuff. Relationscapes can help. I ask the difficult, or embarrassing, or intriguing questions, so you don't always have to.   
"We're breaking down the silence and the taboo." —Karen Tang, MD
"I was not allowing myself to think about being gay." –Sara Glass
"It's creating empathy." –Paul Scheer
If we want to help make the world more just and welcoming, we need a better understanding of the history and context of our relationships. As a podcast listener, you know how satisfying it can be to stop scrolling and go deeper. That's what Relationscapes is for.
"When you step away from the norm, it's gonna influence the way that people treat you." –Eris Young
"Everyone's families can be recognized as valid." –Abbie Goldberg
"Given that I can't solve every problem, here's a couple of things that I do want to get involved in." –David Pakman
Our relationships aren’t just personal. They’re historical, cultural, and political. And when we have a better map of the territory, we won't just be reacting to all this change—we can actively help shape it. Join me on Relationscapes to find out how. 
Follow for updates on IG @_relationscapes.