Fireside with Blair Hodges

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE IN THE RELATIONSCAPES FEED NOW! Some songs wait decades before they reveal what they’re really about. Back in the 90s when 20-year-old Steven Page wrote “What a Good Boy,” he understood it as a plea to ease up on restrictive gender expectations that harmed boys and girls. But as he performed it over the years, he realized it was about much more than that. The song can be understood as a stirring anthem exploring gender identity, wrestling against the binary world's hostility to people who don't fit the mold, trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, gay, or otherwise. Page, a founding member of the smash-hit band Barenaked Ladies and an artist now working deeply in his solo career, has spent much of his life writing songs that explore vulnerability, humor, grief, and joy. His instinct to blend comedy with pathos has made his work resonate in ways he couldn’t have predicted. Page reflects on how that song came to be, how meaning changes over time, and on the responsibility artists carry when their work becomes part of someone else’s becoming. Full transcript is available at relationscapes.org. But you'll want to hear this one! ABOUT THE GUEST Steven Page is a Canadian musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and founding member of the music group Barenaked Ladies. Since going solo, Page has released five albums, he performs with groups like the Trans-Canada Highwaymen, and he publicly advocates on issues including mental and behavioral health. He has three sons and lives in New York with his partner, Christine Benedicto. I'm not sure if he has any dogs or cats, and I forgot to ask him. Join his Patreon!.

When George M. Johnson was a kid growing up in New Jersey, they loved Black History Month. They were thrilled to learn about the people who shaped American history for the better. But as they got older, they started noticing things were missing—hidden stories that might have meant the most to a queer kid like they were. George was especially drawn to one of the most dazzling moments in Black history, the Harlem Renaissance. They went searching for what had been covered up, forgotten, or erased, and resurrected those stories in their book, Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I'd Known. It's a celebration of the Black queer writers, performers, and activists of 1920s America. George M. Johnson joins us to talk about Black and queer culture—how it impacted the past, how it enlivens our present, and how it can open up new possibilities for the future. This is a conversation about truth-telling, lineage, identity, and the stories that save us when we finally get to hear them. Full transcript is available at relationscapes.org. ABOUT THE GUEST George M. Johnson is an award-winning Black non-binary writer, author, and activist. They are the author of the bestselling Young Adult memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue discussing their adolescence growing up as a young Black Queer boy in New Jersey. Their other books include Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I'd Known, and There's Always Next Year. George has also published in places like Teen Vogue, The Root, Essence, Ebony, THEM, and The Grio.

Is it possible to raise kind, feminist boys in our era of manosphere misogyny? Sonora Jha, an Indian-American immigrant and single mother, says yes. But it takes a lot more than good intentions.  She reflects on raising her son across cultures, teaching empathy through film, talking frankly about sex, consent, and body image, and modeling apology without demanding forgiveness. She pushes back on the idea that feminism harms boys, showing how it can actually free them from shame, silence, and isolation. Sonora Jha joins us to talk about her book, "How to Raise a Feminist Son: Motherhood, Masculinity, and the Making of My Family." Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.  ABOUT THE GUEST After a career in journalism in India and Singapore, Dr. Sonora Jha became a professor at Seattle University. She is author of four books, including How to Raise a Feminist Son (2021). Her novels include The Laughter, which won the 2024 Washington State Book Award for Fiction and was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by the New Yorker, NPR, and others, Foreign (2013), a finalist for the Shakti Bhatt Prize and the Hindu Prize, and her latest, Intemperance. 

Adoption is often framed as a loving and selfless decision made by women who want to give their babies a better life—but many relinquishing mothers say it doesn’t actually feel like a real choice at all. Private domestic adoption in the U.S. operates under conditions of high demand, limited supply, and deep economic inequality. Researchers say women rarely choose adoption over abortion or parenting, and many relinquishing parents report long-term trauma.  Sociologist Gretchen Sisson draws on a decade of interviews in her book "Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood" to examine who adoption really serves—and who it leaves behind.  She invites us to rethink adoption from the ground up, and asks what real support for families would actually look like. Show notes and transcript available at relationscapes.org. ABOUT THE GUEST Gretchen Sisson studies abortion and adoption in the United States as a sociologist at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science at the University of California, San Francisco. She is the author of "Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood," based on hundreds of in-depth interviews with women who have relinquished infants for domestic adoption over the past 60 years.

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE IN THE RELATIONSCAPES FEED NOW! We’re a little over halfway through January and already it's been A LOT. The Trump administration  kidnapped the de facto Venezuelan president. The chairman of the Federal Reserve announced he’s being targeted for prosecution because the president wants to control monetary policy. A queer mother in Minneapolis was shot in the head in broad daylight by ICE, who is occupying the city, and the government has been trying to portray her as a terrorist. And etc. Andrea Pitzer is one of my favorite political analysts right now, and I asked her how we might make it out of this mess. Full transcript is available at relationscapes.org.  About the Guest Andrea Pitzer is a journalist and author, known for her books One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov, and Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World (2021). She hosts the popular podcast Next Comes What and writes the newsletter Degenerate Art.