In this episode, host Michelle Browder sits down with Rose for a raw, generous conversation about the realities of pregnancy and early motherhood. Rose opens up about the anxiety that gripped her throughout her pregnancy — the fear of becoming another statistic — and the deliberate, careful process of finding an OB-GYN who would actually listen to her. That search carries extra weight given her own family history: her grandfather, Dr. Robert Williams, was one of the only Black OBs serving rural Alabama, delivering over 7,000 babies across Bullock and Macon Counties — a legacy strangers still stop Rose to talk about today.

Rose walks through her full birth story, from a long induction to an unplanned C-section, and doesn't shy away from the harder chapters that followed: the challenges of breastfeeding, the mental load of postpartum motherhood, and a terrifying medical emergency that sent her newborn son to Birmingham on a life flight. The conversation also turns to the state of maternal healthcare in Alabama today — hospital closures, the shrinking number of OB-GYNs in rural counties, and the growing case for midwifery and home birth as women search for care they can trust.

Honest, funny, and deeply human, this episode is a reminder that behind every statistic on maternal health is a real story — and a real family fighting to be heard.

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For the first time, Michelle Browder turns the mic on herself. In this solo episode — celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Mothers of Gynecology Monument and the tenth anniversary of More Than Tours — Michelle traces the full arc of how she got here: leaving her "best life" in Atlanta to answer her mother's call back to Montgomery in 2002, turning a run-down café into a safe haven for the city's young people, and the professional humiliation during COVID that sent her into a depression — and, unexpectedly, straight to a horse stable, where the idea for the monument was born.

She walks through it all: dropping out of the Art Institute of Atlanta after a professor called her portfolio "too black," discovering Robert Thom's postcard-sized painting of J. Marion Sims that changed the course of her life at 19, teaching herself to weld in a San Francisco shop during the pandemic, and the five-year sprint from sketch to sculpture that led to Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey standing in Montgomery today. Along the way, she gives credit where it's due — to early believers like Gloria Steinem and the Packard Foundation, to partners like Charles Johnson and Dr. Aletha Maybank, and to a memorable tour she gave to Governor Gavin Newsom that helped move real legislation for doulas and midwives.

Equal parts vulnerable, hilarious, and hard-won, this episode is the origin story behind the movement — told, for once, entirely in her own words.

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In this impromptu spotlight episode, Michelle Browder reunites in Montgomery with two women from the University of Michigan who first hosted her three years earlier: Dana L. Thomas, MPH, Director of the Adolescent Health Initiative at Michigan Medicine, and Dr. Tonya Kneff-Chang, a critical and interdisciplinary historian who leads campus history tours confronting the university's own hidden histories — from a Native American land treaty plaque no one had ever noticed, to the University of Michigan Museum of Art's copy of Robert Thom's 1952 painting of J. Marion Sims, the so-called "father of gynecology," and the enslaved women — Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey — he experimented on without anesthesia.

The conversation traces a genuinely full-circle story: how Michelle's Mothers of Gynecology monument found its way into a University of Michigan medical school classroom, how one student used her work to teach a room full of future clinicians about intersectionality, and how that same classroom experience led Dana and Tonya straight to Montgomery — to the actual site of the former Negro Women's Hospital where Sims once treated his subjects. Along the way, the three dig into cultural memory sites, the deliberate placement (and erasure) of monuments across the Deep South, and what it means to hold grief and reverence in the same breath.

Learn more about the Mothers of Gynecology monument at www.anarchalucybetsey.org

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In this special spotlight edition of Listen to Me Good, host Michelle Browder welcomes two women leading the fight for birth equity all the way from Kansas: Dr. Charlotte Smith, founder of the Kansas Birth Equity Network (KBEN) and director of birth equity at KU Med's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and her colleague, a KBEN grants manager and first-generation Nigerian immigrant. The two are in Montgomery, Alabama learning the history behind the maternal health crisis they fight every day back home.

Dr. Smith traces her path from a 300-person town in rural Arkansas to a PhD studying Black infant mortality, and the founding of KBEN — a research network built not around academic theory, but around trust: Panera Bread meetings with sorority and fraternity leaders, a "Celebrate Day 366" campaign that flipped the narrative from infant death to infant survival, and a network that's grown to nearly 200 members across two states. They talk candidly about building a doula-led prenatal care program, distributing $50,000 in community mini-grants, launching a barbershop mental health initiative for Black fathers, and fighting to keep their organization's name — and its promise to the community — intact under shifting DEI policy. At the center of it all is a simple, radical idea: the people closest to the problem already have the solutions. You just have to listen.

This episode is part of Listen to Me Good's ongoing series spotlighting the organizations and leaders working to change maternal health outcomes for Black women and families nationwide.

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In this installment of Listen to Me Good, host Michelle Browder sits down with the woman who started it all — her mother, Buena Vista Browder. A historian, seamstress's daughter, and self-described former beatnik from the South Side of Chicago, Buena opens up about surviving an abusive first marriage, the moment she fled with her infant son and never looked back, and how she rebuilt her life in Denver, Colorado — where she met and fell in love with a young Army medic named Chap.

The conversation traces Buena's decades of quiet, foundational work: serving as an acting prison chaplain at Draper Correctional Center, taking in formerly incarcerated women like the unforgettable "Chaka Red Blood Khan," running the ministry's thrift store for 25 years, and retiring from a career as a historian at the Air University Library. At 86 — and counting her pregnancy months toward "87," as she puts it — Buena talks candidly about aging with purpose, her work at We're Still Here's Village senior community, and why she never experienced a single symptom of menopause. She also shares hard-won wisdom for women still in abusive relationships: get out before it's too late.

Equal parts funny, heartbreaking, and inspiring, this episode is a tribute to the woman who shaped the storyteller, the artist, and the movement — and who's still building something new today.

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For decades, Tonya Terry was the face Montgomery woke up to — a fixture on WSFA, the NBC affiliate she grew up watching as a kid in Troy, Alabama. In this episode, host Michelle Browder sits down with the longtime news anchor turned wellness advocate to talk about what it really took to walk away from the career — and the identity — she built over 25+ years in broadcast news. Tonya opens up about the moment reading the Ahmaud Arbery story on air broke something loose in her, watching colleagues like Don Lemon and Joy Reid pushed out of the industry during the same turbulent stretch, and the years-long process of realizing it was time to go.

The conversation moves from the newsroom into everything that came after: reclaiming her health, navigating menopause and hair loss, the emotional toll of "big beautiful woman" stereotypes she carried on camera for years, and the community of women she's now building through her own platform, Very Tanya Terry. Michelle and Tonya talk candidly about weathering, stress, self-image, and what it means to finally prioritize yourself after a lifetime of showing up for everyone else.

This episode is part of Listen to Me Good's ongoing series on women's health — go back and listen to the earlier episodes as this season builds toward a bigger conversation on reclaiming our health, together.

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Filmmaker, storyteller, and justice advocate Starling Thomas joins host Michelle Browder to talk about her upcoming film Born Captive — a powerful, cinematic look at Black women giving birth in bondage across generations, inspired by her own mother's incarceration while pregnant. Starling opens up about watching her mother taken into custody at seven and a half months pregnant, surviving two years in the federal system while fighting — and winning — her own case, and channeling that experience into a body of work dedicated to elevating the voices of justice-impacted women. She and Michelle dig into the maternal health crisis inside women's prisons, the fight to end the shackling of incarcerated women in labor, and why storytelling itself can be a form of healing.

Starring Naturi Naughton, Born Captive is currently on the festival circuit and headed toward an impact campaign built around screenings, panels, and policy change. Starling will be joining the Alabama Strategy summit October 1st–3rd in Montgomery, Alabama, to continue the conversation in person.

Support the film at borncaptive.org, or text BORN CAPTIVE to 41444.

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In our very first episode, host Michelle Browder sits down with the man who started it all — her father, Chaplain Curtis "Chap" Browder. Appointed by Governor George Wallace in 1978 as Alabama's first Black prison chaplain, Chap has spent nearly five decades walking into the state's prisons and refusing to look away. In this conversation, he opens up about the voice that called him back to Alabama, the violence he survived as a young man in Jim Crow Birmingham, an unforgettable encounter with George Wallace decades later, and the moment a five-day school suspension — and ten tubes of paint — set his daughter on the path to becoming an artist and activist. Along the way, Chap reflects on what real prison ministry looks like, why women are the fastest-growing population behind bars, and why he still won't stop working the yard after five o'clock.

This episode also previews the Alabama Strategy, a three-day gathering October 1st–3rd in Montgomery, Alabama, bringing together faith leaders, attorneys, and advocates — including Bryan Stevenson and Dr. Roger A. Mitchell Jr. — to confront mass incarceration and the growing crisis of women giving birth behind bars. Register at chaplainbrowder.org.

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She was born behind bars. Now she's telling her story. In this clip from Listen to Me Good, Michelle Browder and Chaplain Curtis Browder preview Born Captive, the upcoming film from Starling Thomas — a woman born in prison whose story exposes what really happens when incarcerated women give birth behind bars. It's a preview of the conversations driving the Alabama Strategy, a three-day summit October 1st–3rd in Montgomery, Alabama, confronting mass incarceration and the growing crisis facing women in the justice system. Watch the full episode of Listen to Me Good now.

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