New Legacy Radio

Despite the deeply personal nature of our reproductive experiences, women in particular, continue to face external restrictions, limiting or erasing our rights to bodily autonomy.

For women without children, there is further backlash, ranging from a lack of social acceptance to outright harassment on social media, and misrepresentation and a lack of true narratives in the media, to having our very lives and the terminology we use to identify our experiences, made illegal.

Today we will be joined by our guest, Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos, who is an award-winning journalist, researcher and truth-teller about the realities and the aftermath of ART assisted reproductive technology. She is also an award-winning author and the co-founder of the grassroots initiative ReproTechTruths.org.

We will discuss what it means for our personal journeys to be political, and what is mean to be responsive to what is happening in this context. From pronatalist propaganda and fertility decline, to the reproductive technologies industry, our community has become the target of human-centric, and perpetual economic growth narratives.

Join is for this in-depth conversation, and learn more about what you can do now, to respond to the current environment for people without children.

New Legacy Radio is honored to be joined by today's guest, Nicole Louie. She is the author of the recently released book Others Like Me: The Lives of Women without Children, published by Dialogue Books. The book was released in hardback, eBook, and audio in all English-speaking countries except North America on June 13th. Others Like Me will launch in North America on November 5th, published by House of Anansi. Others Like Me is the story of fourteen women around the world, from different walks of life, who don't have children. It's also the story of why Nicole Louie had to find them and what they taught her. Part memoir, part exploration of childlessness through candid conversations, this book showcases the many ways in which people find fulfillment outside of parenthood. And because the social expectation to procreate weighs the most on women, Louie focuses solely on them, their experiences, and how they flourish outside of motherhood. In doing so, she upends the stereotypes that diminish women who are not mothers and offers reassurance and companionship on a path less known. This book is a must-read that will resonate with those who have similar experiences and will raise the awareness of anyone wanting to understand the real-world impact of pronatalist bias. This deeply personal exploration of childless and childfree women is also a celebration of women's lives. The Irish Times selected Others Like Me as one of the nonfiction books to look out for in 2024 and the Stylist Magazine named it one of the best books about women without children. Tune in on Tuesday, July 30, for a powerful conversation with Author Nicole Louie that you won't want to miss! *Author Image: Photographer's Credit: © 2023 Amanda Braide

Today we celebrate International Childfree Day. In reflecting on what this day means for so many in our collective community, we also want to acknowledge the history and advocacy, behind the origins of this day, and the transition to becoming what it is today.

The National Organization for Non-Parents (NON), later named the National Alliance for Optional Parenthood (NAOP), was founded in 1972 by Ellen Peck and Shirley Radl. NON first designated August 1st as Non-Parents' Day, in 1973.

In 2013, Laura Carroll, childfree author and writer, lead the way in bringing back the acknowledgment and celebration of this day and date, as an annual “International Childfree Day. Laura guided these efforts for a decade, and this year, passed the torch to Childfree Media, which is co-founded by LeNora Faye and Cody Hetzel.

Joining us today are Joan Eisenstodt and Marie Bernardy, who were active participants in NON/NAOP and played key roles in education and visibility on behalf of the organization. Their personal stories of reproductive experiences and choices, and the responses to their public advocacy work demonstrate their deep commitment, to having a choice to become a parent or not. Their work helped create the foundation for many of the ways we continue to seek change for our community today.

We will also be joined by LeNora Faye and Cody Hetzel, the co-founders of Childfree Media, and the co-moderators of the Childfree Convention, which was held for the 3rd year, this past weekend.

You will not want to miss what these dynamic childfree guests have to share and exchange, from experiences and perspectives over the past 50 years, to their insight on what is most needed now, for our collective community to be recognized in equal and equitable ways, and beyond.

On this episode of New Legacy Radio, we will be joined by Dr. Jane van Dis. Dr. van Dis is an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Rochester and lectures internationally on the intersection of the climate crisis and women's maternal health.

Dr. van Dis will share her breadth of knowledge and experience, including the climate crisis and the carbon footprint of medicine, the presence and impact of microplastics, and ecological and population overshoot.

We will discuss the current state and impact of national and global crises, the changes required to disrupt these exponential realities, and why dismantling patriarchy is imperative for urgent, forward movement toward resolving the climate crisis.

Tune in live to learn more!

Today, on New Legacy Radio, we are honored to be joined by Dr. Adaira Landry and Dr. Resa E. Lewiss, authors of the recently released book, MicroSkills: Small Actions, Big Impact. Dr. Landry and Dr. Lewiss bring a fresh approach to navigating career and workplace stress and share their experiences as emergency medicine physicians.

MicroSkills offers a clear, guiding framework of how to take small, intentional steps toward the expertise or career you want to develop, and how to increase self-care to reduce overwhelm and prevent burnout, in the process.

Workplace burnout continues to have an increasing and pervasively adverse impact on people around the globe. In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared burnout to be an occupational phenomenon and further defined it as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress.

Workplace burnout rates vary by occupation and role and can be exacerbated by diverse life circumstances and organizational culture. One concerning example of the depth and prevalence of chronic occupational stress in the medical field. According to Medscape's 2024 physician burnout and depression report, almost half of physicians reported experiencing burnout in 2024. The highest rate of burnout was in emergency medicine (63%).

The report was based on a Mercer survey taken by 9,200 physicians of different ages across 29-plus specialties. According to the survey data, specialties with the highest rates of burnout after emergency medicine include OB-GYN (53%), oncology (53%), pediatrics (51%) and family medicine (51%).

What does this mean for the culture and business of work, individual practitioners, and employees going forward? How can we best navigate this today? Tune in live to learn how to immediately and effectively use MicroSkills for personal and professional self-care!

Tune in to New Legacy Radio today, and learn about the establishment of Single Studies as a global discipline, with today's guest, Dr. Craig Wynne. Dr. Wynne is the co-editor of the recently released, Singular Selves: An Introduction to Singles Studies. He also wrote the book How to be a Happy Bachelor and has published a number of articles on singlehood.

As often discussed on this show, we recognize the ways pronatalism impacts individual reproductive and relationship experiences, amidst status quo thinking and assumptions, and biases experienced by those without children, and those who are unmarried, uncoupled, in diverse relationship structures, and those who are single. Singlism, a term coined by Dr. Bella DePaulo, defines the stigmatizing and negative stereotyping of and discrimination against adults, specifically because they are single.

Dr. Wynne will speak to this, and a range of terminology reflecting individual and collective experiences of singlehood. He will also address the why of an intersectional, interdisciplinary global approach to Single Studies, as we consider the questions: How do we best examine the ways systemic, social, and media perspectives have influenced the understanding of singlehood? How can we change the impact of these influences on those who are single, and center the lived experiences of singlehood for greater social change? Join us for this and much more in today's show!

The emergence of Single Studies as a discipline is both a welcome advancement in education and research and an acknowledgment of the millions of circumstantially single people and those who are single by choice. The ever-present and growing demographic of single people has long been subjected to a lack of understanding and pronatalist-driven, status-quo social stigmatization and discrimination through exclusion from equal rights and public policy considerations. This has led to inequitable and adverse social, economic, and political outcomes and unmeasured impact on single people. Joining the show today to discuss these matters and more, are Dr. Geoff MacDonald, Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo, and Dr. Elyakim Kislev, senior lecturer in the School of Public Policy and Governance at the Hebrew University, specializing in relationships, technology, loneliness, and singles studies. We will also share details of the 3rd International Singles Studies Conference, which will be held in person in Boston and virtually via Zoom on July 5, 2024, which they co-chair with Dr. Ketaki Chowkhani. Tune in to this in-depth conversation to learn more about the work of Dr. MacDonald and Dr. Kislev, and the upcoming conference!

The emergence of Single Studies as a discipline is both a welcome advancement in education and research and an acknowledgment of the millions of circumstantially single people and those who are single by choice. The ever-present and growing demographic of single people has long been subjected to a lack of understanding and pronatalist-driven, status-quo social stigmatization and discrimination through exclusion from equal rights and public policy considerations. This has led to inequitable and adverse social, economic, and political outcomes and unmeasured impact on single people. Joining the show today to discuss these matters and more, are Dr. Geoff MacDonald, Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo, and Dr. Elyakim, senior lecturer in the School of Public Policy and Governance at the Hebrew University, specializing in relationships, technology, loneliness, and singles studies. We will also share details of the 3rd International Singles Studies Conference, which will be held in person in Boston and virtually via Zoom on July 5, 2024, which they co-chair with Dr. Ketaki Chowkhani. Tune in to this in-depth conversation to learn more about the work of Dr. MacDonald and Dr. Kislev, and the upcoming conference!

People who are single and without children, comprise a growing, global demographic, and yet, these lived experiences remain largely unacknowledged vis-a-via the status quo. There is also a common tendency to perceive the emergence of single people without children, as being very recent.

This perspective both eclipses historical literature depicting the lives and voices of single women, and furthers the invisibility of every day discrimination and inequity, based on reproductive identity and relationship status. What can we learn from these cultural narratives and the historic contexts in which they were written?

Today, we are honored to be in conversation with Dr. Katherine Fama, who will share her in-depth work and perspectives on the historical narratives of single women in literature, and how these narratives relate and inform us today. Dr. Fama is the coeditor of Single Lives: Modern Women in Literature, Culture, and Film, and teaches in the School of English, Film, and Drama at University College Dublin. Tune in to learn more!

On this episode of New Legacy Radio, we will be joined by Dr. Jane van Dis. Dr. van Dis is an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Rochester and lectures internationally on the intersection of the climate crisis and women's maternal health. Dr. van Dis will share her breadth of knowledge and experience, including the climate crisis and the carbon footprint of medicine, the presence and impact of microplastics, and ecological and population overshoot. We will discuss the current state and impact of national and global crises, the changes required to disrupt these exponential realities, and why dismantling patriarchy is imperative for urgent, forward movement toward resolving the climate crisis. Tune in live to learn more!