Top Rank Podcast

One of our favorite things about making this podcast is that it gives us an excuse to connect with people we admire, and to stay in touch with them. Sometimes these relationships blossom into other collaborations, as is the case with our guest for this episode, who first joined the show ten years ago (for our second episode ever in 2016) and later became a contributor to our 2023 book, “The Nameplate.” We’re are overjoyed to welcome back scholar, educator, and author Eric Darnell Pritchard. Eric writes and teaches about literacy, rhetoric, and their intersections with fashion, beauty, popular culture, identity, and power. Their first book, “Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy” received three awards. On this episode we discuss Eric’s new and fantastic children’s book (Clothes to Make You Smile: Patrick Kelly Designs His Dreams), their theory of sartorial politics, and the transformative power of being authentically yourself.

If you’ve tuned into Top Rank over the last year, you may have noticed that we’ve been spending some time with the topics of mothering and parenting more broadly. This is not a new interest—we actually did a five-part episode series about birth work back in 2019—but now that we are both parents our entry point has shifted and sharpened.

On this episode, we’ll be discussing a new book by Madeline Lane-McKinley, a feminist author, parent, and educator based in Portland, Oregon. “Solidarity with Children: An Essay Against Adult Supremacy,” which came out late last year, weaves personal experience and political analysis to examine the history of childhood as we know it and consider what it would mean to center children in how we design and inhabit the world. In our conversation with Madeline, we think critically about where our expectations of children (and childhood in general) come from, and how challenging our deepest norms requires truly understanding what we take for granted.

We’re wrapping the year with someone we’ve been looking forward to speaking with since the very beginning of it. We’re so honored to have shared a conversation with the inimitable and visionary Wafa Ghnaim—an art and dress historian, fashion researcher, embroiderer, curator, archivist, educator, and author specializing in Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian, and Lebanese dress history, embroidery, and adornment.

We met Wafa when she attended a talk we gave about nameplate jewelry the Brooklyn Museum in February, and were immediately captivated both by her presence and her incredible book “Tatreez & Tea.” Through writing, teaching, and the Tatreez Institute, which she founded in 2016, Wafa has made it her life’s work to pay homage to and preserve Palestinian fashion history in particular—both its deep past and its continued innovation and evolution.

We spoke with her about material culture and oral tradition, the intricacies of provenance and appropriation, and how people make critical meaning through the art of dress.

Episode 50 ‼️

We’re celebrating this milestone with someone very special, and fitting for the occasion—Alice Grandoit-Šutka.

Anyone who has been following this podcast for a while now is likely familiar with the magazine—also called Top Rank—from which it came. Alice was the co-founder and creator of that publication, made in Brooklyn, which highlighted women who were leading groundbreaking and culture-shifting practices at the time. Though the two of us knew each other prior to the genesis of Top Rank Magazine, it was the first thing we ever worked on together, and it is the reason for everything we’ve created together since. This episode presents a truly full circle moment, as we welcome Alice herself back to the show that was born of her brainchild. 

In addition to a friend, and an impactful and generative force in our lives, Alice is a research-based designer, host, and publisher. Over the past 15 years, she has developed an expansive practice that is equal parts experimental, referential, and relational, and exists at the intersections of the arts, community engagement, and food. For episode 50, we take a trip down memory lane to reflect on how Alice’s creative universe took shape, and continues to evolve.

On our 49th episode, we enjoyed the rare opportunity to share an hour with a writer whose work has been hugely important to both of us. Jungian analyst and podcaster Lisa Marchiano is the author of several books, including one that we hold especially close: “Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself.” In the last five years, we both became mothers, and because of this we’ve been navigating completely new lives and ways of relating to ourselves, to the world around us, and to time itself. There nothing quite like the initiation into parenthood. It is joyful, disorienting, and profoundly beautiful—and, at times, full of loss, grief, and frustration. It was an honor to speak to Marchiano about the many and rich complexities and contradictions of this experience, and how we learn to make meaning from even our most turbulent transformations.

Our intro (“Love is Love”) and outro (“My Ace”) are courtesy of KING VISION ULTRA, 2025.

For our 48th episode, we shared time with the brilliant Emily Manwaring—an artist from and living in New York City whose tender, evocative, & multidimensional works on canvas have been shown at galleries and institutions such as Canada, New Image Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Venice Biennale. We first came into contact with Emily when we licensed one of her paintings to illustrate our 2023 book about nameplate jewelry and have remained drawn both to her prolific creativity and generous spirit. We spoke about what led her to start making images, the need to stay grounded and purposeful while navigating the fickle pressures of the art industry, and how the poetry of NYC life and heritage emerges in her work.

Our intro (“Love is Love”) and outro (“My Ace”) are courtesy of KING VISION ULTRA, 2025.

Our 47th episode welcomes dynamic duo Melissa Sáenz Gordon & Molly Salas of Soft Power Vote: a civic engagement resource that leverages digital, print, and live formats to encourage New Yorkers—and especially millennials and Gen Z—to vote! While just a few days away from the Democratic mayoral primary election in NYC, we’re honored to share the perspectives of two people who have been extremely busy engaging us, and so many of our peers, with crucial information and tools around the urgency of participating in local political infrastructures. This conversation unpacks what brought each of them to this work, some of the eccentricities of election policies and logistics in NYC, and, most importantly, the complexities of navigating the inevitable cynicism of a world in turmoil to act on the belief that we can and must each contribute to shaping and caring for the city we hold so dear.

To learn more about Soft Power Vote, visit them on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/softpowervote/

Our intro (“Love is Love”) and outro (“My Ace”) are courtesy of KING VISION ULTRA, 2025.

For episode 46, we spoke to scholar and author Francesca Sobande, whose research focuses on the impact of digital media in shaping how we perceive, understand, and experience the world and each other. Our conversation explores Francesca’s numerous books (which address topics such as the online lives of Black women in the UK, the ways that big brands manipulate, exploit, and even derail social justice movements, and the commodification of care culture in COVID-19), and the way digital media informs *and* is informed by what we think is “real life.”

Our intro (“Love is Love”) and outro (“My Ace”) are courtesy of KING VISION ULTRA, 2025.

On episode 45, we welcomed scholar, community arts educator, curator, and artist Dr. Jillian Hernandez (@pastelitocookie), whose work challenges the ways racialized and working-class bodies, sexualities, and cultural practices are policed through gendered tropes of deviancy and respectability. We spoke to Jillian about her debut book “Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment” (2020); the insurgent Miami-based art collective, Women on the Rise!, which she founded in 2004; her personal, lived journey into scrutinizing the cultural politics of style; and the radical possibilities of excess.

Our intro (“Love is Love”) and outro (“My Ace”) are courtesy of KING VISION ULTRA, 2025.

For episode 44, we invited illustrator, author, and comedian Daisy Ruiz (@draizys) to bring us into her journey as an award-winning cartoonist and, more recently, aspiring comedian. We talked with Daisy about her highly-acclaimed, super inspiring, and hilarious first comic book—”Gordita: Built Like This” (2023)—and how she combined memory, fiction, and humor to create a parable about the body politics of girlhood. Our conversation digs into how she creates whole worlds on paper; the influence of growing up in the Bronx on her eye and style of storytelling; and how comics can capture the complexity and magic of everyday life.

Our intro (“Love is Love”) and outro (“My Ace”) are courtesy of KING VISION ULTRA, 2025.