For this episode, Tuesday host Carousel Bayrd is in conversation with Ada Calhoun, author of the new book Why We Can’t Sleep, which highlights the struggles Gen X women experience as the perpetually ignored “Jan Brady” generation wedged between the larger contingents of Boomers and Millennials. From latchkey kid to overwhelmed parent to underpaid career woman, Gen X women were raised with high aspirations but given little to no societal support as they entered the workforce while held to higher standards of parenting.

Over the course of the hour, they cover topics like the trap of “having it all,” gender disparities in the household, exhaustion and sleep loss, women’s unseen labor, career expectations and workplace discrepancies, effects of the pandemic on Gen X women, and the overlooked health toll of perimenopause.

Ada Calhoun is a journalist and non-fiction author whose books include St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Street (Norton, 2015), the essay collection Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give (Norton, 2017), and Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis (Grove Press, 2020).

Cover image by Prettysleepy from Pixabay