We began this episode with a clip from a 1972 press conference in which Gloria Steinem protested an abortion reform bill passed by the New York State Legislature designed to circumvent the feminist demand that women have the right to choose.
Our theme music this week is “I Am Woman,” written by Helen Reddy and Ray Burton, performed by Tanya Stephens, copyrighted music licensed from LickD.
If you wish to read my memory of 9/11 on the 25th anniversary of this tragic event, go here.
Gloria Steinem at a Fire Drill Friday with Jane Fonda and Dolores Huerta, an event organized by Fonda to protest government inaction against climate change, in Washington D.C. on December 20, 2019. Image courtesy of Fire Drill Fridays/Wikimedia Commons
In the News:
* On the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks on the Pentagon and Manhattan’s World Trade Center, a New York Department of Health study reveals what we know about long-term health damage from toxins released as soon as the first plane hit. Documents released by the Mamdani administration show that although New Yorkers were told the air was safe to breathe almost immediately, 10 months later, officials were still finding asbestos up to half a mile away. Of the 54,000 people in the Ground Zero study, half are being, or have been, treated for cancer. Some of them, and others, are also under care for respiratory and mental health, as well as dementia. Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who as on the scene that day for hours, appears to be a possible dementia: in addition to his passionate defense of the January 6 terrorist and support for election denialism, Giuliani has announced that Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is Muslim and constantly defamed as a terrorist in right-wing media, should not attend the ceremony.
* As the midterms approach, Donald Trump decided to double down on making the election about him, even as his popularity declines and candidates in tossup districts actively avoid him. A two-day midterm convention in Dallas this week cuts the sheep—candidates already receiving funds and endorsements from a man with 38% favorability rating—from the goats, Republicans with an unexpected family emergency that kept them as far from Dallas as possible. But both choices are bad: embracing Trump drives away independents, while separating him risks losing MAGA fanatics. The Brookings institution released a report this week that has Democrats on track to outperform previous forecasts as they take the House by 25-30 seats, while CBS news has expanded the number of Senate seats in playfrom 6 to 12. Here’s an account of Day 1, which featured a two-hour stemwinder from Trump; and Day 2, which featured JD Vance talking about his wife and Charlie Kirk.
* Then, there was the unexpected, WTF convention video appearance from Democratic Senator John Fetterman. This week, we learned that a new X account allegedly controlled by former Fetterman staffers—@FettermanStaff—plans “to share our stories (and screenshots) to show Pennsylvanians exactly who their Senator is.” The first document dump is scheduled for next week, when the Senate is back in session. But the announcement comes on the heels of a Wall Street Journal exposé by Will Hobson and Siobhan Hughes. It alleges that Fetterman is indifferent to the work of the Senate, spends much of his time doing conservative media spots, fails to meet with constituents, and is isolated in the Democratic party. This is not news: an earlier report by Ben Terris at New York Magazine portrayed Fetterman as depressed, exhausted, erratic, and of uneven mental health since the stroke that disabled him in the 2022 campaign. Last week, Fetterman lost his third chief of staff in less than three years.
Your hosts:
Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.
Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
News focus: The feminists we lost in August
* We were all shaken on August 25 when Dolly Parton, who had cancelled a number of events in the months following husband Carl Dean’s death from Alzheimers, passed at 80 after a short bout with cancer. On September 3, 92-year-old radical feminist Gloria Steinem passed; then, on September 5, Robin Morgan, an essayist, poet and colleague of Steinem’s at Ms. Magazine, died at the age of 85.
* All three women were hard-working and prolific. Morgan wrote 20 books, and compiled the first anthology of radical feminist writing, Sisterhood is Powerful, in 1970. Steinem founded Ms. Magazine, wrote 11 books, traveled hundreds of thousands of miles for the movement, and created nonprofits to funnel money into feminist causes. Parton, who would not have used the word “feminist” to describe herself, nevertheless displayed all the best traits that feminism upholds. She was independent, kind, a performer, a self-made multi-millionaire, a tireless philanthropist, and endlessly creative; she wrote as many as 5,000 songs, 1000 of which she recorded herself on 49 studio albums.
* Both Parton and Steinem made feminism approachable and friendly. This is something Robin Morgan was never accused of, although all three women believed that women could not create an egalitarian society without including men in that vision. Feminist Katha Pollitt also notes that, despite the occasional blunder (such as her remark that young women supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 because “that’s where the boys are,”) Steinem was witty, charming, kind, generous, and believed in a big tent movement for women. But she is also currently being targeted by socialist feminists and other leftists as an agent of the state who sabotaged feminism’s most radical impulses.
* Claire and Neil also discussed the history of feminist struggles over the meaning of beauty. In contrast to Dolly’s deliberate artifice, Gail Collins noted that Steinem’s simple good looks as she became older were a guide to rethinking the relationship between the female aging process and the preservation of a youthful appearance.
* Another thing these three women had in common was a belief that men were part of a feminist project. Although she emphasized women’s independence, Steinem—who married once, late in life—welcomed men into the movement, and believed that true liberation would include all genders. Morgan was married to poet Kenneth Pitchford for 20 years: he was a founding member of the Effeminists, a subset of Gay Liberation Front founded to fight misogyny; they had a son, Blake, who Morgan loved dearly. Parton, on the other hand, was married to one man her entire life, businessman Carl Dean, and skillfully navigated a music industry dominated by men with her wit, intelligence, and canny business sense. Although she had no children, she cared deeply about the welfare of children. She also used her cultural power to defend LGBTQ+ people and, among other things, paid for her chauffeur’s gender transition.
* Dolly’s passing produced a gusher of love across political differences, perhaps because her feminism went unstated. In contrast, although many commenters have expressed fond memories of both women, the deaths of Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan have resulted in something more familiar: accusations on the right and the left that they undermined the well-being of women, families, and society. One notable contribution to this is the revival of charges, initially launched by Redstockings in the early 1970s, that Steinem began her career with a CIA front, and that her central goal was not to elevate feminism but to suppress its most radical impulses. Similarly, within hours after her death, numerous feminist critics have denounced her as having spearheaded the anti-trans, anti-sex worker, and anti-pornography activism in the movement.
What we want to go viral:
* Neil wants you to read Haley Cohen Gilliland’s A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children (Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 2025),a New York Times Notable Book and Pulitzer Prize Finalist about a group of courageous women in Argentina who fought to find and reclaim grandchildren stolen by the junta between 1976 and 1983.
* Claire wants you to read Gregory Barber’s “The 92-Year-Old Mathematician and the Teenage Apprentice” (New York Times, September 6, 2026.) It’s a longread about an elderly female professor who teamed up with a 15-year-old who loves math: together, they solved a problem no one had ever solved and launched a girl on her own career as a scholar.
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