BABBLERY.com: Writer Joan Gelfand’s career has been bookended by two “strange moments,” with the power of the 70s women’s movement at one end and the fight against authoritarianism on the other …
BABBLERY.com: What does it take for an independent filmmaker to shoot a film in a country that lacks a functional government? Haitian filmmaker Alexandrine Benjamin speaks about the difficulty of shooting her short film, N Ap Boule, which is a fictional exploration of the crisis of maternity care in Haiti …
BABBLERY.com: Haitian filmmaker Alexandrine Benjamin is on a mission to make films that tell important stories for her people. But how can she help a country where she can no longer live? …
Early in the 20th century, in which has been named the Great Migration, millions of Black southerners moved North, looking for opportunity and an escape from Jim Crow. The vibrant jazz community centered around Chicago is well-known. But like all people, African Americans have diverse interests and music is no exception. In this mini episode based on our full episode, “Not Forgotten Anymore,” we focus on Black composers of concert music who thrived in Chicago. Check out the full episode show notes for links and information …
Sometimes all it takes is one question to spur a revelation that inspires a movement. The African American Composer Initiative started with a question and has become a thriving nonprofit, discovering, performing, and recording underappreciated concert music by Black composers …
Interviewing a doula about natural childbirth was an intensely personal experience for Babblery host Suki Wessling. She’d planned on natural birth—twice. But the American system of birth isn’t set up to allow births to take their own unusual paths. While doula Anne Wallen talks about what could have happened, we explore what did happen, first in a birth led by an obstetrician, then with a midwife. “ I hesitate to tell my birth stories to women thinking of having children when they ask. I’m likely to say, The great thing about birth is at the end, you get a baby out of it!” ~ Suki Wessling “ No OB wakes up in the morning and says, I want to ruin someone’s birth today. Like, whose birth can I wreck today? Like, that’s just not how they got into this job, right?” ~ Anne Wallen Share and comment on Substack! …
In praise of natural birth In this mini version of the full episode, “Trusting our Survival Mechanisms with Doula Anne Wallen,” we focus on doula Anne Wallen’s trust in the natural process of birth. Anne points out that most practicing obstetricians have never seen a fully natural birth in a home or homelike setting, “and so they don’t know it’s trustworthy.”  ”When you’re able to just gently allow your body to do its thing, your body will do it slowly and gently—the way that you would think that a baby would want to be born, and the way that you would think a woman would want to let a baby out of her body.” Access the full episode for links and more information …
