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The Waves: Gender, Relationships, Feminism

Fleishman - and Middle Aged Marriage - Are in Trouble

The Waves: Gender, Relationships, Feminism

Slate Podcasts

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Sexuality, Health & Fitness

4.2903 Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2022

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate Money host Emily Peck is joined by journalist and author Taffy Brodesser-Akner to talk about Taffy’s new show, Fleishman is in Trouble, based on her bestselling novel. They dig into why men’s magazines are more freeing to write for, how ambition can mess up a marriage, and how midlife crises and divorce are different experiences for women. 


In Slate Plus, Emily and Taffy talk about Toby’s eating disorder, how empathy can make people mad, and more.


Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery.


Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the Wave, Slate's podcast about gender, feminism, and life after 40.

0:18.6

Every episode you get a new pair of feminists to talk about the thing we can't get off our minds and today you've got me

0:24.6

Emily Peck a business reporter at Axios and co-host of Slate Money and I'm joined by the

0:29.7

one.

0:30.7

The only Tavi Brodiser Ackner, a writer for the New York Times magazine known for celebrity profiles of everyone from Gwyneth, Paltro to Tom Hanks to Bradley Cooper, and the author of the 2019 best-selling novel Fleischman is in trouble which just

0:47.4

debuted as a TV series on FX, Hulu.

0:53.7

Taffy, I'm so happy to talk to you today on the waves.

0:56.3

I'm so happy to be here.

0:57.4

Thank you for having me.

0:58.8

So I had a whole long thing written out describing the show

1:02.1

and why I want to talk about it but then I was like let

1:05.2

me just ask Taffy to do that.

1:06.8

Great thank you so much thank you so much so maybe you could just sort of like

1:11.4

give us the premise for the show and then why you think

1:15.3

it's a good thing to talk about it on a podcast about feminism.

1:18.5

Okay.

1:19.5

Schmann is in trouble is a TV show from a book about a man who is luxuriating in his first post-divorce summer of

1:30.7

app-assisted sexual freedom when his ex wife drops the kids off a day ahead of his

1:38.7

custodial weekend and then doesn't pick them up.

1:41.9

He looks for her, finds out where she is, makes peace with the fact that she doesn't seem to be coming home,

1:48.0

and tries to figure out how he could have done things differently, how his marriage could have gone differently,

1:57.6

or any permutation of the above.

...

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