Hello everyone and welcome to talk nerdy. Today is Monday, August 11th, 2025, and I'm the host of the show, Dr. Kara Santa Maria.

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All right.

Today we've got a really interesting discussion for you.

So I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Gretchen Sisson. She's the author of a new book called Relinquished, The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood. So Gretchen is a qualitative sociologist and she studies abortion and adoption at advancing new standards in reproductive health, that's A-N-S-I-R-H, in the Department of Obstetrics,

gynecology, and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco.

So we're going to be talking about not just her dissertation research,

but then follow-up studies 10 years later

and all of the insights that she gleaned interviewing women

who relinquished their babies for adoption.

It's a fascinating conversation.

I learned an awful lot, and I hope that you do too.

So without any further ado, here she is Dr. Gretchen Sisson. Well, Gretchen, thank you so much for

joining me today. Of course. Thanks for having me, Kara. So I'm excited to talk about your new book,

Relinquish, the Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood.

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