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PODCAST

When the Flames Go Up

Magda Pecsenye and Doug French

After we divorced, we started a blog about co-parenting to learn how to work together until our kids were grown. And now that they are, and the world is so busy disrupting and disavowing what we thought we were working for, we"re looking to our community to help us all keep up. whentheflamesgoup.substack.com

society & culture parenting

All Episodes

46:54

Episode 51: Have you ever felt guilty about bringing...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/07/10

We’ve been off for two weeks, and what a two weeks they were! With the debate performance and SCOTUS’s immunity ruling, two of the guardrails against Project 2025 (and the useful idiot who will line his pockets escorting it into reality) took a hit. And suddenly it’s easier to feel that much more anxious about the America our now-voting-age children have to figure out.We’re also learning that it’s possible for two presumably paradoxical things to be true: We can love our kids 3000 and still feel, as

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75:02

Episode 50: Catherine Connors is grieving everything...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/06/20

After a sundry professional career as an academic, a mom blogger, a Disney executive, and an entrepreneur, Catherine Connors has entered what can only be described as her ! phase. That’s how her mom would react to extraordinary or unexpected things, and man, does that ever fit the moment.In addition to her mom—who died on Mother’s Day 2023 right before her daughter’s high school graduation—she has also lost her house, her job, her sister, her cat, and her stepfather within a year of each other. As a

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53:41

Episode 49: Can boys express emotion in a culture...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/06/13

This week’s episode was inspired by the latest in a large library of think pieces about the emotional isolation of boys, who want more emotional intimacy but “have neither the skills nor the social permission to change the story.” No one really knows what masculinity is or should be, but there’s a whole spectrum of weird and conflicting advice out there trying to plead its case.Now that our young adult sons are starting to define their ideas of masculinity on their own, we wonder how they’ve

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59:21

Episode 48: Eliza & Jeff moved north after Florida...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/06/05

The parenting life of Eliza Fendell and Jeff Oberg began in Miami-Dade County and has been an adventure from the start. The oldest required lifesaving surgery to remedy some birth defects. Their middle child is nonbinary, and their youngest has a specialized IEP for his learning challenges.The parents had settled into their roles, working and learning and advocating for their kids whenever necessary. But when Florida began exacerbating its culture wars and alienating its health providers, they felt

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39:29

Episode 47: Helping our kids and parents know when to...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/05/29

Initially, this episode was inspired by the stories of Scarlett Johannson and Riley Keough fighting back against brazen rip-off attempts. And it was fueled by the news that scammers hauled in a record $10 billion in 2023 and how this personal finance writer was somehow conned out of $50,000 in cash.But it soon zoomed out into the bigger picture: the importance of individual boundaries in a chaotic world. So we ended up talking about teaching kids to defend themselves (or walk away), helping our

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61:49

Episode 46: Shannon Reed became an overnight success...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/05/22

Shannon Reed will turn 50 this weekend, and that makes her think a lot about the types of books she couldn’t possibly have written until now. After a long career as a playwright and writing professor at the University of Pittsburgh, she’s broken onto the New York Times best-seller list with her second memoir, Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out.Among the book’s many relatable, charming essays about her all-consuming bibliophilia is a piece about her

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44:17

Episode 45: "The four horsemen of the Fiftypocalypse."

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/05/15

We have limited data on this, but based on a sample size of one we can confirm that the second first anniversary is a lot more fun than the first. It turns out that—once you’ve set aside the burden of synthetic romance—it’s really great to relax and chat about how we manage to pilot our little boats through the riptides of middle age.After 44 episodes, 36 guests, and one remarriage, we’ve also determined that our primary apprehensions fall into four basic buckets: our bodies, our parents, our kids,

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67:31

Episode 44: "My body is doing a damn good job of...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/05/08

We talk a lot on this show about the stresses of the Sandwich Generation, especially when a parent or child has a chronic condition that needs a lot of care. But what if you’re the primary breadwinner, your kids require a lot of medical attention, and you’ve got a debilitating chronic condition of your own?After four years of treatment for Long COVID, Heather Petit knows a lot about that. And though she has every reason to wallow in despair and/or scowl at the heavens, she personifies the importance

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54:58

Episode 43: "If you choose yourself, you have a future."

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/04/24

As fate would have it, this publication day happens to coincide with the 25-year anniversary of the day we got married. So we decided to devote an episode to get a little real and remember what we were really feeling while it all went down dooby-doo down down.The episode’s cover art is an image on the front of a wedding album that Doug’s sister made for us, and it’s kind of eerily prophetic that all the wedding finery is laid out without any people in it. We’ve had a lot of time to think about why

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53:08

Episode 42: "I was wondering how deep we were gonna go."

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/04/17

If there’s a common theme to the separate adventures we had over last weekend, it’s probably Attempts to Defy Cultural Reinforcement. Magda took our son to an Accepted Student event and met parents who wanted to know how promptly the school responds to phone calls. Because modern parents still feel compelled to fly our helicopters onto campuses and advocate for our kids in a chaotic world.Meanwhile, Doug wondered if road-tripping to bourbon country with an “activity buddy” might elevate the rapport

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64:35

Episode 41: "It was all snakes and lions and blood...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/04/10

After creating the “accidental empire” Scary Mommy, Jill Smokler is ready to go deep with her new project, She’s Got Issues—a site devoted to helping women navigate midlife. And she wasn’t afraid to go deep with us about her apprehensions about eldercare, why her marriage failed (and not just because her ex-husband is gay), and the challenge of adapting her skills and strategies for modern media.Jill’s youngest child will graduate high school right as her parents turn 80, so she’s thinking a lot

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42:47

Episode 40: "A big phase of disequilibrium."

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/04/03

This episode arrives during what feels like a very weird confluence of confluences. Mercury went back into retrograde on April Fool’s Day (the same day when Germany legalized weed). The Great American Eclipse—which every U.S. state will at least partially experience—will occur the day after the moon reaches perigee, its closest orbit distance to Earth.And next month, billions of double-brood cicadas will rise up like bug zombies and eat Illinois, for the first time since before Illinois became a

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65:45

Episode 39: "As much as I ran from my childhood,...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/03/27

We’ve talked a lot on this podcast about our parents’ impact on our lives, mostly in the context of supervising their eldercare and/or grieving their loss. But this conversation with Amanda Magee is our first to delve into how it feels to stop all contact with your parents, especially when your kids start aging out of the household.Any fundamental change in an intimate relationship leaves a mark, regardless of how it comes about. And during this turbulent time among the three generations, she relies

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46:24

Episode 38: "It's just a man, a cat, and two guest...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/03/20

After a week off, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. But the standard conversational deviations into The Price Is Right, Rush lyrics, and why ADHD affects your ankle bones serve a subtle purpose as therapy for Doug, who is living alone—like alone-alone, not the-kids-will-be-back-next-week alone—for the first time since 1987.Empty nesting can feel different for single people, especially when your family and best friends are all hundreds of miles away. When the nostalgia and excitement collide, the

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72:27

Episode 37: "While I still can, my answer is always...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/03/06

As a mother of twins and self-described overthinker, began planning for sending her daughters off to college “on the way home from the gynecologist’s office.” So when the house was suddenly empty again, she was ready.She was taught to embrace change as an opportunity by her dynamic parents—a mom who’s working on her eighth book and a dad who’s still processing the medical accident that paralyzed his leg. That intermediate downsizing a few years ago was a bitch, but it was worth it.Like told us in

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57:46

Episode 36: "I wanted to defend the votes of my...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/02/28

With Washington’s birthday and the Michigan presidential primary freshly concluded, listen in as Magda regales us with her meteoric rise from tenderfooted poll worker to precinct chairperson! Witness the palace intrigue! The moral relativism among desperate foes! The unquenchable resolve of a willful ingenue who stepped on any neck she had to in order to plant her flag in the fetid mud pit of Detroit politics!(Actually, she just answered an ad and kept showing up.)A lot of us get involved in

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68:33

Episode 35: "Where’s the line about how much you give...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/02/21

There are no easy answers when you’re “Deep in The Dagwood” of sandwich parenting. When you’re looking after your wheelchair-bound mom and 90-year-old stepdad, your siblings don’t live locally, you have a full-time job, and you want to model competence for your teenage daughters without perpetuating the thought that holding families together defaults to the women.Helen Jane Hearn does all of these things, three years after her family moved across the country—and across a broad political and cultural

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55:37

Episode 34: "How not to die alone."

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/02/14

Magda and Doug are each at a point where it’s time to make some new real-life, face-to-face friends: Magda because she has moved across the country to live with her husband, and Doug because he is a man.And really, how hard could it be? All you have to do is live in a place where at least a few like-minded people are, find the places where those like-minded people hang out, be at least a little bit extroverted (or convince yourself you can be, in short bursts), be forthright but not thirsty, have a

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63:14

Episode 33: "We don‘t arrive at 50 on Plan A."

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/02/07

A lot of people our age are grieving the abrupt death of one parent and taking on sole caregiving responsibility for the other. Some have endured a bitter custody battle (or two) after a breakup and built a business around their experiences. Some have had children later in life and know the fatigue of chasing after a grade-schooler.Jessica Ashley came on our podcast to talk about what it’s like to do all that at once. It’s easy to get angry over relationships that go sour, or misogyny in the family

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45:23

Episode 32: "FAFSA's 1.8 billion mistakes"

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/01/31

FAFSA stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid, and given all the problems with rolling out its update, another f-word is conspicuously missing. Determining financial aid is intricately interwoven into the admissions calendar, but yesterday’s news that FAFSA data won’t be available until mid-March—which we learned after we recorded this episode—means a lot of admissions decisions will be made with far less information than usual.The site’s availability was already pushed back almost three

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