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PODCAST

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making Life Better, with Two Funny Moms

Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson

When you"re a parent, every day brings a "fresh hell" to deal with. In other words, there"s always something. Think of us as your funny mom friends who are here to remind you: you"re not alone, and it won"t always be this hard. We"re Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables, both busy moms of three kids, but with completely different parenting styles. Margaret is a laid-back to the max;Amy never met a spreadsheet or an organizational system she didn"t like. In each episode of "What Fresh Hell" we offer lots of

kids & family parenting

All Episodes

47:02

When Mom Leaves Town

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/07/17

Does it seem like just as much work to leave your kids behind for a couple of days as not to go in the first place? Do your instructions for family operational procedures during your absence run more than five pages? Getting away from our kids—for work, for the weekend, for a friend’s 40th—isn’t just good for us. It’s also an opportunity for our kids to realize that “only Mommy” stuff they pull when we’re around is not as necessary as they might have thought. Margaret and Amy discuss: Why our kids

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42:36

DEEP DIVE: Dropping the Rope

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/07/15

This month, we're doing a deep dive series into letting things go—arguments, unattainable standards, you name it! You can find the playlist with all of the episodes in the series here. When you're locked in a battle of tug-o-war it can be extremely exhausting to keep up the fight. But there is a solution: dropping the rope. It may seem counterintuitive, but when you're in the middle of a conflict you've had many times before—when you're fighting for something that seems very important, or at least

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36:11

Fresh Take: Jo Piazza

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/07/12

Jo Piazza wears a lot of hats: author, podcast host, award-winning journalist, mom. In this episode we talk about them all!We're big fans of her sexy thriller THE SICILIAN INHERITANCE and her podcast Under the Influence (now part of Adalyst Media!) Jo's interests are wide-ranging and so is this conversation. We cover: How Jo's experience solving a century-old murder in her family inspired her book Why Jo and Amy are apparently cousins Jo's advice for parents who are just entering the world of

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45:32

BEST OF: Super-Awesome Mom Hacks

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/07/10

Time for some easy wins! Here of some of our (and our listeners') favorite hacks fornaptime diapers laundry kitchen sibling squabbles and General Sanity Preservation. This stuff really works! The Lazy Genius (Kendra Adachi's) principle: Decide Once What Fresh Hell Podcast is going on tour across the Northeast US this fall! Join us for a live version of the podcast and bring all your mom friends. We can’t wait to go back on the road! https://bit.ly/whatfreshhelltour We love the sponsors that

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45:44

Keeping Our Families' Traditions

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/07/08

Danielle Friedman's recent New York Times article says it all: "The Constant Work to Keep a Family Connected Has a Name." That work is kinkeeping.Sociologist Carolyn Rosenthal defined kinkeeping as "someone who works at keeping family members in touch with one another." Every lucky extended family has a kinkeeper, and yes, it's usually a woman. Perhaps that's why the work of kinkeeping can be dismissed as silly and unimportant, even by the same people who reap its benefits. Margaret and Amy

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33:12

BEST OF: Bethany Johnson and Margaret Quinlan

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/07/05

Margaret "Maggie" Quinlan and Bethany Johnson are the co-authors of the book You’re Doing it Wrong! Mothering, Media and Medical Expertise. This book investigates the history of mothering advice in the media, from the 19th century to today, and the processes by which mothering has been defined, from getting pregnant to being pregnant to giving birth to whether "that baby" needs a hat on.Like most moms, Maggie and Bethany questioned their own parenting decisions because they understood their choices

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45:56

Why Was This a Thing? Rules We Once Lived By

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/07/03

What Fresh Hell Podcast is going on tour across the Northeast US this fall! Join us for a live version of the podcast and bring all your mom friends. We can’t wait to go back on the road! https://bit.ly/whatfreshhelltourRooms where no one was allowed to go? Saving up phone minutes? Opening one kind of cereal at a time? What odd rules did we once live by that we can't imagine following now? Amy and Margaret discuss: The Good Room Snuggies Peek Freans Links to references in this episode: The

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6:01

Ask Amy: I've Already Got the End-of-Summer Scaries

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/07/01

What Fresh Hell Podcast is going on tour across the Northeast US this fall! Join us for a live version of the podcast and bring all your mom friends. We can’t wait to go back on the road! https://bit.ly/whatfreshhelltourWhy is it that summer never seems to be the picture-perfect, sun-washed experience we want for our kids? Amy helps a listener ditch her mom guilt over not providing her kids with the "perfect" summer. "I have the end of summer scaries. Or end of summer mom guilt. I feel so bummed

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39:54

Fresh Take: Mr. Chazz on Breaking Generational Patterns

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/06/28

What Fresh Hell Podcast is going on tour across the Northeast US this fall! Join us for a live version of the podcast and bring all your mom friends. We can’t wait to go back on the road! https://bit.ly/whatfreshhelltourHow can we be responsive, rather than reactive, when our child misbehaves? Chazz Lewis, host of the podcast Learning Curve with Mr. Chazz, explains practical steps for navigating our children's behavior issues with empathy and compassion, rather than judgement. Mr. Chazz is an

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47:10

Sibling Rivalry

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/06/26

What Fresh Hell Podcast is going on tour across the Northeast US this fall! Join us for a live version of the podcast and bring all your mom friends. We can’t wait to go back on the road! https://bit.ly/whatfreshhelltourMost of us have either experienced—or refereed—sibling rivalry. So what do we do when our kids are constantly at each other's throats? Why do they fight constantly, and how do we get them to stop? In this episode, Margaret and Amy discuss: How parents consciously and unconsciously

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43:29

BEST OF: Would You Rather...? (Mom Edition)

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/06/24

What Fresh Hell Podcast is going on tour across the Northeast US this fall! Join us for a live version of the podcast and bring all your mom friends. We can’t wait to go back on the road! https://bit.ly/whatfreshhelltourParenting is a constant process of choosing the lesser evil. When it's stomach flu or Coxsackie, they're both bad, but when you're playing Would You Rather?, you've still got to pick one. In this episode, Amy and Margaret discuss: What their kids' names REALLY are Rat

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30:09

Fresh Take: Lucas Mann on Fatherhood

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/06/21

What Fresh Hell Podcast is going on tour across the Northeast US this fall! Join us for a live version of the podcast and bring all your mom friends. We can’t wait to go back on the road! https://bit.ly/whatfreshhelltour What does it mean to perform the role of "dad" in today's world? How do the ways the world perceives our children affect the ways we perceive ourselves? Lucas Mann is the author of ATTACHMENTS: ESSAYS ON FATHERHOOD AND OTHER PERFORMANCES, a collection of essays about parenting that

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42:09

Dumb Things We Thought When We Were Kids

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/06/19

What Fresh Hell Podcast is going on tour across the Northeast US this fall! Join us for a live version of the podcast and bring all your mom friends. We can’t wait to go back on the road! https://bit.ly/whatfreshhelltourAmy thought The Love Boat was filmed in real time, at sea. Margaret's grandfather had all the kids convinced his dining room light switch controlled the Tappan Zee Bridge. We asked our listeners for all the silliest things they fully believed as children, and in this episode, we

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44:34

BEST OF: Toxic Positivity

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/06/17

What Fresh Hell Podcast is going on tour across the Northeast US this fall! Join us for a live version of the podcast and bring all your mom friends. We can’t wait to go back on the road! https://bit.ly/whatfreshhelltour“God never gives you more than you can handle.” “Look on the bright side.” “It could be worse.” These are examples of toxic positivity. They're platitudes we’ve all heard and we all know are (to say the least) less than helpful. So why do people feel the need to put a good spin on

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29:28

Fresh Take: Ruth Whippman on What We Get Wrong About...

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/06/14

What Fresh Hell Podcast is going on tour across the Northeast US this fall! Join us for a live version of the podcast and bring all your mom friends. We can’t wait to go back on the road! https://bit.ly/whatfreshhelltourHow do the stereotypes we harbor about raising boys harm them in the long term? Ruth Whipmann, author of BOYMOM: REIMAGINING BOYHOOD IN THE AGE OF IMPOSSIBLE MASCULINITY, discusses what most modern parenting advice misses when it comes to raising boys. Ruth, Margaret, and Amy

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46:18

When Your Kid is Being Bullied

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/06/12

What Fresh Hell Podcast is going on tour across the Northeast US this fall! Join us for a live version of the podcast and bring all your mom friends. We can’t wait to go back on the road! https://bit.ly/whatfreshhelltourMost of us hear “bullying” and picture a sand-kicking, lunch-money-stealing menace. But today’s bullying can take other forms. Research by Dr. Charisse Nixon shows that about 7% of kids report experiencing physical aggression once a week— but that HALF of kids report experiencing

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45:17

BEST OF: Uh Oh, It's Summer!

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/06/10

Hooray, summer is finally here! No more French quizzes or spirit days to dress for last minute! So now what? Million-dollar summer camps? Kicking our kids outside from sunup to sundown so they don't drive us crazy?Here's how to give everyone, including yourself, a sane summer that won't send you into bankruptcy. Margaret and Amy discuss: Why summer light affects our mood Summer camp inflation Farmer's almanac predictions - here are the 2024 predictions Here are links to some of the resources

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34:22

Fresh Take: Jessica Calarco on Women as America's...

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/06/07

During the pandemic, most moms hit a breaking point. All of the increased labor of childcare, at-home teaching, and caregiving seemed to land mostly, or only, on their plates. It was a clarifying moment for many of us that things simply could not continue as they were going—and that perhaps they had been going that way for a long time. Jessica Calarco is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin and the author of the new book HOLDING IT TOGETHER: How Women Became America's Safety Net

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40:20

Tips for Vacationing with Extended Family

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/06/05

We've both traveled with our extended families over and over again, and have loved the memories we've made together. But different bedtimes, sightseeing styles, and mealtime expectations can lead to unexpected conflict.Laura in our Facebook group wrote in to say: "Might be a fun episode before summer: large family vacation traditions. I'm wondering if there are favorite games/foods/tips/funny stories on going away with lots of members of your non-immediate family." As usual, our listeners responded

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49:18

DEEP DIVE: When You Feel Like a Failure as a Parent

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making... ·

2024/06/03

This month, we're doing a deep dive series into mom guilt—why it's so pervasive and what we can do about it. You can find the playlist with all of the episodes in the series here. In this episode we discuss all the reasons we’ve felt like failures as mothers, why we’re never as hard on others as we are on ourselves, and what we have done to mitigate these feelings of failure in our own lives. “I feel like I’m failing at parenting fairly often,” our listener Becky wrote when she suggested this

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