x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

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

66:27

Episode 31: "I look forward to yelling at my...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/01/24

When you think about a quintessential Fifties Moment, Bill Braine’s 55th birthday checks a lot of boxes. At the midpoint of his 50s, he was recovering from hip replacement surgery, adjusting to his new CPAP machine, and negotiating intently with his parents to downsize and de-clutter.He was also continuing his now-14-year tradition of mapping out his annual goals with his adapted method of Getting Things Done, a mural-sized type of bullet journal that helped keep him on task to write his first

en

53:24

Episode 30: "Nobody can want what you want them to...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/01/18

This episode is an experiment. Our primary goal for this podcast is and always will be to learn more about our mid-lives, helped by the expertise and experiences our guests offer up. And we’ve got lots of chat partners lined up over the next several weeks to do that.Sometimes, though, we learn by doing what we’ve done best since we met in 1996: killing a cold afternoon with hot coffee, talking about anything and everything until one of us notices it’s gotten dark outside. We had all the chat time in

en

63:34

Episode 29: "We'll remember the ones we've lost, but...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2024/01/10

It’s our first podcast episode of 2024! And we’re greeting the new year with a discussion with writer Jeff Bogle about holidays, death, serendipity, literature, and cats. It’s a difficult episode to encapsulate in one blurb, so let’s try three:* Late last year, Jeff randomly tweeted an idea for a book and walked away a month later with a literary agent and a deal for “Street Cats and Where to Find Them.” The manuscript is due in July.* Christmas has always been a huge holiday for Jeff’s extended

en

70:04

Episode 28: "When we get married, we often don't have...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/12/21

There’s a reason why family advisors—therapists, coaches, lawyers, and such—refer to January as Divorce Month. The holidays can be joyful, but they also represent the end of another cycle, a gauntlet just to get through and then consider if you want to go through another cycle with your spouse.That’s why certified divorce coach Kate Anthony’s new book, The D-Word: Making the Ultimate Decision About Your Marriage becomes available on December 26. The holidays may be over, but for some the thinking

en

66:01

Episode 27: "I go and I run through the woods for...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/12/13

Sure, you’ve cross-country skied since childhood, earned an MBA, and been a working mom for 19 years. But can you run for 100 kilometers? In a row? Soon after her hair went silver, Annie Crombie discovered she could. And she really liked it.Most long-distance runners look at finishing a marathon as an ultimate goal. During this podcast, we sit mostly goggle-eyed while Annie describes the thrill of running almost two-and-a-half marathons on a cold, dark trail, with 16 pounds of emergency supplies on

en

68:39

Episode 26: "Our education in menopause is still very...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/12/06

One of the myriad misconceptions about menopause and perimenopause is that they’re only “for old women.” A wide range of potential (and potentially dangerous) symptoms can start as early as your mid-30s and last for as long as 14 years. It’s kind of a No Woman’s Land.Jackie Piasta, WHNP-BC, NCMP, has devoted her medical career to treating, educating, and mentoring about menopause because there’s so much more to know and—thanks to the “Silver Tsunami”—so many more people who will need to know it.Much

en

56:51

Episode 25: "I need to be more than just the guy who...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/11/30

Like all the best podcasts, this talk with Ian Shea-Cahir could spawn a half-dozen new episodes. We could talk about his career in journalism or his job running Princeton University’s social media team. We can talk about divorce, co-parenting, remarriage, forgiveness, redemption, and parenting a tween in your 50s. We can talk about the pressures of his Mexican/Irish background, or hitting rock bottom with depression and how learning to manage it saved his life.We talked about all of that.But our

en

35:26

Bonus Episode! "Light a candle, drink something, and...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/11/22

It’s Thanksgiving Week in America, which launches the joyful, year-end tradition of crowded travel, meal preparation, frenzied purchases, crushing ambivalence, and family drama known as the Holiday Season.What better time to launch a bonus episode about Candletime, the holiday created to help you survive it all, with only a candle and a drinking vessel?Candletime is the People’s Holiday, created by Magda many years ago (as a companion to her book, Get Christmased) to help people stay centered during

en

61:56

Episode 24: "Getting a new business card is not a...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/11/15

Breaking up with academia felt a lot like a messy divorce for Emily Benson, PhD, who needed a career change after 11 years as a management professor. Throughout that time, she helped hundreds of students assess their skill sets and build the narratives that would secure the jobs that best matched their abilities and ambitions.After her own successful career shift, however, she has pivoted to help more seasoned professionals defy the ageism and self-doubt associated with changing careers in midlife

en

64:29

Episode 23: "There was always a moment in every...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/11/08

Fair warning: After you listen to this episode, you might develop a compelling aspiration to downsize everything into a 30-foot motor home and hit the road. Author and recovering attorney Michelle Fishburne did that in 2020 and spent much of those 12,000 miles talking to hundreds of people across the country about how they endured the COVID lockdown.The result is Who We Are Now: Stories of What Americans Lost & Found during the COVID-19 Pandemic, a unique look at the under-reported empathy we felt

en

70:25

Episode 22: "I'm never going to do that again, where...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/11/01

During her tenure as co-founder of BlogHer, set aside her background as a political blogger in order to establish the conference as “omnipartisan” and welcome to all (reasonable) opinions.But now that she’s writing and consulting about all the challenges of modern commerce and modern life, those days are over.Elisa is approaching her 60s with eyes much wider open, now that she has thoroughly debunked the myths she was fed about how flouncy and fabulous her 50s were supposed to be. Forget all the

en

62:56

Episode 21: "The things that are most important are...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/10/25

After her first day volunteering as an archaeological technician at The President’s House in Philadelphia, author Elizabeth Mosier ended up spending seven years exploring meaning behind the artifacts she found and cared for. Her memoir, Excavating Memory: Archaeology and Home is about how that training prepared her to piece together her own family’s history while she cleaned our her childhood home after her mom died.“What is important is the information, not the thing,” she says. So if you’re

en

68:29

Episode 20: "I knew I was very much falling head over...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/10/18

“There is an unusualness to being connected to my spouse’s ex, and I’m sure it’s odd to be connected to your ex’s spouse.”Such is the wordplay of Mike Zarin, who sits down with his new wife and the guy she married way back in the 1900s to talk about how the first of what became a daily phone-call regimen began with the word “moist.”It turns out that this romance almost never happened, given Mike’s stringent criteria for a Friend request. But reconnecting after 30 years and falling in love in your

en

65:29

Episode 19: "When it all comes together, it is beyond...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/10/11

Note: This episode includes frank discussions about people who were murdered by Nazis during the Holocaust, and we recorded it before the brutal and disgusting attacks in Israel. We find Jennifer's work to be life-affirming, but in light of last weekend’s atrocities, we understand if you need to postpone listening in order to protect your heart.Jennifer Mendelsohn was a freelance journalist when her nascent interest in genealogy led to a life-changing achievement: finding three first cousins of her

en

69:03

Episode 18: "Trust you'll handle the tough stuff, and...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/10/05

A lot has happened since Karen Walrond published The Lightmaker’s Manifesto in 2021. For one, we’ve all aged—which is nothing new. We’ve been doing that since the day we arrived. It’s just at this point in our midlives that we seem to notice it more.Karen’s research in her new book, Radiant Rebellion, establishes that we’ve been trained to fear getting older since our mid-20s, mostly to replenish the job market and sell hair dye. Whether you color your hair or not, Karen asks us all to think deeply

en

12:21

Monday Check-In: "I woke up this morning and just ......

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/10/02

There was actually a lot to check in on this week, Magda’s last before her wedding on Sunday. Stress and decisions and the usual last-minute organizational mishegoss have so frazzled the bride-to-be that she’s immersed herself in more Duggar skul-Duggery in order to seem less insane. And Doug is back from nine days and 1,400 miles around the Four Corners, with no keyboards, no wi-fi, and nowhere to hide from his most intrusive neuroses.Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! Please consider a

en

62:59

Episode 17: "If you hate someone, you don't hate just...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/09/20

How far through the Looking Glass have we fallen when a billionaire threatens to sue the Anti-Defamation League for defamation? Religious studies professor Eric Mazur says it’s not as far as you might think, because scapegoating Jews for the world’s ills has been around forever. The real change is how the age of hyper-information has brought these stories before a larger, non-Jewish audience. Eric sees the shrinking of attendance at synagogues as the result of many factors, including the overall

en

19:06

Monday Check-In: "Please don't eat my death apples."

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/09/18

When you’re reading (or watching) Fleishman is in Trouble, you may be grappling with existential questions about the many stages of divorce. We’re long onto on the other side of it, and now we’re entering the newest stage, where we discuss old-person ailments, vitamin supplements, and body disposal.Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! Please consider a paid subscription to support our work.Plus: How heavily is Magda leaning into Stepmomcore? Can Doug avoid tomatoes during the heart of

en

61:18

Episode 16: "Writing is a usually terrible moment of...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/09/14

When ’s first son was born, she never anticipated having to caution him against living in an L.A. rap mansion. She didn’t figure on raising her kids in the oppressive heat (and politics) of Texas, next to this guy. And she never thought her writing would be subject to a “sensitivity review.”But she’s used it all to inspire an impressive and diverse career as author of I’m Wearing Tunics Now and Ginger Mancino: Kid Comedian and frequent contributor to The New Yorker and McSweeney’s. Wendi wields her

en

19:37

Monday Check-In: "Two dollars' worth of old-timey...

When the Flames Go Up ·

2023/09/11

For once, Magda has a reason to be thankful for overcast humidity, in contrast to the all-too-perfect autumn weather that many New Yorkers associate with 9/11. We talk about the vexing disillusion of those months after the towers fell, and how a doctor Magda knew felt the same way as a teenager after Pearl Harbor was attacked.We also remember the strangely large number of people we know who had reason to be in or near the World Trade Center on 9/11 but, for one flukey reason or another, were not

en

80 results

Similar Podcasts

The Daily Horoscope

The Daily Horoscope

The Michael Decon Program

Michael Decon

Kalimera Koveos

Andrea Koveos

The Documentary Podcast

BBC World Service

Smarter leben

DER SPIEGEL