Last week we looked back to the movies and female characters who helped shaped the way we see the world women inhabit…and could inhabit. It was a great reminder that pop culture can play a significant role in influencing people’s lives. So is it crazy to think the reverse is possible - that the recipients of such influence could turn around and be creators? We don’t think so. If you’re an avid listener you might have noticed that every once in a while we pitch ideas into the universe - things we’d love to see on stage, screen, the telly or our laptop. And a few times we couldn’t help but feel our ideas have manifested (hello, “Worn Stories” on Netflix!). Plus…more women creators please! That’s definitely a Not Small Thing.

We’re women of action, so while we could wait around for Netflix to realize that we’re brilliant, creative, and have our fingers on the pulse of the entertainment-watching public so we should definitely be in charge of programming, we decided to just pitch and see. And we couldn’t do this one alone, so our special guest is storyteller, illustrator, and uber creative genius Amy Ignatow - whose name you might recognize as co-creator of the infamous “Shut up Geoff” mug! And boy do we have you covered in this episode. We warm up by sharing (or in some cases oversharing) some of our current faves, so if you need reccos on what to watch, we have the reccos. Then we move on to an epic pitch session that surely will get us showrunner gigs. We’re only one idea away from glory!

Warning, things get weird. That’s an Ignatow special!

Awards season is officially behind us, and while both of us did a lousy job of keeping up this past year, we couldn’t help but stop and ponder the role movies have played in each of our lives. During our formative years we were lucky to see women portrayed as adventurers, saviors, leaders, risk-takers, barrier-breakers, and survivors. We saw ourselves as the funniest of friends, the nurturing mother, the fed up wife, a different kind of boss, a cool rider, young girls searching for home, or as the woman putting the men around them in their place. We saw the characteristics we hoped to one day embody ourselves - smart, driven, capable, unapologetic, complex, funny, and uncompromising. (Oh, and able to carry a tune and dance). And just as importantly we saw what we didn’t want for our own lives.

In this episode we travel back to the movies and female characters who helped shaped the way we see the world women inhabit…and could inhabit. It’s a conversation about why representation matters and how important it is to see yourself, your choices, and your dreams portrayed and validated for all to see. Which naturally leads to a conversation about how long it has taken for movies to tell more diverse stories, and how we owe it to our sisters to take in those stories and see their worlds as important as our own.

A wise philosopher (okay Madonna) once sang it best…music makes the people come together. Inspired by a recent social media questionnaire, Dara’s love of list making and a desire to create a series of superlative episodes, in this episode we spend some time reminiscing about our favorite live music performances of the past, the cringeworthy, the nostalgic, and what we can’t wait to see in the future. We talk about the Not Small Thing of remembering our parents through their music, connecting with friends, and seeing our musical heroes up close and personal. To saying nothing of the Not Small Thing that is a sense of joy…something we’re most definitely looking forward to experiencing more of. And dancing. We can’t wait to dance.

We’re joined by a special guest - Leslie Hermelin who has spent her career as a music publicist, and now works at the intersection of live music and advocacy. Leslie previously worked to register Texas voters with Beto O’Rourke at the Buffalo Tree Festival. She now works with the National and New York Independent Venue Associations on the Save Our Stages initiative which resulted in 1billion in federal Covid Relief funding for the arts in December 2020.