A year after Dobbs, I'm seeking the Extra+Ordinary

I teased in June that I’ve been making a podcast, and I’m finally ready to share! (i.e., There’s finally something you can do, which is subscribe to our email list, to get both episode notifications and bonus content via the newsletter.)

The Extra+Ordinary podcast project tells the stories of ordinary people doing a little extra in the world. Their extraordinary efforts changed lives—and nations—in ways big and small. Yet most of their names and stories are little-known.

My own personal anti-despair program

When the Supreme Court gave its decision in Dobbs v Jackson, in June of 2022, I screamed in my car, I attacked overgrown branches in my yard with big sharp tools, I made donations. None of that gave me an ounce of relief or hope.

What helped me cope with the rage and grief was a book that posed this reflection: How often have things seemed hopeless, even apocalyptic—apartheid or Jim Crow, women’s suffrage, nuclear proliferation, acid rain, marriage inequality, dictatorships—only to transform, to crumble like the Berlin Wall, revealing a clearer, brighter future?

The answer: Over and over. And sometimes the smallest thing, like a spur-of-the-moment Facebook post, become something momentous, like the Women’s March.

This is the perspective I gained from Hope in the Dark, by Rebeca Solnit. She says we need a rosary, a sutra, of names and stories that remind us of our strength.

This is my contribution to giving us that sutra.

My collaborator on this project is a friend and onetime neighbor, Jennifer Shin Bassett. JB, as many of us know her, is a musician, writer, and podcast producer. She’s the founder of Big Din Productions, an award-winning podcast production company that's worked on projects with iHeartMedia, Hello Sunshine, the LA Times Studio, Motherly Media, HarperCollins, and more.

Not headlines, history

In the coming weeks, we expect to launch our first season.

Right now our earliest story comes from the 1960s, and our most recent is, well, still ongoing! You’ll meet people like:

• a plucky Parisian singer-turned-contraception-smuggler

• an evangelical Christian who made a career providing abortions

• a college activist changing her state’s laws

Subscribe to Extra+Ordinary to get notified when we launch!

We can’t wait to share these stories with you.