Atomic Moms

Atomic Moms is a parenting interview show with two engines: conversations with authors, and the host's own family life reported as it happens. Ellie Knaus hosts, and by her own account the show has been running since 2014. The episodes gathered here sit squarely in 2020, and it shows. She talks about a three-year-old and a six-year-old at home in Los Angeles, a work-life balance that has gone out the window, and a family staying home because her husband's medication leaves him immunocompromised. Another episode finds her in Colorado, back in the saddle after what she calls travels and family upheavals. One sign-off comes from the floor of a kid's closet, with thanks to Owen O'Neill for making a show recorded outside a studio listenable. The guests carry the weight. Dr. Shefali Tsabary returns for a third appearance alongside Renee Jain, and the two treat worry, sadness and guilt as useful parts of being human, choosing the word transform over any promise of less anxiety. Ellie asks about the five superpowers their book describes, and the answer starts from the idea that the work is not really about fixing. Dr. Tina Payne Bryson, also back, reassures parents that a child knows whether you will show up when it truly matters, even if you did not show up for every snack. The conversation with Elizabeth Lesser, whose book Cassandra Speaks Ellie calls her new favorite, turns on a woman in a family tree who went to Mount Holyoke in the 1800s and was never talked about, and on why women's stories need telling from their own perspective. Chelsea Clinton, there for her children's book She Persisted in Sports, remembers a book club that spanned three generations and a great-grandmother her children know as Grandma Dorothy. Tiffany Shlain, billed as an internet pioneer, appears in an episode that starts with Ellie admitting she needs to reboot her relationship with technology. The same episode holds a smaller confession. Ellie nearly passed up a fall bike ride in Colorado with her dad because she had not finished the guest's book. She went, and finished the book anyway. Tammin Sursok and Roxy Manning, guests from the Women on Top podcast, bring a story of arriving somewhere at 21 with two suitcases and no one, plus talk of how Instagram images of natural birth can add pressure. Ellie's own voice is enthusiastic and unguarded: she asks listeners to message her on Instagram, points them to earlier and upcoming episodes, and more than once asks the audience a question and then wonders aloud whether it is a trick question. The closings in these episodes land on the same sign-off about trusting your goodness and living out your greatness. What a listener takes away is expert thinking on anxiety, screens and repair, filtered through someone visibly trying to use it in her own house.