Shows
Women Living the QuestionsSheila Nevins: All True.In this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Sheila Nevins, the celebrated documentary producer whose extraordinary career helped make her one of the defining figures in nonfiction film and television.For nearly four decades at HBO Documentary Films, Sheila championed generations of filmmakers and developed a remarkable instinct for stories that illuminate the human experience. She talks with Ruby about the arc of her own life, from Manhattan’s Lower East Side to Barnard and the Yale School of Drama, and eventually into the company of some of the most remarkable people of our time.In...
2026-10-0831 min
Women Living the QuestionsJoan Kron: A 98-Year-Old TroublemakerIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Joan Kron, a 98 year-old writer, journalist, artist, and cultural observer whose career has taken her from the New York art world to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Allure.Joan began writing at ten, when her mother sent her science-fiction story about life on Mars to the local newspaper. She went on to work with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Indiana, creating art objects now held by the Museum of Modern Art.After leaving the art world, Joan found...
2026-09-2734 min
Women Living the QuestionsPhyllis Rosenblatt: That’s Why I’m an Artist, My DearIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Phyllis Rosenblatt, an artist and teacher whose work has been a lifelong quest to discover what art can reveal beyond words.Phyllis found her calling early and has taught generations of students. She shares her thoughts on growing older, artistic bravery, and endless curiosity, as well as the mysterious territory between what we can experience and what we can explain.This is a conversation about a life devoted to seeking, and about learning to look beyond ourselves, and to stay open to what we find there.
2026-09-1027 min
Women Living the QuestionsLinda Marks: An Ageless, Timeless SoulIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Linda Marks, a body psychotherapist and musician whose work brings together somatic healing, trauma recovery, and music.Linda did not speak a single word until she was three years old, finding her first voice at a piano. At sixteen, she survived a life-threatening street attack that forced an immediate choice to survive. She later attended Yale and MIT Sloan and built a clinical practice centered on the body, while continuing to make music.They talk about Linda’s 2025 album, The Silence Of The Stars, and the connection be...
2026-09-0625 min
Women Living the QuestionsCarol Adams: You Open the Present AgainIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Carol Adams, feminist writer, activist, and author of The Sexual Politics of Meat, whose work examines the connections among feminism, animal rights, violence, and the treatment of female bodies.Carol shares how growing up among her parents’ libraries nurtured a lifelong relationship with books, and how her work took her from advocating for women’s studies and volunteering at an abortion clinic to organizing around domestic violence, homelessness, housing, and racism. She also recounts the death of Jimmy, her pony, and the startling realization that followed. That momen...
2026-08-1729 min
Women Living the QuestionsSally Jean Fox: In Conversation With the MuseIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Sally Jean Fox, an author, artist, organizational storyteller, and educator who taught management and leadership for twenty-five years. After a career in international development, startups, and nonprofits, Sally began asking what might nourish the part of her life that could not be satisfied by achievement alone.Sally shares how returning from Japan and suddenly hearing the word “peonies” became a doorway into beauty and creative expression. At sixty-nine, after believing she wasn't an artist, she began drawing and discovered creativity as a form of healing.Her...
2026-08-0929 min
Women Living the QuestionsJudith Dupré: The Architecture of CuriosityIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Judith Dupré, an architectural historian, Brown University and Yale Divinity School graduate, and bestselling author whose books on skyscrapers, bridges, churches, and monuments have changed how readers understand the built world. After decades of writing nonfiction, she is now completing her first novel, inspired by the unlikely meeting of philosopher William James and showman P.T. Barnum.Judith discusses why architecture is as much about human experience as engineering, and the delight she finds in following questions wherever they lead. This is a woman who has spent a lifetime o...
2026-08-0227 min
Women Living the QuestionsApril Alliston: Better Late Than NeverIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with April Alliston, a professor of comparative literature at Princeton University, writer, and mother who became a parent in her late fifties after decades devoted to scholarship and teaching. Born in New Orleans and raised outside Washington, DC, April brings a lifelong love of literature, history, and language to a conversation about time, purpose, and what the experience of love truly is.April shares the story behind her father’s antique pocket watch, her decision to pursue motherhood after years of infertility and uncertainty, and the two guiding mottos that co...
2026-07-2827 min
Women Living the QuestionsEliza Minden: What She Found InsideIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Eliza Minden, the founder of Gaynor Minden, a dancewear company that transformed the traditional pointe shoe by bringing modern materials and engineering into the world of ballet. A former dancer and arts administrator, Eliza left her career in dance management to create a shoe that would address the pain, waste, and injuries caused by traditional pointe shoes.Eliza shares the story of examining pointe shoes with her brother’s bandsaw and discovering that many were still made with materials and methods that had changed little over generations. She talks ab...
2026-07-2027 min
Women Living the QuestionsLynn Carman Bodden: Why Not You?In this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Lynn Carman Bodden, an intentional interim minister who spent more than thirty years helping churches through seasons of transition by asking enduring questions about identity and purpose. Now retired in Schenectady, New York, Lynn has found joy in walking the Camino de Santiago, working at a local urban farm, and spending time outdoors with the people she loves.Lynn shares the story of the civil disobedience protest that changed how she understood her own authority, the decision to take every class pass/fail at Yale Divinity School, and the...
2026-07-1327 min
Women Living the QuestionsSylvia Brownrigg: The Writer Becomes the StoryIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Sylvia Brownrigg, a writer whose work explores family, memory, and the questions that persist through a lifetime. Raised between Northern California and England, Sylvia has built a literary life through fiction, nonfiction, and creating spaces where writers can gather across cultures.Sylvia talks about the family histories explored in her memoir, the unexpected presence of an absent father, and how love, loss, and motherhood inform her writing. She also shares the Mediterranean Artists Project, a literary gathering in the south of France bringing writers, artists, journalists, and thinkers together...
2026-07-1130 min
Women Living the QuestionsCandace Corson, MD: Kindness Is MedicineThis episode includes discussion of chronic pain and suicidal thoughts. Please take care while listening.In this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Candace Corson, MD. From growing up during the Little Rock school integration crisis and entering Yale as part of its first class of women, to practicing family medicine in rural North Carolina, she has spent a lifetime asking what it truly means to heal.She shares the seven years of debilitating chronic pain that transformed her from doctor to patient. With remarkable clarity, Candace reveals why she believes kindness and gratitude are...
2026-07-0532 min
Women Living the QuestionsBarbara Wagner: Stop Asking Me How Fast I Can TypeIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Barbara Wagner, who looks back on a life of expanding what was possible: from entering Yale as one of the first women at the college, to forging a career in corporate law when women were still being asked how fast they could type.She also shares what it was like to navigate Yale's first years of coeducation and the sexism she encountered along the way. With candid honesty and thoughtful perspective, Barbara reflects on the unconventional partnership she and her husband built, and how together they challenged traditional ideas...
2026-06-3028 min
Women Living the QuestionsPatty Locuratolo Hymanson: The Curious NeurologistIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Patty Louratolo Hymanson, a neurologist, former Maine state representative and chair of the Health and Human Services Committee, and longtime community leader whose life has been shaped by curiosity, courage, and connection.Patty reflects on her Italian immigrant heritage, her upbringing in Yonkers and summers by the sea in Massachusetts, and her family story across generations, from grandparents who arrived from Italy as teenagers to a home shaped by compassion and care. She shares stories from her early medical training during the AIDS crisis in New York City, her...
2026-06-2828 min
Women Living the QuestionsAnnette Cyr: A Woman’s ConstellationsIn the latest episode of “Women Living the Questions”, host Ruby Tugade is in conversation with Annette Cyr, a painter, filmmaker, writer, and professor whose work has been recognized by global cultural institutions and film festivals including Cannes, the Pushcart Prize, and the Guggenheim Foundation.She looks back on a life of shifting between art forms, and learning that when one becomes impossible, another can carry the work forward.Her work, including her long-running “Women in Predicaments” series, explores what she calls the “quiet heroism of women”, or the unacknowledged ways women move through challenge and care.
2026-06-2426 min
Women Living the QuestionsPaula Marantz Cohen: A Portrait of Paying AttentionIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Paula Marantz Cohen, a writer and professor who has moved between scholarship, fiction, and teaching, and who looks back on how family history remains a cornerstone, and how creative identity changes over time.Paula shares how her mother, a strong feminist in her time, once had her husband take her name, and how that act of naming continues in her family across generations.She also talks about her long career as a writer, and her recent shift into painting, where she steps away from language and into...
2026-06-2229 min
Women Living the QuestionsMarie Fortune: A Ministry of Healing & JusticeContent note: This episode includes discussion of sexual violence and clergy abuse within faith communities. Please take care while listening.In this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Marie Fortune, clergywoman, writer, educator, and advocate whose work has helped faith communities respond more thoughtfully to sexual and domestic violence.Marie reflects on her childhood in Asheville, North Carolina, where time spent in her father’s hardware store nurtured a lifelong love of curiosity, problem-solving, and conversation. She shares how an early interest in science eventually gave way to a calling in ministry, informed by questions of...
2026-06-1532 min
Women Living the QuestionsHelen Glazer: The Art of Exploring & TryingIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Helen Glazer, an artist whose work bridges art, science, and the natural world.Helen shares her path from painted constellation murals in Baltimore to tactile sculptural work for blind children, designed so that form can be experienced through touch. She reflects on how these experiments expanded into photography of complex natural systems and later into 3D and digital modeling.She also describes a lifelong pattern of moving toward the edge of what she doesn’t yet know how to do, where uncertainty signals discovery rather than doubt....
2026-06-1435 min
Women Living the QuestionsJacqui Parr Byrne: Hands in Clay, Quiet MindIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Jacqui Parr Byrne, an educator, entrepreneur, and mother whose life reflects the ongoing process of becoming.Jacqui shares her journey from a career in banking and marketing to co-founding an educational program for “twice-exceptional students”, or young people who are both highly capable and face challenges such as anxiety, ADHD, dyslexia, or autism. What began as a response to her own children’s struggles in traditional school became a deeply meaningful and lasting vocation.With candor and insight, Jacqui reflects on the realities of raising four children, includ...
2026-06-1032 min
Women Living the QuestionsSara Holtz: How Yale Made Me a FeministIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Sara Holtz, who looks back on a life of storytelling: from practicing law and training women leaders, to interviewing successful women on the podcast she hosted for seven years, “Advice to My Younger Me”, about the lessons they wish they had known earlier in life.She also opens up about her experience as a member of the first class of women admitted to Yale College. With brave candor and compassionate perspective, she recounts the sexism she encountered, and how her college years made her into a feminist and a uniq...
2026-06-0130 min
Women Living the QuestionsAnn Larson: The Sacred Work of PresenceIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Ann Larson, a retired Lutheran pastor whose life has evolved by ministry and a lifelong search for deeper spirituality.Ann speaks of becoming one of the early generations of women ordained in the Lutheran church, and navigating the challenges of a career that did not unfold in the ways she once expected. With striking honesty, she opens up about therapy, and learning to redefine success and failure over time.She also shares moving stories from her years in the ministry, including sitting beside people in their final...
2026-05-2931 min
Women Living the QuestionsAnna Boorstin: The Many Lives of LoveIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Anna Boorstin, a former film sound editor, writer, and lifelong reader whose reflections on love, grief, and self-acceptance reveal a life deeply examined and fully lived.Anna shares stories about growing up in Southern California during the rise of second-wave feminism, working in the film industry, and raising a family while learning to better understand herself. With humor and candor, she reflects on body image, aging, anxiety, and the complicated expectations placed on women across generations.She also speaks movingly about her late partner, historian John Archibald...
2026-05-2429 min
Women Living the QuestionsJan Jorgensen: A Poetic Soul Pays AttentionIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Jan Jorgensen, a poet, minister, spiritual director, and lifelong reader and collector of books.Jan reflects on growing older with curiosity and tenderness, and on learning to hold both beauty and sorrow at once. She speaks about motherhood, poetry, spirituality, and the ways our earliest selves continue to live within us.With warmth, wisdom, and poetic insight, Jan shares what it means to listen deeply, and reflects on love, shame, forgiveness, and the healing that can happen when we bring our wounds into the light....
2026-05-2027 min
Women Living the QuestionsTherese Eke: It's Up to Me. It's Up to Us.This episode includes conversations about mental health and suicide. Please take care while listening.In this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Therese Eke, a nonprofit director turned community organizer whose life is about service, activism, and personal transformation.With brave honesty, Therese reflects on surviving a mental health crisis in her twenties, rebuilding her sense of self through community, and learning to use her voice in service of others. She speaks about the importance of trust and storytelling, and the responsibility she feels to stand up against unfairness.Therese has found renewed...
2026-05-1431 min
Women Living the QuestionsLauren Mayer: When Laughter Becomes LiberationIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Lauren Mayer, a comedic singer-songwriter, teaching artist, theater director, and vocal coach whose life has been anchored in the performing arts, education, and songwriting. Her story arc spans decades of people-pleasing, and ultimately arriving at a fuller sense of herself, for herself.With candor and humor, she reflects on unlearning the “good girl” role, confronting her inner critic, and learning to fully own her talent as a gift. Now, she is channeling her creativity into work that challenges ageism and cultural stereotypes, while finding joy in making people laugh and...
2026-05-1030 min
Women Living the QuestionsDiane Solomon: The Long Arc to Slow LoveIn this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Diane Solomon, a nurse, midwife, psychiatric nurse practitioner, writer, and educator whose life has been rooted in caregiving.After decades in healthcare, Diane is stepping into a new chapter as a volunteer educator, teaching a more honest and complex history of Oregon. Her journey has included raising four children, moving through romantic relationships, and building a career devoted to understanding human nature.With candor and reflection, she talks about growing up fast, and shares the hard-won lessons of what she calls “slow love”. Now, she’s committed to rec...
2026-05-0431 min
Women Living the QuestionsAlexis Krasilovsky: Living Her Heroine’s JourneyContent Note: This episode includes references to violence, including sexual violence and assault, so please take care while listening.In this episode, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Alexis Krasilovsky, an award-winning filmmaker, author, and professor whose career spans decades of experimental cinema, academic work, and women-centered storytelling.As part of the first class of women at Yale, Krasilovsky created her first film in 1970, End of the Art World, featuring Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns, now restored by the National Film Preservation Foundation. She has built a body of work that...
2026-05-0336 min
Women Living the QuestionsEdith Terry: An Observer Across WorldsIn this episode of “Women Living the Questions", host Ruby Tugade speaks with Edith Terry, a journalist and cultural observer whose life and career span continents, industries, and eras of profound global change.Edith began her journey as one of the early women to graduate from Yale, navigating the complexities of gender in elite academic spaces. From there, her path led her across the world, from her childhood in the Philippines to roles in Washington, New York, Beijing, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, where she has lived for over two decades.She shares her experiences working in...
2026-04-3030 min
Women Living the QuestionsKathy Saranpa: Translating a LifeIn this episode of “Women Living the Questions”, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Kathy Saranpa, who is a scholar, educator, and literary translator whose life has been about a lifelong love of language and an unrelenting drive to empower others through it.Kathy grew up the eldest of six in Ohio and California, stepping into the role of caretaker at twelve when her parents divorced. That early sense of responsibility followed her across decades and continents, through a PhD at Yale, where she was also a new mother, to a tenured position in Finland, to her current life...
2026-04-2330 min
Women Living the QuestionsLenore Skenazy: Restoring Kids' FreedomsIn this episode of “Women Living the Questions", host Ruby Tugade speaks with Lenore Skenazy, a journalist, author, and social change agent whose work challenges modern assumptions about safety, trust, and childhood independence.Lenore began her career as a reporter before a single parenting decision, of allowing her nine-year-old son to ride the New York City subway alone, sparked a national conversation and led to the creation of the “Free-Range Kids” movement. What followed was a shift from storytelling to advocacy, as she began questioning the culture of fear shaping how children grow up today.They t...
2026-04-2034 min
Women Living the QuestionsAlice Young: The Meaning of First BeautyIn the latest episode of “Women Living the Questions”, host Ruby Tugade sits down with Alice Young. They explore a life shaped by early responsibility and cultural memory, from a childhood marked by expectations far beyond her years to a pioneering legal career on Wall Street, where she helped open doors for women in a male-dominated field.Alice reflects on her Chinese heritage and the meaning of her name, “First Beauty”, and what it has meant to live between cultures while preserving family traditions across generations.She speaks about being among the first women at Yale, co...
2026-04-1539 min
Women Living the Questionsroxann Callender: From Guyana to Her Full SelfIn the latest episode of "Women Living the Questions", host Ruby Tugade sits down with roxann Callender. They explore a life lived on her own terms, from an elite prep school in her native Guyana, to breaking ground in information technology, and later returning to academia at Yale and Utrecht University in the Netherlands.roxann reflects on navigating a health condition, and how writing has become both a source of community and a personal sanctuary.At the core of her story is a deep empathy for the people whose lives she has chronicled, and for...
2026-04-0732 min
Women Living the QuestionsTalya Nevo-Hacohen: The Stories We’re Told, the Lives We ChooseContent Note: This episode explores family and personal histories, including wartime experiences. Please take care while listening. In the latest episode of “Women Living the Questions”, host Ruby Tugade sits down with another remarkable woman in the series, Talya Nevo-Hacohen. They explore the ways the stories we inherit and the ones we choose impact who we become.Talya reflects on discovering her father’s wartime past later in life, and how that revelation deepened her understanding of herself.Her journey from architecture to investment banking in New York, to real estate in Southern Califo...
2026-03-3135 min
Women Living the QuestionsStephanie Cotsirilos: Finding Meaning Through StoryIn this episode of “Women Living the Questions”, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Stephanie Cotsirilos, a writer, lawyer, singer, and actress whose life has unfolded across cultures, careers, and creative worlds.Raised in Chicago, Stephanie studied comparative literature at Brown and music at Yale before spending fifteen years in New York’s performing arts scene, including originating the role of The Critic on Broadway in the Tony Award-winning musical, “Nine”. She later returned to Yale for law school, building a new professional chapter in advocacy and intellect.After a profound loss, she moved to Maine with her y...
2026-03-2733 min
Women Living the QuestionsCynthia Dantzic: Living the Questions at 93In the inaugural episode of “Women Living the Questions”, host Ruby Tugade speaks with Cynthia Dantzic, a 93-year-old artist, educator, and pioneer whose life spans nearly a century of creativity.Cynthia began her studies at Bard College before boldly finding a way into Yale’s BFA program, decades before women were formally admitted. There, she studied with the legendary Josef Albers, whose teaching profoundly shaped her understanding of color and design.She later earned her MFA from Pratt Institute and taught for more than fifty years at Cooper Union and Long Island University, inspiring generations of stu...
2026-03-1736 min
Women Living the QuestionsIntroducing "Women Living the Questions" (Trailer)“Women Living the Questions” explores the long arc of a woman’s life: the courage, curiosity, and wisdom earned over decades, and the stories our culture too often overlooks. Host Ruby Tugade speaks with remarkable women, including the first female students at Yale College, about reinvention, discovery, and living fully. Inspired by her mother’s bold journey from her home country to the United States, and guided by Rilke’s words to “live the questions now,” Ruby celebrates the depth, resilience, and power of womanhood at every stage. This podcast is for anyone who wants to see, value...
2026-03-0802 min