How To Not Lose Your Sh!t

In 2018, Jessica Yellin founded News Not Noise. She’d spent 17 years working in TV news (including as CNN’s Chief White House correspondent) and through those years, she learned that traditional news media is really good at generating anxiety and ratings. What it isn’t so good at is helping people understand what’s really going on (at least, not without a daily panic attack). What we really needed was… well, the news without the no...

This week is Thanksgiving, so we're celebrating gratitude with the RWB fam. We heard from our colleagues about what they're grateful for this year -- from brave kids walking out over ICE to the work we get to do every day to the joys of a good book. 

That's not to say that we're not also pissed off! Trump's latest misogynistic jibe (calling a female reporter "piggy") has Katie and LaFonda fuming. B...

As an introvert and first-generation immigrant who moved to her city right before Covid, Lily didn’t know many of her neighbors. But this year, she was inspired to help deliver meals for a local food bank. Once she started hearing the stories of the families she was helping, she says her heart was touched and she was motivated to do more.

She organized a group of volunteers to help even more families in need, meeting so many “like-m...

Extremism lost big in Pennsylvania last week, from ICE-loving sheriffs to the State Supreme Court to school boards across the commonwealth. And it didn’t happen because of pundits on cable news or DC-based strategists. It happened because regular Pennsylvanians stepped up, ran for office, and talked to their neighbors and friends about what was on the line.

This week on the pod, we’re joined by Sherry Luce, our PA Program Director, ...

By now, you’ve probably heard that Democrats won big across the country last night. From Governor and Lt. Governor in Virginia to Proposition 50 in California to school boards and city councils across the country, the people made their voices heard. And some of the biggest swings, especially in Virginia, were amongst suburban women.

This win goes far beyond the races that were on the ballot last night. This is a win for every Americ...

Last Wednesday, Red Wine & Blue was joined by Heather Cox Richardson for a virtual rally that celebrated America. After all, MAGA doesn’t own patriotism or the flag — and the No Kings protests last month were anything but “hate America rallies.” Exercising our First Amendment rights and protecting democracy against authoritarianism is as patriotic as it gets!

We wanted to build on that momentum to get us through election day, so...

This week on the pod, we were joined by a Virginia mom named Andrea. For years, she thought she hated politics — she says it just seemed like a reason for “people to be mean to each other.” But as last year’s election drew closer, she noticed that her friends and family weren’t talking about it. Everyone said they were too exhausted after the first Trump presidency.

Andrea understood the feeling (who isn’t exhausted by Trump??), but...

This week on the pod, we were so excited to talk to Karen Walrond. She’s the author of books like The Lightmaker’s Manifesto, Radiant Rebellion, and In Defense of Dabbling. Her words about the importance of kindness, self-compassion, activism, and even anger were exactly what we needed to hear coming out of this past weekend of joyful protests. 

Our mission here is to help women make a difference in their communities without losing ...

Katie Paris met Jennifer at the gym. It’s a gym of mostly women, where encouragement and high-fives are the norm and pull-ups are celebrated alongside wins for reproductive rights. 

But neither woman could have predicted that their gym friendship would lead to Jennifer co-creating a TroubleNation group called Hope In The Heights that now has more than 400 members! And still, Jennifer considers herself “humanitarian” rather than “pol...

This week on the pod, we are so excited to share wisdom from the one and only Stacey Abrams. The legendary organizer (and author and entrepreneur and state representative and candidate for governor and Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan…) joined Red Wine & Blue last week for a virtual event. She was so inspiring that we just had to share her words with our podcast listeners too.

Katie and Stacey discussed the 10 Steps to Aut...

We are so excited today to share the first episode of our new podcast How To Not Lose Your Sh!t. We’ve been hearing from women in our community that they want to get involved and make a difference, but they’re overwhelmed. They’re scared. And we hear you — we feel the same way so much of the time. 

But we have a theory: what if self-care and politics aren’t actually opposites? What if connecting with our neighbors and making real po...

Let’s be honest: this year has been a bit of a dumpster fire. Here at Red Wine & Blue, we’ve been hearing women in our community say they’re not sure how to make a difference — at least, not without totally losing their shit.

So we decided to tackle that question head-on with a brand-new podcast. It’s simply called How To Not Lose Your Sh!t and it’s hosted by our very own Katie Paris and LaFonda Cousin.

Katie, our founder, has wo...

Ever since last year’s election, suburban women have had more questions than answers. How are we supposed to deal with the firehose of information that’s coming at us all the time? Can we believe what we read in the news or on social media? And, most important of all, why is all of this happening?

That’s why we made “Okay, But Why.” Because these days, good information can be hard to find. And no matter what anyone says, facts are n...

Americans don’t talk about state attorney generals very much. Technically it’s “attorneys general”—like “sisters-in-law” instead of “sister-in-laws”—but don’t get hung up on the wording. It’s what AGs actually do that matters so much.

A state attorney general is basically the top legal expert in their state; they’re also known as The People’s Lawyers because they fight for us, their constituents, against bad actors who don’t have ou...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, recently announced that he’d be “revealing” the “cause of autism” this month. It’s true that rates of diagnosis have gone up over the past 20 years — from 1 in 150 kids to 1 in 31 — but autism advocates are worried that Kennedy’s mission will do more harm than good. 

In the past, RFK Jr. has spread disinformation about vaccines, including exhaustively dispr...

When people think of romance novels, the first thing that comes to mind is shirtless Dukes with windswept hair on the covers of mass-market paperbacks. The damsel in distress main character who is waiting for a love interest to come and save her from the clutches of evil. They’re a thing for girls. It isn’t ‘real’ reading, because they are stories typically written by women, for women, and starring women. 

But what if we told you th...

In June of 2015, the Supreme Court made history by ruling that Jim Obergefell and other same-sex couples deserve the right to have their marriages legally recognized — not just in a few states, but across the country. 

It’s strange to think that only happened ten years ago. Gay couples across the country have only had the right to marry the person they love since the year of Jurassic World and the first run of Hamilton and...

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is everywhere these days. Some people think it’s the solution to all of humanity’s problems and some think it’s going to bring about the end of life as we know it. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. But with so many different opinions and so many ways that AI can be used, it’s hard to know exactly what to believe.

There’s no denying that AI has enabled some incredible scientific b...

Gerrymandering is one of those things that makes people tune out of politics. It doesn’t just sound technical and complicated, it feels so far outside our control. But it’s important to understand because we all deserve to have our votes count. Gerrymandering is basically politicians picking their voters, instead of the other way around. And in Texas, Democratic reps like Ann Johnson are standing up for voters.

Both parties have bee...