Danielle Robay's 'No Phones Allowed' Talking Circles w/ Gloria Steinem | SPOTIFY EXCLUSIVE

This episode is brought to you by PayPal. You know how a mom's bag has everything? Sunscreen, snacks, a stapler? The new PayPal app is like that, but for your money. Shop, pay, manage your account, and earn rewards all in one place. And with purchase protection on eligible items, biometric security, and pass keys, you're protected at every step. Download the new PayPal app to get started. See paypal.com slash protection terms. So tell me about these talking circles that you have going on. I could talk about this forever. So wait, before we go in, I'm going to give a little explanation. Well, I don't know that much. So you do these talking circles with Gloria Steinem, which is just incredibly iconic. I don't even know where to begin on it. So I'm going to let you – I have a few questions, but I'm going to let you talk about it for a little bit, and then I'll do my follow-up. So did you have book reports growing up? Oh, like you mean in school? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Do you remember like what you did your book reports on? The Giver was a big one. There was one other book that was the worst book that I've ever read in my entire life because we were forced to do it. Like not – that was kind of the main one. Okay. We didn't have ones like every single year. It was just kind of like I think it was eighth or ninth grade we all had to collectively read. Yeah. As a grade, The Giver. There was one other one my friend Emma would know. But yeah, our school wasn't very like about that. We did so many book reports. And for every book report, I would dress up like Eleanor Roosevelt or Hillary Clinton. My book reports on my projects were on women's history. Like I have been a feminist my entire life. And so when I had the opportunity to be Gloria Steinem's fellow, I don't think that I've ever been more excited, in awe, in my life. I mean, I felt that way like when I got to interview Reese Witherspoon. But really like Gloria is just such a culture changer. Like for anybody out there who doesn't know, she started the women's movement in America. And she would tell you she didn't start it that she and a bunch of women did. She's the most humble person. But she really helped lead it. And she has her brownstone on the Upper East Side of New York. And in the 70s, in the late 60s and 70s, they started doing something called talking circles where women would come and just tell each other their honest stories. And one of the most feminist things you can do is share your honest stories with other women. And it's part of the reason I love books so much. And so these talking circles were themed a lot of times. Like they would be about now. They're like about AI. They're about… They're about women in sports. They're about any topic that you're curious about. And you gather a group of women. I like to make sure that it's people from like totally different backgrounds, schools of thoughts, professions. I love as many opinions as possible. I love if people disagree. And you have an amazing two-hour conversation. There's no phones. What happens is so magical because all of a sudden you realize like, oh, that also happened to me. That happened to me too. And it was like kind of… I think the beginning of the Me Too movement, right? Like, and it was women saying like, oh, I'm not alone in that. It's really… This episode is brought to you by PayPal. Sunscreen. Snacks. A stapler. Beautiful. Have you… Do you guys talk about like advice? Yes. I think people do sometimes. I threw one on masculinity. I was really curious about the topic because I kept hearing about the male loneliness crisis and that men are in crisis. And a lot of experts would say they're not really in crisis. And I was like, I need to dig in. I don't know. So I threw it on masculinity. And it actually turned into a conversation that was way different than what I had planned. And that's kind of following the spark, right? But it ended up being a lot about women feeling frustrated about like domestic activities, like how they had more of the load at home, doing dishes, making doctor's appointments, et cetera. And so, yeah, women were saying like, here's what I did that helped. X, Y, and Z. And so they did share advice for sure. Interesting. Yeah. Wow. You're going to have to come to one. I would literally… I would have loved to come to the masculinity one. Yeah. Because I talk about that with my close friends, not often, but like when it arises because a lot of my friends are in the LGBTQ community, including myself. So when we're specifically dating women, the topic of masculinity, obviously like the most stupid question that always comes up is like, which one's the boy? And it's like, you don't have that toxic. It's like masculinity when you're dating a female because there's not those like underlying roles and rules of like the girl's supposed to clean up the dishes. She's supposed to do this, that, and this, and that. And that's what I bring into any relationship, whether it's a female or male or whomever. It's like I'm never going to be that type of female and I own that from the beginning. I'm like, if you want this, this, and this, I'm sorry, I'm not your girl. And if that's what you want, go date a sweet, nice girl that just is all up in that. Not me. So interesting. You know what was interesting is there were women of all ages at that one. And one thing I recognized is that that plight seemed to be more common with women that were like 40 to 60. And I think there were like women there that were 19, 22, and they looked at gender, like they didn't even really think about gender roles. It was like not even in their purview. So it would have been really interesting to hear your perspective. Well, I would love, yeah. You'll come to the next one. I'd love that. I would literally love that. I would love that. 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