Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow
359 episodes listed below
Friendship as feminist political analysis.
Call Your Girlfriend is built around the charge of close friends thinking out loud together. Its conversations move from pop culture and bad friendships to abortion rights, disability, gender-based violence, and the strange politics of public life.
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Call Your Girlfriend is a culture and politics show built from the grammar of close friendship. The conversations feel informal, but the subjects are not small. A check-in can turn into a reflection on pandemic isolation, public accountability, the politics of music platforms, or the strange fact that an artist like Neil Young could still exert pressure on Spotify. The show’s intimacy is not decorative. It is how the ideas arrive. Personal disclosure, friendship history, shared jokes, and names from the show’s orbit all become part of the argument. Episodes with guests keep that closeness while making room for more formal expertise. Nicole Perkins brings writing, podcasting, poetry, Prince, pop culture, relationships, and Black womanhood into a conversation about agency and boundaries. The Rewire News Group special shifts into abortion rights with Imani Gandhi and Jessica Mason-Piclo, staying detailed about Texas, Mississippi, Roe, the Supreme Court, procedure, and the practical consequences of legal maneuvers. The disability episode passes space to Emily Ledao and Kelly Dawson for a conversation about friendship, ableism, vulnerability, and the difficulty of moving beyond basic public understanding. The Anita Hill episode is grave and direct. It connects testimony, Clarence Thomas, Joe Biden, gender-based violence, and the wider systems that minimize, dismiss, and protect harmful behavior. Call Your Girlfriend is often funny, but the humor does not soften its politics into neutrality. It is comfortable being angry. It is also comfortable being affectionate, unresolved, digressive, and messy. That mix is the point. The show is for listeners who want friendship and feminist analysis treated as compatible forms of intelligence, not separate moods. It can praise a guest’s craft, ask a hard question, and then admit the emotional stakes of the answer. The result is less a polished panel show than a public record of people thinking seriously in relationship with one another.
Made for: For listeners who like intimate conversation with a clear feminist politics, especially around culture, friendship, power, bodies, and accountability. It suits people who want warmth without neutrality.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is the way it keeps friendship in the foreground while handling difficult subjects with real specificity. It can move from banter to Supreme Court procedure without pretending those modes belong to different worlds.
A podcast for long distance besties everywhere. Co-hosted by BFFs Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow. Produced by Gina Delvac. Brand new every Friday.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Call Your Girlfriend makes public questions legible through candid friendship, informed guests, and close attention to how systems enter personal life.
Call Your Girlfriend turns conversation between Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow into a bridge between friendship and public life. Their exchanges move comfortably from pop culture and personal boundaries to disability, abortion rights, and gender violence, with humor and…
This is the friend call where abortion law, disability, and pop culture all survive the group chat.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A goodbye that keeps thinking aloud instead of polishing itself into a speech.
Call Your Girlfriend's ending lands less like a formal sendoff than a final stretch of friendship played out in public. Aminatou Sow and Anne Friedman let ordinary catching up, pandemic astonishment, and the simple pleasure of being in the same room sit beside the larger…
A warm, funny conversation about agency, boundaries, and the cultural lenses Nicole Perkins brings to relationships.
Amina settles into a familiar Call Your Girlfriend groove here: a warm, funny conversation with Nicole Perkins about her book Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be.
A clear, warm abortion-rights conversation that treats legal precision as part of the point.
A sponsored conversation about abortion rights in Texas and Mississippi moves quickly, and that speed helps it stay grounded in the legal details instead of drifting into abstraction.
A disability conversation shaped by friendship, visibility, and what comes after Disability 101.
Call Your Girlfriend gives Emily Ledao and Kelly Dawson room to talk about disability as something lived, shared, and negotiated in public. Their friendship adds warmth and credibility, and the conversation keeps its focus on ableism without turning the women into people…
A serious Anita Hill conversation that ties her 1991 testimony to broader questions of accountability and gender violence.
This episode of Call Your Girlfriend centers Anita Hill and the larger argument her story forced into public view: gender violence is not a one-off wrong but part of a system that shields power.
Anna Martin interviews writers and couples about the real stories behind Modern Love essays.
Knox and Jamie turn celebrity gossip, film deep dives, and streaming news into weekly comedy.
Two hosts revisit one film, show, or book a week, plus long personal tangents.
A Brazilian journalist spends years reinvestigating unsolved child disappearances in Paraná.
Cris Bartz and Juva Lauer alternate debate and interview episodes on Brazilian social issues.
Robert Wright interviews specialists on Iran, Gaza, Ukraine, Taiwan, and open-source AI.
Everyone finally gets in one room.
Anne and Amina are still here.
Abortion rights feel terrifying here.
Disability is the subject, though the episode keeps refusing to flatten it.
1991 still sits in the room.