We're talking about Encanto, the newest Disney animated film, featuring songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, about a magical family living in the mountains of Colombia. Why are we talking about a kids movie on a podcast about academia? Well, first, because we loved the film. Second, our aunties, Natasha Sofia Martinez (@natysofia_) and Dr. Mariam Georgis (@mariamgeorgis) have plenty to say about intergenerational trauma, the immigrant experience, and who gets to decide which stories are valid.

Thanks for listening! Get more information and read all the show notes at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or by e-mail at podcast@academicaunties.com.

Ethel Tungohan 0:05

I’m Dr. Ethel Tungohan, an associate professor of politics at York University. Welcome to Academic Aunties. Today we’re talking about the newest animated movie from Disney, Encanto. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, be warned, we’ve got spoilers! Here’s the official synopsis of the movie: The Madrigals are an extraordinary family who live in the mountains of Colombia in a charmed place called the Encanto. The magic of the Encanto has blessed every child in the family with a unique gift -- every child except Mirabel. However, she soon may be the Madrigals last hope when she discovers that the magic surrounding the Encanto is now in danger. Now I know you might be wondering, why are we talking about a kids movie on a podcast about academia? Well, first, it’s actually an amazing film! When I was watching it with my kids, I felt extremely moved. I am an immigrant and could relate to many of the themes addressed in the movie. Plus I am an immigration researcher. Witnessing the Madrigals’ journey, including their experiences with intergenerational trauma, resonates with much of my own research! As I was thinking about the movie and the Madrigals, I kept wondering about the power of their story. I kept thinking, too, of some of the criticisms that are circulating of the film. While the movie has gotten great reviews, you can still tell that there are viewers who didn’t understand the Madrigal’s story and were disappointed that the movie didn’t fit into a conventional Disney story, with a hero and a villain. One reviewer even criticized that Encancto didn’t follow the, quote-unquote, the rules of true fairy tales. These critics have the platform to express their disdain. But then other viewers - viewers like me, who related so much to the movie as an immigrant with a huge extended family - saw in the movie stories that almost never get told, not in pop culture, and most certainly not in academia. Or at least the way these stories are usually told rely on “damage-centered” research, as per the words of Indigenous feminist scholar Eve Tuck. And so, it also got me wondering: who gets to tell stories of migrant communities? Of BIPOC communities? Of equity-seeking groups? And why is it that those of us from these communities who tell these stories - who do this research inspired by our own histories - don’t get seen as authoritative because we’re “not objective.” My wonderful guests and I talk about these dynamics and more in this episode. Enjoy!

With us today are two amazing people who have agreed to go on this deep dive journey with me. We have Natasha Sofia Martinez, who is a PhD student in the Department of Politics at York University. And that is Tia Natasha for you. And we have Mariam Georgis Georgis, who is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Manitoba. She appeared on Episode One of Academic Aunties. We're so pleased to have you here with us again. That Amti Mariam. Hi, everyone.

Mariam Georgis 3:10

Thanks for inviting me back.

Natasha Sofia Martinez 3:13

Thanks for having me here.

Ethel Tungohan 3:15

Well, we we've messaged a lot about Encanto. I just really wanted to kind of create the space to talk about this. Tia Natasha, what did you think about Encanto when you first saw it?

Natasha Sofia Martinez 3:26

Yeah. So first thoughts. Like I said, it was a huge family affair. It wasn't a movie initially, that I was gravitating to, just because it's Disney. It was, you know, cartoon, I didn't really think that I would find anything that would interest me in that. But the more I saw it pop up on social media, I saw a lot of Tiktoks on it about people within the community, you know, talking about like intergenerational trauma, and what this meant for them watching it as a family and a household. So that really kind of got my interest in it. And then my family has seen it like, more times than they should. So we decided that, we sat down and watched it me and my cousin. And right away, like I said, like the diversity was, you know, the first thing that really stuck out for me, I really found that I could relate not only based on like experiences and circumstances, but also like physically, like, I feel like I could, you know, identify with like Isabella, or, you know, my cousin could feel like she identified with Dolores, my brother identified with some of the other characters. So because we're all diverse in and of ourselves within the community, we really found characters that represented us. So those are my initial thoughts.

Mariam Georgis 4:42

Yes, I love that too. I mean, I kept seeing it everywhere on my social media from Ethel but also from my, from my own community. I think a lot of Assyrians were just commenting on how much they related to that movie, even though we're from the other side of the world. So many of them had such, you know, they would post like pictures or crying at certain scenes. And so I thought, oh man, I really got to watch this. So like Natasha said it was it was very different just even the way the characters looked, obviously from, you know, your usual Disney movies, and the way that she was telling the story of her family in the beginning, you know. And, like Natasha was saying earlier about how, you know, you can really see that intergenerational like, family relationship, right. Like, I grew up with all of my cousins, my cousins were like, my siblings, they are like my siblings. We all spend, like Natasha's hung out way too much together. You know, and so we all live in intergenerational households, before migration, like even in where where we originally come from, we live all together, you know. So it was just seeing that kind of dynamic as well, as opposed to just seeing like a nuclear family type thing that was being portrayed on the screen that I really made me feel like, Oh, this is basically like, my life.

Ethel Tungohan 6:16

For sure. And one of the things that resonated with me was from the very beginning, you see this extended family structure, you see that they all live together, you see that there's a lot of love there. But they think from the moment the characters went on screen, I was like, Oh, my goodness, look at Mirabel, right, like she out of all of the Disney Princesses probably would look would resemble, my daughter's the most and that to me, was so revolutionary, and also seeing their cousins, right. Like, my, my kids have like nine cousins, you know, like seeing that is is so refreshing.

Natasha Sofia Martinez 6:55

I was gonna say what stood out to me, was like the matriarchal figure, right? The grandma, and for us that holds so much weight, because my grandma is the one who came to Canada, right? I should provide context, like we're not like...the movie's premised in Colombia. But my on my mom's side, we're from Ecuador, and my dad's from Mexico. But we identify a lot more with, like, Ecuadorian culture, which is in South America, right? So even the fact of like, the focus on the grandmother, and like leading the family, and you know, her story in like this new land after her husband passes away, you know, it really, really stuck with us, just because we're like, we call my grandma Nana, or like, Nana, look, you're in the movie, that's you. So we find all types of ways, like a really, really relate to it.

Mariam Georgis 7:43

Yeah, I think I think for me, it was really, it wasn't just one character that I identified with every character in the movie, I could see not just a piece of me, but also of my family, like I were to me was really, really just depicted like every refugee or every immigrant, that was really, really haunted by this fear from that trauma, and holding on so tightly to make sure that, you know, their new homes are safe, that their family is safe. And then to make sure that they survive. They're really just in survival mode, and I could really see my parents, my parents are like this. And it's not that they're trying to instill a fear in us. It's just that they haven't processed their trauma. And they haven't, you know, they don't know how to let go of this, this suffocating fear. My family came over as refugees from what's today called Iraq. We are a Syrian, we are indigenous to northern Iraq. You know, long before there were wars in our country, we were dispossessed from our own homelands, and then making on these countries in what's called today, the Middle East. And my parents came over here as refugees. And I was born there, but I was raised here. So there's that intergenerational type of I could see myself and avoid as kids. So like I weighed as kids, you can see that they told the line that they don't want to upset abuela or really disrespect her or whatever, because they know she she's done all of this for them. Even if they don't agree with all of her ways. You could tell right? Like you could tell Mirabel's mom would be like she didn't agree with everything of what I was doing. You could tell in her own way she would try to interact with Mirabel differently. Yep. That I went to was, but you could tell that she didn't stand up to our will. And the reason for that, just from my own experiences is just that, that, that understanding that appreciation for that character of a winner that has done and sacrificed so much for us to survive. But then there's that younger generation that comes in and I can see that in my younger cousins. They're not they're not afraid. They are not So total lie they are not. They are like Mirabel. Some of them are and some of them aren't. And you see that through Mirabel's siblings, one is working herself to exhaustion, trying to do everything trying to live up to her gifts. The other one is really stifling and suffocating herself in order to be this perfect, whatever. And then there's Miller, well, who's like, we need to destroy all this because it's terrible, right? So I just, it was that it was those kinds of where I could see how trauma had affected each and every one of those generationally that I really saw from, from my own lived experiences.

I wanted to ask both of you more to unpack that a little bit, right? Because I think that gets lost for a lot of viewers, right? A lot of viewers aren't looking at this movie through the lens of trauma. In fact, some people are thinking that if there were to be a villain, it would be Abuela. And so I just wanted to hear more of your thoughts on this and what gets lost if we don't look at the story of the Madrigals from the lens of trauma.

Yeah, like I feel in terms of the relationship that Abuela has with Mirabel. And I don't want to use the word love, because you know, everyone comes in different, every households, right has different sets of relationships. And there's definitely different types of toxic relationships within intergenerational households. But at the same time, I wonder if it's kind of like that hard love kind of building off what Mariam said, in terms of, you know, Abuela left, to come to this new land and build this home and for her family is everything. And this notion of perfection is also everything. Because at the end of the day, perhaps that's only what Abuela can control is the perfection of our households and what the family can do, right? So when Mirabel is not able to produce a gift or something like that, it's kind of almost like a self reflection on the person of what did I do wrong in order for this to happen? Or what's going on? What can I no longer control? And I think it's this notion of control, and fear, but also love that's still there. Because at the end of the day, it's not a villain figure because it's the grandmother and the granddaughter, right, there's still that connection and relationship that's there. So I think by not unpacking that relationship and looking at through those lenses, and solely as what we're accustomed to a protagonist and an antagonist, right, we miss those dynamics.

I really like what you said there. Trauma, and being dispossessed from your home and being dislocated from your home and being removed from your home forcibly through violence is is a loss of control. I like how you said that. For me, Abuela is someone who has not processed her trauma who has not healed, and hurt people hurt. And they pass along this trauma. That's why it's intergenerational trauma, it's unprocessed, it gets passed down in our bodies, in our minds in our feelings and how we hold ourselves and how we live our lives. Because Abuela wasn't trying to hold on to this miracle or power because she...or to get power. Like she was trying to build up her community. She was trying to build her family, she used all those gifts to, to serve that community. So I think when she saw that Abuela was thinking, maybe this is the end, maybe you're not going to survive, maybe something else is going to happen. Because when you have lived through a trauma and this unthinkable fear, you can't stop from thinking about what's coming next. What am I going to have to live through next? And you kind of pass that on? Right? You're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. You know where that needs, needs to heal from that trauma, or children need to heal from this trauma. Is Abuela toxic? Absolutely. Yep. Does that mean she doesn't love Mirabel? No. It's not that simple. We need to have more nuanced and I think trauma allows us to see that those dynamics, you know, to think through some of these things. I think the only reason we couldn't think think outside of that box is because people who were reviewing that movie weren't coming at it from a lens of trauma because they haven't experienced that trauma.

So I guess my question as well is, you know, so Abuela is trying to hold on, she's trying to control things. She's lived through this harrowing experience, saw her husband get shot down. And that scene in the movie Holy crap. I felt like I was punched in the gut. I was like, oh my god, this is too much what? And you know, I can't even talk about it without tearing up right now. But, but then she holds on and her children are holding on and trying to maintain this facade. Mirabel's mom is pushing back a little bit. Her grandchildren, they feel a little bit more free, but still they're holding on except for Mirabel right? So why do you think it had to be in this generation ie Mirabel's generation, why were they the ones who were able to kind of push back a little bit, why couldn't you know, Abuela's children push back?

I feel like even still even within the younger generation, right? Like if we look at Luisa, right, that notion of pressure, that notion of that they have because of being the eldest sibling, or one of the oldest siblings, that they have to take on a lot of responsibility, right? Perhaps it's more so that distance from the initial trauma, right, that allows them to foster more courage in order to like, speak up, right. And I think when we look at it, and we apply, like this movie and these dynamics to like, our own families, I, you know, the same thing, right, like, I'm definitely I definitely saw myself more in Luisa and Isabella, this notion of I have to, you know, do X, Y, and Z in order to succeed, because if not, then I'm a disappointment to my family, right, my family has done so much they've, you know, as migrants, they come here, so you have to equally be able to kind of carry on this legacy of, you know, maintaining some type of success, right. Whereas I can definitely see it in like, my younger cousins that are really disassociated with migration story, right, it's still the same level of burden. But perhaps the reactions to the initial trauma isn't as there but I think the older generation, even within the kids still feel that they need to be careful with what types of decisions and steps they make, because they don't want to make the family upset.

I think experiencing trauma teaches you that survival is in the collective. Survival is not an individual thing. The only way to survive, is through doing your part to ensure the collective good. I think trauma really really hammers down this, this. This lesson, we learned this lesson, like I said mentally, emotionally, but we learned it in our bodies, too. So I think that, you know, like we said, Abuela is still living in that fear. And that survival mode, she's not thinking about processing and moving on, because to her, it's still it might still happen that you see that in her generation of children who are so close to that trauma, still, like Natasha said, who are like that, you'll even see it in the next generation through Isabela, Luisa and Mirabel. And I actually when I watched the movie and thought, right from the beginning, when she kept saying she didn't have a gift, I kept thinking, but she does. She does just watch she does. The entire movie she's showing us her gift. She sets the tone, she plays the role of mediator, she gets them to be brave when they don't feel brave. She's the one who gets Antonio out from under the bed right in the beginning. Yeah, she's the one who goes and finds Bruno to get him to kind of actually process some of what he was feeling about seeing that, that vision. And I think the entire time she's showing us that maybe it's because she's the youngest. Maybe it's because she was born without the burden of this gift. Like Natasha was saying, were the other ones who thought I've been blessed with this gift. Now, in order to show my gratitude, I have to live up to this gift. And in us that meant going to universities making all of my parents sacrifices worthwhile. Because they gave up a lot to get here. They literally give them everything for me. They've done everything for me. My mom made sure I ate before she ate even if that meant not that much was left for her. So that that kind of sacrifice demands that you will live up to that whether that's toxic or not whether that's dysfunctional or not, right? It's not our parents making us feel that way. It's us feeling that way, just due to our circumstances. And so I think like Mirabel didn't have this gift and this pressure to live up to like the other two. And in her interactions with her siblings, because of her personality is more like mediator and talkative. She really listens to them. And she sees that they're suffocating under these gifts. And that's what actually makes her tear this place down. It wasn't just her being fed up with our when and how she was treating her. Actually, it was the whole solo numbers where she saw how Luisa was crumbling under this pressure and how Isabella not as annoying as she always thought she was but she liked I think she didn't want to do just to maintain this family structure. Right. And so she I think she, I think in when she like really just mixed everything collapsed around her it was her just, you know, I don't I don't know that I see it as her standing up to a winner. confronting her so much as saying, look, we've all been through a lot. But this needs to end, survival mode has to end at some point. We're fine now, but we are not fine. Because we are suffocating under this. And we need to find a better way. She is holding Abuela accountable there, she's telling her we need to do things differently. But even as she listens, and see something from our waiters eyes at the river and thinks, that is an unspeakable horror, that I didn't live through, and she finally understands what it's like to be a boy, who's that scared. In my mind, every generation gets a little less scared, a little less fearful, and a little more brave, a little more free, less shackled by this weight of this pressure to constantly make it worthwhile. Because that's really the migration story, right? We always have to make it worth while. Otherwise, what the hell did we sacrifice all this all this for?

This is, after all, a podcast on academia, it's, you know, called Academic Aunties for a reason. And as I as I was watching the movie, one thing that struck me was, you know, in the different worlds and in the different circles that I traveled in as an academic, I never, I never really want to talk about family, I never really want to talk about how even my research is also still informed by like family history. Because academia presupposes that we're all kind of like, objective brains in a jar. That a lot of this stuff that informs the research, a lot of that is irrelevant. And I was wondering, you know, have you had the same pressures to kind of hide that part of her history hide that part of her family lives in order to be seen as valid?

I think, the only time where I felt open enough to discuss what, in relation to whatever topic we were discussing in class, for example, I think it was only in your class. It took me what, four years of undergrad, my masters, maybe five plus years in order to have a space where oral histories was considered valid and rigorous, in relation to talking about when we're talking about migration diaspora, right. Everywhere else, as much as you know, I'm all for incorporating, you know, personal anecdotes in relation to like my family's experiences, because their experience of migrating has informed. It's my research, right? Like, I am informed by their experiences, their trauma, their sacrifices, everything, and I try my best to always portray that in my work, but it's never I never feel comfortable enough. Talking about it in various spaces, because I deem it not to be rigorous.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that as well. Because, Amti Mariam, you fought a lot of battles, you know, in order to be read as legible in the field of IR, right? What are some of these battles? And how have you tried to carve that space to show actually, like, my family, my community's history should form the foundation for how we're studying and engaging with some of these political questions.

Even from my undergrad I noticed that it was it was not that I had the vocab the vocabulary for this in undergrad, mind you, okay, so I didn't have vocabulary, but I saw that it was people like me, who had stories to tell. And people like white cis het men who theorize these stories and made them into rigorous scientific, objective neutral knowledge. And academia was trying to kind of make me less me and more, you know, that in order to take what I know, to make it rigorous, but going through academia, especially through the PhD, and after, I realize my lived experiences, my knowledge is knowledge. I already came to that classroom with knowledge, with knowledge of where I come from, of where it come from before it was called Iraq, of our relationship to each other, to that land, before it was what it is today. Even something like migration, we think about migration as, as, you know, either that Trek or as when people get here, and that's how we analyze it. But actually, migration happens way before that. Migration happens when all of these very strategic very on very purposeful, very systemic things, structural things happen to remove me from my land, to turn me into a refugee or an internally displaced person, all these categories, right, to turn me into an immigrant, a settler, a newcomer, right? And then, and then to start thinking about me in the diaspora, and we really need to think about how all of this is interconnected with all these other structures of empire of colonialism of, you know, heteronormative patriarchy of racial capitalism. That's migration way before I actually got here, right, my story started way before that. And so I really think we do a disservice to our fields. When I tried to say that, you know, international relations isn't just about states, lots of people have said that. But I'm trying to say that if you...from my lived experiences as an Assyrian, that lived experience, this community will tell us something really important about how Empire has functioned somewhere else. Across a different time, a different space. And, and all of these are interconnected, and they're intertwined. They're not separate. That's how I came to be a settler in Canada. And so I think, I really do think academia tries to turn us into this, you know, objective person, when in fact, that's actually a lie that we tell and it does a really huge disservice.

How much richer would our analysis be, if we actually, you know, took to heart, these various moments of family history, these various moments of how the Empire as empty Miriam was saying, was created, right. And I also think, kind of linking back to encantado. And how a lot of these negative reviews are actually written by like, based on their byline, these white dudes, who are like, looking for like a superhero movie, you know, I'm more inclined to listen to critiques from people who are aware and have lived through that family history and that kind of experience, right? Because there are a lot of critiques to be had. So I'd rather listen to those critiques than you know, the white guy who's like, well is Mirabel the hero? Like you know, it's just like a really like crass understand...

My favorite was "Is she like Cinderella?"

No. Oh my gosh.

Like you really can't relate to a character unless it fits into your frame of reference. When you have to kind of equate Mirabel to Cinderella.

Cinderella God, I mean, come on now.

I saw the review and I was like, you know, but not all, there are some people who will watch this movie who have had these lived experiences, who will say I cannot get ove rAbuela's awareness toxicity. And that's because of where they are, in their situation in their life, in their healing journey in their life trauma, of not of not of not being able to let go of that hurt, or somebody else who's working on their trauma processing. It is learning, you know, what? Hurt people hurt. And so that doesn't mean that Abuela shouldn't be held accountable, which I think she is for me in the movie, she does get held accountable by Mirabel. But I think it's also kind of focusing on compassion as a response as saying, hey, Abuela needs to heal, she needs to process this and heal so the rest of us can do the same.

I think what this movie really shows is that toxicity is not okay. But it happens. It's and that dysfunctional and having such a dysfunctional family. It's not that it's just okay like that, but that it exists. Like it happens in my circle, it happens in your circle, because it's such a universal concept. And because a lot of folks from different regions were able to relate and understand this. It shows that you know, you're not alone and experiencing what you're experiencing. Wherever you stand in this generational line of relationships, but that and hopefully as the movie showed, right, like there eventually does get better.

For sure. I think. Honestly, it is a Disney movie, right? Like I feel like there's been so many conversations even within the Filipino community about how, you know, some of the critiques, and I'm completely sympathetic with that, a lot of critique, say, Well, you know, you...we forget how a lot of these intergenerational family structures are super conservative, right? How a lot of them actually, you know, trap people into these roles, right. And I'm not negating that, like, Absolutely, gosh, you know, like, I could, I could spill like family tea, but I'm not going to, um, but the thing is, is that, you know, Tia Natasha says, it's a Disney movie, they can't like portray this. You know, it's not, at the end of the day, there has to still be a happy ending.

I think what I think when I think when I hear like, especially like people, not from my community, or who talk about, like, how maybe my community's conservative or toxic or our family dynamics or whatever, I heard a lot of this growing up in terms of like, even like friends, like if I wasn't allowed to do something, or whatever, they would be like, Oh, my God, right. But I also think that that is also coming from a place of judgment and a place of unfair judgment at that, because it's not like, you know, families in Canada or white families or whatever, don't have these dynamics as well, right. This is not a black and white kind of thing. It's mostly I what I liked about it is that toxicity is not like a destination, all of us have the ability to be to behave in ways that are toxic and dysfunctional. And we all have the ability to behave in ways that are not, and to make it seem like this family. All was just toxicity is super unfair, and also take removed from their context, I think, I think the circumstances that I went ahead to live through and to make decisions in were extremely constraining themselves, these structures were constraining too.

Yeah, I mean, I'm almost thinking, I mean, not to kind of dive deep into like, family history, right. But like growing up, I wasn't really allowed to go on sleepovers. And some of my friends were like, Oh, my God, your parents are so strict. And I'm just like, you know, and back then I was like, Oh, my gosh, why am I not allowed to go on a sleepover? They're not gonna kidnap me, for God's sake, like, stop being so restrictive. But, you know, looking at these moments, with the benefit of hindsight, I'm like, well think about it. Right. You know, my parents don't know the family's inviting me. Right, like, you know, the need to be familiar with them first. And also, you know, sleepovers weren't really something that they did growing up either so you know, divorce from contacts, it seems super draconian, super strict, but if you understand, kind of lived experiences and histories, then what my parents decided made sense.

My parents were the same way because they couldn't let me out of their sight. Like, my mom's anxiety would go through the roof if I had, if I had, you know, I mean, I remember grade seven, or was it grade seven, where they like, go to camp for three days, okay, I was not allowed to participate in this. And I was really mad at a time. You know, as I as I got older, I understood that my parents had done so much to ensure that I lived, yeah, that they couldn't fathom losing me to something like camp. Like to them, literally, to them they're like, I made sure you survived through war. Like, I can't lose you to something as like, as inconsequential as camp.

Final question, and it'll be fun. So the Madrigal family has a lot of superpowers. What superpower would you like to have? If you could have that? And don't say you want to be a mediator like Mirabel. Although that's the best superpower obviously, right? Like she she leads the family to a journey of healing but what would be your superpower if you could have it and why?

I think it's gonna sound bad, but I would love to be Dolores where I can hear every. So in Spanish, like we have this word chismosa. Yeah, right. That means like, you know, you're into like the gossip. You hear these things? Right. And it's funny because as much as we make fun of like this character at the same time, you know, she's just so funny. She knows everything she knew Bruno was like still in the house without everyone else knowing that right so just having this insider scoop I think, I don't know I like Delores' thing. I mean, it's not the best trick to have, but I think it's interesting.

Yeah, sure. You know what, yeah, knowledge is power. So.

I think I would, but not to use it the way she did, because it was super constraining, but I would want the ability to like, kinda like be part of nature and grow things like Isabella. Like I know she only used it to grow flowers and that's super boring. But, I just can't help but I'm just want to be that kind of like feel like I have that kind of relationship with nature and just grow things. I think that's incredible. That's what I would want to do. What about you, Ethel?

Bruno? You know, now we're talking about Bruno, I want to be able to see.

See the future?

Yeah, I want to see the future. I want to see. I want to see what's going to happen next year, are we going to be done with COVID? I mean, obviously, like, you know, he sees it in visions. Right. But that would be amazing.

You'll have to interpret those visions

I know, and usually Bruno's visions would come out really bad. So lets cross our fingers for a better future.

Well, thank you both so so much for being part of this conversation. If any of our listeners want to follow you on social media, do you want to drop your social media handles?

I am on Twitter. I'm just I think my handle's @mariamgeorgis.

Mine's @natysofia_.

Thank you both again, so much.

Thank you so much for having me.

And that’s Academic Aunties. You know, we have such a great time putting this podcast together for you, and we hope you love listening to it as much as we love making it. If you’re looking for ways to support Academic Aunties, please check out academicaunties.com/support. We’ve put together a list of various ways to support the podcast which I hope you’ll consider. We also now have Academic Auntie SWAG, including stickers, hoodies, mugs, and other fun stuff. Go check out our website. If you want to get in touch with us, we’re on Twitter. Follow us at @AcademicAuntie. Today’s episode of Academic Aunties was hosted by me, Dr. Ethel Tungohan, and produced by myself, Wayne Chu, and Dr. Nisha Nath. Tune in next time when we talk to more Academic Aunties! Until then, take care, be kind to yourself, and don’t be an asshole.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai