Maintenance Phase Creators & Guests

Aubrey Gordon, also known as Your Fat Friend, is an author, podcaster, and activist. She writes about fatness, fat acceptance, and anti-fat bias, and she co-hosts the podcast "Maintenance Phase" with journalist Michael Hobbes, which focuses on the poor science behind some health and wellness fads.Gordon's first book, "What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat," was published in 2022.

Michael Hobbes is an American journalist and a former reporter for HuffPost. He is also the co-host of the podcast Maintenance Phase with Aubrey Gordon and the former co-host of You're Wrong About

Audio engineer and media producer

Ashley lives, works, and podcasts from her home studio in Seattle, Washington. She has over twelve years of experience working as a professional broadcaster in commercial radio. As well as five years (and counting) as a Podcast Producer, Podcast Host, Audio Editor, and Audio Engineer.

Sarah Marshall is a writer, podcast, and media critic. She is best know as a co-host of the podcast "You're Wrong About."Marshall's work has appeared in the Believer, Buzzfeed and the true crime collection "Unspeakable Acts."

Kimberly Springer is a curator author, researcher and digital culturalist. Springer's most recent book is "Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968-1980." Her previous books are "Still Lifting, Still Climbing: African-American Women’s Contemporary Activism," and "Stories of Oprah: the Oprahfication of American Culture."Springer received her master’s degree in Information Science from the University of Michigan, and her Ph.D. in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Emory University.

Mike Rothschild is a journalist, researcher, and debunker of conspiracy theories and fringe beliefs. He has specifically focused on the QAnon conspiracy.As a staff writer at several media companies, he has written extensively about politics, history, pop culture, and weird stories on Facebook.Rothschild's first book, “The World’s Worst Conspiracies,” was published in 2020. His work has appeared in the Daily Dot, the New York Times, Snopes, NBC News, Vice, Right Wing Watch, Christian Science Monitor, Politifact, Huffington Post, The Week, Quartz, Cracked, Daily Kos, Raw Story, the Daily Beast, Salon, Harper’s Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Buzzfeed, Daily Beast, and CNN. He also co-created the YouTube series "Daily Debunker," and he is a regular radio, video and podcast guest.Rothschild is also a published playwright.

Parker Molloy is a writer, blogger, and transgender rights activist.

Alyx Devlaeminck, professional name Doctor Dreamchip, is an independent music producer. They create royalty-free electronic music and loops that is often used in podcasts and other media.

Evan Urquhart is a transgender journalist, founder of Assigned Media, Community Manager at Slate. His work has appeared in the Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Politico, NewNowNext, Truthout, and Autostraddle.

Julia Serano is an American writer, musician, spoken-word performer, trans–bi activist, and biologist. She is known for her transfeminist books Whipping Girl (2007), Excluded (2013), and Outspoken (2016). She is also a prolific public speaker who has given many talks at universities and conferences. Her writing is frequently featured in queer, feminist, and popular culture magazines.

Jules Gill-Peterson is Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. She earned her PhD from Rutgers University and has held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Kinsey Institute. She was honored with the Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award from the University of Pittsburgh in 2020.Jules is the author of Histories of the Transgender Child (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), the first book to shatter the widespread myth that transgender children are a brand new generation in the twenty-first century.