A Young Nora Ephron Gets Animated About Breasts, Feminism, Journalism & New Possibilities (1975)

In 1975, Nora Ephron sat down with Studs Terkel to talk about Crazy Sal­ad, her col­lec­tion of essays about women and the wom­en’s rights move­ment dur­ing the 1970s. If the excerpts ani­mat­ed by Blank on Blank above reflect the entire­ty of the con­ver­sa­tion (lis­ten here), then you can’t help but notice that the gen­der issues being dis­cussed then, dur­ing that late stage of sec­ond wave fem­i­nism, haven’t gone away today. They’re still very much out there. The dif­fer­ence is the enthu­si­asm, the sense of pos­si­bil­i­ty, that Ephron could­n’t con­tain then. “It’s excit­ing.” “It’s ok being a woman now. I like it. Try it some time!” Indeed.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Simone de Beau­voir Tells Studs Terkel How She Became an Intel­lec­tu­al and Fem­i­nist (1960)

11 Essen­tial Fem­i­nist Books: A New Read­ing List by The New York Pub­lic Library

Nora Ephron’s Lists: “What I Will Miss” and “What I Won’t Miss”