FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: JULY 3, 2025
Episode one available July 4 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and MsMagazine.com.
Ms. magazine announced today the launch of a new podcast under the Ms. Studios banner: Looking Back, Moving Forward.
Throughout the series, Ms. consulting editor Carmen Rios will trace the intertwined history of Ms. magazine and the feminist movement it has given voice to for over 50 years—and explore where the fight for gender equality must go next.
Each episode will chronicle the ways women’s lives and the feminist movement have transformed over the last 50-plus years. Along the way, listeners will hear from Ms. contributors and editors who have told stories of collective struggle, and the feminist thought leaders and activists who continue to define and redefine this movement—leaders like Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, legendary labor activist Dolores Huerta, reproductive rights advocate Renee Bracey Sherman, civil rights attorney Debra Katz and more.
“The opportunities that I have, they come about because people were willing to stand up and fight for those rights, fight for those laws,” Gov. Healey shared on the show, “and it’s my obligation to, and my responsibility to, carry on for this generation and the next generation.”
By examining the legacy of America’s longest-running feminist magazine, Looking Back, Moving Forward explores how we got to where we are now—and how our shared histories illuminate the path forward, toward an intersectional feminist future. In advance of the release of the HBO documentary Dear Ms., as well as the online release of the full Ms. magazine archive in partnership with ProQuest, Looking Back, Moving Forward could not be more timely.
“I can see how things have changed over the decades,” Huerta explained. “We’re getting a lot of pushback from people in power, but the great thing is that we can take from our own accomplishments, from our own lessons of achievement, because we know how to reach that goal line of equality.”
Looking Back, Moving Forward launches on the Fourth of July with an episode centered on the growing power of feminist voters and candidates, and the ways political representation is tied to the strength of our democracy. New episodes will drop biweekly on Fridays, with future episodes covering reproductive rights, economic justice, gender-based violence, and the Equal Rights Amendment.
Head to MsMagazine.com/series/looking-back-moving-forward/ for full episodes, transcripts, further reading and ways to take action.
The Looking Back, Moving Forward 5-part series launches as a new Ms. magazine documentary Dear Ms. premieres on HBO. Podcast host Carmen Rios and executive producer and executive editor of Ms. Kathy Spillar are available for interviews.
Meet Carmen Rios: Carmen Rios is a feminist writer, speaker, and media personality who has spent nearly two decades sparking conversations that uncover women’s history, challenge patriarchy, and expand feminist power. She was the producer and host of Bitch Media’s pop culture podcast Popaganda, which Mashable called one of “the best podcasts about feminism,” and co-producer and co-host of The Bossy Show — a political talk show that was featured in TIME, Curve, and Diva magazines and hailed by Logo News as driving a “golden age of queer women in podcasting.” Her writing on gender, sexuality, class, and race has been published by outlets including Autostraddle, BuzzFeed, DAME, the National Women’s History Museum, Teen Vogue, and the Women’s Media Center. Carmen has appeared on NPR, CNN, Good Morning America and the CBS Early Show to comment on feminist issues, and her work has been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Guardian, NBC, and Vox. She is a SheSource expert and an alumna of the Women’s Media Center’s Progressive Women’s Voices program.
About Ms. magazine: Co-founded by Gloria Steinem in 1971 and published by the Feminist Majority Foundation since 2001, Ms. magazine has been a trusted, popular source for feminist news and information in print and online for nearly 50 years. Ms.’s time-honored traditions of an emphasis on in-depth investigative reporting and feminist political analysis have never been more relevant, bringing a new generation of writers and readers together to share news, analysis, research and strategies for fighting back and moving forward, for shaping the future.
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If you would like more information on Looking Back, Moving Forward, or to schedule an interview with Carmen Rios or Kathy Spillar, please email press@msmagazine.com.
