Sandra Tsing Loh’s experience of middle age feels less like the so-called Golden Years and more like living a disorganized 25-year-old’s life in an 85-year-old’s malfunctioning body. Loh joins us for a livestream recounting the struggles of leaning in, staying lean, and keeping her family well-fed and financially afloat—all those burdens of running a household that still, all too often, fall to women.

In conversation with actress and director Melanie Mayron, Loh delves into her book The Madwoman and the Roomba: My Year of Domestic Mayhem, chronicling Loh’s roller coaster year in her family’s ramshackle quasi-Craftsman, with a front lawn that’s more like a rectangle of compacted dirt and mice that greet her as she makes her morning coffee. Whether prematurely freaking out about her daughters’ college applications, worrying over her eccentric aging father, or overcoming the pitfalls of long-term partnership and the temptations of paired-with-cheese online goddess webinars, Loh navigates the realities of what it means to be a middle-aged woman in the twenty-first century. Sit in as Loh and Mayron tell us how, when it comes to dealing with the pratfalls of middle-aged life, sometimes we might just need a box of chardonnay and a Roomba to clean up the mess.

Sandra Tsing Loh is a writer and performer whose work has been heard on NPR’s Morning Edition and This American Life. She is a contributing editor to the Atlantic and hosts the syndicated daily radio minute The Loh Down on Science. She is also the author of The Madwoman in the Volvo.

Melanie Mayron is an actress and director of film and television who is known for her role in the ABC drama thirtysomething. She has acted and directed for numerous episodes of shows such as Pretty Little Liars, Switched at Birth, and Jane the Virgin.

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