Speaker 1: Even before I read your book, I always go and
Speaker 1: look at the author picture. I laughed so hardly. In
Speaker 1: the back of your author picture, you saw Markey Jesus. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, I painted him myself, I'll say.
Speaker 1: And one of those like you know, those places where
Speaker 1: you can drink wine and paint, and just like in
Speaker 1: the strip, there's one in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, and
Speaker 1: I just didhammered and painted Monkey Jesus. And it's I
Speaker 1: think about Cecilia Himenez. I think that the woman who
Speaker 1: just google aka Homo and see that there was this
Speaker 1: sort of I feel like it was from the thirties.
Speaker 1: It was like this picture by Elias Martinez and this
Speaker 1: very lovely custodian of a church did it did a
Speaker 1: terrible restoration, restoration and it looks he looks. I hope
Speaker 1: it looks like Monkey Jesus now. But it's places that
Speaker 1: humans have ever done. Just it's so good, so brilliant. Hello,
Speaker 1: I'm Mini driver, I'm welcome to many questions. I've always
Speaker 1: loved Pru's questionnaire. It was originally an eighteenth century parlor
Speaker 1: game meant to reveal an individual's true nature, but with
Speaker 1: so many questions, there wasn't really an opportunity to expand
Speaker 1: on anything. So I took the format of Pruce's questionnaire
Speaker 1: and adapted What I think are seven of the most
Speaker 1: important questions you could ever ask someone. They are when
Speaker 1: and where were you happiest? What is the quality you
Speaker 1: like least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines
Speaker 1: love for you? What question would you most like answered,
Speaker 1: What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most?
Speaker 1: What would be your last meal? And can you tell
Speaker 1: me something in your life that has grown out of
Speaker 1: a personal disaster. The more people we ask, the more
Speaker 1: we begin to see what makes us similar and what
Speaker 1: makes us individual. I've gathered a group of really remarkable
Speaker 1: people who I am honored and humbled to have had
Speaker 1: a chance to engage with. My guest today is author
Speaker 1: and journalist Gia Talentino. Gia wrote a New York Times
Speaker 1: best selling book of essays called Trick Mirror, which is
Speaker 1: this sharp, critically dexterous examination of how we exist in
Speaker 1: this particular societal prism. She is a stark, deep, hilariously
Speaker 1: funny voice of her millennial generation. She grew up in
Speaker 1: a Houston megachurch that was so enormous they called it
Speaker 1: the repentagon. I was fascinated as to how a person
Speaker 1: who has been relentlessly administered a certain set of moral
Speaker 1: and religious ideas breaks free from it. It turns out
Speaker 1: Gia is a world builder from her own questioning and imagination.
Speaker 1: She is so not precious about all the things she knows,
Speaker 1: and is fantastically positive about all the different lives it
Speaker 1: seems she has lived. She is a vivid her, a
Speaker 1: tick woman of fast interests, and it was an enormous
Speaker 1: pleasure to have the opportunity to talk to her. So
Speaker 1: we have been digging into the Britney Spears saga for
Speaker 1: the last like six months, and it's such you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you saw the news about the hearing, devastating.
Speaker 1: It was traumatic listening to her testimony. I had a
Speaker 1: baby during the pandemic, and it's it's really kind of
Speaker 1: this early reinforced, you know, the way she was treated.
Speaker 1: She had two children within thirteen months. She was pounded
Speaker 1: everywhere she went. Like if I had been dogged by
Speaker 1: fifty men shouting things at me to get a response,
Speaker 1: and I was carrying a crying baby, I probably would
Speaker 1: have gotten in my car, put the baby on my lap,
Speaker 1: and driven away. You know, I would have hit the
Speaker 1: man with the umbrella, not the car. You know, Yes,
Speaker 1: it happened to me. I mean it happened repeatedly when
Speaker 1: Henry was tiny, but particularly an airport when Henry was
Speaker 1: three months old, and it was a female paparazzi, which
Speaker 1: I think made it so much worse. And the things
Speaker 1: that they were saying to try and elicit a response,
Speaker 1: and the flashes were making the baby jolt. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine that. I'm not saying that there is any real
Speaker 1: equivalency between myself and Brittney Spears, but in that instance
Speaker 1: of knowing the insanity as a new mother, feeling attacked
Speaker 1: and hunted absolutely Like now, I'm like, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: imagine what I would have been like to have to
Speaker 1: you know, she got pregnant two and a half months
Speaker 1: after giving birth, right, yeah, I mean I the pandemic
Speaker 1: kind of afforded a surprisingly lovely postpartum experience that I
Speaker 1: wasn't expecting because you know, it was a cocoon. But
Speaker 1: if there had been a camera on me for even
Speaker 1: one second, I would have looked like I was certifiable. Like,
Speaker 1: it's just you're unraveled for so long, but there is
Speaker 1: no latitude. There is no latitude given to women right
Speaker 1: for this moment after It's extraordinary. Mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: why I'm surprised, given that there's so much less latitude
Speaker 1: given to women in general for childbirth and mothering and
Speaker 1: taking care of children and maternity leaves and paternity leaves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's shocking. And only if you've experienced that roller coaster
Speaker 1: of hormones that happens after was that you do need
Speaker 1: a gentleman, ironman like you had. Yeah, And even in
Speaker 1: a gentle environment, it's still hard, Yeah, because there's a
Speaker 1: calibration that you have to take care of this tiny
Speaker 1: creature and make sure nothing happens to it and feed
Speaker 1: it and take care of yourself. But also that you're
Speaker 1: your life is completely and utterly changed. But isn't it
Speaker 1: interesting like that women become these totems to further this
Speaker 1: sort of systemic abuse. I was watching an old episode
Speaker 1: of Sex in the City, which you know, I happen
Speaker 1: to love. I just watched it for the first time.
Speaker 1: It's like eating cotton candy, Like I enjoy it, but
Speaker 1: I was watching an episode and a young girl who's
Speaker 1: saying that she's saving herself for marriage, and Sarah Jessica
Speaker 1: Parker's character says, you know, well, what do you consider sex?
Speaker 1: And the girl went, well, I didn't Lewinsky him or anything.
Speaker 1: When I think about the abuse that a young woman
Speaker 1: like Monica Lewinsky withstood through, what was a savage takedown
Speaker 1: and what should have been a takedown of a different person,
Speaker 1: of a different person than yet there she was. We've
Speaker 1: literally had the scarlet letter placed on us in all
Speaker 1: these different forms for time immemorial, and our idea of
Speaker 1: equality is different from that of men. This is why,
Speaker 1: because it is so oddly perverse, because it is in
Speaker 1: every area, even in something is sweet confection as sex
Speaker 1: in the city, there is this blatant acknowledgement that this
Speaker 1: woman is apparently a whore or did something that you know,
Speaker 1: she was only accountable for right the extent to which Brittany,
Speaker 1: But I think kind of all women in the public
Speaker 1: eye inevitably end up experiencing sort of projection of cultural
Speaker 1: fears and desires that in Brittany's case, I think, really
Speaker 1: composed the entire structure from life. I mean, I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about it so much. I'm sure you have. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you have. Gosh, Oh, I could talk to
Speaker 1: you all day. We get to talk her an hour.
Speaker 1: My first question is when and where were you happiest.
Speaker 1: One thing that I have realized I had a baby
Speaker 1: during the pandemic, which was a real sort of reintroduction
Speaker 1: to the control bowling forces of sort of hormones and
Speaker 1: chemicals within one's body and psychological state. I write about
Speaker 1: it in an essay in my book where I talk
Speaker 1: about the feeling of ecstasy. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I feel luckiest about in this life is that temperamentally,
Speaker 1: I've been blessed with pretty sunny mental weather. I find
Speaker 1: a feeling of sort of ecstatic joy. When I was
Speaker 1: a child, I felt it constantly, you know, just riding
Speaker 1: my bike with the son at a certain angle, or
Speaker 1: jumping into a pool, or having a day with nothing
Speaker 1: to do but reading, or seeing all my friends at
Speaker 1: the playground or ice skating in a circle in the rank,
Speaker 1: seeing my family at dinner. I was constantly full, like
Speaker 1: brimming with this sort of ecstatic happiness. I would feel
Speaker 1: it listening to music playing in someone's car. I felt
Speaker 1: it when I was out dancing, I felt when I
Speaker 1: was eating a really good bite of food. I found
Speaker 1: this feeling of just kind of an unfettered happiness. And
Speaker 1: it's been interesting sort of seeing that in my baby,
Speaker 1: who's now ten months old. I'm really just going right
Speaker 1: in there. I recently, um like, stopped breastfeeding my child,
Speaker 1: and for about a month, you know, it com leatly
Speaker 1: changed the chemical composition of my brain and the ability
Speaker 1: to access joy was completely removed from me. And I
Speaker 1: realized how much of that quality of having happiness, you know,
Speaker 1: right at hand, anytime the light was a certain way
Speaker 1: or a song would hit a certain note. You know
Speaker 1: how arbitrary that was, and how lucky I was to
Speaker 1: have that feel so so common and so right under
Speaker 1: the texture of my everyday experience. But you know, I
Speaker 1: would say, like peak happiness. You know, for me, isn't
Speaker 1: it like as an adult, like dancing at four in
Speaker 1: the morning with my friends, being caught in a rainstorm,
Speaker 1: Like doing acid and looking at a tree, you know, petting,
Speaker 1: like walking with my dog by myself in the park
Speaker 1: in New York City. You know that that's it for me.
Speaker 1: I so feel all those things. Do you think that
Speaker 1: it's a frequency, that there are certain conditions or chemicals
Speaker 1: that one can use to access that frequency of happiness?
Speaker 1: Because when I read that essay X to see in
Speaker 1: Trick Mara, I was so brilliant because I remembered that
Speaker 1: that when I was a kid, drugs would take me
Speaker 1: to that place. Now surfing takes me to that place.
Speaker 1: Being with my son takes me to that place. Being
Speaker 1: out in the desert, meditating takes me to that place,
Speaker 1: which makes me think that that place is always there,
Speaker 1: it's just how we find our way into it. Do
Speaker 1: you think that it's a frequency? I tend to act
Speaker 1: as if that is what it is and try to
Speaker 1: do the things that turned me into that frequency. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you know the things that you're describing surfing,
Speaker 1: being with your son, being in the middle of the desert,
Speaker 1: and meditating, these are things that you know, you get
Speaker 1: like a sort of like almost instinctively kind of a
Speaker 1: pre verbal almost just physically and existentially in tune, right,
Speaker 1: And there's like a light that comes from that sensation.
Speaker 1: And I think it is a frequency. And I think
Speaker 1: that you know that was that historically has been my
Speaker 1: attraction to psychedelics or you know, like like drugs you
Speaker 1: you ow music, I mean music, like we'll take you
Speaker 1: to the same because there are enough instances when you
Speaker 1: it has taken me to the same place that the
Speaker 1: music plus the ecstasy would have taken. Right when I
Speaker 1: was pregnant and couldn't do drugs, I was like, man,
Speaker 1: I need to feel when I was playing. You know,
Speaker 1: I remember this morning. It was the middle of the pandemic.
Speaker 1: I remember one night driving through like kind of an
Speaker 1: empty New York City on the way to a doctor's
Speaker 1: appointment or something, and I was like, I need to
Speaker 1: feel it. And I turned on a song, like a
Speaker 1: particular song and waited to feel it, and you know,
Speaker 1: I felt the flicker. You know it's but then, you know,
Speaker 1: I realized how how lucky to have been able to
Speaker 1: access the frequency. And I think that's where you say
Speaker 1: having a sunny, a sunny experience of mental health, if
Speaker 1: it was so easy, like if everyone could just do it,
Speaker 1: everyone exactly, And I mean, isn't that what the what
Speaker 1: what antidepressants or what certain drugs are supposed to do,
Speaker 1: which is to help you potentially access or at least
Speaker 1: put you in a place where you are more more
Speaker 1: open to it. But we're so chemically bound. I mean,
Speaker 1: you say stopping breastfeeding. I had exactly the same experience.
Speaker 1: But because you've been flooded with oxytse, and you have
Speaker 1: been flooded with the happiest, most loving, divine connected hormone
Speaker 1: in existence. For me, it makes testosterone look like a
Speaker 1: kind of wet salami sandwich, like it's it's so divine,
Speaker 1: it is so divinely experienced and feels like it is
Speaker 1: divinely given that when you take that away, no wonder
Speaker 1: you feel bereft. I'm glad to hear that you experiment
Speaker 1: with your ways into that. In fact, when I was
Speaker 1: talking about your book Trick Mirror with a couple of
Speaker 1: girlfriends who really experienced depression, they said that reading the
Speaker 1: essay on ecstasy, it gave such a vantage point of
Speaker 1: how there are may be other ways in that they
Speaker 1: don't let themselves. They so identify themselves as depressed people
Speaker 1: that allowing that experiential stuff might help them find a
Speaker 1: different pathway in was super helpful. You know, you're talking
Speaker 1: about a frequency that you you have to kind of
Speaker 1: actively put yourself within the band. For um, it's you know,
Speaker 1: they do. There's so much stuff on sort of psychedelic
Speaker 1: therapy and sort of you know, like and even like
Speaker 1: end of life UM therapy, you know, M D M
Speaker 1: A therapy absolutely, and I and I really do think
Speaker 1: that there's something I mean that was it has served
Speaker 1: that purpose. You know. I'm wary of doing this too
Speaker 1: much or relying on it solely, but you know, there's
Speaker 1: something to be said for reminding yourself that this frequency
Speaker 1: is available to you, you know, and sometimes you might
Speaker 1: have to use an artificial means to access it, and
Speaker 1: maybe you wouldn't want to do that all the time,
Speaker 1: but it has served that purpose for me, is reminding
Speaker 1: like I am capable of feeling just unbelievably grateful to
Speaker 1: be alive. You know, that's amazing. That's amazing. Okay, So
Speaker 1: what relations and ship, real fictionalized defines love for you?
Speaker 1: This is such a good question and it made me
Speaker 1: reconfront all of the answers that occurred in my mind.
Speaker 1: None of them were romantic, and this is something that
Speaker 1: I haven't yet figured out about myself. But I know, like,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, I I have been so drawn
Speaker 1: to really traditional almost stereotypical route. You know, I've been
Speaker 1: in basically, I've been in monogamous relationships almost unbroken since
Speaker 1: I was sixteen. You know, I'm drawn to just to
Speaker 1: like traditional notions of romantic love, and yet I find
Speaker 1: it incredibly uninteresting. And I haven't really squared. I'm not
Speaker 1: that interested in love stories, you know, I'm not. I
Speaker 1: can't those like sweeping love stories and film and and
Speaker 1: you know in books and literature, I'm not. I'm not
Speaker 1: drawn to them. I don't find them interesting. Even in
Speaker 1: in music, I find the drama of sort of attraction
Speaker 1: much more interesting, and songs about love and and so
Speaker 1: when I and I don't know, I still haven't figured
Speaker 1: out what that is because in my actions, that's it's
Speaker 1: it's been a primary thing that I care about and
Speaker 1: structure my life around. But I think my experience of
Speaker 1: love is almost it's so and this is something that
Speaker 1: I feel lucky about it. It's so kind of familiar
Speaker 1: and natural that it's almost boring. Which isn't to say
Speaker 1: that I find love in my daily life boring, but
Speaker 1: as a concept anyway, So when I thought about this question,
Speaker 1: you know, the things I think that what I really
Speaker 1: that what defines love for me our relationships structured around care.
Speaker 1: I think I thought about like this was another thing
Speaker 1: that I thought about having a baby in the pandemic,
Speaker 1: was sort of like, this is what love is. The
Speaker 1: extraordinary lengths that people go to in circumstances around the
Speaker 1: world that are often phenomenally difficult in ways that I
Speaker 1: can you know, hardly speak to or imagine what people
Speaker 1: do on every day basis to take care of the
Speaker 1: people in their family and the people that they love.
Speaker 1: I think that I think of that, that caretaking and
Speaker 1: devotion that to me is what love is, and on
Speaker 1: a really sort of every day and maybe that is
Speaker 1: why maybe that does connect to the way I think
Speaker 1: of romantic love as this sort of almost mundane thing.
Speaker 1: Is that love to me is, like I think about,
Speaker 1: what defines love for me is a sort of everyday
Speaker 1: commitment or something like that, and not romantically, and in
Speaker 1: terms of an everyday commitment to taking care of and
Speaker 1: watching out for and safeguarding you know, the well being
Speaker 1: of a parent, a child, a partner, a friend, right
Speaker 1: hopefully you know, often strangers too. I think I think
Speaker 1: of just this every day, these everyday actions. When I
Speaker 1: was young I remember my first this is so funny.
Speaker 1: I just remember this when I was maybe an elementary school.
Speaker 1: One morning, I woke up sobbing because I had had
Speaker 1: this dream about a bicycle, a bicycle in an empty
Speaker 1: playground that nobody had, like that was just there and
Speaker 1: nobody had picked it up, nobody had claimed it. And
Speaker 1: I woke up sobbing, like thinking, like, someone has to
Speaker 1: take care of this bicycle. And I think, and that
Speaker 1: to me was one of the first I think that
Speaker 1: was an early understanding of what love is. And I
Speaker 1: think I had another sort of shocking realization of of that.
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, back to the breastfeeding thing, but
Speaker 1: you know, I mean it is kind of I remember,
Speaker 1: it's huge and I and I think that's really the
Speaker 1: experience that you know, people say like motherhood will change
Speaker 1: you or whatever, and I think, really it was the
Speaker 1: sort of hormonal tsunami that came breastfeeding that made me understand.
Speaker 1: I remember, like day three back from the hospital, when
Speaker 1: my milk came in, I could feel in my body
Speaker 1: just this this existential desire to to take care and
Speaker 1: like the responsibility and the desire and the sweetness and
Speaker 1: the like monstrosity of needing and wanting to take care
Speaker 1: of somebody for as long as they live. Basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's such a beautiful That is such a beautiful way
Speaker 1: of putting it. It is overwhelming, which love is right,
Speaker 1: but also every day right, it's it's every single day,
Speaker 1: which dovetails into also the letting. I've talked about this
Speaker 1: a bit, but what no one ever seemed to talk
Speaker 1: about with motherhood is that the very act of giving
Speaker 1: birth is the thing that you will have to do
Speaker 1: most with your child, which is to let go of them.
Speaker 1: And it is this this constant process. How do you
Speaker 1: want to continue to give something everything when you also
Speaker 1: have to continually be letting them go in order to
Speaker 1: have the experience that they came here to have, which
Speaker 1: it's Do you have any advice for me? Um? Yes,
Speaker 1: I do? I do? My God, what would my advice be?
Speaker 1: Keep it in your heart that but I think you
Speaker 1: already do, just from having read your book, But that
Speaker 1: notion that nothing is guaranteed, and that every single moment
Speaker 1: is leading up to this moment where you really, you
Speaker 1: really do completely let them go to be free. But
Speaker 1: you must always underwrite that. So it's kind of being
Speaker 1: very being very strict with yourself about what your job
Speaker 1: as custodian is and how much they are serving your
Speaker 1: needs and insecurities as opposed to you dealing with that ship,
Speaker 1: and then really underwriting the person that they are becoming.
Speaker 1: So it's just paying attention to who they are. I
Speaker 1: really have tried not to shove my sweet Henry into
Speaker 1: any box, and as a result, very young, he has
Speaker 1: been self determining. And that's not you know, oh the kids,
Speaker 1: Oh you know, I'm just gonna let my kid flingers
Speaker 1: po across the room because I want them to be
Speaker 1: free to be him. It's not that. It's about really
Speaker 1: really feeling and seeing whether interest lies and encouraging that
Speaker 1: and not hammering the stuff that we think they should learn,
Speaker 1: because they're going to learn that if you're if you're
Speaker 1: kind and loving and you keep letting them go, because
Speaker 1: no one tells you to teach yourself to let your
Speaker 1: child go. But it's really the number one thing as
Speaker 1: a as a mother that I've learned. It's hard, but
Speaker 1: it's the best possible thing because I think it's what
Speaker 1: brings them, It's what will always bring them back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it will always keep them connected. To you is knowing
Speaker 1: that they're free to fly, and they're like homing pigeons.
Speaker 1: I've just come home. I'm going to hang onto this
Speaker 1: and remember it. And I and I think for me,
Speaker 1: there was something that I felt thankful for in the
Speaker 1: way that pregnancy and childbirth was in itself sort of
Speaker 1: physically instructive, how it physically reinforced the sort of existential
Speaker 1: and practical thing that you would have to do later
Speaker 1: write that you could never like you had to understand
Speaker 1: that nothing was ever guaranteed, that nothing is ever certain.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I found that to be like a useful
Speaker 1: existential lesson about the world's And I mean, it really
Speaker 1: is what person, place, or experience most altered your life.
Speaker 1: I grew up in an extremely conservative religious community in Texas,
Speaker 1: going mostly on scholarship to a very very ultra Christian
Speaker 1: school attached to one of the biggest mega churches in
Speaker 1: the country. And I have realized increasingly I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: that I'm a straightforward product of that environment, but it
Speaker 1: was the entirety of my world from age four to sixteen,
Speaker 1: let's say. And without that experience, I think I would
Speaker 1: be significantly different. I lost religion, I would say maybe
Speaker 1: high school. You know, my politics veered very far left
Speaker 1: as soon as I got to college. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I grew up I never met a liberal person, I
Speaker 1: never met a feminist. I never met anyone that was
Speaker 1: pro choice. It was very, very kind of a homogeneous
Speaker 1: in every way. It was a white, very rich environment.
Speaker 1: But I think what that did to me was at
Speaker 1: a fundamental level, and I think this has served me
Speaker 1: in writing and in thinking. I think it it made
Speaker 1: me understand the default state of life as one in
Speaker 1: which nobody would necessarily agree with you, and that was okay.
Speaker 1: Your opinion did not have to be validated by the
Speaker 1: people around you. It gave me a sort of quasi
Speaker 1: lonely but like a true sort of independence within my
Speaker 1: own brain. It also gave me, I think, an understanding
Speaker 1: of political and sort of cultural views that I think
Speaker 1: I technically find really imporrant. But growing up with only
Speaker 1: people who believe these things made me understand how a
Speaker 1: view that I find apporran might manifest on the intimate,
Speaker 1: everyday level to somebody who holds it. And I think
Speaker 1: that a lot of my progressive politics came from growing
Speaker 1: up in the church and not understanding why you know,
Speaker 1: this Bible that I was having to read every single
Speaker 1: day of my life for years, it seemed to me
Speaker 1: to be this very clearly kind of like socialist and
Speaker 1: aggressive thing that was interpreted in ways that were the
Speaker 1: opposite sort of economic policies that were harsh and individualistic,
Speaker 1: and my kind of confusion and anger about all of
Speaker 1: that ended up shaping my politics into what they are now.
Speaker 1: And then abidingly the last thing I'm left with, the
Speaker 1: sort of vestigial almost desire for devotion. I crave and
Speaker 1: respect and kind of venerate devotion. And that might have
Speaker 1: something to do with my answer about love. And I
Speaker 1: think that that came from the church. How extraordinary to
Speaker 1: be in an environment of and I hope it's not
Speaker 1: offensive to say indoctrination. No place I got. I got
Speaker 1: a ring that said I wasn't going to have sex
Speaker 1: when I was like seven, you know wow. But within
Speaker 1: that environment, you can read the Bible and actually see
Speaker 1: the beautiful, socialist, loving, inclusive text that is an interpretation
Speaker 1: of it, whilst also being hammered with the idea that
Speaker 1: Jesus was white and that it is an individualistic world
Speaker 1: that we're living in undergo right, and like gay people
Speaker 1: should not you know, well, the gay people shouldn't exist.
Speaker 1: And how on earth did you how did you listen
Speaker 1: to your own voice when you have this megavoice slamming you.
Speaker 1: How did you do it? Well? I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: the process that you're describing is no different from what
Speaker 1: we were talking about before we started recording. It's like
Speaker 1: maybe what every woman does to get themselves out of
Speaker 1: the thumb of sort of patriarchal expectation, right, Like both
Speaker 1: probably done our own individual like d programming out of
Speaker 1: things that were kind of unequivocally grafted onto us at
Speaker 1: a younger age, you know. And I've really never thought
Speaker 1: about this except for the way that you just asked
Speaker 1: the question. I am troubled by how well I sort
Speaker 1: of adapted to fit in and like still wanted to
Speaker 1: be cool and fit in with this environment that I
Speaker 1: also openly hated. But still, you know, was a teenager.
Speaker 1: But I think, you know, there were certain things. I
Speaker 1: was not white, my family was not wealthy like those
Speaker 1: other families. There was already a difference. There was already
Speaker 1: some sort of separation that maybe made room for are
Speaker 1: a lot of sort of private individual questioning. I also
Speaker 1: had a couple of close friends that, you know, we
Speaker 1: had preliminary versions of these conversations, not knowing what we
Speaker 1: were talking about, but you know, there was a strong
Speaker 1: desire to get out or to reach for something else
Speaker 1: than what we've been given. And a few of my
Speaker 1: friends we kind of reached for these things kind of blindly,
Speaker 1: and I think that actually the real way, though it's
Speaker 1: just writing. I think as an elementary schooler even I
Speaker 1: was just this copious, copious journal er. And when I
Speaker 1: was going back, I was reading my old diaries to
Speaker 1: sort of fact check my book, and I had to
Speaker 1: also remember that the transition away from these things it
Speaker 1: feels significant, but it was gradual. It maybe you know,
Speaker 1: started in seventh grade and reached a sort of working synthesis,
Speaker 1: maybe at the end of college or something. You know.
Speaker 1: I remember getting to college and a girl in one
Speaker 1: of my classes introduced herself as a feminist, and I
Speaker 1: was like, like, you know, performative much, you know, like
Speaker 1: I was sort of like, that's so like eighties or
Speaker 1: you know, I don't even know what I said, but
Speaker 1: there was a period of time where I was trying
Speaker 1: to find a way to hold onto both. And I
Speaker 1: think that period lasted for six or seven years. It
Speaker 1: was a steady movement, but there was a long time
Speaker 1: where I was trying to reconcile the environment that I
Speaker 1: grew up in with the things that I kind of
Speaker 1: instinctively felt were true. And in going back and reading
Speaker 1: my journals, I had to remember it took a long time,
Speaker 1: and I think the way I moved was just constantly
Speaker 1: writing out my anxiety, writing out, you know, like there's
Speaker 1: something strange about this, and then six months later I
Speaker 1: would say, you know, I think what it is is this,
Speaker 1: And then six months later I would realize, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was just slowly, slowly, slowly. I think it's
Speaker 1: really interesting. And again I'm not drawing any equivalency between
Speaker 1: me and you, but what I do recognize is, in
Speaker 1: the face of being told something that is apparently empirical,
Speaker 1: that the stuff that you were being told, the stuff
Speaker 1: that I was being told, was that you are going
Speaker 1: to be unemployed and you'll be lucky if you do
Speaker 1: some sort of corporate videos telling people where the exits are,
Speaker 1: and you know, developing the idea of an independent thought
Speaker 1: within a structure that feels impermeable. I think it's really interesting,
Speaker 1: and I think that women have to do it an
Speaker 1: enormous amount. Right, We're always having to get out of
Speaker 1: structures that have been previously created. I'm so proud of you.
Speaker 1: My heart is persty. What quality do you like least
Speaker 1: about yourself? I have a long held beery that the
Speaker 1: best and the worst qualities about ourselves are always deeply related.
Speaker 1: For me, I think one of the best qualities of
Speaker 1: myself is that I can be very carefree. I think
Speaker 1: I am very easy going. But my least favorite quality
Speaker 1: is that I can be incredibly careless on every level.
Speaker 1: Careless to the level of, you know, losing my phone, wallet,
Speaker 1: keys within the span of thirty weekends, to to I
Speaker 1: think emotional carelessness like deep emotional carelessness. To deciding. I
Speaker 1: think that when I choose to care about something, it
Speaker 1: is like a true commitment. But I think it is
Speaker 1: very easy for my brain to compartmentalize and say, like,
Speaker 1: I do not need to recognize this as a concern,
Speaker 1: a little too easy for me to turn off from.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is something that has served me well.
Speaker 1: On the other end of the spectrum, where I think
Speaker 1: I'm really good and not worrying about certain things that
Speaker 1: I can't control, sort of accepting on certainty and you
Speaker 1: know whatever. But the flip side to it is everything
Speaker 1: that I've ever regretted in my life, every real mistake
Speaker 1: I've ever made, I think stems from equality of carelessness
Speaker 1: so interesting that we don't think of it like that
Speaker 1: as the thing that we like best about ourselves and
Speaker 1: the thing that we like at least really being so
Speaker 1: closely aligned. There's a rizzler paper, yeah, like thin bit
Speaker 1: between carefree and careless, and there's and it's the opposite.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like my my boyfriend, my partner who
Speaker 1: like his like his best point. It's almost the option.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're in a relationship, you have the
Speaker 1: same fight over and over, yeah, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: just always and like ours is the same, you know,
Speaker 1: for twelve years. It's been me saying like, why do
Speaker 1: you care so much about this dumb thing? And he's like, Jia,
Speaker 1: why don't care about this really imparity thing? You know,
Speaker 1: and his in his body like luckily they get mirrors
Speaker 1: like his. I think his best quality is that he
Speaker 1: is abundantly conscientious and detail oriented and caring, you know.
Speaker 1: And the flip side is that you can be like
Speaker 1: pedantic or over you know, critical or something you know,
Speaker 1: but it's but they're entirely the same. It's the same quality. Anyways.
Speaker 1: That's so funny. I find I've grown because I have
Speaker 1: an extraordinarily detailed orientated boyfriend as well, and and I
Speaker 1: realized it sets me off sometimes because I wish I
Speaker 1: were like that. So really there's a kind of aspirational envy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: has it made you any more detail are in being? What?
Speaker 1: Do you know what? It's made me appreciate how shit
Speaker 1: I am at that. But like I think that but
Speaker 1: if it's a scale, only only I would notice that
Speaker 1: the needle has actually flicked further forward into being more
Speaker 1: but nobody else would notice that you do. But the
Speaker 1: other great quality is patience he has. He has limitless
Speaker 1: patience with you know, I feel most of the time
Speaker 1: just like a really cumbersome luddite that he carries around
Speaker 1: with him, like, you know, this is my girlfriend. She's
Speaker 1: only just realized that they've invented the wheel. And but
Speaker 1: he's so patient without being patronizing, And I think that's
Speaker 1: what makes him sort of almost superhuman. But there is
Speaker 1: a pedantry, And sometimes I'm like, you don't have to
Speaker 1: look at all the little bits, just enjoy the whole.
Speaker 1: We don't have to dissect it into all of these
Speaker 1: little pieces. But then probably both of our lives are
Speaker 1: enriched by like attentive detailed at all. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: that I would I wouldn't be able to get half
Speaker 1: bet in the morning. If I did, I would live
Speaker 1: in a nest of books and clothes on the floor,
Speaker 1: like everything would be getting shut off, and be like,
Speaker 1: I wish there was some way to pay these bills,
Speaker 1: some automated away someone happened. What question would you most
Speaker 1: like answered? I think it would be like what is
Speaker 1: the most useful possible way I could spend my life?
Speaker 1: You know, because you struggle with this in a sort
Speaker 1: of utilitarian sense, I often think, like what am I doing?
Speaker 1: Like shouldn't I just be chained to a treat in
Speaker 1: an old growth forest? Like shouldn't I be like at
Speaker 1: the Texas Mexico Board or flinging myself in front of
Speaker 1: you know, like an ice facility, Even like you wonder
Speaker 1: like I never expected that I would be able to
Speaker 1: write for a living. I never expected that I would
Speaker 1: have the privileged. You know, so few people in the
Speaker 1: world get to do something that's creatively fulfilling and get
Speaker 1: paid to do and get paid to do it. I
Speaker 1: feel so phenomenally lucky to be able to do it.
Speaker 1: And then sometimes I'm like, you know, is this just
Speaker 1: sitting at my computer and writing an art? I think
Speaker 1: that serves like an objective function and it's important. But
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, sometimes you just wonder like, should
Speaker 1: I be doing something? You should? I should I go
Speaker 1: to law school? And you know, this is very interesting.
Speaker 1: This is very interesting because you wrote something. I don't
Speaker 1: know where I read it, but I wrote it down here,
Speaker 1: and everything that I write, I do hope to make
Speaker 1: things clearer for the people who read it. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think that that is unbelievably useful and amazing.
Speaker 1: To be able to articulate is a gift. God knows.
Speaker 1: It's why we read. But I would also like to
Speaker 1: say it's really interesting because even at a very young age,
Speaker 1: you clearly have been worried about how do you save
Speaker 1: all the bicycles? Right, It's quite interesting that that's been
Speaker 1: a concern of yours, for it sounds like your whole
Speaker 1: life is like, how do I save all the stuff?
Speaker 1: It's like you're you're doing it. You're doing it through
Speaker 1: the medium of writing, You're doing it through mothering, and like,
Speaker 1: maybe you will change yourself to an old growth tree.
Speaker 1: I know, maybe I will, Maybe you will at some
Speaker 1: point do that. But I know what you mean about,
Speaker 1: is there more that I should be doing? Yeah? You know,
Speaker 1: and then there'll never be an objective answer. I think
Speaker 1: what I do know is that you know when you
Speaker 1: have a friend that they ask like, am I are
Speaker 1: really bad? In person? Order? Am I? And it's like
Speaker 1: you have to remind them that the fact that they're
Speaker 1: always asking themselves this question is itself a guard against
Speaker 1: the thing that they're worried about. I have a feeling
Speaker 1: that this anxiety that's always in the back of my
Speaker 1: mind that could I be using my time in a
Speaker 1: better way? Could I be giving my impulses more to
Speaker 1: the collective other than the individual. Like I think that
Speaker 1: it is a kind of stick that I need to have.
Speaker 1: I try to keep that stick going in a way
Speaker 1: that is productive rather than sort of like uselessly self flagellating. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's such a great answer that question, like could somebody
Speaker 1: tell me the exact thing that would be the most useful,
Speaker 1: best use of my life? Here does someone tell me
Speaker 1: if someone run the math? But again, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think you just sort of answered it those well and
Speaker 1: saying if you're asking that question, it means that you're
Speaker 1: paying attention to what you are doing, which means you're
Speaker 1: most likely holding that thought of is this the best
Speaker 1: use of my time? I mean, God knows I do
Speaker 1: enough stuff where I go. What am I doing is
Speaker 1: usually just doing something incredibly mundane, and I'm like, what
Speaker 1: am I doing? I feel like I should be doing
Speaker 1: something ten times more productive, but it's not always possible.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like do it when you can write,
Speaker 1: I get the steeling. When I'm like laying in bed
Speaker 1: and needing to wind down. I'm just reading news that
Speaker 1: I know I'm going to forget, and you know instantly
Speaker 1: as soon as I read it, and it's like, you
Speaker 1: know what, whatever. Sometimes the brain simply must eat some
Speaker 1: garbage and then exactly. I wonder if some of the
Speaker 1: people who are chained to the old growth trees, I
Speaker 1: wonder if they think is there something more that I
Speaker 1: could be doing? Because there's no stay cis in any
Speaker 1: of this. There's no definitive answer. Yet, there's no there
Speaker 1: there that even the person who is definitively doing what
Speaker 1: we would objectively look at and go that person is
Speaker 1: changing the world, they can't be doing it twenty four
Speaker 1: hours a day, seven days a week. They themselves must question,
Speaker 1: you know, is there more? Lord? Okay, So in your life,
Speaker 1: can you tell me about something that has grown out
Speaker 1: of a personal disaster. I'll say, I feel, you know,
Speaker 1: another kind of luck that I've had in my life.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been spared a lot of personal grief
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people have had to
Speaker 1: go through. I have not had a very close family
Speaker 1: member die anyway. This is just a way of saying
Speaker 1: I've been spared a lot of disasters. But I think
Speaker 1: that the closest thing to this question. When I was
Speaker 1: out of college, I graduated right into the middle of
Speaker 1: the two eight recession, I was like, you know, like
Speaker 1: you were saying earlier, I was like, I'll never be employed,
Speaker 1: I'll never do I'll never be able to make anything
Speaker 1: of myself. I didn't know what to do when I
Speaker 1: joined the Peace Corps with all of this sort of
Speaker 1: idealism and grand plans to you know, do good and
Speaker 1: you know probably you know, these ultimately imperialistic desires to
Speaker 1: save somebody or something. Right, maybe it's back to the
Speaker 1: bicycle thing, Yeah, exactly. And you know, and that's an
Speaker 1: uncomfortable and you know, in many ways sort of dehumanizing
Speaker 1: way to think of other of other humans who are
Speaker 1: your equals, right, But in terms of you feeling from
Speaker 1: a very young age that there was service that needed
Speaker 1: to be addressed. Yeah, and and so you know, and
Speaker 1: I this was one of the most important periods of
Speaker 1: my life. I went to Kyrgyzstan in Central Anesia and
Speaker 1: it was it was a roller coaster of an experience.
Speaker 1: We were evacuated to a military base twice. There was
Speaker 1: essentially a genocide month too. There was a government coup
Speaker 1: Day seven. I wanted the challenge of it, and I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of humistically that you know, you come
Speaker 1: out of this challenge stronger and you do all of
Speaker 1: these things. And it was a sort of singularly defining
Speaker 1: lesson that your intentions and your outcomes. There's often a massive,
Speaker 1: sort of unbridgeable gap that you can come in trying
Speaker 1: so hard to do something and then realize you were
Speaker 1: all wrong. And you know, you can come in feeling
Speaker 1: like you have so much to give and then ultimately
Speaker 1: understand that you were still taking somehow. And I ultimately
Speaker 1: left early. I left after thirteen months. And I pride
Speaker 1: myself on commitment. That was a story that I told
Speaker 1: myself about myself, that you know, I say, I'm going
Speaker 1: to do something, and I'm going to do it. And
Speaker 1: I quit, and I bailed, and I came back feeling,
Speaker 1: you know, useless and and terrible and like I would
Speaker 1: never be able to do anything good in my life
Speaker 1: and feeling like I don't understand anything. And I came
Speaker 1: back sort of horrified at American capitalism, you know, because
Speaker 1: I was in the middle of nowhere, you know, no internet,
Speaker 1: you know, no running water. And I came back. I
Speaker 1: would go into grocery stores and I would burst into
Speaker 1: tears that I craved and I feared the fact that
Speaker 1: I could just walk in anywhere and just all of
Speaker 1: these products have been flown around the world for my
Speaker 1: comfort and my whims and you know, and I felt
Speaker 1: just so confused and like I knew absolutely nothing. And
Speaker 1: I think as time went on, I realized that that
Speaker 1: was actually an okay way to feel, you know. That
Speaker 1: was actually maybe the grounds from which I would begin
Speaker 1: to try to understand things is with the sort of
Speaker 1: simultaneous reaction of dread of the world as it is,
Speaker 1: but a desire to be in it. You know, people
Speaker 1: often say they're humbled when they actually mean like I'm
Speaker 1: I'm very honored to announce, you know, And that was
Speaker 1: an experience of being humbled as being like truly broken down.
Speaker 1: For a while, I thought I need to get myself
Speaker 1: out of this state, to get back to normal, and
Speaker 1: I think slowly I started to understand I need to
Speaker 1: remember part of this state and retain some aspect of
Speaker 1: this humility, you know, like function a little better, but
Speaker 1: retain some of the sense that I don't know anything
Speaker 1: and that that's okay, and that I can operate from
Speaker 1: this standpoint of humility, true humility from here going out. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's quite a thing to bring that with you and
Speaker 1: then to synthesize that into your everyday life. But amazing
Speaker 1: that you had that experience. I feel really lucky. And
Speaker 1: it was again, you know, you go there expecting to give.
Speaker 1: I left feeling like I took and you know that
Speaker 1: too was a lesson. You know that you would have
Speaker 1: to be a study and constantly re evaluated commitment if
Speaker 1: I did want to give more than I took in
Speaker 1: this world. I think it's a really really good way
Speaker 1: of looking at any kind of service is really seeing
Speaker 1: how much you're actually taking. Yeah, God, it's just so
Speaker 1: lovely to talk to you. I could really talk to
Speaker 1: you forever and ever. It is such an honor to
Speaker 1: meet you, and thank you for thank you for having me,
Speaker 1: and thank you for telling me that about mothering. I'm
Speaker 1: going to remember it for all ways. I think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: love with loose hands. That's what someone said. Anyway, Good
Speaker 1: luck with your gorgeous baby bird. Thank you, Jeez. Book
Speaker 1: Trick Mirror is out now, and there is an extraordinarily
Speaker 1: good piece of investigative journalism. She co wrote with ronand
Speaker 1: Farrow in the July three edition of The New Yorker,
Speaker 1: entitled Britney Spears Conservatorship Nightmare. Mini Questions is hosted and
Speaker 1: written by me Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer
Speaker 1: Morgan Lavoy, research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby
Speaker 1: by Mini Driver. Additional music by Aaron Kaufman Executive produced
Speaker 1: by me Mini Driver Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson,
Speaker 1: Addison No Day, Lisa Castella and Annicke Oppenheim at w
Speaker 1: kPr de La Pescador, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, And
Speaker 1: for constantly solicited tech support Henry Driver