Speaker 1: We have a sun named Henry as well, also enjoys
Speaker 1: the hot pocket now and then I tried to make them.
Speaker 1: I tried to make them because I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna like a hot pocket, it's not that
Speaker 1: far off like a CalCon so that's been feeding Italians
Speaker 1: from time immemorial, So perhaps we should just have a
Speaker 1: girl making a hot bookt And Henry was like, what
Speaker 1: is the Italian word for kelson and men again? And
Speaker 1: I was like sock And he was like, yeah, mom,
Speaker 1: you made a sock to taste like a sock. Nice. Hello,
Speaker 1: I'm Mini driver. Welcome to Many Questions Season two. I've
Speaker 1: always loved Cruce's question. It was originally a nineteenth century
Speaker 1: Harlag game where players would ask each other thirty five
Speaker 1: questions aimed at revealing the other player's true nature. It's
Speaker 1: just the scientific method really. In asking different people the
Speaker 1: same set of questions, you can make observations about which
Speaker 1: truths appeared to be universal. I love this discipline, and
Speaker 1: it made me wonder, what if these questions were just
Speaker 1: the jumping off point, what greater depths would be revealed
Speaker 1: if I ask these questions as conversation starters with thought
Speaker 1: leaders and trailblazers across all these different disciplines. So I
Speaker 1: adapted prus questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions
Speaker 1: that I personally think a pertinent to a person's story.
Speaker 1: They are when and where were you happiest? What is
Speaker 1: the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real
Speaker 1: or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you
Speaker 1: most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped
Speaker 1: you the most? What would be your last meal? And
Speaker 1: can you tell me something in your life that's grown
Speaker 1: out of a personal disaster. And I've gathered a group
Speaker 1: of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and
Speaker 1: humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You
Speaker 1: may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions.
Speaker 1: We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to
Speaker 1: their experience, or the most surprising, or created the most
Speaker 1: fertile ground to connect. My guest today is the author
Speaker 1: Anthony Door, whose book All the Light We Cannot See
Speaker 1: One the Pulitzer Prize. This, it turns out, is not
Speaker 1: surprising at all if you have ever read a single
Speaker 1: word he has written. His more recent novel claud Cuckoo
Speaker 1: Land is genuinely one of my favorite books ever, and
Speaker 1: the level of lyricism present in his writing is there
Speaker 1: when he speaks to I wrote down so many things
Speaker 1: he said all the way through the interview, you know,
Speaker 1: as though the whole thing wasn't being recorded and I
Speaker 1: had to take notes. I hope you enjoyed this conversation
Speaker 1: as much as I did. I'm very interested. Do you
Speaker 1: mean to start up with since my mother died? But
Speaker 1: since my mother died, I think about the things that
Speaker 1: I didn't realize until after she'd gone, that went into
Speaker 1: the basic architecture, the stuff that was impassing, rather than
Speaker 1: the big moments. And it was weird. It was like
Speaker 1: it was like having the foundation of something revealed when
Speaker 1: I'd really just been looking at the building the whole time,
Speaker 1: this beautiful building, because she was this amazing person. It's
Speaker 1: been like this weird posthumous gift to feel all these
Speaker 1: other things. So now when I do something and my
Speaker 1: son rolls his eyes and like things that I'm super
Speaker 1: embarrassing and that we've spent five hours making a sock,
Speaker 1: I do go. Now you know what he's going to
Speaker 1: remember this because we listened to New Order while we
Speaker 1: made this cow zone and we chatted about some something
Speaker 1: that's so interesting, because that's kind of the lesson for
Speaker 1: like beginning writers want to write about the big architecture,
Speaker 1: you know, they want to write about love for what
Speaker 1: it feels to be confused. But the only way to
Speaker 1: deliver that to another person is through detail, through like
Speaker 1: these moment by moment details of life. That's how memories
Speaker 1: get built, you know, is New Order and making a
Speaker 1: cow zone exactly. And you know what, I had this
Speaker 1: teacher who I dedicated my book to my English teachers.
Speaker 1: My three teachers were so huge in my life as
Speaker 1: a whole, but Alistair one of them. On a Monday morning,
Speaker 1: a piece of a four paper would be posted on
Speaker 1: the notice board in my school from the age of
Speaker 1: ten onwards, and there would be a list in his
Speaker 1: really beautiful, strange italic handwriting, and it would be like
Speaker 1: drinking a cup of tea, tying my shoelaces, getting out
Speaker 1: of bed, and you had to write two sides of
Speaker 1: a four describing this extraordinarily mundane thing. And he was like,
Speaker 1: this is just like exercise. He was like, this is
Speaker 1: the same as you're running around playing fields, playing hockey, basketball,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. So many years later, when I was
Speaker 1: still working my way through the anthology of what he
Speaker 1: told me to read in my Life, he said it
Speaker 1: was about getting you to pay attention to not just
Speaker 1: having to do this thing. The thing was not the thing,
Speaker 1: but to your life, to all those things that it
Speaker 1: would trigger that whenever you noticed something, it would trigger
Speaker 1: the memory of your interest in the fact that you've
Speaker 1: had that muscle built in from an early age to
Speaker 1: appreciate it and to be able to kind of develop
Speaker 1: ideas from it. Yeah, detail is how you communicate with people.
Speaker 1: If you had said I had this teacher our stair
Speaker 1: he was meaningful to me, that would kind of bounce
Speaker 1: off me. But if you describe his handwriting and you
Speaker 1: describe this list on his door and the details of
Speaker 1: what he was asking you to do, described telling your shoelaces,
Speaker 1: it means something to me. That's how you communicate a motion.
Speaker 1: It's ironically it's like you're reaching for the stars. But
Speaker 1: the way to do it is like the tiny little
Speaker 1: pieces of broken glass on the ground, and that we
Speaker 1: keep retrieving memory, Like I've just moved back to the
Speaker 1: town that I'm from. I don't like how it feels
Speaker 1: because I don't feel like I can make new memories here.
Speaker 1: I'm so in the trough of what went before and
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by At the same time, it's feeling incredibly sad.
Speaker 1: It feels palpable. I keep asking everybody, how do you
Speaker 1: create new memories in a totally familiar environment. That's super interesting.
Speaker 1: It makes me think about Germans and like the seventies
Speaker 1: trying to deal with like the weight of the memory
Speaker 1: of all the stuff that had happened, and you're just
Speaker 1: trying to listen to music and be eighteen years old,
Speaker 1: and there's always this impulse to renew. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that's what's so beautifu. Those grass always ends up
Speaker 1: growing over the battlefields and it's so important to remember
Speaker 1: that blood was spilled there, but at the same time
Speaker 1: allow space for young people to move around. So our
Speaker 1: twin boys just went off to college. Oh wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I worry so much about you know, this world, Like
Speaker 1: I keep saying, like a little world's warming up, oh,
Speaker 1: and like it's gonna get worse. You know, he doesn't
Speaker 1: need that, he needs to be able to go make
Speaker 1: new memories and discover the world anew and go to
Speaker 1: a party as if it was like the first time
Speaker 1: anybody ever went to a party? Did you go to
Speaker 1: any good parties? And what you're busy going? Can you
Speaker 1: believe the ice caps? Not? What about that Kappa Kappa
Speaker 1: gamma that's totally it? Yeah, And then his mom's like,
Speaker 1: ask him about COVID. She's like the cherry on top,
Speaker 1: that's really funny. Well, God, I'd better get on because
Speaker 1: I could really just ask you about a thousand questions
Speaker 1: that have nothing to do with these seven questions, but
Speaker 1: I will glean all the answers that I would like
Speaker 1: to ask you. If these having questions allow a ski,
Speaker 1: will you tell me where and when you were happiest?
Speaker 1: Of course I thought about it. I'm gonna choose a
Speaker 1: general when, but a specific where I love to ski.
Speaker 1: I live in Idaho, in the mountains in the United States,
Speaker 1: one of the last places middle class families can still ski,
Speaker 1: and you know afford it. We raised our boy skiing
Speaker 1: on this mountain called Brundage Mountain, about two hours north
Speaker 1: of here, where you know, they just put a keg
Speaker 1: of beer in the snow and like grill Hamburgers and
Speaker 1: you could still get a seasons pass for about two bucks.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. There's something about joy for me that's
Speaker 1: always connected to the ephemeral, and for me, it's fresh
Speaker 1: snow is like this great reminder of it, when the
Speaker 1: whole world's like made new again by a big dump
Speaker 1: of fresh white snow. To be there with my boys,
Speaker 1: like moving downhill, there's some joy and speed are linked
Speaker 1: in my head too for some reason. But skiing through
Speaker 1: fresh snow like your joints filled twenty years younger, because
Speaker 1: you can just land without pain and moving and hearing
Speaker 1: them like whooping. You can hear like the joy of
Speaker 1: other people. And you know what's gonna go away. It's
Speaker 1: going to get tracked up, but I'll get too warm.
Speaker 1: The moment of freshnow is unpredictable. You just have to
Speaker 1: be lucky enough to be there when it comes, and
Speaker 1: then to feel yourself dancing. It's really a kind of
Speaker 1: dance moving down through that all of your troubles kind
Speaker 1: of vanished and evaporate, and you're just present in the
Speaker 1: now and you're creating like you're dancing. Is especially if
Speaker 1: there are trees you're dancing down through them, so you're
Speaker 1: kind of improvising and making music in your head. It's
Speaker 1: really sharing that with somebody is so special. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: for how you describe that. It is so akin to
Speaker 1: the ocean. I mean, I know that snow is visited
Speaker 1: upon us and the oceans are always there, But that's feeling.
Speaker 1: That is what surfing is like. For me. Everything feels young.
Speaker 1: It's only the next day when you feel your knees
Speaker 1: and my shoulders in my back and the thing in
Speaker 1: that moment, that's it. And the waves aren't always predictive,
Speaker 1: but me you're waiting to see what way will common.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they aren't there and sometimes they're too big, and
Speaker 1: so it's very very similar. Yeah, and you're using gravity
Speaker 1: the forces of nature to move you through an environment
Speaker 1: something so deeply human. It connects us to our ancestors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really does. It really does that. Moving through nature,
Speaker 1: particularly like the mountains, feel particularly sort of atavistic because
Speaker 1: there's it's so much to do with survival, Like I
Speaker 1: don't know, the part of my brain is always on
Speaker 1: a mountain or high up or on a glacier like
Speaker 1: super super super, more turned on than it is anywhere else,
Speaker 1: even in the ocean where I know that there are
Speaker 1: great white sharks. They swim right by me to go
Speaker 1: up to the seal colony and eat their breakfast. It's
Speaker 1: not switched on in the same way as it is
Speaker 1: in the mountains. It's funny, but there is always a
Speaker 1: thread of injury. There's always there's something that makes you
Speaker 1: feel a little more alive. I'm not chasing like down
Speaker 1: crazy cool wars or something, but a little bit of
Speaker 1: threat of danger does help keep you kind of present
Speaker 1: and in a mind like mine that's always like what
Speaker 1: do I have to do next Friday? Or why can't
Speaker 1: I solve this problem in the book I'm working on
Speaker 1: right now, to just be present is something I'm chasing,
Speaker 1: and it's always so leading, you know. I just want
Speaker 1: to grab on that and remember, like, my boys are
Speaker 1: going to get bigger, you know, they won't always ski
Speaker 1: with me. I'm going to get older, sort of have
Speaker 1: those moments when you get to be with them and
Speaker 1: to try to appreciate them for what they are before
Speaker 1: they're gone. Yes, my son barely looked over I mean
Speaker 1: he did, but he did barely look over his shoulder
Speaker 1: when he went off on this camping trip. His first
Speaker 1: week back at school, and I was like, I carry
Speaker 1: him around in my pocket if I could, Like I
Speaker 1: would be in the back of his class, being like
Speaker 1: this an agent ron great, Like I'd be you want
Speaker 1: to sit together at what should we have the lunch?
Speaker 1: Like I would be his worst night matter if I
Speaker 1: possibly could. But I called his name out, and I
Speaker 1: must have There must have been something. You know how
Speaker 1: when you hear someone shout and you can tell that
Speaker 1: they're in vain, you know it's not a shriek of
Speaker 1: Joe way, You really know that they've trodden on the
Speaker 1: thumb tack or stuff. That time, I must have said
Speaker 1: his name with something in it, because he turned around
Speaker 1: so quickly, and I sort of like cheshire cat grinned
Speaker 1: at him, and he was like, mom, it's gonna be okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then I asked him if I was damaging him. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we just we have twin boys. Will just drop them
Speaker 1: off at college, so it's like the same thing. God,
Speaker 1: that must have been really hard. Your whole job is
Speaker 1: to get them to live on their own, and yet
Speaker 1: you're trying to make your deepest emotional connection of your
Speaker 1: life really over and over with them and then you're
Speaker 1: expected to kind of say okay and let them go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let them go. I know it's way more evolved than
Speaker 1: humans actually are, which makes me feel like we used
Speaker 1: to be so evolved, because clearly we used to do it,
Speaker 1: We've been doing it for this long, but like it
Speaker 1: doesn't hasn't gotten any easier, Like how come everything else
Speaker 1: is supposed to evolve and there are these things that
Speaker 1: just do not. It never becomes easier, or you can't
Speaker 1: intellectual qualify. Maybe we didn't evolve to send our kids
Speaker 1: three thousand miles away at the university. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of things that are kind of artificial demands that modern
Speaker 1: life puts on us that maybe our ancestors didn't have
Speaker 1: to deal with. I think, you know, we would be
Speaker 1: around our elders a lot more, we would be around
Speaker 1: our grown kids. And the way we segment kids in schools,
Speaker 1: for example, like all the twelve year old shipped together now,
Speaker 1: but the village is like kids of all different ages
Speaker 1: would be helping each other. The three year olds would
Speaker 1: be attended by the nine year olds, and the fifteen
Speaker 1: year olds are helping the nine year olds. Sometimes I wonder,
Speaker 1: you know, all this segmentation in the distance. You know,
Speaker 1: our kids got into so called good universities, but they're
Speaker 1: far from home, and maybe that's a little artificial, I
Speaker 1: know for people listening. Clokkleland is honestly one of my
Speaker 1: favorite books I ever read, and the part that I
Speaker 1: cried in the most was one of may is leaving home,
Speaker 1: being forced to leave with his cattle, yeah, and knowing
Speaker 1: that he will never see them again. This idea that
Speaker 1: even if one returns. There was something particularly unbearable about
Speaker 1: how going to I don't know how far Constantinople was
Speaker 1: from where his woods were, probably only three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty miles, but you know, in those days, that's forever.
Speaker 1: The whole book really is about returning and how you
Speaker 1: can never step in the same river twice, and yet
Speaker 1: that's part of life. Like letting your son go off camping.
Speaker 1: You know he'll come back slightly changed and he'll still
Speaker 1: need you for a few more years, but you have
Speaker 1: to celebrate his growing independence even as he's pushing against
Speaker 1: those boundaries that you're building around him. Our boys need
Speaker 1: to go build new families, new tribes, and they're not
Speaker 1: rejecting us. We're not losing them as much as kind
Speaker 1: of sharing them with other people. As what I keep
Speaker 1: trying to tell myself. Anyway, you're a little bit ahead
Speaker 1: in terms of like the college thing, but Henry goes
Speaker 1: to boarding schools. There is something of them like going
Speaker 1: off and taking what you've given them out into the
Speaker 1: world and saying, this is what we did. This was
Speaker 1: the point was to build good, strong, kind, intellectually curious,
Speaker 1: independent people who can go out and be a nice
Speaker 1: addition to whatever environment they find themselves in. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: so BEAUTIFU fleet put, that's a kindness. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think we're successful if we build kind people for the
Speaker 1: next generation. Yeah, I mean I will saw later obviously,
Speaker 1: but I will remember these what relationship real or fictionalized?
Speaker 1: De find love fear? This was your hardest of your questions.
Speaker 1: I've been reading a lot about Rachel Carson. Her most
Speaker 1: famous book was called Silent Spring. It came out in
Speaker 1: the sixties, and as she was dying of cancer, she
Speaker 1: made a very persuasive and emotional and beautifully written to
Speaker 1: argument that d d T this pesticide that humans were
Speaker 1: spring everywhere, was going to lead to a silent spring.
Speaker 1: It thins that the shells of bird eggs, and so
Speaker 1: it really makes bird reproduction complicated. You know, it's an insecticide.
Speaker 1: In World War Two, it arrived as like this magic
Speaker 1: silver bullet that could eradicate, especially during war when everybody's
Speaker 1: all close together, these diseases that you know, these awful
Speaker 1: pandemics that were occurring, especially saying Naples, and they shower
Speaker 1: a million people with D d T and all the
Speaker 1: life sty and then there's no typhus anymore, so saving
Speaker 1: tons of lives and also malaria. It's amazing mosquito eradicating pesticide,
Speaker 1: but if the collateral damage is immense. So anyway, Rachel
Speaker 1: Carson was living at a time when I definitely wasn't
Speaker 1: okay to be a lesbian or even just be interested
Speaker 1: in sexuality in a different way. And she had a
Speaker 1: relationship with a woman named Dorothy Freeman. And there's about
Speaker 1: nine d letters that survived between them, and they had
Speaker 1: this amazing romantic relationship that was always kind of fearful
Speaker 1: of being found out Dorothy was married to a man.
Speaker 1: And so I've just been reading through some of those
Speaker 1: letters and trying to understand they're very different, and I
Speaker 1: think what's so interesting about loves. We often think, what
Speaker 1: do we have a comment, you know, like, hey, let's
Speaker 1: go out on the scorpio. You're you like skateboarding. But
Speaker 1: a differences, I think are what ultimately make relationship. It's
Speaker 1: interesting the way you try to embrace what's different about
Speaker 1: each other, and that's how you learned and evolved together.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, man, he likes to go to bed
Speaker 1: at ten and I like to go to bed at
Speaker 1: eight thirty or whatever. I think those kinds of things
Speaker 1: that really help push you to grow as a person
Speaker 1: if you can embrace the differences of your beloved. So
Speaker 1: called beloved, were they very different Dorothy and Rachel Carson. Yes,
Speaker 1: Rachel kind of had a little ego, which is interesting
Speaker 1: to learn. And you know, she became a famous writer
Speaker 1: about ten years before Silent Springs, so she had to
Speaker 1: deal with fame. Of course, she didn't have another person
Speaker 1: in her life, so there's always that kind of strange
Speaker 1: jealousy too, where Dorothy has this husband stand. But they
Speaker 1: shared so much love for beauty and for the natural
Speaker 1: world that they could, you know, be out just like
Speaker 1: in their dresses in their nineteen fifties dresses tiebooling together,
Speaker 1: and they took such joy and sharing that, so sharing
Speaker 1: the beauty of the world with each other, I think
Speaker 1: was this thing they had in common. But then Dorothy
Speaker 1: would go back to her so called heterosexual life and
Speaker 1: all these worms that are pressed down upon these women
Speaker 1: so that the time they could spend together is so intense.
Speaker 1: There's something really beautiful. That's amazing. I love that. I
Speaker 1: love that that's in a book, But it's not fiction.
Speaker 1: That's really cool. What quality do you like least about
Speaker 1: yourself in patience? I take a long time to write
Speaker 1: these books, like how long. My book before Cloud cook
Speaker 1: Land was called All the Light We Can't See. It
Speaker 1: took me ten years to write. I started it when
Speaker 1: I was thirty and I finished it as forty. Took
Speaker 1: me forever. You did win the fullest surprise for its
Speaker 1: or maybe it was worth it. I guess that was
Speaker 1: an epically beautiful book. The Shell Collector was my gateway book,
Speaker 1: and then All the Light we Can't See and then
Speaker 1: Cloud Cookie Learned, and then your memoir Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: He's so sweet. But anyway, you know, at least Americans
Speaker 1: were kind of taught to worship efficiency, like don't waste
Speaker 1: a chapter. Don't like, oh if you would take a
Speaker 1: research trip to France for this book. Every minute better
Speaker 1: be productive or you're failing, like you know, especially leaving
Speaker 1: my wife back at home with two kids, taking a
Speaker 1: financial risk to go there. You just put so much
Speaker 1: pressure on your stuff, Like I can't just go entering
Speaker 1: cider and look out at the sea. I've got to
Speaker 1: be working to the point where I think, you know,
Speaker 1: through my thirties, I was teaching myself if I'm stuck
Speaker 1: in a line at the grocery store, you should be
Speaker 1: back at your desk, like this is a waste of time,
Speaker 1: Like you should at least be reading something, like you
Speaker 1: should be researching while you're waiting three people deep to
Speaker 1: buy this lettuce. And I'm trying, as I can get older,
Speaker 1: to accept that sometimes you can't control life, like you
Speaker 1: just get stuck in traffic or your flight is delayed,
Speaker 1: and there are real pleasures in trying to find moments
Speaker 1: of the day to just breathe. For example, I was
Speaker 1: just on the flight and it was right on time.
Speaker 1: Everything was going great, but it was like the third
Speaker 1: flight is long flight back home from Europe has probably
Speaker 1: happened to you, and the gate people aren't ready to
Speaker 1: like dock the plane with the jetway and you know
Speaker 1: your bladders full, and I'm like, I've timed my patients
Speaker 1: just for this last thirty seconds so i could get
Speaker 1: off the plane. I'm just telling myself, like, here's an
Speaker 1: opportunity for you to just breathe, sit in the chair.
Speaker 1: I'm totally failing at this, by the way, but I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say, like, now you can exercise patients and
Speaker 1: say you're alive. You have so many things to be
Speaker 1: grateful for. You have a book in your bag, Just
Speaker 1: pull the book back out. It's gonna be okay. But
Speaker 1: I'm not that great at that. So in patience, I
Speaker 1: wish I was more patient. What do you think would
Speaker 1: happen if you were more patient? Maybe you would lose
Speaker 1: like some kind of engine. I think that's okay, Like
Speaker 1: the engine of like that makes you write books, or
Speaker 1: that makes you go say yes to the film project
Speaker 1: that's probably landing in your email box right now. Sometimes
Speaker 1: saying yes to those things is so valuable because you
Speaker 1: go to Fiji or whatever, You'll meet people and you'll
Speaker 1: give you participant in this great team making this film.
Speaker 1: But sometimes if you tone down the engine, maybe stillness
Speaker 1: is something that we need to embrace a little more.
Speaker 1: At least for me as I'm getting older, the pandemic
Speaker 1: really helped teach me that I used to think, like
Speaker 1: I've got to have a list of things I've got
Speaker 1: to see before I die. Like you've never been to
Speaker 1: the multi coast, Tony, like you ever read all of
Speaker 1: Edith Wharton Tony to take Washington Square to goddamn a
Speaker 1: most exactly, and then while you're there, make sure you
Speaker 1: also go for a run and to push ups. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think I've got to say it's okay.
Speaker 1: Like there were these moments, especially early in the pandemic,
Speaker 1: and there's no airplanes in the sky. You know, we
Speaker 1: have these beautiful blue spring skies, and the snow kis
Speaker 1: were migrating like a mile above our yard. You'd see
Speaker 1: this little thread, this little like bracelet of white birds
Speaker 1: and you could hear them because there was no other sound.
Speaker 1: You hear them honking at each other, and you realize, like,
Speaker 1: just here in our backyard versus many miracles as I've
Speaker 1: been chasing. When I'm trying to like go all the
Speaker 1: way to Kenya or something. So I'm trying to learn
Speaker 1: that right around us there's all these gifts and that
Speaker 1: I don't have to always be running the engine as
Speaker 1: high as I think I should in your life, Can
Speaker 1: you tell me about something that has grown out of
Speaker 1: a personal disaster. So we've been talking about our kids
Speaker 1: just heading off to school. They're eighteen years older. Twins.
Speaker 1: Are they identical? Twins? Are they fraternal? Their fraternal? They're
Speaker 1: quite different looking at inside too. But we got married
Speaker 1: two years ago and dated for a few years before that,
Speaker 1: and we both wanted to be parents and it wasn't
Speaker 1: working out. I forgot married, were like, let's see if
Speaker 1: we can make babies, and it wasn't happening. And in
Speaker 1: the beginning we were kind of like in this arms
Speaker 1: race with some friends who were getting pregnant, or like
Speaker 1: semi unconsciously bragging about it, and you just sort of like, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess it is hard for us. We're struggling. And
Speaker 1: it felt very much like a personal disaster, even though
Speaker 1: I know there are many worst problems in the world.
Speaker 1: And thanks to science and UH in detro we were
Speaker 1: able with quite a bit of expense that wasn't covered
Speaker 1: by our healthcare plan able to get pregnant, got pregnant
Speaker 1: with twins. When I look back now, I am so
Speaker 1: grateful that we went through those thickets because I want
Speaker 1: I knew I wanted these kids, and every minute that
Speaker 1: I was with them, I was pumped. I was so
Speaker 1: grateful that I got to see those kids run around
Speaker 1: and jump in puddles and play basketball and skin their
Speaker 1: knees and yell at me. And I just really had
Speaker 1: to go through that journey to understand, like, this is
Speaker 1: an immense privilege to get to have an offspring that
Speaker 1: I get to hang out with. I've just been thinking
Speaker 1: about that lately, how that so called personal disaster at
Speaker 1: least the troubles we were going through really helped us
Speaker 1: appreciate what we had. That's really what their childhood was.
Speaker 1: M you noticed it happening, and now noticing that it's
Speaker 1: so there in all. I mean, I know that that
Speaker 1: is It's sort of what you're famous for in your books,
Speaker 1: is the detail with which you tell these stories. But
Speaker 1: it is very interesting that that is like how you
Speaker 1: live your life as well. I'm trying my favorite art,
Speaker 1: whatever does film or a painting or a symphony or
Speaker 1: like a quilt. It shows you the world with new eyes.
Speaker 1: It wakes you up to the miracle of being alive,
Speaker 1: because I think the worst crime you can commit is
Speaker 1: to sleep walk through your life, you know, And of
Speaker 1: course there's days when you're tired and it's fine too,
Speaker 1: you know whatever. Taken a junkie film where you know
Speaker 1: every single thing that's going to happen, But to challenge
Speaker 1: yourself occasionally to wake up and see the familiar with
Speaker 1: unfamiliar eyes. That's what I try to do in my sentences,
Speaker 1: to try to disrupt little patterns so that you're disrupting
Speaker 1: cliche at the sentence level. And then stories that kind
Speaker 1: of disrupt expectations in surprise the reader. They bring me
Speaker 1: so much pleasure. So that's the kind of stuff I'm
Speaker 1: trying to make anyway, So, now, what question would you
Speaker 1: most like answer to? I was thinking about this and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, it's obviously gonna be aliens, Like
Speaker 1: are there aliens? And I thought, that's okay. Here's my
Speaker 1: midlife journey is just like tying in with my previous answer,
Speaker 1: trying to get more comfortable with not knowing, like not
Speaker 1: knowing when the dudes are going to use their little
Speaker 1: joystick and put the jetway onto the plane. Get more
Speaker 1: comfortable with that, and so I think I would just
Speaker 1: say it's okay, I'm happy with not knowing what I
Speaker 1: don't know. Like you know, the classic exercise if they
Speaker 1: handed any driver and envelope and said inside is the
Speaker 1: date and the cause of your death, you know, would
Speaker 1: you open it? No, right, because knowing would suck. Knowing
Speaker 1: would suck, totally suck. Like again, why are we not
Speaker 1: better at it? All we do is humans? Is not
Speaker 1: nice stuff? How we know better at this? Like I'm
Speaker 1: I want to know that. I want to know about
Speaker 1: why these parts of ourselves don't evolve when we have
Speaker 1: so much information, Like you just saying, I just want
Speaker 1: to get more comfortable with the unknown, Like it feels
Speaker 1: so freeing, it feels like like a breath, Like God.
Speaker 1: That's the way to do it. It's not to seek
Speaker 1: to you know. It's like God isn't in the God,
Speaker 1: It's in the faith. If you can get into the
Speaker 1: notion of faith and you can really get into the
Speaker 1: idea of God. I mean, this is how my Christian
Speaker 1: friends have fixed my and got to me. And I
Speaker 1: understand that because they're wanting me to just cozy up
Speaker 1: with the void. And I feel differently about that on
Speaker 1: any different day. But it's interestingly we haven't developed a
Speaker 1: better relationship with not knowing. Yes, for me, that's all
Speaker 1: time with the future. Like my anxiety is often about
Speaker 1: like what is coming, what will come next? What will
Speaker 1: happen next Tuesday when I have to talk to a
Speaker 1: French journalist, how badly will I flame out? And if
Speaker 1: I can just be more president like the Buddhists, maybe
Speaker 1: like Christians. You know, Buddhist idea of living now and
Speaker 1: accepting now means you have to be comfortable with not
Speaker 1: knowing what's coming and whatever comes, being comfortable with your
Speaker 1: ability to cope with it. And I'm just saying words.
Speaker 1: I'm not good at following any of this, but well, okay, well,
Speaker 1: which leads me to what I'm going to have to
Speaker 1: ask you this. How does one get from the self
Speaker 1: awareness and the knowledge that the words create of what
Speaker 1: it is we need to know, and then the not
Speaker 1: doing of that, and the continuing not doing of the
Speaker 1: thing that we know would make us feel better? How
Speaker 1: do bridge that schism? Tony, come on quick. The novelist
Speaker 1: friends who meditate. For me, it's yoga in the morning.
Speaker 1: The moments that you can just take in the day
Speaker 1: to practice being comfortable in the now, even if it's
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, I think can help prepare you to make
Speaker 1: you a little more resilient for the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: When you're uber is late and you're like, when will
Speaker 1: he get here? I have to be blank. And then
Speaker 1: also I think for me, like accepting the invitation of
Speaker 1: like the night sky of the universe often helps me.
Speaker 1: Right before we dropped our boys off a college, I
Speaker 1: took them backpack and we're really lucky to have smoke
Speaker 1: free skies. And remembering how tiny you are can sometimes
Speaker 1: be so helpful because our problems start to seem like
Speaker 1: we're the center of the universe. And if you remember,
Speaker 1: like the Earth's four and a half billion years old,
Speaker 1: like percent of species have gone extinct, you know humans
Speaker 1: will be the same eventually. You know your life is
Speaker 1: small and huge, and that's kind of like that's the
Speaker 1: paradox in fiction, right think, Really, you know you're dealing
Speaker 1: with the details of some person's life, and yet this
Speaker 1: person's life in the pages of a novel becomes enormous
Speaker 1: but it's also tiny because you're connecting with readers across
Speaker 1: time and space, and so you can remember somehow your
Speaker 1: smallness by exercising that imagination, that imaginative empathy. To say, oh,
Speaker 1: Minny driver has felt the same way as I have
Speaker 1: felt about saying goodbye to her son before he goes
Speaker 1: off to camp. Means I'm not alone, and it means
Speaker 1: my problems aren't so unique in the history of the world.
Speaker 1: And I think reading is one way to really help
Speaker 1: me exercise that and just looking up at the stars
Speaker 1: and contemplating, you know, our tiny little whirling kunk of
Speaker 1: carbon that's like whirling around out here. We're just tiny.
Speaker 1: Even the Milky Way is just a tiny little galaxy
Speaker 1: in a sea of galaxies. God, it's nuts when you
Speaker 1: say that the Milky Way is a tiny little galaxy
Speaker 1: in a sea of galaxies. As my mother was dying,
Speaker 1: which is the kind of the agonizing everyday pot of
Speaker 1: grief subsides and like, you start watching it grow into
Speaker 1: something else if you've developed a relationship with it, which
Speaker 1: I think it's incredibly important to do. And the days
Speaker 1: where you can approach your loss in this more robust
Speaker 1: way and remember and think about that person, and I
Speaker 1: think about my mother. And she did say a version
Speaker 1: of We were lying in her bed pretty close to
Speaker 1: the end, and she said, I just I can't believe
Speaker 1: how fast this is all happening. And I said, do
Speaker 1: you mean dying? And she said, I do. I mean dying,
Speaker 1: but I also mean living. She's like it happened so quickly.
Speaker 1: And then she and she didn't not and she wasn't
Speaker 1: in a self pitching when she said, and you know
Speaker 1: the other thing that was crazy. She was like, the
Speaker 1: lack of significance and the significance of my life is
Speaker 1: happening in real time and in real awareness, and it
Speaker 1: is the trippiest feeling and thought to hold that it
Speaker 1: meant everything and it meant nothing. And those two things
Speaker 1: are existing in time and space and here in my
Speaker 1: physical body, which is soon going to be gone. And
Speaker 1: it was so interesting because you want I wanted to
Speaker 1: have a really evolved spiritual reaction to that, but invariably,
Speaker 1: because again one is comforted and also confounded by your humanness,
Speaker 1: all I could do is just squeeze her hand just
Speaker 1: so tightly. And I suppose in recognition or in comfort
Speaker 1: or in whatever it was she needed to get out
Speaker 1: that squeeze. But it's wild remembering that. Yeah, that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: And don't be impatient with yourself if that spiritual moment
Speaker 1: doesn't last, because you are alive, Like eventually you have
Speaker 1: to go eat and have breakfast and change your shoes.
Speaker 1: And these revelate, these like epiphanies that we have don't last.
Speaker 1: That's just part of being human and we kind of
Speaker 1: have to keep relearning those lessons of our vast significance
Speaker 1: and our massive insignificance all at once exactly. So, will
Speaker 1: you tell me what person, place, or experience most a
Speaker 1: to your life. Yeah, I think my wife Shanna gets
Speaker 1: a shout out here. She's taught me patients. Shauna grew
Speaker 1: up in a family. She had three sisters and her
Speaker 1: oldest has an intellectual disability, and as a consequence, her
Speaker 1: house was filled with patients in a way mine wasn't
Speaker 1: because Kelly just takes much longer to do everything. And
Speaker 1: also they just kept conflict to a minimum. I had
Speaker 1: three brothers, was kind of this other yin yang household,
Speaker 1: and there's just always movement in mud and creatures and
Speaker 1: action in our house. And I think Shanna has taught
Speaker 1: me so much about patients, and she'll just drop me.
Speaker 1: She teaches me about love every minute. She'll just drop
Speaker 1: whatever she's doing to talk to all of her friends,
Speaker 1: our kids, me about our problems, you know, versus me.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm tying being a very important email. You know.
Speaker 1: Can I hear about your heartbreak later? You know, kindness patients.
Speaker 1: When we first got married, Like if we're in the
Speaker 1: grocery store and I'd be like, oh, I decided we
Speaker 1: don't want this pancake mix or something, and I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna put it back here in the soft drink style.
Speaker 1: She'd be like, no, We're gonna walk all the way
Speaker 1: back to Aisle three and put it back where you
Speaker 1: found it. Oh my gosh, are we okay? Oh we are?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, we're doing this all right. Okay. Education of
Speaker 1: being a better person all the time. That's a great
Speaker 1: that you love that though. That's clearly obviously why she
Speaker 1: loves you, because you don't mind things that are kind
Speaker 1: of making you a more thoughtful and considerate humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the love is especially you know, over decades, it helps
Speaker 1: you grow as a person. You know, if you can
Speaker 1: keep challenging each other and help each other evolve and
Speaker 1: appreciate that changes, like the only music and the world
Speaker 1: that you know, change is going to keep coming, and
Speaker 1: how do you help each other through that? You know,
Speaker 1: I remember the first days in the pandemic when we
Speaker 1: thought like we're going to be dragging each other's corpses
Speaker 1: to the curb or who knows. I remember both of
Speaker 1: us saying like, we are so grateful we have had
Speaker 1: this time together, and those little resets are so important.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, how is she doing with your son's
Speaker 1: being off for college. Yeah, thanks for asking. Since we're
Speaker 1: only eight days in, we just neither of us really know.
Speaker 1: Sevent of the traffic and our house came from our
Speaker 1: boys and their pals, and so it's super quiet. Thankfully.
Speaker 1: My career is kind of busy, so that kind of
Speaker 1: helps me maybe ignore feelings that like the dumb men
Speaker 1: aren't good at this way and she's probably a little
Speaker 1: farther along and processing this is part of the journey.
Speaker 1: But you know, phones are interesting. You know, when I
Speaker 1: went to college, I called my parents every other Sunday
Speaker 1: and that was it. And they're texting her a lot,
Speaker 1: and so I think she's getting connected to them. Because
Speaker 1: of technology in a way that's mostly healthy. I don't
Speaker 1: think they're ignoring their experienced to touch base with home,
Speaker 1: but it does make you feel connected to them, like, oh,
Speaker 1: they've figured out what dining hall to eat at, or
Speaker 1: they figured out how to do their laundry, or they
Speaker 1: figured out how to get a package. You know that
Speaker 1: stuff is kind of nice. Yeah, No, I love the mundane.
Speaker 1: I checked the weather where he is right now, he's
Speaker 1: on this camping track. I'm obsessively refreshing the met office
Speaker 1: here in England, which is notorious and they useless and
Speaker 1: predict weather. But I'm looking at it in real time,
Speaker 1: not ahead, So I feel like I'm staying very present
Speaker 1: with the weather where he is. So that's good, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I'm in the now and he's in the rain. It
Speaker 1: is just raining and it's quite cold, and are you
Speaker 1: comfortable with that? Can you sit with that? Be like
Speaker 1: he's called? Yeah, because I know how many socks he's
Speaker 1: got because I packed them and I realized, really what
Speaker 1: you need is you need fifteen pairs of socks, because
Speaker 1: really what you want is your feet to feel dry,
Speaker 1: even if your boots are wet, putting on dry socks
Speaker 1: makes you feel better. I know that from having done
Speaker 1: a lot of trekking. And if you've gotten wet, you
Speaker 1: have to have warm clothes to change into. So I'm
Speaker 1: not worried. Boys are so funny that I guarantee doesn't
Speaker 1: even know everything that's in his back. I swear to
Speaker 1: you he will have won the same two pass socks
Speaker 1: and the one sweater you know I packed five. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like being connected by mundane things that makes me
Speaker 1: feel safe in the world rather than being connected by
Speaker 1: the loftier stuff. I just want him to text me
Speaker 1: and go, can you get some salt and vinegar crisps
Speaker 1: for when I get back? And I'll be like, yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: and like that's it, And that's what love is, though,
Speaker 1: that's love. That's what love is. It's like it doesn't
Speaker 1: need to be she experience on it, you know, it's Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have those moments or they volunteered them. That's what's great,
Speaker 1: those moments. The poetry of your children comes in the rarest,
Speaker 1: most amazing moments, you know, not when you necessarily need
Speaker 1: it or are asking for it, but when they deliver it.
Speaker 1: And there's something I mean, I tend to write down
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff that he says. But I
Speaker 1: sometimes I do write down the Crisps conversations too, because
Speaker 1: they are incredibly comforting, like verbatim. I'll do it and
Speaker 1: they make me chuckle. That's great, and you'll love them
Speaker 1: in twenty years. And I've been doing it since he
Speaker 1: was about three. I've been writing down the weird ship
Speaker 1: that he says, and it's really good going back and
Speaker 1: reading and knowing that he's wound up where he is
Speaker 1: currently and we'll continue, Yeah, making that unscheduled time for that.
Speaker 1: You know, corporations are always trying to sell us on
Speaker 1: like come to this resort and have meaningful family tough.
Speaker 1: But you know you can just do that by being
Speaker 1: president dinner, you know, just burned some pork chops. By
Speaker 1: the way, I went to hear Rumdus speak when I
Speaker 1: was quite young. He came to London and I went
Speaker 1: and sat on the floor and listened to this. You know,
Speaker 1: he was amazing and amazing being in person, and his
Speaker 1: whole thing was you know, not only not only can you,
Speaker 1: but you will and you should think about it. If
Speaker 1: you won't think about anything, having your big spiritual experiences
Speaker 1: in the butcher's shop, in picking your tomatoes, waiting in
Speaker 1: line at the dentist in the waiting room as you will,
Speaker 1: like sitting under the Banyan tree. It goes back to
Speaker 1: what you were saying about detail, like there is such
Speaker 1: life in detail, and that is mundane and that is
Speaker 1: also poetic. The mundane and the sublime are linked there,
Speaker 1: like braided around each other all the time. Boy, they
Speaker 1: really are. I love sort of videgar crisps. They are
Speaker 1: the food of the gods. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming and chatting and where all these ideas. It is
Speaker 1: absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much. Mini. I've really enjoyed
Speaker 1: diving into the podcast, and I think it's so cool
Speaker 1: that you're exercising your curiosity and you get to bring
Speaker 1: all these different people together. So wonderful. Thank you, Tony,
Speaker 1: and please say hello to your wife and your boys. Okay, same,
Speaker 1: say hi to Henry. We'll do well when he gets
Speaker 1: back with his clean socks socks. Anthony's newest book, Cloud
Speaker 1: cookoo Land, is out now in hardcover and paperback, and
Speaker 1: be sure to read his other incredible works, including All
Speaker 1: the Light We Cannot See About Grace and This wonderful
Speaker 1: collection of short stories called The Shell Collector. Mini Questions
Speaker 1: is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver, supervising producer
Speaker 1: Aaron Kaufman, Producer more Than Levoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown.
Speaker 1: Original music Sorry Baby by Mini Driver, Additional music by
Speaker 1: Aaron Kauffman, Executive produced by Me Mini Driver. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison No Day, Lisa Castella
Speaker 1: and a Unique Oppenheim at w kPr, de La Pescador,
Speaker 1: Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg. And for constantly solicited tech support,
Speaker 1: Henry Driver.