Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro and this is a special bonus episode of
Speaker 1: Family Secrets. This summer, the wonderful Nora mcinnerney, host of
Speaker 1: the podcast Terrible Thanks For Asking, joined me for a
Speaker 1: live taping of Family Secrets at Rizzoli Bookstore in New
Speaker 1: York City. This is part two of our conversation. So,
Speaker 1: so we're going to open it up to questions, and
Speaker 1: there's a mic up here. Um, so anybody who has
Speaker 1: a question should come up and kind of I know,
Speaker 1: it's a little My favorite part of any event is
Speaker 1: just the silence and then the mercy when someone stands
Speaker 1: up and then you hope she's asking a question, but
Speaker 1: maybe she just wants a sparkling water. Now she's gonna
Speaker 1: ask a question. What angel Um. I'm a bit more
Speaker 1: familiar with Danny life now there from There was Your Life,
Speaker 1: nors m very ser loss Um. I was curious a
Speaker 1: few years ago. I think there was a popular book
Speaker 1: Calum Breath Becomes singer Um. I guess it's kind of
Speaker 1: written from the other perspective where the doctor was very sick.
Speaker 1: I think he may also had a bring tumor of
Speaker 1: some sort. And what I'm wondering whether you read that
Speaker 1: book and how does it make you feel, because it
Speaker 1: is kind of from the opposite side. Um, When Breath,
Speaker 1: When Breath becomes There is by Paul Colin Eathi and
Speaker 1: or Calanthi and uh. He was He was a physician,
Speaker 1: and I think he had lung cancer and very he
Speaker 1: had all the cancers and he wrote a beautiful memoir
Speaker 1: and his wife finished it, Lucy finished it for him.
Speaker 1: And I could not read it for the longest time.
Speaker 1: And I got maybe a hundred of them gifted to me,
Speaker 1: people You're gonna love this book, and I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I won't. I'll show you, No, I won't. I did
Speaker 1: read it um eventually, and it was oddly comforting. It
Speaker 1: was oddly comforting. Aaron had a very different personality than Paul.
Speaker 1: Aaron was just but he was also so buoyant. Aaron
Speaker 1: was just so happy and alive. And he always told
Speaker 1: me like, this is okay. It's okay. Even when I
Speaker 1: was bawling, like no, it's not you have a brain cancer.
Speaker 1: He was like, it's okay, it's okay. And Paul's book
Speaker 1: made me feel like maybe it really was and in it,
Speaker 1: he writes this beautiful letter to his daughter, and I
Speaker 1: remember being jealous when I read that, because I had
Speaker 1: asked Aaron, do you want to write a letter to
Speaker 1: our son or maybe a couple of letters, like maybe
Speaker 1: you write one for his like sweet sixteen. I don't
Speaker 1: know if boys even have one. Also, I didn't have one.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the Midwest. I was like, do
Speaker 1: I get a car? My dad was like, are you
Speaker 1: on drugs? Like what? I was like, well, I've been
Speaker 1: watching a lot of commercials. Um. But he writes this
Speaker 1: beautiful letter to his daughter, and I remember asking Aaron
Speaker 1: about that and he was like what No, he was
Speaker 1: so uncomfortable, like what am I gonna write? Like, Hi, son,
Speaker 1: Well I'm dead? And so he didn't. He didn't do that.
Speaker 1: But I do think of my first book as as
Speaker 1: that for Ralph, because I couldn't do that. But when
Speaker 1: Breath Becomes airs as a very incredible book. It was
Speaker 1: very comforting for me, but it was very resistant to
Speaker 1: reading it. And whenever somebody is around somebody who's grieving
Speaker 1: and they're like what should I do? What should I do?
Speaker 1: I'm like, I mean, you can give him a book Um,
Speaker 1: they might not read it, but it is a really
Speaker 1: nice gesture. So if you're wondering what to get the
Speaker 1: grieving person who has everything, not a hot dish, they've
Speaker 1: got enough of those. Give him a book or a plant.
Speaker 1: Not not your question, but you know it asked another question.
Speaker 1: I just interviewed a guest for season two, The Family Secrets.
Speaker 1: It's launching in late August, and it's um, someone who's
Speaker 1: whose wife recently passed away, and the secret involves that
Speaker 1: they chose not to tell their their their children that
Speaker 1: she was dying, and they're quite grown children. But she
Speaker 1: talked about the way that she didn't want the casseroles,
Speaker 1: like she just did not want that. She wanted to
Speaker 1: be the bringer of the casseroles, not the receiver of
Speaker 1: the casseroles. And um, it's funny the way I mean funny,
Speaker 1: but the way that casseroles and hot dishes have become
Speaker 1: like the symbol of all illness and what you know,
Speaker 1: people want to do something right, they want to they
Speaker 1: want to cook, they want to do they want to
Speaker 1: do something, and they don't know what to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, food is helpful, but at the time I
Speaker 1: was I was not eating casserole. I was eating like
Speaker 1: a five pound bag of sour Patch kids, and that's
Speaker 1: hard to like. It's hard to express someone that can
Speaker 1: we bring something? I'm like, yeah, you can bring like, um,
Speaker 1: I don't like a twelve pack of coke would be nice. Uh,
Speaker 1: bag of taco bell. Actually someone did deliver taco bell.
Speaker 1: That was a lovely gift. So. I just recently discovered
Speaker 1: both your podcasts and I love them both. And I
Speaker 1: am in complete agreement with Nora that you really should
Speaker 1: if you had like a podcast where you just spoke quietly,
Speaker 1: I'd probably could fall asleep to it. You have an
Speaker 1: amazing SMR obviously, I was actually gonna stay in the
Speaker 1: shapiro a SMR YouTube channel check it out later. I would, yes,
Speaker 1: for people don't know what SMR is. It just people
Speaker 1: talking really quietly and tapping and tapping their nails, and
Speaker 1: you could just be like I'm Danny Shapira and I'm
Speaker 1: an open a plastic selfing bag. Yeah I would. I
Speaker 1: would download it. I'm already subscribed to exactly UM. So
Speaker 1: I love both of your podcasts. I Uh. There are
Speaker 1: certain ones though, where I see um, I see the
Speaker 1: description before and I'm like, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: can listen to it quite yet, because they can be
Speaker 1: pretty intense. Was there one of your podcasts, one of
Speaker 1: your episodes that was the hardest, really the most difficult
Speaker 1: for you to do? I would I would say in
Speaker 1: the first season it was the episode UM that's called
Speaker 1: Band of Men. Um. I had been contacted a number
Speaker 1: of years earlier by Um, a man who had gone
Speaker 1: to the same high school as me. UM, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know him. He was a couple of years younger
Speaker 1: than than I was, so we hadn't been in each
Speaker 1: other's social circles. But it had turned out that he
Speaker 1: was one of a really significant number of boys who
Speaker 1: was sexually abused by a very charismatic social studies teacher
Speaker 1: slash boy Scouts leader slash you know, wilderness counselor in
Speaker 1: the at the camp all the boys went to. He
Speaker 1: was just a complete groomer of of boys of a
Speaker 1: very young age, sort of ages ten to twelve. And
Speaker 1: he had come to me years earlier because he knew
Speaker 1: that I was a writer and that I knew a
Speaker 1: lot of writers in journalists and maybe I could help
Speaker 1: him get the story out. And I had tried. I
Speaker 1: spoke with a friend of mine at sixty minutes. I
Speaker 1: really wanted to help these guys be able to tell
Speaker 1: their story. The school was behaving badly. It was just
Speaker 1: a very upsetting, infuriating story, and I wasn't able to
Speaker 1: because the school was like a nice private school in
Speaker 1: New Jersey. But it wasn't St. Paul's, you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't horas Man. There had already been these stories. There
Speaker 1: was like enough boy abuse stories out there apparently, So
Speaker 1: when I was launching Family Secrets, I approached him and
Speaker 1: I said, I think I do have a way of
Speaker 1: getting your story out, um. But it was an extremely
Speaker 1: emotional interview. That was one of the ones that I
Speaker 1: did in my son's old playroom with the with the
Speaker 1: stuff hippopotamus and the and there was something about seeing
Speaker 1: it's actually in my introduction to that episode, being in
Speaker 1: this boy's playroom, you know, as his mom and thinking
Speaker 1: about this this long ago boy who had just been
Speaker 1: through this horrific, horrific I mean, I think I think
Speaker 1: we spent two and a half hours on that particular
Speaker 1: conversation interview, you know, to ultimately kind of carve of
Speaker 1: it the story that needed to be told, but it was.
Speaker 1: And then the more that I knew about it, the
Speaker 1: more that I realized how many of those boys I
Speaker 1: had known, you know, as as a kid. So I
Speaker 1: had a very it was personal. The episode that I
Speaker 1: was thinking of was actually very, very similar. I interviewed
Speaker 1: this woman named Rachel and she was a victim of
Speaker 1: Larry Nasser's and she didn't even know it, like she
Speaker 1: was one of the she was one of the girls
Speaker 1: who had defended him, essentially, and was like, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about? And that was also a two and
Speaker 1: a half hour conversation, and then it was several hours
Speaker 1: of me transcribing and like listening to it over and
Speaker 1: over while I was on winter break with my kids,
Speaker 1: and and then also just looking around me at just
Speaker 1: all of the ways that that that girls are discredited
Speaker 1: and that they're sort of hyper sexualized in ways that
Speaker 1: you don't even necessarily think about. Um, yeah, that was
Speaker 1: That was a really great winter break. I think I
Speaker 1: sat in a room and cried for like half a day,
Speaker 1: and the kids were like, is she okay? My husband
Speaker 1: was like, oh, she's great, Yeah, she'll be out. And
Speaker 1: then um, there's an episode in the first season called Semperify,
Speaker 1: and it's about It started with with my dad. My
Speaker 1: dad was a marine in Vietnam and he had left
Speaker 1: a comment on like the Virtual Vietnam. While you can
Speaker 1: leave a you can leave a comment on the memorial
Speaker 1: for somebody. And I was trying to piece together the
Speaker 1: stories that my dad had told me about his time
Speaker 1: in Vietnam. There were not many, but for some reason
Speaker 1: he told them to me. My brothers were like, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't, so I had nobody to like compare them too.
Speaker 1: And I went to the Marine Corps reunion that my
Speaker 1: dad had never gone to. I got in touch with
Speaker 1: all these guys that my dad was looking for. They
Speaker 1: were looking for him, but I mean it was nine.
Speaker 1: They all spelled each other's names wrong, by the way,
Speaker 1: like on the back of on the back of the
Speaker 1: three photos they had. And so I found these guys
Speaker 1: and I went to this reunion and I figured out
Speaker 1: the story that I was thinking about. And also I
Speaker 1: just spent hours talking to these men that everybody had
Speaker 1: told me would not talk to me. And they sat
Speaker 1: in a hotel room with me and with my producer
Speaker 1: Hans holding his arms up like this with a with
Speaker 1: a mic he sat there for five hours silently while
Speaker 1: I just wept, and they wept, not even necessarily about
Speaker 1: the story that I was there for. And I just
Speaker 1: felt like this immense sense of everything that my dad
Speaker 1: had gone through and everything that he had he had
Speaker 1: carried and never told us about. And I just felt
Speaker 1: really heavy and wrung out. And I was also secretly
Speaker 1: pregnant and um, and I just remember going back to
Speaker 1: my hotel and helped my hotel room night after night.
Speaker 1: We're there for four days, and just crying so hard
Speaker 1: that my head hurts, and putting that episode together, crying
Speaker 1: in the studio with Hans and and and crying as
Speaker 1: we got a letter from the man who's at the
Speaker 1: center of the story of boy who's at the center
Speaker 1: of the story, the boy who died in this worthless way,
Speaker 1: and all of these men looking at me and telling
Speaker 1: me that they would go back because you have to
Speaker 1: tell yourself it was worth it. You have to. And
Speaker 1: I got a letter from his family afterwards, after the
Speaker 1: episode came out that said thank you, and I will
Speaker 1: go home and ball about that tonight. To put that
Speaker 1: episode is just very um. That's probably the most important
Speaker 1: one to me. And also the hardest to make. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to pause for a moment. Hey, it's really
Speaker 1: cool to see you guys in person. Um So, kind
Speaker 1: of on the note of what you were just talking about,
Speaker 1: you both have children, Can you talk about how your
Speaker 1: work and your family co exist? More like how how
Speaker 1: do you make those episodes? And then turned back to
Speaker 1: your kid? Oh there, you know husband? Remember should we
Speaker 1: have your son? Answered this one? Yeah, hey, Jacob, where
Speaker 1: are you? My son's here somewhere. Um, you can stay there,
Speaker 1: It's okay. So so my my my kid is now
Speaker 1: you know, a young man. Um So it feels a
Speaker 1: little bit different now. But throughout my writing life, much
Speaker 1: of which coincided with his childhood, I had to find
Speaker 1: a way to go to these places that were scary, dark, painful,
Speaker 1: and not have them enveloped me. So I found myself
Speaker 1: almost visualizing it as a place inside of me where
Speaker 1: I could go that was small, and that when I
Speaker 1: would go there, it would expand and it would become
Speaker 1: the whole world. And then I could be in that
Speaker 1: world and swim around in that world and do whatever
Speaker 1: I needed to do in that world. Um. But then
Speaker 1: when I needed to leave that world, I could almost
Speaker 1: like a deep sea diver, like just push up from
Speaker 1: it and it would contract again and it would be
Speaker 1: there waiting for me. And it wasn't like it wasn't
Speaker 1: something that I was feeling all the time. But it
Speaker 1: was kind of contained. It didn't take me over, um,
Speaker 1: and you know, so I could be you know, me
Speaker 1: as a mom and make lunch and put dinner on
Speaker 1: the table, and help with homework and and be in.
Speaker 1: I very acutely did not want to miss my family's
Speaker 1: life as a young family. I had this feeling I'd
Speaker 1: seen it too many times of just and and all
Speaker 1: the truisms that people say it goes by so fast.
Speaker 1: I mean it doesn't. It doesn't you know that the
Speaker 1: days are long and the years are short. Um. But
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't want to miss it. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to look back. I was driven by not wanting
Speaker 1: to look back and thinking, you know, I just I
Speaker 1: missed it. I was too focused on, you know, my
Speaker 1: my work, because my work is incredibly important to me
Speaker 1: and I had big, um creative ambitions for it. But
Speaker 1: I also had this opportunity to have this beautiful family
Speaker 1: life that I wanted to have, So I I was
Speaker 1: always kind of like even an example would be I
Speaker 1: realized early on, uh, I was always a morning writer,
Speaker 1: and if I didn't get to work first thing in
Speaker 1: the morning, if I didn't roll out of bed and
Speaker 1: get to work, then the work wouldn't happen. But now
Speaker 1: I had a kid, so there was something definitely in
Speaker 1: the way between rolling and bed and getting to work.
Speaker 1: There was all sorts of other things that had to
Speaker 1: happen to have his day get started. And and I
Speaker 1: didn't want to just zone out on it and be
Speaker 1: like the sort of did I get up? Did I
Speaker 1: you know, like what has happened? Um? And so I
Speaker 1: learned to like find a pause button, like to be
Speaker 1: able to actually be like, all right, I'm I'm going
Speaker 1: to be able to get up and be present and
Speaker 1: you know, make the eggs and pack the lunch box
Speaker 1: and drive to school and come back and then and
Speaker 1: then I can stop the pause button and start and
Speaker 1: start the day again. Um. Which was something that I
Speaker 1: learned how to do out of necessity. Wasn't something that
Speaker 1: I knew how to do, but I but I learned
Speaker 1: how to do it. And I also became much more
Speaker 1: resourceful in terms of um my time, Like, if I
Speaker 1: had an hour, I used the hour. If I had
Speaker 1: two hours, I used Like. The worst thing for me
Speaker 1: was feeling like, Wow, I had that time, and I
Speaker 1: just frittered it away because I got in my own
Speaker 1: way and my resistance and my frustration got the better
Speaker 1: of me. And then and then I learned that if
Speaker 1: I did that, i'd really like be so mad at
Speaker 1: myself at the end of the day that I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to be me. So I learned how to kind
Speaker 1: of do end runs around that kind of experience. This
Speaker 1: event was supposed to be on Wednesday night, and then
Speaker 1: I realized that um kindergarten graduation is Wednesday, and I
Speaker 1: don't let you know these things. They don't let you know.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what it feels like this could have gotten
Speaker 1: on the calendar a little sooner. Also, do I read
Speaker 1: all the emails? No, okay, I don't. We get a
Speaker 1: lot of them. Um, and Danny was like, we'll figure
Speaker 1: it out. So I know that I know that you
Speaker 1: were that kind of mom, because you were awesome about that. Well.
Speaker 1: I remember there's a annual writer's conference called a w
Speaker 1: P and and it was I think some year when
Speaker 1: my son was little. It was in maybe Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And I was supposed to be on a panel about
Speaker 1: motherhood and writing. And on the morning that I was
Speaker 1: supposed to head to d C from my panel on
Speaker 1: motherhood and writing, there was a blizzard in Connecticut and
Speaker 1: so snow day was called and I couldn't go to
Speaker 1: the panel on motherhood and writing, which was an object
Speaker 1: lesson in motherhood and writing. Yeah, it really is. Um
Speaker 1: I I've not always been that intentional and I I
Speaker 1: mean I went to work two days after I had
Speaker 1: a baby. Part of it that was EP D and
Speaker 1: PP and part of it was just like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: are they gonna not, you know, support this if I
Speaker 1: don't like, get right back to work. And also part
Speaker 1: of it was I just I felt so attached to
Speaker 1: the thing that I was making I didn't feel like
Speaker 1: I could stop. And we have a two year old,
Speaker 1: a six year old, a twelve year old, and a
Speaker 1: seventeen year old. That's a wide range of humanity. And
Speaker 1: because the older kids are newer to me, I really
Speaker 1: don't want to miss anything about their lives. I want
Speaker 1: to be there for middle school, I want to be
Speaker 1: there for for high school stuff. Also it's just frankly
Speaker 1: more interesting than preschool stuff. I got to be honest,
Speaker 1: I'm like, wow, so what's happening? Like, tell me everything?
Speaker 1: Like Also, seventh graders feel like very superior to sixth
Speaker 1: graders in a way that's fascinating to me. I'm like,
Speaker 1: remember that was you last year? And she's like was it?
Speaker 1: Like it was? Um so at first. And Also I'm
Speaker 1: self employed. Everything that I do is is basically on
Speaker 1: a freelance basis, and that means your day could end
Speaker 1: never and my days were ever ending and I would
Speaker 1: open my laptop at ten and the kids noticed, and
Speaker 1: my husband definitely noticed, and that felt terrible. And now
Speaker 1: I'm just very like I have the most strict routine
Speaker 1: out of anybody. I go to bed so early, I
Speaker 1: wake up early, I go to the gym with my
Speaker 1: biggest kid. Then I write for two hours. You might
Speaker 1: be wondering where the kids. My husband's taking care of them, Okay,
Speaker 1: he's where a man belongs in the kitchen, making breakfast
Speaker 1: for the kids, getting him ready for school. And then
Speaker 1: my day ends at three, so I can be there,
Speaker 1: um too, when I remember to pick them up, I
Speaker 1: can be there, am I always know, but I took
Speaker 1: I took like email off my phone. I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't do this as much because they are so interesting
Speaker 1: and also if it's that urgent, maybe it's um like
Speaker 1: a better be life or death at this point, which
Speaker 1: I love. Like younger people, all the youths who are
Speaker 1: like in their twenties, they just won't work like that.
Speaker 1: They just will not. They're like, oh no, I don't
Speaker 1: I'm not going to check my email at night, Like whoa,
Speaker 1: look at those boundaries. It's bonkers. But when I was four,
Speaker 1: I was like, I will do whatever you want. You
Speaker 1: want me to come to your house and feed your
Speaker 1: hamster for no money, boss, I'm there. True story. It's
Speaker 1: like oh yeah, no, I mean it's a two hour
Speaker 1: train ride, but yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it.
Speaker 1: And like kids now in their twenties, like even early thirties,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh no, I don't do that. No, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I go to yoga that night. It's amazing. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Be like these gen zers there, they really they got
Speaker 1: to figure it out. It's because their their parents sent
Speaker 1: them to therapy. So uh, I was just wondering what
Speaker 1: podcasts you guys listened to I listened to, Okay, my
Speaker 1: favorite podcast is Who Weekly because it is pop culture
Speaker 1: candy for me. It's everything you need to know about
Speaker 1: the celebrities you don't so, you know, you always pick
Speaker 1: up like an US weekly and you're like, who what
Speaker 1: is this about? And it's two writers who I think
Speaker 1: used to work for New York Magazine, Lindsay Weber Bobby Finger.
Speaker 1: They're so funny and they just it's it's basically an
Speaker 1: analysis of the celebrity industrial complex, where like everybody is
Speaker 1: famous now, um, and you can't figure out why. And
Speaker 1: it's not mean, but it's very, very, very funny, and
Speaker 1: it comes out on Tuesdays and Fridays. And I also
Speaker 1: listened to You Call Your Girlfriend. Those are the two
Speaker 1: that I listened to every episode every week. And also
Speaker 1: Forever thirty five podcast about the things we do to
Speaker 1: take care of ourselves. And I listen to I Just,
Speaker 1: I Just We're back on the jet ski Guys. I'm
Speaker 1: literally flipping through the on my phone. I really I
Speaker 1: try to listen to podcasts that I would never make,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense, because they're just so they're so
Speaker 1: different from what I do. They like, they just sit
Speaker 1: down and talk and just like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you're this way, But if I'm writing a memoir, I
Speaker 1: can't read any memoirs. I really can't. And if I'm
Speaker 1: uh writing a novel, of which I've I've done one
Speaker 1: in progress, Well that's not a good example because I
Speaker 1: guess all I read is novels right now. But if
Speaker 1: I'm in the middle of creating podcasts a podcast, I
Speaker 1: can't listen to podcasts that are similar to mine. But
Speaker 1: when I'm not, then I listened to sad narrative podcasts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say that's true for me too. I actually
Speaker 1: stopped listening to Terrible Things for Asking while I was
Speaker 1: making Season one of Family Secrets because what is that
Speaker 1: dip in my DNA alright down by one? Because it
Speaker 1: felt like, um, you know, in in writing, there's you know,
Speaker 1: we talk a lot about voice, and I stay away
Speaker 1: from work that feels that it could sort of seep
Speaker 1: into my voice in some way. Um, And that's usually
Speaker 1: work that has some kind of overlap or similarity. One
Speaker 1: podcast I've consistently listened to is Heavyweight. Um. Yes, jeez, Louise,
Speaker 1: just it's really really good storytelling. Um. See some nodding heads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can tell you also the ones that I tend
Speaker 1: to kind of shy away from our like, you know,
Speaker 1: two girls sitting around talking, you know, like just the
Speaker 1: the kind of loose banter that doesn't really feel like
Speaker 1: it's about anything. I'm not naming names, but I just
Speaker 1: there's just a feeling of like just overhearing something that's
Speaker 1: happening at the next table in the restaurant when you're
Speaker 1: bored and you're waiting for your dinner companion, and just
Speaker 1: it's just people talking. And I think it's because you
Speaker 1: and I both spend so much time creating something that
Speaker 1: feels that's very that's very produced, that I tend to
Speaker 1: gravitate more towards those. But I also have been really
Speaker 1: enjoying the limited series, you know, the I loved um
Speaker 1: the the dropout, you know, as did a lot of people.
Speaker 1: It was just just just I just wanted to well,
Speaker 1: that was so completely freaky. I mean, not really a
Speaker 1: spoiler alert if any of you haven't listened to it,
Speaker 1: but her her voice, um, Elizabeth's Holmes. Yeah, are you
Speaker 1: talking about my voice? Question about my voice? Is it fake?
Speaker 1: Your voice was made up? Voice? Is made up and
Speaker 1: it sounds it sounds like this, and it's like, how
Speaker 1: do you not know that she was doing a voice disguise?
Speaker 1: It sounds like when your brother's voice is not changed
Speaker 1: and he tries to answer the phone Hello, but you're
Speaker 1: like really hearing the pathology like in action. And I
Speaker 1: preferred listening to it as a podcast then watching UM,
Speaker 1: the documentary about I guess was better. That's why. And
Speaker 1: as sort of a follow up to that, what kind
Speaker 1: of books do you like to read while you're actually writing?
Speaker 1: And it can be either when you're writing memoirs or
Speaker 1: when you're writing fiction or non fiction. I have so
Speaker 1: many piles of different books for different um for different reasons.
Speaker 1: I mean like I'm entering a period of time right
Speaker 1: now where I feel like I can read for pleasure
Speaker 1: UM in a way that I haven't been able to
Speaker 1: do in a while, Like there's just a break in
Speaker 1: my UM. Because when you're a writer and you're on tour,
Speaker 1: as I have been since January, I will often be
Speaker 1: reading the books of people that I'm doing events with,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they're really pleasurable, but they're not necessarily the
Speaker 1: books that I would pick up and say this is
Speaker 1: what I want to read next. I um just started
Speaker 1: a beautiful novel, UM first novel debut called UM Disappearing
Speaker 1: Country by Julia phillips Um. That's been getting really gorgeous reviews.
Speaker 1: I dip into, Oh, I'm reading Sally Rooney's Normal People
Speaker 1: so good. It's just so good. Um. I love great writing,
Speaker 1: and I can't read for story if the writing isn't beautiful.
Speaker 1: And I can forgive a lot when it comes to
Speaker 1: story if the writing is beautiful and I just fall
Speaker 1: into it and I just want to be there. I
Speaker 1: want to kind of be in in those sentences. Um,
Speaker 1: what else I I lose? They go like titles go
Speaker 1: right over my head. If I'm writing memoir, then I
Speaker 1: mainly just want to read old books that I've already read.
Speaker 1: So The Loved One, Evelyn Wis, all these all these
Speaker 1: books that like you read when you were seventeen or sixteen,
Speaker 1: and you're like, I bet that was a really good
Speaker 1: book and I was just reading it to get to
Speaker 1: the you know, ap English final. Um. And if I'm
Speaker 1: writing the podcast and I'm just reading novels that's all
Speaker 1: I've been reading lately, I can forgive basically anything like,
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just reading just to like have fun
Speaker 1: and be alone. And I read every single day and
Speaker 1: I read normal People and it made me really sad.
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, this is about how much I
Speaker 1: hated myself in my twenties. Uh. And I just read Ghosted,
Speaker 1: which was very absorbing. Absorbing. It's a new word, the
Speaker 1: only here here. Um, it's a really it's a good story.
Speaker 1: It's a really good story. And I'm reading Red White
Speaker 1: and Royal Blue. Ah, I novel about the that the
Speaker 1: first son falling in love with the Prince of England.
Speaker 1: What would happen? We'll find out do they hate each other?
Speaker 1: It's like a classic rom com, only with uh, gay
Speaker 1: teenage boys. It's wonderful. Well, you know you're you're reminding
Speaker 1: me too, I am. So. I've been producing season two
Speaker 1: of Family Secrets, and and probably we should rename Season
Speaker 1: two of Family Secrets Writers with Family Secrets, because eight
Speaker 1: out of ten of my guests are writers. Um and um,
Speaker 1: so I've been I've been reading their books in preparation
Speaker 1: and uh, well, one of them, I was familiar with
Speaker 1: his very familiar with his work, and um just thought
Speaker 1: he would have a lot to say about shame and secrecy,
Speaker 1: shame being the thing that's always kind of thrumming underneath
Speaker 1: anything that's secret, and that's u. K. S. A. Lehman.
Speaker 1: His memoir Heavy, So he's one of the guests and
Speaker 1: is a beautiful book that he's a memoir, but he
Speaker 1: addresses it to his mother, so it's in the in
Speaker 1: the in the second person, in the you voice. There's
Speaker 1: also a wonderful memoir that just came out recently, and
Speaker 1: she's also going to be a guest on season two.
Speaker 1: Her name is Brigette M. Davis and the books called
Speaker 1: the World according to Fannie Davis. Her mother Fannie Davis.
Speaker 1: Brigette was raised in Detroit in the sixties and seventies
Speaker 1: and her mother was a numbers runner and that's how
Speaker 1: she supported her family. And it's just this fantastic story
Speaker 1: of like a family keeping the mother's secrets and um.
Speaker 1: So that like I have a lot of books that
Speaker 1: have just there's like scribbled in the margins and everywhere
Speaker 1: with I was actually going to be on a panel
Speaker 1: with Brigette, and so I was reading her book in
Speaker 1: preparation for being on the panel. And as soon as
Speaker 1: I started reading her book. I was like, oh, and
Speaker 1: she was amazing. Hi. I want to thank you guys
Speaker 1: so much. Um. So, I am donor conceived. I found
Speaker 1: out via DNA testing little over a year and a
Speaker 1: half ago. Um And I also um in my career,
Speaker 1: I worked in Alzheimer's care and hospice. I actually had
Speaker 1: a client who was about thirty five with young children
Speaker 1: died of a brain cancer. UM. So, kind of my
Speaker 1: question is is when I found out I was donor conceived,
Speaker 1: there were other big stresses going on in my life.
Speaker 1: There were some family mental breakdowns, there were marriage issues.
Speaker 1: I had just had a baby, I had a toddler. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, so there was a lot going on, a
Speaker 1: lot um and it's very difficult for people to understand
Speaker 1: like intense trauma. Um And so my question for both
Speaker 1: of you having been through these kind of unimaginable thing
Speaker 1: after saying after saying within a short period of time
Speaker 1: where it's people don't understand it, or people are just
Speaker 1: kind of tired of it, or people just think it's
Speaker 1: negative when it's really like processing, what do you see
Speaker 1: as the state of kind of empathy in our society? Like,
Speaker 1: what do you see as maybe kind of like your
Speaker 1: role in that um and kind of educating people, because
Speaker 1: that's something I like to write about in my kind
Speaker 1: of donor conception advocacy. A lot is you know, kind
Speaker 1: of trauma recovery and how we kind of process these
Speaker 1: things and kind of normal and how human it is.
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering what your perspectives are having been through
Speaker 1: those things and also being public figures who have podcasts
Speaker 1: and books, like what you see from people in your
Speaker 1: personal life and also what you see from from talking
Speaker 1: with people in the general public about those things. Those
Speaker 1: are great. Those are really great questions and um ones
Speaker 1: that I feel like I've been grappling with really intensely
Speaker 1: in the last and the last just in the last
Speaker 1: few years. I Mean you'd think I would say I've
Speaker 1: been grappling with them all my life as a writer,
Speaker 1: but it really feels much more intense in the last
Speaker 1: few years. And one of the things about writing Inheritance,
Speaker 1: which was something that I knew that I had to
Speaker 1: do almost instantly. I mean, I made this discovery and
Speaker 1: I started thinking about how I was going to process
Speaker 1: it in language, because that's how I process everything, and
Speaker 1: I need to be able to find the shape and
Speaker 1: the language for it or else I'm not going to
Speaker 1: understand it um And but I also knew that it
Speaker 1: was an experience that wasn't going to be a slam
Speaker 1: dunk in terms of people's empathic response, because it was
Speaker 1: something out side of the realm of what what people
Speaker 1: have thought about. So I had written other books in
Speaker 1: which you know, my son was sick as a baby, Well,
Speaker 1: we understand that, you know, anybody's going to have some
Speaker 1: empathy for that. My my dad died in a car accident.
Speaker 1: We understand that we don't have to have been through
Speaker 1: those experiences, but we think, like, wow, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: I can imagine how I would feel if I had
Speaker 1: a childhoo was sick, or I can imagine how I
Speaker 1: would feel if I lost a parent in that way.
Speaker 1: But try out, I'm fifty four years old, and I'd
Speaker 1: take a DNA test and I discovered that the dad
Speaker 1: who raised me wasn't my dad, and that actually I
Speaker 1: was conceived by a sperm donor. Is like, what what
Speaker 1: would that be? And and you know, and then there
Speaker 1: are people like it's one of the reasons why I
Speaker 1: don't read, like read or comments on things, because there's
Speaker 1: like like a version of wow, wow, wow, Like what
Speaker 1: is a big deal? I mean, so what, She's had
Speaker 1: a great life, She's here, isn't she She should be
Speaker 1: pleased at this terrific you know, turn of events, and
Speaker 1: and you know who cares Like it's like get over it.
Speaker 1: It's like one or under the bridge. And I knew
Speaker 1: that in the writing of it that I had to
Speaker 1: actually aim for and think about what was universal about
Speaker 1: my experience, which is not something I've ever had to
Speaker 1: do as a writer. It's something that I would counsel
Speaker 1: people against doing because it makes you sort of self conscious,
Speaker 1: like what's universal about my experience? But I had to
Speaker 1: and I and I so I found myself thinking what
Speaker 1: am I learning about identity? What am I learning about
Speaker 1: what makes a father a father? What am I learning
Speaker 1: about nature and nurture? That I can find a way
Speaker 1: to impart so that I can connect with the reader,
Speaker 1: um and and like push the reader toward, provoke the
Speaker 1: reader toward a kind of understanding of Oh I see wow,
Speaker 1: that would be really complicated to make sense, really provoking empathy,
Speaker 1: which is what I felt like I had to be
Speaker 1: doing in this case. Um, everything that we do is
Speaker 1: aimed around empathy versus pity. It's a huge distinction for
Speaker 1: the show. It's a huge distinction for uh, what we
Speaker 1: do with Still Kicking, what we do with the Hot
Speaker 1: Young Widows Club, which is a real group that I have,
Speaker 1: which is that nobody needs you to feel bad for them,
Speaker 1: but there are plenty of ways to do that, and
Speaker 1: pity is like the cheapest emotion we have. That's why
Speaker 1: we're so generous with it. We're just like, you can
Speaker 1: have some you can I can feel bad for literally anyone.
Speaker 1: I'm so good at it. But empathy does require imagination,
Speaker 1: and most people really are not that imaginative. It takes
Speaker 1: a lot of energy to be empathetic. So the stories
Speaker 1: that we look at on our show are really meant
Speaker 1: to stretch that I really meant to. We listen to
Speaker 1: it as we're writing it, and we listen to it
Speaker 1: as as an unempathetic person, and when we do group
Speaker 1: listens for the draft episodes, we say like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so why wouldn't this be a thing. And some of
Speaker 1: the narration is meant to cut those reflexes off from
Speaker 1: the listener and to say, like, I know that you
Speaker 1: might be thinking this, but think about it this way,
Speaker 1: because I do want to create episodes that that can
Speaker 1: be helpful for other people, and that can help other
Speaker 1: people help the people around them stretched so that you
Speaker 1: who feel very, very beleaguered by trying to bring everyone
Speaker 1: in your life along with you and this thing that
Speaker 1: they think is too sad, have something to show that's like, look,
Speaker 1: it's not just me, Look this is this is this
Speaker 1: is something that a lot of people feel. So listen
Speaker 1: to this. Think of it this way. So we've had
Speaker 1: a lot of I mean, it's easy to feel You
Speaker 1: can feel ad for somebody who as a has a
Speaker 1: has a dead baby. You can feel bad for somebody
Speaker 1: who has a has a dead husband. But can you
Speaker 1: feel for someone who has a more complicated story, Because
Speaker 1: the thing is all of those stories are always more complicated.
Speaker 1: But it's it's hard for you, like on the personal level,
Speaker 1: Like it is hard when people don't get it. And
Speaker 1: what I would say to you and to anybody here,
Speaker 1: a lot of people in your life just won't. And
Speaker 1: so if you can take that off your plate. You
Speaker 1: are not here to make everybody understand absolutely everything that
Speaker 1: you feel. It's impossible to do. That is going to
Speaker 1: free up a lot of anguish for you. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: strikes me to listening to you that pity is something
Speaker 1: that separates, right Like, if I am pitying you, it
Speaker 1: means that I'm on one side of this divide and
Speaker 1: you're on the other side. Um, if I'm pitying, it
Speaker 1: means you're pitiable and I'm not. And empathy has to
Speaker 1: do us. We are all in this together. This could
Speaker 1: be you, this could be me, this could be any
Speaker 1: one of us at any given moment, and we are
Speaker 1: all always, you know, always in that place. Um. And
Speaker 1: I think empathy comes from that understanding, even when it's
Speaker 1: and and and know there will be failures of empathy constantly.
Speaker 1: But when you're describing what you do in the scripts
Speaker 1: and in the voiceover in your show, is precisely what
Speaker 1: I was talking about earlier when I when I described
Speaker 1: trying to hold a story, it's it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: your job, and it's my job as a host of
Speaker 1: a show like this to say, wait a minute, Um,
Speaker 1: We're gonna turn this a little bit here. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get inside of your head, listener, and I know what
Speaker 1: you're thinking, but here's here's a pivot. Here's another way
Speaker 1: of looking at it, And that's that's that's the holding
Speaker 1: I think of this kind of work, and I think
Speaker 1: a lack of empathy comes from this need to compare
Speaker 1: your story against somebody else's, which is a really sort
Speaker 1: of reflexive thing that people do. Right, Like, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: at least the dad you had was pretty good, right,
Speaker 1: so when we at least each other, when we just
Speaker 1: each other, all of these things that sort of minimize
Speaker 1: the experience that you don't even think that they do,
Speaker 1: but they do. It immediately shuts off your capability for empathy.
Speaker 1: So some of the stories that we pick, our stories
Speaker 1: that you might not think of as that terrible, right,
Speaker 1: um is is having a stutter that terrible? Well, if
Speaker 1: it's the biggest thing in your life, if it has
Speaker 1: kept you separate from the life that you want to
Speaker 1: live and from connecting with people the way you want to, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. And nobody benefits from this sort of comparison
Speaker 1: of this is better or this is worse. Nobody like
Speaker 1: when you're the person trying to sort of hold your
Speaker 1: terrible thing up above somebody else's, Like, does that make
Speaker 1: you feel better? Not? Usually? Not? Usually So that concludes
Speaker 1: my answer. Do you think of podcasting as a new
Speaker 1: community that you're building? Because I find that we're all
Speaker 1: creating conversations. Now it used to be like what you
Speaker 1: heard on Oprah? And now it's like, oh, did you
Speaker 1: hear the story on you know, such and such a podcast?
Speaker 1: That it's creating conversation and community and conversations around grief
Speaker 1: and empathy. Like do you do you think about that
Speaker 1: as you're creating because I find it on the other
Speaker 1: end as a listener that it's happening more in conversation,
Speaker 1: that we're creating community around being able to open conversations
Speaker 1: based on topics. I mean, I think I've come to
Speaker 1: understand that as I've been making family secrets, and also
Speaker 1: as I've been on tour for Inheritance, and I realized
Speaker 1: that my events start becoming sort of de factove support
Speaker 1: groups for people. People have come to my events and
Speaker 1: then people help them discover their biological fathers. I mean,
Speaker 1: all sorts of astounding things have happened because people are
Speaker 1: gathering and we want to gather, you know, we want
Speaker 1: to gather. We're hungry for gathering because we feel I think,
Speaker 1: you know, so many of us so isolated by this,
Speaker 1: you know, and by you know, being working remotely or
Speaker 1: constantly being on our devices. UM. In this season, as
Speaker 1: we're leading up to season two of Family Secrets, UM,
Speaker 1: my producers made an eight hundred number especially eight eight
Speaker 1: eight secret zero where UM where listeners can actually call
Speaker 1: in and anonymously tell their own secrets. And I love
Speaker 1: them too. At first, I thought, really, and and it's
Speaker 1: it's this is fantastic thing because I think that sense
Speaker 1: of piercing aloneness, especially when it comes to emotions that
Speaker 1: make us feel alone. We feel alone when we grieve
Speaker 1: so alone, we feel alone when um, we are the
Speaker 1: keeper of a secret or a secret has been kept
Speaker 1: from us UM and then when it gets revealed, you know,
Speaker 1: week after week, when there's you know, these kinds of
Speaker 1: conversations that are kind of exploding some of the shame
Speaker 1: and isolation surrounding like these kinds of stories. I think
Speaker 1: that that's part of what's creating community, because it's people
Speaker 1: even if they're listening to these podcasts alone in their
Speaker 1: cars or late at night, or you know, when they're
Speaker 1: by themselves, there's a sense of oh, I'm not alone.
Speaker 1: I'm not alone I'm not alone. And then and then
Speaker 1: that I think does start to really build, um, build
Speaker 1: something of a community. I don't know if it's unique
Speaker 1: to podcasting. I think just the intersection of Internet and
Speaker 1: making something just creates more opportunity for fandom and for
Speaker 1: and for people who like something to gather around something
Speaker 1: that that they enjoy. So I think that you kind
Speaker 1: of find this around anything people like enough. Yeah, so um,
Speaker 1: the compliment that we're just paid is, well, people seem
Speaker 1: more comfortable. You're creating a language around these hard things.
Speaker 1: And I think I'm I'm just saying a lot of
Speaker 1: things that have been said by a lot of different people.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've said literally anything original, um, in
Speaker 1: my entire life. Possibly I don't want to yet I
Speaker 1: don't think so. Um all there's nothing new under this on.
Speaker 1: Everything has been, Everything has been said. People have always
Speaker 1: been dying. Um, it felt like my husband was the
Speaker 1: first to die, but in fact my mom's was I'm
Speaker 1: just kidding. Uh and uh yeah, So I think I'm
Speaker 1: just saying things louder and in a different way and
Speaker 1: in a newer medium. But and and also I can't
Speaker 1: take all the credit, and I don't think podcasting can
Speaker 1: take all the credit for that. But I do think
Speaker 1: that also because that question asked another question, which is,
Speaker 1: every single time I do any events, someone's like, I
Speaker 1: wanted to write a book about my husband dying, but
Speaker 1: you did it. I didn't write a book about your
Speaker 1: husband dying. Go write your own book, Go make your
Speaker 1: own podcast, Go tell your own story, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: because it's yours. And that's that's the difference between all
Speaker 1: of this is like it is yours and the people
Speaker 1: around you, strangers, they need to hear how you are
Speaker 1: getting through, whatever you're getting through. And because every single yes,
Speaker 1: the stories of grief, stories of war, stories of you know,
Speaker 1: love and loss and heartbreak, um, you know they've they've
Speaker 1: all been told. There is there is no new story
Speaker 1: under the sun. But every single telling of a story
Speaker 1: is its own individual snowflake of a story. Always. Otherwise
Speaker 1: we'd be done, you know, we'd be done. We'd be
Speaker 1: done with literature, we'd be done with art. We've been done.
Speaker 1: You can still write that Devil's Where product book. I
Speaker 1: am going to you because you know there's Hamster in
Speaker 1: that book. There there is room for a whole another
Speaker 1: boss and a whole another young woman showing up in
Speaker 1: New York. Yeah, thank you, Maybe it will, but that
Speaker 1: that really is I mean, I can't tell you how
Speaker 1: often I hear that from students. It's like, Oh, it's
Speaker 1: it's diversion of answering yourself to say, oh, that's been done,
Speaker 1: so I can't do it. And was that. I think
Speaker 1: that this concludes. I'd like to thank Resoli Bookstore for
Speaker 1: hosting the live taping of Family Secrets and Derrek Clemens
Speaker 1: for recording it. And i'd like to thank Nora mcinnerney.
Speaker 1: If you haven't already, be sure to check out and
Speaker 1: subscribe to her podcast, Terrible Thanks for asking. Family Secrets
Speaker 1: is an i Heeart Media production. For more podcasts for
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.