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, I was so excited to have
Speaker 1: Nora McNerney, the host of the wonderful podcast Terrible, thanks
Speaker 1: for asking join me for a live taping of Family
Speaker 1: Secrets at Rizzoli Bookstore in New York City. This is
Speaker 1: part one of our conversation. Well, hey, everybody, very exciting
Speaker 1: for me because you know you you make podcasts kind
Speaker 1: of a loaner with one other person in a tiny,
Speaker 1: little dark space. UM. And this is the first live
Speaker 1: event that I've done for Family Secrets. UM. So that's thrilling.
Speaker 1: And what's particularly thrilling is to have Norah with me,
Speaker 1: because I have to say that when I was starting
Speaker 1: to think about doing a podcast, I knew nothing about
Speaker 1: how to do a podcast. I listened pretty regularly to
Speaker 1: some podcasts that I liked a lot. I live in
Speaker 1: rural Connecticut, I drive a lot, and I would listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts in my car. UM. And I knew what
Speaker 1: I liked and I knew what I didn't like, But
Speaker 1: I didn't necessarily really think or discern why. UM, when
Speaker 1: I read. I've spent my life as a writer, so
Speaker 1: when I read, I know what I like or what
Speaker 1: I don't like and why, or what's good or what
Speaker 1: I don't think is as good and why. But I
Speaker 1: didn't know with podcasts. And then I was in conversation
Speaker 1: with the podcast producers who I ended up partnering with,
Speaker 1: and someone in one of those phone calls said, have
Speaker 1: you listened to Terrible? Thanks for asking? Do you know
Speaker 1: Nora mcinner me? And since I was sort of a
Speaker 1: podcast virgin um and late to the party, I had
Speaker 1: not yet listened to Terrible Thanks for Asking? And then
Speaker 1: I basically binge listened to Nora for weeks and weeks
Speaker 1: because I thought, Oh, I think I do know how
Speaker 1: to do this. I think I want to do this
Speaker 1: the way that she does this, in the sense of
Speaker 1: holding a story, like holding being someone who has actually
Speaker 1: is not just a just but you know, is not
Speaker 1: a journalist or am an observer or doesn't have any
Speaker 1: skin in the game, but someone who is actually um,
Speaker 1: like on the path that is the same path that
Speaker 1: um she's asking her guests to walk. And so there's
Speaker 1: something very different about that and very intimate about that,
Speaker 1: and then in addition to that, the artfulness and the
Speaker 1: way that there is the story of the guest, but
Speaker 1: then there is the host and the host holding the story,
Speaker 1: which is the way I always think of it. So Nora,
Speaker 1: thanks for doing this with me. Oh and I should
Speaker 1: also add that this conversation took place. Oh yeah, also
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. But more importantly, this conversation
Speaker 1: took place with each of us in our cars, and
Speaker 1: within five minutes, I was like, I mean, listen to
Speaker 1: your voice. You should absolutely have a podcast. Like I
Speaker 1: was like, I feel like I don't even know what
Speaker 1: you said for the past five minutes, but like I'm
Speaker 1: I mean, I will download that podcast. I would listen
Speaker 1: to you say anything. And um, I stand by that statement. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you and thank you for being my brabbi. I
Speaker 1: uh what what What Nora's leaving out is that when
Speaker 1: I listened to her podcast binge listened to it, I
Speaker 1: was like, I need to talk to her. I need
Speaker 1: I need to find out like what am I in for?
Speaker 1: Like what is this thing? And and and Nora gone
Speaker 1: on the phone with me and us we were in
Speaker 1: our cars, like she has at a car wash and
Speaker 1: at the car dealer. I was sitting outside this UM
Speaker 1: cafe where I go work in the country. UM, just
Speaker 1: like sitting in my car in like you know, dead
Speaker 1: of winter with the engine running, kind of just looking
Speaker 1: out over a waterfall and just having like these a
Speaker 1: couple of long conversations, UM that were these deep dives
Speaker 1: into And I guess this is a lot of what
Speaker 1: I would love to talk with you about today. UM.
Speaker 1: What it is two experience something you know on a
Speaker 1: human scale, very very difficult UM. In your case, UM,
Speaker 1: having been widowed at a shockingly young age, the loss
Speaker 1: of your husband Aaron, and a lot of loss compounded
Speaker 1: all at once, and then a moment where or tell
Speaker 1: me if it's a moment but a feeling where in
Speaker 1: which you need to do something with it other than
Speaker 1: sit with it. It was kind of a series of
Speaker 1: moments for me. But for those of you who don't
Speaker 1: know my very um uplifting story, my husband Aaron died
Speaker 1: when he was thirty five. He had brain cancer for
Speaker 1: three years and I was thirty one and we had
Speaker 1: almost two year old child together, and he died right
Speaker 1: after my dad died of cancer. But my dad had
Speaker 1: cancer very briefly, which was like rude, like Aaron already
Speaker 1: has cancer, Like you can't also get cancer, you can't
Speaker 1: die first. Um. And then my dad had died right
Speaker 1: after I had miscarried my second child with Darin. So UM,
Speaker 1: just set in the tone for a fun evening out
Speaker 1: for you, for you all welcome. And I I had
Speaker 1: always been a person, even when I was very little,
Speaker 1: and I know you were too, who was always like
Speaker 1: very observant, very attuned to the other the emotions of
Speaker 1: the other people. Um, in my life and in my orbit.
Speaker 1: And I I had never had anything that I thought
Speaker 1: was important to write about, which if if you ever
Speaker 1: feel that way, like literally you can write about anything
Speaker 1: like and truly you don't have to have you don't
Speaker 1: have to have, like a disaster happened to you. Um.
Speaker 1: But I always thought, like, what would I write about?
Speaker 1: You're supposed to write what you know. I don't know anything.
Speaker 1: Nothing's ever happened to me. And Aaron had a seizure
Speaker 1: at work a year after we started dating, and I
Speaker 1: met him at the hospital and we were both like, man,
Speaker 1: we gotta get you out of here. It's Halloween. We
Speaker 1: gotta hand out candy. It just did not register to
Speaker 1: us that this this was the thing, This was a
Speaker 1: serious thing, both of us. Instagram had just come out.
Speaker 1: This was a simpler time. This was like you know,
Speaker 1: we were He was like, take a picture, take a
Speaker 1: picture of me, like laying in the e R. And
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, that's that's funny, that's cool. Um,
Speaker 1: He's like take a picture. They have to put me
Speaker 1: in a wheelchair. It's like that's great, it's great. It's
Speaker 1: got two likes. So it's me and it's you. What
Speaker 1: did you? I liked my own photo just to get
Speaker 1: the get that content rolling. Um. But I always had
Speaker 1: notebook with me. It was always filled with very important
Speaker 1: work things. I worked in advertising, so like truly life
Speaker 1: or death kind of stuff happening every day. And I
Speaker 1: remember Aaron being pushed into the mri I room and
Speaker 1: him giving me the thumbs up and the door closing,
Speaker 1: and that hitting me like, oh, this is this is
Speaker 1: a moment. This is an important moment, and there will
Speaker 1: be before this moment and there will be after it,
Speaker 1: whatever happens, Like this is this is a big thing.
Speaker 1: And I sat in that hallway and I wrote everything
Speaker 1: that had happened, and I didn't think that it was
Speaker 1: for anybody else, but a part of me knew, and
Speaker 1: I wrote this in that same notebook that I had
Speaker 1: to keep my eyes open for this, even though I
Speaker 1: didn't want to. I didn't want to remember seeing him
Speaker 1: going going like this. Um from that room, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to go home and hand out Halloween candy.
Speaker 1: And at first, when I started writing about it again,
Speaker 1: this was a simpler time. I used tumbler dot com
Speaker 1: and uh, I password protected it. I don't want anyone
Speaker 1: knowing all my secret feelings. Nobody cared. And then, um,
Speaker 1: I just got tired of writing group emails to people,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure you've written quite a quite a lot
Speaker 1: of group emails lately. You have to keep so many
Speaker 1: people updated when when your life turns upside down. And
Speaker 1: I took the password off it, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm only going to be writing here. And it was
Speaker 1: immediately not updates about Aaron's cancer. It was observations about
Speaker 1: what it was like to be alive with him, because
Speaker 1: I didn't want him to be a sad story, and
Speaker 1: I could feel that from people. I could feel people
Speaker 1: just like pitying us and feeling bad for us, and
Speaker 1: I hated it, and I truly thought the only people
Speaker 1: who would read something like that would be the people
Speaker 1: who knew us and already and cared about us. But uh,
Speaker 1: it started to be parent that more people were reading
Speaker 1: it than I knew personally. I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
Speaker 1: and so I know, I mean, I know most of
Speaker 1: the city. There's a good chance I'm related to like
Speaker 1: most people I encounter there. UM, But not everybody knew us,
Speaker 1: But people could understand that feeling, that feeling of being
Speaker 1: so out of control of your life and having your
Speaker 1: life go so off the path that it's supposed to
Speaker 1: when you meet someone and you fall in love, like
Speaker 1: it's just supposed to be good. You know, that's supposed
Speaker 1: to like immediately turned into UM an episode of Gray's Anatomy.
Speaker 1: So when people would begin to respond and and they
Speaker 1: went beyond the people that you knew in Minneapolis, UM,
Speaker 1: was that a feeling of UM supporting community UM? Or
Speaker 1: did you feel in any way like WHOA you know?
Speaker 1: Was there any sense of privacy being invaded? Or you
Speaker 1: know a lot of people know stuff about me and
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know them, but they feel they
Speaker 1: know me? Or or did it feel like a good thing.
Speaker 1: I think that if the same thing were to unfold now,
Speaker 1: it would look so drastically different, Like the difference between
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen internet and Internet is crazy. It's not even
Speaker 1: it's not even the same world. And so the people
Speaker 1: who were reaching out, we're literally just leaving comments. They
Speaker 1: were um like it was such a it was such
Speaker 1: a smaller system. Does that make sense now? It would
Speaker 1: be there would just be so many ways to access
Speaker 1: that information, and it would be so much more direct.
Speaker 1: And I think that thirty six year old me in
Speaker 1: Internet probably wouldn't do it that same way. But I
Speaker 1: was seven, and it was the year, and I did
Speaker 1: it the way that I knew how, and that felt
Speaker 1: natural all for how I was, And it did feel
Speaker 1: so amazing to have people care, because it's so lonely
Speaker 1: to be sick or to have someone you love be sick,
Speaker 1: and to automatically inhabit this different version of the world
Speaker 1: where you are, where your calendar has all the normal
Speaker 1: stuff on it, like you have a nine am conference
Speaker 1: call and then at one pm you have to go
Speaker 1: pick up your husband and take him to get chemo infusion,
Speaker 1: and your friends care, but they also just don't know
Speaker 1: what that's like. They just don't know. So having people
Speaker 1: from really all over be able to say, I know
Speaker 1: how that feels, I know how you feel like I
Speaker 1: care about this thing that feels too big for you
Speaker 1: to even like talk to anybody face to face about.
Speaker 1: The Internet gave me away to to say the things
Speaker 1: that I could not say to the people who cared
Speaker 1: about me face to face, because it's just so much.
Speaker 1: It's so much for a casual conversation ship. When you
Speaker 1: run into a friend of a friend at the co op,
Speaker 1: that's a lot you knows as you're talking. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about the difference between writing a book and UM
Speaker 1: and beginning to post online and and ultimately then what
Speaker 1: leads to making a podcast, right, So writing a book,
Speaker 1: which is something you do alone in a room in
Speaker 1: this way, I mean when I when I was writing Inheritance, UM,
Speaker 1: I rented an office that was out of my home. UM.
Speaker 1: And just briefly for anyone who doesn't know what my
Speaker 1: book is about, I UM made the discoveries three years ago,
Speaker 1: almost exactly three three years ago, that my dad who
Speaker 1: raised me had not been my biological father. I had
Speaker 1: never known this. UM it was a secret that was
Speaker 1: very much kept from me by my parents. And so
Speaker 1: it was just like identity shifting, um massive shock that
Speaker 1: that happened in my life. Very very different on your story.
Speaker 1: But as I was beginning to work on inheritance, I
Speaker 1: rented an office because I couldn't be in my home
Speaker 1: with all this research that had to do with early
Speaker 1: reproductive medicine in this country, and just some kind of
Speaker 1: crazy details about what people were told and not told,
Speaker 1: and it was very disturbing. It's very disturbing to be
Speaker 1: told that you would be considered an abomination in your
Speaker 1: face because because in Judaism they didn't, you know, rabbis
Speaker 1: didn't believe in artificial insemination, donor insemination and so forth.
Speaker 1: So I would be in this office and I would
Speaker 1: go in every morning, and it was in an empty house.
Speaker 1: A friend who was a lawyer had recently moved his
Speaker 1: law offices and the house was just sitting there for sale.
Speaker 1: But the real estate broker said to me, no one's
Speaker 1: ever going to buy it. You'll be fine, you can
Speaker 1: have every years. And I would go into this completely
Speaker 1: empty house and I would go up the stairs and
Speaker 1: I would unlock the door to my office, and in
Speaker 1: the office there was a beatle, a bug a beatle,
Speaker 1: and it was the only living thing in this house.
Speaker 1: And I would like look forward to seeing the beetle,
Speaker 1: and I would wait for the beetle to make itself
Speaker 1: known each day. And they're like, oh, there's the beetle. Wow,
Speaker 1: the beatles finding something to eat here. It's like, still,
Speaker 1: there's my beetle. That's how solitary it was, right, So
Speaker 1: it's like in a way, And then the experience of
Speaker 1: writing a book and publishing a book even is that
Speaker 1: you're not seeing people read it. They're not responding in
Speaker 1: real time. Every once in a while, someone on Instagram
Speaker 1: posts a picture of like, look, there was somebody on
Speaker 1: the subway reading your book. And it's the most amazing
Speaker 1: thing when that happens. But it's not that sense of
Speaker 1: immediate response that that you're describing the feeling of putting something,
Speaker 1: putting a raw and complicated thought out there, and then
Speaker 1: immediately having this world of some version of me too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that's part of like the addictive nature
Speaker 1: of the Internet. And I will usually say, oh God,
Speaker 1: I hate the Internet. Somebody should find it and unplug
Speaker 1: it and we should all just write each other letters
Speaker 1: and make phone calls on landlines and um. And I
Speaker 1: usually stand by that. And also some of the most
Speaker 1: amazing things that have come out of this experience would
Speaker 1: not have existed without the Internet and without social media.
Speaker 1: I I was never posting things trying to accumulate followers. Um.
Speaker 1: Internet celebrity hadn't wasn't a thing I would say in
Speaker 1: at least not a thing in in my life and
Speaker 1: my world. But what I remember about Aaron being diagnosed
Speaker 1: is immediately googling it, regretting googling it, and committing to
Speaker 1: never looking it up again. Never, never, never, Because the
Speaker 1: only thing that I found out he had stage four
Speaker 1: glioblastoma was that he was going to die. And that
Speaker 1: um when I when I looked, even just just I
Speaker 1: was like, maybe there's something on the second page of
Speaker 1: Google like that would be like, no, we won't UM.
Speaker 1: So I went looking for the like he's not going
Speaker 1: to die page, and all I found was forums of
Speaker 1: of women. This is a cancer that mostly affects men,
Speaker 1: young men. Pages and pages of forums of women who
Speaker 1: were just chronicling their husband's cancer, just their just their sickness,
Speaker 1: the treatment that he was getting the pill, that he
Speaker 1: was taking, the doctor that he had seen, the specialists
Speaker 1: that they had they had gone to for a second opinion,
Speaker 1: and I thought, I don't want that. I don't want that.
Speaker 1: I don't want that life. I don't want Aaron to
Speaker 1: have that life. I want to be people. I want
Speaker 1: everybody who reads anything about us to know that we
Speaker 1: are people and that this is our life. And when
Speaker 1: I look back at those early posts, I was truly
Speaker 1: creating a manual for the people who knew us and
Speaker 1: those who didn't, to say, this is who we are,
Speaker 1: and this is how you should in age with us.
Speaker 1: Do not feel bad for us, you can feel with us.
Speaker 1: And the people who found me were the same women
Speaker 1: who did the same Google search I did, but my
Speaker 1: blog went to the top of those search results, and
Speaker 1: they would just see two people and then eventually a baby,
Speaker 1: also living, just living. I never wrote about what Aaron
Speaker 1: was taking. When people asked me what Aaron was taking, like, frankly,
Speaker 1: I don't know. For a long time, I thought one
Speaker 1: of his infusions was I don't know where I got
Speaker 1: this information, Danny. I was certain. I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: Aaron goes on Wednesdays, he gets like a vitamin. This
Speaker 1: doctor was like, what that's chemo. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: someone once explained to me that it was vitamin drip.
Speaker 1: And he's like, no one ever said that to you.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, that's how I heard it. And guess
Speaker 1: what he felt great after it to be adaptive, right,
Speaker 1: I was like, well, looks, I mean, it's kind of
Speaker 1: the color of a vitamin. I maybe I assumed. I
Speaker 1: don't know, um, very medically minded. Um. I can't remember
Speaker 1: where that story was going. My train of thought is
Speaker 1: literally just a jet ski and so we're going to
Speaker 1: go a lot of places, and so let me guide
Speaker 1: you a little yea. So wait, yeah, should be a
Speaker 1: jet ski, I think they have. I think a train.
Speaker 1: I also don't know. I've never been on one, but
Speaker 1: I've seen people use them, and they seem they see
Speaker 1: even a fully dangerous and out of control. So here
Speaker 1: I am so the way that, you know, when people
Speaker 1: have been asking me about family secrets and how it
Speaker 1: came to be, I keep on describing it as some
Speaker 1: combination of um, this very organic thing. I never thought,
Speaker 1: oh podcast, I listened to them, I should make one
Speaker 1: also kind of a happy accident, like some combination of
Speaker 1: like an organic happy accident. And so I guess I'm
Speaker 1: wondering what the moment was for you when you moved
Speaker 1: from I'm posting these, um these bullets like bulletins, this
Speaker 1: kind of in a way educating people in how to
Speaker 1: how to be with me and how to be with Aaron,
Speaker 1: um and maybe even really how to be with anyone
Speaker 1: who's ill into something that you make that's artful and
Speaker 1: that um, and then that becomes terrible. Thanks for asking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I also didn't set out to be like, oh
Speaker 1: my weight, so my husband has a brain tumor, looks
Speaker 1: like I finally have a book. Um. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: great and he's gonna die awesome, Um great, Um. That
Speaker 1: was not that I really wanted to write a book
Speaker 1: when I was younger. That was about a girl who
Speaker 1: moves to New York and wants to be a writer
Speaker 1: but instead finds herself like in a different kind of
Speaker 1: job and her boss is crazy, and um, that book
Speaker 1: is the devil worst product. Tragically, tragically, it was made
Speaker 1: into a classic film featuring Anne Hathaway, And so I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I guess I'll never be able to
Speaker 1: write a book. Someone beat me to the one story
Speaker 1: I have, And um, I didn't write my blog like
Speaker 1: necessarily hoping that it would be a book. I still
Speaker 1: had a job, you know, I was working every day
Speaker 1: writing tweets for discount hair care companies. Uh seven nine haircuts.
Speaker 1: That's a full tweet, by the way, seven en haircut,
Speaker 1: seven nine haircut this weekend link. Um got paid the
Speaker 1: big books for that. Um. So it's not as if
Speaker 1: I was sitting there, you know, calculating how this could
Speaker 1: be a thing. So this is how it happened. This
Speaker 1: is like my origin story. Is that everything that I
Speaker 1: ever posted Aaron read. Aaron saw every picture, he read
Speaker 1: every caption, he read every post. Because it wasn't my story.
Speaker 1: It was the story of our family. And my dad died,
Speaker 1: which I already told you, But guess what my dad's
Speaker 1: dad must say? As many times I can. My dad
Speaker 1: died and I had to write his obituary. And we
Speaker 1: have I have three siblings, and you know, I write
Speaker 1: a draft, they all edit it. It's very it's it's
Speaker 1: the worst collaborative effort that you can imagine. And because
Speaker 1: we're like, I don't know what is important to dad
Speaker 1: like my brother's like, I don't think that's that part's important, Like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, to me, it felt like that was a
Speaker 1: really you always write somebody's obituary customarily after they die,
Speaker 1: which does make sense because it's kind of a bummer
Speaker 1: to right. But I didn't want to go through that again.
Speaker 1: And I didn't want to be the person who wrote
Speaker 1: the final word on what Aaron's life meant, because he
Speaker 1: was so unique, he was so funny. And the night
Speaker 1: that he entered hospice and we had no idea what
Speaker 1: that meant other than you can't have any more chemo vitamins. Um.
Speaker 1: We went home and we put our baby to bed,
Speaker 1: and I opened up my laptop and I said, uh,
Speaker 1: I think we have to write your obituary right now,
Speaker 1: and he was like, okay, Um, I really wanted to
Speaker 1: watch Game of Thrones and like, we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: We will, we will do that. And we paused Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones and we sat down and we wrote his
Speaker 1: obituary together, and the first line of it is per
Speaker 1: mort Aaron Joseph Age died on November fourteen due to
Speaker 1: complications from a radioactive spider bite, and UH revealed his
Speaker 1: identity as Spider Man and gave you know, shout out
Speaker 1: to his first wife, Gwen Stefani, and it mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: the the band that he was in in high school,
Speaker 1: a local a local band called the Asparagus Children. Anyone
Speaker 1: heard of it? Weird? Okay? Where that didn't get past
Speaker 1: Anoka County, Minnesota. Oh strange. And I didn't think that
Speaker 1: they would a blish it, but we wrote it, and
Speaker 1: turns out they will publish it because in obituary is
Speaker 1: an advertisement for your death, so they will you pay
Speaker 1: for it, They'll they'll publish whatever you want. So take
Speaker 1: that knowledge home tonight. And they published it after Aaron
Speaker 1: died and it went viral like crazy everywhere on the internet.
Speaker 1: That I that I looked for distraction from planning his funeral,
Speaker 1: which actually he planned so I really didn't have much
Speaker 1: to do but implementing those plans. Um, he was there,
Speaker 1: his face was there, and it's because it was so
Speaker 1: true to who he was, and that is so rare.
Speaker 1: That's not something that you see all the time. It
Speaker 1: was people. People loved that. And a woman named Jessica
Speaker 1: Regal emailed me and said, I'm so sorry about your husband.
Speaker 1: Um and you know, I'm a I'm an agent. Maybe
Speaker 1: in like five years, you'd want to write a book.
Speaker 1: And I replied and I was like, I probably would
Speaker 1: write it now, honestly, And she was like, that sounds insane.
Speaker 1: We'll talking in five years, and I was, no, I
Speaker 1: really do I want to write it now, because I
Speaker 1: there are so many books written from distance of time,
Speaker 1: and those are wonderful. A lot of them helped me
Speaker 1: when I was when Aaron was diagnosed, after Aaron had died,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to write something while I was in it,
Speaker 1: while I was in all of that chaos, because being
Speaker 1: in something is also a perspective. And so I two
Speaker 1: months after Aaron died, I was here in New York City, Uh,
Speaker 1: wearing so many I was wearing like an outfit from
Speaker 1: Jay Crew, like on the on the I can't think
Speaker 1: of the word mannequin. That's the word where you know
Speaker 1: they dressed Jay Crew models or mannequins, and many layers.
Speaker 1: It's it's too many layers. Was it winter? It was winter,
Speaker 1: but not that winter, not like a sweater shirt and
Speaker 1: a jacket winter. It was too much. I thought I
Speaker 1: was going to die, but instead I sold a book
Speaker 1: we're going to pause for a moment. Let's let's go
Speaker 1: to the idea of immediacy for a minute, because I
Speaker 1: think that that's actually really UM, I think it's key
Speaker 1: to both of our stories and both of our experiences.
Speaker 1: I mean, Inheritance is my tenth book I owe and
Speaker 1: fifth memoir, and I always believed that it was impossible
Speaker 1: to write anything good out of immediate experience, out of
Speaker 1: sort of the raw immediacy, and UM, and I think
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely like you know the commercials say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, don't try this at home, or because I,
Speaker 1: for me, UM, the story of Inheritance, I didn't want
Speaker 1: to tell from my rocking chair someday. I wanted to
Speaker 1: capture it as it was unfolding, or maybe was a
Speaker 1: half a step away from it enough to have a
Speaker 1: little bit of a way of pivoting toward it and
Speaker 1: away from it. But it felt essential that it be
Speaker 1: told that way. UM, And I wonder whether to take
Speaker 1: it a step further than in podcasting. There's such intimacy
Speaker 1: in in podcasting. It's intimate in the way that it's made,
Speaker 1: in the conversations that you know that you have with
Speaker 1: your guests, or that I have was my guests is
Speaker 1: intimate in the way that it's listened to. Uh, at
Speaker 1: least his intimate is reading because you know, you've got
Speaker 1: these you know, air pods in or whatever they're called,
Speaker 1: and you know, or you're in your car alone. People
Speaker 1: don't have like podcast listening parties, at least not yet.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe a little become a thing, um, but
Speaker 1: it's something that people do by themselves. And so there's
Speaker 1: this there's this voice in literally become the voice in
Speaker 1: someone's head. So so then how does how does it
Speaker 1: go from you know, you're in these j crue layers
Speaker 1: and you sell the book and it's two months after
Speaker 1: Aaron died to um it becoming the birth of a podcast.
Speaker 1: Did you intend for that to happen? Because another thing
Speaker 1: that I think that happens with people a lot um
Speaker 1: when they see see something that works a book, a
Speaker 1: short story, an essay, a podcast, there's always like retrospective intentionality, like, oh,
Speaker 1: this must have been the plan all along and that's
Speaker 1: why it's a thing. And as about me, it's so flattering.
Speaker 1: Everyone thinks, right, it was on it was on a
Speaker 1: list of this is how you're going to be about it.
Speaker 1: It's almost never the case that that's what it is now.
Speaker 1: I uh. I was unemployed, so an unemployed widowed mom
Speaker 1: with a toddler and a mortgage. I sold a book.
Speaker 1: I started trying to do freelance copyrighting on the side.
Speaker 1: But I had this other full time job, which was
Speaker 1: managing the emotions of anyone who had read that obituary,
Speaker 1: and anybody whose husband was sick, and anybody's husband who
Speaker 1: had died, and they would email me. It would email
Speaker 1: me because I was a person who had said something
Speaker 1: about it, and their friends and family didn't know how
Speaker 1: to talk about it, and so they weren't talking about it.
Speaker 1: And so I spent every night going through my emails
Speaker 1: and replying to every single person so that they would
Speaker 1: feel like someone out in the world heard them and
Speaker 1: felt with them, and that they weren't so alone, because
Speaker 1: you have to be pretty alone in this world to
Speaker 1: spill your guts to an absolute stranger over email. UM
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. And I know because
Speaker 1: I've done that. I have done that, Cheryl Strait, you
Speaker 1: got gotten several messages for me like UM. I did not.
Speaker 1: I did not think, oh, like this would make a
Speaker 1: this would make a great podcast everything that I've done,
Speaker 1: because I also feel I am a lucky person. Aaron died,
Speaker 1: he did not have life insurance. I quit my job
Speaker 1: by not going, which was I don't advise that, UM,
Speaker 1: but I was like, oh my god, I've forgotten, and
Speaker 1: also I don't want to do it. UM. But so
Speaker 1: many people, if you are lucky enough to be employed
Speaker 1: full time time and in benefits, go ahead tonight and
Speaker 1: read them because you probably have three to five business
Speaker 1: days of bereavement leaf if your husband dies, if your
Speaker 1: wife dies, you have no time. You have to get
Speaker 1: back to real life. And many many women who I
Speaker 1: was talking to her fielding their their emails, they didn't
Speaker 1: have that. They had nothing, They had even less than nothing.
Speaker 1: Aaron did not have life insurance. But I had a
Speaker 1: mom who was still alive, who had a house that
Speaker 1: it could and did end up living in as a
Speaker 1: thirty one year old mom. That felt great. We were
Speaker 1: not the best of roommates, but I still do love
Speaker 1: her UM and mostly it's mutual. I do feel but terrible.
Speaker 1: Thanks for asking was like the next the thing that
Speaker 1: I could do that seemed like it would it would
Speaker 1: help it would it would help all of these people
Speaker 1: feel less lonely. So the first season is every single
Speaker 1: story is from my inbox. My first season, all ten
Speaker 1: episodes are all people who had emailed me before I
Speaker 1: had a podcast, before I had anything, people who had
Speaker 1: just sent me a message about something. I replied to
Speaker 1: them and said, so, if I had a podcast, which
Speaker 1: I don't, um, would you want to be on it?
Speaker 1: And they were like that sounds great. The title is
Speaker 1: a rejected title for my first book, right, um, So
Speaker 1: I had a title, I had an inbox full of
Speaker 1: sad stories, and I had um nothing more to lose,
Speaker 1: And so I sent out a tweet and I said,
Speaker 1: who in Minnesota makes podcasts? Great? Didn't even google it? Okay,
Speaker 1: I was like, right to right to Twitter, And if
Speaker 1: I saw that tweet, I would be like google it,
Speaker 1: dou fas. But someone who's nicer than me was like,
Speaker 1: there is there is someone who makes podcasts in Minnesota.
Speaker 1: His name is Hans Buto, and that man became my
Speaker 1: producer and we created this show together and and that's
Speaker 1: that's how it all happened. And I do, I do.
Speaker 1: I would love to be able to say like this
Speaker 1: was all the plan. But really I do know one thing,
Speaker 1: which is that the plan was to at least make
Speaker 1: a thing. Every episode is a thing that somebody can
Speaker 1: point to and say like, it felt like this, or
Speaker 1: it parts of it, it feels like at five minutes
Speaker 1: and thirty eight seconds, that's how I feel. That's how
Speaker 1: I feel. So you and I talked on the phone
Speaker 1: the other day about whether this kind of work is
Speaker 1: therapeutic or cathartic. People will often say about writing memoir
Speaker 1: and they will also say about um, this kind of
Speaker 1: podcast either family secrets or terrible things for asking a
Speaker 1: feeling of um. Is this somehow like a form of
Speaker 1: therapy or um? I remember years ago, as a memoirist,
Speaker 1: somebody for the first time asking me a question about
Speaker 1: my first memoir, the it must feel so cast a question,
Speaker 1: and at the time I actually found it like I've
Speaker 1: bristled at it. It was like, it's not catharsis, it's
Speaker 1: art um. And of course these are not mutually exclusive,
Speaker 1: but I wonder and I actually don't find writing memoirkus arctic,
Speaker 1: but I do and have found the conversations that I
Speaker 1: have um either when I'm I mean the various places
Speaker 1: where I record family secrets, my basement in Connecticut and
Speaker 1: my son's old playroom, like hunched over my recording equipment
Speaker 1: with like the big stuffed you know, hippopotamus from when
Speaker 1: he was to sitting in the corner and like you know,
Speaker 1: baseball paraphernalia and stuff like that very glamorous, or in
Speaker 1: the studio with my guest on the phone, or with
Speaker 1: my guest in the room. Um, and it almost doesn't
Speaker 1: matter where or even whether the guest is in the room.
Speaker 1: And actually I remember you saying to me early on,
Speaker 1: it can feel even more intimate when the guest is
Speaker 1: not in the room. You're just in this kind of
Speaker 1: cocoon of just voices and silence and pauses and um.
Speaker 1: And this this interaction that can feel almost like a
Speaker 1: confessional booth in some way. And to me that has
Speaker 1: felt I don't like words like cathartic or or therapeutic,
Speaker 1: but there's something that happens that really feels transformative, both
Speaker 1: hopefully for the guest but for me. So I'm wondering.
Speaker 1: You know, you were talking about starting it thinking I
Speaker 1: want to give something to all these people who are
Speaker 1: flooding my inbox. But what has it done for you also,
Speaker 1: people who listen to your podcast find it therapeutic, and
Speaker 1: that's a very good I know a lot of sobbing.
Speaker 1: Sobbing by the side of the road over everyone's looking
Speaker 1: for a way to cry in their car or on
Speaker 1: the subway, whatever is available to you. A big fan
Speaker 1: of like a good public cry. The first season sounds
Speaker 1: so different than the current season, and that is because
Speaker 1: it was my form of therapy. I was. I mean,
Speaker 1: so much was happening in my life that had not
Speaker 1: been included in the book, because it happens. You write
Speaker 1: a book and then life has happened after you turned in,
Speaker 1: after you turned in the final draft, and after it
Speaker 1: comes out, and all of these things had happened. I
Speaker 1: had um met a man and I had fallen in
Speaker 1: love with him, and we had I had gotten pregnant,
Speaker 1: not in that order, and uh and we blended this
Speaker 1: family and it was so wonderful. And also for the
Speaker 1: first time I had stopped moving since Aaron died, and
Speaker 1: I was present with love and with like this newness
Speaker 1: and it was my grief just catching up with me.
Speaker 1: And you can hear that in the first season for sure.
Speaker 1: Is that all of the things that I thought that, um,
Speaker 1: that I had processed by writing a book or by
Speaker 1: starting you know this nonprofit, uh still kicking that that
Speaker 1: honors my husband and anybody going through something hard by
Speaker 1: just staying busy. I felt like maybe maybe I wouldn't have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I felt like I would avoid the grief like it
Speaker 1: would expire and I'd have like I would have just
Speaker 1: avoided it like a genius. Like I don't know why
Speaker 1: everybody doesn't do that, Like you just stay really busy.
Speaker 1: Time passes and like you've ducked down and the grief
Speaker 1: has shot overhead. It totally missed you, and instead it
Speaker 1: had completely just decimated me. And so much of that
Speaker 1: first season is me digging through that, along with my
Speaker 1: guests and their stories that are about not that at all.
Speaker 1: You know. What's so interesting nor though, is it's possible
Speaker 1: for something to be as beautifully produced as your show
Speaker 1: is and to be stark ly honest. They're not, They're
Speaker 1: not mutually exclusive. Um. I think we sing to go
Speaker 1: back to Instagram and social media like that. The more
Speaker 1: produced something is, the more it means that it's kind
Speaker 1: of burnished and therefore somehow not real, not true. Um.
Speaker 1: And yet I think that. When I first heard your show,
Speaker 1: I thought, oh that I want. I want to do
Speaker 1: something that's going to be beautifully produced, that can be
Speaker 1: heard and listened to and shaped and there there's there's
Speaker 1: music in there, and they're sound in there, and there's
Speaker 1: real artfulness in there. And at the same time it's
Speaker 1: it's true, and there's rawness, and there's honesty, and there's
Speaker 1: vulnerability that often overused word, but it's really there within
Speaker 1: the container of this um beautifully produced thing. Yeah, Danny
Speaker 1: is like really smart. Sometimes I'm like, yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker 1: It is art. We're going to open it up to
Speaker 1: questions in a minute. The tempt someone posted a picture
Speaker 1: of us at a different event and was like the
Speaker 1: Queen the Joker, and I was like, it was accurate.
Speaker 1: It was not me. I reposted it because I was like,
Speaker 1: that's actually, it's actually very accurate. And in the picture,
Speaker 1: I'm like, Danny's like, we're talking about a book. I'm like,
Speaker 1: are we um? So episode zero of my podcast is
Speaker 1: was not planned. We were not making an episode zero.
Speaker 1: We're supposed start with number one. But I had a
Speaker 1: baby right before the podcast was supposed to come out.
Speaker 1: I had not told anybody that I was pregnant, including
Speaker 1: the people who worked on my podcast, because I do
Speaker 1: believe the world to be like an inherently sexist place,
Speaker 1: and I just was like, I don't know, if anyone
Speaker 1: knows I'm pregnant, they're really going to try to promote
Speaker 1: a show made by a woman who just had a baby.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe I'm not being generous enough, but
Speaker 1: that's what I did. And you can hear in that episode, um,
Speaker 1: I'm holding a baby. I'm holding a two day old
Speaker 1: baby and recording a podcast. And because it just felt
Speaker 1: like I wanted to put something out there that was
Speaker 1: that was real and that was produced, I did it
Speaker 1: in a studio. I took my baby with no immune
Speaker 1: system out into the world. I was like, honey, the
Speaker 1: world needs this content. Um. But because I've been so
Speaker 1: deeply depressed during my pregnancy and I was automatically just
Speaker 1: had postpartum anxiety and postpartum depression, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: tell that story that sometimes it is more complicated than
Speaker 1: it looks, because from the outside, at the time my
Speaker 1: life did look and was it was really good. Like
Speaker 1: it's hard to write a better happy ending than a
Speaker 1: widowed mom meeting a divorce dad and all the kids
Speaker 1: falling in love and then you moved to the suburbs
Speaker 1: and you get a minivan and a rescue dog. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty good story. And also I was so sad,
Speaker 1: it was just so sad. So um, so yes, I'll
Speaker 1: and plus i'll smart things to Danny. So yeah, so
Speaker 1: I think, you know, i'd love to you know, when
Speaker 1: it comes to I mean, everything that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: we're talking about life, um, and I think both of
Speaker 1: our shows are really about that, really about life. And
Speaker 1: we talked a lot um earlier about again the kind
Speaker 1: of burnishment of social media and all that stuff. And
Speaker 1: I feel like there are these places out there that
Speaker 1: are like respites from that, you know, that are you know,
Speaker 1: like it's really not um. I mean, I know for
Speaker 1: myself that I am constantly working against. I don't want
Speaker 1: people to mistake my life for being um perfect, fabulous,
Speaker 1: photoshopped in some way. And I mean these days there's
Speaker 1: probably not much of a chance of people doing that,
Speaker 1: but it's happened a lot over time. And my only
Speaker 1: is to kind of move into that place of let's
Speaker 1: talk about the and here, you know, not the either
Speaker 1: or but the like this and this, you know that
Speaker 1: the you you have talked a lot about um and
Speaker 1: early early in the first season you you you talk
Speaker 1: about loving two men, you know, having two husbands, having
Speaker 1: a child with each of them, and it's this great
Speaker 1: you know, comic of course because it's you, but also
Speaker 1: a very very real sort of introduction to this is
Speaker 1: this messy, complicated, beautiful, painful, tragic, which is to say,
Speaker 1: human life. And I think that that's what you know,
Speaker 1: that's what resonates about these kinds of stories. And I
Speaker 1: think it's like that for most people, but we just
Speaker 1: don't know it typically, especially in marketing UM marketing books
Speaker 1: like this book is it's on. It's an escape from
Speaker 1: every day. But the reason that podcasts like this work
Speaker 1: and are popular is because what you need an escape
Speaker 1: from is this oppressively optimistic American um social media in
Speaker 1: uh uh faned But just like this, this oppressively optimistic
Speaker 1: point of view, which is that if something happens, then
Speaker 1: the next thing that happens is like you get over it.
Speaker 1: If somebody hits you in the face with the lemon
Speaker 1: it turned to lemonade on your face, or like a
Speaker 1: nice vitamin c Serum while it was on there, um
Speaker 1: like you're you're definitely supposed to find the silver lining
Speaker 1: as soon as possible so that people can feel inspired
Speaker 1: by you. And we need stories that are not just bummers.
Speaker 1: Nobody's interested in in a story that is just a
Speaker 1: sad story. And also nobody's story is just a sad story,
Speaker 1: even if your story makes people really sad, even if
Speaker 1: people are like, Danny, your dad wasn't your dad? Like
Speaker 1: your story is also a story about love and and
Speaker 1: and life in all of its complications. And I do
Speaker 1: want my kids to know more than anything that this
Speaker 1: is not the exception to the rule, like at all,
Speaker 1: Like this is just the rule. Actually, like really really
Speaker 1: bad things are going to happen in your life and
Speaker 1: also really good things, and then most of it is
Speaker 1: going to be so dull you won't remember it. Like
Speaker 1: today on the airport, on the airport, on the airplane,
Speaker 1: I looked over there's a woman sitting next to me
Speaker 1: and I was like, I'm sorry, did I stand up
Speaker 1: to let you in or did you have to climb
Speaker 1: over me? And she was like you stood up? And
Speaker 1: I was like, I have no memory, no memory of
Speaker 1: standing up for you just want to make sure I'm
Speaker 1: not the worst person on this plane. That is how
Speaker 1: dull most of our lives are. Like I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't even remember standing up for you, lady. That's
Speaker 1: a little of an impression. Like, so anytime like and
Speaker 1: it's all temporary, and most of it is going to
Speaker 1: be just like a five, and that's a pretty good day.
Speaker 1: And so when you're having a one, like, you'll be
Speaker 1: at a five soon enough. When you're at a ten, like,
Speaker 1: savor the flavor because you're gonna be leveling out all
Speaker 1: over again. Virginia Wolf describes that as the cotton woolf.
Speaker 1: It's like the cotton woolf of daily existence. That's what
Speaker 1: we're in most of the time. And there's one thing
Speaker 1: that I want to like, just and this part of
Speaker 1: the conversation with which is terrible, thanks for asking. There's
Speaker 1: also there's I have this dear friend Buddhist teacher or
Speaker 1: some of you may uh no or have encountered named
Speaker 1: Sylvia Borstein um and um. Sylvia's version of that when
Speaker 1: somebody says how are you is couldn't be better? Always true,
Speaker 1: not couldn't be better, but just couldn't be better. Can't
Speaker 1: be better than I am right now, so maybe that's
Speaker 1: the sequel. This equal pretty okay, pretty all right? Thank
Speaker 1: you for inquiring. Ah. I'd like to thank Rizzoli Bookstore
Speaker 1: for hosting the live taping of Family Secrets and Derrek
Speaker 1: Clemens 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,