Speaker 1: Ninety three was like my jam like, so I'd like
Speaker 1: I fully like, I'm like, oh ninety three, I could
Speaker 1: have been at this party, like literally, I was living
Speaker 1: in New York. I could have been there. I probably
Speaker 1: was there. I bet I snog bis I am in
Speaker 1: her book.
Speaker 2: Maybe you are exite.
Speaker 1: Hello, I'm mini driver. I've always loved Preust's questionnaire. It
Speaker 1: was originally in nineteenth century parlor game where players would
Speaker 1: ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the
Speaker 1: other player's true nature. In asking different people the same
Speaker 1: set of questions, you can make observations about which truths
Speaker 1: appear to be universal. And it made me wonder, what
Speaker 1: if these questions were just the jumping off point, what
Speaker 1: greater depths would be revealed if I asked these questions
Speaker 1: as conversation starters. So I adapted Prus's questionnaire and I
Speaker 1: wrote my own seven questions that I personally think are
Speaker 1: pertinent to a person's story. They are when and where
Speaker 1: were you happiest? What is the quality you like least
Speaker 1: about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you?
Speaker 1: What question would you most like answered? What person, place,
Speaker 1: or experience has shaped you the most, what would be
Speaker 1: your last meal? And can you tell me something in
Speaker 1: your life that's grown out of a personal disaster? And
Speaker 1: I've gathered a group of really remarkable people, ones that
Speaker 1: I am honored and humbled to have had the chance
Speaker 1: to engage with. You may not hear their answers to
Speaker 1: all seven of these questions. We've whittled it down to
Speaker 1: which questions felt closest to their experience, or the most surprising,
Speaker 1: or created the most fertile ground to connect. My guest
Speaker 1: today is the multiple awards winning writer Jennifer Egan. I
Speaker 1: try not to fanger on this podcast. It is hard,
Speaker 1: but usually I can hustle my stammering enthusiast into another
Speaker 1: room and present a slightly more implacable version of myself.
Speaker 1: I didn't really manage to do that with Jennifer because
Speaker 1: her work, her words, and characters, live so presently in
Speaker 1: my own life. Her bullet Surprise winning novel A Visit
Speaker 1: from the Goon Squad lives permanently on my nightstand, and
Speaker 1: I constantly reference it when I can't sleep, when I'm
Speaker 1: stuck with something i'm writing, or when I'm turning over
Speaker 1: the idea of a character I'm going to play. Jennifer,
Speaker 1: like a lot of the characters she writes, has this
Speaker 1: kind of briny brilliance. Each answer she gave to a
Speaker 1: question I asked hinted at a far bigger mechanism at play,
Speaker 1: and I literally could have asked her a million questions more.
Speaker 1: She has a brain you want to spend time in,
Speaker 1: and a way of speaking and writing that cuts precisely
Speaker 1: to what is most revealing and to me, most interesting.
Speaker 1: Her books are fantastic. I encourage you to read all
Speaker 1: of them, by the way I just said it, and
Speaker 1: I now think that that is exactly what I'm going
Speaker 1: to That's not my new fantasy. I was actually in
Speaker 1: your book.
Speaker 2: I bet we passed each other.
Speaker 3: We passed each other on Avenue Age countless times.
Speaker 2: I'm sure I'm.
Speaker 1: Going to get in trouble if I keep asking you
Speaker 1: questions like can I come over? Do you think I
Speaker 1: was in your book? It sounds like I was, but
Speaker 1: the answer is yes, come every time. We know that excellent,
Speaker 1: I will. I'm going to get on and ask you
Speaker 1: these questions because I also want to know what you
Speaker 1: think about these. So my first question to you is
Speaker 1: where and when were you happiest.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's always hard, it always feel a little
Speaker 3: artificial to pick one moment, and so I usually go
Speaker 3: with the first one that comes to mind, because I
Speaker 3: guess I'm all about trusting instants in first drafts. So
Speaker 3: I'm going to say when I went with my husband
Speaker 3: and kids to Galway in Ireland in the summer of
Speaker 3: twenty eleven, and we were staying in a little bed
Speaker 3: and breakfast, and we were actually all in one tiny room.
Speaker 3: It was much tinier than we had expected. Our beds
Speaker 3: were almost jammed together, and our kids were eight and ten,
Speaker 3: and there was just something about that intimacy and that closeness,
Speaker 3: that feeling of our bodies just being so close together
Speaker 3: that it was like we were one being that I
Speaker 3: absolutely loved. And maybe because they were eight and ten,
Speaker 3: I thought that would never change, of course, but you know,
Speaker 3: they're twenty two and twenty now would be pretty weird
Speaker 3: if we were still sharing rooms that size, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And so I think there was just this sense of
Speaker 3: the preciousness of that proximity, of that sense.
Speaker 1: Of I was going to say, what is it about
Speaker 1: proximity that is the engenders that feeling of deep, abiding
Speaker 1: peace and happiness. Is it because you think you had
Speaker 1: a subconscious idea that there was a timestamp on it.
Speaker 3: I think it probably was just that I never had
Speaker 3: that in my nuclear family. My mother and father, I
Speaker 3: have no memory of them together. They divorced when I
Speaker 3: was two. I grew up apart from my father, and
Speaker 3: there were more children.
Speaker 2: On both sides.
Speaker 3: But that sense of being physically linked to a small
Speaker 3: unit and deeply bound to that unit and having them
Speaker 3: all around me, I don't think I had actually ever
Speaker 3: experienced it, So it was just so moving. And I
Speaker 3: also just think the fact that we were in Ireland
Speaker 3: was important too, because I had never been there, but
Speaker 3: my father was proudly Irish American. And on that same trip,
Speaker 3: we went to the town where some of my ancestors
Speaker 3: had come from, and we went to a graveyard where
Speaker 3: it seemed like every other name was Egan spelled the
Speaker 3: same way. And so the sense of connection to my
Speaker 3: own past, coupled with this tremendous physical proximity to my
Speaker 3: immediate nuclear family, was just intoxicating and so beautiful.
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that you going to a
Speaker 1: place where you're seeking to reconnect and finding that, but
Speaker 1: also just being packed into a little tiny room like
Speaker 1: a wolf pack. I think that's really beautiful and I
Speaker 1: really like that. I must say that pack feeling, not
Speaker 1: having had physical proximity much as a kid either, that's
Speaker 1: the feeling that I love with my dog, my boyfriend
Speaker 1: and my son.
Speaker 3: There's something about the bodies together that is so immediate.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that is like reptilian brain, which is like,
Speaker 1: when we are all together, we're safe. The sabertooth tiger
Speaker 1: can't get us. The rock is rolled in front of
Speaker 1: the cave, nobody's out, we're here. Everybody smells right, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of hermetically.
Speaker 3: Sealed exactly, and you're not doing that tiny calculation that
Speaker 3: I think we all do all the time of where
Speaker 3: is so and so and where is so and so? Well,
Speaker 3: I didn't have to ask that question because I could
Speaker 3: reach out and physically touch every person in the room.
Speaker 3: And I remember there was one point where we were
Speaker 3: all lying in bed. Each of us had our own book,
Speaker 3: and we were lying there in silence in this tiny
Speaker 3: little room and it was just it was heaven God.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 1: I just love the little, tiny, sort of maybe cultural
Speaker 1: stereotype about Ireland.
Speaker 4: Like this, this teeny weeny.
Speaker 1: Beds just all packed in together, the baby sardines.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true, and it was just a wonderful little interlude.
Speaker 1: It really was how lovely. What quality do you like
Speaker 1: least about yourself?
Speaker 3: That's a tough one because there's so many choices. I
Speaker 3: think that the quality I like least is my tendency
Speaker 3: to compare myself to others. Because it's one of these
Speaker 3: exercises that feels useful. It's actually self denigration disguised as
Speaker 3: information gathering.
Speaker 1: That's very good. I'm writing that down, so.
Speaker 3: It's like, what are other people doing? But that's not
Speaker 3: really what I'm asking. What I'm looking for is a
Speaker 3: way to undermine what I am doing and have done. So,
Speaker 3: just a one tangible example, every time I have a
Speaker 3: book come out, I pick some other book that's doing better,
Speaker 3: because there always.
Speaker 2: Is a book that's doing better, usually many.
Speaker 3: And I basically deem my effort a failure based on
Speaker 3: that success. And it's so arbitrary that later I sometimes
Speaker 3: you can't even remember what book I was using as
Speaker 3: my instrument of infliction.
Speaker 1: You flatch a book.
Speaker 2: Exactly long ago.
Speaker 3: I would look at Amazon reviews, for example, a terrible mistake,
Speaker 3: and I always would obsess over the mean ones, and
Speaker 3: of course a lot of them are mean because I'm
Speaker 3: not the audience for those reviews. They're writing for each other,
Speaker 3: and as well they should, that's what it's for.
Speaker 2: And I'm seeing a therapist then, and he said, I
Speaker 2: think you should call this what it is.
Speaker 3: When you go on Amazon and you read those, you
Speaker 3: are going to read bad reviews.
Speaker 2: That's why you're going. So you have to ask yourself
Speaker 2: before you do that, why am I doing that?
Speaker 3: And I have to tell you I have not looked
Speaker 3: at an Amazon review. It's got to have been fifteen years.
Speaker 3: So I'm trying to work on this quality of mine,
Speaker 3: but it's difficult to eradicate it is.
Speaker 1: It's the worst, It's the absolute worst. I read a
Speaker 1: review once of something I did, and I just said,
Speaker 1: mini driver dash tripe explanation point, which has now become
Speaker 1: how can you respond? It's now become like whenever anything
Speaker 1: goes wrong, I do sort of say, rather sadly to myself,
Speaker 1: mini driver tripe, like from dropping a bottle of ketchup
Speaker 1: to larger and more important things. But I think sticking
Speaker 1: away from them is a very good idea. Let me
Speaker 1: ask you this, When you're comparing yourself, do you honestly
Speaker 1: tune out the accolades and the reviews and all the
Speaker 1: other stuff, like you've won a pulitzerprise.
Speaker 3: I think in that negative state of mind, whose goal
Speaker 3: is self undermining, any accolades feel like good luck and
Speaker 3: things that I can't match, in other words, expectations I
Speaker 3: could no longer fulfill. So they actually add to the
Speaker 3: sense of in this state of mind, all the good
Speaker 3: things from the past just feel like more evidence that
Speaker 3: the present is falling short, like I can't match that.
Speaker 1: I so feel that.
Speaker 2: Yes, So that's the hard party.
Speaker 3: Nothing helps in that mindset because the mindset is leading
Speaker 3: the way.
Speaker 2: That's another part of the trick.
Speaker 3: It feels like, well, I'm just looking at hard evidence
Speaker 3: that I'm drawing my conclusions. Not at all, I am
Speaker 3: looking in a slanted way at my achievements in life
Speaker 3: and deeming them all insufficient, because that was always the
Speaker 3: conclusion I was going to come to, because the conclusion
Speaker 3: led the discovery.
Speaker 1: God, that's some really clever, awful self battery right there,
Speaker 1: and I recognize it fully, really interesting I'm so glad
Speaker 1: you've said that out loud. I'm going to share that
Speaker 1: with everybody and then listen to it back when I
Speaker 1: feel like doing the same thing, or if anybody does.
Speaker 3: I don't know what the solution is though. For me,
Speaker 3: I just I think of it as weather. It's like, okay,
Speaker 3: it's that kind of day. Okay, So all of my
Speaker 3: thinking is going to be like that, and I'm going
Speaker 3: to try to just think about other things if I can,
Speaker 3: and then I wait for it to pass.
Speaker 1: I think looking at it like whether, yes, a friend
Speaker 1: of mine was blue and we were talking about that.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you just have to stay the course. You just
Speaker 1: have to put your raincoat on and go below deck
Speaker 1: for a minute. That's it. I'm wait. But I think
Speaker 1: naming it is really good too. I'm just going sometimes
Speaker 1: I do this thing. It looks like this. It gets
Speaker 1: rid of all of this other thinking because I think
Speaker 1: it's so recognizable. I think we all do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think if I were someone who meditated, that
Speaker 3: would help, but at this point I'm not sure that's
Speaker 3: ever going to be me. But for me, reading is
Speaker 3: a huge help because it somehow occupies more parts of
Speaker 3: my brain than most other activities. So if I can
Speaker 3: really engage with that, I can let go of some
Speaker 3: of that thinking and noticing. Okay, this is just a
Speaker 3: day where every thought ends on this negative node.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's not even.
Speaker 3: Comparison, it's just failure, a feeling like I could have
Speaker 3: done this better, I could have done that better, and
Speaker 3: then I just wait for that to pass.
Speaker 1: Do you prescribe that to your kids? Have you said
Speaker 1: that to them? Just wait it out, just hold on
Speaker 1: and see where you are at tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Luckily, they're not this as much this way as I am,
Speaker 3: which is really good, or at least not so far
Speaker 3: good for them. But I do try to remind them
Speaker 3: in moments where I feel like their anxiety is really
Speaker 3: what's dictating their perceptions, I'll try to point to the
Speaker 3: fact that in this anxious state, the anxiety looks for
Speaker 3: something to kind of dig into, and so just know
Speaker 3: that because you feel like this thing is going terribly wrong,
Speaker 3: but in fact, all that's really going wrong is that
Speaker 3: you're terribly anxious and you've found a thing to express that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to hang it on. God, that really is so
Speaker 1: exactly what I've been trying to put it into words.
Speaker 1: It's good. It's like descaling your brain, actually hearing somebody
Speaker 1: else say things that you haven't been able to put
Speaker 1: into words.
Speaker 2: I like descaling the brain. That's cool. I need a
Speaker 2: good descaling.
Speaker 1: Seriously in your life. Can you tell me about something
Speaker 1: that has grown out of a personal disaster?
Speaker 2: I can so.
Speaker 3: I mentioned my father earlier, the Irish American guy whom
Speaker 3: I loved so much, but I really didn't know him
Speaker 3: well because my mother and stepfather moved moved with me
Speaker 3: and my little brother who was their son, to San
Speaker 3: Francisco when I was seven, and my father remained in Chicago.
Speaker 3: He had three more kids. They're much younger than I am.
Speaker 3: I knew them when they were little, but then for
Speaker 3: many reasons, I really didn't know them at all after
Speaker 3: a certain point, and I really had almost no contact
Speaker 3: with my father's family. I did see him now and then,
Speaker 3: but there was a bit of a chasm there.
Speaker 2: And my father, when he.
Speaker 3: Was actually younger than I am, he had just turned sixty,
Speaker 3: he was hit by a truck while he was bicycling
Speaker 3: and he was killed. And so I was reunited with
Speaker 3: my now adult siblings, and it was obviously just so
Speaker 3: unexpected such a catastrophe.
Speaker 2: I mean, he was going to be.
Speaker 3: Running in a marathon the next week. He was in
Speaker 3: the peak of health, and it was a disastrous loss.
Speaker 3: And for me, it really meant that I would never
Speaker 3: really know my father. But I did reconnect with my
Speaker 3: siblings and we have been close ever since. Really, and
Speaker 3: that was nineteen ninety six, So wow, it's meant that
Speaker 3: our kids know each other. They are a big part
Speaker 3: of my life. And in fact, that brother that I
Speaker 3: moved to San Francisco with, the son of my mother
Speaker 3: and stepfather, ended up passing away very early in his life.
Speaker 3: So these are my siblings and I'm so grateful to
Speaker 3: have them, and I'm not sure that reunion would have
Speaker 3: happened without this absolute catastrophe of my father losing his life.
Speaker 3: I mean, I wish you were here. I wish he'd
Speaker 3: gotten to do all the things he missed. I feel
Speaker 3: so sad for him when I think that he never
Speaker 3: saw his youngest child graduate from college, he never met
Speaker 3: a grandchild. I mean, it's bad, but you know, there
Speaker 3: are some good things at least we've been able to
Speaker 3: enjoy in the wake of that.
Speaker 1: God. Yeah, I have a strange siblings who, Yeah, not
Speaker 1: even the death of my father was enough to bring
Speaker 1: us all back together. But I do wonder about them
Speaker 1: an awful lot. Maybe one day. I like the idea
Speaker 1: that there's I think everything is possible. I really do.
Speaker 1: That's my most hopeful thought.
Speaker 2: As long as we're all here, As long as as
Speaker 2: long as.
Speaker 1: We're all here, everything is possible. Truly, sometimes I find
Speaker 1: that to be a really edifying thought, like when things
Speaker 1: are particularly dark, so everything is possible. Yes, everything awful
Speaker 1: that you're currently thinking about, but also the turnaround and
Speaker 1: the slightness of a solution to a gigantic problem. It's
Speaker 1: never commensurate. Again, I don't remember whoever said that to
Speaker 1: me when I was younger, but it was true. The
Speaker 1: solution to a problem is never commensurate with the size
Speaker 1: of the feeling around the problem. Hm.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's true.
Speaker 3: I feel so sad about those kinds of chasms and divisions,
Speaker 3: given just how short life is and how hard it is.
Speaker 3: It feels so unnecessary, like it's sort of bad for everyone.
Speaker 2: But I also know that.
Speaker 3: Sometimes people just cannot overcome these bad feelings.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: My disposition is always to try to connect with everyone.
Speaker 3: That's always my thought like, let's see if we can
Speaker 3: work it out. But I know that's sometimes simplistic and
Speaker 3: it doesn't always solve things. But I'm just a believer
Speaker 3: in trying to, I don't know, try to find as
Speaker 3: much joy together as we can while we're here. I
Speaker 3: can't think of any more useful philosophy than that.
Speaker 2: In a way, like here we are, who knows exactly,
Speaker 2: Let's try and have fun and make each other happy if.
Speaker 1: We can, exactly, Let's do as much as we can.
Speaker 1: What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you?
Speaker 2: So funny. I'm one of these people who's not great
Speaker 2: at talking.
Speaker 3: About things like love because it always seems corny. But
Speaker 3: I guess this is a very American of this moment answer.
Speaker 3: But I can't help but think of Rosalind and Jimmy
Speaker 3: Carter because super insanely long marriage which both real doers
Speaker 3: and believers, you know, this long, rich, varied experience in
Speaker 3: which they both remained so relevant kind of culturally and
Speaker 3: to each other. I guess there's just an a liveness
Speaker 3: about that in every conceivable way that is really exciting
Speaker 3: and inspiring to me.
Speaker 2: You know, I hope to live a really long life.
Speaker 3: I hope my husband will live a really long life,
Speaker 3: and I hope we can be that way.
Speaker 2: But they're a role model there, really are.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just extraordinary, and I love she at
Speaker 3: a time when men didn't necessarily, certainly not presidents, privilege
Speaker 3: and prioritize their wives' views so much, she really had
Speaker 3: such a strong voice. And I also love the way,
Speaker 3: even though he was a one term president and sort
Speaker 3: of ended in humiliation in a certain way, they just
Speaker 3: use that as a starting point to do the kind
Speaker 3: of work they wanted to do, and they did that
Speaker 3: individually and together forever, and I just what more can
Speaker 3: you really ask for from a love?
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, No, I agree.
Speaker 1: I agree that there was such dynamic humility in their
Speaker 1: relationship that was pretty astonishing, because you're right where it
Speaker 1: ended was just the beginning of what their life's work
Speaker 1: was actually going to be. In actual fact, his presidentship
Speaker 1: was the addendum to what was this unbelievably full, amazing life.
Speaker 1: I mean, remember when they put the solar panels up,
Speaker 1: Remember when there was the whole kind of ecoization of
Speaker 1: the White House, and how that was just sort of
Speaker 1: torn down at the end of his presidency, but they
Speaker 1: carried it all on. I think you're right. I think
Speaker 1: that's a really beautiful testament to love. I love that
Speaker 1: you think love is corny.
Speaker 3: That's so funny, well talking about it, I mean as
Speaker 3: a subject, it's just not something I would ever say.
Speaker 2: I'm writing about love.
Speaker 1: I can't wait because I bet you do. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I really want you to write about love. Now, come on,
Speaker 1: it would be He's so good. I'll be in it.
Speaker 1: I'll be in your awful, corny book about love. I'll
Speaker 1: be a minor character.
Speaker 3: Please come and inspire me Mannie, because right now I
Speaker 3: got nothing.
Speaker 1: Oh I got I love. I just keep trying to
Speaker 1: insert myself in your books. It's really weird and great.
Speaker 1: I think that's cool. Everybody writes about love. I like
Speaker 1: that you don't want to write about it. The thing is,
Speaker 1: I keep thinking that you have written about love, like
Speaker 1: when I think about Goon Squad, like it's full of love. Yeah,
Speaker 1: love is there, right, But you're not writing about love
Speaker 1: and people being in love as it were.
Speaker 3: Yeah for me, I mean, of course, anything that anyone
Speaker 3: thinks my work is about is true. You know, it's
Speaker 3: in the hands of the reader. But in my mind,
Speaker 3: love is something that happens while you're writing about other things.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I don't know why, but that's how I think of it.
Speaker 2: It can't be a subject unto itself. It almost feels
Speaker 2: like it's not interesting enough.
Speaker 1: Huh, has to.
Speaker 3: Be there alongside something more complicated, more challenging.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean maybe it's because love isn't a thing.
Speaker 1: It's an amalgam of all these different things, which I
Speaker 1: only realized that quite recently.
Speaker 3: You know, my husband and I had in exchange when
Speaker 3: our older son was really little, and I said, he said,
Speaker 3: I love you, And I said to my husband, but
Speaker 3: I don't think he knows what it means.
Speaker 2: And my husband said, do you.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, your husband said that to you. That's hysterical.
Speaker 1: Your husband's funny.
Speaker 2: Who is so laugh about it. He's very funny.
Speaker 1: It's really funny.
Speaker 2: So now they'll say, I love you, but I don't
Speaker 2: know what it means.
Speaker 4: Which is true?
Speaker 1: What person, place, or experience most altered your life.
Speaker 3: I think it would be New York City actually, because
Speaker 3: I'm from the Midwest. I was born in Chicago, and
Speaker 3: I grew up in San Francisco. I knew I wanted
Speaker 3: to move to New York before I'd ever been to
Speaker 3: New York. And I've lived here really my whole adult life,
Speaker 3: and it's just the perfect place for me.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm very curious. I'm nosy I would go
Speaker 2: that far.
Speaker 3: I love street life, I like watching people. I like
Speaker 3: to be invisible and just watch the rest of the world.
Speaker 3: It's just full of life. It's full of so many industries,
Speaker 3: and ninety percent of them or more couldn't care less
Speaker 3: about the publishing industry, or rarely even know that it exists.
Speaker 3: And I love that that there's so much happening, and
Speaker 3: there's interesting stuff everywhere I look and listen. And I've
Speaker 3: also gotten very involved in New York history, and I
Speaker 3: think some of that was a result of nine to
Speaker 3: eleven because I lived here and during that time and
Speaker 3: actually heard one of the planes hit.
Speaker 1: Oh my God.
Speaker 3: And I think that led me and many others to
Speaker 3: think about what it was like to live in New
Speaker 3: York during World War Two, and that led me down
Speaker 3: a massive research rabbit hole, and I ended up writing
Speaker 3: Manhattan Beach. Now I'm interested in nineteenth century New York,
Speaker 3: so I think it's fair to say that New York
Speaker 3: has kind of become a muse for me.
Speaker 1: It's pretty extraordinary to have known that you're going to
Speaker 1: move to a place like do you think that that
Speaker 1: is a prescient knowledge that if we tune in hard
Speaker 1: enough we can find these guide posts, that they're actually there,
Speaker 1: these signposts, and we just maybe don't listen to them.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: There must be some that I didn't listen to, or
Speaker 3: that I did listen.
Speaker 2: To and were wrong.
Speaker 3: But there's just something about New York. It feels inexhaustible.
Speaker 3: And I'm a very place driven person. Like even in
Speaker 3: my work, I really start with a time and a place,
Speaker 3: not people or any kind of plot.
Speaker 2: So physical circumstances mean an enormous amount to me.
Speaker 3: And somehow New York with its depth of history, which
Speaker 3: we have so much less of here in the United
Speaker 3: States than, for example, you do in Britain. But in
Speaker 3: New York there is actually enough history on this place
Speaker 3: that you can feel it in the buildings, in the streets,
Speaker 3: there are cobblestones sort of coming up here and there,
Speaker 3: and I like that sense of embedded history in this place.
Speaker 3: I mean, by the way, what I just said ignores
Speaker 3: the fact that there is a long history of Native
Speaker 3: Americans in what became the United States, whose presence we
Speaker 3: eradicated by essentially destroying them. So obviously what I'm talking
Speaker 3: about is the history of Western Europeans here and not
Speaker 3: the original inhabitants of America.
Speaker 2: But New York holds a lot for me.
Speaker 3: It holds a lot of its own history, and then
Speaker 3: also my personal history because it's a relatively small place
Speaker 3: where I've now lived since the late eighties, and I
Speaker 3: feel my own memories embedded in all of its different neighborhoods,
Speaker 3: and then I also feel this kind of collective memory
Speaker 3: of so much life that's happened here, really for hundreds
Speaker 3: of years.
Speaker 1: Now. Ah, Jennifer, thank you so much for talking to me.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I mean, I could honestly ask
Speaker 1: you a goodjillion more questions, and I will when I'm
Speaker 1: next stalking you in Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: I'm going to look for you in my neighborhood and
Speaker 3: we'll have some tea and we'll feel be.
Speaker 1: Having coffee, and Jennifer, Hi, it'll be like the end
Speaker 1: of Saltburn. If you haven't seen that, I can't believe
Speaker 1: that you get your coffee here.
Speaker 3: Well, then you're going to come over and you're going
Speaker 3: to enter into my book.
Speaker 1: Hoah, got a plan. So excited. Thank you really, thank
Speaker 1: you so much.
Speaker 2: It was such a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Mini Questions is hosted and written by Me, Mini Driver,
Speaker 1: Executive produced by Me and Aaron Cole from Me, with
Speaker 1: production support from Jennifer Bassett, Zoe Denkler and Ali Perry.
Speaker 1: The theme music is also by Me and additional music
Speaker 1: by Aaron Kaufman. Special banks to Jim Nikolay Addison, O'Day,
Speaker 1: Henry Driver, Lisa Castella, Annick Oppenheim, a, Nick Mueller, and
Speaker 1: Annette Wolfe, a w kPr, Will Pearson, Nicki Etoor, Morgan
Speaker 1: Levoy and Mangesh had Tigadore