Barbara Kingsolver (author of Demon Copperhead) | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

welcome welcome welcome to armchair expert experts on Experts I'm Dan Shephard I'm joined by Monica Lily padman hi hi Hi how are you good I made a bowan a last night you did how did it turn out as good as the last batch you gave me I think so because I had long I started earlier so I didn't feel so rushed okay I really could chop those onions fine uh and the garlic yeah the garlic you're supposed to slice cuz you don't want it to burn and so you wouldn't it's not good for you because you would yeah you would break out yeah that's okay it might be worth it I ate a shitload of it last time so good I I mean you let me know I have extra yes and I found a gluten-free noodle that's in the fridge sex over at sex over at Lazy ACR that's delish actually great I'm glad you finally found a gluten-free pasta it in fact made me want to make my own it's been a long time so yours is better now you you me different and not better this is a rare occurrence it's the first time ever that you and I independently read books that we both loved on the same level and then we both were starving to talk to the author which is such we talk about it in the episode it's incredible the privilege to be able to fall in love with the book and get to talk to the [ __ ] author it's like what I dreamed about as a kid I would never trade that in like the way we the way I also happened I also read it uh which as we have declared is fairly rare in these circumstances normally I don't and I act more as the audience yeah I will say even though I'm so glad I recognized that like me knowing more there are Parts when we're talking about the book MH it's like it's good I don't read them right cuz we we can't have everyone on the inside exactly cuz people who haven't read it are like I don't know what you're talking about right now what people don't hear on this show which is cut out is like I I often get too esoteric with the guests because they know their subject matter really well and I just brushed up on it so we can depart from what the general audience might know yeah and you constantly go hold on a second I don't think anyone is following this at this point yeah so but it's harder if I'm also inside the bubble yes so maybe this episode sucks so it's really bad uh so don't listen no do listen it's my favorite of the Year okay oh yes so you said this in the fact check this isn't a response what we just said yeah Barbara King solver she of course wrote our favorite book of the Year demon Copperhead which I'm so prone to get wrong I say Copperfield sometimes you want to B which makes sense you it makes sense but Barbara she won the pullitzer prize for the book this year but she's written a ton of other beautiful books The Poisonwood Bible unsheltered The Bean Trees flight behavior and I encourage everyone to go get demon Copperhead and hopefully this will wet your appetite to read it cuz it is phenomenal she's so and she's even cooler than the book she's so cool she's better than the book please enjoy Barbara King solver he's [Music] anch he's an you're already here I'm here oh my goodness she made it hi hi I'm so happy to have you here thank you yeah it's great to be here I'm very excited you smell great oh that's our candle that's our candle no no it's all me it's all it could be a mixture good faon mixed with the candle good morning nice Browns thank you in yeah Browns yeah Browns that sounded a little bit like a euphemism for my breasts oh alas it was not but um but I thought I'd clear that up Barbara welcome thank you okay this is a little self-indulgent but I'm just going to tell you it occurred to me what is so exciting about having you here is if you would have told me I don't know my teens and 20s that I could have put down fear of flying and then gone and spoken with Erica young or I could have put down catcher in the right and then talked to JD Salinger I'm having a very big moment where I can't believe I get to read a book fall in love with it and then talk to you it's like very exciting for me well good that's so much better than if if you said well I kind of hated your book but here's your chance to redeem yourself Barbara win me over Barbara I know the poit are convinced that you did a good job but I think you need to convince my standards are much higher when you were young who would you have most wanted to have talked to after reading their book oh man well it depends on how young like when I was 12 Charles Dickens or Louisa May Alcott that's a toss up then later Doris Ling I actually did get to meet Doris Les she was an icon for me in my late teens early 20s what was she saying that you were like oh right that's kind of how I think thanks for saying it the first books of hers that I read were the Martha Quest novels the children of violence I don't know that they're all that well known the last of those five novels is the golden notebooks which people do know about but the series begins in what was then rhia so she was writing about what was called then the color bar so she was writing about racism and she was writing about sexism in what year that you can ballpark it yeah yeah yeah yeah in the 50s 60s okay those were the first novels that helped me understand what literature can really do what it can talk about what it can Embrace what it can change what it can challenge how it can make you feel uncomfortable or in my case it was more like articulating these pressures on me that I didn't know how to name right living in a place that was segregated living in a world where all the women I knew were wives that was their job they were not encouraged to go educate themselves or pursue anything or they it wasn't even about encouragement it was about options I mean I just grew up looking around seeing that men ran the world hm seems like they still do but you can use present tense for that yeah there were authors along the away from Louisa May alcot Little Women is the first novel I remember reading that just took me completely away from where I was which was the back of a station wagon going on some long long family vacation post Congo yeah yeah you weren't reading that book at 6 no I was probably 9 or 10 well she could have been some people are early could be a doyer I waser then I went to medical school I was an early reader actually I remember the first word that I read no I do because you know how you remember the things that stun you sure yeah yeah of course well I was three I know that because of where we lived and my dad was a reader when he was home he had his face in a newspaper or even the serial box on the table whatever there was that had print he was reading it and I just remember watching him and thinking I want that I want me some of that whatever he's getting right from those words and I knew I had probably beleaguered my mother to teach me the alphabet so I knew the alphabet so I remember my dad laying down a newspaper and going to work and I climbed up on the couch and I opened that newspaper and just stared at it saying come to me you know what is it and I would just pick out words and say the letters and I saw o r a n g and it became orange it was like [Music] thator and that flavor and that whole experience just broke on my mind it was like an orange smash from little symbols from those yeah that first experience of the symbol becoming the experience like going straight into the brain I mean how could you forget that yes yes okay great cuz I was going to say two seconds ago but this is yet another example of writing in Reading Is Magic there's a bunch of magic that happens there's a crazy symbol there's no way that should make you think of the smell or taste or visual of an orange likewise the magic trick of literature say Little Women is that if I write an opinion piece a non-fiction piece and I make a claim about how the world should be or how it is it's quite likely to induce defensiveness if I ask you only to join this character on a journey and you personally your identity is not a threat that's a magic trick where you can lead people with fiction is really magic I completely agree with you I say this all the time it is a kind of Truth it makes me really sad to hear people say well they don't have time to read fiction or it's like secondary somehow to journalism it's another kind of truth but it's magical as you say because journalism informs you it gives you information your point about defensiveness is exactly on point you can decide oh do I believe this or not but fiction is the only medium we have that takes you inside of another brain it's an empathy machine for sure you actually put your life down on the bedside table or whatever and you put on the life of another person so their kids are your kids and their worries are your worries and you feel their fear it's even deeper than empathy it's losing yourself inside another life and there's nothing to replace that and I think it's awfully important to learn I mean not necessarily at age three but learn when you're still young enough to train your brain to do that without the defensiveness of thinking about what am I reading yeah what are they asking me to do what opinion are they asking me to support or deny right and what is the symbolism here or whatever just to learn to read fiction and do that magical thing of putting fiction on when you're young enough that your brain I think still has the plasticity to enjoy it cuz I'm afraid that but if you don't like a second language it's harder to learn that process later on and there's so much going on like we could look at biochemically right the part of your brain that's activated while reading a bit of news is like generally to fall into the amydala if you're looking at this empathetic Human Experience which predates all of our political opinions predates all of our civilized governments everything it's the truest thing that we can tap into yeah it's just really magical yeah I like what you just said that it's the truest thing we can tap into well I was trained as a biologist this excites me greatly I'm an anthropology major so the fact that we're both sitting here is hilarious anthropology was my minor in graduate school and so I'm really interested in the human condition as we were for 300,000 years before this little blip of History where we began getting all our information not from people but from an intermediate Source we evolved as social animals we evolved to receive information from people we also evolved to be very quick to judge Friend or Foe in group out group exactly all of those things are just in us and so I think it's interesting that fiction is the one medium of gaining information that kind of replicates The Human Experience yeah the early storytelling getting the experience from another person and the advantage is that we can get that information from someone who's not in our family or our group but from a stranger who lives in another side of the world it's a way that we can experience the other without that defensive otherness you can teleport in Reading you can time travel in reading everything we would hope that would be invented exists in this 3,000 year old tradition yep oh my God yeah makes me so excited it is so cool when you think about the aliens let's imagine they can't read somehow they made it all the way here but they can't read yet and they're looking at us like what's going on with those people they're just staring at a paper and they're crying or laughing how they probably think it's a slightly bigger phone they can't read oh they have these really big phones they occasionally look at seems to be at bed at night untrained that was me looking at my dad when I was three like what is it what is the magic there cuz clearly it is clearly it's holding him there yeah that's what the also I guess this is what the internet has become over time but certainly when I was young to being holding cfi's brain and go oh there's another person that feels like me that feels like this place is really abstract that feels like this is all arbitrary that these rules and all this stuff is very confusing I hadn't talked to another kid at school nor was I likely to bump into one that felt the way I did and the Comfort I got out of that oh well minimally there's another one of me in this fictitious world right that feeling that someone has just touched you on the shoulder and said yeah me too mhm well as they say it's windows and its mirrors both are really important to see yourself and to see somebody that you'll never be someone who's a different gender or so different that the only way you can really experience their reality is through a novel yeah okay so you already hinted at it which is you majored in Biology and got Masters in ecology and evolutionary biology let's go back even further okay dad was a physician you're born in Kentucky actually I was born in Maryland he was in the Navy but I don't remember that part we moved yeah Anapolis you were born okay who cares my earliest memories are from Eastern Kentucky okay then I just want to tell you more self-indulgence so all my family is from Hazard Kentucky my mom was born in 1951 so similar feminist all these things so much of your story I feel very connected to but growing up in Kentucky up till I guess seven you go to the Congo yeah I always say that's what I did instead of second grade okay skip second grade in Lou of L of Congo which then was Zer it was the Republic of Congo then we were there right after Independence so it was just a minute after lumba was killed it was still up in the air and it hadn't become the dictatorship that it was under mabutu yet I was right in between the horrible colonization and the horrible what the CIA helped to impose after a moment of Hope for the Congo not that any of that was especially relevant where we lived because we were in a place that was so rural I'm just going to say it's probably hard for you to imagine cuz there was no Plumbing no electricity no cars you got your water from the river you didn't need to study anthro you lived it you did field workor you were doing an ethnography at 7 years old well I'll tell you what it really changed my life it was a deep dive into the notion that what's true and right and good in one place can be very different in another and for example I had never thought about being white before and then I went to a place where nobody in the village had seen white kids before they had maybe seen white adults were they fairly fascinated by you that's one word for it grabby handsy yeah like why don't you have any skin right why aren you yeah and I had really long hair which kids just kept trying to pull up and was it blonde like that's so confusing it wasn't but it was long you know and straight it was just like what is this weird stuff you have on your head so I was very self-conscious and my brother and I just tried to learn kituba and keep up with these kids who were so competent by the age of probably 9 or 10 all the kids in kikongo were doing basically adult work the girls were taking care of younger siblings the boys were finding food climbing trees to get birds out of a bird nest to eat or you know what have you and I just felt really like this useless person it was a very interesting way to discover a sense of race really quick so dad was there doing Healthcare work Mom and Dad yeah was it religious zero religious component I will say that a lot of the social services that existed in the Congo after Independence because the belgians didn't allow congales people any education at all so when the belgians left there was sort of a Dar of doctors any kind of professions and so there were religiously based groups that organized things like what you would say Doctors Without Borders now to get people into places and kind of help with education social welfare stuff so there was probably a group of missionaries who helped set up this Arrangement my dad just was born with this vocation he just wanted to help people that really really needed Medical Care and so we spent most of our time in Eastern Kentucky pretty poor region of the country but now and then he'd just get a wild hair and he would talk to a colleague and say well where did people need a doctor more where can I get the most bang for my body right like where would I be the only physician within you know like 500 miles can I see 3ti a day this is it yeah I want to see leprosy I want to see I mean seriously and we did I mean my sister was two I was seven my brother was nine and when I imagine taking my kids into this situation I cannot cuz I mean we all had malaria oh my God we all had one thing or another but I wouldn't write that out of my history I think it made me who I am in a big way did you know it was temporary yeah were you scratching in the wall five five like and at least knowing like this isn't for I would feel better yeah it wasn't permanent it was a huge Adventure I really did do this instead of a second grade there was no schooling my brother and I were just feral children we were just left to our own devices I think my mother was trying to keep the 2-year-old alive and try to figure out what to feed us oh man yeah were hard things about not having enough to eat so on one hand we would go dad's incredibly altruistic but also if I'm the child of dad I could also say little EEG manah called to drag all of us you know you have a hair up your ass now we all have to join you and not eat food for years yeah yeah and here's a wife who says with thou goest you know like okay honey yeah I wouldn't do that we'll just leave it at that Congo is just an example the place where I grew up in Kentucky and the public school system I mean bless their hearts there were teachers trying hard but we had so little funding even the efforts that have been made since to kind of equalized like State Testing and stuff didn't exist then so my high school had one science course and it was called science I never did homework I don't remember really learning anything in school how did you get into depal was it was it challenging the question yeah so it was like this in Congo it was like this throughout my childhood if I wanted to know something I had to figure it out we had books in the house my dad as I mentioned was a reader he read poetry to us I remember really early my dad reading Robert Burns To Us like a poem about a louse wow yeah yeah good for are you going you crowling fairly however that goes just this fascination with words was always there and we had books and we had the book Mobile in the library and so I just supplemented wasn't even supplement ation it was like that was the primary I was an autodidact for example my brother and I decided we were going to read the encyclopedia Banica I started at Z and tun he started with a by the time we meet we're going to know everything yes well if you're together our thinking that was like we're a team and we will know everything can I ask how far you got we got pretty far that's the sad part to me my brother and I had a lot of plans but they would run out of Ste we were going to build a raft and go across like michig yeah we had those plans too but we learned Morse code my brother and I taught ourselves Morse code and we ran this wire through the register from my room to his and so we would you know like tap out it's really tedious and we were saying things like are you asleep you know but just that we did that I mean you could think on the one hand it was really pathetic no but you can think on the other hand we were just figuring out whatever we needed to know finding out how to learn things and I feel like that served me so that's an enormous gift it is yeah you have to learn all this stuff which no one wants to have to do anything but if you're just on your own Quests for knowledge that's an entirely different Endeavor I think that it's why I'm a novelist is I just feel like I can do anything I hope that doesn't sound terrible you feel competent the opposite is you felt in Congo you became to feel competent yeah or anything I need to know anything I need to become an expert on I can it kind of sounds like you on Gilligan's Island a little bit yeah without comedy without the skipper you know when I see people worrying a whole lot about getting their kids into even the best preschool and worrying so much that kids will be at a disadvantage somehow in this horse race of Education if they don't get the best and the best and the best and I had to figure out how just to get to go to college cuz people in my high school didn't nobody told us oh you need to take the SAT or anything like that my brother and I figured that out from Reading from the encyclopedia thank God you had your brother you figured that out that was in the s's SATs read this I couldn't do that but definitely my brother and I were a team it would have been different to be solo but I didn't even know of the existence of the Ivy Leagues this was a kind of long story I got into depal on a music scholarship sounds crazy oh wow yeah yeah I was a Pianist and that's kind of how I got through High School intact was just losing myself in music and playing the piano I also played other instruments and that was sort of my social group which was outside of the little town where we lived I went to piano competitions and stuff and so my first boyfriend was another piano player so oh this is hot yeah classical piano D what if there were a couple at a piano bar exactly so yeah I just figured out cuz we needed scholarships and so I got myself to depa they had a good music program and auditioned and got in on a piano scholarship and I just thought well this will work was Dad at all urging you to pursue medicine or were you not inclined to pursue medicine you obviously hold them in high regard when I was young I wanted to do everything I remember wanting to be a doctor and a farmer and I don't know fly airplanes not that that was really an option concert pianist yeah I kind of wanted to do everything and I found a way yeah exactly being a novelist you get to be everything what a great point I remember I didn't really know that women could be doctors that wasn't clear to me that's back in the day where the riddle this may comfort you oh the riddle do you remember when we were kids there was a riddle oh yeah yeah yeah the doctor is not the doctor and his son are driving in a car there's an accident the father dies the son's rushed to the O and then the operating surgeon says can't operate on him he's my son how is this possible and I was completely flx by that riddle as a kid and my kids you asked them that and they're like there's not even a riddle there no because the the majority of students in med school now are women it's actually one of the encouraging things I've witnessed that we told them that riddle and they're like this isn't a riddle yeah right it is yeah what is wrong with you but no I do remember thinking about being a doctor and I remember kind of this turning moment in my life when I realized I couldn't do that because of empathy I would hurt you had too much or you lacked it no no the opposite I think I was maybe a little opposite of my dad I knew I would be too invested I thought that if I have to see people die I will die yeah you weren't so interested in seeing the leprosy he was super interested in seeing no it felt too painful to me to put my whole life into people's pain I just couldn't go there right you know I didn't know what I would do I just knew I needed to get to College because all of the women that I knew growing up were completely dependent on men financially and frankly not very happy yeah most indentured servants aren't super happy yeah exactly that's how it felt to me I wanted to get out of indentured servitude and college was going to be a ticket and when I got there it took me 10 minutes to figure out I'm not going to be a classical pianist maybe there are like 10 job openings and I was wasn't in the top 10 so I realized that was not going to pan out as far as the Financial Security end of things so I just switched to biology because it seemed solid if I learned science I can get a job and I didn't think I was going to be a writer ever well great cuz I look at your trajectory I'm curious when that starts to seep in I obviously know when you start writing but at that point when you join biology again you have a lot of fantasies which I appreciate but what is the primary fantasy that will happen after you get this biology degree do you think you'll teach I wasn't that clear I just thought I really like learning this stuff it really clicked I really love science meosis is sexy yeah yeah well biology is sexy it's all sexy it is no I just loved learning it and I figured this is practical I'll get a job I didn't really nail it down I still wanted to just do some living I guess I wasn't yet ready to give up on the I'm going to do everything you go to France immediately after graduating for a year I just wanted to see the world I got one of the those $200 Icelandic Air tickets I got to interrupt you this usually takes me the entire episode to do I know who it is you say it first Merill Street yep Merill [ __ ] Street you have such a quality it's crazy usually get that a lot I do yeah of course of course people ask me if we're related the voice is really similar too yeah I'm so glad we're on the same page I thought it like four minutes into this I was like oh my God half the time this annoys Monica cuz we'll have like a really profound Professor on or something and and I'm so distracted by what movie star they look like and then eventually I'll take in the middle of an important conversation which we are now as well okay here's the difference between Hing me I don't have a star down there on that side yet yes yeah you should have one come on she's Wonder of okay sorry back to France I just got that $200 one-way ticket that you could get on Icelandic Air and hitchhiked all over Europe I did whatever jobs that you could do I worked on archaeological digs no kidding one northern France fighting the anderl bones that's what we were after Northern Gul asteris yeah yeah yeah awesome you know sort of fell into this French commune we don't know each other well enough yet but did you take on a French lover of course obvious yes yes yes okay wonderful obvious great one you're asking one just one you know just one thing led to another I lived in Paris for a little while again living with a whole bunch of people in a small apartment just the things you do then I worked in York England for a while I just moved around and did stuff and just experienced life how did you know when it was time to come home because my work visa ran out okay that how I knew was there a version in your mind that you would stay forever in there why not you were probably having the best time of your whole life I was and I really liked looking back at my country and not being in it there were things I missed mostly having to do with I so hard to explain there's something about the way Americans reveal ourselves to each other kind of an immediate closeness that you can establish like this conversation we're having could not happen in Sweden and it wouldn't happen in France either you think so no and it wouldn't happen in the UK I think that aspect of American culture is probably moving European cultures in the direction well I also think we have a historical explanation for that which is like we were the most Multicultural place on the planet if any group of people with their High dopamine levels could trust strangers it's us right and these homogeneous populations have a much different everything yeah also we're the Apex individualist we're capitalist we got to get out there and sell ourselves we got to connect right let's all in the stew that's the part I didn't miss yes of course yeah but I'm a very verbal person and while I became comfortable in French I never was fluent enough to completely relax into words I missed that I was in a job where my supervisor had to lie to keep me on to say I was doing something that French person could do which was not true right build a McDonald's franchise yeah for example little did they know you could do something that no one else could do but they didn't know yet that wasn't proven yet yeah okay you have to come home how do you then get to Tucson Arizona yeah this some wild [ __ ] Barbara I was Foot Loose I just wanted to see the West I figured I'd stay a couple of weeks honestly I mean I had probably $150 in my pocket and I just thought I'll go see the West see what happens and I got a job then I got an apartment and then I got a boyfriend and then next thing you know it's like a house and a kid and wow that's where the Rolling Stone started Gathering Moss right did you feel trapped by that someone with such wander lust and appetite for all experiences I mean I would have just rolled on if I felt trapped I wouldn't have thought of it this way until this very moment but I spent most of my 20s running away from the notion of being trapped just because I grew up feeling so afraid of that so determined not to be that woman who's tied down that becomes its own trap I was very reluctant to commit to relationships to jobs to place to anything I didn't have a home and we haven't really talked about writing I don't suppose you need to I always wrote I got a diary when I was 8 years old somebody gave me that diary with the little key had it you did did yeah that Keyhole that could be opened with the bobby pin or you could just pull it apart just pull it apart and what you would have found in my seven-year-old diary was then I read a book and then I went to bed it was really really boring sounds like my current Journal but along with Reading Writing was just that private thing I did to process my experience and my Diaries did become more interesting in my teens and more confessional and thoughtful I too started writing in a young age there's also the element that I can't actually go have this adventurous life I want write the second but I can have it on paper stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare it's funny I not too long ago cleaned out the childhood home and found this cash of my my short stories that I wrote when I was between ages of 8 and 13 every single one of them was about a little boy with some kind of terrible disability you were really drawn to that they were all in the first person I am a boy with one leg I am a blind boy here I lie a boy with one leg well but you were in an environment where you were exposed to a lot of boys with one leg yes I am a boy with elephant Isis um I don't know what that was about but I just didn't want to be a girl it was what it was very limiting exactly so I think that my fantasies of being boys were based in that but the obstacle because you couldn't escape how you really felt which was disabled was disabled that's right yeah it leaks in but yeah I was writing these fanciful stories and I wrote poems and I also feel like writing about what I lived through I was always really conscious of time getting away which is a weird thing I mean kids aren't supposed to worry about time flying by but I did maybe because I was seeing people die also if you have a million fantasies in a romantic inner life you have a finite amount of time you're aware of that that's really a good point I was constantly like we got to get the show on the road like if we're going to do all these things I want to do can I really wait till 12th grade before I head out to California you know yeah I would say I'm a very impatient person I have always had to cultivate patience that's something I have to work kids really help with that don't they yeah yeah yeah like the more in a her you are the L they go They're the antidote if you're struggling with patience currently yes have a baby I feel like you could not to be this capitalist girl but you could sell those short stories now for so much money you could give them to charity the money but wow I'd love to read a you should make a cash offer before 14,000 I don't know from there I could get cancer no you would you couldn't it could be bad but back to time I just felt like time is this River and I can't pin it down and writing about what I did today what happened today what I saw or thought or what hurt today or what I accomplished today it just kind of nailed that River to its banks that's how I felt and so that was the reason I wrote not really for anything else but me and I kept doing that in college I wrote Because I was a science major and I didn't have electives I took one creative writing course and I loved it my creative writing professor said you know you're good at this you should take another no no no I'm I have to take chemistry and physics but my chemistry and physics books have poems in the margins and there are like poems about electrons and stuff but I felt like if anybody knew I was doing that they would think I was unserious right uhuh it felt frivolous yeah growing up in a workingclass culture and a workingclass place you don't say you want to be an artist when you grow up well at least in Kentucky you don't say that but it seems feels hoyy toyy it feels hoyy toyy that's what it feels it feels upper class it feels Rich we hate rich people exactly a self indul and it's putting yourself above like I'm not one of you it's like saying I'm going to be Merill Street when I grow up yes which happened accident yes I just kept this to myself can I say as a boy as a young boy growing up in very bluecolor Detroit area it was gay that was my fear I was writing I was being creative and so my little Paradigm I was stuck in was that was gay because it was feminine which also is probably part of your feeling too you want to be a powerful woman which means more masculine right I need to do what the boys are doing they're not writing poems right that's for sure it's all wild that either of us would have had any thought like this thing needs to be private it's so crazy yeah and God forbid if you'd wanted to be a dancer oh no it wasn't on the table people ask me that in interviews like when did you know you were going to be an actor did you act all through high school I'm like you didn't go to my high school I would have acted in my school I to get my ass kicked in the parking lot every day not an option that's how I felt for a long time after I left Carlile Kentucky being a writer was not an option saying I am a writer I couldn't imagine it yeah I needed to be something real and practical so I just wrote and all that time I was traveling around I was still writing and I wrote poems in French God they're probably terrible but I was writing and processing and I think what hit me in Tucson is I didn't have a voice I wasn't from anywhere I didn't have any Authority I was writing short stories said in Tucson and they just felt fake just as fake as those French stories that I wrote there was no authenticity and also honestly I had internalized the shame of being hillbilly I mean we haven't even started on that oh no we're getting there but just as I didn't understand I was white and until I went to the Congo I didn't understand I was a hillbilly till I went to college in a state where people stopped me in the cafeteria and made me say words so that they could laugh at me w s h worsh yeah and serup what's this syrup smells like a pole cat what yeah just mocking my accent and saying oh you're wearing shoes how cute so I just kind of erased that the accent you're hearing now I code shift when I'm in Kentucky or when I'm at home when I'm talking to my neighbors I talk the way I spoke growing up but little by little and not really intentionally I just neutralized my affect for sure so that people will listen to what you're saying instead of stopping at the words really quick you're arriving at a place that artists have to arrive at which is you first start by trying to emulate things that you yourself find captivating or romantic and you can't succeed at it and then hopefully the road leads you to believing actually my my version is worthy of telling and my voice is worthy of listening to and that's such a crazy Road I agree with you completely and I'd take it a step further you have to get to I do have something to say my voice is worthy furthermore it's the only thing I've got yeah exactly it's your only true asset and if all you have out there in Tenny for what you think people want from you you got nothing absolutely nothing and I think that's where I was for a long time and when I was maybe starting to take my writing a little more seriously even though I still HD it through grad school but I was writing poems and starting to share them and starting to share stories you're also writing for the school paper you're doing science related yeah my first job after graduate school was as a scientific writer just talking to scientists and translating what they said into English that other people could read but the what do you call it when I felt down on the road to Damascus was does that playful very poetic I was becoming aware that I had no authentic voice somehow it's like the cogs weren't catching and somebody gave me a collection of short stories called Shiloh and Other Stories by Bobby Anne Mason do you know Bobby Anne Mason never read never heard all right she's Kian this collection which would have been released early 80s it was quite renowned people really paid attention it was kind of the minimalist era it was sort of little like Raymond Carver were you to say es a little after that but she's from Western Kentucky and all of her short stories were about people who worked in Kmart and they did shift work and they were my people these stories were beautiful and they were respected how inspirational it was like the scales fell from my eyes it just really happened all at once I understood what I had been repressing yeah the enormity of the ordinary life and it can make the reader feel special I remember those types of things made me feel special he way I was like well I'm not in World War I I'm not going to sail a boat here I don't catch Marin yeah I can't totally relate but it's like oh I know the mundanity the mundane being broken yeah yeah I know that feeling so intimately and it slows you down it stops you in your own tracks and asks you to look at the lives that are being lived in your circle in your own neighborhood among your own people and How brave they are what they're dealing with and that that's worthy that's literature too and in my case reading Bobby andne Mason that I didn't need to be ashamed of my people they could be heroes of stories well and they weren't ridiculous all along I knew better but especially when you're young you just internalize the shame the world tells you something else the world tells you that you're worthless so I did a deep dive I read Wendel Berry I had been exposed before but hadn't really paid attention and so I read a lot of Kentucky authors and then this collection of short stories I had been writing or trying to write set in Tucson well I wrote a short story set in Kentucky called the one to get away this girl in high school whose goal was to get through high school without being pregnant and get out of there and she got this car it had an engine it didn't have a starter and she drives across the country and someone puts a baby in her car and then she gets to Tucson and she tells the whole story that I had been trying to write with a Kentucky accent I needed that first person Kentucky voice and you were spelling out phonetically the accent no but that was the beant trees that was my first no I was being poetic she needed a Kentucky accent she needed a Kentucky identity she needed to see things the way I saw things right and that finally worked I didn't know it was working it was clicking for me it felt like yeah this is what I've been trying to do also ironically while I was writing this novel about this girl who all she wanted in life was not to get pregnant and then ends up with a baby I was pregnant you know I was happily pregnant but I really rushed that novel I wrote it during my pregnancy cuz I couldn't sleep and I had all those extra hours what a gift talk about making lemonade out of all lemons yeah yeah I don't sleep very much and I call it my superpower God maybe I should embrace that for me too cuz I'm kind of just miserable half the night no no I'm serious about this embrace it I mean so long as you can still function cuz some people just don't need as much sleep as others you know my doctor was saying oh do something really tedious that you hay like scrub literally my doctor said get a toothbrush and scrub the grout I said screw that I'm writing a novel and I did and I sent it off to this agent right before I had my baby and this is the amazing true fact of Barbara King solver I got my first book contract and had my first baby on the same day on the same day the two most pivotal moments of your life EX on the same day one moment so efficient yeah so effici twins you birth to two careers you know the two most important things that I am happened at once the cornerstones of your identity all on the same day ex and as you can imagine I only noticed one of them at a time you know I was it's like hormonal I'm the Queen of the Universe I just produced a human being and then wait what I also sold my book yeah I want to read your journal from that day I gave it to my daughter actually recently yeah but that's when I finally was able to say I am a writer cuz I sold a novel and it was finished very little editing one sentence I think I changed and it was published and I got an advance that at the time I thought was an enormous amount of M right right enough for me to live on while I wrote another book and that changed everything yeah so you're Off to the Races that's 1988 that's right the week it was released was the week my daughter learned to walk oh no all serendipit so then you go on a tear you have animal dreams in 90 you have pigs in heaven which is a sequel to The Bean Trees 93 and you know what you're leaving that also there was a collection of short stories so I had four books in four years oh my God cuz there was a backlog I had stuff I had been working on before that I just brought out of the closet and said well guess what you guys like what I'm writing here's some more I was able to get a bunch of books out pretty efficiently in those early years because I could just live from Advanced to Advanced I did some other work some other freelance work which was good for me I think to be a journalist but I didn't have to go back to a day job you did the thing you were supporting yourself you weren't an indentured servant exactly I had my own money yes yeah I could be an artist and be independent wow I'm only going to fast forward because I want to spend a lot of time on demon Copperhead I think my publicist would agree like that yes I don't know if your publicist has told you but mon have already talked about demon Copperhead I bet you 40 times in the last seven months I get these DMS from time to time armchair expert really lik your book I'm glad it made its way to you that's good LifeWise I just want to throw in there that in '94 you get married to an or ologist we just had this incredible owl expert on oh yeah and we got really deep into bird watchers ornithologists wait who was on Jennifer Akerman do you know Jennifer akman I don't know her personally but I know her work in that conversation she was very much drawn to bird watching and I said do you think if we had to generalize our stereotype that ornithologists and bird watchers are people who very little stimuli gets them excited in fact probably pretty sensitive to Too Much stimuli is this the case with Steven was that true of him he's also a rock and roll musician go right the window when I met him the whole theory he was the front man of a band and a professor of psychology yeah he kind of does a lot of things like me yeah he's a sexy a rock and roll star and a professor my God right yeah exactly going to implode right no he's the perfect guy oh that's wonderful awes so I forgot what was the question I just wanted to update on the story before we landed demon I just want to mentioned that you marry an ornithologist you have a second daughter 98 you write or is released The Poisonwood Bible and that one gets a ton of attention you meet Oprah for the first time you're shortlisted for the Pulitzer and the falconer award oh man you're very cemented at this point as a real Titan in the space so I'm saying all this to tell you and to admit to you my insane ignorance on you before I read demon Copperhead that's not insane I didn't know of you it goes deeper okay how can it be deeper than you know nothing oh watch this and I'm going to name drop here but Kevin Bacon having dinner with him and he goes you know I don't read books I wish I liked them I just don't like him but man I read this [ __ ] book demon Copperhead I can't believe how much I love this book he gave such a sales pitch that I went home that night I went on Audible I typed in Demon Copperhead it came up I began I didn't even look who wrote it who cares doesn't matter who wrote it thatth it didn't of course I feel like it happened here didn't it it did I'm going to walk her through that other prerequisite knowledge you must know is that I [ __ ] hated the hillbilly elegy thank you I [ __ ] hated it Monica and I had a bunch of arguments I was screaming from the rooftop this is a fraudulent account of all of this the person wasn't there they didn't experience any this this is [ __ ] and the one good thing about him running and winning the position he has now is it's proof he's not one of us well that's the only thing that ultimately Monica had to I had to really eat my shorts or whatever that we had a lot of arguments around that cuz he was like I don't buy it I know that world and I'm also from the south I'm from Georgia so I was like well you can't assume just cuz it wasn't your experience like we had so many lot of debates about it right and then I had to be like God you were right this fraud it's his worldview okay here's my complaint about that book we don't even have to say the name of it he's entitled to write his Memoir the fact that that got pitched and bought wholesale as my Memoir too and your Memoir too the explanation of a people makes me so mad because he had no context he didn't talk about structural poverty he didn't talk about the history of it was selfis yes I went to the I league if you only work hard enough you can be and the thing is what's heartbreaking about it is that it really validated The Stereotype it was so widely sorry you've already eaten your suar it was so embraced by the rest of America because they want to hate on Hillbillies they want to look down on us we are the last class of people that Progressive people get to make fun of there's also a pull humans love a quote Underdog people love an Underdog Story and that's what it felt like a little bit which is very problematic because it's again this model minority issue where it's also he's pretending he's bosot and he's not it makes people believe oh well if he can do it what's wrong with everybody else and that's wholly wrong a lot of us recognize structural racism institutional racism but structural classism is just not talked about we just had Carrie Washington on and she had two different jumping into different world experiences one was her school was moved because they didn't want the white kids to have to bust into the Bronx so they sent everyone to this Italian neighborhood so that was her first kind of cultural Clash then she ended up going to this very very very expensive on a scholarship Manhattan school and I asked her what was a bigger Chasm the racial divide you experienced when you went to the lower class Italian neighborhood or the socioeconomic one you experience and she said tenfold the socioeconomic one and I'm like that is the enormous thing that no one wants to really sink their teeth into and it's mad that's right because America is the classless society we've really really bought that yeah the fallacy of meritocracy yeah I didn't write demon Copperhead as an answer to anything I don't want to give that guy credit for it but when I read that I was so angry about the lack of context that it gave me this hunger to write the great appalachin novel I wanted to somehow tell the whole story of what made us this way it's the poorest hunk of America it's a big chunk of America that has really terrible unemployment terrible rates of disability and so many things stacked against us it's not because we're lazy I mean I can walk you through how we got that way the coal companies literally bought everything including the schools including the cour houses yeah talk about a company Town yeah it's a company region they deliberately kept out all other kinds of employment so people had to work in the mines and then when the Min stopped employing people then there's nothing and likewise the coal companies deliberately suppressed the culture of Education they still do in Kentucky it's even hard to explain how stigmatizing it was to be smart I grew up hiding my brains yes you know about that yeah you're like a rich kid nobody knows any rich people so there's no frame of reference for that like who do you think you are you're not better than me yeah yeah and that's cultural and that comes from a history of these companies that didn't want people to be smart and a family culture where they don't want you to go to college because then you'll leave home never see you again so it's all of a piece it's not about laziness so yeah I wanted to write that novel and my point of entry into it I knew would be the opioid epidemic because that's just this freight train of exploitation starting with Timber pulling out the timber then pulling out the coal then tobacco the fact that Purdue Pharma looked at data and they targeted us our exact region well it's very parallel to the crack epidemic of the 80s and the victims of that yeah the most vulnerable wait so finish okay great yeah because I think you'll get a kick out of this CU it involves my huus so I get this book I come on here I start talking about all the time and here's what I am saying repeatedly on here this is so epic CU I'm wrong on like nine accounts so I'm like Bo this book's the opposite of Hill bology whoever wrote this book was in those situations like I was in those situ I had the violent stepdads I had the young mother addiction across the board in the family I'm like now this is an authentic I'm like this is someone who lived it I've been going on for a while I don't know at what point it occurs to Monica we're like real time and I'm like who okay I look it up and I was like oh it's Barbara King solver I'm like wait it's a woman yeah and I was like yeah and not just a woman like one of the biggest authors of our time I'm like it's a woman so wait she's not a boy that is how insanely good your book is I honestly was on this mission to explain to everyone that this is what happens when an author actually has lived the thing and blah blah blah and it turns out I'm completely wrong I then become actually more fascinated with you because now and here lies most of my questions okay let's just talk about really quick because it's at the beginning of the book you meet the boyfriend the boyfriend's always a Salesman and then once they buy us then they're an authoritarian it's like the most specific transition there's all these Clues I'm in that single wide when that's happening and I'm like oh I can remember the days so how do you know that how how on Earth do you know what I lived do you know how you know it here's the thing about being an author it's so much better than being an athlete or a model or maybe even an actor cuz you get better with age there's no cap the older you get the more things you've been the more lives you've had you have wisdom I think what we really go to literature for is wisdom I mean we want entertainment but really we want to come through it kind of knowing more about life the longer you live the more of that you have to offer the more Scar Tissue I remember when I was young looking at old people old people being like 40 probably and thinking well they've always been old right yes of course I mean I just think you still do and so I've seen on social media how does this Grandma person know what it's like to be a teenager well you know what I was what am I allowed to say on here everything you want yes God damn it I was a [ __ ] teenager there we go I remember being 13 much better than I remember being 35 same same it's so foundational you feel things so intensely there's so many first seared in I still have a teenager in me I have all of those people I've ever been still in me many of them very unhappy I'm a happy person now but all those unhappiness are still in there all of those terrible relationships that I feel lucky to have survived they're in there remember them and I've read that actors when you have a part you think about the parts of you that relate to that part I do the same I haven't been a boy that's the one thing I can't tell you that I have been a boy but I have two daughters nine years apart so what that means is for the better part of two decades I had teenage boys in my house yeah just just saying I know what they do I know how they think so there's more of demon in me than you might imagine particularly two things about him one is his sense of never belonging anywhere The Imposter syndrome I mean finally we have a word for this for my whole life I thought I wonder if anybody else feels like they're going to come any minute they're going to come over here and say you don't belong in this party leave you know turns out yes there's a name for that can we add the thing I related to and this is pretty arrogant to say but it's the truth I was observing adults acting worse than I knew was right and in ways I felt more mature than them and I knew what was right and wrong more I felt a little special about that I felt it in him whether I projected that or not I felt like he was seeing everything he wasn't a kid that was confused by this like he knew what the score was he was in on it and that's alienating and isolating and its own way it is unless I mean he kind of belongs to an underclass of kids who have to to be the adults because they don't have any adults in their lives right so I don't know that he felt special about it it was just like yeah I'm the one that gets mom to work on time I'm the one who finds her keys under the toilet you know intuitively that that's the adults that are supposed to be doing that not you so when you're doing it there's something that you feel older than your age I felt I should say okay well it's a little complicated in this novel because he is telling you the story from the advanced age of maybe 25 or something yeah he's in his early 20s but telling you it's a hero's journey right and the good thing about that is you know he's going to survive oh man I got to tell you there are a bunch of times in the book I'm like how is this person still telling this story yeah but he was so I gave you that it had to be in first person I don't know that people would be able to get through if they didn't know that exactly it's stress it's a promise yeah I don't like to read books especially where children are in Peril especially after becoming a parent I turn pages and look ahead to see if the kid's still alive so yeah I needed to give you that promise so there is a little bit more maturity in the voice and there are moments in the book where he breaks the fourth while he talks directly to the reader saying can you believe we did that and here's the deal he says I know what you're thinking but look this is what we had to work with so I see what you're saying about his sense of himself as being maybe special the otherness I think the other in there somewhere I think when he feels like life is perfect because he's just playing the creek with his best friend maggot and Mom's up there with her mellow yellow and her cigarettes saying don't y'all put your eyes out with sticks and that's perfect life is great and never mind that he's the one who's keeping his mom sober and getting her to work I don't think he feels especially you know victimized yeah yeah victimized by that that's just kind of how life is and he does have Mrs pegot feeding him when he's hungry and stuff I think it's later adolescence changes his circumstances in many ways but when he talks about going to Jonesville middle school and he feels like a hundred years older than these other kids his same age because they've had an easier life they don't know what money is he's actually been a wage laborer for several years already when he's 13 and so he can't believe the way they throw away money and he calls them blind puppies so that's when I think he becomes more self-aware which is common in teenagers what I think a lot of folks too that haven't been in that situation don't recognize is that we're aware you think we're gross like in my town I know you think I'm gross and at some point that's a bonding thing between me and all my friends and then also a pride like you care about that and we don't and [ __ ] you and we do stuff that you can't do and you Cobble together some esteem from the solidarity of your victimhood yeah he addresses that directly several times when he talks about Hillbillies and this is the truth people from my region where I still live in Appalachia we see ourselves portrayed on TV and in film on the news if at all we see ourselves as a joke a stupid hillbilly joke or a poverty documentary that's it I mean it's not just Appalachia it's rural people in general and it's this Urban Elite laughing the coastal people yeah it's everywhere there are late night comedians I can't watch cuz I know it's going to be only 30 seconds till the Tennessee joke I think this is really important to think about and talk about because it's at the heart of the political polarization that kind of condescension when you feel it day after day from the national media that you're seeing you reach a point I mean I don't vote the same way as some of my neighbors but I get them you feel that the system is so stacked against you that nobody's listening to you you feel so invisible you'll vote for the guy who just says I'm going to blow up the system absolutely you have the most beautiful analogy in the book and I remember when I was reading it I was so emotional which is imagine being in the stall of the bathroom at school and the other kids come in and you can hear them all making fun of you and attacking you and belittling you that is exactly what it's like we can hear you see you that broke my heart for everyone that's grown up in that onslaught of endless punch lines and it's still going on and I would say it's worse now than it was 5 years ago because there's this kind of vindication it's like see those stupid people voted for stupid guy so we feel validated in our hatred if we felt a little guilty before for our condescension now we don't have to well because it's life or death now it is us against them yeah so I'm in a interesting position as a rural person as an Appalachian who has a platform it's pretty important to me to use it to say this is life and death we need to have a lot of conversations across these divides and people only take information from those they trust that's all so if you open the conversation with I'm going to tell you stuff you idiot yeah then that's over yeah I just disagreed with someone who said they don't think all Republicans are this or that they just don't have the right information and I said well what you're saying is if they were as educated as you they would think like you not that a people think differently regardless of Education there are differences of opinion there's differ double mean levels there's different everything and different priorities I think a lot of my liberal friends think well if everyone was as educated as I they would have no choice but to think exactly how I do right and they would put their career ahead of their families as I do and they would work 90 hour work weeks as I do yes nope right right they would value all the same stuff I value yeah I don't like it also I do want to say we left you said you related to him in two ways and we didn't get to the second way this is you so good at that I want to hear time okay the one is the burden of his feeling like he is not wanted anywhere just nobody ever comes through for him he feels like every place he goes they're not going to want to keep me the good thing about demon is he has this resilience no matter what there's something in him that's going to figure it out that's going to get out of here he doesn't stop moving he's going to work on it he's he's going to learn mors code and he's going to read the branica there you go and that's me too this conversation that he has when he goes to this new school and this counselor who turns out to be really important in his life Mr Armstrong he's read his DSS files that go back forever and he says well one thing I can say about you demon is or Damon is that you're resilient and Demon says are you going to give me drugs for that he thinks it's another diagnosis and in a way it is and I feel like I share that with demon been through some really bad times bad situations hard situations and there's something in me that doesn't give up that really thinks there's a way to get through this and furthermore you know how the things that are easy for us we wonder why they're hard for other people yeah I look around at other people and think just get on it right deal start moving just deal if you're mad do something I very much share that capacity and I think that capacity in Demon is what makes him readable and maybe lovable I'm very deliberate about this I knew what I wanted to write about and where I wanted to take the reader and it's not an easy place to go it's a horrible hard place to go so I knew that most of all you'd have to love this kid so much and he had to be a kid that was the answer I mean I spent two years trying to just figure out how to crack into this story and that was the answer let the kid tell the story because people will go there with a kid he get your heart and you'll get in there yeah once he's an adult he's at fault right you look around with your judgment like well that person's made these choices and it's right you get to see from the beginning how he didn't make any choices right he was given none he just used the tools at hand but yeah it's that American meritocracy isn't it it's like if you're not in a good place you must have done something to put yourself there right cuz if you were smart enough or hardworking enough you'd be rich or a senator from Ohio whatever stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare how did you get so knowledgeable on the addiction stuff cuz again also I'm an ex opioid addict so this thing just was a bullseye for me just really couldn't every single page I'm like okay good here we go I know this too I'm really sorry oh yeah I mean I know no but I mean I'm just saying I'm sorry I don't feel like I deserve that but I appreciate you well it's a terrible terrible disease how do you familiarize yourself well let me also say as the reader as his own issues start burbling up I go no no no no no no I don't want this and then I go yeah of course duh there's no way it would be such a [ __ ] lie if he didn't yeah I know the comfort that comes you're not going to not accept that comfort for and so I just hated it and I was like and it's the absolute truth you're not going to be the child of an addict with that kind of trauma kicked around in the foster care you look at any one of these Aces he's in the eights and nines he's got an 85% chance of becoming an addict at this point yeah and by the time he's a young teenager pretty much everybody he knows is using everybody and that's the truth and the other thing you nailed is these varying degrees where you can kind of go like well I'm not so bad cuz this person's doing this and everyone's kind of playing the same relative game except ones like poor Dory who's just giv in junkies like Fon yes we're going to shoot dope but there's this in between sort of semi functional and it's such hard work I mean there are so many things that I wanted to help bring some compassion cuz that was my starting point I live in Southwest Virginia which was targeted by Purdue Pharma Lee County same setting as dopi yeah my older daughter is a mental health therapist and she works with teenagers she's seen it all and it was because of her work that I became aware I mean you can't not be aware of you were probably seen it right when you were living there people nodding off in grocery stores I still live there no I'm saying at the height of it were you probably bumping up against it a lot I mean the height of it hasn't passed is the thing because these kids yeah because it's a whole generation of these opioid orphans who are coming up through the system and so among all of my friends and acquaintances where I live I don't know a single that hasn't lost somebody to overdose I try to stay apolitical on here cuz who gives a [ __ ] but I will say the only time I ever ever ever saw Trump misstep was when he made fun of Biden for having us no no he misstepped a ton no no no no no no no no let me be very clear no no he was right he could shoot someone in the middle of the street and his base would still love him that's what I'm saying he never violated the contract he had with his own B Mis step with his people the only time I ever saw happened is when he made fun of Biden for having a son with an addiction and that was the first time I felt the basically like eh slow down wait a minute and I was like waa that's really telling about how pandemic this is yeah and making fun of anybody else didn't do it even prisoners of war or whatever that didn't lose them but that one people didn't like and for people who are outside of the epidemic I wanted to try to reach across that Gulf this failure of empathy and I mean I don't blame anybody it's a brainwash it's been 50 years of the so-called War on Drugs literally taught kids in school that criminals use drugs bad people use drugs lazy people use drugs because you could just say no and this indoctrination has left us with this cultural Gulf between people who have been consumed by this disease and their families and the people who are lucky enough to be untouched and just blame the victims and treating this disease as if it could be cured by incarceration it's just sickening to those of us who live there so I knew I wanted to bring people into this really hard life to show people how hard I mean laziness it's really hard work to be an addict there's a chapter that just takes you through his day how hard it is to wake up and find your means and find your connect I've been my most creative I've worked my hardest yeah in pursuit of that yeah addiction is not for the lazy that's really true and once you have that disease the only thing you can do is stay alive just do all the things you do every day to stay alive you're not chasing a high many people never were sounds like you had some help from your daughter I did she helped me to connect me with people I could talk with at DSS and the foster care system so I could learn how all that works but as far as really being inside the experience of addiction I needed to go and just sit sit with people who would tell me their stories and a lot of them so I made friends with Dr art vanz who runs a clinic in Lee County who most of his practice is treating people in recovery he's been in a few of the docs yeah exactly in fact I resisted watching dopesick for a good while because I didn't want to see these friends of mine being played by you know actors but I ultimately did and it was great it's tremendous it's tremendous yeah and Beth Macy is a friend and I think she's done a wonderful job her next book is also really good raising Lazarus it's about treatment and the gaps in the Gulfs and how little help there is for people in our region so I made friends with Dr vanz I told him what I was doing and he was very supportive and he said let me send an email to my patients and see if I can get people to talk with you and that worked out and so I just spent hours and hours and hours sitting down with people who were wonderfully forthcoming I didn't know know what to expect if you've not spent time in rooms of AA or na it'd probably knock you on your ass how honest people are right well how people want a hearing you know just want to talk about it and just saying ask me anything just to have a sympathetic ear very very helpful there wasn't any format I just usually would sit down with the person and say this is what I'm doing I'm not going to write about you I will not anybody anything about you I just want to know what your life has been like the worst of it the best of it everything how'd you get there how'd you get out and just let the tape roll what stunned me even though I thought I knew a good deal what stunned me is how many stories began with a prescription yeah from the doc who said set your clock don't miss a pill cuz that's what Purdue told them right the so-called studies that Purdue gave them that said no no there's no way that this will be addictive and so on doctor's orders they took the pills on schedule and when they got to the end of the bottle they were addicted and then 10 years of a life lost because of that you know when I interview people I would stop and say and then how did that feel and how did your head feel and how did your stomach feel and just if you don't mind saying what were the worst symptoms how does it feel when you're dope sick and everybody has a different description but oh ultimately you get the picture of how that feels physically just putting myself in their position so a lot of talking and every symptom just about that someone described I thought okay I've had that usually from food poisoning usually from food poisoning or combin food poisoning no sleep for four days and you know a broken limb or something like put that all together you did a great great job gave me so much compassion to imagine having that disease and having people spit on you and saying why did you do that MH yeah another way to look down the last thing I want to point out that seems impossible you could have done it this well and I want to talk about the context and I'm curious how much thought went into this what I really really appreciated is I think there would have been a big Temptation in our current Society to handle the boys burgeoning adolescence and sexuality in a way of what should be versus what actually is and I think it was such an accurate portrayal of how [ __ ] horny we are we're so horny and how preoccupied you are and how every conversation with every guy you ever I mean 80% of your brain power is in that zone for like four years and I was delighted that you didn't try to do a [ __ ] self-actualized version of it or what Society should be what would that have been I don't even know people would do it I think people would be afraid to do what you did with the boy sexuality I think at this point in our history I found that to be refreshingly brave but that's where fiction can save you a little bit cuz you're not saying you know what are they going to say they're going to be like well that's a character did any of that cross your mind no it didn't I just was going for authenticity and once I got this character in my head once he started talking to me I don't want to say he took over cuz I mean I'm fully responsible for all of it I know this should we take that polter away in the wrong study do do you even know what I'm saying does that make any sense okay well yeah he was really horny honestly I'm going to tell you those Sensations are not alien to teenage girls either exactly I don't think they're alien no I don't I'm not teen girls also can be preoccupied but I think boys suffer physical blueball suffering that they had and giving him that older girl that did the phone sex and tortured him there's some suffering involved yeah yeah I guess what I was conscious of always is that I have to keep the reader on board with demon I can't have him lose his audience you really have to go there so I thought that he could be as horny as he would really be and kind of as crude just because that's the language but in his way he's kind of a gentleman when the girls are all putting underwear and stuff in his locker and he says like I don't want to come in at the end I want to come in at the beginning of the car chase not right before the car blows up he wants the whole experience yeah or even when the prostitute is trying to steal at the truck stop yes yes and it's just like politely saying no it's like it's sweet no lady I don't think so I don't want to bej no thank you you just nailed it for me it's actually in the language you embraced which is I can see where a modern writer might think if I'm truthful about how they're talking I'm going to lose audience but it seems to me that you had a confidence that we would recogn I it like no no this is real so you can bow but it's kind of on you this is the truth he drops F bombs every other sentence I suppose if there was one thing I thought about dialing back was his language actually I did a little bit well he's just so angry yeah and he's got every reason to be but in the first draft because I revise a lot I rewrite everything a hundred times every sentence is Rewritten over and over again so the first couple chapters I wrote he was believe it or not even more pissed off than he is when you met him and I realized I can't start there I have to back up got earn all that get you on his side and then you can see why he's so pissed off but I think that I'd written 100 pages and I just thought well I'll just do a search and see how many times he says the f word yeah yeah 107 4 and I thought that might be a bit a page that's a bit let's see if I can set the goal to get it below 100 Stephen my husband he's always my first reader and he really responded he's a good reader and he's an honest reader and if something isn't working for him he'll say so he does read fiction but it's not his favorite thing to read so that makes him a good reader because if I have him I know I've got a read her but this I think that I gave him about 19 pages and we sat on the front porch and he he read it and he said I love this guy and so that made me happy yeah also does anything feel better than impressing your mate I think we're past that point really well we impress each other what can I say I mean we both have you know skills I think you can easily just be two human beings bumping into each other in the hallway I don't know I just think we both get up and impress each other every day yeah that just that's a good life yeah we should celebrate that that's pretty great why I brought him up is the second thing he said is this is not going to get the AP Literature course adoptions the language is probably going to keep it out of high schools but I can't worry about that no yeah honestly I write with nobody looking over my shoulder you'd already come to that years ago years ago that's why you're successful yeah well is it I don't know you could also say that is a recipe for failure if you go to any writing conference which I don't but I did for a while and I realized I don't belong here cuz it's all about marketing marketing what do people want yeah what's working in the marketplace you're very similar to Sedaris in that way he just doesn't he's like I write for me and I don't care if people are mad or what they say it's what we were talking about an hour ago six hours ago yeah six hour seven the only thing I have is what I can say from this exact position in the universe that I inhabit and so if I'm thinking about what people want from me that's going to get pulled it's like a point I'm sitting on a point and I can't risk getting pulled off of it right so I really do write with nobody looking over my shoulder I don't think that means that I'm completely oblivious to audience you know I mean I try to make things clear I've tried to read some books I won't name names but there are great novels I've tried to read and I just thought I don't even know what he's talking about and poetry I'm not that writer I'm committed to accessibility I want to be understood I don't want readers to have to work so hard I would imagine once you've got stuff and you're going through your rewrite process you are rightly going what price do I pay for this and what thing do I value the most in this moment if I'm going to devalue the thing I'm trying hardest to do because I want to do this little thing that I want to do I'm not going to prioritize the little thing I want to do no but not in any way that would be untrue to yourself you would just recognize the balances well it's really more about Stephen as a reader calls it bringing up the lights he'll say I think you need to bring up the lights on this scene I don't know exactly what's going on because it's all so abundantly clear to me that's the best thing I think other readers can do for you is tell you when you're overstating or understating that's smart I just had this experience I was reading something out loud to the girls and my wife that I had written and there was just one little throwaway line for me it was about when I was a little kid and this boy I became friends with in my neighborhood and how he looked at your face and it didn't really feel like he was looking at your eyes and this and that and then later Kristen was like so he was autistic and I was like no he wasn't autistic and I was like oh okay so that really makes you think he's so I need to relay the same thing that was happening but in a way that's probably less modern that makes you think immediately the boy was autistic yeah that's the best of what readers can do for you is just say whatever's clear in your head here isn't being made clear in mine right yeah and that's easy mistakes to make it's not even a mistake it's kind of a titration to because readers have different levels of Acuity different levels of attention they're the readers that will read the book four times or eight times and then they're the readers that are only mildly attentive so you're trying to reach a medium here the bell curve of it yeah exactly and so that's one of the wonderful things about revision you can keep honing it till everybody gets something and the readers that are really giving you a lot will get a lot back so there's like always more more I hope you're putting me in that latter category of course of course who's Barbara King but yeah I like to write books that will be enjoyed on a second reading just like your favorite films you want to watch them again because you know there's going to be stuff in there you missed the first time so then how do you know when you're done the editor says it's time okay it's very hard for me I could still be writing my first novel I'm a perfectionist I have that disease I revise and revise and revise you can feel when you get to a point of diminishing returns okay I've revised this whole manuscript and I changed a bunch of words and then changed them back you know when you get to that point where you kind of feel like you're there and I'm really pretty good at meeting deadlines but when I turn in a book it's exactly the book I want it to be which is why I don't read reviews because I'm not the audience this book is done as far as I'm concerned it's exactly what I wanted yeah my experience with it is over right and so whatever strengths or weaknesses other people might find in it that's well this one really went your way one really went away actually there were some hateful I don't read them but I get told my ukuk editor was really mad because one of the big UK papers accused me of writing about a place she's never been and I live I [ __ ] live there these are my people so it just makes you realize it's noise well Barbara this was a blast I feel very very very lucky to have gotten to talk to you about my favorite book this has been so fun thank you for support of the book and thanks for talking to all your friends about it of course I hope you'll trick me again I mean that was the best trick when Monica broke it to me that it was in fact a woman and she was not she's a really big teen boy and well did you listen to the book I listened to the book I see so you I'm dislexic so I read so slow most of the books 99% of them I listen to that's fantastic and so yeah I'm never holding the book and so you don't see the author photo there was my face right there on the back I don't see the on the front your name's there but it's like I'm in the chapters right away yeah and you were listening to Charlie thirston not me I usually read my audio books my publisher lets me do that I like to do it I like going into the studio and it's my one acting gig every you know the street thing yeah yeah exactly her or me one or the other but it's kind of a catharsis for me because I've had these characters talking to me and my head for years yeah and to get in the studio and replicate them and get the accents and everything as perfect as I can I feel like it's a value added product that I'm giving my readers but in this case the one thing I cannot be is a boy and so I auditioned several readers and I picked him and I was really happy he was available to do but that's another reason you could easily have thought that it was a male it didn't help yeah yeah it didn't help but interestingly I did not think the voice actor was the author yeah I didn't go that far well you know I mean in it's too good this is a professional oh well thank you so much for coming in person this was such a blast and I really can't wait to read the next thing you write okay get going I'll be on my way thanks a lot for having me this was fun I like like your space here thank you so much we do too it's uh keep it cozy yeah yeah yeah no it's comfy heavy on the knickknacks heavy heavy on well if I had my own wedy box I would I triy to hide it a little bit you should have your own weedies box we should get on top I'm going to talk to the folks at General Mills yeah right great poitz are eh yeah exactly all right well be well and I can't wait to see you again next up is the fact Che I don't even care about facts I just want to get in your [Music] pants did you wash your hair today no does it look clean it looks like it's mildly damp like you just yeah that's the opposite that it's like oily well I don't know about oily it just looks very straight like it's wet I I'm using new hair products oh what kind they're so good this is a shout out this is a little bit of an Easter EG cuz look we're in November and you know what's approaching I'm I'm I've been waiting to see if you're even going to address it because you don't like doing it even though it's so wildly successful I love doing it after I've done it there you go as with that all writing I love to have written that's right because this is dual my gift guide my gift guide we're talking about my gift guide obviously third annual gift guide a congratulations and It's Tricky cuz it's two things at once it's me recommending products right and then also me writing about them in a way that feels fun to me yes which you thus far you've done two very bang them up jobs thank you like I actually as you know I use the gift I buy everything that's on the gift guide so I wait patiently or impatiently for them I know but then also as a performance piece is a 10 thank you yeah the writing's off the charts thanks I do enjoy it but I care about both missions and so it's a little bit of a burden because I care that's right you want to make sure you I want to deliver yeah anyway maintain the high bar you've set for yourself this is probably an Easter egg I'm not sure yet but I'm considering putting this on the gift guide oh wow so then do you want to withhold the the product name what do you want to do here no I'm gonna say okay okay yeah Rose Hair line is incredible it's spelled r Oz R Oz No E no because so RZ but Rose okay but Ro no because Mara rosac is a hair stylist out here it's my friend's wife no way yeah Taylor that is in Local Natives that played our live show is Mary deara yeah oh wow I'm learning so much so excited now fun well I I've met her once and she's the sweetest nicest sweet okay and she's very prolific okay me she has a lot of fancy clients is there yes it's Kate Mara's best friend Mara yes oh yeah ding ding ding Kate Mara's best friend who we did talk about here cuz we thought that was impossible that her best friend's name was Mara right turns out Mara's in my Orbit Mara is very good friends with Sally Christensen from Argent suit company that I love and endorse tiny little web you find yourself my God it's such a Sim there's seven characters right so I met Mara via Sally she was wonderful but I had already at that time started using her new hairline prior to meeting her yeah and so obviously I was a big fan girl cuz it's so good you there's a couple products there's a hair oil I really do like how much you like products well yeah products but by EXT mentioned people like I know you're over celebrity sightings but you also still get you get so amped up about certain people which is still endearing and and adorable which I like I do oh my God this hair she makes this hair product like she she's married to like the excitement I know but it's it's really kind of cute hair products as you know you know Dam know that work well with your hair are hard to come by in this world I only use one thing yeah exactly when you find your thing here's the problem with Amazon I used to know all my Brands like in junior high aquan extra firm hold extra super so it had like three expletives okay about how firm the hold was and it was yeah I had a 78 in Spike and it didn't go anywhere all day but I knew all my products I like the Paul Mitchell gel I like this aquanette and it came in like a 70 o aerosol too ozone be gone yeah because of Amazon I go to past orders I'm like and I type in hair hair and then it brings up the one I like that I've ordered before that's great so I don't ever remember I think it might be a Paul Mitchell product I'm using this kind of a creme I use in my hair yeah your hair looks lovely but I don't I wonder if we get Mara in to just Bruce it up a little bit little something dance it up yeah yeah no when people have created something I care deeply about or I'm I admire mhm oh yeah I love it yeah yeah love to see it like you like the row oh which is great like yeah it's a great brand um but then you and you didn't have any interest in her as a celebrity before that but now you've elevated her to almost deity them Mary Kate and Ashley MK yeah yeah yeah I guess I go straight to Ashley of course understand entric no it makes sense okay they were my f I had a Michelle doll okay house that's the her name their name yeah Michelle I had a Michelle doll so always had an affinity for them right but no I could care less uh right until the road yes it's it's interesting I like it no you're taking off your David Beckham sweater it's too hot in here and I know if I turn on the air you'll be very cold go down a layer we'll start here that'll be step one and then if I continue to S Spitz I'll have to wow we have so many things left up in the air okay tying up some we yes let's weave them all together one is 's Hair Care is incredible Rose uh R Oz yep which spells Ros but we can you just P respectful but there's like a Accent on the o so I think that's what oh that's what makes it yeah okay then I stand un corrected okay so she so it's a hair oil and then there's what you do is you put the hair oil in before you shower and you just let that sit for like 10 to 12 minutes maybe 20 and then you shower it you use the shampoo and the conditioner okay then after you damp it dry towel damp dry I have a tip dab it dry is that what you mean damp it dry see make it damp okay you get the towel wet and then rub the towel on your head well you don't make no no no your hair is dripping wet yes and you dab it with the towel well I wouldn't say dab you like you would say damp cuz that's what you said you squeeze out the water but you don't want to squeeze it out out too much it's very it's damping it yeah okay great it's a word okay I have a trick for that that I learned from some video I use I do a towel real quick on it just like a Quick Squeeze and then I take a paper towel okay and and I dab it like it's a greasy Pizza I damp it no you don't do it like that I know what you're thinking you're talking about like dabbing patting it padding yeah no you take the paper towel and you like scrunch the hair okay great with the paper towel mhm then it's stamped okay okay right and then you use a little she has this milk Hair Milk oh wow and this other little other oil and I mix those small amount then I put it in my hair and then it looks good wow so many steps it's a real project it looks great and I have a few other friends who are using it and they love it satisfied customers would you agree that if you were someone who washed your hair every day this would be too much to do daily five steps I don't though and you don't have to if you use rose okay and you're once every 3 to four days on a Hair W pretty much sometimes what's the longest we'll go seven eight days uh longest we're depressed the sky is gloomy where we at I'm sad two months no God no I mean probably a week is the longest I all right I think yeah cuz it does start to get start keeping a hair journal and then we'll know next year oh speaking of I gave you homework I wonder if you did it oh [Music] [ __ ] okay well I'll give you another week what was the homework again five favorite podcast episodes of all time oh [ __ ] blame that's still number one that's we already know you already established that now we need two three four and five I hope that every arm Cherry has found their way over to stereo lab to listen to radio radio lab that's an old favorite band of mine stereo lab really great band [ __ ] this happens on stop this happened with Fred when he reminded me of tortoise and then I get depressed that I forget about my favorite bands that they got that I don't listen to them for years and actually I get a Pang of guilt you do yeah like I'm not being faithful to them and stereol lab was such a is such a great band um you don't have to feel guilty you can reframe it as you're excited to find it again okay would you want to hear one second of stereolab just so you can get a flavor for what it is because it's very very novel original music okay okay are there words in these songs yeah [Music] okay all the on the water ready [Music] it sounds French yeah I like it very French they're incredible how how original is that sound yeah I like that did you ever have a stereo lab phas wob yeah I like them the did you know the lead singer's name is Mary Hansen oh here we go no I did not know that and who is she married to Rob one of your aunts she connected to Mara well she's still died in 20 2002 oh I'm Sor I just been Tom Hansen Mary Hansen Jesus wait does singer died uh backing and lead vocals I mean there's another lead I was mostly connecting the Hansen last name yeah 94 96 97 99 I don't it doesn't appear that they have anything recent so maybe theyve just well she's passed Bo maybe she passed because I stopped listening it looks like they became active in 2019 again oh wonderful it took a 10e break it sounds like you do have some stuff to feel guilty about actually I always do yeah take me long to remember no you can reframe it um and like I can reframe okay do you want me to get you a stereol lab tea vintage yeah of course okay I would love that I'm going to look into it cuz you know I like vintage t- shop what can I get you for Christmas yeah I'm so bad at this let's go right to the horse's ass I'll think about it okay now this shirt this is similar to your stereol lab story okay I was in New York with Molly obviously we've talked about it and then Pinn because you just W in New York yes I was and we we stopped into this vintage store MH vintage Tea Store and it looked like it was not going to be my style right but then he had all these Gumby shirts sure gumes which I had forgotten until I saw these shirts and it was so exciting for me gumbies was a pizza place in Athens oh wow and they had Pokey sticks and were they stealing the actual intellectual property of of Gumby was he there he was there okay yeah there's no way they had like a license for I think he was there um and he and there well I mean they had Pokey sticks so they were obviously playing on this yeah but I didn't even know about Gumby really right cuz that was very early Saturday Night Live yeah I didn't know I just knew the pizza and we were obsessed with gumbies it was like our it was our spot it was a hospital it was a cm see uhuh see be seen and we have such nostalgic me my group has such nostalgic memories I'm now yeah so uh okay I think I'm conflating some things so there was Mr Bill was a character uh on Sant life but also um Eddie Murphy would play gumby oh really he played Black Gumby so he swore and stuff it was it was great right I had an inflatable Gumby that was 6 feet tall when I was in junior high and I used to fight it non-stop I would punch it and wrestle it and my mom for some reason was very entertained cuz I would build up the fight what I'd start talking to gumy what you say and then I would run and Tackle him and it a whole show I would do yeah but maybe Gumby was a straightup character outside of SNL yeah I didn't know there was an SNL connection but yeah um that's also Sim because I bought an SNL shirt also Jesus crazy can't even talk we get very close to short circuiting yeah so yeah gumbies is very nostalgic for me and so I bought this Gumby shirt I can't see it at all your hair your beautifully conditioned and oil G in the Olympics oh Gumby goes for gold I found out why they can use the character so when Gumby's Creator art cloi came through Gainesville in a college speaking tour her they threw him a party and the founder said he had such a good time that he granted them the national rights to gumbies wow and Pokey names for 100 years wow wait what year was that nice um 1986 well because they closed gumbies yeah didn't make it maybe you can bring it back bring educate we have to stand out there and educate everyone on what gummy okay so here's the thing about gumy a lot of you might think he's from Sant live and kind of but and it's like I don't think anyone at this age is gonna have any questions I didn't even have any questions I thought it was a pizza boy oh okay but what about someone out front like giving a 30 minute lecture on what it is you're about to like chairs like please sit down before you enter the store so you understand the full context of what we're trying to do here yeah I'm not well that's interesting um the pizza was so good the Poké sticks were so good and I miss it yeah I bet and also it's gone so people can't have it if we had our wishes I would go eat at flaky Jake and you'd go eat at gumy yes yeah okay I want to talk about something did we leave a we left do we so many it's a disaster but I think we have so much stuff to go through we got to just keep storming part of this is is your fault when you go away M too much to talk about I agree I know okay my apologies you went to New York went to New York very early flight 700 a.m. on Thursday and if I can do a little like complaining I don't mind when things are delayed when it's the afternoon but if you wake up I woke up at 4: a.m. to journal and meditate to get in the car at 5 a.m. to get to LAX at 6:00 a.m. to be in the and then we didn't take off till 9 no yes and I was like no that is a that is I put in the I did all the crappy stuff yeah so I had a little I was struggling a little bit when we started going down the runway at 900 a.m. I looked um were you on the plane for two hours or was it delayed a good hour yeah it had to be I I think like for some reason boarding like they didn't shut the door till 7:45 and then by the time we were going down the runway it was 9 yeah um yikes I want to say he claimed that there was a stalled aircraft at JFK on the runway like they were delaying people from even going there maybe but whatever the case is flight was fine but what happened is when we landed then originally when we were supposed to land we were going to have time to go to the hotel yeah get a bite to eat and then Kristen would go to a Musical on her own got it and I would watch I don't know what I would do yeah can't even remember what I did but we landed so late that then the cab ride was like she had to be at the play in an hour and 40 minutes and then we were going to go to drop me off at the hotel first her play is obviously in in Midtown yeah and we're in downtown yes and then the better something of my angel better angels of my character nature I was like let's drop you off first and I'll bring all the bags and nice of you and and smart and it's 5:00 p.m. on a Thursday in Manhattan so basically got on that flight at 6:20 a.m. and the long flight then the cab ride was like two and a half from the time we got in at JFK to the time I got out at the hotel I was like oh I've been for 12 hours sitting kind of confined and not able to move around and do my own thing bang I hate that cab ride from JF imagine going to Midtown first I'm giving you credit that adding anything it sounds unbearable because I hardly can stand that yeah it's not great and then um when she got out and then I decided to Google Maps it myself and then I saw it was going to be like 57 minutes to get done I was like oh my God and I couldn't get out and take the Subway at that point I had all the bags and [ __ ] yeah anyways got into the hotel Hotel what I do Thursday night oh I immediately text Vincent denofrio cuz he lived down in that same area where we were staying first I I said are you at home cuz I was going to meet him at Emily Brooklyn maybe cuz he lives in Brooklyn he said no I'm in Michigan so I was in his birthplace and he was in my birthplace how lovely but then he told me to go to Bubbies have you been to Bubbies yes many times oh you have you know all about Bubbies yeah Bubbies is great Bubbies so he said to go to Bubbies I went to bubbi and I loved it and people watching in New York and I love it so much and I sat by myself and just stared at people and watched all oh I just love it looking out the window was it crisp what was the weather like uh yeah it was perfect it was like high 50s nice yeah perfect you know I had my piece I was wearing my piece the whole time yeah to both pieces just the hoodie zipper hoodie and I brought some sweaters to look like Beckham right uh oh I know Easter egg we interviewed Jedediah Jenkins yes upcoming great episode he recommended couples therapy oh right I know I need to start it well by luck it was on the airplane ride to JFK so Chris and I started it and then when she got back from her play we then watched a couple episodes it's so good oh I'm so excited oh my God I love it it's it's a great recommendation then Friday we went to Bubby's in the morning MH we worked out we went to Bubby's we were trying to keep it like cuz we had a 5:00 p.m. reservation at Manhattan Emily okay and so we just had kept a real light up Bubbies that time but then we went at 5: immediately saw an arm Cherry with her mom who was on vacation who was there because we suggested it so that was really cute and she was so sweet and then I went Gutenberg which is Josh Gad and Andrew rolds and uh these two are insane I have by the way I've only seen five musicals in my life and now two of them are with these two guys and they're insane together they have such good chemistry and then Christen gets on stage at the end they do special guests in that show that's right at the very end and um you know what an ovation she got it was so sweet cuz I know and you know some part of her heart is broke that she didn't stay and do Broadway for a long time or that she's not return to do Broadway yeah I know that's a big thing for her yeah she will yeah but for her to get on on stage and the level of excitement people had for her being there made me feel so good for her like oh you deserve this girl you weren't there but you are loved there yeah oh yeah she's a huge part of that Community get home that night from the play and I ordered Emily Burger wow just been there 5:00 P p.m. wow ordered now gluten-free pizza in a whole round pigged out slept late first night I was there I slept 11 and a half hours wow which was really really helpful good because of the very early morning blah blah blah and then uh she went to another play I started watching F1 we went to Emily Brooklyn on Saturday that was wonderful yeah picked out again then walked around Manhattan for a couple hours we walked like six miles and then uh on the way back I was like I could go for Bubbies again went back into Bubby's so now in one yeah you see the pattern mhm anyways ate at Bubbies four times in 3 days ate at Emily Burger three times in 3 days it's great and that's pretty much the trip it's wonderful yeah it was fun sounds great yeah uh I thought about this CU you posted that I was like wow that's so fun you have your Staples going it's very me it is it is and if I find something I like I just want what I like over and over I don't like interesting yeah cuz I you have a much more like you feel like you're missing out on meals if if you were to go back exactly but I do have both like I I I have the same issue and that if I love it I want it like when I got home from New York I was like when am I going to have Tha Diner again ever like I have to I panic yes but I can't go twice I can't although I did go twice to a breakfast place last time but it that's do yeah the other thing was I went the first night was for dinner and I noticed that that they had gluten-free pancakes but when I went back the next morning I couldn't eat gluten-free pancakes cuz we were eating at Emily Burger in 2 and 1 half hours so we had made a pack to keep it light so I just had eggs no breads so now I still need the gluten-free pancakes so I still got to go back so I'm getting something different every time that I've seen on the menu that I also want to try so it is somewhat uh I'm getting new stuff but I understand it hard it was great though uh what a city what a city what a city I was thinking about I was like how many Broadway theaters are there Kristen guessed 15 she thought around I'm like what's the average cast size like 10 15 so you think about more than that if they're musicals they're big casts yeah and then like this one that we just saw uh Gutenberg this is two people so a hand she counting like Off Broadway cuz that okay so just Broadway I was thinking you know for as enormous of an industry it is and how much space it occupies in our culture you're really looking that maybe 300 people are employed at any given time doing that job which is it's very small right and I saw many people on the subway cuz that's another thing we rode the subway everywhere which was really really fun best people watching imaginable last thought on New York I'm reminded that when you're in New York you just have to live out loud you're seated so close to everybody when you eat you're literally touching shoulders every time you eat a meal so you're hearing everything they say they're hearing everything we say and so so goes the subway and everywhere and you just what are you going to not live your life you got to just talk so you're over I was overhearing the most thrilling conversations intimate stuff and that's just it's a voyous paradise I guess that's what I my summation fun anyways back to the what I saw on the subway I saw a few different groups of people that were actors talking about the stage and I thought man there's only 300 jobs there's all these people in all these schools yeah it's tough It's hard so hard yeah well fun um what was your weekend like one thing I wanted to bring up which was interesting it came up twice in the weekend on Thursday morning I was interviewed for something which was very cool uh a podcast or article an article okay it was very flattering to be asked and it was it was very thoughtful and you know who knows how it will turn out but it was it was funny because I've declared it here and it's this is how true it is I don't look at stuff I don't read comments I don't look into what people are saying about me MH and it was reiterated that that is the smart decision for me because in doing this she kind of brought up a couple things that people say oh boy and not she wasn't saying it to be mean she was kind of saying like it's sort of crazy that they say this and kind of like what do I say to that sort of and I was like huh well I didn't know that and right right right and oh jeez that's got to sit you in a bad space for a minute during the interview it was interesting it was interesting which what did she say they said yes so I guess a thing that people say is well a lot of like why why aren't you talking more or what does she add oh oh type of thing or like no no no not what does she add something about me not knowing as much is you and I was like well of course I don't I'm not doing the same thing I'm not I'm not there to do the same thing he's doing I thought that was very clear right right right but maybe it's not to some people who cares I mean I really really don't care but it it did make me think oh there's stuff being said that I just don't know about and happily and I'm just so happy to continue to not know yes as someone who reads all the comments I will say she's shining a light on something that's less than 0.1% just however you need to file that in your head it's not like there's some what she said is any kind of consensus or even 1% of comments yeah she said something about like about being smart people say I'm not and I and that was I've never read that I don't remember I it's is all like you know I'm hearing I'm hearing it all at once and so I'm not sure if I'm saying this correctly some things of your own probably yeah I know I'm smart it's like the one it's one of the only things I know about myself you don't have that insecurity at all I really don't so it it was interesting to hear because I was like oh oh they're just that should inform all right and you should reverse engineer from that that exact same thing which is like for someone to say that is as relevant as anything else that's being said yeah so that happened and that was Thursday on Saturday we get an email from ad from Adam our public and he sent this art he said this is a nice article he sent it and it was a opinion piece in Vogue which I could not uhhuh could be more perfect for you oh my god a really sweet lovely very beautiful and I want to applaud her as well what was the um her name is Lucy Lucy I want to applaud her because I think what's very tempting for people if they write something Pro Monica there's this inclination to pit us against each other I've seen this before yes it's like if something's with you then it's related to me and I never I'm always like celebrate Monica I don't know why I yeah but Lucy was very very generous about I just think she was very accurate about what the whole thing is there was no positioning you and I against each other which I liked no it was a very flattering celebration of you don't have to talk all the time basically me acknowledging there's a genius in talking when you should and when you shouldn't yeah that was really lovely but it was also it was also so you know there's a line in it where she said the reason she thought to do this is because she was talking about the show with someone and someone said who even is Monica yeah and I was like wow this is two things a couple days apart that are reiterating sort of the same thing yeah it was funny because when I was editing this episode of Barbara King solver oh speaking of I think um I think my favorite episode of the year really yeah I really do wow that's great I can't wait hear love I just love her she's so awesome she said that when she finishes a book she's done with the book like she doesn't read reviews and it doesn't really matter to her what people say cuz she knows she did what she wanted to do she done with it and I felt like that I was like yeah that's sort of how I feel like it's weird to start hearing pokes because I like what we're doing and I I like the role I'm in would be one thing to me making these accusations if we were like a football team with a record of zero and 12 you start looking around for what's broken but there's nothing broken like our show's doing as well as it's ever done and nothing's broken about well and also we're not a show where me and you are hosting equally that's not the point of it that was never the point of it and still not and so I feel that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing correctly and I like what we put out well listen I read the thing as well the article the article and it was great and I saw that line as well and I then naturally didn't want you to read that line oh you know I felt protective of you and then it set me out uh I spent a a little while thinking about it afterwards I really think I've isolated what's happening if you're interested yeah like no one's triggered by Michael Jordan they see Michael Jordan and they go oh my God this guy dedicated every waking hour of his life to be as good as he was I No Illusion that I could be Michael Jordan mhm I think when things get tricky is when people see someone like Paris Hilton and they're like well wait I can do that like she doesn't do anything so I could do that and they're resentful at her because well [ __ ] if she's got millions of dollars I should too because I can do nothing as well so I think what's tricky for people is whether they were fans of mine or not they've at least known I've been around for 20 years on TV doing stuff so if I have a podcast they don't go well I should too they go oh he was he's been doing this for 20 years and I'm I've been aware of it now when they see you and they're just meeting you for the first time they go well [ __ ] I guess I could have been the baby sitter in B totally right and they're willfully ignoring how incredibly funny you are how intelligent you are how much you worked on your writing and how beneficial that was to everything we did they're not choosing to do that you're a brain new person to them that they find out has the house across the street from us and I think that's what it is they're like well wait why why does she have all you know you're more relatable which in turn makes them mad at you which is so interesting right which is also why the show works too exactly I that's I know that I thought the same I when I thought about it I thought the same thing I was like oh it's cuz they think they could be me and so why did it get to be me exactly I guess and I don't know where this confidence comes from because my confidence is so fleeting and it's in and out in so many ways I just know they're wrong like I know your value to the show I really do and I know that this show would not be this show it would be a different show I don't know what it would be but it would not be this show that's i' probably throwing baloney slices at women's asses I don't know what you'd be doing but it would be not this it would not have this finger print it would not we have a bunch of shows on this network and they're all they're all great and none of them are this and that is that there's a symmetry between you and I yes that is greater than the sum of our parts yes and so sorry if you're one of those people and I don't think most people listening to the fact are in line with the who is Monica but if you are now look they would hate something else about you I I'll just be clear let's say that you had been on three TV shows and then we had this thing and then it was a big success they wouldn't have that issue but it would move to another issue of course yes but you know I just know that's wrong and not in a I know it's wrong I really have to convince myself I know in my bones it is yeah I also know what I do for the show that no one knows that I do so that helps too so anyway I just thought it was interesting but a beautiful article I hope everyone reads it really really sweet article and yeah so that was part of my weekend what else um we don't need to get too into it we talked about it a little bit on sync I went on two dates two mhm with two different people where did you go to dinners uh no drinks both times drinks both times mhm and uh they were both great great mhm you have a favorite no okay I'm just in an information gathering period not trying to overthink anything which was congrats fun thanks you're going to have to reverse engineer your um 2023 resolutions list this is do you ever do something you have a to-do list and then you do an added thing so you write it on your list afterwards do you ever do that no I do that it's so it's so petty so that you can cross but like I yeah I was like I had to do all this stuff but then I stopped and use the leaf blower I'll add I get that I get the impulse yeah so similarly you can now go back and go like go on xon go on two dat in 2023 yes put you can put that on there now poly okay so we have some facts okay from Barbara So Merill Streep it was crazy nuts is that the first time we both had it at the same time I never have it right you're always looking for it but this was so undeniable it just yeah popped off the page if you will it really did in keeping with her work okay she mentioned the golden not book which was one of her favorite authors early on you asked like what some influences were that was one of my sadnesses is we had no overlap of our favorite books you always want I always want that have the same favorite books as someone I admire or it's that maybe you'll like some of these other books I'm also excited to explore the ones she likes yes yes so Doris lesing is uh was an author she mentioned who was talking about very Progressive things for the time you asked the time the golden notebook was written written in 1962 okay she said 50 60s and that's accurate 13 years before I was here B math she said her dad read her Robert Burns poem about AE and she started reciting it yeah and so you found it I found it are you going to read it is it a long one or a short one okay so there's two allouse on seeing one on a lady's Bonnet at church oh okay okay it's 1786 Scots language poem oh boy by Robert Burns and his favorite meter standard habby okay oh wait this is just the final verse give us the final verse okay oh wad some power the gifty gas to see ours oh my God this got her horny for literature this seems impossible this would be a rrap on literature for me she did say some crazy stuff and I was like what is she talking about but this now makes sense to see ourselves as ithers see us it wad frym a blunder free not even English and foolish notion what airs in dress and gatew leas and Evan devotion okay that's the original now Standard English translation okay this translated now oh would some power the gift give us to see ourselves as others see us it would for many a blunder free us and foolish notion what heirs and dress and gate would leave us and even devotion I love that actually I barely understand it I just barely can hang on exactly what we've been talking about this whole time for six years self awareness knowing how other people see you right if only we could see ourselves the way others do I can cuz I have a mirror they didn't have a mirror since 1480 yeah this this is like basically an OD to a mirror okay it also says see also so this was two AOW this is to a mouse oh whoa this is what a someone else's version him he's also has a poem called two amouse yeah oh my gosh two amouse on turning her up in her nest with the plow oh wow okay so there plowing the field and turned up I'm going to read it a mouse okay great I'm going to read the original We SLE it cin Tim Rous beasy oh what a panics in thy Brey or breasty breasty titties this is about me oh sorry well no I'm saying it might be about me it's to a mouse and then okay thou need not start a see Hasty we bickering Brattle iwad be LA to Ren and Chase thee we murdering paddle I'm truly sorry man's Dominion now you've switched now it's going into translated it's not okay I'm truly sorry man's Dominion has broken Nature's social Union and justifies that ill opinion which makes the startle at me thy poor earthborn companion and fellow mortal I doubt no WS but thou May theve what then poor beasty thou Man live a damer in a thve s now you could make anything up at this point request I'll get a blessing with the LA and never missed oh it's really long I'm not going to keep reading okay um that's with the translation I'll read a little with the translation yeah I want to hear if the mouse had big breath sounded like what he was beating around the bush about little Sleek cowering timorous Beast oh what a panic is in your breast oh you need they're quivering you need not start away so Hasty with bickering prattle I would be loathed to run and chase you with murdering paddle okay it still hard to understand life was so boring back then that when you were plowing and you saw Mouse you went home and wrote a whole poem about it that's there was nothing to do but plow the field and then interact with a mouse God yeah it's true I can't tell if we got it better or worse you know I'm back and forth all the time I agree I but I just think of living this time like sitting in a dirt field with no electricity inside the house and nowhere to clean up and I just oh my God end it for me nothing to put gas we're on the opposite extreme that's for sure although I guess it could be word we could have real Ro robot like physical robots in here with us distracting us I want to get two that are always trying to make us laugh like really distracting robots oh like we look over and they dry humping each other right now doing like really immature stuff that mean we'd have to give them egos CU they would want our approval yeah that's fine with me you think we're going to be able to do that maybe well you just program them to make us laugh that's what they're oh I see that's what they're running is that's true they're trial and ering and then they're remembering every outcome and by the end we'll just be laughing hysterically the whole time in that'd be fun absolutely you can hear their bodies kinking what's going on for the listener the robots are air humping each other ones wearing a cowboy hat the robots they have an uphill battle because if they're trying to get both of us mhm they well I mean we have a lot of this we do we do I don't know about the the squeaking noise is really going to get me so much but what about dry humping like if one was miming a robot stupid that F I think they're funny sophomore to sophomore little sophomore um I don't think they can do what like you can do word play oh they can do anything you think they can do work play yeah and hair play wow that would be funny too is if while we were interviewing people both the guests and the two of us were just we had robots behind us playing with our hair the whole time oh my God I would love that well that's the dream okay um she said the majority of people in med school now are women okay the acceptance rate for women applicants was 42.6% compared to an acceptance rate of 44% for men the number of women first year students at us medical schools in 2022 increased to 12,630 women made up 55% of all first year students in US medical schools 55 congrats MH huge Improvement yeah okay we talked about trauma and rate of addiction so then I looked up aore relationship MH I think it's only like three if you have aove having an a score four nearly doubles the risk of heart disease lung cancer and increases the likelihood of becoming an alcoholic by 700% 700% people with the score of five or higher are seven to 10 times more likely to use illegal drugs and become addicted ding ding dinkles I know that's a saoli for youm I the more I live with that since we interviewed him I'm really I'm really starting to believe it I I stand where I was then which is I don't think it's binary but I think it's huge I think it's huge I think it's more than 50% but what I really still hold firmly on to is it only makes sense looking backwards it just doesn't make sense looking forward yeah and everything in life like if you have the advantage of looking backwards yeah it all looked very predictable yeah so I just they'd have to go in the other direction for me just once to prove that it's possible no I think it's more good to know it so that you have empathy and compassion agree and how we have law like how we structure Society yeah okay last thing we talked about the war on drugs and how so many of us feel well it's kind of in keeping Superior because we're not on drugs we're so much of it has to do with so many things out of our control and that the War on Drugs had such a big part of it like drugs are so bad and people who do drugs are bad don't be that cuz you'll be bad when I was home we talk about this on an upcoming flightless bird when I was home you know how I sit at my desk my childhood desk when I record from the basement mhm and there's some stickers still there from when I was a wee baby yeah and one of the stickers it was a anti-drug sticker right and it was like oh it said I dream of a drug-free world or something one of your priorities it's a circle and it says I dream of a drug-free world around the perimeter and in the center of it it says just like me exclamation point oh okay and I tape that to my you want everyone to know no you're not doing drugs no I'm a good girl yeah I'm a good girl really good girl take me on some dates cuz I'm so good I don't do drugs although you have although I have and I if I was in so many circumstances I would have done a lot more but anyway it's just so funny that that like that was given to me that's from like I was in kindergarten yes yes yes yes I mean and you know I'm sympathetic to the people are trying to curb this crisis they don't know what the [ __ ] they're doing no one knows what doing we're just like try we're throwing [ __ ] at the wall some of it backfires some of it kind of works I know that's the other thing I forget what guest we had on that did reference all this data which is really important too which is if it's in your neighborhood your odds also go up exponentially so it's like you add Ace into availability you weren't stumbling across anybody doing drugs um not hardcore no I mean people did stuff that I did not do though but I've smelled weed smoke my whole childhood it's it's always been around you know and my dad's doing coke my stepdad's doing coke like it's a it's just around you know you see people giving other people volumes and [ __ ] and you know that they're not the doctor so why is my aunt Get You Know M yeah no I know it's just a much different my mom now be very clear Laura was like she didn't drink she didn't do any drugs I mean she smoke weed when she was kid but yeah um so it wasn't like in my house there wasn't even really much booze but right but I just think as far as the this specifically um bab's Kings solver our boy in the book demon demon yeah it's everywhere around him in addition to all the ace score yes yeah that's one of the couples in season three of couples therapy she has an accident and she gets prescribed burgus she has no history of any of this oh she also had a crazy miscarriage right before maybe an abortion something then the accident then the peret like total relief and then addicted the peret like oh my God yeah that's uh that can happen too not can it's epidemic yeah it's oh God it's sad remember my mom at one point was on some painkillers for um oral surgery no she had frozen shoulder oh and oh her shoulder was frozen oh my god um did she couldn't move it at all it was she like could barely move it oh and she had a surgery for it no she didn't she was just on painkillers for it cuz it hurt get her through yeah and my grandma had it too so I am a little anxious sure that's I move it a lot just to keep it moving good yeah yeah keep it lubricated and uh she was talking about being on them and I was like you need to stop you need to stop taking those even even as a kid yeah I wasn't I it wasn't that long ago oh okay and so she did but it it's a slippery slope for anyone yeah yeah yeah yeah especially if you have a lot going on at the time like so much of this stuff is timing of everything yeah sad okay I think that's it for Barbie last thing I want to say about Babs she said it herself MH she said choose my occupation cuz you can do it into your 60s and still be relevant yes and you only get better I find that abnormally encouraging because that's not typically in our business it's opposite it gets comedians get less funny over time because they're less familiar with what's really driving The Angst of the culture directors get very comfortable slowly throughout their career they get to ask for shorter days and shorter days and short you know as they're and then everything just you don't see many people in our business doing the greatest work of their life you get less hungry I mean you get satisfied comfortable less angsty yeah and and then rightly so you make your environment nicer so you'll say I'm not going to shoot Knights anymore I got a family and blah blah blah well but something crazy happens when you're up all night sometimes you know it's all very understandable but I would say this is a rare except even look at physicists they they have this terrible if you chart their their breakthroughs it's like it happens seems to happen all at like 20 to 24 and then it just starts going down all these things so this is hugely encouraging especially for me personally who still has fantasies of writing many books like I guess I was just encouraged that I could still do the best writing of my life yeah and that the older you get the more experience you have on Earth you get better as a writer you're better off a little bit later yeah it's cool she's so impressive I wonder if she'll like the writing in my gift guide absolutely everyone does it's unanimous all right well that's it all right love you [Music]