Viola Davis and the Joy of Being Alive

Glory speaks with actor and author Viola Davis about her new memoir, Finding Me. In the final episode of this season, Viola gets candid about books as a means of escape during her difficult childhood and how she and her sisters found salvation in literature while living in poverty in Rhode Island. Glory and Viola also talk about the author’s writing process and how this book became her legacy. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Pushkin. Before we get started, let's talk about Pushkin Plus.
Pushkin Plus is a subscription podcast program available on Apple Podcasts.
Members will get access to exclusive bonus content like my

(00:37):
weekly bookmarks, where I talk about how I got a
book agent and what I'm watching on TV that week.
You'll get uninterrupted listening to many of your favorite podcasts
like Revisionist History, Cautionary Tales, and The Happiness Lab. Sign
up for Pushkin Plus on the show page in Apple
podcast or at pushkin dot com. I wrote the book

(01:09):
because I had just an existential crisis of meaning after
Brianna Taylor, Ahmad Aubrey, George Floyd the Elections. That's the
singular voice of Viola Davis, actor, producer, and author, talking
about her new memoir Finding Me. It was just a
real crisis of meaning. And when you have a crisis

(01:32):
of meaning, what ritual? What tool do you have to
find it? For Viola, that tool is writing. It's what
she uses to assign meaning to the things happening in
the world and in her own life. And Finding Me,
Viola writes about who she is now and how hard

(01:52):
she fought to become that person. Viola grew up to
be a phenomenal actor whose on screen performances have captivated
us for years. Won an Academy Award for her character
Rose Maxon in the film adaptation of August Wilson's play
Been Say and How to Get Away with Murder. She

(02:14):
took our breath away as Annalie's key in That was
a role Viola set helped her tap into some truths
about herself. Welcome to Well Read Black Girl, the literary

(02:34):
kickback you didn't even know you needed. I'm your host,
Glory Adam. All season long, I've been speaking with writers
and thinkers about their craft, their journey, and how they
showed up in the world. And in our season finale,
I speak with the one and only Viola Davis on
how she and her sisters found salvation in literature and

(02:56):
the childhood memory that shaped her outlook on life. And
before we began, just to know Miss Davis and I
go deep and we get real. Over the course of
her life, her career, and her incredible journe Miss Davis
has been called many things, some of them violent and harmful,
which you will hear her say in this episode, unbeat,

(03:28):
Can I call you Viola? Is that is that Okay, absolutely, please, okay,
thank you so much for being here, for writing this
amazing book. It is just so extraordinary and I heard
it in your voice. I heard every single word in
your beautiful voice. Wonderful. So we like to start the
podcast from the very beginning. How did reading and writing

(03:50):
show up in your childhood? It showed up as a necessity.
I read and I wrote to escape all the time.
I would, you know, leave my school in kindergarten at
the end of the school day, and I'd walk to
the library and I'd stay at the library until it

(04:11):
got dark, and then I would walk home. Sometimes I
would run home because I would be scared when I
was passing by Jenks Park, because I had a huge
tower that looked really ominous at night. But I stayed
until it was dark. But I stayed at the library
because I love the smell of the books, and I
love being transported into even nonsensical worlds, and it gave

(04:38):
me a relief from my world. And it was also
a place that I can reinvent myself and have fun
like the other characters in the book. The children's section
of the library, it was in the basement with these big,
colorful bean bags and toys and all the books. It's
just it was Willy Wonka, and I wrote to relieve

(05:04):
my mind. Whatever stories I had, I just would regurgitate
on the page. I would create characters that I always
wanted to be. It sparked the powerful, powerful strength and
aspect of imagination with me, and I did it as
much as I could. I also enjoyed the conversations and

(05:26):
just the interactions you have with your sisters. I am
a big sister, I'm the oldest, and I did so
much go into the library and reading stories to my brother,
and I was wonderful to witness that engagement and that
level of just intimacy that you have. How did your
relationship with your sister's influence your love of reading? How
did that all come together? Well, it was really my

(05:47):
sister Diane who sparked the joy of reading. Because the
first thing she said was, you have to figure out
what you want to do with your life if you
don't want to be poor like this, and so her
way was education. And we got this little desk that
we purchased at Salvation Army at the time, and I

(06:10):
would sit in there and every time she would come
back from school because she was the oldest. She would
teach us what she had learned that day, and I
mean she would lean in, I mean seriously lean in
with the multiplication table, with reading, with writing, I mean everything.
And she really sparked it for me and for my

(06:32):
sister Nied and my sister Dolores. My sister Danielle came later,
and we knew that that was the portal, the portal
to choices, the portal to possibilities, and it gave us
something to do. And also with my sisters, it was
a safe space because I knew they loved me. Yes,

(06:53):
you know, they were the first people that gave you
unconditional love and support and saw your mess. You know,
we all dreamed together, and we all went the bed together.
You know. Was there an author that really spoke to
you when you were in the library, that like you
knew immediately that, okay, this is a voice or a

(07:15):
story that I connect with immediately. Oh gosh. I mean,
when I was just five, the writer that spoke to
me was doctor Seuss and only because it was nonsensical
and it felt like that was the only world that
I got an immediate invite too in my brain because
it was nonsensical. And at that time, you know, this

(07:37):
is in nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy. The other stories
was see Jane, See Jane Run. Jane has a dog,
and Jane was always blonde with little pigtails, with the
little brown dog and the picket fence. And I didn't
have any way into that. I just didn't. I would
try to because I wanted to be Jane until I

(08:00):
realized I'm not Jane. And then as I continued to
go to the library and read, then it was Judy
Bloom The Bopsy Twins, and then it turned into Richard
Wright when it went from The Bopsy Trends to Claude
Brown and Richard Right, So there you go. I love
to hear just the transformation of the things that just

(08:21):
pull your young imagination and allow you to say, like, Okay,
I can belong in this world, and I can also
make up my own and I can be real and
feel tangible, like those are such the beginning locks of
who you are today. And as I was reading your memoir,
that opening scene, like there was this rawness, authenticity, this

(08:43):
energy of just like the passion that you exude on
the screen, you feel that in your memoir, you absolutely
feel that. So the memoir begins with the incident in
your childhood. A group of racist boys chase you down,
they taught you, they attack you, and you said, this
is the first time you really had your heart and
spirit broken. Did you know you were going to start

(09:04):
at that point as eight year old Viola? No? How
long did it take you to write it? Like how
it took me a long long time to get that
first chapter, very very long, because when you shake somebody's
hand for the first time and you say hi, I'm Viola.
For me, the first chapter was like a handshake, Hi,
I'm Viola. So what is that high going to be?

(09:28):
I thought it was you know, when I go to
Target or Vans or Ralph's, which I love grocery shopping
by the way, and people come up to me and
they say, oh, miss Davis when they want to hug me.
Everybody wants to hug dudes want to hug me. Everyone
wants to hug me. So I was like, should that
be my introduction? And I was like, no, my introduction

(09:52):
should be my story. That's what it should be. And
for me, I always go back to this story. I
think we spend so much of our lives hiding the
truth of who we are. I think we either hide it,
we reinvent it, we reshape it, we remember it really
wrong a lot of times. And that was the challenge

(10:15):
of the first chapter of giving someone a story that
totally incompletely defined who I was, and not thinking about
how it was going to land. And that's why that
chapter was very, very difficult for me. I just found
that as I went through my life, there was something
always gnawing at me. And I realized through therapy is

(10:39):
that I believed what they were saying about me. I did.
And that's one of my earliest memories. And it's a
powerful one because you have eight to nine boys, because
I would count them. Sometimes there were more, but I
would count them. And when they're saying the combo of

(11:00):
those words, the black, the ugly, the nigga, all of
them together, and they're screaming it with eight. And then
as you move along in your life and you don't
have any boyfriends, there's no one asking you out. I
remember growing up. I remember this bus driver saying, yeah,
I don't think black women are attractive at all. There's

(11:22):
only two black women I find attractive, Donna Summer and
Diana Ross. And I just remember even going through my
life when people with impunity just telling me out of
the blue, when we were just having a conversation about
just nonsensical things that would have to interject with you know,
you're not pretty right what? And but for me? See?

(11:48):
For me, That's why I had to start with that memory,
because here's the thing. With men, it's virility. With women,
it's beauty. And when you're dark skin, black woman, you
are catapulted out of that realm of beauty. What does
that mean? What it means is they give beauty a

(12:12):
value and a worth. So if you're not that, then
you're worth less. That was a message to me, and
it was a constant driving me. Not a true message,
it's a big fat lie, but it was a message.
Nevertheless that had an effect and metastasize and I needed

(12:35):
to address it, which is why I started the book
with that memory. I thought it was a fitting start.
There's a scene in the book where you talk about
seeing Sisily Tyson and years later working with her on
screen in person. Just everything about Sicily Tyson is just
it feels my heart with such joy. I recently finished

(12:55):
her autobiography, and I see you in a lineage. I
see you both holding hands in such a beautiful way.
Definitely holding her hand. I'll tell you I held it
and she lifted me up out of a very dark hole.
Because I think you need to see a physical manifestation
of your dreams. I don't think that it's enough for

(13:16):
people to say, you gotta hope it. You got to
believe it, and you have to pull it out of
yourself when you don't have the language for it, you
don't have the bandwidth for it. Here's the thing. Beauty
doesn't have a value. I'm going to repeat it. Yeah,
I mean, listen, there's some beautiful people in the world.

(13:38):
It's not just the way Miss Tyson looked that blew
me over. It was everything that she was. It was
her braveness and a courage to play a character the
age from eighteen to what it was, one hundred and ten,
one hundred and six. It was her excellence and her artistry.

(13:59):
And I found that as I've moved through my life
and the more I have examined my life, that I've
made peace with it, that I've unpacked it. The more
I have moved or self love and acceptance and ownership
of my story. The more I've connected with myself, the
more beautiful I felt. It is an internal almost not

(14:22):
reckoning that happens like when you're able to know who
you are. It reflects outword. That's like the glow that
people talk about. That's that energy that you don't know
why you attracted that person. It's like their energy, you know.
Can I quote you? I recently read an interview that
you did and you were talking about the book, and
basically you said, I count it all as joy. I do.

(14:43):
All of those things happen to me, but I own
it and it's a part of who I am. And
I think what you were just speaking to is owning
it and finding the courage to tell your story and
not be afraid of the messy parts of the hard parts,
like in your memoir, was there anything that you were like, Okay,
I don't want to talk about this or I don't
want to own this. How did you work up the

(15:05):
courage to own every moment of your story? I just
did it. I mean, I understand that courage is not
the absence of fear. It's probably the absence of faith.
Would you can see yourself a faithful person. Absolutely, I
had to believe it, even though I didn't see it.
And I believe that. I've gotten to the age of

(15:27):
fifty six and I have beautiful friendships, but they're very
few of them, because I think there's very few people
that you have a lasting connection to. And part of
that is because, well, there's not a lot of people
who have a connection to themselves. And they don't have
a connection to themselves because there's a huge part of

(15:49):
this story that they do not want to own, believe, examine,
look at. They just rather it die somewhere, just an
invisible death. And so then when I'm in the presence
of people like that and I really want to lean
in and I really want to have hard conversations, I

(16:13):
can't have it because they've disconnected. That's one of the
reasons why I wanted to write the book, because I
don't want to be that. Yes, I don't want anyone
to come into my presence in the field they haven't
made a connection with me. And I find that there's

(16:35):
a lot of people that have jumped ship in my
life and have been fair weather friends that they could
connect with me, enjoy and in good times when I'm winning,
but when I'm not, it is dead silence. The people
who I want in my foxhole, on my team are
people who have my back whenever after the break. More

(17:01):
with an incomparable Viola Davis on her memoir Finding Me.
I'm Glory Adam and you're listening to well read Black Girl. Today,
I'm talking to actor and author Biola Davis about her

(17:25):
writing ritual, how acting and writing works for her, and
what she considers her legacy. You tell so many great
stories about acting and attending Juilliard and working with Seana Rons.
Some of your most notable characters have had little screen time,

(17:46):
but you've had like a huge impact. I'm thinking of Doubt,
I'm thinking of miss Miller. And in the book you
talk about how you wrote the hundred page biography of
who this character was. Was this something that you learned
at Juilliard or was it something that you just like
decided to try to get a fuller understanding of the character.
That is the actual process of being an actor. That's

(18:07):
how you find a character. You start with the given circumstances.
Everything in the script that says something about your character,
how she's dressed, what she looks, like and that's the Bible.
Those are all your stats, and then you have to
fill it in with life, right. I mean, you yourself
have your favorite color, what's your favorite book, what's your

(18:30):
worst memory? What is the deepest, darkest secret you ever kept?
When were you born? What do you live for? What's
standing in the way of what you live for? All
of those things you have to ask yourself, and then
you write a bio so that by the time you
are on that set, you're armed with so much information

(18:53):
that you have slowly become that character, whoever that character
is now. I say it all the time. If someone
were to do a bio pick up my life, if
they went to my husband and even my daughter, you're
still on going to get forty to fifty percent of
who I am. Who you are is so vast. There

(19:20):
are the stream of consciousness your day to day that
you never share, even with the person that you love
the most. Maybe a dark thought that comes up, or
a happy one or a salacious one. I've lived fifty
six years on this earth, then maybe one thing that
I've forgotten that someone will remind me of, or something

(19:42):
that I remember that I would never share with anyone
because I find that maybe you don't need to know
and I'm trying to forget, but all of those things
make you who you are. So you can't write enough,
you can't discover enough, you can't unearth enough to create

(20:02):
a human being. I feel I'm gonna cry because I'm
just like everything you're saying is so on point. It's
like what we need in order does it tell our
stories in order to heal ourselves? And you described your
acting profession as a healing well spring? What do you
mean by that? Meaning you have to become a human being.
You have to become another human being. So you have

(20:25):
to rely on life, what you have observed in life.
You gotta be vulnerable, you gotta totally open yourself up.
I played a crack addictive woman Ava May in Antoine Fisher.
A lot of people say crack addict as if it

(20:46):
explains everything. Well, Noah doesn't. She has a name, she
has a past, she has desires, she has regrets, she
has all of that. And for me filling that up
and making you believe that is relying on things within myself,

(21:08):
even things that have happened that I've observed in the past.
That I have to be vulnerable and allow my emotions
and those private emotions to seep through on camera in public.
So it is like a therapy session using the character
as a conduit to express that, and that is extraordinarily healing.

(21:33):
Everything you're saying is just so on time. Right now,
I want to talk about your feeling that you're going
to be bringing into the world The Woman King. I'm
so excited for it. Can you talk about that process
of bringing this to life? There are no words literally
to describe the eight month process of shooting The Woman King,

(21:54):
which is about the Agojia tribe in Benin West Africa,
which was Dahomey, West Africa. There are no words of
looking at, first of all, the scope of the set design,
the faces of all the black and brown people on
that set, the warriors. There were times when you were

(22:20):
moved to tears and there were times that you were
moved to complete silence. Is what it was. It is
absolutely my legacy to bring up black women and to
make them a part of the narrative. We have been
so forgotten, left behind, not adored for so long that

(22:47):
I found that when I stepped off that stage, when
I accepted my oscar, that that was the only thing
that made me feel alive. That if I could do
what Miss Tyson did, if I could do that for
other black women like the Lashawna Lynches, that she La
eight Teams, Tussa Mbe dou Adrian Warren, the Jamie Lawson's,

(23:09):
any number of them that are in this movie. I
cannot tell you you wait until you see it. I mean,
it is the power of a physical manifestation of dreams
that people tell you to have faith for. You're supposed
to believe it even though you don't see it, and
you're like, Okay, I'm gonna believe it, even though I

(23:30):
don't see Okay, I believe it. But when you see
it and you believe it and you hope for it,
then oh my god, that is a powerful elixir. The
Woman King is what I'm sharing with others. That is
my elixir. That will be my elixir. I would love
to even go even further with that because listen, after this,

(23:51):
I'm about to go into my group chat because we
used to have a how to Get Away with Murder
group chat and we can oh, we would go and
how many people because I forgot we would have all
of our memes and we would talk about what was
going on with the latest episode was and there was just,
of course the iconic episode when you take off your wig.

(24:11):
We're like, yes, that's us right now, like watching like
taking off our wig and feeling free. And you're talking
about all these moments of just showing up and being
who you really are. And I think there's not enough spaces,
whether it's in fiction or in film, where black women
can just show up as they are and not feel
like they have to perform or be number one. They

(24:31):
can just be whole, real authentic women without any kind
of like adornments exactly exactly, you know. I think that's
what I learned when I went to Africa, the piece
of just being you can you tell us more about that.
I remember being in the Gambia and I was walking
down the street or something, and I think I went

(24:52):
into a storefront and I thought to myself, every time
I walked into a store, I was thinking, Okay, what
is the store? Oh my god, the security guard is
going to follow me. Let me show them that I'm
not here to steal. Blah blah blah blah. That's my
inner narrative. All of a sudden, I'm in Africa and
all of that is gone. You're just present in a

(25:14):
community where everybody looks like you, and that levity, that
peace that comes with just being and also the enormity
of seeing art as ritual. Because here's the thing. I
wrote the book because I had just an existential crisis

(25:35):
of meaning after the Brianna Taylor, Ahmad Aubrey, George Floyd,
the LGBTQ community, the elections, the COVID of it all.
It was just a real crisis of meaning. And when
you have a crisis of meaning, what ritual? What tool
do you have to find it? In other cultures, they

(25:56):
get together and they sing, they have songs, they have
the Jim Bay drum, They go out into the bush
for months at a time and they learn from their elders.
I learned that in Africa, the power of community, the
power of connection, the power of connecting that ritual to
something in life that gets us from one point to another. Yes,

(26:20):
So what became your ritual in this process of writing
the book starting in twenty and twenty, did you like
go into your room and get into a corner? Yes?
How did you find a way to write through this
pain and make it into this beautiful book. I got
up three o'clock in the morning, which by the way,
is hormone reset time. That seems the time that everybody
wakes up three in the morning. So I would wake

(26:42):
up at three in the morning, and I would come
to my movie room because it sound proof, and I
would be in the dark with my computer and I
would write for three four hours or more at a time,
and I would just write. I wouldn't edit at all yet,
I just regurgitate, just write, and i'd write a memory

(27:03):
that came to me. And then I would stop and
I would breathe, and I get a cup of tea.
And then if I thought something again, I would put
a little notepad next to my bed with a pen,
and I just write down one word that would unlock something.
Or I would call my sisters and ask them about

(27:24):
a story, because sometimes we remember things wrong. We remember
things that fits our needs at the time, whatever that is,
And that would be my ritual. Now that the book
is out, what are your sister's thing? Did you allow
them to read it or is it gonna be the
first time reading them? Most definitely okay, oh yeah, I
allowed them to read it. I just feel like truth

(27:48):
is so absolutely cathartic. I really do, and I tried
to tell the truth as much as I could, as
much as I could remember. But I also think that
in the book you see my love for my sisters.
I think that you see that I'm honoring them. I
don't think that you honor people by filtering out what

(28:12):
you see as the bad parts, because that's an apology,
that's not an uplift. Yeah, I see all of who
they were and all of what happened to me, and
I celebrate that. I didn't find out until I was
fifty three that young Viola was a survivor. I thought
that she was just a pain soaker upper. I didn't

(28:38):
know that. Literally, for me, my life has become all
the stages of my life where I went through a
radical transformation, like I went from one point to another.
That all of that counts as my relay race. The
six year old passing the baton to the fourteen year
old Viola and saying, I ran my leg of the race.

(29:01):
I was a little shoddy. I said a lot of
bad words, but listen, I got here, Yea and the
fourteen year old Viola passing the baton to the twenty
eight Viola who said, you know what I thought. I
grew up, I have my degree, I'm at Juilliard. I
just graduated, but there's some things that I really need
to work on. So I accept the baton. And then

(29:24):
that twenty eight year old Viola passed the baton to
the thirty four year old Viola who met Julius and
who wanted to accept an intimate relationship in my life
and I wanted to be able to give to it
and contribute my one hundred percent. And then that Viola
passing the baton to the forty something. You're Viola who
had the hysterectomy who then became a mom at forty five.

(29:48):
You know, and that's what life becomes. At each stage
of your life are a reassessment, because there are a
new set of obstacles with each stage that you face.
And my book became my ritual, and it also became
your legacy in such a powerful way. But you know,

(30:10):
you all so mentioned that part of your legacy is
forgiving your dad and forgiving who you were a as
a young person and saying like, okay, I am a survivor.
I am able to do all these beautiful things and
keep moving forward in my life. How has that process
of forgiving helped you become the person you are today?
How has that process been They say that therapy is

(30:32):
the point where you learned that your parents did the
best they could with what they had. So it's giving
up all hope of a different past. You're not trying
to change it. You're not trying to become the Brady Bunch.
My forgiveness was for me, Yeah, was to lighten my load,

(30:53):
That's what it was. It was a choice I made
because I really really wanted to love my father and
I saw more benefits to loving and forgiving him than
I did with not doing that right. And one of
the things that I know in life, I know even
with parenting, it's life doesn't always have to be pretty

(31:15):
to be right. Hi, I'm Viola Davis and you're listening
to a well read black girl. It's time for rapid

(31:36):
by y'all. So you just gotta the first thing that
comes to mind. I'm not great at this. I'm gonna
be better. We made it easy. So it's the first
one is are you an introvert or you are extrovert?
Introvert absolutely without question, cats or dogs, dogs love dogs.

(31:57):
Out of all the characters you've played, who would you
play over again? That's a hard one. I'm gonna say analyst, keating,
I miss her, O go to cocktail. Oh my god,
I'm gonna have to say sparkling brute wine, champagne. Ah. Yes,
always a celebration. Yeah. This one's a little bit longer,

(32:19):
so you'll have some time. You say the memoir that
you have considered being a teacher. If you had to teach,
what subject would it be? It would have to be
English because I was an honor student in English and
I was going to major in school until I decided
to be a theater major. I love books, and I

(32:41):
love words, and I love plays. I love all of it.
So I would teach that. You've made a billion English teachers.
So happy to hear that. That was wonderful. Thank you
so much for coming on the Well Read Black Girl Podcast.
We are so appreciative and congratulations on your new memoir.
Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, y'all, Like wow,

(33:06):
I am still buzzing from my conversation with Biola Davis,
the Viola Davis. I can't believe those words are coming
out of my mouth to have the opportunity to be
in conversation with such an icon as a blessing. Her
memoir is an unfiltered look into her entire life, and

(33:27):
she gives us courage to examine our own stories. Viola's
beautiful story is centered on overcoming the obstacles of her life,
and she wants us to embrace the full pain and
joy of being alive. Finding Me by Viola Davis is
out now, so pick up a copy. This is the

(33:51):
final episode of the season, and I'm just so proud.
I got to speak with so many of my favorite writers,
and I hope they became some of your new favorites too.
This season has been a lesson in endurance. With each interview,
I discovered a new way to nurture myself, to craft
the sense or simply how to reach for a story

(34:13):
that made me feel seen. Sharing these conversations with all
of you has been one of the most meaningful experience
I've had since starting the book club, and that says
a lot. Throughout this season, I've learned that by highlighting
the stories of women of color, by simply shifting their
lives from margins to center, we can uplift the narratives

(34:34):
of all women, no matter your race, your gender, your background,
our stories are universal. It's been awe inspiring to witness
our differences and our similarities. It makes me think of
this Audrey Lord quote and Sister Outsider. It is not
our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, except,
and celebrate those differences. For every community member that has

(34:59):
reached out on social media and our dms, shouting us
out in your bookstore and sending episodes to your friends
and family, I see you and I appreciate you. It
would mean the world world to me if we can
continue sharing and downloading all the episodes from the season,
start from the very first one, which is a very
special episode for me. Until next time. Thank you for

(35:24):
listening to Well Read Black Girl. Well Read black Girl
is a production of Pushkin Industries. It is written and

(35:47):
hosted by me Glory Dam and produced by Scher Vincent
and Brittany Brown. Our associate editor is Keishall Williams. Our
engineer is Amanda ka Wang, and our showrunner is Sasha Matthias.
Special thanks to Vicki Merrick and Lisa Dunn. Our executive
producers are Mia Lobell and Lee taal Molad at Pushkin

(36:11):
thanks to Heather Fane, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrau, Julia Barton,
Jen Goera, John Schnars, and Jacob Wiseberg. You can find
me on Twitter and Instagram at Well Read black Girl.
You can find Pushkin and all social media platforms at
Pushkin Pods, and you can sign up for our newsletter

(36:32):
at pushkin dot Fm. If you have a question or recommendation,
or you just want to say hi, email us at
WRBG at pushkin dot Fm. If you love this show
and others from Pushkin industry, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus.
Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content

(36:53):
and uninterrupted listening for four ninety nine a month. Look
for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you're
already a subscriber, make sure to check out my exclusive
Bookmark series. You'll hear our full slate of extended interviews
with book club members, bookstore owners, more, and you'll hear
what's on my mind, on my Radar and what's on

(37:14):
my reading list this season. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
listen on iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you like
to listen