July 4, 2019 • 42 mins
In the second part of this special episode, Dani sits down with Nora McInerny from the podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Danny Shapiro and this is a special bonus episode of
Family Secrets. This summer, the wonderful Nora mcinnerney, host of
(00:20):
the podcast Terrible Thanks For Asking, joined me for a
live taping of Family Secrets at Rizzoli Bookstore in New
York City. This is part two of our conversation. So,
so we're going to open it up to questions, and
(00:40):
there's a mic up here. Um, so anybody who has
a question should come up and kind of I know,
it's a little My favorite part of any event is
just the silence and then the mercy when someone stands
up and then you hope she's asking a question, but
maybe she just wants a sparkling water. Now she's gonna
ask a question. What angel Um. I'm a bit more
(01:02):
familiar with Danny life now there from There was Your Life,
nors m very ser loss Um. I was curious a
few years ago. I think there was a popular book
Calum Breath Becomes singer Um. I guess it's kind of
written from the other perspective where the doctor was very sick.
(01:22):
I think he may also had a bring tumor of
some sort. And what I'm wondering whether you read that
book and how does it make you feel, because it
is kind of from the opposite side. Um, When Breath,
When Breath becomes There is by Paul Colin Eathi and
or Calanthi and uh. He was He was a physician,
(01:43):
and I think he had lung cancer and very he
had all the cancers and he wrote a beautiful memoir
and his wife finished it, Lucy finished it for him.
And I could not read it for the longest time.
And I got maybe a hundred of them gifted to me,
people You're gonna love this book, and I was like, no,
I won't. I'll show you, No, I won't. I did
(02:05):
read it um eventually, and it was oddly comforting. It
was oddly comforting. Aaron had a very different personality than Paul.
Aaron was just but he was also so buoyant. Aaron
was just so happy and alive. And he always told
me like, this is okay. It's okay. Even when I
(02:27):
was bawling, like no, it's not you have a brain cancer.
He was like, it's okay, it's okay. And Paul's book
made me feel like maybe it really was and in it,
he writes this beautiful letter to his daughter, and I
remember being jealous when I read that, because I had
asked Aaron, do you want to write a letter to
our son or maybe a couple of letters, like maybe
(02:49):
you write one for his like sweet sixteen. I don't
know if boys even have one. Also, I didn't have one.
I grew up in the Midwest. I was like, do
I get a car? My dad was like, are you
on drugs? Like what? I was like, well, I've been
watching a lot of commercials. Um. But he writes this
beautiful letter to his daughter, and I remember asking Aaron
about that and he was like what No, he was
so uncomfortable, like what am I gonna write? Like, Hi, son,
(03:11):
Well I'm dead? And so he didn't. He didn't do that.
But I do think of my first book as as
that for Ralph, because I couldn't do that. But when
Breath Becomes airs as a very incredible book. It was
very comforting for me, but it was very resistant to
reading it. And whenever somebody is around somebody who's grieving
(03:32):
and they're like what should I do? What should I do?
I'm like, I mean, you can give him a book Um,
they might not read it, but it is a really
nice gesture. So if you're wondering what to get the
grieving person who has everything, not a hot dish, they've
got enough of those. Give him a book or a plant.
Not not your question, but you know it asked another question.
(03:55):
I just interviewed a guest for season two, The Family Secrets.
It's launching in late August, and it's um, someone who's
whose wife recently passed away, and the secret involves that
they chose not to tell their their their children that
she was dying, and they're quite grown children. But she
(04:15):
talked about the way that she didn't want the casseroles,
like she just did not want that. She wanted to
be the bringer of the casseroles, not the receiver of
the casseroles. And um, it's funny the way I mean funny,
but the way that casseroles and hot dishes have become
like the symbol of all illness and what you know,
(04:38):
people want to do something right, they want to they
want to cook, they want to do they want to
do something, and they don't know what to do. Yeah,
I mean, food is helpful, but at the time I
was I was not eating casserole. I was eating like
a five pound bag of sour Patch kids, and that's
hard to like. It's hard to express someone that can
we bring something? I'm like, yeah, you can bring like, um,
I don't like a twelve pack of coke would be nice. Uh,
(05:02):
bag of taco bell. Actually someone did deliver taco bell.
That was a lovely gift. So. I just recently discovered
both your podcasts and I love them both. And I
am in complete agreement with Nora that you really should
if you had like a podcast where you just spoke quietly,
I'd probably could fall asleep to it. You have an
amazing SMR obviously, I was actually gonna stay in the
(05:23):
shapiro a SMR YouTube channel check it out later. I would, yes,
for people don't know what SMR is. It just people
talking really quietly and tapping and tapping their nails, and
you could just be like I'm Danny Shapira and I'm
an open a plastic selfing bag. Yeah I would. I
would download it. I'm already subscribed to exactly UM. So
(05:44):
I love both of your podcasts. I Uh. There are
certain ones though, where I see um, I see the
description before and I'm like, I don't know if I
can listen to it quite yet, because they can be
pretty intense. Was there one of your podcasts, one of
your episodes that was the hardest, really the most difficult
for you to do? I would I would say in
the first season it was the episode UM that's called
(06:07):
Band of Men. Um. I had been contacted a number
of years earlier by Um, a man who had gone
to the same high school as me. UM, and I
didn't know him. He was a couple of years younger
than than I was, so we hadn't been in each
other's social circles. But it had turned out that he
was one of a really significant number of boys who
(06:27):
was sexually abused by a very charismatic social studies teacher
slash boy Scouts leader slash you know, wilderness counselor in
the at the camp all the boys went to. He
was just a complete groomer of of boys of a
very young age, sort of ages ten to twelve. And
he had come to me years earlier because he knew
(06:49):
that I was a writer and that I knew a
lot of writers in journalists and maybe I could help
him get the story out. And I had tried. I
spoke with a friend of mine at sixty minutes. I
really wanted to help these guys be able to tell
their story. The school was behaving badly. It was just
a very upsetting, infuriating story, and I wasn't able to
because the school was like a nice private school in
(07:10):
New Jersey. But it wasn't St. Paul's, you know, it
wasn't horas Man. There had already been these stories. There
was like enough boy abuse stories out there apparently, So
when I was launching Family Secrets, I approached him and
I said, I think I do have a way of
getting your story out, um. But it was an extremely
emotional interview. That was one of the ones that I
(07:31):
did in my son's old playroom with the with the
stuff hippopotamus and the and there was something about seeing
it's actually in my introduction to that episode, being in
this boy's playroom, you know, as his mom and thinking
about this this long ago boy who had just been
through this horrific, horrific I mean, I think I think
(07:53):
we spent two and a half hours on that particular
conversation interview, you know, to ultimately kind of carve of
it the story that needed to be told, but it was.
And then the more that I knew about it, the
more that I realized how many of those boys I
had known, you know, as as a kid. So I
had a very it was personal. The episode that I
(08:13):
was thinking of was actually very, very similar. I interviewed
this woman named Rachel and she was a victim of
Larry Nasser's and she didn't even know it, like she
was one of the she was one of the girls
who had defended him, essentially, and was like, what are
you talking about? And that was also a two and
a half hour conversation, and then it was several hours
(08:33):
of me transcribing and like listening to it over and
over while I was on winter break with my kids,
and and then also just looking around me at just
all of the ways that that that girls are discredited
and that they're sort of hyper sexualized in ways that
(08:53):
you don't even necessarily think about. Um, yeah, that was
That was a really great winter break. I think I
sat in a room and cried for like half a day,
and the kids were like, is she okay? My husband
was like, oh, she's great, Yeah, she'll be out. And
then um, there's an episode in the first season called Semperify,
(09:15):
and it's about It started with with my dad. My
dad was a marine in Vietnam and he had left
a comment on like the Virtual Vietnam. While you can
leave a you can leave a comment on the memorial
for somebody. And I was trying to piece together the
(09:39):
stories that my dad had told me about his time
in Vietnam. There were not many, but for some reason
he told them to me. My brothers were like, well,
I didn't, so I had nobody to like compare them too.
And I went to the Marine Corps reunion that my
dad had never gone to. I got in touch with
all these guys that my dad was looking for. They
were looking for him, but I mean it was nine.
(10:02):
They all spelled each other's names wrong, by the way,
like on the back of on the back of the
three photos they had. And so I found these guys
and I went to this reunion and I figured out
the story that I was thinking about. And also I
just spent hours talking to these men that everybody had
told me would not talk to me. And they sat
in a hotel room with me and with my producer
(10:25):
Hans holding his arms up like this with a with
a mic he sat there for five hours silently while
I just wept, and they wept, not even necessarily about
the story that I was there for. And I just
felt like this immense sense of everything that my dad
had gone through and everything that he had he had
carried and never told us about. And I just felt
(10:48):
really heavy and wrung out. And I was also secretly
pregnant and um, and I just remember going back to
my hotel and helped my hotel room night after night.
We're there for four days, and just crying so hard
that my head hurts, and putting that episode together, crying
in the studio with Hans and and and crying as
(11:11):
we got a letter from the man who's at the
center of the story of boy who's at the center
of the story, the boy who died in this worthless way,
and all of these men looking at me and telling
me that they would go back because you have to
tell yourself it was worth it. You have to. And
I got a letter from his family afterwards, after the
episode came out that said thank you, and I will
(11:33):
go home and ball about that tonight. To put that
episode is just very um. That's probably the most important
one to me. And also the hardest to make. Yeah,
we're going to pause for a moment. Hey, it's really
cool to see you guys in person. Um So, kind
(11:54):
of on the note of what you were just talking about,
you both have children, Can you talk about how your
work and your family co exist? More like how how
do you make those episodes? And then turned back to
your kid? Oh there, you know husband? Remember should we
have your son? Answered this one? Yeah, hey, Jacob, where
(12:15):
are you? My son's here somewhere. Um, you can stay there,
It's okay. So so my my my kid is now
you know, a young man. Um So it feels a
little bit different now. But throughout my writing life, much
of which coincided with his childhood, I had to find
(12:35):
a way to go to these places that were scary, dark, painful,
and not have them enveloped me. So I found myself
almost visualizing it as a place inside of me where
I could go that was small, and that when I
(12:55):
would go there, it would expand and it would become
the whole world. And then I could be in that
world and swim around in that world and do whatever
I needed to do in that world. Um. But then
when I needed to leave that world, I could almost
like a deep sea diver, like just push up from
it and it would contract again and it would be
there waiting for me. And it wasn't like it wasn't
something that I was feeling all the time. But it
(13:17):
was kind of contained. It didn't take me over, um,
and you know, so I could be you know, me
as a mom and make lunch and put dinner on
the table, and help with homework and and be in.
I very acutely did not want to miss my family's
(13:40):
life as a young family. I had this feeling I'd
seen it too many times of just and and all
the truisms that people say it goes by so fast.
I mean it doesn't. It doesn't you know that the
days are long and the years are short. Um. But
I didn't. I didn't want to miss it. I didn't
want to look back. I was driven by not wanting
to look back and thinking, you know, I just I
(14:01):
missed it. I was too focused on, you know, my
my work, because my work is incredibly important to me
and I had big, um creative ambitions for it. But
I also had this opportunity to have this beautiful family
life that I wanted to have, So I I was
always kind of like even an example would be I
(14:22):
realized early on, uh, I was always a morning writer,
and if I didn't get to work first thing in
the morning, if I didn't roll out of bed and
get to work, then the work wouldn't happen. But now
I had a kid, so there was something definitely in
the way between rolling and bed and getting to work.
There was all sorts of other things that had to
happen to have his day get started. And and I
(14:42):
didn't want to just zone out on it and be
like the sort of did I get up? Did I
you know, like what has happened? Um? And so I
learned to like find a pause button, like to be
able to actually be like, all right, I'm I'm going
to be able to get up and be present and
you know, make the eggs and pack the lunch box
(15:03):
and drive to school and come back and then and
then I can stop the pause button and start and
start the day again. Um. Which was something that I
learned how to do out of necessity. Wasn't something that
I knew how to do, but I but I learned
how to do it. And I also became much more
resourceful in terms of um my time, Like, if I
(15:26):
had an hour, I used the hour. If I had
two hours, I used Like. The worst thing for me
was feeling like, Wow, I had that time, and I
just frittered it away because I got in my own
way and my resistance and my frustration got the better
of me. And then and then I learned that if
I did that, i'd really like be so mad at
myself at the end of the day that I wouldn't
want to be me. So I learned how to kind
(15:48):
of do end runs around that kind of experience. This
event was supposed to be on Wednesday night, and then
I realized that um kindergarten graduation is Wednesday, and I
don't let you know these things. They don't let you know.
I'm like, what it feels like this could have gotten
on the calendar a little sooner. Also, do I read
all the emails? No, okay, I don't. We get a
(16:10):
lot of them. Um, and Danny was like, we'll figure
it out. So I know that I know that you
were that kind of mom, because you were awesome about that. Well.
I remember there's a annual writer's conference called a w
P and and it was I think some year when
my son was little. It was in maybe Washington, d C.
And I was supposed to be on a panel about
(16:31):
motherhood and writing. And on the morning that I was
supposed to head to d C from my panel on
motherhood and writing, there was a blizzard in Connecticut and
so snow day was called and I couldn't go to
the panel on motherhood and writing, which was an object
lesson in motherhood and writing. Yeah, it really is. Um
I I've not always been that intentional and I I
(16:54):
mean I went to work two days after I had
a baby. Part of it that was EP D and
PP and part of it was just like, oh my gosh,
are they gonna not, you know, support this if I
don't like, get right back to work. And also part
of it was I just I felt so attached to
the thing that I was making I didn't feel like
I could stop. And we have a two year old,
(17:15):
a six year old, a twelve year old, and a
seventeen year old. That's a wide range of humanity. And
because the older kids are newer to me, I really
don't want to miss anything about their lives. I want
to be there for middle school, I want to be
there for for high school stuff. Also it's just frankly
more interesting than preschool stuff. I got to be honest,
I'm like, wow, so what's happening? Like, tell me everything?
(17:39):
Like Also, seventh graders feel like very superior to sixth
graders in a way that's fascinating to me. I'm like,
remember that was you last year? And she's like was it?
Like it was? Um so at first. And Also I'm
self employed. Everything that I do is is basically on
a freelance basis, and that means your day could end
never and my days were ever ending and I would
(18:01):
open my laptop at ten and the kids noticed, and
my husband definitely noticed, and that felt terrible. And now
I'm just very like I have the most strict routine
out of anybody. I go to bed so early, I
wake up early, I go to the gym with my
biggest kid. Then I write for two hours. You might
be wondering where the kids. My husband's taking care of them, Okay,
(18:23):
he's where a man belongs in the kitchen, making breakfast
for the kids, getting him ready for school. And then
my day ends at three, so I can be there,
um too, when I remember to pick them up, I
can be there, am I always know, but I took
I took like email off my phone. I don't. I
don't do this as much because they are so interesting
(18:48):
and also if it's that urgent, maybe it's um like
a better be life or death at this point, which
I love. Like younger people, all the youths who are
like in their twenties, they just won't work like that.
They just will not. They're like, oh no, I don't
I'm not going to check my email at night, Like whoa,
look at those boundaries. It's bonkers. But when I was four,
(19:10):
I was like, I will do whatever you want. You
want me to come to your house and feed your
hamster for no money, boss, I'm there. True story. It's
like oh yeah, no, I mean it's a two hour
train ride, but yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it.
And like kids now in their twenties, like even early thirties,
they're like, oh no, I don't do that. No, I'm sorry.
I go to yoga that night. It's amazing. It's amazing.
(19:33):
Be like these gen zers there, they really they got
to figure it out. It's because their their parents sent
them to therapy. So uh, I was just wondering what
podcasts you guys listened to I listened to, Okay, my
favorite podcast is Who Weekly because it is pop culture
(19:53):
candy for me. It's everything you need to know about
the celebrities you don't so, you know, you always pick
up like an US weekly and you're like, who what
is this about? And it's two writers who I think
used to work for New York Magazine, Lindsay Weber Bobby Finger.
They're so funny and they just it's it's basically an
analysis of the celebrity industrial complex, where like everybody is
(20:16):
famous now, um, and you can't figure out why. And
it's not mean, but it's very, very, very funny, and
it comes out on Tuesdays and Fridays. And I also
listened to You Call Your Girlfriend. Those are the two
that I listened to every episode every week. And also
Forever thirty five podcast about the things we do to
take care of ourselves. And I listen to I Just,
(20:39):
I Just We're back on the jet ski Guys. I'm
literally flipping through the on my phone. I really I
try to listen to podcasts that I would never make,
if that makes sense, because they're just so they're so
different from what I do. They like, they just sit
down and talk and just like, I don't know if
you're this way, But if I'm writing a memoir, I
(21:00):
can't read any memoirs. I really can't. And if I'm
uh writing a novel, of which I've I've done one
in progress, Well that's not a good example because I
guess all I read is novels right now. But if
I'm in the middle of creating podcasts a podcast, I
can't listen to podcasts that are similar to mine. But
when I'm not, then I listened to sad narrative podcasts. Yeah,
(21:23):
I would say that's true for me too. I actually
stopped listening to Terrible Things for Asking while I was
making Season one of Family Secrets because what is that
dip in my DNA alright down by one? Because it
felt like, um, you know, in in writing, there's you know,
we talk a lot about voice, and I stay away
(21:44):
from work that feels that it could sort of seep
into my voice in some way. Um, And that's usually
work that has some kind of overlap or similarity. One
podcast I've consistently listened to is Heavyweight. Um. Yes, jeez, Louise,
just it's really really good storytelling. Um. See some nodding heads. Yeah,
(22:05):
I can tell you also the ones that I tend
to kind of shy away from our like, you know,
two girls sitting around talking, you know, like just the
the kind of loose banter that doesn't really feel like
it's about anything. I'm not naming names, but I just
there's just a feeling of like just overhearing something that's
(22:28):
happening at the next table in the restaurant when you're
bored and you're waiting for your dinner companion, and just
it's just people talking. And I think it's because you
and I both spend so much time creating something that
feels that's very that's very produced, that I tend to
gravitate more towards those. But I also have been really
enjoying the limited series, you know, the I loved um
(22:49):
the the dropout, you know, as did a lot of people.
It was just just just I just wanted to well,
that was so completely freaky. I mean, not really a
spoiler alert if any of you haven't listened to it,
but her her voice, um, Elizabeth's Holmes. Yeah, are you
(23:10):
talking about my voice? Question about my voice? Is it fake?
Your voice was made up? Voice? Is made up and
it sounds it sounds like this, and it's like, how
do you not know that she was doing a voice disguise?
It sounds like when your brother's voice is not changed
and he tries to answer the phone Hello, but you're
like really hearing the pathology like in action. And I
(23:33):
preferred listening to it as a podcast then watching UM,
the documentary about I guess was better. That's why. And
as sort of a follow up to that, what kind
of books do you like to read while you're actually writing?
And it can be either when you're writing memoirs or
when you're writing fiction or non fiction. I have so
many piles of different books for different um for different reasons.
(23:56):
I mean like I'm entering a period of time right
now where I feel like I can read for pleasure
UM in a way that I haven't been able to
do in a while, Like there's just a break in
my UM. Because when you're a writer and you're on tour,
as I have been since January, I will often be
reading the books of people that I'm doing events with,
and sometimes they're really pleasurable, but they're not necessarily the
books that I would pick up and say this is
(24:16):
what I want to read next. I um just started
a beautiful novel, UM first novel debut called UM Disappearing
Country by Julia phillips Um. That's been getting really gorgeous reviews.
I dip into, Oh, I'm reading Sally Rooney's Normal People
so good. It's just so good. Um. I love great writing,
(24:39):
and I can't read for story if the writing isn't beautiful.
And I can forgive a lot when it comes to
story if the writing is beautiful and I just fall
into it and I just want to be there. I
want to kind of be in in those sentences. Um,
what else I I lose? They go like titles go
(25:00):
right over my head. If I'm writing memoir, then I
mainly just want to read old books that I've already read.
So The Loved One, Evelyn Wis, all these all these
books that like you read when you were seventeen or sixteen,
and you're like, I bet that was a really good
book and I was just reading it to get to
the you know, ap English final. Um. And if I'm
(25:21):
writing the podcast and I'm just reading novels that's all
I've been reading lately, I can forgive basically anything like,
I'm just I'm just reading just to like have fun
and be alone. And I read every single day and
I read normal People and it made me really sad.
I was like, wow, this is about how much I
hated myself in my twenties. Uh. And I just read Ghosted,
(25:44):
which was very absorbing. Absorbing. It's a new word, the
only here here. Um, it's a really it's a good story.
It's a really good story. And I'm reading Red White
and Royal Blue. Ah, I novel about the that the
first son falling in love with the Prince of England.
(26:09):
What would happen? We'll find out do they hate each other?
It's like a classic rom com, only with uh, gay
teenage boys. It's wonderful. Well, you know you're you're reminding
me too, I am. So. I've been producing season two
of Family Secrets, and and probably we should rename Season
two of Family Secrets Writers with Family Secrets, because eight
(26:30):
out of ten of my guests are writers. Um and um,
so I've been I've been reading their books in preparation
and uh, well, one of them, I was familiar with
his very familiar with his work, and um just thought
he would have a lot to say about shame and secrecy,
shame being the thing that's always kind of thrumming underneath
anything that's secret, and that's u. K. S. A. Lehman.
(26:53):
His memoir Heavy, So he's one of the guests and
is a beautiful book that he's a memoir, but he
addresses it to his mother, so it's in the in
the in the second person, in the you voice. There's
also a wonderful memoir that just came out recently, and
she's also going to be a guest on season two.
Her name is Brigette M. Davis and the books called
the World according to Fannie Davis. Her mother Fannie Davis.
(27:16):
Brigette was raised in Detroit in the sixties and seventies
and her mother was a numbers runner and that's how
she supported her family. And it's just this fantastic story
of like a family keeping the mother's secrets and um.
So that like I have a lot of books that
have just there's like scribbled in the margins and everywhere
with I was actually going to be on a panel
with Brigette, and so I was reading her book in
(27:37):
preparation for being on the panel. And as soon as
I started reading her book. I was like, oh, and
she was amazing. Hi. I want to thank you guys
so much. Um. So, I am donor conceived. I found
out via DNA testing little over a year and a
half ago. Um And I also um in my career,
I worked in Alzheimer's care and hospice. I actually had
a client who was about thirty five with young children
(28:00):
died of a brain cancer. UM. So, kind of my
question is is when I found out I was donor conceived,
there were other big stresses going on in my life.
There were some family mental breakdowns, there were marriage issues.
I had just had a baby, I had a toddler. Um.
You know, so there was a lot going on, a
lot um and it's very difficult for people to understand
(28:22):
like intense trauma. Um And so my question for both
of you having been through these kind of unimaginable thing
after saying after saying within a short period of time
where it's people don't understand it, or people are just
kind of tired of it, or people just think it's
negative when it's really like processing, what do you see
as the state of kind of empathy in our society? Like,
(28:47):
what do you see as maybe kind of like your
role in that um and kind of educating people, because
that's something I like to write about in my kind
of donor conception advocacy. A lot is you know, kind
of trauma recovery and how we kind of process these
things and kind of normal and how human it is.
So I'm wondering what your perspectives are having been through
(29:07):
those things and also being public figures who have podcasts
and books, like what you see from people in your
personal life and also what you see from from talking
with people in the general public about those things. Those
are great. Those are really great questions and um ones
that I feel like I've been grappling with really intensely
in the last and the last just in the last
few years. I Mean you'd think I would say I've
(29:29):
been grappling with them all my life as a writer,
but it really feels much more intense in the last
few years. And one of the things about writing Inheritance,
which was something that I knew that I had to
do almost instantly. I mean, I made this discovery and
I started thinking about how I was going to process
it in language, because that's how I process everything, and
(29:52):
I need to be able to find the shape and
the language for it or else I'm not going to
understand it um And but I also knew that it
was an experience that wasn't going to be a slam
dunk in terms of people's empathic response, because it was
something out side of the realm of what what people
(30:17):
have thought about. So I had written other books in
which you know, my son was sick as a baby, Well,
we understand that, you know, anybody's going to have some
empathy for that. My my dad died in a car accident.
We understand that we don't have to have been through
those experiences, but we think, like, wow, I know, I know,
I can imagine how I would feel if I had
a childhoo was sick, or I can imagine how I
would feel if I lost a parent in that way.
(30:39):
But try out, I'm fifty four years old, and I'd
take a DNA test and I discovered that the dad
who raised me wasn't my dad, and that actually I
was conceived by a sperm donor. Is like, what what
would that be? And and you know, and then there
are people like it's one of the reasons why I
don't read, like read or comments on things, because there's
like like a version of wow, wow, wow, Like what
(30:59):
is a big deal? I mean, so what, She's had
a great life, She's here, isn't she She should be
pleased at this terrific you know, turn of events, and
and you know who cares Like it's like get over it.
It's like one or under the bridge. And I knew
that in the writing of it that I had to
actually aim for and think about what was universal about
(31:24):
my experience, which is not something I've ever had to
do as a writer. It's something that I would counsel
people against doing because it makes you sort of self conscious,
like what's universal about my experience? But I had to
and I and I so I found myself thinking what
am I learning about identity? What am I learning about
what makes a father a father? What am I learning
about nature and nurture? That I can find a way
(31:46):
to impart so that I can connect with the reader,
um and and like push the reader toward, provoke the
reader toward a kind of understanding of Oh I see wow,
that would be really complicated to make sense, really provoking empathy,
which is what I felt like I had to be
(32:07):
doing in this case. Um, everything that we do is
aimed around empathy versus pity. It's a huge distinction for
the show. It's a huge distinction for uh, what we
do with Still Kicking, what we do with the Hot
Young Widows Club, which is a real group that I have,
(32:28):
which is that nobody needs you to feel bad for them,
but there are plenty of ways to do that, and
pity is like the cheapest emotion we have. That's why
we're so generous with it. We're just like, you can
have some you can I can feel bad for literally anyone.
I'm so good at it. But empathy does require imagination,
and most people really are not that imaginative. It takes
(32:50):
a lot of energy to be empathetic. So the stories
that we look at on our show are really meant
to stretch that I really meant to. We listen to
it as we're writing it, and we listen to it
as as an unempathetic person, and when we do group
listens for the draft episodes, we say like, well, okay,
(33:14):
so why wouldn't this be a thing. And some of
the narration is meant to cut those reflexes off from
the listener and to say, like, I know that you
might be thinking this, but think about it this way,
because I do want to create episodes that that can
be helpful for other people, and that can help other
(33:36):
people help the people around them stretched so that you
who feel very, very beleaguered by trying to bring everyone
in your life along with you and this thing that
they think is too sad, have something to show that's like, look,
it's not just me, Look this is this is this
is something that a lot of people feel. So listen
to this. Think of it this way. So we've had
(33:57):
a lot of I mean, it's easy to feel You
can feel ad for somebody who as a has a
has a dead baby. You can feel bad for somebody
who has a has a dead husband. But can you
feel for someone who has a more complicated story, Because
the thing is all of those stories are always more complicated.
But it's it's hard for you, like on the personal level,
(34:20):
Like it is hard when people don't get it. And
what I would say to you and to anybody here,
a lot of people in your life just won't. And
so if you can take that off your plate. You
are not here to make everybody understand absolutely everything that
you feel. It's impossible to do. That is going to
free up a lot of anguish for you. Yeah, it
(34:43):
strikes me to listening to you that pity is something
that separates, right Like, if I am pitying you, it
means that I'm on one side of this divide and
you're on the other side. Um, if I'm pitying, it
means you're pitiable and I'm not. And empathy has to
do us. We are all in this together. This could
(35:05):
be you, this could be me, this could be any
one of us at any given moment, and we are
all always, you know, always in that place. Um. And
I think empathy comes from that understanding, even when it's
and and and know there will be failures of empathy constantly.
But when you're describing what you do in the scripts
(35:26):
and in the voiceover in your show, is precisely what
I was talking about earlier when I when I described
trying to hold a story, it's it's you know, it's
your job, and it's my job as a host of
a show like this to say, wait a minute, Um,
We're gonna turn this a little bit here. I'm gonna
get inside of your head, listener, and I know what
(35:46):
you're thinking, but here's here's a pivot. Here's another way
of looking at it, And that's that's that's the holding
I think of this kind of work, and I think
a lack of empathy comes from this need to compare
your story against somebody else's, which is a really sort
of reflexive thing that people do. Right, Like, well, I mean,
(36:09):
at least the dad you had was pretty good, right,
so when we at least each other, when we just
each other, all of these things that sort of minimize
the experience that you don't even think that they do,
but they do. It immediately shuts off your capability for empathy.
So some of the stories that we pick, our stories
that you might not think of as that terrible, right,
(36:33):
um is is having a stutter that terrible? Well, if
it's the biggest thing in your life, if it has
kept you separate from the life that you want to
live and from connecting with people the way you want to, yeah,
it is. And nobody benefits from this sort of comparison
of this is better or this is worse. Nobody like
(36:54):
when you're the person trying to sort of hold your
terrible thing up above somebody else's, Like, does that make
you feel better? Not? Usually? Not? Usually So that concludes
my answer. Do you think of podcasting as a new
community that you're building? Because I find that we're all
(37:17):
creating conversations. Now it used to be like what you
heard on Oprah? And now it's like, oh, did you
hear the story on you know, such and such a podcast?
That it's creating conversation and community and conversations around grief
and empathy. Like do you do you think about that
as you're creating because I find it on the other
end as a listener that it's happening more in conversation,
(37:38):
that we're creating community around being able to open conversations
based on topics. I mean, I think I've come to
understand that as I've been making family secrets, and also
as I've been on tour for Inheritance, and I realized
that my events start becoming sort of de factove support
groups for people. People have come to my events and
then people help them discover their biological fathers. I mean,
(37:59):
all sorts of astounding things have happened because people are
gathering and we want to gather, you know, we want
to gather. We're hungry for gathering because we feel I think,
you know, so many of us so isolated by this,
you know, and by you know, being working remotely or
constantly being on our devices. UM. In this season, as
(38:20):
we're leading up to season two of Family Secrets, UM,
my producers made an eight hundred number especially eight eight
eight secret zero where UM where listeners can actually call
in and anonymously tell their own secrets. And I love
them too. At first, I thought, really, and and it's
it's this is fantastic thing because I think that sense
(38:41):
of piercing aloneness, especially when it comes to emotions that
make us feel alone. We feel alone when we grieve
so alone, we feel alone when um, we are the
keeper of a secret or a secret has been kept
from us UM and then when it gets revealed, you know,
(39:02):
week after week, when there's you know, these kinds of
conversations that are kind of exploding some of the shame
and isolation surrounding like these kinds of stories. I think
that that's part of what's creating community, because it's people
even if they're listening to these podcasts alone in their
cars or late at night, or you know, when they're
by themselves, there's a sense of oh, I'm not alone.
(39:23):
I'm not alone I'm not alone. And then and then
that I think does start to really build, um, build
something of a community. I don't know if it's unique
to podcasting. I think just the intersection of Internet and
making something just creates more opportunity for fandom and for
(39:44):
and for people who like something to gather around something
that that they enjoy. So I think that you kind
of find this around anything people like enough. Yeah, so um,
the compliment that we're just paid is, well, people seem
more comfortable. You're creating a language around these hard things.
And I think I'm I'm just saying a lot of
(40:05):
things that have been said by a lot of different people.
I don't think I've said literally anything original, um, in
my entire life. Possibly I don't want to yet I
don't think so. Um all there's nothing new under this on.
Everything has been, Everything has been said. People have always
been dying. Um, it felt like my husband was the
first to die, but in fact my mom's was I'm
(40:26):
just kidding. Uh and uh yeah, So I think I'm
just saying things louder and in a different way and
in a newer medium. But and and also I can't
take all the credit, and I don't think podcasting can
take all the credit for that. But I do think
that also because that question asked another question, which is,
(40:48):
every single time I do any events, someone's like, I
wanted to write a book about my husband dying, but
you did it. I didn't write a book about your
husband dying. Go write your own book, Go make your
own podcast, Go tell your own story, whatever it is,
because it's yours. And that's that's the difference between all
of this is like it is yours and the people
around you, strangers, they need to hear how you are
(41:10):
getting through, whatever you're getting through. And because every single yes,
the stories of grief, stories of war, stories of you know,
love and loss and heartbreak, um, you know they've they've
all been told. There is there is no new story
under the sun. But every single telling of a story
(41:30):
is its own individual snowflake of a story. Always. Otherwise
we'd be done, you know, we'd be done. We'd be
done with literature, we'd be done with art. We've been done.
You can still write that Devil's Where product book. I
am going to you because you know there's Hamster in
that book. There there is room for a whole another
boss and a whole another young woman showing up in
(41:52):
New York. Yeah, thank you, Maybe it will, but that
that really is I mean, I can't tell you how
often I hear that from students. It's like, Oh, it's
it's diversion of answering yourself to say, oh, that's been done,
so I can't do it. And was that. I think
that this concludes. I'd like to thank Resoli Bookstore for
(42:24):
hosting the live taping of Family Secrets and Derrek Clemens
for recording it. And i'd like to thank Nora mcinnerney.
If you haven't already, be sure to check out and
subscribe to her podcast, Terrible Thanks for asking. Family Secrets
is an i Heeart Media production. For more podcasts for
(42:52):
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Danny Shapiro and this is a special bonus episode of
Family Secrets. This summer, the wonderful Nora mcinnerney, host of
(00:20):
the podcast Terrible Thanks For Asking, joined me for a
live taping of Family Secrets at Rizzoli Bookstore in New
York City. This is part two of our conversation. So,
so we're going to open it up to questions, and
(00:40):
there's a mic up here. Um, so anybody who has
a question should come up and kind of I know,
it's a little My favorite part of any event is
just the silence and then the mercy when someone stands
up and then you hope she's asking a question, but
maybe she just wants a sparkling water. Now she's gonna
ask a question. What angel Um. I'm a bit more
(01:02):
familiar with Danny life now there from There was Your Life,
nors m very ser loss Um. I was curious a
few years ago. I think there was a popular book
Calum Breath Becomes singer Um. I guess it's kind of
written from the other perspective where the doctor was very sick.
(01:22):
I think he may also had a bring tumor of
some sort. And what I'm wondering whether you read that
book and how does it make you feel, because it
is kind of from the opposite side. Um, When Breath,
When Breath becomes There is by Paul Colin Eathi and
or Calanthi and uh. He was He was a physician,
(01:43):
and I think he had lung cancer and very he
had all the cancers and he wrote a beautiful memoir
and his wife finished it, Lucy finished it for him.
And I could not read it for the longest time.
And I got maybe a hundred of them gifted to me,
people You're gonna love this book, and I was like, no,
I won't. I'll show you, No, I won't. I did
(02:05):
read it um eventually, and it was oddly comforting. It
was oddly comforting. Aaron had a very different personality than Paul.
Aaron was just but he was also so buoyant. Aaron
was just so happy and alive. And he always told
me like, this is okay. It's okay. Even when I
(02:27):
was bawling, like no, it's not you have a brain cancer.
He was like, it's okay, it's okay. And Paul's book
made me feel like maybe it really was and in it,
he writes this beautiful letter to his daughter, and I
remember being jealous when I read that, because I had
asked Aaron, do you want to write a letter to
our son or maybe a couple of letters, like maybe
(02:49):
you write one for his like sweet sixteen. I don't
know if boys even have one. Also, I didn't have one.
I grew up in the Midwest. I was like, do
I get a car? My dad was like, are you
on drugs? Like what? I was like, well, I've been
watching a lot of commercials. Um. But he writes this
beautiful letter to his daughter, and I remember asking Aaron
about that and he was like what No, he was
so uncomfortable, like what am I gonna write? Like, Hi, son,
(03:11):
Well I'm dead? And so he didn't. He didn't do that.
But I do think of my first book as as
that for Ralph, because I couldn't do that. But when
Breath Becomes airs as a very incredible book. It was
very comforting for me, but it was very resistant to
reading it. And whenever somebody is around somebody who's grieving
(03:32):
and they're like what should I do? What should I do?
I'm like, I mean, you can give him a book Um,
they might not read it, but it is a really
nice gesture. So if you're wondering what to get the
grieving person who has everything, not a hot dish, they've
got enough of those. Give him a book or a plant.
Not not your question, but you know it asked another question.
(03:55):
I just interviewed a guest for season two, The Family Secrets.
It's launching in late August, and it's um, someone who's
whose wife recently passed away, and the secret involves that
they chose not to tell their their their children that
she was dying, and they're quite grown children. But she
(04:15):
talked about the way that she didn't want the casseroles,
like she just did not want that. She wanted to
be the bringer of the casseroles, not the receiver of
the casseroles. And um, it's funny the way I mean funny,
but the way that casseroles and hot dishes have become
like the symbol of all illness and what you know,
(04:38):
people want to do something right, they want to they
want to cook, they want to do they want to
do something, and they don't know what to do. Yeah,
I mean, food is helpful, but at the time I
was I was not eating casserole. I was eating like
a five pound bag of sour Patch kids, and that's
hard to like. It's hard to express someone that can
we bring something? I'm like, yeah, you can bring like, um,
I don't like a twelve pack of coke would be nice. Uh,
(05:02):
bag of taco bell. Actually someone did deliver taco bell.
That was a lovely gift. So. I just recently discovered
both your podcasts and I love them both. And I
am in complete agreement with Nora that you really should
if you had like a podcast where you just spoke quietly,
I'd probably could fall asleep to it. You have an
amazing SMR obviously, I was actually gonna stay in the
(05:23):
shapiro a SMR YouTube channel check it out later. I would, yes,
for people don't know what SMR is. It just people
talking really quietly and tapping and tapping their nails, and
you could just be like I'm Danny Shapira and I'm
an open a plastic selfing bag. Yeah I would. I
would download it. I'm already subscribed to exactly UM. So
(05:44):
I love both of your podcasts. I Uh. There are
certain ones though, where I see um, I see the
description before and I'm like, I don't know if I
can listen to it quite yet, because they can be
pretty intense. Was there one of your podcasts, one of
your episodes that was the hardest, really the most difficult
for you to do? I would I would say in
the first season it was the episode UM that's called
(06:07):
Band of Men. Um. I had been contacted a number
of years earlier by Um, a man who had gone
to the same high school as me. UM, and I
didn't know him. He was a couple of years younger
than than I was, so we hadn't been in each
other's social circles. But it had turned out that he
was one of a really significant number of boys who
(06:27):
was sexually abused by a very charismatic social studies teacher
slash boy Scouts leader slash you know, wilderness counselor in
the at the camp all the boys went to. He
was just a complete groomer of of boys of a
very young age, sort of ages ten to twelve. And
he had come to me years earlier because he knew
(06:49):
that I was a writer and that I knew a
lot of writers in journalists and maybe I could help
him get the story out. And I had tried. I
spoke with a friend of mine at sixty minutes. I
really wanted to help these guys be able to tell
their story. The school was behaving badly. It was just
a very upsetting, infuriating story, and I wasn't able to
because the school was like a nice private school in
(07:10):
New Jersey. But it wasn't St. Paul's, you know, it
wasn't horas Man. There had already been these stories. There
was like enough boy abuse stories out there apparently, So
when I was launching Family Secrets, I approached him and
I said, I think I do have a way of
getting your story out, um. But it was an extremely
emotional interview. That was one of the ones that I
(07:31):
did in my son's old playroom with the with the
stuff hippopotamus and the and there was something about seeing
it's actually in my introduction to that episode, being in
this boy's playroom, you know, as his mom and thinking
about this this long ago boy who had just been
through this horrific, horrific I mean, I think I think
(07:53):
we spent two and a half hours on that particular
conversation interview, you know, to ultimately kind of carve of
it the story that needed to be told, but it was.
And then the more that I knew about it, the
more that I realized how many of those boys I
had known, you know, as as a kid. So I
had a very it was personal. The episode that I
(08:13):
was thinking of was actually very, very similar. I interviewed
this woman named Rachel and she was a victim of
Larry Nasser's and she didn't even know it, like she
was one of the she was one of the girls
who had defended him, essentially, and was like, what are
you talking about? And that was also a two and
a half hour conversation, and then it was several hours
(08:33):
of me transcribing and like listening to it over and
over while I was on winter break with my kids,
and and then also just looking around me at just
all of the ways that that that girls are discredited
and that they're sort of hyper sexualized in ways that
(08:53):
you don't even necessarily think about. Um, yeah, that was
That was a really great winter break. I think I
sat in a room and cried for like half a day,
and the kids were like, is she okay? My husband
was like, oh, she's great, Yeah, she'll be out. And
then um, there's an episode in the first season called Semperify,
(09:15):
and it's about It started with with my dad. My
dad was a marine in Vietnam and he had left
a comment on like the Virtual Vietnam. While you can
leave a you can leave a comment on the memorial
for somebody. And I was trying to piece together the
(09:39):
stories that my dad had told me about his time
in Vietnam. There were not many, but for some reason
he told them to me. My brothers were like, well,
I didn't, so I had nobody to like compare them too.
And I went to the Marine Corps reunion that my
dad had never gone to. I got in touch with
all these guys that my dad was looking for. They
were looking for him, but I mean it was nine.
(10:02):
They all spelled each other's names wrong, by the way,
like on the back of on the back of the
three photos they had. And so I found these guys
and I went to this reunion and I figured out
the story that I was thinking about. And also I
just spent hours talking to these men that everybody had
told me would not talk to me. And they sat
in a hotel room with me and with my producer
(10:25):
Hans holding his arms up like this with a with
a mic he sat there for five hours silently while
I just wept, and they wept, not even necessarily about
the story that I was there for. And I just
felt like this immense sense of everything that my dad
had gone through and everything that he had he had
carried and never told us about. And I just felt
(10:48):
really heavy and wrung out. And I was also secretly
pregnant and um, and I just remember going back to
my hotel and helped my hotel room night after night.
We're there for four days, and just crying so hard
that my head hurts, and putting that episode together, crying
in the studio with Hans and and and crying as
(11:11):
we got a letter from the man who's at the
center of the story of boy who's at the center
of the story, the boy who died in this worthless way,
and all of these men looking at me and telling
me that they would go back because you have to
tell yourself it was worth it. You have to. And
I got a letter from his family afterwards, after the
episode came out that said thank you, and I will
(11:33):
go home and ball about that tonight. To put that
episode is just very um. That's probably the most important
one to me. And also the hardest to make. Yeah,
we're going to pause for a moment. Hey, it's really
cool to see you guys in person. Um So, kind
(11:54):
of on the note of what you were just talking about,
you both have children, Can you talk about how your
work and your family co exist? More like how how
do you make those episodes? And then turned back to
your kid? Oh there, you know husband? Remember should we
have your son? Answered this one? Yeah, hey, Jacob, where
(12:15):
are you? My son's here somewhere. Um, you can stay there,
It's okay. So so my my my kid is now
you know, a young man. Um So it feels a
little bit different now. But throughout my writing life, much
of which coincided with his childhood, I had to find
(12:35):
a way to go to these places that were scary, dark, painful,
and not have them enveloped me. So I found myself
almost visualizing it as a place inside of me where
I could go that was small, and that when I
(12:55):
would go there, it would expand and it would become
the whole world. And then I could be in that
world and swim around in that world and do whatever
I needed to do in that world. Um. But then
when I needed to leave that world, I could almost
like a deep sea diver, like just push up from
it and it would contract again and it would be
there waiting for me. And it wasn't like it wasn't
something that I was feeling all the time. But it
(13:17):
was kind of contained. It didn't take me over, um,
and you know, so I could be you know, me
as a mom and make lunch and put dinner on
the table, and help with homework and and be in.
I very acutely did not want to miss my family's
(13:40):
life as a young family. I had this feeling I'd
seen it too many times of just and and all
the truisms that people say it goes by so fast.
I mean it doesn't. It doesn't you know that the
days are long and the years are short. Um. But
I didn't. I didn't want to miss it. I didn't
want to look back. I was driven by not wanting
to look back and thinking, you know, I just I
(14:01):
missed it. I was too focused on, you know, my
my work, because my work is incredibly important to me
and I had big, um creative ambitions for it. But
I also had this opportunity to have this beautiful family
life that I wanted to have, So I I was
always kind of like even an example would be I
(14:22):
realized early on, uh, I was always a morning writer,
and if I didn't get to work first thing in
the morning, if I didn't roll out of bed and
get to work, then the work wouldn't happen. But now
I had a kid, so there was something definitely in
the way between rolling and bed and getting to work.
There was all sorts of other things that had to
happen to have his day get started. And and I
(14:42):
didn't want to just zone out on it and be
like the sort of did I get up? Did I
you know, like what has happened? Um? And so I
learned to like find a pause button, like to be
able to actually be like, all right, I'm I'm going
to be able to get up and be present and
you know, make the eggs and pack the lunch box
(15:03):
and drive to school and come back and then and
then I can stop the pause button and start and
start the day again. Um. Which was something that I
learned how to do out of necessity. Wasn't something that
I knew how to do, but I but I learned
how to do it. And I also became much more
resourceful in terms of um my time, Like, if I
(15:26):
had an hour, I used the hour. If I had
two hours, I used Like. The worst thing for me
was feeling like, Wow, I had that time, and I
just frittered it away because I got in my own
way and my resistance and my frustration got the better
of me. And then and then I learned that if
I did that, i'd really like be so mad at
myself at the end of the day that I wouldn't
want to be me. So I learned how to kind
(15:48):
of do end runs around that kind of experience. This
event was supposed to be on Wednesday night, and then
I realized that um kindergarten graduation is Wednesday, and I
don't let you know these things. They don't let you know.
I'm like, what it feels like this could have gotten
on the calendar a little sooner. Also, do I read
all the emails? No, okay, I don't. We get a
(16:10):
lot of them. Um, and Danny was like, we'll figure
it out. So I know that I know that you
were that kind of mom, because you were awesome about that. Well.
I remember there's a annual writer's conference called a w
P and and it was I think some year when
my son was little. It was in maybe Washington, d C.
And I was supposed to be on a panel about
(16:31):
motherhood and writing. And on the morning that I was
supposed to head to d C from my panel on
motherhood and writing, there was a blizzard in Connecticut and
so snow day was called and I couldn't go to
the panel on motherhood and writing, which was an object
lesson in motherhood and writing. Yeah, it really is. Um
I I've not always been that intentional and I I
(16:54):
mean I went to work two days after I had
a baby. Part of it that was EP D and
PP and part of it was just like, oh my gosh,
are they gonna not, you know, support this if I
don't like, get right back to work. And also part
of it was I just I felt so attached to
the thing that I was making I didn't feel like
I could stop. And we have a two year old,
(17:15):
a six year old, a twelve year old, and a
seventeen year old. That's a wide range of humanity. And
because the older kids are newer to me, I really
don't want to miss anything about their lives. I want
to be there for middle school, I want to be
there for for high school stuff. Also it's just frankly
more interesting than preschool stuff. I got to be honest,
I'm like, wow, so what's happening? Like, tell me everything?
(17:39):
Like Also, seventh graders feel like very superior to sixth
graders in a way that's fascinating to me. I'm like,
remember that was you last year? And she's like was it?
Like it was? Um so at first. And Also I'm
self employed. Everything that I do is is basically on
a freelance basis, and that means your day could end
never and my days were ever ending and I would
(18:01):
open my laptop at ten and the kids noticed, and
my husband definitely noticed, and that felt terrible. And now
I'm just very like I have the most strict routine
out of anybody. I go to bed so early, I
wake up early, I go to the gym with my
biggest kid. Then I write for two hours. You might
be wondering where the kids. My husband's taking care of them, Okay,
(18:23):
he's where a man belongs in the kitchen, making breakfast
for the kids, getting him ready for school. And then
my day ends at three, so I can be there,
um too, when I remember to pick them up, I
can be there, am I always know, but I took
I took like email off my phone. I don't. I
don't do this as much because they are so interesting
(18:48):
and also if it's that urgent, maybe it's um like
a better be life or death at this point, which
I love. Like younger people, all the youths who are
like in their twenties, they just won't work like that.
They just will not. They're like, oh no, I don't
I'm not going to check my email at night, Like whoa,
look at those boundaries. It's bonkers. But when I was four,
(19:10):
I was like, I will do whatever you want. You
want me to come to your house and feed your
hamster for no money, boss, I'm there. True story. It's
like oh yeah, no, I mean it's a two hour
train ride, but yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it.
And like kids now in their twenties, like even early thirties,
they're like, oh no, I don't do that. No, I'm sorry.
I go to yoga that night. It's amazing. It's amazing.
(19:33):
Be like these gen zers there, they really they got
to figure it out. It's because their their parents sent
them to therapy. So uh, I was just wondering what
podcasts you guys listened to I listened to, Okay, my
favorite podcast is Who Weekly because it is pop culture
(19:53):
candy for me. It's everything you need to know about
the celebrities you don't so, you know, you always pick
up like an US weekly and you're like, who what
is this about? And it's two writers who I think
used to work for New York Magazine, Lindsay Weber Bobby Finger.
They're so funny and they just it's it's basically an
analysis of the celebrity industrial complex, where like everybody is
(20:16):
famous now, um, and you can't figure out why. And
it's not mean, but it's very, very, very funny, and
it comes out on Tuesdays and Fridays. And I also
listened to You Call Your Girlfriend. Those are the two
that I listened to every episode every week. And also
Forever thirty five podcast about the things we do to
take care of ourselves. And I listen to I Just,
(20:39):
I Just We're back on the jet ski Guys. I'm
literally flipping through the on my phone. I really I
try to listen to podcasts that I would never make,
if that makes sense, because they're just so they're so
different from what I do. They like, they just sit
down and talk and just like, I don't know if
you're this way, But if I'm writing a memoir, I
(21:00):
can't read any memoirs. I really can't. And if I'm
uh writing a novel, of which I've I've done one
in progress, Well that's not a good example because I
guess all I read is novels right now. But if
I'm in the middle of creating podcasts a podcast, I
can't listen to podcasts that are similar to mine. But
when I'm not, then I listened to sad narrative podcasts. Yeah,
(21:23):
I would say that's true for me too. I actually
stopped listening to Terrible Things for Asking while I was
making Season one of Family Secrets because what is that
dip in my DNA alright down by one? Because it
felt like, um, you know, in in writing, there's you know,
we talk a lot about voice, and I stay away
(21:44):
from work that feels that it could sort of seep
into my voice in some way. Um, And that's usually
work that has some kind of overlap or similarity. One
podcast I've consistently listened to is Heavyweight. Um. Yes, jeez, Louise,
just it's really really good storytelling. Um. See some nodding heads. Yeah,
(22:05):
I can tell you also the ones that I tend
to kind of shy away from our like, you know,
two girls sitting around talking, you know, like just the
the kind of loose banter that doesn't really feel like
it's about anything. I'm not naming names, but I just
there's just a feeling of like just overhearing something that's
(22:28):
happening at the next table in the restaurant when you're
bored and you're waiting for your dinner companion, and just
it's just people talking. And I think it's because you
and I both spend so much time creating something that
feels that's very that's very produced, that I tend to
gravitate more towards those. But I also have been really
enjoying the limited series, you know, the I loved um
(22:49):
the the dropout, you know, as did a lot of people.
It was just just just I just wanted to well,
that was so completely freaky. I mean, not really a
spoiler alert if any of you haven't listened to it,
but her her voice, um, Elizabeth's Holmes. Yeah, are you
(23:10):
talking about my voice? Question about my voice? Is it fake?
Your voice was made up? Voice? Is made up and
it sounds it sounds like this, and it's like, how
do you not know that she was doing a voice disguise?
It sounds like when your brother's voice is not changed
and he tries to answer the phone Hello, but you're
like really hearing the pathology like in action. And I
(23:33):
preferred listening to it as a podcast then watching UM,
the documentary about I guess was better. That's why. And
as sort of a follow up to that, what kind
of books do you like to read while you're actually writing?
And it can be either when you're writing memoirs or
when you're writing fiction or non fiction. I have so
many piles of different books for different um for different reasons.
(23:56):
I mean like I'm entering a period of time right
now where I feel like I can read for pleasure
UM in a way that I haven't been able to
do in a while, Like there's just a break in
my UM. Because when you're a writer and you're on tour,
as I have been since January, I will often be
reading the books of people that I'm doing events with,
and sometimes they're really pleasurable, but they're not necessarily the
books that I would pick up and say this is
(24:16):
what I want to read next. I um just started
a beautiful novel, UM first novel debut called UM Disappearing
Country by Julia phillips Um. That's been getting really gorgeous reviews.
I dip into, Oh, I'm reading Sally Rooney's Normal People
so good. It's just so good. Um. I love great writing,
(24:39):
and I can't read for story if the writing isn't beautiful.
And I can forgive a lot when it comes to
story if the writing is beautiful and I just fall
into it and I just want to be there. I
want to kind of be in in those sentences. Um,
what else I I lose? They go like titles go
(25:00):
right over my head. If I'm writing memoir, then I
mainly just want to read old books that I've already read.
So The Loved One, Evelyn Wis, all these all these
books that like you read when you were seventeen or sixteen,
and you're like, I bet that was a really good
book and I was just reading it to get to
the you know, ap English final. Um. And if I'm
(25:21):
writing the podcast and I'm just reading novels that's all
I've been reading lately, I can forgive basically anything like,
I'm just I'm just reading just to like have fun
and be alone. And I read every single day and
I read normal People and it made me really sad.
I was like, wow, this is about how much I
hated myself in my twenties. Uh. And I just read Ghosted,
(25:44):
which was very absorbing. Absorbing. It's a new word, the
only here here. Um, it's a really it's a good story.
It's a really good story. And I'm reading Red White
and Royal Blue. Ah, I novel about the that the
first son falling in love with the Prince of England.
(26:09):
What would happen? We'll find out do they hate each other?
It's like a classic rom com, only with uh, gay
teenage boys. It's wonderful. Well, you know you're you're reminding
me too, I am. So. I've been producing season two
of Family Secrets, and and probably we should rename Season
two of Family Secrets Writers with Family Secrets, because eight
(26:30):
out of ten of my guests are writers. Um and um,
so I've been I've been reading their books in preparation
and uh, well, one of them, I was familiar with
his very familiar with his work, and um just thought
he would have a lot to say about shame and secrecy,
shame being the thing that's always kind of thrumming underneath
anything that's secret, and that's u. K. S. A. Lehman.
(26:53):
His memoir Heavy, So he's one of the guests and
is a beautiful book that he's a memoir, but he
addresses it to his mother, so it's in the in
the in the second person, in the you voice. There's
also a wonderful memoir that just came out recently, and
she's also going to be a guest on season two.
Her name is Brigette M. Davis and the books called
the World according to Fannie Davis. Her mother Fannie Davis.
(27:16):
Brigette was raised in Detroit in the sixties and seventies
and her mother was a numbers runner and that's how
she supported her family. And it's just this fantastic story
of like a family keeping the mother's secrets and um.
So that like I have a lot of books that
have just there's like scribbled in the margins and everywhere
with I was actually going to be on a panel
with Brigette, and so I was reading her book in
(27:37):
preparation for being on the panel. And as soon as
I started reading her book. I was like, oh, and
she was amazing. Hi. I want to thank you guys
so much. Um. So, I am donor conceived. I found
out via DNA testing little over a year and a
half ago. Um And I also um in my career,
I worked in Alzheimer's care and hospice. I actually had
a client who was about thirty five with young children
(28:00):
died of a brain cancer. UM. So, kind of my
question is is when I found out I was donor conceived,
there were other big stresses going on in my life.
There were some family mental breakdowns, there were marriage issues.
I had just had a baby, I had a toddler. Um.
You know, so there was a lot going on, a
lot um and it's very difficult for people to understand
(28:22):
like intense trauma. Um And so my question for both
of you having been through these kind of unimaginable thing
after saying after saying within a short period of time
where it's people don't understand it, or people are just
kind of tired of it, or people just think it's
negative when it's really like processing, what do you see
as the state of kind of empathy in our society? Like,
(28:47):
what do you see as maybe kind of like your
role in that um and kind of educating people, because
that's something I like to write about in my kind
of donor conception advocacy. A lot is you know, kind
of trauma recovery and how we kind of process these
things and kind of normal and how human it is.
So I'm wondering what your perspectives are having been through
(29:07):
those things and also being public figures who have podcasts
and books, like what you see from people in your
personal life and also what you see from from talking
with people in the general public about those things. Those
are great. Those are really great questions and um ones
that I feel like I've been grappling with really intensely
in the last and the last just in the last
few years. I Mean you'd think I would say I've
(29:29):
been grappling with them all my life as a writer,
but it really feels much more intense in the last
few years. And one of the things about writing Inheritance,
which was something that I knew that I had to
do almost instantly. I mean, I made this discovery and
I started thinking about how I was going to process
it in language, because that's how I process everything, and
(29:52):
I need to be able to find the shape and
the language for it or else I'm not going to
understand it um And but I also knew that it
was an experience that wasn't going to be a slam
dunk in terms of people's empathic response, because it was
something out side of the realm of what what people
(30:17):
have thought about. So I had written other books in
which you know, my son was sick as a baby, Well,
we understand that, you know, anybody's going to have some
empathy for that. My my dad died in a car accident.
We understand that we don't have to have been through
those experiences, but we think, like, wow, I know, I know,
I can imagine how I would feel if I had
a childhoo was sick, or I can imagine how I
would feel if I lost a parent in that way.
(30:39):
But try out, I'm fifty four years old, and I'd
take a DNA test and I discovered that the dad
who raised me wasn't my dad, and that actually I
was conceived by a sperm donor. Is like, what what
would that be? And and you know, and then there
are people like it's one of the reasons why I
don't read, like read or comments on things, because there's
like like a version of wow, wow, wow, Like what
(30:59):
is a big deal? I mean, so what, She's had
a great life, She's here, isn't she She should be
pleased at this terrific you know, turn of events, and
and you know who cares Like it's like get over it.
It's like one or under the bridge. And I knew
that in the writing of it that I had to
actually aim for and think about what was universal about
(31:24):
my experience, which is not something I've ever had to
do as a writer. It's something that I would counsel
people against doing because it makes you sort of self conscious,
like what's universal about my experience? But I had to
and I and I so I found myself thinking what
am I learning about identity? What am I learning about
what makes a father a father? What am I learning
about nature and nurture? That I can find a way
(31:46):
to impart so that I can connect with the reader,
um and and like push the reader toward, provoke the
reader toward a kind of understanding of Oh I see wow,
that would be really complicated to make sense, really provoking empathy,
which is what I felt like I had to be
(32:07):
doing in this case. Um, everything that we do is
aimed around empathy versus pity. It's a huge distinction for
the show. It's a huge distinction for uh, what we
do with Still Kicking, what we do with the Hot
Young Widows Club, which is a real group that I have,
(32:28):
which is that nobody needs you to feel bad for them,
but there are plenty of ways to do that, and
pity is like the cheapest emotion we have. That's why
we're so generous with it. We're just like, you can
have some you can I can feel bad for literally anyone.
I'm so good at it. But empathy does require imagination,
and most people really are not that imaginative. It takes
(32:50):
a lot of energy to be empathetic. So the stories
that we look at on our show are really meant
to stretch that I really meant to. We listen to
it as we're writing it, and we listen to it
as as an unempathetic person, and when we do group
listens for the draft episodes, we say like, well, okay,
(33:14):
so why wouldn't this be a thing. And some of
the narration is meant to cut those reflexes off from
the listener and to say, like, I know that you
might be thinking this, but think about it this way,
because I do want to create episodes that that can
be helpful for other people, and that can help other
(33:36):
people help the people around them stretched so that you
who feel very, very beleaguered by trying to bring everyone
in your life along with you and this thing that
they think is too sad, have something to show that's like, look,
it's not just me, Look this is this is this
is something that a lot of people feel. So listen
to this. Think of it this way. So we've had
(33:57):
a lot of I mean, it's easy to feel You
can feel ad for somebody who as a has a
has a dead baby. You can feel bad for somebody
who has a has a dead husband. But can you
feel for someone who has a more complicated story, Because
the thing is all of those stories are always more complicated.
But it's it's hard for you, like on the personal level,
(34:20):
Like it is hard when people don't get it. And
what I would say to you and to anybody here,
a lot of people in your life just won't. And
so if you can take that off your plate. You
are not here to make everybody understand absolutely everything that
you feel. It's impossible to do. That is going to
free up a lot of anguish for you. Yeah, it
(34:43):
strikes me to listening to you that pity is something
that separates, right Like, if I am pitying you, it
means that I'm on one side of this divide and
you're on the other side. Um, if I'm pitying, it
means you're pitiable and I'm not. And empathy has to
do us. We are all in this together. This could
(35:05):
be you, this could be me, this could be any
one of us at any given moment, and we are
all always, you know, always in that place. Um. And
I think empathy comes from that understanding, even when it's
and and and know there will be failures of empathy constantly.
But when you're describing what you do in the scripts
(35:26):
and in the voiceover in your show, is precisely what
I was talking about earlier when I when I described
trying to hold a story, it's it's you know, it's
your job, and it's my job as a host of
a show like this to say, wait a minute, Um,
We're gonna turn this a little bit here. I'm gonna
get inside of your head, listener, and I know what
(35:46):
you're thinking, but here's here's a pivot. Here's another way
of looking at it, And that's that's that's the holding
I think of this kind of work, and I think
a lack of empathy comes from this need to compare
your story against somebody else's, which is a really sort
of reflexive thing that people do. Right, Like, well, I mean,
(36:09):
at least the dad you had was pretty good, right,
so when we at least each other, when we just
each other, all of these things that sort of minimize
the experience that you don't even think that they do,
but they do. It immediately shuts off your capability for empathy.
So some of the stories that we pick, our stories
that you might not think of as that terrible, right,
(36:33):
um is is having a stutter that terrible? Well, if
it's the biggest thing in your life, if it has
kept you separate from the life that you want to
live and from connecting with people the way you want to, yeah,
it is. And nobody benefits from this sort of comparison
of this is better or this is worse. Nobody like
(36:54):
when you're the person trying to sort of hold your
terrible thing up above somebody else's, Like, does that make
you feel better? Not? Usually? Not? Usually So that concludes
my answer. Do you think of podcasting as a new
community that you're building? Because I find that we're all
(37:17):
creating conversations. Now it used to be like what you
heard on Oprah? And now it's like, oh, did you
hear the story on you know, such and such a podcast?
That it's creating conversation and community and conversations around grief
and empathy. Like do you do you think about that
as you're creating because I find it on the other
end as a listener that it's happening more in conversation,
(37:38):
that we're creating community around being able to open conversations
based on topics. I mean, I think I've come to
understand that as I've been making family secrets, and also
as I've been on tour for Inheritance, and I realized
that my events start becoming sort of de factove support
groups for people. People have come to my events and
then people help them discover their biological fathers. I mean,
(37:59):
all sorts of astounding things have happened because people are
gathering and we want to gather, you know, we want
to gather. We're hungry for gathering because we feel I think,
you know, so many of us so isolated by this,
you know, and by you know, being working remotely or
constantly being on our devices. UM. In this season, as
(38:20):
we're leading up to season two of Family Secrets, UM,
my producers made an eight hundred number especially eight eight
eight secret zero where UM where listeners can actually call
in and anonymously tell their own secrets. And I love
them too. At first, I thought, really, and and it's
it's this is fantastic thing because I think that sense
(38:41):
of piercing aloneness, especially when it comes to emotions that
make us feel alone. We feel alone when we grieve
so alone, we feel alone when um, we are the
keeper of a secret or a secret has been kept
from us UM and then when it gets revealed, you know,
(39:02):
week after week, when there's you know, these kinds of
conversations that are kind of exploding some of the shame
and isolation surrounding like these kinds of stories. I think
that that's part of what's creating community, because it's people
even if they're listening to these podcasts alone in their
cars or late at night, or you know, when they're
by themselves, there's a sense of oh, I'm not alone.
(39:23):
I'm not alone I'm not alone. And then and then
that I think does start to really build, um, build
something of a community. I don't know if it's unique
to podcasting. I think just the intersection of Internet and
making something just creates more opportunity for fandom and for
(39:44):
and for people who like something to gather around something
that that they enjoy. So I think that you kind
of find this around anything people like enough. Yeah, so um,
the compliment that we're just paid is, well, people seem
more comfortable. You're creating a language around these hard things.
And I think I'm I'm just saying a lot of
(40:05):
things that have been said by a lot of different people.
I don't think I've said literally anything original, um, in
my entire life. Possibly I don't want to yet I
don't think so. Um all there's nothing new under this on.
Everything has been, Everything has been said. People have always
been dying. Um, it felt like my husband was the
first to die, but in fact my mom's was I'm
(40:26):
just kidding. Uh and uh yeah, So I think I'm
just saying things louder and in a different way and
in a newer medium. But and and also I can't
take all the credit, and I don't think podcasting can
take all the credit for that. But I do think
that also because that question asked another question, which is,
(40:48):
every single time I do any events, someone's like, I
wanted to write a book about my husband dying, but
you did it. I didn't write a book about your
husband dying. Go write your own book, Go make your
own podcast, Go tell your own story, whatever it is,
because it's yours. And that's that's the difference between all
of this is like it is yours and the people
around you, strangers, they need to hear how you are
(41:10):
getting through, whatever you're getting through. And because every single yes,
the stories of grief, stories of war, stories of you know,
love and loss and heartbreak, um, you know they've they've
all been told. There is there is no new story
under the sun. But every single telling of a story
(41:30):
is its own individual snowflake of a story. Always. Otherwise
we'd be done, you know, we'd be done. We'd be
done with literature, we'd be done with art. We've been done.
You can still write that Devil's Where product book. I
am going to you because you know there's Hamster in
that book. There there is room for a whole another
boss and a whole another young woman showing up in
(41:52):
New York. Yeah, thank you, Maybe it will, but that
that really is I mean, I can't tell you how
often I hear that from students. It's like, Oh, it's
it's diversion of answering yourself to say, oh, that's been done,
so I can't do it. And was that. I think
that this concludes. I'd like to thank Resoli Bookstore for
(42:24):
hosting the live taping of Family Secrets and Derrek Clemens
for recording it. And i'd like to thank Nora mcinnerney.
If you haven't already, be sure to check out and
subscribe to her podcast, Terrible Thanks for asking. Family Secrets
is an i Heeart Media production. For more podcasts for
(42:52):
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets News
Host
Dani Shapiro
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