Pushkin.
Hello everyone, Hello, Hi, hello, Hi. Here we all are in the studio. Yes, indeed, and today we've got something a little different.
Ooh but kayleie, I don't like different things.
Well, Jonathan, you might just have to give it a chance, because sometimes trying new things can be scary but rewarding.
Yeah yeah, okay, well here comes the chuo choo train of listening. What do we got here?
Recently you're a guest on a show called Wildcard? Do you remember that?
Of course? I remember? How can I forget? I was interviewed by Rachel Martin.
How did it feel, Jonathan to be in the guest seat?
It felked. I didn't like it. It's a tremendous loss of control. I have to say. It was like the spider had become the fly or something. But you know, here's the incredible. This is nuts. It doesn't even make sense to me. I'm just looking at their past episodes. Okay, of wild Card, you know who was on two weeks ago? Someone that's so famous they're known by one name, sure, Adele. It wasn't Share or Adel someone more? Actually, dare I say maybe someone more famous?
Obama?
I'm gonna say as famous as Obama may be more famous. What all right, I'll just tell you Oprah interviewed Oprah last week, she interviewed Melinda Gates.
She's got more money than you.
Oprah has more money than me. Let's see who else has.
I would say almost every guest is probably richer than you.
You know, honestly. So I'm on her website right now, on the wild Card website, and I'm schooling, and I'm like, I'm looking like Melinda Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Harrison Ford, I mean crazy, And then I saw my name and I got nervous. I thought, like, that's a mistake.
Do you think they had someone fall through that week?
Well, it's funny, okay. So I did ask her that, like why am I on the show? Basically? And I thought, you know, the answer would be something like, oh, what are you talking about? Like of course you you know, But she was honest. She was like, well, you know how it is, like sometimes you do like a biggie and then sometimes you just do a small one or something like that.
I don't know.
I think she was more compliment than that.
I don't know.
If she called me a small sounds like.
She just wanted to talk to you, which is really nice.
It is it is what thank you? That is very nice.
You know, Me and Stevie usually are in on like the you know, we're producing the conversations you have. This is one that we got to come to just as listeners. We just heard the edited version at the end, and I really enjoyed it. I felt like it covered a lot of territory beyond just the typical like how did you come up with the show? Like, like I felt like you guys kind of went deep in a really interesting way.
I got an interesting text from my mother in law after she had listened to it. She said that she had never had anybody express something about life and death that she had always felt. WHOA, yeah that's cool.
Yeah yeah.
And after I got the text, I told my wife, I said, Emily, you married your mother gradually. Yeah.
So we're going to listen to that episode.
I think listeners will really enjoy it.
Yeah, we did.
And if you don't, will we'll we'll send you a check returning your full purchase price.
If you don't, try try the Oprah episode. You know maybe I like that.
But first, a word from our sponsors, just.
A heads up. This episode does have some strong language. Do you think people can really change?
Oh?
Yes, I mean I have to believe that. I mean, even if I don't believe it, I have to believe that. And I think that's the struggle. It's like the paradox. I mean, like we are who we are, but I think as long as we're alive, we're able to change.
I'm Rachel Martin and this is wild Card, the show where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life, questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one back on me. My guest this week is Jonathan Goldstein.
I was writing and no one was buying what I was selling. I just couldn't get anywhere, and I just kept doing it because I felt compelled to do it, like a spider spinning a web.
Jonathan Goldstein believes enclosure, which is what is massively popular podcast Heavyweight, is all about helping people move on from some kind of unfinished business in their lives. Maybe that's helping someone make amends or to say thank you to a stranger, or to help a person turn a page on a traumatic experience. And yes, the word heavy is in the title, but it doesn't feel that way, in large part because Jonathan is very funny, and he's also
got this lightness about him. He's the kind of guide who makes it clear no matter what happens around the next bend, he'll be there rooting you on. I am so very happy to welcome Jonathan Goldstein to Wild Card. Hi.
Hi, thank you so much. It would have taken me about ten tries to get that, and so much editing. I don't believe you, but it is, it's true, and yet it's true.
I'm going to hold up three cards. You pick randly one, two or three. Okay, first three cards, First three cards.
Now, one is on my left.
I tend to think of one being this on my right.
Oh yeah, okay, that's my left.
Okay.
I'm trying to make this as confusing as possible for perfect because I'm hoping, I guess my my subconscious wish is that you're just going to say, you know what, forget it, We're gonna do a rerun this week. Okay, sorry, it doesn't matter, you know what. I get the impression, as a as a child magician, that you're trying to force the number two cards. It's poked out a little bit more. Yeah, yeah, Okay, now you're forcing the one in the two. I just I just want to please you.
I'll take I'll take the number two.
I'm not pushing, I promise, Although I do like this question. Okay, look what happened there? Okay, what's an ordinary place that feels extraordinary to you because of what happened there?
Okay. You see, it's very difficult for me to talk about places because I I'm not very place aware. Oh. I live so much of my life up in my head. For many years, I thought of it as like internal and then like through therapy, I've begun to see it as disassociative. Possibly, I will say broadly, movie theaters I are kind of like I think Pauline Kle called them like her church, and I think that's a little bit the way that I feel about movie theaters. Yeah, and
there's one particular. I live in Minnesota, Minneapolis, and there's an old mid century theater that used to be walking distance from my house, and I would just go see anything that was playing there and always sit way way way back in the back row because I like to
take it all in by yourself, by myself. Yeah, it had I'd like going there with people, but I you know, if I had my drothers, it was by myself, and that just felt like my place in the dark, looking up at this big screen, feeling like a baby being held by somebody. You know. Maybe that's a part of it.
I don't know what was the extraordinary part of that experience.
I think this particular theater because it's mid century. I had the experience last Christmas of going to see It's a Wonderful Life there and I found it to be a very emotional experience. Like it it's just I mean, it's just a room. But I don't know, all of this stuff sounds very corny. I mean, my father used to watch these black and white movies and refer to it as like a time machine, and it is kind
of like that. There is this feeling of the past kind of erasing, and you're kind of existing in all times at once. Beyond that, it's probably just pretty banal. It just yeah, there's just something extraordinary about in this day and age being able to kind of like turn your phone off and shut out the world for a couple of hours.
I mean, thank God, hold on, there's one sound on here I need to make sure goes away.
Is it my voice? You figured out the one thing that's dragging down this podcast?
Okay, three more cards.
I'll take one this time.
Were you intimidated or excited about leaving your parents' house?
Leaving my parents' house? I have to say, And you know, and this is kind of like you just don't know what you don't know back then, But I was nothing but excited. I didn't enjoy my childhood very much, and the idea of being able to make my own rules was very exciting. And I remember when I I harken back to it now that I got a kid, I
think about how sad my mother was. She was sitting on the edge of my bed and yelling at me for what she called dismantling my room, for the stuff that I was taking, you know, And all I was taking was these milk rates. I didn't even have like a bookshelf. It was just like I kept my books and stuff in milk crates. And she was like very upset that I was taking them. And I remember I wore cowboy boots, which were a very impractical thing to wear in the summer when you're moving boxes. But there
was something about it that felt very romantic. I had these cowboy boots that I only wore like once a year. Yeah, and it felt like that was an occasion for the cowboy boots, even though they were slippery.
Where were you going to? Where were you moving from and to?
So I was living in Montreal, That's where I grew up, and I was moving to a very cheap part of town called Pointing Charles.
Yeah.
It was probably no more than like a half an hour car drive.
Yeah, but it can be a whole world away.
Yeah, it felt great. There was a five dollars liter of apple wine that they sold at the corner store, and there was all these like dollar ninety nine breakfast places.
It was like nineteen thirty four.
It was yeah, back, this is back in the thirties. Yeah. I could listen to all the jazz music I wanted. Yeah, No, I don't know. It was just yeah, it was just the feeling of being free. It really Yeah, it felt it felt free.
Yeah, last one in this round one, two or three?
I guess three.
Oh, I feel like I'm putting all these place questions to you. What details do you remember about your childhood.
Bedroom, the milk crate, the wall to wall posters of David Bowie. Nice, very big David Bowie fan. To this day, my father will call me up on the phone if David Bowie's on TV and I'll say, oh, your buddy's on TV. He just didn't get it.
That he knows that you like him, and he was like trying to connect with you.
Yeah. Yeah, just a lot of like pictures taken out of magazines and newspapers. And I don't it must still be the same way for kids, But it was like your whole personality was splayed across your bedroom walls. Like if it wasn't on your bedroom wall, then you weren't in the world properly. You know, you had to lead with all of these things on your wall. I had this little card table that with a type with an electric typewriter that I wrote on.
What were you writing at the time?
Such junk. I remember when I applied into the creative writing program at the University in Montreal Concordia with such high hopes because from a very young age I was always writing and making plays and making radio plays and you know, forcing my friends into performing in them. And I applied put together what I thought was my best work, and I applied to this creative writing program and the guy, the professor running the program rejected me. And I couldn't
understand why. And I made a meeting with him, and he said that someone that wrote the way that I did needed a therapist more than they needed a creative writing program, which was probably true, but was still like a very heavy thing to hear at like eighteen, you.
Know, not helpful guidance.
But it was all like nuts. I mean, like young men are, or at least me and my friends, I mean we were just nuts. We were just really pushing boundaries and you know, loved Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac.
There's nothing, no offense, but there's nothing extraordinary about that. That's that doesn't signal depression. That's just being an angstret No.
I was just depressed on top of that. Yeah, that was that was just a whole other side project. Yeah, various dark places, you know, very caught up in like what's it all about? I had, like during my teen years, like a foray into becoming religious and then kind of losing my faith and feeling that that brought on a really heavy depression. I wanted to believe and I just
couldn't figure my way into it. And yeah, just like very from a very young age is very caught up in the big questions, I guess, and not that that's necessarily a formula for depression, but for me, I don't know, there was something very dire and desperate about it. Remember asking my father like at a like at a very very young age, like where God came from? And that feeling like a very basic question because God was given, but like, okay, so then where does God come from?
And I remember him telling me that I should look it up, and I had these childs encyclopedia set and looking up.
What did you look at God?
And under g yeah, like God, And like I thought, oh, well, I'm going to get to the bottom of this in two seconds. Everybody wanted to hear this, and it wasn't. I remember like looking at the Bible and thinking like, oh, it must be before Genesis, like before but you know, there's like no preface, there's no you know, it just starts with the big bang and that's it. But I don't know, it was probably also more banal, like I probably couldn't meet any girls, you know.
Yeah, that's a big existential stew of things.
Yeah, yeah, very profound, very yeah. Well Schopenhower asks, is that a word?
Sure?
Now, yeah, yeah, but I think dealing with that the uncertainty of life at that end, but.
I couldn't see. Yeah, but I know, you know, it's still something that I struggle with. I mean, I just want to really let go and and give myself over to life. But I don't know, there's always just been this feeling of like if you're not totally invested in it, it'll make death easier. You know, like if you live your life as though like you're kind of you know, here's life and here's death, and they kind of are side by side, adjacent to one another on a shelf,
it'll be more of a lateral move. Good night, folks, it's not too it's not too late to like run the rerun.
I'm just trying to understand it. It means putting as much effort into the thinking about death as the thinking about life, and they are equal experiences, and so then it's a lateral.
Yeah, if you're sort of like braced for death from a young age, you know, if you don't fully you know, throw yourself into the whole life thing. Then when the carpet is yanked out from under you, you're going to be braced for your fall.
No, I get it. I like do this in my own mind. I am the worst case scenario person. It is how I live My life is to prepare for the worst things, and so I practice not being around anymore. It's dark.
But and you don't want to model that for your No, I.
Have two of them. I don't think that's a great way to live. But it actually doesn't bring me down. I don't get bummed about it. It just go there for a little bit. I try it on, and then I come back and I'm like, everyone was okay. Everyone when I was gone in my imaginary death, everyone grieved and then they lived beautiful lives and then it was fine.
Oh that's wonderful. So you're thinking about your own absence from the perspective of those you love, Yeah, I guess that's the mark of a superior human being. That's not how I was thinking about it. I was thinking more, fuck all, y'all. No, no, no, I'm just kidding.
Let's talk about your show for a few minutes, because it is a wonderful thing. It is a wonderful thing that you have made.
Thank you.
Have you wait been nine years? Over nine years?
Yeah, they were doing their ninth season.
Yeah, there was a little break the show was cancel was yeah, at the end of twenty twenty three, and then it found new life and it's as a listener, I think this is a wonderful thing. I'm sure when it was canceled you were like, yeah, maybe maybe I'm going to do something else, lean into my writing and you know, but but you were given this other shot. What do you love about making this show?
Well, the simplest is that I like having a job. I found out when the show was canceled that I wasn't very good at not having a job. I had been kind of on various deadlines, Like before this, I had a show in Canada on the CBC for eleven years. It had been just kind of like twenty years of deadlines. This is wiretap right wire type. Yeah, that's right. I found not having a job difficult, and being back at
it has given me a renewed appreciation. But I love I think I love it is a way from me to feel things and live, interact with people, and life in a way that for me is preferred. I guess there's a certain kind of safety about being alone in the attics studio a lot of the time and thinking things through in a way that I can't in real time. I don't feel like I'm great in real time.
We should just take a second and explain to people who haven't heard the show. I mean I nodded to it a little bit in the intro, but you really are getting into very intimate parts of people's lives. You're helping them through specific regrets and longing and helping them find closure, like someone who's you know, did something to
someone wronged them twenty thirty years ago. More. You literally go find that person for them and help them sometimes come confront them and have a one on one exchange. Sometimes you don't find the person, but somehow through the journey they've been able to understand their life in a more intimate way. I mean, it's very emotionally intense work. I mean, you say you do this work in part
just to feel things. That's a lot of feelings, Jonathan, Like, it's a lot of living that you are You're navigating through other people's experience.
Yeah, Yeah, there's definitely, like you say closure, I think like that is. Yeah, that is always kind of like the imaginary finish line. I don't think most of the episodes get there, but it is true what you also say about the process of getting there, and sometimes it's the thing that people are searching for is somewhat of
a mcguffin. Like there was one episode called Scott where this former heroin addict had sold all of like many prize possessions that belonged to his father, among which was this gun that his grandfather, his father's father had taken off a Nazi in World War Two, and he had sold this this gun to a pawn chop to buy drugs and he wanted to get the gun back and he felt like he owed it to his father and spoiler alert, he gets the gun after I mean, I
didn't think we were ever going to find this gun again. It might have taken him a couple of years. We finally got it. He gives it to his dad and his dad's like, oh, thank you, you know, and it's just sort of like Jesus Christ, like that's not going to make a very satisfying end. It is the closure
that we thought we wanted. But then it turns out that the conversation he ends up having with his father, the gun is merely a pass key that allows us into this emotional space where his dad is able to talk about his feelings about his dad and that gun, which he never liked, and he had mixed feelings about his own father, And it ends up getting to this point where the dad's able to say to him like,
I don't really give a shit about the gun. I was afraid of losing you, and I'm so glad to have you back, and I don't care about getting the gun back, but I got you back. And it's sort of like we spent two years searching for the gun just to get us to this other place. So it's sort of like sometimes like if things wrap up too neatly and too quickly, it's not good. There needs to be that struggle in order to get to really get someplace, and you know, to get someplace emotionally and internal, and
it's it's hard to dramatize that. You know, sometimes you just need the gun. You need that mcguffin.
I really love interactions with strangers. They make me very happy, They give me life, They make me feel connected and alive. And I think you might love strangers even more than I do, because it's your whole thing. Is like a random person will come into your inbox and all of a sudden, you, I imagine you fall in love a little bit with them and their plight or their struggle.
Yeah. Yeah, it's complicated. When you said that about like loving to talk to strangers, I don't even know if this is really if this makes sense, but it occurred to me this morning. I was on a run and I saw these two kids. There's something very sweet about the two of them. They were they were wandering, you know, wandering. I was kind of like a on a running path and they were just taking a leisurely stroll and they were coming towards me, and they had such open faces.
They looked like they were wearing pajama bottoms. Maybe that's just what kids do. It had the affect of like feeling like they just rolled out of bed and maybe they were, you know, in love and we're just happy to be spending the morning together, and or maybe they were on ecstasy. I don't know, but they just their faces just seem so open, and I felt like stopping and telling them that that's a wonderful thing to see.
And then I also thought about how like if I was their age, that would be like yeah, and made me also it makes me aware of just like how like clenched my faces like I'm just waiting to get punched in the face, and like I'm just all like you know, and it's my natural like at this age, I mean, this is what my face has become. And I realized that a part of my fear is going through life with my face open like those two kids, for fear that a weirdo like me is going to
come up to them. And so I kind of keep I've kind of like, after fifty odd years, my face has just become this.
Closed and don't talk to me.
Yeah, And like what am I afraid? What would be the worst case scenario if I did walk through the through the world with an open face and meeting people's gaze and not afraid of having people approach me, strangers approach me? What would be the worst case scenario?
But you've developed a way, You've made a whole job for yourself where you get to meet strangers under your.
Infety in a way like in with parameters and the context.
Round two insights cars and.
I haven't even skipped a.
Flipped but you're not judged either.
I mean, I don't know what's in there. There might be something that's so embarrassing. So that's why I've been saving them. We've moved from the yellow carts of the blue cards, so I believe. So I can only imagine that this is.
Getting more intense, okay, one two three one. What's a sound that instantly puts you at ease? That's a person who lives in sounds. I think a laugh, maybe anyone in particular or all of them, all the laughing.
And this is coming from someone who does not, unfortunately for me, like have an easy laugh. Being in the business that I am in, it would be a nice signal to somebody of like, hey, I'm enjoying you. But I think, yeah, all kinds of different laughs. It lets me feel like the person isn't taking me too seriously. I feel dangerous when I'm being taken too seriously.
You feel dangerous or the situation that erous.
I kind of feel like I shouldn't be taken too seriously. And I feel like my old friends don't take me that seriously. Like my friend Jackie, who opens the show who I phone, who has a very endearing, distinct, kind of insane laugh. I like hearing it. It makes me feel like it makes me feel free to say all kinds of really dumb things, you know, because I feel like I'm not hurting anybody. When I hear the laugh, it's a signal that I'm not hurting anybody. And I
think that's a big eie. I have a friend who told me a while ago, He's like, is this stupid? I go through life just always being afraid that I'm gonna get yelled at? And I was like, no, I think I relate to that. You're afraid that you're gonna hurt somebody get yelled at or Yeah, you just want to be You just want to feel like you're not you're not messing anything up. And I don't know. Yeah, laugh is like a really nice thing.
Yeah, one, two or three?
Three?
How much do you rely on the validation of others?
I think, in some ways not a lot, because you know, hearkening back to that story about trying to get into a writer's program when I was eighteen, for a very long time, I mean, I was writing and no one was buying what I was selling like and I was getting rejections and I'm not talking like big magazines, but like zines and chapbooks, and no one would I couldn't.
I just couldn't get anywhere. And I just kept doing it because I felt compelled to do it, like a spider spinning a web, like I I And in that sense, I think I was kind of like free of needing any validation. And maybe that's just the cockiness of youth or not knowing any better, but I think I still have that. I think I would still be doing what I'm doing regardless of whether anyone liked it. That being said,
I do like to know what people are thinking. I think laughter, you know, getting a laugh or something is a form of validation, and I like that.
That sounds like just the right healthy amount of caring. Not that you need me to validate your sense of whether validation is important.
I can't believe I'm doing something healthy.
We're moving to round three.
Beliefs, all right, Oh, the red cards?
Red cards one, two, or three?
I'll take one.
Do you believe in ghosts?
I don't not believe in them. I don't know that I've ever seen one or experienced one, but I believe in the idea of them. We moved in a couple of years ago into this turn of the century Victorian that I catch all kinds of weird smells in that I feel are kind of like ghostly remnants of people that lived here, that died here probably.
And do sensations like that? Are they pleasant to you? Is that something you enjoy thinking about or is it disconcerting?
Mm?
Or neutral?
Neutral? Yeah, Like I'll smell cigarettes all in a sudden and I'll be like, that's so weird. So there must have been there's something about the weather that's bringing out the smell. But it you know, of some long dead smoker who lived here. It feels like you just kind of passing through.
That.
Maybe one day you'll just be a faint smell. I think it's probably more towards the positive. Yeah, if I had to, if I had to choose, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, if I saw someone crab walking on the ceiling less so, but just something subtle, you like a wisp face right right, like a kind of spectral sort of you know, zero mostelle. Maybe one of the first long text exchanges I had with my wife was about ghosts.
She had finished reading a book about ghosts, and I thought, wow, this is a real kooky chick.
Tell me more. I mean not not you tell me more, but you were like, tell me more. I'm into this. Yeah.
I was like, yeah, bring it on.
Yeah, three more cards one two or three two? Have you made peace with mortality?
Some days I feel like, yeah, take me, this is a good day to die, and I feel like one of these stoic guys in a spaghetti western. And then other days, no, I guess it. Really it's crazy to think that something like that would be so mood dependent. Is that possible?
It's so final.
Sometimes it just feels okay, and sometimes it just doesn't. Sometimes it just doesn't make sense, and then other times it just feels like, well, we all got to go sometime. That's one of the things I liked about drinking, was that feeling of like of getting philosophical about that, like I was someone I'm not a great flyer, and that was when I relied the most on. You know, I would travel with the little bottles of booze in my pockets, so it just feeling them there gave me a sense
of security. And sometimes during turbulence. I'd pop one of those or two of those, and it just felt kind of like, yeah, you know, we all got to go sometime.
Yeah. I think that AH planes often summon internal conversations about living and dying. I mean for me for sure too as well.
But but and sometimes it's like sorry, go ahead, no no, you say no, no, I was just going to ask you like it. It's that's sometimes not a bad feeling. It's sort of like you feel like crying sometimes when you watch sentimental movies on a flat.
Oh yeah, and the complains are my favorite place to cry. Yeah, it feels like safe. There's like strangers around and that I find comforting. One of them might say something to me and I might be open to that or I might not. I don't know, but I like the idea that it could happen.
What did they say to you?
Oh?
Just the possibility that they could say, are you okay? And then that look at it makes me emotional thinking about it. That breaks me. When you're in a vulnerable place and a stranger extends themselves at all, it makes me feel good. But now I pivoted this to myself and I didn't want.
To No, no, no, no, not at all. What do you say? What do you say if someone asks you are you okay? Do you say not at all? Or do you say yes?
Oh?
I'm thinking of one circumstance in particular, and I said no, And I didn't want to talk about I didn't want to say anymore. But I really appreciated that.
They asked, did you tell them that?
No?
But I said no, but it's okay, And that was it. And and I think, am I trying too hard to sew this together? But I do think there's something about being suspended in air in a situation where you could die because planes don't make sense, and those being more truthful spaces because what the hell do you have to lose? So I get I get the plain thing for sure.
And I also think that, yeah, yeah, you said no, I know, please please no.
I was just going to say you you were saying at the beginning that it feels like dangerous to be so dependent on one's emotional state to determine whether or not one is okay with dying on a particular day.
But I all, maybe this is just me.
I think that's a sign of a healthy person who wakes up and and like observes the question, you know, like how is my life? And and when you're saying today's a good day to go, what you're really saying is I have lived a good life.
Yeah. I don't know if this is a quick story, but I felt I feel like I kind of got felt like I got the license to think about it in that way. From a story, a heavyweight story. It was about this woman who was in her forties and felt like her life had kind of gone off track because her foster mother didn't allow her to stay in stay with basketball because her grades weren't good enough, and she felt like her life would have been better if she could have pursued basketball, she would have gone in
a scholarship. And so we went and found this foster mother who she hadn't spoken to in years, who was now this ninety four year old woman, to ask her why why didn't she allow her to pursue basketball when
she saw it was her one passion. And this woman was a tough old bird, like it would have been so easy to say, oh, I'm sorry, and like she just wouldn't, and she had had a hard life herself, and I and I felt it was almost like she was unclear on the concept of regret, you know what I mean, And I was trying to explain it to her and she was like, no, no, no, I know what you're saying, and I don't. I honestly don't know if I had a chance to do it over again with her,
whether I would have done it differently. And I think it really depends on my mood, what mood I was in.
Wow.
I was like, wow, Wow, that is something that is seldom acknowledged. It is, you know what I mean.
It is, but it isn't the whole ballgame. Not to make that bad pun but it.
Is like, yeah, I get or more of it then we acknowledge. You know, just how drunk a lot of these Founding fathers were when they were coming up with their laws and ideas, you know what I mean, and they echo through the years.
That was a journey. That question, this is the last one, Jonathan one, two or three?
Three?
Do you think people can really change? Oh?
Yes, I mean I have to believe that. I mean, even if I don't believe it, I have to believe that. And I think like that's the struggle is to really try to believe that. And I do think people are capable of change within limits. You know. It's like the paradox. I mean, like we are who we are, but I think as long as we're alive, we're able to change. You know. I'm working on a story that should come
out this season. It's about a woman who is one hundred and two years old who one day her kids, who are you know, in their seventies, said, you know, you're getting on in age, we should probably clean up the storage room. And while they were doing that, they found this box containing two hundred and fifty six letters that had been sent to her by her fiance at the time when she was like twenty, who was in the war, this was World War Two, who died in
the war. And she had not opened up this box and looked at these letters in over eighty years, and had never really mourned the loss of this man and
this relationship. She put it aside, and she married a man named Irving, stayed married with him for sixty odd years, had three kids, and then finds his box and then finds herself at the age of one hundred and two, falling in love with this with this long dead young man from her past, and in that process like she, you know, a person who was very used to and maybe that's a little generational. Two is like you just pack it up and put it in a box and move on, but it sticks with you, you know what
I mean. And like you know, she went through a lot of changes even at that age, which is kind of like a beautiful thing to see, you know what I mean. As long as like we're alive, and as you know, as long as we keep going, there's always going to be change. You know, maybe not the change that other people want to see, but we're there's going to be changes.
We end the show the same way every time, with a trip in our memory time machine where you go back and revisit one moment from your past. It's not a moment you would change anything about. It's just a moment you'd like to linger in a little longer. Oh, I know, there are many you could pick anything whatever comes to the fore.
I mean, I guess the first thing that comes into my head is my child's birth. Yeah, I guess. My wife says that. I you know, like I was saying, I don't. I'm not an easy laugh. I don't. I wish I smiled more. But she said that like all through labor, I had such a big smile on my face which kept her going. Just such a wonderful, wonderful day and just filled with so much hope and wonderful expectation and beginning. And yeah, I think that. And I also really love the hospital cafeteria. It was at NYU.
It was really good.
Jonathan Goldstein, It's been such a pleasure. You can hear Jonathan on the newest season of his amazing show, Have Youweight.
Thank you so much, Thank you, thank you.
Thanks so much for listening. If you liked this episode, I think you would also dig my interview with Jonathan's former boss and host of This American Life, Ira Glass. Ira was super open and honest and way funnier than I expected.
Check it out.
This episode was produced by Lee Hale and edited by Dave Blanchard. It was mastered by Patrick Murray and Jimmy Keeley. Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sangwini. Our theme music is by rom team Ara Bluie. You can reach out to us at Wildcard at NPR dot org. We're going to shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.
Hi, it's Jonathan here again breaking out of the straight jacket of being a guest. I just had one further announcement. We here at the show have started a free newsletter and it's a lot of fun. Khalil a Holt. Wouldn't you say, yeah, come on, step it out, step it up.
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I'm still not convinced in these.
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