Jia Tolentino

think about Cecilia Himenez. I think that the woman who just google aka Homo and see that there was this sort of I feel like it was from the thirties. It was like this picture by Elias Martinez and this very lovely custodian of a church did it did a terrible restoration, restoration and it looks he looks. I hope it looks like Monkey Jesus now. But it's places that humans have ever done. Just it's so good, so brilliant. Hello, I'm Mini driver, I'm welcome to many questions. I've always

loved Pru's questionnaire. It was originally an eighteenth century parlor game meant to reveal an individual's true nature, but with so many questions, there wasn't really an opportunity to expand on anything. So I took the format of Pruce's questionnaire and adapted What I think are seven of the most important questions you could ever ask someone. They are when and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines

love for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that has grown out of a personal disaster. The more people we ask, the more we begin to see what makes us similar and what makes us individual. I've gathered a group of really remarkable people who I am honored and humbled to have had a chance to engage with. My guest today is author

and journalist Gia Talentino. Gia wrote a New York Times best selling book of essays called Trick Mirror, which is this sharp, critically dexterous examination of how we exist in this particular societal prism. She is a stark, deep, hilariously funny voice of her millennial generation. She grew up in a Houston megachurch that was so enormous they called it the repentagon. I was fascinated as to how a person who has been relentlessly administered a certain set of moral

and religious ideas breaks free from it. It turns out Gia is a world builder from her own questioning and imagination. She is so not precious about all the things she knows, and is fantastically positive about all the different lives it seems she has lived. She is a vivid her, a tick woman of fast interests, and it was an enormous

pleasure to have the opportunity to talk to her. So we have been digging into the Britney Spears saga for the last like six months, and it's such you know, I'm sure you saw the news about the hearing, devastating. It was traumatic listening to her testimony. I had a baby during the pandemic, and it's it's really kind of this early reinforced, you know, the way she was treated. She had two children within thirteen months. She was pounded

everywhere she went. Like if I had been dogged by fifty men shouting things at me to get a response, and I was carrying a crying baby, I probably would have gotten in my car, put the baby on my lap, and driven away. You know, I would have hit the man with the umbrella, not the car. You know, Yes, it happened to me. I mean it happened repeatedly when Henry was tiny, but particularly an airport when Henry was three months old, and it was a female paparazzi, which

I think made it so much worse. And the things that they were saying to try and elicit a response, and the flashes were making the baby jolt. I can't

imagine that. I'm not saying that there is any real equivalency between myself and Brittney Spears, but in that instance of knowing the insanity as a new mother, feeling attacked and hunted absolutely Like now, I'm like, I'm trying to imagine what I would have been like to have to you know, she got pregnant two and a half months after giving birth, right, yeah, I mean I the pandemic kind of afforded a surprisingly lovely postpartum experience that I

wasn't expecting because you know, it was a cocoon. But if there had been a camera on me for even one second, I would have looked like I was certifiable. Like, it's just you're unraveled for so long, but there is no latitude. There is no latitude given to women right for this moment after It's extraordinary. Mean, I don't know why I'm surprised, given that there's so much less latitude given to women in general for childbirth and mothering and

taking care of children and maternity leaves and paternity leaves. Yeah, it's shocking. And only if you've experienced that roller coaster of hormones that happens after was that you do need a gentleman, ironman like you had. Yeah, And even in a gentle environment, it's still hard, Yeah, because there's a calibration that you have to take care of this tiny creature and make sure nothing happens to it and feed it and take care of yourself. But also that you're

your life is completely and utterly changed. But isn't it interesting like that women become these totems to further this sort of systemic abuse. I was watching an old episode of Sex in the City, which you know, I happen to love. I just watched it for the first time. It's like eating cotton candy, Like I enjoy it, but I was watching an episode and a young girl who's saying that she's saving herself for marriage, and Sarah Jessica Parker's character says, you know, well, what do you consider sex?

And the girl went, well, I didn't Lewinsky him or anything. When I think about the abuse that a young woman like Monica Lewinsky withstood through, what was a savage takedown and what should have been a takedown of a different person, of a different person than yet there she was. We've literally had the scarlet letter placed on us in all these different forms for time immemorial, and our idea of

equality is different from that of men. This is why, because it is so oddly perverse, because it is in every area, even in something is sweet confection as sex in the city, there is this blatant acknowledgement that this woman is apparently a whore or did something that you know, she was only accountable for right the extent to which Brittany, But I think kind of all women in the public eye inevitably end up experiencing sort of projection of cultural

fears and desires that in Brittany's case, I think, really composed the entire structure from life. I mean, I've been thinking about it so much. I'm sure you have. I mean, I'm sure you have. Gosh, Oh, I could talk to you all day. We get to talk her an hour. My first question is when and where were you happiest. One thing that I have realized I had a baby during the pandemic, which was a real sort of reintroduction to the control bowling forces of sort of hormones and

chemicals within one's body and psychological state. I write about it in an essay in my book where I talk about the feeling of ecstasy. One of the things that I feel luckiest about in this life is that temperamentally, I've been blessed with pretty sunny mental weather. I find

a feeling of sort of ecstatic joy. When I was a child, I felt it constantly, you know, just riding my bike with the son at a certain angle, or jumping into a pool, or having a day with nothing to do but reading, or seeing all my friends at the playground or ice skating in a circle in the rank, seeing my family at dinner. I was constantly full, like brimming with this sort of ecstatic happiness. I would feel

it listening to music playing in someone's car. I felt it when I was out dancing, I felt when I was eating a really good bite of food. I found this feeling of just kind of an unfettered happiness. And it's been interesting sort of seeing that in my baby, who's now ten months old. I'm really just going right in there. I recently, um like, stopped breastfeeding my child, and for about a month, you know, it com leatly changed the chemical composition of my brain and the ability

to access joy was completely removed from me. And I realized how much of that quality of having happiness, you know, right at hand, anytime the light was a certain way or a song would hit a certain note. You know how arbitrary that was, and how lucky I was to have that feel so so common and so right under the texture of my everyday experience. But you know, I

would say, like peak happiness. You know, for me, isn't it like as an adult, like dancing at four in the morning with my friends, being caught in a rainstorm, Like doing acid and looking at a tree, you know, petting, like walking with my dog by myself in the park in New York City. You know that that's it for me. I so feel all those things. Do you think that it's a frequency, that there are certain conditions or chemicals that one can use to access that frequency of happiness?

Because when I read that essay X to see in Trick Mara, I was so brilliant because I remembered that that when I was a kid, drugs would take me to that place. Now surfing takes me to that place. Being with my son takes me to that place. Being out in the desert, meditating takes me to that place, which makes me think that that place is always there, it's just how we find our way into it. Do you think that it's a frequency? I tend to act as if that is what it is and try to

do the things that turned me into that frequency. I mean, I think you know the things that you're describing surfing, being with your son, being in the middle of the desert, and meditating, these are things that you know, you get like a sort of like almost instinctively kind of a pre verbal almost just physically and existentially in tune, right, And there's like a light that comes from that sensation.

And I think it is a frequency. And I think that you know that was that historically has been my attraction to psychedelics or you know, like like drugs you you ow music, I mean music, like we'll take you to the same because there are enough instances when you it has taken me to the same place that the music plus the ecstasy would have taken. Right when I was pregnant and couldn't do drugs, I was like, man, I need to feel when I was playing. You know,

I remember this morning. It was the middle of the pandemic. I remember one night driving through like kind of an empty New York City on the way to a doctor's appointment or something, and I was like, I need to feel it. And I turned on a song, like a particular song and waited to feel it, and you know, I felt the flicker. You know it's but then, you know, I realized how how lucky to have been able to

access the frequency. And I think that's where you say having a sunny, a sunny experience of mental health, if it was so easy, like if everyone could just do it, everyone exactly, And I mean, isn't that what the what what antidepressants or what certain drugs are supposed to do, which is to help you potentially access or at least put you in a place where you are more more open to it. But we're so chemically bound. I mean, you say stopping breastfeeding. I had exactly the same experience.

But because you've been flooded with oxytse, and you have been flooded with the happiest, most loving, divine connected hormone in existence. For me, it makes testosterone look like a kind of wet salami sandwich, like it's it's so divine, it is so divinely experienced and feels like it is divinely given that when you take that away, no wonder you feel bereft. I'm glad to hear that you experiment

with your ways into that. In fact, when I was talking about your book Trick Mirror with a couple of girlfriends who really experienced depression, they said that reading the essay on ecstasy, it gave such a vantage point of how there are may be other ways in that they don't let themselves. They so identify themselves as depressed people that allowing that experiential stuff might help them find a

different pathway in was super helpful. You know, you're talking about a frequency that you you have to kind of actively put yourself within the band. For um, it's you know, they do. There's so much stuff on sort of psychedelic therapy and sort of you know, like and even like end of life UM therapy, you know, M D M A therapy absolutely, and I and I really do think that there's something I mean that was it has served

that purpose. You know. I'm wary of doing this too much or relying on it solely, but you know, there's something to be said for reminding yourself that this frequency is available to you, you know, and sometimes you might have to use an artificial means to access it, and maybe you wouldn't want to do that all the time, but it has served that purpose for me, is reminding like I am capable of feeling just unbelievably grateful to

be alive. You know, that's amazing. That's amazing. Okay, So what relations and ship, real fictionalized defines love for you? This is such a good question and it made me reconfront all of the answers that occurred in my mind. None of them were romantic, and this is something that I haven't yet figured out about myself. But I know, like, on the one hand, I I have been so drawn

to really traditional almost stereotypical route. You know, I've been in basically, I've been in monogamous relationships almost unbroken since I was sixteen. You know, I'm drawn to just to like traditional notions of romantic love, and yet I find it incredibly uninteresting. And I haven't really squared. I'm not that interested in love stories, you know, I'm not. I can't those like sweeping love stories and film and and you know in books and literature, I'm not. I'm not

drawn to them. I don't find them interesting. Even in in music, I find the drama of sort of attraction much more interesting, and songs about love and and so when I and I don't know, I still haven't figured out what that is because in my actions, that's it's it's been a primary thing that I care about and structure my life around. But I think my experience of love is almost it's so and this is something that I feel lucky about it. It's so kind of familiar

and natural that it's almost boring. Which isn't to say that I find love in my daily life boring, but as a concept anyway, So when I thought about this question, you know, the things I think that what I really that what defines love for me our relationships structured around care. I think I thought about like this was another thing that I thought about having a baby in the pandemic,

was sort of like, this is what love is. The extraordinary lengths that people go to in circumstances around the world that are often phenomenally difficult in ways that I can you know, hardly speak to or imagine what people do on every day basis to take care of the people in their family and the people that they love.

I think that I think of that, that caretaking and devotion that to me is what love is, and on a really sort of every day and maybe that is why maybe that does connect to the way I think of romantic love as this sort of almost mundane thing.

Is that love to me is, like I think about, what defines love for me is a sort of everyday commitment or something like that, and not romantically, and in terms of an everyday commitment to taking care of and watching out for and safeguarding you know, the well being of a parent, a child, a partner, a friend, right hopefully you know, often strangers too. I think I think of just this every day, these everyday actions. When I was young I remember my first this is so funny.

I just remember this when I was maybe an elementary school. One morning, I woke up sobbing because I had had this dream about a bicycle, a bicycle in an empty playground that nobody had, like that was just there and nobody had picked it up, nobody had claimed it. And I woke up sobbing, like thinking, like, someone has to take care of this bicycle. And I think, and that to me was one of the first I think that

was an early understanding of what love is. And I think I had another sort of shocking realization of of that. I remember, you know, back to the breastfeeding thing, but you know, I mean it is kind of I remember, it's huge and I and I think that's really the experience that you know, people say like motherhood will change you or whatever, and I think, really it was the sort of hormonal tsunami that came breastfeeding that made me understand.

I remember, like day three back from the hospital, when my milk came in, I could feel in my body just this this existential desire to to take care and like the responsibility and the desire and the sweetness and the like monstrosity of needing and wanting to take care of somebody for as long as they live. Basically, yeah, that's such a beautiful That is such a beautiful way of putting it. It is overwhelming, which love is right, but also every day right, it's it's every single day,

which dovetails into also the letting. I've talked about this a bit, but what no one ever seemed to talk about with motherhood is that the very act of giving birth is the thing that you will have to do most with your child, which is to let go of them. And it is this this constant process. How do you want to continue to give something everything when you also have to continually be letting them go in order to have the experience that they came here to have, which

it's Do you have any advice for me? Um? Yes, I do? I do? My God, what would my advice be? Keep it in your heart that but I think you already do, just from having read your book, But that notion that nothing is guaranteed, and that every single moment is leading up to this moment where you really, you really do completely let them go to be free. But

you must always underwrite that. So it's kind of being very being very strict with yourself about what your job as custodian is and how much they are serving your needs and insecurities as opposed to you dealing with that ship, and then really underwriting the person that they are becoming. So it's just paying attention to who they are. I really have tried not to shove my sweet Henry into any box, and as a result, very young, he has

been self determining. And that's not you know, oh the kids, Oh you know, I'm just gonna let my kid flingers po across the room because I want them to be free to be him. It's not that. It's about really really feeling and seeing whether interest lies and encouraging that and not hammering the stuff that we think they should learn, because they're going to learn that if you're if you're kind and loving and you keep letting them go, because no one tells you to teach yourself to let your

child go. But it's really the number one thing as a as a mother that I've learned. It's hard, but it's the best possible thing because I think it's what brings them, It's what will always bring them back. Yeah, it will always keep them connected. To you is knowing that they're free to fly, and they're like homing pigeons. I've just come home. I'm going to hang onto this

and remember it. And I and I think for me, there was something that I felt thankful for in the way that pregnancy and childbirth was in itself sort of physically instructive, how it physically reinforced the sort of existential and practical thing that you would have to do later write that you could never like you had to understand that nothing was ever guaranteed, that nothing is ever certain.

And yeah, I found that to be like a useful existential lesson about the world's And I mean, it really is what person, place, or experience most altered your life. I grew up in an extremely conservative religious community in Texas, going mostly on scholarship to a very very ultra Christian school attached to one of the biggest mega churches in

the country. And I have realized increasingly I wouldn't say that I'm a straightforward product of that environment, but it was the entirety of my world from age four to sixteen, let's say. And without that experience, I think I would be significantly different. I lost religion, I would say maybe high school. You know, my politics veered very far left as soon as I got to college. I mean, you know, I grew up I never met a liberal person, I never met a feminist. I never met anyone that was

pro choice. It was very, very kind of a homogeneous in every way. It was a white, very rich environment. But I think what that did to me was at a fundamental level, and I think this has served me in writing and in thinking. I think it it made me understand the default state of life as one in which nobody would necessarily agree with you, and that was okay. Your opinion did not have to be validated by the

people around you. It gave me a sort of quasi lonely but like a true sort of independence within my own brain. It also gave me, I think, an understanding of political and sort of cultural views that I think I technically find really imporrant. But growing up with only people who believe these things made me understand how a view that I find apporran might manifest on the intimate,

everyday level to somebody who holds it. And I think that a lot of my progressive politics came from growing up in the church and not understanding why you know, this Bible that I was having to read every single day of my life for years, it seemed to me to be this very clearly kind of like socialist and aggressive thing that was interpreted in ways that were the opposite sort of economic policies that were harsh and individualistic, and my kind of confusion and anger about all of

that ended up shaping my politics into what they are now. And then abidingly the last thing I'm left with, the sort of vestigial almost desire for devotion. I crave and respect and kind of venerate devotion. And that might have something to do with my answer about love. And I think that that came from the church. How extraordinary to be in an environment of and I hope it's not offensive to say indoctrination. No place I got. I got a ring that said I wasn't going to have sex

when I was like seven, you know wow. But within that environment, you can read the Bible and actually see the beautiful, socialist, loving, inclusive text that is an interpretation of it, whilst also being hammered with the idea that Jesus was white and that it is an individualistic world that we're living in undergo right, and like gay people should not you know, well, the gay people shouldn't exist.

And how on earth did you how did you listen to your own voice when you have this megavoice slamming you. How did you do it? Well? I think that, you know, the process that you're describing is no different from what

we were talking about before we started recording. It's like maybe what every woman does to get themselves out of the thumb of sort of patriarchal expectation, right, Like both probably done our own individual like d programming out of things that were kind of unequivocally grafted onto us at a younger age, you know. And I've really never thought about this except for the way that you just asked

the question. I am troubled by how well I sort of adapted to fit in and like still wanted to be cool and fit in with this environment that I also openly hated. But still, you know, was a teenager. But I think, you know, there were certain things. I was not white, my family was not wealthy like those other families. There was already a difference. There was already some sort of separation that maybe made room for are

a lot of sort of private individual questioning. I also had a couple of close friends that, you know, we had preliminary versions of these conversations, not knowing what we were talking about, but you know, there was a strong desire to get out or to reach for something else than what we've been given. And a few of my friends we kind of reached for these things kind of blindly, and I think that actually the real way, though it's just writing. I think as an elementary schooler even I

was just this copious, copious journal er. And when I was going back, I was reading my old diaries to sort of fact check my book, and I had to also remember that the transition away from these things it feels significant, but it was gradual. It maybe you know, started in seventh grade and reached a sort of working synthesis, maybe at the end of college or something. You know.

I remember getting to college and a girl in one of my classes introduced herself as a feminist, and I was like, like, you know, performative much, you know, like I was sort of like, that's so like eighties or you know, I don't even know what I said, but there was a period of time where I was trying to find a way to hold onto both. And I

think that period lasted for six or seven years. It was a steady movement, but there was a long time where I was trying to reconcile the environment that I grew up in with the things that I kind of

instinctively felt were true. And in going back and reading my journals, I had to remember it took a long time, and I think the way I moved was just constantly writing out my anxiety, writing out, you know, like there's something strange about this, and then six months later I would say, you know, I think what it is is this, And then six months later I would realize, you know, and it was just slowly, slowly, slowly. I think it's

really interesting. And again I'm not drawing any equivalency between me and you, but what I do recognize is, in the face of being told something that is apparently empirical, that the stuff that you were being told, the stuff that I was being told, was that you are going to be unemployed and you'll be lucky if you do some sort of corporate videos telling people where the exits are, and you know, developing the idea of an independent thought

within a structure that feels impermeable. I think it's really interesting, and I think that women have to do it an enormous amount. Right, We're always having to get out of structures that have been previously created. I'm so proud of you. My heart is persty. What quality do you like least about yourself? I have a long held beery that the best and the worst qualities about ourselves are always deeply related. For me, I think one of the best qualities of

myself is that I can be very carefree. I think I am very easy going. But my least favorite quality is that I can be incredibly careless on every level. Careless to the level of, you know, losing my phone, wallet, keys within the span of thirty weekends, to to I think emotional carelessness like deep emotional carelessness. To deciding. I think that when I choose to care about something, it

is like a true commitment. But I think it is very easy for my brain to compartmentalize and say, like, I do not need to recognize this as a concern, a little too easy for me to turn off from. And you know, this is something that has served me well. On the other end of the spectrum, where I think I'm really good and not worrying about certain things that I can't control, sort of accepting on certainty and you

know whatever. But the flip side to it is everything that I've ever regretted in my life, every real mistake I've ever made, I think stems from equality of carelessness so interesting that we don't think of it like that as the thing that we like best about ourselves and the thing that we like at least really being so closely aligned. There's a rizzler paper, yeah, like thin bit between carefree and careless, and there's and it's the opposite. It's sort of like my my boyfriend, my partner who

like his like his best point. It's almost the option. You know, when you're in a relationship, you have the same fight over and over, yeah, you know, and it's just always and like ours is the same, you know, for twelve years. It's been me saying like, why do you care so much about this dumb thing? And he's like, Jia, why don't care about this really imparity thing? You know, and his in his body like luckily they get mirrors

like his. I think his best quality is that he is abundantly conscientious and detail oriented and caring, you know. And the flip side is that you can be like pedantic or over you know, critical or something you know, but it's but they're entirely the same. It's the same quality. Anyways. That's so funny. I find I've grown because I have an extraordinarily detailed orientated boyfriend as well, and and I realized it sets me off sometimes because I wish I

were like that. So really there's a kind of aspirational envy. Yeah, has it made you any more detail are in being? What? Do you know what? It's made me appreciate how shit I am at that. But like I think that but if it's a scale, only only I would notice that the needle has actually flicked further forward into being more but nobody else would notice that you do. But the

other great quality is patience he has. He has limitless patience with you know, I feel most of the time just like a really cumbersome luddite that he carries around with him, like, you know, this is my girlfriend. She's only just realized that they've invented the wheel. And but he's so patient without being patronizing, And I think that's

what makes him sort of almost superhuman. But there is a pedantry, And sometimes I'm like, you don't have to look at all the little bits, just enjoy the whole. We don't have to dissect it into all of these little pieces. But then probably both of our lives are enriched by like attentive detailed at all. I'm pretty sure that I would I wouldn't be able to get half

bet in the morning. If I did, I would live in a nest of books and clothes on the floor, like everything would be getting shut off, and be like, I wish there was some way to pay these bills, some automated away someone happened. What question would you most like answered? I think it would be like what is the most useful possible way I could spend my life? You know, because you struggle with this in a sort of utilitarian sense, I often think, like what am I doing?

Like shouldn't I just be chained to a treat in an old growth forest? Like shouldn't I be like at the Texas Mexico Board or flinging myself in front of you know, like an ice facility, Even like you wonder like I never expected that I would be able to write for a living. I never expected that I would have the privileged. You know, so few people in the world get to do something that's creatively fulfilling and get paid to do and get paid to do it. I feel so phenomenally lucky to be able to do it.

And then sometimes I'm like, you know, is this just sitting at my computer and writing an art? I think that serves like an objective function and it's important. But you know, I mean, sometimes you just wonder like, should I be doing something? You should? I should I go to law school? And you know, this is very interesting. This is very interesting because you wrote something. I don't know where I read it, but I wrote it down here, and everything that I write, I do hope to make

things clearer for the people who read it. Sure, yeah, so I think that that is unbelievably useful and amazing. To be able to articulate is a gift. God knows. It's why we read. But I would also like to say it's really interesting because even at a very young age, you clearly have been worried about how do you save all the bicycles? Right, It's quite interesting that that's been a concern of yours, for it sounds like your whole life is like, how do I save all the stuff?

It's like you're you're doing it. You're doing it through the medium of writing, You're doing it through mothering, and like, maybe you will change yourself to an old growth tree. I know, maybe I will, Maybe you will at some point do that. But I know what you mean about, is there more that I should be doing? Yeah? You know, and then there'll never be an objective answer. I think what I do know is that you know when you have a friend that they ask like, am I are

really bad? In person? Order? Am I? And it's like you have to remind them that the fact that they're always asking themselves this question is itself a guard against the thing that they're worried about. I have a feeling that this anxiety that's always in the back of my mind that could I be using my time in a better way? Could I be giving my impulses more to the collective other than the individual. Like I think that it is a kind of stick that I need to have.

I try to keep that stick going in a way that is productive rather than sort of like uselessly self flagellating. Yeah, exactly. It's such a great answer that question, like could somebody tell me the exact thing that would be the most useful, best use of my life? Here does someone tell me

if someone run the math? But again, I mean, I think you just sort of answered it those well and saying if you're asking that question, it means that you're paying attention to what you are doing, which means you're most likely holding that thought of is this the best use of my time? I mean, God knows I do enough stuff where I go. What am I doing is usually just doing something incredibly mundane, and I'm like, what

am I doing? I feel like I should be doing something ten times more productive, but it's not always possible. So it's sort of like do it when you can write, I get the steeling. When I'm like laying in bed and needing to wind down. I'm just reading news that I know I'm going to forget, and you know instantly as soon as I read it, and it's like, you know what, whatever. Sometimes the brain simply must eat some

garbage and then exactly. I wonder if some of the people who are chained to the old growth trees, I wonder if they think is there something more that I could be doing? Because there's no stay cis in any of this. There's no definitive answer. Yet, there's no there there that even the person who is definitively doing what we would objectively look at and go that person is changing the world, they can't be doing it twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. They themselves must question,

you know, is there more? Lord? Okay, So in your life, can you tell me about something that has grown out of a personal disaster. I'll say, I feel, you know, another kind of luck that I've had in my life. You know, I've been spared a lot of personal grief that I think a lot of people have had to go through. I have not had a very close family member die anyway. This is just a way of saying I've been spared a lot of disasters. But I think

that the closest thing to this question. When I was out of college, I graduated right into the middle of the two eight recession, I was like, you know, like you were saying earlier, I was like, I'll never be employed, I'll never do I'll never be able to make anything of myself. I didn't know what to do when I joined the Peace Corps with all of this sort of idealism and grand plans to you know, do good and you know probably you know, these ultimately imperialistic desires to

save somebody or something. Right, maybe it's back to the bicycle thing, Yeah, exactly. And you know, and that's an uncomfortable and you know, in many ways sort of dehumanizing way to think of other of other humans who are your equals, right, But in terms of you feeling from a very young age that there was service that needed to be addressed. Yeah, and and so you know, and I this was one of the most important periods of

my life. I went to Kyrgyzstan in Central Anesia and it was it was a roller coaster of an experience. We were evacuated to a military base twice. There was essentially a genocide month too. There was a government coup Day seven. I wanted the challenge of it, and I thought, you know, sort of humistically that you know, you come out of this challenge stronger and you do all of these things. And it was a sort of singularly defining

lesson that your intentions and your outcomes. There's often a massive, sort of unbridgeable gap that you can come in trying so hard to do something and then realize you were all wrong. And you know, you can come in feeling like you have so much to give and then ultimately understand that you were still taking somehow. And I ultimately left early. I left after thirteen months. And I pride myself on commitment. That was a story that I told myself about myself, that you know, I say, I'm going

to do something, and I'm going to do it. And I quit, and I bailed, and I came back feeling, you know, useless and and terrible and like I would never be able to do anything good in my life and feeling like I don't understand anything. And I came back sort of horrified at American capitalism, you know, because I was in the middle of nowhere, you know, no internet,

you know, no running water. And I came back. I would go into grocery stores and I would burst into tears that I craved and I feared the fact that I could just walk in anywhere and just all of these products have been flown around the world for my comfort and my whims and you know, and I felt just so confused and like I knew absolutely nothing. And I think as time went on, I realized that that

was actually an okay way to feel, you know. That was actually maybe the grounds from which I would begin to try to understand things is with the sort of simultaneous reaction of dread of the world as it is, but a desire to be in it. You know, people often say they're humbled when they actually mean like I'm I'm very honored to announce, you know, And that was an experience of being humbled as being like truly broken down.

For a while, I thought I need to get myself out of this state, to get back to normal, and I think slowly I started to understand I need to remember part of this state and retain some aspect of this humility, you know, like function a little better, but retain some of the sense that I don't know anything and that that's okay, and that I can operate from this standpoint of humility, true humility from here going out. Wow, it's quite a thing to bring that with you and

then to synthesize that into your everyday life. But amazing that you had that experience. I feel really lucky. And it was again, you know, you go there expecting to give. I left feeling like I took and you know that too was a lesson. You know that you would have to be a study and constantly re evaluated commitment if I did want to give more than I took in this world. I think it's a really really good way of looking at any kind of service is really seeing

how much you're actually taking. Yeah, God, it's just so lovely to talk to you. I could really talk to you forever and ever. It is such an honor to meet you, and thank you for thank you for having me, and thank you for telling me that about mothering. I'm going to remember it for all ways. I think, Yeah, love with loose hands. That's what someone said. Anyway, Good luck with your gorgeous baby bird. Thank you, Jeez. Book Trick Mirror is out now, and there is an extraordinarily

good piece of investigative journalism. She co wrote with ronand Farrow in the July three edition of The New Yorker, entitled Britney Spears Conservatorship Nightmare. Mini Questions is hosted and written by me Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Lavoy, research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby

by Mini Driver. Additional music by Aaron Kaufman Executive produced by me Mini Driver Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison No Day, Lisa Castella and Annicke Oppenheim at w kPr de La Pescador, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, And for constantly solicited tech support Henry Driver