Laura Brown

You've got it, got a vice for AI on a bad percent now, I've also got a body for radio as well. Hello, I'm Mini Driver. Welcome to The Many Questions Season two. I've always loved Cruce's questionnaire. It was originally a nineteenth century parlor game where players would ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the other player's true nature. It's just the scientific method, really. In asking different people same set of questions, you can make

observations about which truths appeared to be universal. I love this discipline, and it made me wonder, what if these questions were just the jumping off point, what greater depths would be revealed if I ask these questions as conversation starters with thought leaders and trailblazers across all these different disciplines. So I adapted prus questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions that I personally think a pertinent to a person's story. 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's grown out of a personal disaster? And I've gathered a group of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and humbled to have had the chance to engage with.

You may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions. We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to their experience or the most surprising, or created the most fertile ground to connect. My guest today on many Questions is Laura Brown. Laura Brown is a brilliant journalist. She's the former editor in chief of in Style magazine and executive director of Harper's Bazaar magazine. She started her career with Mode and Australian Fashion mag eventually working for

Harper's Bazaar Australia and Talk Magazine. Then she became a senior editor at W and then joined Harper's Bazaar, where she produced a ton of the magazine's most impressive covers, including maybe her most famous cover from March two thousand fifteen, featuring Rhianna in a gold bathing suit inside the jaws of a great white shark. It is an epic image. Laura's interviewed some of the biggest names, Oprah, Stephen Colbert. She's hosted the podcast Ladies First with Laura Brown, dedicated

to women driven by bravery, kindness, and curiosity. And those are the cornerstones of who Laura Brown is to me and it seems to everybody else. She has a kind of rare creative magic about her and a curiosity about life and an appetite for metabolizing culture and making it available to all of us, for fashion to not be remote, for celebrity to not be remote. She brings things in and she she makes them comfortable and beautiful and understandable. And it was a great pleasure speaking to her. So

what person, place, or experience most altered your life. I was probably my mom getting to botch from my dad when I was five and moving. We were on a farm outside of Sydney and we moved to Sydney proper. We had a bit of money for that year and then we didn't have any and I I think that was her bringing me up, but me needing to take care of myself, you know, and very much wanting to react against, you know, being stuck or not having my

ability and having money or whatever. So I was like working I waitress since I was fourteen, so I could buy my own clothes and I could do that kind of stuff. So I feel like it's having a life with one of the person with a mom and the resources that you have. But she was always the ongoing with a newspaper going read this, read that, like whenever I'm on the phone joining out, did you know that the trade in Australia is blah blah blah, Like she's

always so up on things. So a lack of resources but a lot of awareness I think read from that, and then the desire to get myself up and into the world in whatever way that was and get where the grown ups were because I didn't have any other sisters and brothers around me or that kind of stuff. Obviously I made my school friends and everything. But I think that situation. I often think about if my mom and dad has said together and lived on this farm where I would be. I think I'd still get to

the same. But I don't. You don't know, do you? You don't know when when what happens when you're sprung somewhere when you're five years old. There i'd be, you know, mega farmer brown number two. I'd be a crap farmer, farmer browner, farmer browner. No, I would be a terrible farmer. But yeah, I think my mom for sure, my mom and circumstances with my mom, rather than like that sort of mushi my mom. You know, it's part and parcel of my mother and the circumstances we were in. So

what quality do you like least about yourself? Impatience? But I kind of like it sometimes in what way, just because I want to get things done, you know what I mean? And I don't like a lot of dillydall hate. I do love fasting around, Like in my apartment, I love a good fat Yeah. I think sometimes I was like, oh, not everybody can necessarily work at the speed that I do. I was going to say, I think it's more to do with alacrity and speediness, Like come on, bullet, get there.

You come on, I see where it's going. Come on, get there. You're standing at the finish line with your arms crossed, houghily waiting for everyone else to catch up. I can imagine you. Yeah, so I was always a bit of a ship runner um. But no, a little bit a bit of that, I think, just to be like, come on, why isn't this is clear? You know? And it's just not giving myself a compliment. It's it really isn't somebody going, oh, I just get it and you don't.

It's not it's not the deal. No, no no, no. But also, why don't we Why is that a bad thing because you're being impatient with other people? Or I'm just wondering because it feels like it's quite a good thing to get the answer to a problem quicker. I just feel like, socially, you shouldn't, you know, I just added empathetically, you should be learned to be patient sometimes. But I do think in my business, and I guess maybe in New York and everything, I'm like, I don't like mucking around. I

don't like work creation, I don't like wibbly wobbling. I don't like second guessing. I hate overthinking, because whoever overthought anything and went, oh, that that's better, that was worth it. Sometimes I feel like lately I've turned into like some sort of like my verbie. It has become like a bully in an eighties in high school movie where literally the other day I went, I can't stand these weenies. People have been freaking weenies. Who is this weenie? But

I'm like, there's just a lot of weenie. I think it's going to think. There's so much language right now which has become weaponized. Yes, which is why I'm pulling Weenie out. Yeah, pull out. I weaponized my weenie. You weaponize your week. I like that you weaponized your whenie. Someone had to someone was gonna ladies. It's about ownership and weaponizing your weenie. And I don't know, dr F.

I'd go go to town and up. It's weird because like the next of patients and no I can encourage you to come up to speed and believe that that is actually empowering those people to work harder and faster. But as you said, there's a balance with being patients, and many people get there in there in time. I just get and I'm like, oh it's not working. Look I'll just do it. Yeah, I'm not getting it assigned. I'm just gonna do you know what I mean. So

like let's just do it. And we have to talk around it for like half an hour, but why we're doing it. I decided it's fine, move on. That might be a cultural thing though, but it isn't as an American thing, like just a bit of Manian And like I told you what I mean, I've noticed that Americans want a lot of explaining, like talking it out, Like I don't want to therapize around a decision sometimes I

just want a decision exactly. And doesn't mean there's no diss on you, you know, there's no diss to the process. Just like we're just moving on now, saving my day. Not meaning to be mean to Americans because obviously we both live here, no, no, but it's sort of a corporate American thing a little bit sometimes you know, it's not the entire land at all, but it is just

a little bit of like work creation. And we had a talk this straw and we made this deck or we did this, and I'm like, I don't need to see your deck. I don't need to see like you know what I mean, Like, I just need to get on with it. There's so much to produce. I think it's that. I think it's exactly that. You know. Recently I was doing a film and rather guttingly, as usual, I found myself in a movie with a huge amount of music. But again because I was playing the high

soprano of the Paris Opera. Of course you are. And while I sing, I do not sing like that. And she needed to sing in the extraordinary way. Ship dude, So the studio or arrange you like, I keep getting these emails going. You know, we really want you to do these, you know, voice lessons. You know you have to go with a vocal coach. And I was like, I'm not singing. I've got a lip sync Really, what I've got to do is practice lip syncing in front

of the mirror in a foreign language. Yeah, but they were so obsessed with but no, because it's music and there's vocalizing. It needed to go in this. So eventually I just did it because no one was shutting up about it. So I just had this meeting with this very nice man where we both went, this is sort of pointless, but it's really nice to meet you, right,

the indulgence of like this sort of work creation. Like we said, we're going to do it this way to a TI TI see, and I'm like already I'm already at D And it's the same result. I know. I concur I can't think that that is a quality to likely. Don't ever give that up. I like concurring. No, it's just like sometimes I mean, yeah, I mean what am I going to say? What I like at least about myself? You know what, that's actually great thing about me. I think it's really good that when you say the thing

you like least by yourself. Actually, by the time you finished talking about it, you go, do you know what? I think that's actually fucking great. Scratch that from the record. I'm perfect. You know, just if you could just thank thank you so much, Minny for concluding that winning Wednesday over here, fully winning Wednesday, winning Wednesday. This can be honestly as sort of matter or as literal as you decide, but the betase I've got them new metaphorse, please no, no,

that's not about that. When and where were you happiest? When and where was I happiest? Ship many Here's the thing. I'm a Gemini, know I sort of have a split screen life, if it makes sense. So I'm happiest in

two modes. And I don't know exactly if I can pinpoint like a time, but I'm happiest in New York and I'm working with incredible people and we're making something amazing together, and I'm inspired by them and I can feed off that for weeks, or if I'm in Australia literally being poured at by baby kangaroos at my friend's sanctuary, I'm completely ecstatic by both of them, and I think each one sort of feeds the other, and having the option to be able to do both. If that makes sense,

it really doesn't. I love the idea of baby kangaroos pouring at fashion. Joey's pouring. They pour at your skirts. And then when they're really young, they called pinkies. And it's when at the beginning their eyes are still kind of closed before they're Joey is their pinkies. The pink is because they're literally pink. I love so literal Australia. I don't know it's pink, call it pink. You know you find pink, pinky kangaroos and the Great Sandy Desert.

Because it's sad, simple, we're simple folk. I like it. It's very user friendly. When their eyes just open, they have very dark black eyes and they literally like animatronic and they're like, I wish everyone could see Laura's physical impression of a pinky baby newborn kangaroo. Hey man, it's legit. Yes, so that's sort of I know it's a hybrid answer. I'm sorry it is. It is duality, it's not one thing. Is that endemic in your life? Do you think there

is always a duality around most things? Yes, there is always a duality most things. I came from Australia. I live in New York. I really mythologize New York and

I really wanted to be part of that. And then as one matures and you start to remember where you came from and appreciate where you came from and not try to strain yourself to get your ass out of there so much so I think more as I've gotten older, that duality is there, you know, the ability to go between the two of that thinking that the place I came from is lesser and not cool and not whatever, and you know what I mean, And everything had to be up here because I think once you get the

measure of up here versus down there, and you've been doing it for a while, there's things you really appreciate, but you don't just having perspective on me anything on people or things that you have again mythologized and just realized that they're oldest people. Do you think that you can do that in other aspects of your life, that being able to be fluid about the quite literally the southern and the Northern hemisphere and kangaroos and high fashion

that you are pretty fluid? Yeah, I am. I am. I can sort of plunk anywhere and be all right. And I think they got that for my dad. My dad was literally farmer Brown, a dairy farmer, and he's dead. He would say that I'm Richard him, I'm dead. But anyway he would be able to go to the oscars or a gas station or a hospital or whatever it is and just be able to kind of find a level with people, and I think that that's what I've

been able to do, at least to date. I don't know if it's a bit of only child syndrome too. It's like, come on, be my friend. I mean, I have a half sister, my dad said, but I was raised on my own, so I think there's a bit of likes younger as definitely a pleaser. I do like to get on with people, but I think that that you know, if you are in the world, you should be able to meet people on their level, wherever it is, if you're alive, and not just have your blinkers on

all day. M It's interesting. I'm fascinated by what makes people happy or what their version of happiness is. I'd like the idea that it's an oscillation between two worlds, and the idea of being able to move easily through the world is what makes you happy. Yeah, freedom of movement is what makes me happy, and losing my freedom of movement is terrifying being stuck somewhere. I don't like

the idea of that was the pandemic card for you? Then, like, in terms of lockdown, let's say not the pandemic, but being locked down and having to be in one place or was that hard for you or to do? Like it because it let you off the hook. No, because because it was everybody, or just because it was a universal experience, so it wasn't just me being tied down. Everybody else was flapping around. So no, I didn't feel you know, we felt constrained, but I didn't feel like

I was. Something was happening to me that wasn't happening to everyone else. So I don't know. I just think success is freedom of movements. And no, that doesn't necessarily matter how much money you have, not in the slightest or whatever allows you to have freedom of movement in a schedule because I just I want to be able to go places and see people and or at least even if I'm not doing it in life, I'm doing

it on here, aren't I So? And that's also my profession, journalism allows me to do that, and I get to meet all these different people every single day. So that did help me through the old penny because I have all these access to other people's experiences. So I think I luckily, I think did better than than some people because I had that opportunity rather than just sitting around going what do I do now? Yeah? You know I had work to do. You did, You had to get

on with it. I did. What question would you most like answered? What question would I most like answered? Why does so many people not care about other people? Like? Why are so many people are so my opics? Someone empathetic so lacking an understanding of others. It doesn't mean you have to be benevolent or charitable, or give money or be woke or hashtag all day on on your Instagram. But why don't people are just looking right now? But people who won't get vacs, people who are scared of

other people. You know, I don't get it. I've always found it seems to be a harder way to be to not just go X, Y and Z are people in finaltle. I just don't understan why people don't care about others and don't see people as people. I find that the most extraordinary and politically here as as we've seen. And cynicism, why people cav there in cynical with the way they communicate to people. Fox News, you know, gets

my blood boiling more than anything. And in the past you're and just saying how disposable and how little respect they have for their audience and for their minds, for their health. And then you know, like Lucalan Modock goes off and builds a you know, leaves everybody here to be misinformed by Tucker Carlson and go to Sydney for three months and buys a boat wharf. You know, that sort of stuff really upsets me when it just goes.

It's a disrespect for people who we may not agree with, you know, but like people could have real power, why they don't care. You still can have your stuff, you can still have your boats, you know, but why are they throwing these people away? I couldn't agree with you more because I think the dislocation from basic humanity, this evolution of a protectionist like spiritual protectionism and literal protectionism and then closing borders in all senses figuratively and literally. Yeah,

the evolution of that is them. And I don't even mind saying them. I hate the US and them, but in this instances them no longer believing that there's anything wrong with it, that just looking out for number one, and forgetting that you're living in a world full of billions of people, and even in your community or representing a country, and how how easily that's been stirred up in the past few years, and how revealing it is

whether or not it was obviously they're festering before. But I just don't have an inability to just cast aside groups of people. And I'm not like a bleeding heart either. I'm a pragmatist, but you know, I just to disrespect, especially at the moment, people's health. Their health. Oh yeah, I mean historically we do this right as human beings. We do this, particularly when empires are declining, and it's

like people start grabbing. It's sort of like a smash and grab, and I feel that that's where we're at. All these systems are breaking down and people are becoming more protectionist and more fearful, which means, funk everybody else and take care of myself and I don't care about you. I don't want to wear a mask. So I'm not wearing a mask because it infringes on my personal freedom, which will for the rest of my life be one of the most insane things I've ever heard. It's one

of the most insane things you've heard. And yes, so that's that's you know, it's a bit bleak out. But that is me question, and I you know, I do everything I can within my life and my work to demonstrate the very opposite. Perhaps that's all we can do, but just get a bit wearing sometimes as a journalist because you're sorry, that's Laura Brown hitting herself in the face,

self flagellating, but being flagellated by everything. So it's in that when you absorb a lot of it, I can kind of get you down, but you try to really really I hope there's a balance for that by seeing that there is I quote this lovely geneticist I met once all the time because he was like, wherever you see the rise of anything specifically like organically in the world or energetically, wherever you see the rise of one thing, for example, if it makes you frightened, let that be

a trigger to remind you that it's counterpart is present as you're feeling that there about rising darkness if you want, right, right right, that is literally how the physical universe works. Right now, there is the other side, and that's you know, and I know I'm very much now it's there. I don't know when you're watching Fox News or and perhaps you know by the same token. You don't know when you're watching CNN. You know you we are. We've become

partisan and are everything right? Right? Right? I have great friends on MSNBC here and whatever I mean. In the media, I pay very close attention. But I'm not watching either of those sides just to tripally reinforce my own views. I know what they are and just sit there and everybody pat themselves in the background. Yeah we agree, Yeah they I got it, you know, And um, so I'd rather just get on with it. Yea. What relationship real or fictionalized? To find love? Fear? My relationship with my

fiance Brandon. Are you affianced? Yeah? Oh my god. Our engagement is vintage by this point. We got engaged at the end of eighteen. Well that's got a nice long engagement like the Victorians. Liked like the Victorians. Yeah, nothing wrong with that. In the Kangaroo Sanctuary, we got engaged there and then this crazy thing happened globally, wouldn't believe it, and um everybody had to stay home and can get married and yes, so, but I love him very much.

What is it about that particular relationship that defines love for you? It's so funny. He can probably hear me, can you hear me? I think it is the lack of ambiguity, you know what I mean, just the way of just being entirely yourself and having that baseline and just and sincerity. He's a very very very very sincere person who loves people, who loves his family and loves his friends, very very deeply loves people so much that makes me come off a bit bit pat sometimes. I

like that clarity and sincerity. No, I write these things down because I like to go back and revisit them. It's so true, though, isn't it. By the time, you're not as old as I am, But there is definitely a cong seven. What are you? Yeah, well I'm a hundred and seven? Thanks very much. Wow, you're look stunning gorgeous. But don't you find that when you've fought your way consistently through jungles, particularly around love, and every time it

seems to be a bit different. The notion of getting to a place where you recognize love as being clear and sincere and unambiguous and unambiguous, it makes it makes so much sense. Yeah, I didn't meet by until I was forty one, so you know, it took me a long time to get to that point. I was very

single all the time. I didn't meet my boyfriend until I was forty eight, so like see, And by the way, actually looking back on it, probably wouldn't have it any other way because I don't think I would have been able to cheers to all of the assholes that I dated before, because frankly they were brilliant training ground to actually be able to be unambiguous and sincere in love she is. It isn't edit life. Isn't edit like that. I like it when you speak in like T shirts. Yeah,

we're calling pull quotes in the biz. Oh is that right? Pull quotes? Yeah? No, But it's like it is like like, you know, keep what you like, delete what you don't. Isn't that just editing? It is? But I wish I sometimes wish it hadn't taken quite as long. But actually it's all divine timing in it. And that's just when you're like in your bones, you know, Yeah, it is divine timing if you like try honestly, forty plus ladies, yes, your face to us to fall down and stuff, But

you are in your bones, aren't you? So I think that there's a reason why I'm at brand at forty when and you met your beloved at forty that's all right. It's quid pro faceful. It really is quid pro urs drag, quid pro wrinkle. Katie Couric of mind when she does interviews, she calls it instant facelett. She just turns what she's doing and she's putting her two fingers at her temple and just pulling her I wrinkles back like that. You have any I wrinkles. Look at that and now look

at that. Say no, I'm interested, but also youthful. So good. You heavily filtered when you do that. It's quite weird. Yeah, anyway, this side to not my best side, though, Katie would appreciate this being shared, by the way, just so you know it's a good trick. But I'd be stuck there. I wouldn't want to let If I let go, then it would all it would all You'd have to stay there. Now then you hang up, breaking up, I'm going into a tunnel. Goodbye. In your life, can you tell me

something that has grown out of the personal disaster? Did I sound pack to say like you? The death of my father was a personal disaster. That soundselfish? What do you mean? Of course that is it sounds like something that like like this happened to me, but it did, but well, it happens to everybody. Ultimately, what grew out of it? I think more closest with my sister, My sister Emily, who is a dairy farmer, who is farmer brown and her instagram is literally filled with cow's uders.

I love her. Shame with the others. Sorry, I'm not trying. My dad would appreciate this. I'm talking about my father's sad death, but he would love this. That's a moving other. It's iconic. O. God, look at those others. I'm looking closer up. Oh yeah, I'm looking at other cam a cow's bum and beautiful pendulous odds looking both like a bottom and also giant saggy breasts. They are beautiful. Actually, I love cows and one of our bonding things it was sort of funny. It was like, I joke is like, oh,

you're a dairy farmer and I'm in fashion. But you know, sometimes we both worked with cows gidding. So him dying created more of a bond and a relationship with her. Yeah, because I just have to come and go, and we're quite similar in a way, and she's a great writer. She just has a very different life from me. I think this just this understanding of this sort of sadness about the mortality of somebody that we didn't think we were going to lose as early as we did, and

then just kind of move on from it. So I love her and I want her to come and visit me up here. You know, we got a bit stuck as well and not sure if I can get home. But I think definitely that when something happens to the both of you, you know, I think ultimately it's what your parents also want, Like that is a very beautiful gift for your dad to have bequeathed both of you. Is that, in him dying, you guys became tighter exactly?

Thanks Rachel, Well done, Richard. Thanks Richard, you get a siren for that, really getting all the open noises that you're lucky that the freaking buzz hasn't gone off. We don't have a dormant, so it goes like, oh yeah, I mean, I'm surprised that Bob, Bobby, come, can I do? I'm surprised he hasn't lost his mind is that's Bob. I'm sorry, Are you gorgeous? Are you gorgeous? He just had a boss, so he doesn't currently smell, but he's the worst smelling dog in the history of dogs. Oh

my god, I Bobby to Pequita. He looks beautiful, but he's actually he's from a very very bad part of Los Angeles. He's like a street fighter who looks like he Oh it was street Are you a street tough Bob? And he allegedly had a terrible fight with a raccoon, which is why he's partially blind. I mean, if I had a dollar, every time I've had a terrible fight with raccoon, bar mine and mostly in a bar, I would have six dollars. It's might be willing on fire.

I'm really hoping not to hear more from Laura. Please do check out her podcast Ladies First with Laura Brown, which you can find wherever you listen to your podcasts. 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 a Nick Oppenheim at w kPr de La Pescador, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited Tex support Henry Driver