Monday mornings while I mix scones, sheet out pastry dough, and wash dishes, I listen to podcasts.
Specifically, I listen to Fresh Air.
Wanna know what I love about interviews?
They are just conversations with people who have lived their lives, suffering and failing and trying, and then during a quick 45 minutes, we get to look back at the whole messy story and watch as an astonishing arc rises from the mundane.
Inevitably, the interviews give me new perspective on my own life. Like everyone else, I, too, don’t know where I’ll end up or what may emerge. This truth makes me feel both hopeful and grounded.
(Reading the John Lewis books about the Civil Rights Movement, I had the same sort of epiphany. Back then, people were doing what they needed to do — chaotically and incorrectly and without any guarantee of results — and then, over time, this Thing, the Civil Rights Movement, emerged. From where we sit now, the Movement seems like a given, but it wasn’t. Back then, the capital-M Movement was just lower case-m movement. In the midst of living, it’s all a jumble.)
Anyways, if you have a big cooking project coming up and need some interviews to listen to, here are a few goodies I’ve enjoyed recently.
Anna Deavere Smith asks incredible questions: How are human emotions captured in the rhythm of our language? How do the rhythms in which we speak reveal our internal disarray? She says that when people struggle to make sense of something, they often end up creating “gorgeous architectures of language” — isn’t that beautiful? (The audio clips of her theater monologues are stunning.)
This interview with The Atlantic writer Helen Lewis about masculinism, which is all about the belief that feminism emasculates men (because men apparently don’t feel strong enough to withstand the power of the feminine, I guess?), is a doozy. Interestingly, both liberals and conservatives have a right and wrong way to be a women. For the conservatives, the wrong way is to be a “small-breasted biddy,” as Reverend Douglas Wilson said (this year!). And for the liberals, there are the Karens — meddlesome women who insert themselves. In either case, the behavior is “wrong” primarily because the person doing it is female.
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, a scholar of the N-word, speaks in a way that is deeply nuanced and challenging. If you’re anything like me, you may find the podcase requires some soul-searching and a conversation buddy. My advice? Tell a good friend to listen to it, and then go on a walk together to discuss.
When legal scholar Kimberle Williams Crenshaw was a kid, her parents expected their children to come to supper prepared to share something that they were thinking about or that they’d learned. In other words, meals weren’t places to shut up and eat — they were times to show up and share. (Kimberle often had to leave off playing with friends early so she’d have time to prepare what she was going to talk about at supper!) Kinda makes me wish I could redo our family dinners.
***
Bonus! The Netflix documentary about Martin Short is a cacophony of activity, grief, and laughter.
Eighty percent of living is failing, Marty says, without even a twinge of resentfulness. Once you accept that failure is a central part of life, it doesn’t sting as much.
This same time, years previous: best damn pork butt roast, something you might not know about me, banana pudding, the coronavirus diaries: week 70, mushroom burgers with cheese, the quotidian (7.9.18), nose spots, a photo book, the quotidian (6.9.14), let’s talk, the quotidian (7.9.12), basic and plain (and delicious), while I can.