Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker 1: I could get into it maybe if there were, but well, more Taylor swifts really football and a financial.
00:00:07
Speaker 2: Incentive for us. I definitely cared about a lot of sports for a lot of bad boyfriends in my past.
00:00:14
Speaker 1: By the way, I've stood in the rain with more men in Asuran like this, with the wind and the rain. It's going. I love this. I swear to.
00:00:25
Speaker 2: God please like me. Like me.
00:00:28
Speaker 1: I'm a cool girl who likes sports for money. Hello, I'm mini driver. I've always loved Proust's questionnaire. It was originally in nineteenth century parlor game where players would ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the other player's true nature. In asking different people the same set of questions, you can make observations about which truths appear to be universal. And it made me wonder, what if these questions were just the jumping off point, what greater depths would be revealed if I asked these questions as conversation starters. So I adapted Pru's questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions that I personally think are 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 is comedian, political commentator and author Meant the Beat, the longest running correspondent on The Daily Show. Has made me and probably you scream with laughter on that show and on her own series Full Frontal, which ran for seven seasons. I was thrilled to hear that she began her broadcasting career in the attic of her house when she was nine, with a self tape show called News for Goofs. We talked about everything from googling crop tops for fifty year old terrible idea and wondering if our digital imprint, i e. Our search history goes with us when we die and etherically counts against us. SAM is a treasure and a pleasure I hope you.
00:02:38
Speaker 2: Enjoy once we're through talking that I'm going to the train.
00:02:43
Speaker 1: That's your full for having more than one child. I mean, that's really sounds like a new problem because me problem, that's a lot of schedules to schedule.
00:02:51
Speaker 2: And I'm in service to them. By the way, in service to.
00:02:55
Speaker 1: You're essentially a nun mom. Yeah, that it is like giving your life over to an institution.
00:03:02
Speaker 2: I don't even think about it anymore. I just disassociate. I just put on an audio book and then I just drive. It's just like pick this one up here, that one's going there, this friend is coming over, do the what's for dinner? What do we But it's it's all good. It's all everybody's in a good state. And apparently everybody upstairs decided to move furniture because I hear a lot.
00:03:23
Speaker 1: Oh that's good. I enjoy that.
00:03:25
Speaker 2: Let's drag some chairs.
00:03:28
Speaker 1: A podcast. Let's do it. Well. Let me ask you my first question, which is where and when were you happiest.
00:03:39
Speaker 2: Oh, oh my god, they are literally dragging.
00:03:42
Speaker 1: First, they really are dragging, But it's fine as long as we acknowledge it.
00:03:46
Speaker 2: Actually, I think they might be vacuuming, so I don't want to stop it when we're happiest.
00:03:52
Speaker 1: When I realized my kids were cleaning the fucking house.
00:03:56
Speaker 2: When they impromptu started vacuuming.
00:04:00
Speaker 1: Someone's coming over, someone's coming out, that I wouldn't just be doing that.
00:04:04
Speaker 2: That's what's nita to get the house clean. I actually can't pinpoint a single day, but I am my most happy when I am with my family and when we are doing something all together with enthusiasm, like a vacation or a big dinner. It's such a cliche, but I really feel like I know where everybody is. I feel very safe. We're all being nourished, and we all get along and we're laughing. It's those moments.
00:04:34
Speaker 1: I think, did you have that when you were growing up?
00:04:36
Speaker 2: No, I'm an only child. Ah, I'm an only child, and I certainly was loved, but each corner of my family's very small, so I never had noise or chaos, Like, I never learned how to argue. I never learned how to fight constructively because I was like a miniature adult at a really early age. So I love chaos.
00:05:01
Speaker 1: And how many children do you have three? And are they at odds with each other often or not?
00:05:05
Speaker 2: Really? Not really, they don't legitimately fight very often. They make fun of one another nearly constantly, like ninety nine percent of the time they are making fun of one another.
00:05:21
Speaker 1: So will you like Rupert Pupkin in the King of Comedy, like in the Basement by yourself, like bomb shut up, like just doing your stand up when you were a kid. Is that how you came to be so weirdly funny?
00:05:34
Speaker 2: Well, I'm definitely weird.
00:05:36
Speaker 1: That's you know what I mean. I mean right, it is articulate and surprising and specific. And now I'm loving the idea of you like in the Basement. Now I want you to be Rupert Pupkin.
00:05:49
Speaker 2: I don't know that it turned out really well for him.
00:05:52
Speaker 1: I don't know. He wrote a book, he got out of jail eventually.
00:05:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, great, this is funny. I don't often talk about it, and I do still have it. I used to do fake news broadcasts when I was like six or seven, and I have a cassette tape still because I had a little tape recorder with a microphone, so I would either surreptitiously record my family and then transcribe their very very mundane conversations about dinner. But I also would do fake news broadcasts of like fake weather reports, and I called it news for Goofs and I have it. I have a news for Goofs cassette. I don't know where it is right now.
00:06:37
Speaker 1: I can't find you need to find it? I do you need to find it? Immediate news for goos. Was it for a specific audience or was it just for your own solitary delectation? Would you just like play it back?
00:06:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, I just played it. I wasn't for anyone or anything, And I don't believe that anyone ever listened to it, nor should they. It was like a precocious but I was like quiet, just like kind of a quiet little that.
00:07:05
Speaker 1: It was like a news report. You weren't like, hey, this is Sam. You know you weren't doing hot girl stuff you're doing You're doing the news report.
00:07:13
Speaker 2: No. No, it was like thunder showers are rolling in for the next thirty six hours, so make sure you take your umbrella, Like really not I just I.
00:07:24
Speaker 1: Love that story so much. I knew that you came from the basement.
00:07:28
Speaker 2: Well, actually I did have more, more of an attic. We had well you know, the same tomato from the hub of the house.
00:07:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean attic exactly. It was away and it was private behavior. Behavior that you did that I secretly must have known made you partly who you are.
00:07:50
Speaker 2: We lived with my mom and it was a for sure haunted house. It was all divided up into little apartments. It had been a hospital during the war.
00:07:58
Speaker 1: That's creepy. That's very creepy.
00:08:00
Speaker 2: And my mother gave me the top floor apartment to just do my own only child things.
00:08:07
Speaker 1: It was the way they put the people. They just didn't want to hear screaming. Oh yeah.
00:08:10
Speaker 2: They were like, we should put her in the belfry, should we?
00:08:15
Speaker 1: Just?
00:08:16
Speaker 2: And so I had a little apartment where I could see all the other children getting fresh air and like playing in the streets. But I had my ABBA records and your recording, fully entertaining myself and totally fine with it, not like yearning to be on the street playing ballock.
00:08:32
Speaker 1: No wonder you love chaos because you were basically just sort of like flowers in the attic with the tape.
00:08:37
Speaker 2: Recorder, totally, totally, just expressing myself to myself with love, and.
00:08:44
Speaker 1: I love that. That's why you like that the happiness. Of course, you grew up in a haunted, spooky ex hospital, sequested by yourself with the tape recorder. Of course you like family life and the noise. And you probably have a sweet dog.
00:08:58
Speaker 2: We have two cats. Is busy and I do yearn for it.
00:09:07
Speaker 1: What quality do you like least about yourself?
00:09:11
Speaker 2: I think it varies. I will say this, it varies.
00:09:14
Speaker 1: From it, but it's interesting.
00:09:15
Speaker 2: I like that it's not consistent. I don't actually spend too much time beating myself up. It's too chaotic to worry about. I wish I was less of a people pleaser. I'm better at it now. But I have been such a pushover and so unable to love you.
00:09:32
Speaker 1: I find that so hard to believe, given like the way in which you have engaged with sort of the culture and with issues and yourself, Like, that's really interesting. So you're never afraid to take things on. It has seemed to me that's.
00:09:48
Speaker 2: The side of myself that I have to turn on. It's like isn't that so weird? I don't think about it that much, but I'm definitely I wouldn't go out in the world and just speak extemporaneously about something that I feel passionately about. It's all very thoughtful, it's all very curated, it's all very intentional, and I definitely have to divorce the shy side of myself, you know what. That's it. I wish I was more of a joiner. I wish I was less shy.
00:10:19
Speaker 1: Gosh, that's really interesting. I wish I was more of a joiner.
00:10:22
Speaker 2: Yes, I do.
00:10:24
Speaker 1: Did you not feel like when you're on your show and everything that you had joined with all these millions and millions and millions of people who are watching and who listen to you and engaged with you, did that not fit you? Did that?
00:10:38
Speaker 2: And did that to me was like a beautiful communion. That was like almost that was a very shared experience. I always thought about the audience, and especially when doing live shows and things like that.
00:10:53
Speaker 1: I love that you just said it was like a communion.
00:10:55
Speaker 2: It was especially having a live audience. It felt like sharing something with the people in the room, and I think we all really got into it. It was like there was a back and forth I was taking from the audience they were taking from me, and there was a fluidity there. I wish I was more just like physically a joiner, Like I would get really stressed out if everybody's gone for a hike and then everyone's like, let's jump off this cliff into the water. I'm like, oh no, we jumping off a cliff. What am I gonna do? And then I really like really worries me and I get like almost become a different person where I just get so interior and I'm like, I'm gonna I'm gonna jump off the clip, I'm gonna fall, and my head's gonna smash open on the rocks.
00:11:48
Speaker 1: Do you think that stems from being having been, you know, a solitary child, like an only child who then who's an introvert, but then finds their way into a deeply extrovert job and life. So was that really conscious? Like did you go i'm a shy person, I'm going to fall. Most shy people will go I'm a shy person, I'm going to go to the library.
00:12:12
Speaker 2: It was really accidental. Don't you think this is pretty common with performers you like have a very shy side, and where you can really find your back in a space is in front of people. You can let it all go. You're very free, and then you kind of go back to yourself and it's I don't know, it's an exercise in a different kind of It's just like flexing different muscles. It's a different type of freedom. And I love it, but I don't live like that. My close friends can all see it because before an event or something like that, if you know, if I'm speaking at something or doing a performance, I'm so mellow, you would not imagine that a switch would get flipped at any point. People would observe me and think something is terribly wrong, like just how quiet and calm I am, And then the switch turns and I'm completely in show mode and it's like one second. It takes one second. Maybe it's just practice or muscle memory. And I like it and I feel free and I feel great.
00:13:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't know. No, I think it's I think you're right. I think a lot of performance have that. And then I think it's very difficult when you want to switch it off. But when you're in the supermarket, people don't want it to be switched off. They want it to be switched.
00:13:35
Speaker 2: On, and they want you to be right.
00:13:37
Speaker 1: I think there's quite a lot of discord that comes from that. It's probably why you don't see, you know, the Kardashians, Dan and Gelson's much.
00:13:44
Speaker 2: I feel like they're there. They're just standing the headies.
00:13:47
Speaker 1: I mean, they're just.
00:13:50
Speaker 2: They just put like an old bag on and then go to the supermarket. I mean, you have to want to do your own supermarket shopping, right.
00:13:57
Speaker 1: I think some people just don't. I think it's like I couldn't possibly go to the supermarket. I did see Angelina Jolee once in the parking lot of the market near my house in Malibu, and there was a throng of people. She had a kid on her hip and a security guy who was holding the shopping. She was trying to get the kid in the car and he was trying to get the shopping in the back. And there's a tree, like a throng of people standing just watching her struggle with her toilet paper and her kid. And unfortunately, I suppose, as I'm remembering this, I must be like them.
00:14:30
Speaker 2: Does she's one of those I.
00:14:34
Speaker 1: Was part of the throng, and I knew it was wrong, and I knew it was awful. I knew, but I do remember thinking, God, that is just not what you want. You want there to be rules around it. Switched on. We've all agreed it's on right now, and now I'm going to switch it off, and like, please, let me live my life with it switched off with It doesn't.
00:14:49
Speaker 2: Work like that. It doesn't work like that. If you're Angeline famous, that's next level. When people would pay money for photographs of you handling your toilet paper.
00:14:59
Speaker 1: That's it's a different level of engagement. And yeah, then you probably just stop. I never saw her again.
00:15:05
Speaker 2: That's when you move to France. Then you're like, I gotta go where people also care, but they won't.
00:15:10
Speaker 1: I've got to go and make rose.
00:15:13
Speaker 2: I've got I've got to go and make my lambruscos I.
00:15:19
Speaker 1: Just can't do the shopping anymore. I've got to go and make rose. Should I feel like that most days I can't go to the shops anymore. I just need to get back to my vineyard. I have to.
00:15:28
Speaker 2: I just have to check on the grapes. Come, please just check on them.
00:15:35
Speaker 1: Hello, my babies, Hello.
00:15:36
Speaker 2: My Yes, Oh I want to. I want to check on the garden that way in the future, like, hello, girls, what are you doing?
00:15:44
Speaker 1: Hi down Finians, Good morning. Oh it's just mom. She's just talking to the tomatoes again. So what relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you?
00:16:11
Speaker 2: This is an easy one for me. It's Coach and Jammy Taylor in Friday Night Lights.
00:16:19
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
00:16:20
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever seen a couple like a happy couple rendered better in TV or film. I really don't.
00:16:29
Speaker 1: Did you love that they were hot and that they just like the way they loved each other? Or was it the small town America of it, the fact that it felt real? Like what part of it did you love?
00:16:41
Speaker 2: It felt real to me? Well, that they are I mean that's not we're not they're hot, they're smoking hot, but absolutely beautiful, just like the aspirational beauty aside, Okay, I actually felt that I was seeing a couple. It felt powerfully realistically rendered. Maybe like an idealized version, I guess a little bit, but I could relate to the way they talk to each other. There was an intimacy, they didn't always agree on things. It just felt like the normal functioning of it. You just so seldom see in television, in film, in art, just kind of a healthy couple doing healthy couple stuff, talking about things relating to each other.
00:17:31
Speaker 1: It's quite hard for it to be interesting, and yet that show was. It was really engaging, and it was really interesting. You're right, it's very difficult just to show a nice, normal relationship because now a days, somebody has to be a spy, and that pants have to be on fire, has to be so all.
00:17:49
Speaker 2: Has to be extra. There has to be like a terrible couple secret that they're both holding onto or something devastating that happened to them that colors every interaction forever. And it sometimes is just like I'm married to my friend and we've been together a really long time and we like it being around each other most.
00:18:17
Speaker 1: I think that was a reflection. I don't know what year of Friday Night Lights began, but I wonder if that when I think back on it now we are not in two thousand and six, what was the friendly face of a Republican government, you know, before Barack Obama, Like it feels like it was a far more kind of Bucolic America. I guess I mean, all the subprime mortgages hadn't destroyed working class people in America.
00:18:51
Speaker 2: That was a right life.
00:18:52
Speaker 1: It's just a bear. It was right. But it's interesting, like when I think that, I would have thought it was longer ago than two thousand and six, but I don't. I think you see stuff like that on television now because genuinely, I feel like the sort of nuts level of television right now reflects what's everywhere. Right, there's this amped up feeling like even the relationship shows that are genius, like Mister and Missus Smith are still oh, tightened, tight and tightened.
00:19:18
Speaker 2: Everything is operatic, and there's blood and there's fury.
00:19:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, blood, rage and disparity.
00:19:29
Speaker 2: We also weren't like incentivized to be so angry on social media, like that was all that wasn't really banging yet it was it wasn't really I'm trying to think. I feel like I got my first iPhone in two thousand and seven, two thousand and six, I.
00:19:46
Speaker 1: Got It's so funny. I still had a BlackBerry when Henry was born, and he was born in two thousand and eight. I was blackberrying hard. I wasn't doing anything. There wasn't I think maybe that actually is exactly what it is. We didn't have this pub onslaught, so that in a way, television was a bit more focused and we haven't been ruined by I don't know. It feels like a very different time, although.
00:20:11
Speaker 2: I mean it was the Iraq Warren we were mad as you're.
00:20:16
Speaker 1: Right, I'm just stuffing that under the carpet. You're right, But we didn't have the internet in the way that we have now to amplify it's horror of what was going on. So I was still reading the newspaper and you would read it in the same way that one metabolized news. Differently when I'd read it in the newspaper and it was quite literally this object in front of me in paper. Now, when I turn on my phone on my computer and it is videos and TikTok of people who are there and it is happening in this moment, is a very different response to the news we are.
00:20:51
Speaker 2: You really are metabolizing the most horrifying images and realities time, which really it's devastating.
00:21:02
Speaker 1: I mean on every part of everybody's life.
00:21:04
Speaker 2: I think yes, and I do think, like thinking back to that time and at that time, I worked on The Daily Show, and we would do pieces about the Iraq War, like we would do pieces about George Bush and how bad of a president he was, and you know, it was revelatory to our audience. They were like, oh, I never thought about it that way.
00:21:22
Speaker 1: But that show was also like the Revolutionary Like it was suddenly comedy. Is politics politics as comedy, but suddenly we were. It was a way in which every single person who watched The Daily Show could understand and somehow that it was articulating something that I don't think we'd ever had to articulate before, because we'd never know. That was certainly the first war that I lived through consciously as it were.
00:21:43
Speaker 2: Yes, and we were learning about it all with the same toolbox, and now we are just seeing it like if you pick up your phone alerts you they're like, great, But do you know what I mean?
00:21:55
Speaker 1: Because I know that perhaps it is specious to say that it was like the friendly of us, because you're right, the Iraq War was an abomination. However, in terms of how it was engaged and justified, I still would say that given Trump, George Bush seems like a far friendlier face of Republicans and something that somehow there could be some reaching across the aisle, and that the extraordinary gulf between that and where the Republican Party is now sort of feels like a rubicon has been crossed.
00:22:29
Speaker 2: We've crossed so many I am no, George Bush, I'm not gonna I can't. Ten thousand red lines have been crossed, Like I don't know what. I can't believe the things that have been said and done.
00:22:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't, and we don't have to talk about it. We're not going to give any oxygen to that nonsense because I just want to think about you reporting on the news in your attic. Actually, oh my god, how did I not make the connection between that young woman and then you on the Daily She's crazy. Essentially, you got to get the news for goofs. You got to get it, and it maybe needs to get back on the Daily Show.
00:23:13
Speaker 2: In a way, I invented the Daily Show and in my belfry in nineteen seventy seven. I'm just not getting any credit for it at all.
00:23:23
Speaker 1: Sweet Listen, I was the first. John Stewart should.
00:23:26
Speaker 2: Think it was the first.
00:23:27
Speaker 1: Whatever what question would you most like answered?
00:23:35
Speaker 2: Oh? What happens to us when we die?
00:23:39
Speaker 1: What do you think happens?
00:23:42
Speaker 2: I am a person of faith, and I can't really articulate, but I definitely think that this is really everybody's like she's going back to her belfrey and after I say these words, I'm going back come climbing. Those are rickety stairs, and I'll be there until I'll be there. If theories putting them all up on a chukboard, I'm hoping this is my hope. I don't know what I believe anymore. My hope is that we sort of we exit our earthly bodies and shoin some wonderful energy field where we just kind of exist in an astral plane. I favor them. Just the concept of a multiverse or like our energy doesn't just dissipate, that it goes somewhere else, that it goes where it's needed is kind of my hope.
00:24:38
Speaker 1: Do you think that it is reused or do you think that there is like an energy stream that exists that is where our energy is uploaded into some sort of etheric cloud.
00:24:53
Speaker 2: I like that it sounds so technological when you say uploaded. I know I want to upload myself to the cloud. That's I feel like, you know, I write as well, I'm going to take my browsing history with me. Actually, just as I turned my computer on before joining for this wonderful conversation that I'm thoroughly enjoying, I was like, I have to tell many what my last Google search was before I joined this, because I haven't used this computer in maybe a week or two. It was crap tops for women over fifty, Thank you for coming to my ted talk. It was one sentence, did you well?
00:25:35
Speaker 1: Very important rejoinder to that is did you find something? And what does it look like? Okay, are you wearing it?
00:25:44
Speaker 2: I will never wear it, but I did buy one? Did you? It's never going on my body and I'm not wearing it. It's awful.
00:25:50
Speaker 1: Did you buy it to wear with like high waisted jeans or are you? I did? And I like that idea. I do. I'm not going to lie.
00:25:57
Speaker 2: I think that what's going to happen? And it's so up there. It's sitting in my glass set upstairs. Yeah, it's mocking me. I look at it. It's floral. It's going to make me look like just that I'm about three feet tall. That's my theory. Like, I'm going to feel really good about myself. I'm going to put it all together. I'm going to walk out the door going I'm doing it, and then I'm going to see my reflection somewhere unexpected, and I'm going to go, this is a fun house mirror, right like, this is a weirdly positioned piece of glass. And then I'll catch it again and at the next doorfront and go, oh no, no, I am a three foot tall woman, So maybe I'll sell it.
00:26:43
Speaker 1: Are your kids boys or girls?
00:26:45
Speaker 2: Two girls? One boy?
00:26:47
Speaker 1: Would they wear it?
00:26:48
Speaker 2: Oh?
00:26:48
Speaker 1: No? Do they even know you bought it?
00:26:50
Speaker 2: They don't know I bought it. They're going to be ashamed. And actually, my eldest daughter is going into fashion. She's going to college for fashion design, and so she very picky and intelligent about style, and so it's helpless.
00:27:08
Speaker 1: Maybe could one of your animals wear it?
00:27:13
Speaker 2: It will fit my cat perfectly. It will be like a full sized ramper on her, but she's going to pull it off.
00:27:22
Speaker 1: I just like the idea of recycle. I like recycled energy, recycled crop tops. And I do think our browser history should go with us when we die, that all of our digital everything, our digital imprint, should go with us into the etherical.
00:27:35
Speaker 2: Cloud, but you have to carry it with you.
00:27:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then I think you can also, Like when you get there, I'm sure it'll just be like, let us just take all that from you.
00:27:45
Speaker 2: Give us, don't worry.
00:27:46
Speaker 1: Give us your crop tops, give us your inappropriately googled blokes in the middle of the night, give us everything.
00:27:52
Speaker 2: Come on, that's a heavy load you're carrying me.
00:27:54
Speaker 1: By the way, I bet you that's why angels can flies, because they've given away all of the awful secrets to God.
00:28:01
Speaker 2: They took off that heavy backpack and then they unfurled their ways exactly.
00:28:06
Speaker 1: They didn't have to carry the browsing history. They could spread the wings.
00:28:10
Speaker 2: Finally, they had wings the whole time, but they were underneath your backpack.
00:28:15
Speaker 1: They were underneath your backpack of spiritually unanswered questions and questionable human questions.
00:28:22
Speaker 2: Yep, yes, yes.
00:28:24
Speaker 1: Can you have questionable questions? That sounds like a double negative.
00:28:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, crap tops for women over fifty?
00:28:46
Speaker 1: What would be your last meal?
00:28:48
Speaker 2: Okay, I love to eat. My last meal would be so big, it would be immense, like it just would have so many different things in it.
00:28:58
Speaker 1: I hope that's it is. A buffet?
00:29:01
Speaker 2: Is completely feast. First of all, I have to have a topo Chico because I love drinking topochico. It's my favorite all time beverage. I always have Topochico in the house.
00:29:12
Speaker 1: Is it just soda water or are they different flavors?
00:29:16
Speaker 2: I only like the plane just without flavor, such an effervescent seltzer that it burns my throat and slakes my thirst every time, unbeatable.
00:29:26
Speaker 1: Great, So that's you want to begin with the burning.
00:29:28
Speaker 2: I want to begin with that. I'm going to have some freshly squeezed orange juice because that I also love as a beverage, and some very fine champagne. So there's my beverages. It is not going to be coherent with the meal.
00:29:42
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter it's your last meal, because coherence is you're about to give your backpack to the angels.
00:29:47
Speaker 2: It's fine, I'm taking it off, so let's go out in style.
00:29:51
Speaker 1: Let's fill it up, take it off.
00:29:53
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be able to fly. I'm going to be really full with liquid and solids. I need a tiny break before I take off to digest.
00:30:05
Speaker 1: Guys, guys, guys, hold on, hold on, I just need to digest. I'm not gonna be able to fully ascend because.
00:30:10
Speaker 2: I need just eaten. I need to lay down on a hot rock for eight hours. Then I'm going to a sound I'll join you all. I'd be there wait.
00:30:20
Speaker 1: As opposed to a food coma, you're going to be in food limbo before you die. This is special. Carry on. I'm loving that visuals.
00:30:29
Speaker 2: This is a little holding station the people.
00:30:32
Speaker 1: Who holding rock. Okay, so what are you eating?
00:30:36
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna need some great cheese and some fine cracker. I love cheese and crackers love. I love fine breads, cold salted butter. We're gonna have some freshly baked breads, crackers like a spread. I wouldn't mind having a shrimp cocktail, a classic one, because I love a shrimp cocktail me too delicious. I would love like a really good hummus, some chickpea like I love Thomas and chickpeas. I love that. I'd love a kale salad. I love kale. A great steak would be nice. I love a steak.
00:31:11
Speaker 1: You can have all of it.
00:31:12
Speaker 2: My husband makes the best steak rub, so it has to have that. It is so delicious that every time we eat it, we don't eat it very much. We don't eat that much meat, but when we do, it's very special. I'm going to make my own rice pee laugh, because we all love it in this family. I make great rice. I just do, and every one of my family is like, the meal is whatever, but this rice, everybody gets excited about it. Someone have that. Some veggies, you know, surprise me. I love vegetables. Surprise me with the vegetables. Let's get nuts. There's things that can't be on the table, such as eggplant, which is just not good.
00:31:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm with you on that.
00:31:57
Speaker 2: If you have to jazz it too much to make it nice, it probably wasn't intended for consumption.
00:32:02
Speaker 1: It's a night shade. It's out. I almost feel that way about tomatoes, which are a fellow night shade. But carry on. This is your male, not mine.
00:32:09
Speaker 2: We're gonna have some roasted mushrooms. I love mushrooms. I love caramelized onions. We should have some of that.
00:32:14
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:32:15
Speaker 2: Probably a roast chicken too, Okay, I love a roast chicken, like a proper French style, salted, crispy skin roast chicken. It would be nice. And then we're gonna go have some dessert. I love cake. It doesn't really matter what flavor it is. I just love cake. I love cake. It's so good, it's delicious. Also, we have to have dates. I love dates dates and cake. Sticky chassy pudding would be nice, like a nice date cake with some caramel, maybe a little sour cherry pie. And I think I'm good, and then I gotta lay it down on my hot rock. Eight.
00:32:58
Speaker 1: You are literally you're in food limbo. Yeah, and the angels will be looking at their watches and your backpack will be filled, but you'll be on your hot rock digesting.
00:33:09
Speaker 2: Yeah. I warned everyone. They were like, what's your last meal? And I was like, this is going to take some time, Like, don't pressure me. I love people who are like just a hamburger and fries like ebbs. No, No, absolutely not.
00:33:24
Speaker 1: It's quite interesting how people do censure themselves around food and go, well, it can only be one thing. Well, I better just pick one vegetable and one protein. And it's like, oh, is it fries or is it mash? And I'm like, is it both?
00:33:36
Speaker 2: Could it be both?
00:33:37
Speaker 1: Could it be all potatoes?
00:33:39
Speaker 2: Could it be?
00:33:40
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's interesting that you leaned hard into the glufftad. I'm happy that you did. I did because for a last meal, I don't see the point of if I have the option, Can you tell me about something that has grown out of a personal disaster?
00:33:59
Speaker 2: Oh, one has grown out of a personal disaster. I think my relationship to my husband came out of a lot of like bad relationships. When we got together, I remember we went out for dinner. I liked him, but I didn't think that we were on a date. I actually really didn't because I considered myself to be never having a relationship again, like unironically and not as a joke. When I was with my boyfriend before him, I was like, I'm never going to do this again. I think I'm done with relationships, Like it's never happening again. I was like, that part of me is just gone. I'll just have friendships in a nice life and cultivate friendships and family relationships and that'll be that. And so we went out for dinner, and he thought we were on a date, as I know now, and he told me as story about how he had this female friend who was really into him and he just thought of her as a friend, and I thought he was talking about me, and I was like, that's great, because I'm never being in a relationship again in my whole entire life. So delicious dinner, Thank you so much. We'll see each other again because we're friends. And I think that out of the ashes of many bad relationships that were so out of balance, and things were done to me and I did terrible things to others, Like it wasn't like I was a pristine ingredient who was kind to people. People were awful to me, I was awful to them. And we started dating, and I was shocked to learn that you could just be happy with someone like there was no gamesmanship. It was very balanced. We each would to sometimes wind sometimes lose, like I mean the battle of like where are we going for dinner? You know, we both contributed equally to the decision making. And it was actually shocking to me. I didn't know that it didn't have to be as grindingly difficult as it had been to that point.
00:36:22
Speaker 1: But how amazing took a sec you were so young to figure that out.
00:36:28
Speaker 2: I was in my late twenties, you know, amaz.
00:36:32
Speaker 1: To forty eight. I mean, I literally was with just an absolute bounder as we'd say in England who did terrible, terrible things to me, to his kids and just awful. Oh, and out of that said absolutely the same thing. I am ruined and I will never love anyone ever again to the person that I am still with, who I love more than anything in the world apart from my son.
00:36:55
Speaker 2: Isn't that so funny?
00:36:56
Speaker 1: I think that maybe it is like you just did it when you were much of just a relinquishing of I am done. This is scorched earth, so you know we're good.
00:37:06
Speaker 2: Just a ruined person.
00:37:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very freeing, being completely ruined.
00:37:12
Speaker 2: It was freeing.
00:37:14
Speaker 1: Maybe the angels come and take backpacks at certain times in our life.
00:37:18
Speaker 2: Well, isn't that a nice way to see it? Right?
00:37:22
Speaker 1: Maybe we just give stuff up and go, you know what, I'm ruined. It's fine. I'm just going to carry on and out of that rubble stuff can actually grow.
00:37:30
Speaker 2: Stuff can grow. It feels there was such a gift to just meet someone for whom it's very natural to just be steady, like just an even keeled person who just wants to be happy, just like.
00:37:50
Speaker 1: It's nice a and also that it is actually beautifully binary. Yes, just yeah, simple, a simple equation, not a big complicated conversation about Yeah, this is my damage, this is my trauma. You know, we've all got damage and trauma. Let's just get out and have a nice time despite it.
00:38:10
Speaker 2: Very simple, not a lot of conversation, and we still all these years later, like almost thirty years later, just good, continue amazing, having the same amazing conversations. We don't talk about it very much. I only talk about my relationship with him with other people.
00:38:27
Speaker 1: Well, that's great, we'll get him to listen to the podcast.
00:38:31
Speaker 2: He'll like it.
00:38:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's gonna be like, Wow, was that crap about the backpack? That was that stupid bit?
00:38:39
Speaker 2: Talk that way. People are gonna thank you.
00:38:41
Speaker 1: People think you're crazy. Just talk about my rub.
00:38:50
Speaker 2: I don't want anyone to know that my steak rub is delicious.
00:38:53
Speaker 1: Now everyone will want it exactly what are you doing to us?
00:39:00
Speaker 2: He could go into business. He could, by the way, it's great.
00:39:03
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie. I feel like, if you feel his rub could rub people the right way, get it out there in the world.
00:39:10
Speaker 2: It would be great on a mushroom. I'm just saying, if you don't like than that now.
00:39:15
Speaker 1: Sounds very delicious. Rubbed roasted mushrooms, also sort of filthy. Yeah. I can't thank you enough. You're the most wonderful delight to talk to and it is so nice to see you. And I'm so glad that you're so well.
00:39:31
Speaker 2: So nice to see you, so nice to talk to you. This was a lovely conversation. I feel very energized to go pop my crop top on and check myself out in a full length mirror.
00:39:44
Speaker 1: By the way, I want you to do one final recording, okay of news for coops, news for goofs in your crop top before you give the crop top to your cat.
00:39:55
Speaker 2: I'm gonna put it on my cat and send you a piccher.
00:39:58
Speaker 1: Please do that.
00:39:58
Speaker 2: I'm going to do that that later.
00:40:01
Speaker 1: Oh my god, love me, Thank you, thank you, thank you a million times. Mini Questions is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver, Executive produced by Me and Aaron Kaufman, with production support from Jennifer Bassett, Zoe Denkler, and Ali Perry. The theme music is also by Me and additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay Addison, O'Day, Henry Driver, Lisa Castella, Anick Oppenheim, a Nick Muller and Annette Wolfe, a w kPr, Will Pearson, Nicki Etoor, Morgan Levoy and mangesh Had Tiggadore
