00:00:00.000hey y'all joe here and you are listening to under the influence two weeks my friends two weeks until
00:00:12.040the book of the summer is in your hands have you ordered the parisian heist yet have you asked
00:00:17.800everyone you know to order it i freaking love this book and i think everyone else is going to
00:00:22.460love it too so i genuinely want to get it into your hands i do so grab a copy of the parisian
00:00:28.840heist today. Grab one for your mother-in-law. She'll actually love it. My mom is just drooling
00:00:33.460over it right now. Grab one for your best friend. Just get those orders in, and I'm here. I'm here1.00
00:00:38.420to talk about all of it. I promise you're never going to look at a Van Gogh painting the same way
00:00:42.440after you read this book. And, and, that leads us into today's episode. This book also dives so deep
00:00:48.400into the themes of women, ambition, power, and who has the privilege to actually create art in this
00:00:54.100world. I'm giddy about today's conversation, and I fangirl a lot because I adore Emile Niazi. I
00:01:01.340adore. I love everything that she writes, okay? She sees and writes life in a way that just gets
00:01:06.520me. It does. It just squeezes my soul. Like, she writes so well about the very real experience of
00:01:11.920reaching your 40s and not knowing what the F is gonna happen next. She recently wrote an essay
00:01:18.980called Midlife Crisising in the End Times, and I forwarded it to about a thousand people. I've
00:01:24.220not stopped thinking about this, because the truth is, so many of us did all of the things we were
00:01:29.340told to do. We built the right careers, we worked impossibly hard, we accumulated all of the
00:01:34.640expertise and the accomplishments, and instead of arriving at some stable chapter of adulthood,
00:01:39.940many of us, most of us, feel like we're standing on increasingly shaky ground. But we're not just
00:01:46.460talking about the fear today. We're not. This is also very hopeful. We're talking about how we can
00:01:50.520redefine ambition in middle age and how we can shift the mindset of ambition being all about
00:01:57.020bigger titles or more prestige and more about community, friendship, freedom, and the time to
00:02:03.820actually enjoy our lives that we've worked so damn hard to create. You're going to love this
00:02:09.720conversation and you're going to fall in love with her as much as I already have.
00:02:16.460i'm gonna be real fangirly in this episode because everything that you write including
00:02:24.660your wonderful book life after ambition just hits me in my soul like i feel it i'm like yes
00:02:31.340ma'am me too so thank you for that truly thank you oh my gosh like right right back at you i was
00:02:39.560like oh he got joe piazza wants to talk to me that's that's very exciting i want to talk to
00:02:45.580you want to hang out with you all of the things I feel like we're living these parallel lives we
00:02:50.000have kids who are the same age ages you've got three and we're also both living in this strange
00:02:58.440world right now that I for me I gotta say it's nothing like what I expected adulthood to be like
00:03:06.000I thought at this point in my mid-40s as a mom and as a successful writer like I've had a successful
00:03:12.240career. Yes. I would be more coasting now than terrified of what the future holds. Yeah. No,
00:03:19.100100 percent. I mean, me like I knew that when I was like going to quit my pretty stable job to
00:03:27.040pursue this, it was a risk. But I also was like, but I've been doing this for 20 years. Like I have
00:03:33.920an incredible amount of experience and I'm good at what I do under my belt. So it's not like,
00:03:39.020you know I'm I'm doing something wild but yes absolutely I thought like mid-40s pretty good
00:03:47.340careers between the two of us like that we should be I don't know buying buying our summer house at
00:03:53.400this point and buying our summer house in the Hamptons like all those editors were for Vogue
00:03:57.30025 years ago okay it's hard to it's hard to know that right it is very hard and maybe and maybe as
00:04:04.640millennials we are delusional and we are whiny and we are you know entitled but it's hard to
00:04:10.140know in your soul that if you were doing this exact same thing 20 30 years ago you would you
00:04:18.120would have a house in the hamptons i would be like you know having my my nails done at my uh
00:04:26.100my muskoka cottage or whatever like yes it's hard to know that it's hard to know that like we
00:04:31.740are in a position in not that much like it's not that much further in the future where we are like
00:04:39.340really struggling and really um continuing to feel like we're on a waterbed right like every
00:04:46.720the the waves are choppy uh below but it's i know i like i'm not allowed to be whiny about it
00:04:55.040apparently no we can be whiny about it this is a this is this is a safe place we can whine all we
00:05:00.460on. But it is so true because I look at the women who were my first bosses in magazines and, you0.77
00:05:07.220know, they had the jobs that I have now. You know, they write a book once in a while. They
00:05:10.900edit magazines. I mean, editing jobs don't exist as much anymore. But, you know, the things that
00:05:17.300the job I probably would have had. And yeah, they're buying houses in Sag Harbor left and right
00:05:21.960and, you know, writing their plastic surgery and their Botox off on on the magazine's expense
00:05:27.200account yeah right i mean i have a column a recurring column in one of the most widely read
00:05:34.500like media companies in the world at this point right because they're they're not that many left
00:05:40.580there's not that many left and yes one of the most widely read publications in the world yes and i
00:05:45.420know it's a very popular column they tell me like some great hot subscriber like uh through raid and
00:05:52.500all of that stuff they go viral they're in the top five often uh me in like 20 years ago doing
00:06:01.120this column I would just do the column and that would be my full-time job and I'd get paid
00:06:05.380fantastically for it and you'd make so much money yes like you say write a book every once in a
00:06:10.680while but wouldn't have to like you know um but instead yeah people are always like you must make
00:06:16.500so much money writing for the cut and i'm like girl are you great yeah i would have in 2000
00:06:23.580exactly exactly no it's true and i love what you wrote um in your piece uh midlife crisising in
00:06:31.460the end times because it does often feel like end times you know that there's emotional terror in
00:06:37.960like every conversation that we have with people who are age are our age who are already very like
00:06:43.880quote unquote successful and how you know you scream scream at your husband every few days0.98
00:06:48.080like shit is bad dude and I I also scream at sweet Nick Astor every few days um and I think0.98
00:06:55.300so much of the anger and frustration I want to hear what you think about this is that it does feel0.99
00:06:58.880like no one's doing anything about it like the world like this is just going to continue on its
00:07:04.560path towards chaos and that there there does not seem to be a fix in sight yeah no there's no plan
00:07:11.760um okay so one I think it feels bad because it it feels like this didn't need to be this way
00:07:19.040right like a lot of this stuff the tariffs the Strait of Hormuz the gas prices like all of this
00:07:26.480stuff feels like it did not like we were watching a really bad thing happening in in slow motion and
00:07:34.140you're like please stop this there's no reason for this the economy was doing okay so there's
00:07:41.040that part of it and then there's the scarier part which is that yeah no one seems to have a plan for
00:07:46.920like what if there is mass unemployment when the all of these companies decide they would prefer
00:07:52.440to like outsource this stuff to ai what if there is like people uh losing their homes on mass because
00:08:00.100they are over mortgaged and they can't afford to keep uh the house or you know the the car like
00:08:06.960the car repos like i just you know it feels very 2008 but worse and the fact that they are promoting
00:08:15.980ai they're promoting all this stuff that's essentially like we're going to take your jobs
00:08:20.380but then not in the next breath saying but don't worry because we have a plan and everyone gets to
00:08:26.640like get five thousand dollars a month for the rest of their lives because we're giving up our
00:08:31.320clean water for this um yeah it's it's really hard to see and it's like we've been left to our
00:08:38.600own devices our entire lives uh but this certainly does feel like catastrophic in a different way
00:08:46.140because it seems i feel like it's colliding with the climate crisis that we've been like holding
00:08:51.140our breath for since we were little kids right like when there was a hole in the ozone and acid
00:08:55.980rain was going to melt our bodies i don't know if you experienced that as a child but i was like i
00:09:00.300think about acid rain like too often i know i do maybe like you know once every couple weeks i'll
00:09:07.100be like whatever happened to the acid rain crisis i was scared to go outside for recess as a child
00:09:13.040because i was like but the acid rain is gonna melt our bodies gonna get me yeah exactly i mean
00:09:17.980well if i said acid rain to my kids they have no idea what i'm doing actually my son would probably
00:09:22.320think it's quite cool he'd be like yeah acid rain right on what kind of acid is that um yeah and
00:09:28.680And even even then they were like, yeah, there's probably like acid in the rain and a hole in the ozone that's going to burn all of your like the top layer of your skin off.
00:09:37.360But we don't really have a plan for it.
00:09:40.300Thank God we fixed the hole in the ozone.
00:09:44.460That was it's kind of like the one win for the environment that we've ever had.
00:09:48.860But yeah, I think it's really scary to know that the people in charge and like government, but also like the CEOs, people in management, anyone in charge.
00:09:58.680seems to just sort of be like rolling the dice and waiting to see what happens but it's our
00:10:04.340jobs it's our lives it's our livelihoods our children's like comfort and future and safety
00:10:10.980that's at risk and yet we're we're being sort of told like yeah well wait and see we'll just wing
00:10:18.100it just see what happens see we'll see what see what happens to you it's yeah it's so true and
00:10:24.420you wrote about this you know we i think we both have friends in their 40s who are trying to age
00:10:28.880proof their resumes uh to so that you cannot identify how old someone is in their resume my
00:10:36.400husband was um on a job search a few years ago he's in his 50s and i mean i he's so experienced
00:10:42.900and i genuinely believe his age is why he did not get hired for the majority of these jobs and he
00:10:48.200didn't even get through the system through the the you know filters for it and now we're okay
00:10:53.440because we started our own media company
00:10:55.800and we do a thousand different things,
00:11:00.160which feels like that's what you have to do these days.
00:11:04.100But yeah, so many of my friends are like,
00:11:21.540that like innate understanding of like this is good and this is bad and that's that's valuable
00:11:26.420that's that's what you spend your life building towards is like someone who can do anything take
00:11:33.700on anything and and you know a pair of safe hands is what we used to call it but yes now we're in
00:11:40.060this like tricky position where it's like too old for a lot of stuff but too young for a lot of other
00:11:46.380stuff so you yeah you do want to kind of i i've stopped saying like my age i'll say 40s you know
00:11:52.480so that people are but oftentimes people assume i'm in my 30s and i let them because it's like
00:11:57.880you know yeah i feel for your husband but it's even more dangerous to be an older woman because0.98
00:12:05.500we essentially stop existing right after 40 where are they where are the amazing 50 year old women0.99
00:12:12.720in the companies that you can look up towards and be like, yes, mentor me. They're few and far
00:12:18.140between. And that is terrifying. That really terrifies me. I mean, and it's true that they're
00:12:23.180not there. So I think about this because I had incredible women mentors in media. My first two1.00
00:12:31.420bosses at the New York Daily News, Colleen Curtis and Joanna Malloy. I'm still very, very close with
00:12:36.680both of them and so many other women. And I'm like, oh, but where have they gone? They're all
00:12:41.000consulting now okay like they're all doing their own thing they're not in these institutions you
00:12:48.340know nor am i to be honest um bringing up the next generation passing on the torch yeah yeah i
00:12:55.100remember being at vice i was 35 i was about to have my first baby and i was like you know thinking
00:13:01.180about what what would it be like for me to come back as a 35 year old woman who's now a mom into
00:13:07.200a media company that is obviously predicated and obsessed with youth. What will that look like?
00:13:13.440Will I be ostracized? Will I still have the same opportunities? Will they look at me
00:13:18.580differently? And I was like, OK, well, let's look around and see, like, who else is a mom here? Who
00:13:23.460else is older? There's like two. There's like two women and only one of them even had a child. The
00:13:30.040other was like very much able to continue to party, stay out late, do all the things that
00:13:34.980that you're sort of expected to do in a place like that, because she didn't have a kid. And it was
00:13:39.840like, well, I will need to go home at like five, you know, I will need to leave the party at eight
00:13:46.920because of the babysitter. Like it just, it was really, really scary to think about that. And I
00:13:51.860sometimes think about now that we're having kids older in life, it's like, what's it going to look
00:13:57.120like if you're, let's say you have your first child at 40, maybe you take a little bit of, you
00:14:03.800know time off of work until they're in school now you're starting the job search at 45 with five
00:14:11.180years you know that yeah we're like and we're not even having those conversations we're in no way
00:14:17.280prepared for all of the what the statistics are bearing out in terms of how we have families
00:14:23.780you know what our lifestyles look like now it just there's no preparation there's there's no one in
00:14:29.820charge, looking at it and going, yeah, maybe we need to adapt how we work. Maybe we need to adapt
00:14:35.660how we live, how we think, how we make money. No, it's just like this like engine. It's like
00:14:41.420the snow piercer train. It was just like death, full steam ahead towards disaster. And it's,
00:14:48.460yeah, it's, uh, everyone I talked to in, in so many different industries across like a pretty
00:14:54.280wide swath of ages within like the millennial uh cohort uh all pretty scared and and genuinely
00:15:03.480worried that that they were kind of like being left to figure it out for themselves everyone
00:15:09.580literally everyone you know even the people who work in ai tell me they're like ai is replacing
00:15:15.780me they're like like no one no one is confident right now i want to take a quick break but when
00:15:22.800we get back I do want to talk about you have some hope in this piece you know it's like what are the
00:15:26.940things we're all holding on to and what are the things we can push for more of and I love that
00:15:32.200and I want to I want to dig into that a little bit okay we're back so it sounds kind of trite
00:15:43.920to be like our communities and our friends will save us but when no one else is coming to save us
00:15:49.280That is what I'm clinging to right now. I am clinging to like real life with my people, strengthening my friend groups, strengthening my community ties, because that feels like the only thing that is not going to go anywhere.
00:16:03.480exactly yeah when I you know I didn't want to end the piece on like a really ultra grim note because
00:16:12.120what we need in this moment is optimism and is hope because we do have to get up every single
00:16:18.400day and sort it out take care of our kids go to work you know love our pets care for our families
00:16:23.920so you've got to have a reason you've got to have a purpose and I asked everyone like okay so what
00:16:29.760is bringing you happiness what's bringing you joy like what's bringing you a shred of hope in this
00:16:34.980moment and and universally it was like my community my friendships my family art so many people said
00:16:43.100art and music and just like uh yeah reconnecting with nature being outside it felt really pure
00:16:50.720and really sweet and I think uh regardless of your age more and more people are sort of I think
00:16:56.720saying that like this push against generative AI and the slop that's out there because people are
00:17:03.340like no you know what I have standards like I good art moves me because a human being made it
00:17:11.560because they're they're like grief or their trauma or their happiness is like imbued into
00:17:19.100to the fabric of that art and and that's what connects me to to joy and to life and uh you know
00:17:27.140in talking to to some of my own friends we were like okay like what you know what what does the
00:17:33.440the future look like uh for our kids and for ourselves and increasingly we're talking about
00:17:39.040like this idea of yeah returning to kind of that like village feel where you know you get your
00:17:44.820stuff close to home i you know this is also the the walkable city the 15 minute city i think this
00:17:51.620is something that luckily there are people who are advocating for this type of um community
00:17:58.060and it's like yes it's it's seeing my neighbors it's getting to know them it's helping them it's
00:18:04.640them helping me um i love that more and more new moms younger moms are are asking like what is a
00:18:12.540village where is my village how do I make one because for a long time it was like isolate the
00:18:18.260nuclear family and do it yourself and I think there's this push to to really like yeah find
00:18:25.600your people love them take care of them and that that might be the thing that gets you through
00:18:31.820this moment and we we saw it a lot in the pandemic right like all of the um so much the the incredible
00:18:38.380like outreach that people had, the community fridges, the tent cities. So many of my friends
00:18:48.520and family got involved and were donating things and going down and bringing food and just like
00:18:52.500walking your elderly neighbor to go get their COVID vaccine. It just felt like, hey, actually
00:19:00.200in a dark time, it's our instinct to return to that. So I do see that and I see it as so hopeful
00:19:07.440and so beautiful because like genuinely what else is there what else what else is there it's so true
00:19:14.600i mean i've been really i've like intentional about building my village uh and i moved home
00:19:22.520to philadelphia where i'm from i was in new york and san francisco and i moved home to where i had
00:19:27.880a really strong friend network to where my mom was she was in the burbs we have recently uh she
00:19:34.920just moved into the city. So she's five blocks away from us. A lot of my friends from college0.64
00:19:39.420are here as well. And their kids go to the same school as mine do. And, you know, I moved here
00:19:45.960because of that. I tried to build that intentionally. And then also I try to be a good,
00:19:50.880you know, good community member. So I like I do as much outreach as I can. I'm like, I'm at Target.
00:19:57.320What can I get you? Or, you know, I'm walking by your house. Like, do you want me to take your kid
00:20:01.000somewhere really quick so you can you know have a shower or read a book read a chapter of a book
00:20:05.780and when you do that i think it does come back to you as well um in so many different ways and i
00:20:11.820feel incredibly supported right now it might be i mean that and in my marriage because i chose to
00:20:16.840marry a good guy and not one of the dicks that i dated in my 20s but like those are the two areas
00:20:20.680where i do feel a lot of support in life and like that is exactly what what you wrote and i did i
00:20:25.960loved how you ended the piece that is what's keeping me going and and like knowing that like
00:20:30.520the more I strengthen that, I think the stronger that we're, we're all going to be as, as we watch
00:20:36.100what's going to happen next. Yes, completely. And, and I'm with you that I did the same thing.
00:20:40.800We were living in London, um, you know, probably would have been better for my career, better for
00:20:46.040like, you know, the kind of external validation that, that you seek often when you're young and
00:20:52.480looking for that kind of thing. But it was like, we were about to have our second kid. My, my mom
00:20:59.200and sisters live in toronto are all of our like really truly good friends that would do anything
00:21:05.220for you that we would do anything for lived here and it was like what kind of life do we want to
00:21:10.080have like do we want to have a life where we're yeah sure living in a city but we can barely enjoy
00:21:15.640even the the the spoils of that because like it costs a million dollars same for san francisco
00:21:22.640right i was like wow like we can't even we can't even really enjoy being here exactly exactly or
00:21:27.960do we go to the place where we feel so comfortable and and happy and like yeah I live like blocks
00:21:35.760away from so many of my good friends I I love to like know my neighbors and wave at them uh lately
00:21:42.420my my son's friends from school who also live very close have been coming and knocking on our door
00:21:49.260at random times and being like hey you know can Somerset come to the playground and I'm like yeah
00:21:54.740go ahead be back in 20 minutes what at for dinner and like oh my god it's my 90s dream right this
00:22:01.780is what we wanted actual 90s dream yeah 100 100 this is this is this is what we wanted i i actually
00:22:08.860i have a lot of problems with um all of the 90s summer rhetoric that i am served on instagram
00:22:14.980because i think that there are so many ways that we can have a 90s summer um and yet our world is
00:22:21.540not set up to have a 90s summer like we don't many of us and this is happening to me too like
00:22:26.640my house is usually filled it will be in 10 minutes you'll see three kids are going to come
00:22:31.120up here and there's going to be 10 children in my house okay um because all their friends come here
00:22:35.560um running wild but at the same time i don't think that we're set up socially for most kids
00:22:42.480to just run around solo outside until it is dark and then you know come home whenever whenever it's
00:22:49.340dinner time or whenever it gets dark. The summers are also too fucking hot now. And so they can't
00:22:54.620be outdoors all day. And so much of 90s summer was predicated on, you know, you kind of did what
00:23:02.280you want because your boomer parents were checked out. And so I also some days were spent watching0.52
00:23:06.560a lot of days of our lives and Phil Donaghan inside in the air conditioning. So that's the
00:23:10.620reality of the 90s summer for me. Exactly. No, absolutely. Same. And I, you know, predicated on
00:23:16.800One working parent and one stay-at-home parent.
00:23:19.340One working parent and one stay-at-home parent.
00:23:21.760Because my mom was a teacher and so she was around, right?
00:23:24.180And so, like, I'm not saying I'm dreading summer.
00:23:29.020I'm, like, I'm trying to have a more easeful summer.
00:23:31.520I, too, just, I got rid of a big consulting job I was doing because I'm like, I don't want to do this.0.86
00:23:38.600I don't have the mental space to do this, even though maybe that's stupid in our precarious economy.
00:23:44.220But at the same time, I'm working all summer.0.96
00:23:45.940I'm going on book tour. Like I'm working my butt off and neither of us are going to be home to
00:23:51.180to supervise. So, yeah, I think a 90 summer is really like so good in our brains and then also
00:23:57.000so hard to implement. But I do live in a neighborhood that is very 90 style where it's
00:24:02.020like we can't we gibbler. We call it gibblering where we just pop in to people's houses.
00:24:06.660I love it. I love it. Yeah. Because it's like with cell phones, with this like whole new
00:24:12.740attitude post-COVID of like, you know, don't talk to the Uber, like the Uber Eats person,
00:24:19.360don't talk to anybody, don't ever show up unannounced because, you know, I'm bed rotting
00:24:23.920or whatever. We've become so like insular and isolated. But the pop-in, man, the pop-in
00:24:31.760bursts that bubble. It immediately forces you into some sort of spontaneity, forces you into
00:24:39.180community and oftentimes gets you outside either you're like okay yeah I'll come for a walk or
00:24:44.780you're like yeah come on in and let's you know hang out and I I just really love the pop-in I
00:24:50.540love that like my kids friends are popping in I you know I'm trying to encourage like my friends
00:24:57.160to pop in the pop-in let's bring that back if we're gonna bring back anything from the 90s
00:25:02.240it should be the pop-in we're bringing it back we're bringing the pop-in back okay that's that's
00:25:07.380that's what we're doing I've also I've let go of like my insecurities of oh my god you can't come0.94
00:25:11.220in my house is a goddamn mess right now because my house is always a goddamn mess I'm like I don't0.93
00:25:14.940care like I love you for a reason and just like come into my house into my messy house I will0.98
00:25:19.660pull out whatever deli meats and cheeses I got in there and maybe a tapenade and I'll make you1.00
00:25:25.800make you a cheese and meat board okay and then shit sit and shoot the shit shit and soup the0.99
00:25:31.020but yeah let's the pop the pop in I think is like yet another thing that's going to give me hope1.00
00:25:37.680right like just like yeah the spontaneity of creating a spontaneous third space yes exactly
00:25:44.620because people are like oh I can't you know I can't get a hold of my parent friends because
00:25:49.840we have to it's over scheduled and there's you know 15 minute blocks but the truth is like yeah
00:25:55.120it is probably hard for me to schedule something but more often than not on a Thursday at like
00:26:02.080five I'm here the kids are running around we're getting dinner ready the music's on like
00:26:06.920come in for a glass of wine and heck stay for dinner like I love inviting people to stay for
00:26:13.260dinner sames sames exactly I'm like I can cook more pasta I can make more mac and cheese with
00:26:18.880some hot dogs in it or even maybe like i'm it's like i'm cooking like you know beef bourguignon
00:26:25.020over here exactly exactly yeah i mean and i do think you know so many people do be moan they're
00:26:31.960like oh i bet there's so much loneliness after you become a mom right because scheduling things
00:26:36.900around kids stuff is hard literally just like if i see my friends walking down the street i'm like
00:26:41.040are you around after after school tonight just come on come on over we sit on our stoop a bunch
00:26:46.500and in fact we uh we took over our kids lemonade stand oh my god they made so much money on
00:26:51.140lemonade because it's so hot like that's nice that is ai proof at this point they made mad
00:26:56.500dough on lemonade but we took it over and turned it into one of my pop-up bookshops
00:27:01.040yes and we which by the way your book sells like hot cakes in okay like everyone i sell your book
00:27:08.700yeah oh my god what a dream yeah it does it does it does so well people people see the title they
00:27:14.420see and you know i love the cover the cover and they just like freaking love it but um yeah and
00:27:20.560we met all of these neighbors we had never met before people came and sat on the stoop we went
00:27:24.660in we got some wine and we just all talked about books with friends and with strangers and it was
00:27:30.340so freaking magical okay and like yes that is like that is what's giving me so much hope yeah no you're
00:27:36.300describing like my dream afternoon is like really with people having people like come by we recently
00:27:43.120our neighborhood does this like big yard sale every year and it's like growing and growing and
00:27:47.180growing and it's to the point where like you just go to the park you see all your neighbors you
00:27:52.760catch up you buy some of their crap they buy some of your crap and and it just like it fuels me for
00:27:59.400like the beginning of summer because i'm like oh my gosh right we haven't seen each other for months0.97
00:28:03.800because it's been freezing cold and we've all been hiding inside but i love seeing you i love0.81
00:28:07.920talking to you I love like just shooting the shit as you say I think there's we've built up this0.97
00:28:14.740idea that like your house has to be perfect you know you have to have like the perfect uh0.99
00:28:20.100setup to go and hang out and everything like you know we've we've built up all this expectation
00:28:25.840it doesn't need to be there once we like actually run into our friends and have that hang which is
00:28:31.460so much like what my 20s were about it's so invigorating and you're like right it doesn't
00:28:38.480have to be all this stuff it doesn't have to be hyper over planned or my house doesn't have to
00:28:42.700be clean like we just want to hang out with each other that's the only thing that matters yeah
00:28:48.040exactly exactly oh I love see now I have hope again not good because I told you I'm like I'm
00:28:53.960like we have a very tight window to talk today I have to go to the food truck party at my kids
00:28:57.080last day of school i'm actually really excited for the food truck party i truly am i truly am
00:29:01.300all right let's take one more break and then i want to talk a little bit
00:29:04.120about life after ambition a good enough memoir
00:29:07.920okay we are back you've written so many great essays about this um i mean that we've been
00:29:22.180talking about right like losing my ambition the mind fuck of midlife um but i this book i read a
00:29:28.180lot of books i read a lot of memoirs but like like i said this one just like hit me in my soul
00:29:33.160because i think about women's ambition a lot it's a theme that runs through all of my novels
00:29:39.320um it's it's like really really uh central to the parisian heist um both in the past and the
00:29:46.780present timelines. And I think that women have taught that I think women have been taught that
00:29:52.040ambition means only one thing that we can only be as women of our generation, right, that, you know,
00:29:58.200we can only be ambitious about like climbing this ladder. And if to do anything else is is opting
00:30:04.940out or checking out. And I want to hear a little bit about your path to how you decided to step
00:30:11.980back from you know the traditional archetype of 90s 2000 ambitious girl boss yes yes and i love
00:30:21.340what you're saying about what we've been told ambition is because i think that's really you
00:30:26.140know obviously the the title's provocative because you know it has to be these days but
00:30:31.440really every book i think would have a little bit of rage bait if you want it to sell
00:30:35.080exactly what i was really trying to get at is like one what ambition meant to me in the very
00:30:44.100very positive sense as a young child as the child of immigrants or i you know i was an immigrant i'm
00:30:49.440first generation we came here when i was five um someone who grew up poor someone who just like
00:30:56.300sort of always felt like i was on the margins of of what success traditionally looks like and always
00:31:03.700told like kind of I was taking up space by accident almost. But also someone who was told
00:31:10.580eventually like you have a lot of potential. You know, if you just work really hard and put your
00:31:15.220head down and pursue the right path, you know, you you will be successful. And so it was a survival
00:31:21.680mechanism. It was something that I was really clinging to. And it did help. It got me out of
00:31:26.660poverty. It got me into spaces that I never thought I could, you know, be in. But increasingly, I was
00:31:33.440like okay well they did tell me at some point I would be successful but I still don't feel it I'm
00:31:38.440still really struggling I'm now there's like you know layoffs I was always living in the fear of
00:31:43.720losing my job I never felt confident as much experience as I built up that I was like going to
00:31:50.220remain employed and it just felt very far away from kind of what I had what was drilled into me
00:31:58.040at a young age. And then, of course, I came up against like what increasingly felt like
00:32:07.880toxic work environments, toxic dudes, toxic ideas of what success should be, of how a woman should
00:32:17.360be at work, of how a woman of color should be at work. And I was like, this doesn't feel good.1.00
00:32:22.740this doesn't feel like something I want to like get further into by climbing up and up this ladder
00:32:28.720and I felt I was being taken further away from like what I really loved and cared about you know
00:32:36.980not just like writing and being creative and and but having any sense of like time and freedom and
00:32:45.600like ownership of my time I was like is this gonna be the rest of my life like giving all of myself
00:32:51.560to this place that has made it clear to me that I could lose my job at any moment, but I should
00:32:57.600be grateful that I haven't. And so, yeah, I was like, no, I have to, after having children,
00:33:05.620it just really crystallized like, okay, you only have a very limited amount of time. You only have
00:33:11.140a very limited amount of life. How do you want to spend it? Do you want to spend it being ambitious
00:33:17.320in this way seeking external validation um you know going deeper into these corporations and
00:33:24.380trying to be you know fit yourself into this mold or do you want to take a chance on yourself take
00:33:30.140a chance on on your family and your life and the kind of life that you are now ambitious for
00:33:36.700and and like walk away from it and and not that I pursue less but that I add I I pursue more of
00:33:47.380what I actually want that's what it really was like felt like to me it's like I'm still someone
00:33:53.040who is desirous of a full and rich and exciting and expansive life I still want things I still
00:34:02.760want things for myself as a writer and as a professional woman, someone who's like
00:34:08.400amassed this, like we were saying, this incredible, you know, portfolio and profile.
00:34:14.680But I just not going to do it the way that I've been told I'm supposed to do it. I'm going to do
00:34:19.340it the way that I want to do it. And I'm going to do it in service to myself and in service to
00:34:24.860my family, because that's really those are the things that are most important to me in my life.
00:34:28.800It's like, yeah, I love me and I love the life that I've built for myself.
00:34:53.940It's not about like quit your job and go off and like, you know, have a walkabout, have a rummishpring up, pray in love.
00:35:02.060Exactly. It's more about like, hopefully, and this is what I have heard from a lot of women who've messaged me about it,
00:35:09.760is like, I hope that it just prompts a question of like, what do I actually want?
00:35:15.880And is this thing that I have been chasing giving that to me?
00:35:19.740If yes, because there are some people who are like so fulfilled by the work that they do and by that the ambitions that they have to climb that ladder.
00:35:27.820Amazing. But if it's not, why are you doing it?
00:35:33.260And so that's kind of where I landed. Yeah.
00:35:36.320Yeah. No, I mean, and I I've landed there, too, and it took a long time.
00:35:40.680Right. Like it takes a long time, I think, to untangle all of the things that we've been taught.
00:35:46.340But, you know, I think back on when I was working in magazines and, you know, I didn't have kids then, but I had a lot of moms that were working for me.
00:35:57.480And I just remember thinking, I'm like, yeah, you get in at 8.30, 9 o'clock, you're working till 8.30 at night.
00:36:03.440I cannot imagine having that life with children.
00:36:12.840and before i you know understood what it was like to be a parent something that i upheld in the
00:36:17.860workplace as well and i you know i think about that and i kick myself for it all the time but
00:36:21.580i also didn't know and it was also like we set out these archetypes of what does work
00:36:26.440look like what what should work look like you know and i i try to dismantle that as much as
00:36:33.360i possibly can i'm like okay i did choose to have more freedom right um by controlling like
00:36:40.880you know what I'm doing and who I'm working with but if I have that freedom what am I going to
00:36:46.060do with it and so I'm where I work most weekends right like I either have a book event or um I'm
00:36:52.440just writing and working and my husband and I work together so I'm like what if our Mondays were our
00:36:57.580Sundays because the kids are gone so we what if we just didn't work on Mondays it was so hard for
00:37:03.760us to like do that and it still is because we're like but Monday means work um but it doesn't have
00:37:10.280to mean work it's like the old ideas of what work and paid labor mean i think that the only like one
00:37:15.820of the only upsides of this weird ass economy and world that we're moving into is that we get to
00:37:21.000reshape hopefully what some of these very antiquated ideas look like that did not put families and
00:37:29.020caregivers first yes exactly 100 and by the way i love that you made mondays your sundays because
00:37:35.580like yeah I've I had the Sunday scary is pretty much my whole entire working life and when I was
00:37:40.400finally able to like unwind from that I was like oh Sunday's a great day and Monday can be a great
00:37:47.220day right and and Monday can also be great exactly yeah I think a big part of like you know what was
00:37:58.040difficult for me was actually how people saw me and how I presented myself to people right because
00:38:05.100being able to say like yeah I work at this company and I'm a I'm a producer and yeah I produce this
00:38:10.500show that you watch or that you've heard of or you know I work for this like big news person or
00:38:15.640I worked at the BBC oh I work at the Guardian yeah you know like it there's there's still so
00:38:21.420much cachet attached to certain titles and certain jobs especially like working in a magazine you
00:38:27.700know it's very like in in our minds it's glamorous you I immediately attach signifiers to you uh it
00:38:36.200immediately gives you this like clout which is you know the the new word for it um and and to
00:38:44.780have to then stop saying and then people start to see you that way right so you get comfortable
00:38:50.620with like yes that's my friend and she's this and this and this for me it was like well what
00:38:56.940happens when I stop doing that? And how am I going to introduce myself to people? And how
00:39:02.080are people going to talk about me? And are they like, am I going to be less than I'm going to be
00:39:08.120uncomfortable? I remember like talking about this book to people before it came out and they would
00:39:12.900be like, oh, you know, it's self-published or like, you know, like there's an idea of you because
00:39:18.200you're a freelancer and they don't know who you are immediately that they treat you differently
00:39:23.960or you have to get over that you have to get over this idea that the title the job it doesn't give
00:39:31.200you anything uh except for ulcers for me and but then how do you exist in the world and how do you
00:39:38.580present yourself in the world and now you have to like rebuild your sense of self and sense of
00:39:43.220identity and sense of self-worth and in talking to a lot of women especially moms especially like
00:39:49.760feminist moms they were like yeah but it's hard for me to to wrap my head around like
00:39:57.220am I allowed to be less ambitious or ambitious for something else and still be living up to that
00:40:05.640ideal and yes and quite yeah frankly just like can I still be a feminist and I'm like
00:40:11.540yes the answer and the answer is yes and I say this a lot I mean I think that that has been a
00:40:17.620really big problem with feminism and with the branding of feminism, that it felt like you had
00:40:22.860to be ambitious about this one thing in this one way. And we excluded, we pushed a lot of people0.99
00:40:28.560out of the tent. It's like, you can't be ambitious about motherhood. You can't be ambitious about
00:40:33.520family life. And I think we lost a lot of people along the way. And we need to make that tent
00:40:38.920bigger. And, you know, even again, one of the upsides of the entire economy being shaken up
00:40:45.960is that i no longer and i'm the same as again we're like we're living we're living parallel
00:40:52.420lives girl um but i also identified my self-worth and my identity so much with my job with the
00:40:58.700company i was working at i was like i work at this magazine i work this newspaper i worked at yahoo
00:41:03.140which was sad in san francisco because it was the ugly stepchild of that company but for a while
00:41:07.420for a while they were they were really doing well uh but like i was like oh yeah my identity is this
00:41:12.220company this brand is me i am this brand and again i think that's what we were told to do
00:41:19.160but now seeing what has happened in all these companies i'm like a company's never going to
00:41:24.000love you back like none of none of them are okay they're just not like you are your own brand you
00:41:30.880are your own media engine um and like to folk to focus on what works for you that is ambitious that1.00
00:41:40.480That is a sort of ambition instead of what can you do for another company to make a bunch of D-bags rich, to be honest.1.00
00:41:48.420Exactly. Like most of the of our ambitions, I think, are often we've conflated feminism, work, identity with ambition and then conflated that with a very specific capitalist model.1.00
00:42:09.940which just enriches other people. And we what we are left with is burnout. And this idea that also
00:42:16.940and I'm so glad you said what you said about making the tent so small. It's like for a long
00:42:22.160time, I did see myself in opposition to stay at home moms. You know, it was like, well, but I'm
00:42:28.480a working mom and that that makes me a better feminist than you. Even though I am so miserable,0.89
00:42:35.520I'm so unhappy. None of this is like feeding me on in either side. But but this is what I'm
00:42:43.880supposed to do. And if you were if you, you know, like it's just so awful what what what we did
00:42:50.040instead of fighting each other, we should have been fighting the man. But here we are. Yes. The
00:42:55.960mommy wars, the working mom versus the stay at home mom and stay at home mom is such a dumb word0.82
00:43:00.700anyway because no one is just staying no one exactly no one is staying anyway okay uh it's
00:43:07.780all work it's all labor and you know we were pitted against each other instead of being taught to fight
00:43:13.500with each other and i think that is yet another disservice that culture did to us over the past
00:43:18.84030 years yes yes it's like daycare should be free for everyone you know for everyone every mother
00:43:25.940Every parent could benefit from excellent, high quality child care.
00:43:32.880Everyone deserves to have the opportunity to work as much or as little as they want to.
00:43:39.920You know, like, why can't we job share?
00:43:41.540Why can't I work two and a half days a week and still be considered ambitious and still be considered good at my job and still rise up the ranks if I want?
00:43:49.720Like, who said five days a week is even, you know, who's working five days, eight hours a day?
00:43:55.940none of us i'm gonna be probably three good hours maybe maybe if that okay like and all of the men
00:44:04.700uh you know that are sitting in their their cubicles nine to five and women too but like
00:44:10.720they're just playing scrabble or like surfing porn i'm sorry okay like no one and this work
00:44:17.920day was not created for for for human beings no um it really wasn't created for women and for
00:44:24.220families. And so that's that's like I said, that is what makes me optimistic because I think we
00:44:28.320can change it. I think we have the power right now. Like this is a moment like a hinge in like
00:44:34.820how we view work, how we view paid labor. And like we have the opportunity to make some really
00:44:39.740big changes if we don't get eaten by the AI machine and run out of water. Absolutely. Yes.
00:44:45.420This is giving me a lot of optimism. There's a there is a sea change coming if we can be united
00:44:53.440And if we can like, you know, have more of these types of conversations, I do believe the the appetite is there.
00:45:00.280I did this like big women's forum recently in Boston and it was women in advertising and marketing.
00:45:07.380And these are like these are the prototypical ambitious women.
00:45:11.760Like they have risen the ranks of their companies in what were often like highly male oriented, you know, what do you call it?0.84
00:45:21.400like fields fields um yeah and they like a lot of them are working moms and i you know did this
00:45:30.280panel i i don't think many of them even really knew who i was but afterwards we're doing a book
00:45:35.760signing big wine and almost every woman that had uh their book signed by me was like would lean in
00:45:44.180and was like thank you so much like you said everything that i've been thinking but i was
00:45:50.460scared to say it like I was scared to think that I might want to work a bit less or that might I
00:45:56.820might want to pull back from this type of success or like you know like it was just a real awakening
00:46:05.140for me as well because I have my preconceived notions about like what someone who's really
00:46:10.240successful in a field like this looks like and thinks and to see that all almost all of these
00:46:16.080women were like yeah you know I'm not sure that I'm happy but I was always told this is what would
00:46:23.200make me happy and I'm kind of confused and I don't know what to do next what do we do now what do we
00:46:30.780do now exactly this is the inflection point and like this is the opportunity and we have to grab
00:46:34.340that opportunity by the balls and run with it yeah and the answer is not by the way oh every0.98
00:46:39.160single woman that spoke to me quit your job and like go pursue you know hang gliding it's we make0.99
00:46:45.560work better we make these industries better more empathetic more reasonable more accommodating
00:46:52.500more flexible let us work remotely let us work three four days a week let us work from
00:46:59.040from niece if we want to you know let us work whatever hours work best for us as long as i
00:47:04.240get the job done why do you care how i do it or where i do it yeah yeah exactly exactly and you
00:47:12.480know there's always going to be people who take advantage of it but there's people who take
00:47:15.200advantage of in the office so it doesn't really matter like you hire hire someone because they're
00:47:18.940a good worker and i think we can also one of the things i want to change is like you know so much
00:47:25.500of the ageism in the workplace that we talked about earlier you know who i think would be the
00:47:29.960best and i think about this in publishing all the time uh the best like editorial assistants
00:47:36.020slash like the people reading through slush piles for agents and publishers retired teachers and
00:47:40.600librarians yes right because you have a lifetime of reading experience and you're about you know
00:47:46.680a good book better than a 21 year old who just graduated from barnard okay and um and yet we
00:47:53.680discount those people and as more and more of those people are going to have to continue working
00:47:57.720because retirement is no longer a thing yeah like let's find ways to integrate all ages into the
00:48:03.980workforce in ways that are just beneficial for everybody yes that's a big one is how are we going
00:48:09.720to integrate people who are working way longer or starting way younger into this new economy
00:48:16.820because like, yeah, I'm probably going to work till I die.