00:03:38.580It's a good place to start. I do. I want to jump right into the book because I'm holding up the
00:03:43.040book and I've tabbed so many places, things that just really struck me. I mean, I love your writing
00:03:47.820so much, but it's nice to see. I'm still adjusting to people reading it in the world because it's
00:03:53.320not out for another two and a half months. That's right. It's an advanced, uncorrected
00:03:58.040proof. Very uncorrected. And yes, but which is another. Yeah, that our co-producer Rachel
00:04:05.660had from Glynnis and gave it to me to tear through. And I have to say, I'm almost done
00:04:09.720in two days. So just for the listeners to know, it is a beautiful read. It's a riveting read.
00:04:15.360And just the food thing alone, that's kind of what I was going to point to is like, yeah,
00:04:19.180One of the pages I flagged that I happened to flip through right before hitting record is how you talk about frying eggs and butter and the way you describe it.
00:04:27.440And it's not just, yeah, it's not just chocolate.
00:04:47.960I can't cook. I mean, I literally don't cook anything. And so writing about food as a person
00:04:53.600who only understands food from the consuming end of the deal, I felt like I hope that I can do
00:05:00.080justice to the many pleasures that France provides in that department. The whole book is it's a
00:05:06.300sensory soak. I mean, I don't know. Let's get it. Let's get it. I'll put that on the book cover.
00:05:11.420it's a sensory like you really literally okay let's okay this podcast as you know it's about
00:05:17.980living with intention making decisions for yourself what we want our lives to look like
00:05:22.140and often i think and i still think this is true that we're told as women pretty early on like the
00:05:26.780messaging is that there's just a way to do it but we know here at the show that that's not true i
00:05:32.520myself married divorced did not have the happily ever after and remarried very happily but like it
00:05:37.820didn't go at all the way I expected it to as a young person as a teenager right our co-producer
00:05:44.400single mom right you know we're just not really interested in the typical narrative and then
00:05:48.780there's just not one way to do that and that is like that's your writing and your life is so much
00:05:53.240about like agency and priorities right so yeah I want to talk about the sensory soak that is I'm
00:05:59.620mostly here to enjoy myself and just like the way that you're living too Glynis so where to begin
00:06:05.500It's been interesting in the last few years because even when you said something about my turning 40, I'm turning 50 at the end of the summer. And 40 is beginning to sound young to me inevitably, even though it didn't feel so at the time. And certainly I am sensitive to it not feeling so for many people in the same way that I was at a dinner party the other night with everyone there was over the age of 60.
00:06:26.940And they sort of scoffed that when I said I'm turning 50, and they're like, oh, you're such a baby, which I don't actually think is a very useful framing of age, because it's a little patronizing. And so I try to stay away from it. But I am also aware that culturally are approaching some of these what feel like predetermined expectations or cultural roles has shifted dramatically in the last five to seven years, and that this is a very heteronormative narrative that I was feeling, I don't know if the word's pressured, but I was feeling very sensitive to.
00:06:56.340You know, a lot of I find the response to the book, not entirely, but is increasingly like, oh, it's interesting. What's the big deal? And I think, you know, in some ways, the progress that you hope was going to be made has been made. And in some ways, obviously, we know living in America that there's this extreme rollback happening around women and agency.
00:07:17.880So I think both of these things are happening at the same time. But I do think I try to be clear, particularly in this book, that a lot of what I'm responding to or thinking about are narratives that were handed to me as like, I think the phrase is heteronormative, like you're a woman, you'll grow up, you'll fall in love with a man, you'll get married, you'll have the wedding, you'll have the kids, whatever.
00:07:36.800and still so many of our rituals are based around that trajectory of events but i think increasingly
00:07:43.260we're having a different discussion and there's a different vocabulary around so many experiences
00:07:47.680not everywhere and certainly as anybody with a shred of awareness of the news cycle will can
00:07:54.220tell you the pushback is violent and dangerous and against a lot of vulnerable people but i think
00:08:00.800there's a lot of different things happening although when i set out to write no one tells
00:08:04.200do this, which I think I started writing that book not quite a little less than 10 years ago.
00:08:08.100So it's been an interesting trajectory. I mean, I feel like I just read it just like not that long
00:08:13.420ago. Well, it came out five, six years ago. It was a book about the year 2014 to 2015. Anyway,
00:08:19.560it's just sort of on my mind as we think these things through and who is feeling the pressure
00:08:24.720and what sort of pressure. Yeah, I think the thing you say about aging really struck me. I took a
00:08:28.620note on that, the framing of it, because I always say getting older beats the alternative, right?
00:08:32.060not everybody gets 50. Yeah, I do think that this book is a lot more about aging than is about,
00:08:38.300I mean, I guess age and gender are very hard to separate because we do punish women for aging.
00:08:42.340That has not changed, I don't think, in very small ways. But this book is far more about
00:08:47.220the expectations and invisibility around age than it is necessarily around sort of the cultural
00:08:53.180norms of marriage and or partnering in parenthood. Yes, I'm gonna fist pump on that because it stuck
00:08:58.800out so much to me, Glynnis, as I've been reading it. And you know, maybe there's more to come in
00:09:02.200the last like 40 pages that I have left. There's a spanker in the last 40 pages. So get ready.
00:09:07.440I flipped through I flipped ahead so that I would be oriented. But I'm going to go back and actually
00:09:11.840read. I did do a fast. So I'm aware. But I there's a paragraph from the end of that chapter
00:09:17.100missing in the galley, which is frustrating and amusing to me because the end of it seems so
00:09:21.440dramatic. And in reality, it was far more amusing. But anyway, when they say uncorrected proof,
00:09:25.700it does seem really dramatic right yeah it's not it's not there's a paragraph it's it's too boring
00:09:30.360to go into why but there was like there's a paragraph missing in the galley from the end
00:09:33.880of that chapter and a couple people have reached out to me being like what happened are you okay
00:09:37.880and i was like yeah like it was just of the paragraphs to go missing in the book it's
00:09:42.120amusing that that one got lost it's very it's very cliffhanger-y and what's funny about it
00:09:48.380there's that there's that whole section where you're finding your way out of the forest and
00:09:51.440I was like okay I know Glynis is okay but I'm nervous I wasn't like the way you wrote it I was
00:09:56.560like I was actually I'm like I know she's fine but like I'm talking to her tomorrow in two days
00:10:00.940or whatever but like I was like I'm I was actually nervous for you so it was well written because it
00:10:04.960was very oh I'm glad to hear that that is I sometimes tell people to sort of take us off a
00:10:10.040bit when people ask me what the book is about you know depending who you talk to it's about age it's
00:10:13.560about sex it's about food as we say or agency and I sometimes think for me personally it's a love
00:10:19.320letter to my bike because so much of my life and how I live is on a bike and that bike ride I talk
00:10:24.500about in that chapter is hands down in my life one of my favorite which is why you know it made
00:10:29.780it into the book it was sort of a really incredible bike ride home that night it's beautifully written
00:10:34.760back just about the aging thing because I think I actually think I had this thought a few times
00:10:39.440it grew actually this feeling of like every woman of every age should read this book because it's
00:10:45.400not i mean because i have read more graphic sex in books than this for sure it's beautiful and it
00:10:52.180is very sexy and all that but what really struck me over and over again was how you saw yourself
00:10:58.860so differently and your beauty and your desirability and how that shaped your how that
00:11:05.320changed the self-love side of it your view of yourself literally and metaphor yeah maybe we
00:11:11.940should tell people who are listening I feel like we jumped ahead but the premise of I'm mostly here
00:11:16.000to enjoy myself is after it takes place in August and a little bit of September 2021 and comes at
00:11:24.020the year at the end of a year to a year and a half of me being primarily completely alone in my very
00:11:30.560small Upper West Side apartment during COVID during lockdown and after we went into lockdown
00:11:35.000March 2020 and by June 2021 the vaccines had sort of rolled out and there was this sense of an
00:11:41.380impending sort of re-release into life which sort of started that summer and right before the delta
00:11:47.100wave i sort of feel like in the action version of this movie i had bought a plane ticket to paris
00:11:51.880sort of out of desperation and out of the stagnation of everything was punishing in another
00:11:56.800sort of way and i had an apartment to stand in paris so i bought the plane ticket it sort of felt
00:12:00.860like as the plane was taking off sort of the wave of delta was coming in behind me and it was this
00:12:05.120sense of like i'm just gonna go and when i landed in paris the city was i have a large community of
00:12:11.160friends here and I've spent a lot of time here but when I landed the city was completely free
00:12:15.420of tourists which is unheard of I would say outside of times of war in the last 200 years
00:12:21.060and the French who could had gone to their holiday homes for August as per usual and so it was just
00:12:26.220this incredible experience of having Paris for Parisians and me and Paris had just come out of
00:12:33.200sort of a much more restrictive lockdown so everyone who was here was having this similar
00:12:38.320experience to me of just like how quickly can I get out of my clothes and how quickly can I get1.00
00:12:45.420into life and like touch and sort of a hedonistic element of living which the French already are0.86
00:12:52.680much better at than most places it's in those five weeks that I recount just pleasure and but0.59
00:12:59.640the pleasure of friendship and the pleasure of community and the pleasure like has like corporeal
00:13:06.040the word for it like physical pleasure of food and obviously as much like nudity as much as possible
00:13:12.580chew on this bold question from dentine gum is it ever okay to compliment a millennial
00:13:24.240on their skinny jeans in 2026 dentine chew bold
00:13:36.040i think of my life as being determined by my ability to literally move i ride my bike
00:13:44.280everywhere i am able to leave sort of at will within you know the confines of limited funds
00:13:51.500etc but that's sort of what i was trying to capture in the book and this sense of it happening
00:13:56.560in a moment where i was 40 i turned 47 in that book this sense of you're headed into you're
00:14:02.820into sort of the era age of women where you cease to see any version of yourself in the culture at
00:14:09.360all and you are sort of not sort of you are just encouraged to think of everything to come is just0.62
00:14:15.400going to get worse your sexual appeal will diminish your opportunity will diminish your
00:14:20.900viability will diminish and in my experience it's been the complete opposite and so as usual i'm
00:14:26.860wanting to just let people know well and back to my that's my point about that was my point about
00:14:32.160like, I feel like everyone should read this because it's like this unfolding. And there
00:14:35.460were several moments where you would look back at like older pictures and be like, I was so hot,
00:14:40.960you know, like pictures that we like, and we all do that, right? Like, we're looking back and we're
00:14:44.420like, you know, the book is very fresh, because I've just been reading it the last two days.
00:14:47.540But it's like, oh, it's great. I haven't I haven't done that. I'm doing the audio,
00:14:50.500but I get back to new I'm this we should say this podcast. I'm actually in Paris right now.
00:14:53.760That's right. That's right. Absolutely. Only in so far as I fly back to New York
00:14:59.020this weekend and i'm doing the audiobook uh week after next so i will reequate myself with all of
00:15:04.840the sentences that could have been sharper i'm sure that i will come back to and be like what
00:15:09.400were you thinking i don't think so i mean i think yeah always but it's riveting and pleasurable and
00:15:14.560enjoyable also all these things that are just so like just so thought-provoking to glenis like
00:15:19.340where just on this where your friend is like picks the as opposed to picking the picture where she
00:15:23.700looks at the photo where she looks the most alive or very alive she picks the one where she looks
00:15:27.780more perfect it wrenches the heart a little bit because we all do it yeah i mean i think sitting
00:15:33.120during covid and just craving experience just being like craving touch or craving being seen
00:15:39.960or whatever it is i'd be going back through photos and just think like oh god i remember seeing this
00:15:44.680i mean rachel obviously it's a long history of me yelling at her for taking my photos so much
00:15:49.800and then i'll go back and be like wow this is a great photo but of course at the time you only
00:15:54.720see how terrible it is and I just think like our enjoyment of ourselves is so stolen by ideas of
00:16:02.440what we're supposed to look like to me and I think I wrote a piece in the times that sort of maybe got
00:16:06.840reworked into the book this sort of there's a five-year gap between to having a photo taken
00:16:12.060of yourself and your ability to enjoy that photo I wanted to offer myself the grace and the kindness
00:16:17.640to even if I look at a photo and I think oh that like just know you know enjoy it and that am I
00:16:23.320enjoying myself. I mean, certainly I miss my neck from when I don't actually miss anything. I don't
00:16:29.480actually I'm having such a good time. It's very hard to even like to see photos and think like I
00:16:34.760understand based on how we measure women's value in appearance that I looked amazing in 2012. But
00:16:42.240like, I wasn't amazing. I wasn't enjoying myself. And I'm having such a fantastic time. I'm trying
00:16:48.680really, really hard to make that gap be as small as possible or non-existent or not worry about it
00:16:55.080at all. And again, just going back to, I mean, and you say that in the book, and you're saying
00:16:58.740it now, and I think it's really important. And it's reminding me of what you touched on at the
00:17:02.360top, which is rights, access to care, and support and equality. There is a thread and the rollbacks.
00:17:12.220The message of this book that is like just a through line for you feels more urgent than ever.
00:17:17.360I think so. I know I said this a bunch when the last book came out, but I really think it made me even more relevant now, which is I was born in 1974, which is obviously the year after Roe has passed in America and is also the same year that women were first allowed to have bank accounts and credit cards in their name.
00:17:34.960And I look at the life I'm leading now in terms of the degree of agency I have over my own life. And I think I'm a direct result of all three of those things.
00:17:50.420and the the result one of the results of that is that I do not have to ask permission to do
00:17:59.120anything I don't need a chaperone I don't need someone to sign off on the I don't need to check
00:18:05.280to make like I can and I don't need I mean when we say permission we're really talking about
00:18:12.280you know the larger idea I don't the patriarchy is a phrase I'm not the biggest fan of just because
00:18:18.020it's so overused but that sense of like who don't I not need do not need permission from and that is
00:18:22.960it's that and the fear of my being out of that control like I'm not and shame is so much a part
00:18:31.620of that the shame of oh I'm eating by myself or I'm traveling by myself or I don't have to ask
00:18:37.880permission because in some ways permissions is a stamp of approval I don't have to do any of these
00:18:42.280things. And I can't conceive of feeling bad about that, I think is a terrifying prospect to power
00:18:49.920structures that are based on women being kept in their place quite literally. And so it doesn't
00:18:55.860surprise me as and I am very much one of many, I think that's always my frustration when I write
00:19:01.860about certain things that I'm doing is I'm not I look around and I'm one of an enormous group of
00:19:07.820people it's like I see women everywhere living similarly and we don't see that reflected in the
00:19:13.660culture in any great way and I also see these rollbacks as a response to watching women be like0.98
00:19:21.180fuck yeah this is fucking fantastic like Ezra Klein the other day did a whole podcast on0.99
00:19:26.380dropping fertility rates and I enjoy his podcast and he's certainly you know a very progressive0.99
00:19:31.700voice and still he was like well I don't quite understand and I'm like what if the answer is
00:19:36.900just women are for the first time discovering what it's like to have a life outside these roles and
00:19:44.560they're really enjoying it and maybe that's just it maybe it's not maybe that's as simple as it is
00:19:51.640and it's so new still and the reason people are having less children or no children is because
00:19:57.000wow this is you know so dazzling in certain ways and in certain ways it's you know it's just as
00:20:02.520hard as anything else so i just it's it's really interesting to sort of be on the crest of that
00:20:06.840wave and recognize that you are and see how and sort of understand so much of overturning of roe
00:20:13.840this push to make no fault divorce not a thing the trad wife movement is really in response to
00:20:19.860oh my god they're having a they actually don't need us they're having a really good time and0.98
00:20:25.280holy shit how do we get them back inside the house right and and also all the other larger0.93
00:20:30.420forces to like what's what's happening with the climate and like yeah the irony of it we're0.98
00:20:35.880finally arriving and these things are completely connected that we're finally arriving at a moment
00:20:40.480where sort of women and certainly in the past women have been able to travel but so much of
00:20:44.960that is tied to money so the last 75 years tied to money and certainly you've only had birth control
00:20:49.900for the last 50 and now all these things are tied together and you're like at this moment where
00:20:53.920this sense of like oh we can finally do everything of course the collides with climate change which
00:20:58.500is just the upheaval around it and not just i mean being in europe right now i mean we're not
00:21:03.060unaware of russia and the states but there's a proximity reality to being here that shifts that
00:21:08.720a little bit too so yeah this is all happening at the same time and certainly that summer even
00:21:14.200though it predates stops it didn't predate it enough it's not that we didn't know this was
00:21:18.980coming and it's not like all these other things weren't at play too and having been in new york
00:21:22.880city for the last 25 years or whatever this awareness of how fortunate i'm able to do what
00:21:29.300i'm able to do and how fortunate that i'm a person who's completely set up personality and
00:21:34.440life-wise to do it is able to take advantage of it in this moment and how rare it is and the
00:21:39.520absurdity of ever feeling any shred of shame about it because it's not the epic epilogue is it the
00:21:45.040epigraph the little quote you put at the beginning of a book i think that's what it's called yeah i
00:21:48.960I think so. I was getting confused. The epigraph in this, one of the epigraphs is from The Handmaid's
00:21:53.040Tale. Did you read The Handmaid's Tale? Ages and ages ago. I don't know if you remember. Some
00:21:57.020people don't remember because I think a lot of people watch the show now. But in the novel The
00:22:00.500Handmaid's Tale, there is an epilogue where you realize that the whole book is actually, they're
00:22:05.600at an academic conference in the future and someone has found this diary in a wall and they're debating
00:22:10.360the veracity of Offred's tale. Was it representative of how women lived at the time
00:22:16.760in a widespread way and there was part of me when I wrote all this down being so aware of how
00:22:23.280precarious the life I'm leading is in terms of like all the forces at work right now I just
00:22:29.020thought I should write it down in case it it does get shoved in a wall somewhere just as like
00:22:33.560evidence this was possible for a brief period of time if we go careening back into the way things
00:22:38.480have been for women and for most people for most of history oh so many things to talk about I mean
00:22:45.140I want to I do want to name I do want to name. Thank you. I think of you as someone who has a
00:22:49.480high tolerance for risk. I do have a high tolerance for risk. Yes. Some might say too
00:22:54.040high a tolerance. Some might, but I don't know. I don't know if you feel if you're at least I know
00:22:58.720how to benefit from it. I do have that conversation. I know it's in the book, Josh, but I do have that
00:23:02.200kind of Rachel and I have had that conversation like a high tolerant people who are rewarded for
00:23:06.260having a high tolerance of risk oftentimes have a high bank account number. And neither. There
00:23:12.360are times where I'm just like, it's privileged to have a high tolerance for risk, right? Because
00:23:17.100it's not, there's so many factors at play in that, including health. That's right. Thanks for saying
00:23:22.140that. Because there's a little bit of a luxury to like, what's it like to not feel anxious about
00:23:25.660all the things? I mean, and you have taken some big risks. And I think you wrote about that,
00:23:30.220Rachel, you know, co-producer of the podcast. She's like, remember that piece she wrote? I think
00:23:33.760we're, I think we're alone now. Welcome. Right. Which really in for the New York Times at the
00:23:37.600beginning of like early 2020, where it was like, I was like, some of us have been living like this
00:23:41.060for quite some listen there's a lot of anxiety I do have a high tolerance for risk and that is
00:23:45.740partly me and I can claim that but I'm aware of certain things that have allowed me to foster
00:23:50.400that but certainly at the beginning of the pandemic where many many people are like this was not in my
00:23:55.160five-year plan and I thought wow what a luxury to have a five-year plan I mean I coach people all
00:23:59.780the time on like having a target not the end but an end like something you're working towards and
00:24:04.860often I will anchor people in like three to five years but I also add in that we evolve because
00:24:10.360this is humans and because stuff happens to us right so that's the thing we talk about here a
00:24:14.700lot on this podcast is like we you know we make plans we live intentionally we design our lives
00:24:18.520but also like what do we do when life throws all kinds of stuff at us this is specific to my choice
00:24:25.480to be a writer in a world where the media industry has been collapsing at an ever increasing rate for
00:24:32.540the last 15 years i think some of the anxiety i feel right now is there not being a place there's
00:24:38.980know where to aim because it doesn't exist and that I think is a real thing that a lot of people
00:24:43.720who are in media at large are suffering from too there's no far off goal to aim at and say you know
00:24:49.66020 years ago or 25 years ago you could have said I want to be Maureen Dowd or I want to be Frank
00:24:55.120Rich and have I remember Frank Rich I was like oh I want to do that I want to have one 1200 word
00:24:59.200column once a week that's like fun and smart and like that's the goal and of course these things
00:25:03.920don't exist anymore and they're and there's nowhere to point and I think that probably is
00:25:08.420what some people experienced for the first time during the pandemic of like, oh, my God, what is
00:25:12.060this world? And if you've been living in an industry that has been shifting to the degree that
00:25:16.220media has, you know, for the last 15 years, I think that felt more familiar. And then add to
00:25:21.520that the fact I don't have any outside support systems. The fallback is you. Let's speak to that
00:25:28.040a little bit, too. I want to just name and we'll come back to this. But I want to stick with this
00:25:31.820about what you just mentioned, which is, you know, the book, you think it's going to be a romp,
00:25:35.580but it really is very serious. Also, it is a sensory soak, but it is right. It is serious.
00:25:40.600Like these things that were like, it is, it is a very enjoyment is serious. I think agree. But it
00:25:46.260also explores these very, these much deeper questions about how we get to see ourselves,
00:25:51.440how we get to live, you know, what are the kinds of stories that are uplifted for women and men,
00:25:56.740right? About what's possible for women? Like, how do we all, you know, work together? So yeah,
00:26:00.600pleasure is serious agree and there's a lot of layers there's a lot of layers and there also is
00:26:07.020there is some romping oh there is there's y'all the romping is good the romping is good there's1.00
00:26:14.080an ass on the cover of this book for there is there is you know she's rolling around naked on0.99
00:26:19.820her furs it's great it's amazing when it's all you you're an orphan i guess yeah i suppose i am1.00
00:26:27.040It's hard to say I'm an orphan when I'm almost 50.
00:26:56.000I really, and it has a lot to do, the older I get, the more I'm aware of, like, so much of this has to do with health, right?
00:27:01.680Touch wood, I've been in good health, and I'm increasingly just so aware of when I was 25 and in good health, I didn't think twice about it.
00:27:09.380But when you're 50 and in good health, every mammogram, you know, the waiting period between the mammogram and the test results is a little bit of a, like, a life, like, what's a ghost of Christmas future?
00:27:19.180it's a little bit ghost of where you're just like oh if this goes badly especially when you're in
00:27:23.820America and I say that because the conversation you know I'm in France where they really do have
00:27:27.840comprehensive health coverage and nothing is ideal and as a Canadian I know how the Americans
00:27:33.100can idealize Canadian health coverage but like really understanding the penalties for health
00:27:38.040issues in the United States and the bankruptcy and have you read Annie or no she won the Nobel
00:27:42.440Literature Prize last year she's an amazing writer who writes a lot of memoir-esque stuff and has
00:27:47.500done for decades. She's French. And someone said, I just love her writing so much. It's just
00:27:51.480incredible. And I just thought like, and some of her books are like 50 pages. It's amazing. And I'm
00:27:56.040so aware of like, and I don't know the details of her life. But I'm like, no one could make this
00:28:00.660career in the States because I'm like, she also had comprehensive health coverage, which makes
00:28:05.580a huge difference when you're wanting to devote your art to something. It's true. I mean, in
00:28:09.620between every mammogram, I now think because I'm also I am 50. I always think is this the time my
00:28:15.020life changes you know like i have i have that and that's increased that definitely had that thought
00:28:20.160that thinking has increased um as i have gotten older every year you mentioned from the times
00:28:25.760it's okay to want to be not want to be alone whatever they end up with the title it was a
00:28:29.500piece i started writing before covid and i think the title got shifted maybe but it came out of
00:28:34.820going to get a breast biopsy and going by myself out of habit and needing someone to take me home
00:28:41.080but also the punishment of being in that alone and me really thinking through like you're a little
00:28:46.760bit cavalier about how much you're able to do alone and you need to think through what that
00:28:51.700starts to look like going forward and just like that and also I mean not for nothing just like
00:28:58.420what that looks like when with your health insurance when you were the only you know I
00:29:03.160joked that I went to every Christmas party this year and asked people how they were making money
00:29:06.520as a writer because I thought I was missing something again I was at one of those parties
00:29:09.840I remember you saying it yeah I was like and what do you do and the answer the people the answer is
00:29:13.940always the same they're married they're married to it or it's family money or someone else's health
00:29:19.200insurance is relieving that and that those are all real concerns in the states where they're not
00:29:24.660you know it's true I mean I am married to a Canadian and and we talk a lot of he was Canadian
00:29:29.300that's crazy I didn't know that really no wow I can't believe I didn't know that I can't believe
00:29:33.980that either i'm stunned i've rachel's rachel's dropping the ball on her canadian her canadian
00:29:39.940connections well but we talk and his family's in toronto and what but we talk all the time about
00:29:44.440how though the health care is idealized there like if there was a catastrophic illness the level of
00:29:50.820stress is just different there because of that i think i think having health care thinking is
00:29:55.160different yeah the thinking is different it's very yeah i think i mean i mentioned this in the book
00:29:59.440in one of the chapters, but one of my coping mechanisms for how obscene the healthcare is in
00:30:05.720the States is just telling French people about it and then watching the look of horror. They don't0.84
00:30:10.300believe it. They don't believe it. And then, you know, trying to explain co-pays and deductibles
00:30:14.680and what this premium premiums and the whole shebang. And they just don't believe you. And
00:30:20.700it's their disbelief that somehow comforts me in really remembering. You're not crazy. The
00:30:26.700system's crazy it's almost like being in a you know it's like the analogy i suppose in some ways
00:30:31.780is being in an abusive relationship where it's like the gaslighting is so extreme and you sort
00:30:35.960of need someone else like the outside view to be like no this is really as bad as i think it is
00:30:40.120one thing i want to do want to hit on because i think just talking about the family on your own
00:30:55.900and it's all on you is I think therapy and writing about it.
00:30:59.640But I also think to the pleasure of community,
00:31:02.020like that's a real through line for you to like supporting women,
00:31:05.460talking to women, building a community of women.
00:31:07.180And like it's the co-producer of the podcast, Rachel, editorial producer.
00:31:11.980I mean, you guys were co-founders of a women's network,
00:31:14.700which was a huge that you sold in 2020 called The List, right?