Jodi Picoult: Why Every Villain is the Hero of Their Own Story

Every villain is the hero of their own story. That line opens part two of Jodi Picoult's thirtieth novel, and she'll tell you it's also how most of us get through any given day, or life. Picoult is the number one New York Times bestselling author of thirty novels, including My Sister's Keeper, Small Great Things, and Wish You Were Here. Her new one, Hollow Bones https://amzn.to/4xAhI0a, arrives right around the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and centers on a woman whose entire career is built on preparing for catastrophe, who gets blindsided anyway. For three decades, Picoult has done her research by climbing all the way inside other people's lives, including people whose beliefs she can barely stand to sit across from, and a good part of this conversation is about how and why she does that, how it impacts her own life, beliefs, and approach to storytelling. We explore: What thirty years of living inside other people's heads has actually cost her, including the nightly ritual one narrator forced on her before she could face her own familyThe moment in an interview when she had to leave the room, splash water on her face, and decide which version of herself was walking back inOne finding from her research on lying that explains why a small untruth gets harder to take back the longer you hold onto itWhy one of her books landed on the most banned book in America list last year, and how she respondedWhere the line actually sits between sugarcoating your own life and bending the truth to protect someone you love, and what tends to happen to people who never find it If you have ever told a gentler version of the truth to protect somebody you love, this conversation will sit with you for a while. You can find Jodi at: Website https://jodipicoult.com/ | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jodipicoult | Episode Transcript https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/book-bans-unreliable-narrator-empathy-jodi-picoult Next week, it's just me, and I want to talk about something that's been on my mind: the moments in our lives that end without us ever knowing they were the last ones. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss that or any upcoming episodes! Midlife Design Lab: I'm opening up an intimate retreat with me and a small, curated group in Boulder, CO (Oct 24-25, 2026), followed by 3 months of virtual group coaching. A few weeks back, I shared something I'd been building for myself, and the response blew me away, so spots are limited and I expect them to fill fast. If this calls to you, apply here https://jonathanfields.substack.com/p/midlife-design-lab-update-and-invitation?open=false#%C2%A7midlife-design-lab-immersion. Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sponsors/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jonathan Fields?

  So question for you, when is the right time, if any, to return to a trauma that so many people still carry in their bodies and their memories? That's one of the questions I explore in this deep provocative conversation with iconic author Jodi Pico. So Jodi and I, we both lived through 9/11 in New York City, and this conversation takes us into her new book, Hollow Bones, which is cast around that event, what those days felt like, what came after, and how shared grief can briefly unite people in a way that's both heartbreaking and strangely beautiful. We also talk about the pandemic, because once again, she's writing right into the center of collective disruption and the stories we tell ourselves to survive moments like

• 0:44Jonathan Fields?

  that. What I love about Jodi's work is that she doesn't hand you easy answers. She writes in the gray area. She wants you to see every side of a question, including the ones that make you really uncomfortable, and then decide for yourself what you believe. In this conversation, that shows up pretty much everywhere, in the research behind Hollow Bones and her approach to that research, in the psychology of lying and self-protection while telling yourself that you're actually doing it to save someone you love pain. We also wind around to the topic of book banning, gender discrimination in publishing, and her enduring belief that empathy is at the heartbeat of not only the work, but of this human life.

• 1:29Jonathan Fields?

  And we also get into what turning 60 has felt like for her, what it means to keep making art after three decades in the public eye, and why she recently got her first tattoo as a declaration that she is not done yet. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. And we'll jump right in after this short break.

• 1:55Speaker 01

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• 3:07Jonathan Fields?

  This episode is brought to you by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the bestselling book, How to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes, and everyday people about why we do the things we do. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com/podcast or wherever you listen. The new book lands, I think, right around September 15th, which is pretty close to the 25th anniversary of 9/11. I was in New York City, as were so many people that I knew in New York City.

• 3:48Jonathan Fields?

  I knew people who went to work that day and did not come home. What made you feel like now was sort of like the right time to drop into territory that arguably has also been really explored from almost every angle?

• 4:07Speaker 05

  I think that when you're talking about a disaster of that magnitude, you almost have to let it settle a while before people are ready to read about it or revisit it in some way. You know, I specifically timed Hollow Bones with the 25th anniversary. I knew that I wanted it to come out this particular year. And, you know, it's one of those things that everybody has a story about, right? Everybody knows where they were the minute that the planes crashed into the Twin Towers. And, you know, I think that, for me, one of the most interesting things about writing

• 4:47Speaker 05

  is choosing topics where your readers bring their own stories into the one that you've written as well. So there's not anyone who's going to be able to read this book and not be able to relate to it on that level, you know, if they were alive back then, obviously. Who wasn't born yet? That's a different story. You know, so it felt to me like the right time. It wasn't too soon, and it also wasn't, it was coming at a time when I think we're going to see a very natural return to discussions about 9/11, you know, now that we have a very big milestone coming up.

• 5:24Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, that lands really strongly for me. You know, I was, I'm in Boulder, Colorado, right now, but we were 30-year New York City lifers before that, and we were a pandemic move. You know, so I was there. That was my home for decades before. And as horrifying as it was to be in the city in that moment, and you're right, like, I can tell you the couch that I was on, the color of the fabric, and like, exactly, like, that moment will be seared in me forever. And I found myself actually volunteering unexpectedly about 30 feet from what they were calling at that moment, the pile, two days later.

• 6:08Jonathan Fields?

  And so all of that is deep, it's like in my DNA at this point. I am not claiming in any way, shape, or form to be one of like the heroic people who did all the incredible work. It was complete chance that I was there. But, but you're right, like, there's a story that I will bring to it, that every other person will bring to it. But the story that really I haven't seen told, I'm curious how this lands with you, is what happened in New York in the six months that followed, which was this sense of sisterhood and fellowship that I had, I never felt before, and I haven't felt since.

• 6:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, there was, I mean, I think it actually bled outside of New York, because I lived in New Hampshire then. And I just remember the goodwill from the world, the fact that we're all grieving with you, that it was a unification. It was, it was a terrible event that brought everyone together. And, you know, especially right now, when I think we're a very fractured country, it's very hard to remember what that felt like. But yeah, there was, what I remember about New York was, I wasn't living there, but I remember a few months later, well, I remember, first of all, I was, I was not one of the authors on book tour. Because I remember many authors who were like, now what do we do? And how do we get home? There are no planes.

• 7:21Speaker 05

  And I remember authors like carpooling and driving across the country. I wound up flying, I think, three days after 9/11.

• 7:29Jonathan Fields?

  Oh, wow.

• 7:30Speaker 05

  Some events.

• 7:31Jonathan Fields?

  So you were like one of the first planes in the air after.

• 7:33Speaker 05

  I remember going into the airport, and I remember getting on the plane. It was like a giant plane. It was like a jumbo jet, and there were three people.

• 7:42Jonathan Fields?

  Wow.

• 7:43Speaker 05

  And we all sat down, and we looked at each other like, do I trust you? Do I trust you? You know? And, and everything was fine. But I remember thinking that was a very strange feeling. Yeah, it's, I do think too, though, that like, there's so much collective trauma left still in New York. You know, I remember months later being in New York, and every day was another funeral for a fallen first responder. And you would see like the, the fire engines going down 8th Avenue, and the police cars, you know, in a big sort of line of a very solemn parade. I mean, it just felt like it didn't end ever.

• 8:21Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, no, that lands so true. As you're describing that, what's coming to me is the only other time I felt the sensation anywhere remotely similar to the way we came together was actually the pandemic in the city. That like smack in the middle of that, you know, like, we lived on the Upper West Side, actually, a couple of blocks from the Ansonia, which you've written about in prior books.

• 8:43Speaker 05

  You heard of the pots and pans out the windows?

• 8:46Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I have, you know, at 7 o'clock every night. It was a ghost town when you looked outside, but like, millions of windows got thrown open and were banging and banging. I recorded a bunch of those nights, and I cannot listen to those, like, you know, 60 seconds of audio without just completely being brought to tears. It's like, it's because of what it symbolized, you know? And it's like, it was just more of this, please. As awful as this moment is, more of that.

• 9:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, it's funny, because you talk, your first question was about how do you know it's time? And it's not time yet for the pandemic. I mean, I wrote a novel about it, actually. And it was for a different reason. It wasn't to memorialize, that it was really to chronicle it. Because I think we're going to forget a lot of what it was like back then, and our grandkids are going to be like, oh, my gosh, you were alive back then? What was that like? You know, so, but I also, one of the projects that I did during the pandemic was write a musical with my co-libratus, who I work with on other musical projects, and as many songwriting teams and directors as we could possibly bring together, because the entire theater industry closed.

• 9:57Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, right.

• 9:58Speaker 05

  And we were trying to employ people, basically. And so we wrote something that was a bunch of linked vignettes. And, you know, we filmed it in an empty theater, and we streamed it, because you couldn't go to the theater. And that, I think a lot about that musical, and I think about how in about 15 years post-pandemic, people will be ready to really sit down and see that again.

• 10:21Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I feel like you're right, you know, that, that we need time to really let it sit and understand it better. It brings up one of the, call it a theme, or question, really, that I felt was really centered in this new book, Hollow Bones.

• 10:42Jonathan Fields?

  You talk about somebody who has literally prepared her whole life, and I'm gonna do my best not to give away any spoilers.

• 10:47Speaker 05

  I know, it's hard, right? Yeah.

• 10:49Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. You know, like centered in this is, is, is a, is a woman who has prepared for, you know, like 25 years for catastrophe.

• 10:59Speaker 05

  Right.

• 10:59Jonathan Fields?

  Yet she is the one who like can get everything figured out when all the awful stuff hits.

• 11:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:10Jonathan Fields?

  Yet, the way the story unfolds, the one thing that, you know, absolutely derails everything is something she could never have seen or prepared for.

• 11:22Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 11:23Jonathan Fields?

  And I feel like in telling that, you're capturing so much of what so many of us have felt for so many years.

• 11:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, I, I don't think it's giving too much away to say that the character you're talking about is Molly. We meet her when she's 25, but on nine 11, she was two months old and her mom goes to a doctor's appointment and never comes home.

• 11:45Jonathan Fields?

  No.

• 11:46Speaker 05

  And, you know, even that two month old, her whole life is sort of formed around having this very public tragedy, you know, and it was very different for the people who lost someone, you know, in, in the towers that day or in the planes. Very, very different than all of us who still were grieving and watching it unfold on TV. And, and it's, you know, and in speaking with the survivors from, uh, family members of, of people who, who died that day. They, they really grew up feeling like they were in a fishbowl a little bit. Retrospective is like, oh, what are the children of the people who died nine 11 like, and, you know, and, and

• 12:28Speaker 05

  I, it felt to me very organic that someone who grew up thinking about that all the time would wind up in a career where she tried to keep other people from feeling what she felt.

• 12:39Jonathan Fields?

  Right.

• 12:40Speaker 05

  You know, and so there are, I, I did shadow this woman, amazing woman who runs the Department of Emergency Preparedness for the state of Rhode Island. And that is literally her job. Her job is to try to mitigate disaster. But the problem is that catastrophes happen, no matter how hard you try for them not to.

• 12:59Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. I mean, that's the whole concept behind, um,

• 13:04Jonathan Fields?

  the black swan, right? It's like these big wildly disruptive things and you can plan and plan and plan, but like they are by definition, the things that you could never have dreamed would come into your orbit.

• 13:14Speaker 05

  Right, exactly.

• 13:15Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. So as you just described, um, you went and found this like the real life person who does this job. Your, your approach to writing has been repeatedly to kind of largely dissolve yourself and live inside someone else's interior life from the inside.

• 13:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:36Jonathan Fields?

  And you do immense research. Some of it is academic, some of it is study, but also often it's experiential. Like, like let me go and, and not just, sometimes not just interview and really be with the person, but actually like, can I live their experience? You've been doing this for 30 years. Not just writing, but that level of let me go and inhabit somebody else's interior experience.

• 13:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:00Jonathan Fields?

  What does that do to you over 30 years, just as a human being?

• 14:04Speaker 05

  I, I actually see it as a real privilege. You know, cause I, I never lose myself in the moment. I never forget who I am. And even when I'm writing the person and kind of channeling that voice, I, I know who I am. I, I could separate that out. But to me, you know, not many people get to try on other lives for size. And I do it every year. I get to go wherever I want to go and, um, and it's allowed me to become a lifelong student. You know, I was, I was the kid who loved learning. I was the academic and I guess the alternative would have been to, you know, become a professor or postdoc or something, but even that would have been just one topic.

• 14:48Speaker 05

  And with this, I get to learn every time I start a new book and not just learn the facts and the figures, but how it affects real people in the middle of all of it. Uh, cause that ultimately is why I think it's why I write, and I think it's why people pick up novels. It's, it's to be whisked away, sure, but it's also to find what resonates with you and this fictional character.

• 15:18Jonathan Fields?

  Have you ever found yourself, you hear about actors, especially method actors in particular, right?

• 15:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:24Jonathan Fields?

  Who will, they will literally, they won't break character ever. Like talk about inhabiting another person, like this is, they'll walk through their days and their lives and like the bodega and like they're in character.

• 15:35Speaker 05

  Right.

• 15:36Jonathan Fields?

  So that's not you, but you do oftentimes go really, really deep into these people's lives.

• 15:41Speaker 05

  And it does affect you. Like when I was all great things, it was in three narrative voices. One was a white woman who was a public defender. One was a black woman who was, um, a nurse that was accused of murdering an infant, and one was the infant's father who was a skinhead. And I did very, very deep research in all of those, all of those fields, including talking to people who were former skinheads. And every time I sat down to write Turk's point of view, I felt like there were ants crawling all over me. You know, and I knew it wasn't me. Again, I knew this was a persona I was trying on, but it's the only time I've ever written a narrator. And every time I finished one of his sections, I had to go downstairs and take a shower.

• 16:26Jonathan Fields?

  And something that really doesn't wash off all that easily.

• 16:30Speaker 05

  I don't want to be with this guy. I don't want him in my head. You know, it was, it was really hard to inhabit that space. And yet I, I feel really duty bound to do that because I tend to write about pretty controversial things.

• 16:43Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 16:43Speaker 05

  I of course have opinions on all of these, but I don't think it's my job to tell you what to think. I think it's my job to show you every facet of a situation, even the ones I don't agree with, and let you decide what you believe. But I will ask you to revisit your beliefs because I think many of us form our opinions kind of when we're very young. You know, from our parents, our friends, our religious leaders and, um, and we don't really ever, ever think about it. We just kind of hold that opinion. And I think what's nice about my books, or what I hope is, is helpful about my books is that it invites you to look at everything laid down very neatly for you so that you can reevaluate what you believe.

• 17:27Jonathan Fields?

  No, I think they do that beautifully. I, I mean, what, I'm curious, when you do that also, and again, you've been doing this pretty much every year for 30 years now. This is book 30 that's come out, right?

• 17:39Jonathan Fields?

  Is there a cost to that just personally for you? Have you felt that at any point where like, this is actually like, as much as it's opening doors inside of me of empathy and understanding that there's a, a cost that it's actually, I wasn't anticipating paying.

• 17:52Speaker 05

  No, if anything, I think it's very, um, I think it's, it's, it's enriching, honestly. Because it, uh, I, I feel like it allows me to tick something off my list. Cause the things that I write about are the things I worry about, right? So if I, if I can process them in a book, then I'm like, okay, great. Don't have to worry about that anymore. Of course that's not true. It's just my superstitious, you know, nature, but, um, but something about, about being able to explore something that deeply, an issue that deeply makes me feel like I've, I've, you know, checked that one off. That's a notch in the belt, another, you know, I, I can move on now.

• 18:32Jonathan Fields?

  It's really at the end of the day, right? It is about, um, I was gonna say it's about empathy, but like part of what you're doing is you're, you're basically saying like, here's a question that probably a lot of us struggle with, even when we're not consciously aware of the fact that we're struggling with it, we're sitting with it. You know, and we're probably getting one side of the story based on the bubble that we choose to surround ourselves with.

• 18:58Jonathan Fields?

  I'm going to, I'm going to position front and center, more sides for you. And then it's your job to figure out what to do with that.

• 19:06Speaker 05

  Exactly. Yeah. I mean, my favorite books are the ones where I write about something like, um, abortion rates in America, right? And I have people come up to me on book tour and say, I couldn't figure out whether you're pro-life or pro-choice. And I, I mean, I'm happy to tell them and I'm, I'm quite pro-choice, but I'm thrilled that they don't know that. You know, from the book, uh, cause then it feels very balanced and even.

• 19:29Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. Cause for you, that's not what it's about. Well, it's almost like you choose an issue that you know is polarizing, but also something that you really want people to revisit and, and understand different points of view. But rather than saying, this is my point of view, you're like, we're going to create a story around it.

• 19:49Speaker 05

  Right.

• 19:49Jonathan Fields?

  That shares all points of views and you can figure out where you land with this.

• 19:53Speaker 05

  Hollow bones is a really good example of that. Cause you know, there's nothing, there's nothing political really about nine 11. It happened. There's something we can change that, right? But the after effects of COVID, for example, are very deeply explored through Molly's professional life. Because one of the things that this, uh, this woman, um, in Rhode Island made very clear to me is that first of all, the state of Rhode Island used to get all their funding for emergency preparedness from the federal government. They get nothing now, absolutely nothing. So they have to find a way to find money in the state budget for that. They also said that after, the after effects of COVID, where there were questions about, do masks work?

• 20:35Speaker 05

  Should we vaccinate? Vaccines aren't good for you. Um, all of that, uh, anti-science rhetoric that has sprung up in the wake of, uh, the pandemic. She said, will make it absolutely impossible for her to do her job if another massive global catastrophe like that happens because people have lost faith in public health officials.

• 21:00Speaker 05

  And you know, it was really important to me to make sure that I said all that, too.

• 21:04Jonathan Fields?

  When you, when you go into issues like that, um, there's a really big risk that you, you, in telling a fictional story, you're presenting things as fact that people will assume are a fact, but get them wrong. Um, I imagine you're very aware of that and you, you research fiercely to try and make sure that those, those specific things are dialed in.

• 21:30Speaker 05

  I do. And I mean, I wouldn't be able to do the work I do if I, if I didn't have people who are willing to, like you said, let me shadow them, walk through their lives, have interviews with them. And it doesn't end there. I mean, when I finish a manuscript, they get the manuscript and their job is to take a red pen to it, to make sure I've gotten it right. You know, I don't want to assume that what I heard was the right thing. Uh, you know, that said, sometimes you do get the facts right and people don't want to believe them.

• 21:56Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. Have there been times when you did get it wrong and it was important and it landed with you where you're like, oh, what do I do about this?

• 22:05Speaker 05

  Yeah. And there are actually times where something was in error because honestly, because someone who was helping me with research got it wrong, even in their own field. And when possible, I will try to make a correction for future printing.

• 22:18Jonathan Fields?

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• 23:01Jonathan Fields?

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• 24:33Speaker 03

  This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Ah, fall. That cozy season where we swap the swimwear for sweaters and sunnies for scarves. But before the Halloween decorations are put away or Thanksgiving table's been set, there's already holly jolly music playing in the grocery store, reminding you that the year is coming to a close. Time to kick end of year into high gear. When you use Apple Card with Apple Pay, you earn 2% daily cash back on all purchases, including food, decorations, gifts, and more. Get a head start on your end of year purchases. Apply for your Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone today and start using it right away with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 25:14Jonathan Fields?

  One of the things that is definitely present in this book, and also it's sort of like a common theme, is, in fact, this is actually, if I remember correctly, the opening line in part two of the new book, is this idea that every villain is the hero of their own story. Take me into this.

• 25:33Speaker 05

  Yeah. I, you know what? I had that line in my head and, um, I wanted to use it so badly. And it, it felt like the moment.

• 25:45Jonathan Fields?

  You're like, I need the right book for this.

• 25:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, totally. Um, and, and this was it because, uh, the, the character who, who is our narrator in part two, uh, makes some very questionable choices. And you can look at her and see her as a villain, or you can look at her and see her as a hero. Uh, she is not talking about herself, mind you, when she says that line. Yeah. And that's all I can say, because I can't give anything else.

• 26:12Jonathan Fields?

  I know. But, but I guess, like, more generally, um, just the notion of, you know, we do love to see ourselves in a particular light, um, even if the world sees us radically differently.

• 26:24Speaker 05

  Right? No one, no one sits down and says, you know, oh, today I'm going to be, I'm going to be the evil villain. It's, everyone thinks that they're justified in their thoughts and their opinions and their actions, you know? And, um, sometimes that's true and sometimes it's really not.

• 26:41Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. Um, when you sit down with somebody, um, who the world perceives as a villain.

• 26:52Speaker 05

  Oh, I got this one. Yeah. Yeah.

• 26:55Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. Um, A, how do you handle that? And, and, um, how do you get inside their head and?

• 27:05Speaker 05

  Well, I'll give you a story. Um, when I was writing a book called Sing You Home, which was about gay rights, uh, I had started the book and then my eldest son was writing his college application essays at the time. And he came out in his essay and he gave me the essay to read and I read it and he, I said, well, did you want to talk about like the content or the grammar? And he said, both. And, uh, you know, I gave him a big hug and I said, Kyle, I could not love you anymore if you were not gay and I do not love you any less because you are gay. This was not a big surprise to me or my husband. I think it was more of a surprise to Kyle. But all of a sudden, this book, which I had been writing theoretically about gay rights and gay parenting and what makes a family,

• 27:49Speaker 05

  was very, very personal. And part of my research for that book involved going to talk to people from Focus on the Family. And at the time, they were running a seminar called Love, Love Wins Out, uh, or Love Won Out. And it was, um, was basically a seminar where you could go and be told that you were not gay, you were gay identifying, and that just like a dieter can avoid chocolate cake, you can avoid these gay impulses. And lots of stuff that I personally do not believe at all. Um, and anyway, I, I went and I talked to the public information officer for this organization at the time. And it was this

• 28:33Speaker 05

  woman who, um, had actually been a lesbian and was born again Christian and decided that this was not the path she wanted to follow and, you know, was now apparently attracted to men and so on. And I was talking to her and we, I mean, I was trying to be as, um, I guess as, uh, non-contentious as possible so that I could, you know, have a conversation rather than, than be lectured to. We talked about, uh, Bible quotes. And when she gave me Bible quotes, I would say to her, okay, are you aware that this word, uh, you know, which is translated as homosexual in the Bible, um, is from the Greek arsenakotai?

• 29:16Speaker 05

  Uh, and actually, nobody really knows what it means. And it wasn't actually in the Bible as the word homosexual until 1958. Uh, but most Greek scholars think it means somebody who was married who paid for a male prostitute, you know? And I could, I could say things like that because I had done my homework. Um, and she, of course, you know, had some kind of comeback. Uh, and then we kept, we kept talking and, you know, we're going around in circles. She's discounting all the science that shows that there's a genetic component to being gay. And finally, I said to her, do you ever worry that some of the rhetoric you use at your conference is going to lead to hate crimes against gay people? And she looked at me straight in the eye and she said, well, thank goodness, that has never

• 30:01Speaker 05

  happened. And I, I lost it. I said, will you excuse me? I ran to the bathroom and I'm splashing water on my face. And I was like, I was having such a hard time in that moment, not being the mom of a gay kid, but instead just being an interviewer. I got myself under control and I went back there and I said, I'm sorry, but you know, have you ever heard the name Matthew Shepard? And she looked at me and said, who?

• 30:32Speaker 05

  And you know, you just have to hold it together in that moment. I will tell you that not long after I interviewed her, she wound up leaving the organization. And from what I could figure out, she wound up in a relationship with a woman. So there you go.

• 30:48Speaker 05

  But you know, that's a great example of how even when you don't agree, you know, even when you're talking to a skinhead, if you want the information, you have to listen to them. And you have to understand that this is their point of view. You will have a chance to give your point of view, but you have to let them talk. You can't talk.

• 31:06Jonathan Fields?

  I mean, what I'm curious about in that scenario too, because this is not the typical way that you would go into an interview, like having just had your son Julie come out to you as a kid and then having this conversation, like literally all sort of like unfolding in real time, right? And, and as you shared, you have this commitment to sort of, you know, I'm going to go out and going to talk to people often who I may just personally fiercely disagree with their point of view. And, but I, but I still want to bring the representation of them or that point of view into this particular story that I'm writing in a way where somebody can see the different sides of the argument and make up their own mind. How do you do that in that particular scenario?

• 31:46Speaker 05

  You just honestly, you have to, you have to fight your inner instincts.

• 31:51Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 31:51Speaker 05

  You know, it's like, it's, I, the way I always think about that moment is swapping out a hat, taking off the mom hat and putting on the researcher hat. And, and really, you know, subsuming that part of me that just wanted to reach across the desk and shake her, um, you know, because that was not my job at that moment. I was not there to advocate for my son. I was there to get information from her about what Focus on the Family believes about homosexuality.

• 32:17Jonathan Fields?

  Now, when you sat down with her to do that interview, um, was there anything in you that was also thinking, part of my job in this moment is to try and persuade her to a different point of view?

• 32:34Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 32:37Jonathan Fields?

  It's like, how could you not?

• 32:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's why I had all those great Bible quotes and the studies that have been done that, you know, proved this genetic component to homosexuality. So, I mean, I went in there armed, fully armed, but, um, you know, but I, there's, there was a wall and I found this, I've, I've talked, I've written about evangelicals multiple times in my books, including in Hollow Bones. And I have found that when discussing anything sometimes with evangelicals that one might consider a fraught topic, there is always a point that I call the Jesus wall, where the answer is just because that's how it is, you know, and they won't go past that.

• 33:17Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 33:19Jonathan Fields?

  I think you could also extend that to, in a lot of ways, orthodoxy in almost any philosophy.

• 33:27Speaker 05

  Absolutely. Yeah.

• 33:28Jonathan Fields?

  You know, it's basically just this idea that there is a doctrine, there's, there's one translation of it, like, and this is what has been taught to me as the way things are. It just is, um, like no matter where it comes from.

• 33:39Speaker 05

  Yeah. Right? It's orthogonal to the way I write, which is saying that there are multiple sides.

• 33:43Jonathan Fields?

  Right.

• 33:43Speaker 05

  And we have to figure out with all the information that we have, we need to make a Bayesian rational decision about what is actually morally right and what is morally wrong.

• 33:53Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. I mean, do you feel like part of what you're doing in your writing is, people love to have to not make choices, but they love to know what to decide. Like they love to know the rules, like, like, like.

• 34:09Speaker 05

  I think so. And I actually would say, I really like gray areas. I, that's the most fun to walk around in, right? Cause there's room and there's nuance. And, you know, you're never going to see me write a character that is a hundred percent good or a hundred percent bad. Everyone's got some flaws in them. Otherwise it's a very boring book. But, uh, but I think that most people actually want to be told what to think. There are a couple of books of mine that have really ended on a cliff. And I cannot tell you how many readers are like, but what happened? But what did you do? You could just tell me, right? You know?

• 34:42Jonathan Fields?

  It's just us, just the two of us. Come on.

• 34:47Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I, I so agree. I mean, and so when you write something where it's like, look, here's a scenario, here's a big question that we're building a story around. Here are the different ways to look at this. And then you're handing it over to them to sort of like figure it out, like where do you land?

• 35:00Speaker 05

  Right.

• 35:01Jonathan Fields?

  On the one hand, it's got to be incredibly eye opening, but it's also probably really jarring for a lot of readers because they're left in the gray and they just want to go back into a world of black and white so they can move on and not sit with it anymore.

• 35:14Speaker 05

  Look, I have many, many theories about this and they're all political. Has to do with like rational thinking and teaching kids how to think instead of teaching them, you know, what to do, basically. I, I think we've lost the ability to critically think right now. Um, you know, I, I actually have a master's degree in education and a million years ago when I was teaching, uh, yeah, that was the kind of the catchword, the catchphrase was critical thinking and how to, how to sort of enhance critical thought in students. And, uh, I, I don't, I, I think that teachers still care about that, but I think that we're not seeing a lot of it. You know, and with the rise of AI, you're going to see even less of it.

• 35:58Jonathan Fields?

  And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

• 36:02Jonathan Fields?

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• 36:47Jonathan Fields?

  City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com. Good Life Project is sponsored by Whatnot. So I love buying books and for some reason I especially love buying used books. I just had so much fun, literally minutes ago, I picked up the entire Hunger Games trilogy of books for only $11 and also got this beautiful thank you from the seller and a welcome from all the others in the chat. Whatnot is the largest dedicated live shopping platform from beauty to luxury fashion, even cookies, and you almost never pay full price. Plus what really gets me is the other side of the screen. On Whatnot, anyone can sell, whether your business is big or small or doesn't even exist yet. You go live, share what you love and build relationships with people who come back for

• 37:32Jonathan Fields?

  you, not a logo. According to Whatnot, people selling there sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces. It's a real path to building something that lasts. Search Whatnot, W H A T N O T in the App Store, download and you can start selling right away.

• 37:54Speaker 06

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• 38:31Jonathan Fields?

  That another theme that tends to show up really commonly, and again, it's centered in, um, in Hollow Bones is this idea that we are unwitting and unreliable narrators of our own lives. You know, we're all kind of editing a version of our lives and ourselves, just our identities in real time, often becoming these wildly unreliable narrators, um, in the name of making it more kind of inhabitable, more smoothed over, make us feel better about maybe the world or about how we personally are showing up.

• 39:05Jonathan Fields?

  And there's a lot of revisionist history that we're doing in our own lives, like almost on a minute by minute basis.

• 39:11Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 39:13Jonathan Fields?

  And I feel like some of that actually, there's an argument that says that some of that can be a good thing, especially if you've gone through major trauma. Yeah. Like you've got to figure out how to tell a different story about what happened to you.

• 39:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 39:24Jonathan Fields?

  But there's a counter argument to that too.

• 39:27Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, it goes back to the everyone, every villain's a hero in their own life, right? You know, you are going to cast yourself in the starring role of your own life and you're going to somehow create your narrative in a way that's palatable to you. There are a lot of bad actors, bad faith actors that I can think of right now who are in positions of power, who manage to do that every single day. And worse, they're trying to convince other people of that. I would argue though, that there is a difference between that, um, sugar coating your own life to make it more palatable and twisting the truth to protect the people you love.

• 40:07Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm. Take me into that more.

• 40:09Speaker 05

  Well, I think that's what you see in Hollow Bones. Choices that are made that might seem suspect, uh, are not necessarily selfish choices, but selfless ones.

• 40:21Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, we can't really go deeper into that without revealing like a major spoiler. I'm like, ah, let's really go that one more step.

• 40:29Speaker 05

  Like six months after it comes out. I know.

• 40:32Jonathan Fields?

  I know. Um, dope it. I think that is, I, I get that. Um, especially as a parent.

• 40:39Speaker 05

  Right.

• 40:40Jonathan Fields?

  I get that, you know, because you're, you're constantly trying to figure out what is in the best interest of the people who I care most about and who I feel, um, responsible to protect in this world.

• 40:54Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 40:54Jonathan Fields?

  More than anything.

• 40:55Speaker 05

  Right.

• 40:55Jonathan Fields?

  And the way that we tell our own story, or even their story.

• 40:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:59Jonathan Fields?

  Is going to be teller to that, even if we're fully aware of the fact that it's not truth.

• 41:04Speaker 05

  I get asked all the time, you know, which character of yours are you most like? And I usually say none of them because they lived terrible lives. Thank you very much. But, um, but the one who I'm really most like is actually Nina from Perfect Match, who finds out that her son has been sexually abused by a priest and she decides, she's a prosecutor. And she knows what the system's like and she takes matters into her own hands and kills the guy who she thinks did it, only to find out she killed the wrong guy. And everyone's like, what? That's who you are? And I was like, no, I haven't killed anyone yet. But, you know, um, I could see myself, that's, that's my mama bear instinct. If you do something to my family, I'm coming after you.

• 41:43Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. I mean, that's, you often hear stories about a parent, um, who's done something horrific supposedly in like the name of something that they believe strongly. And, and you think, well, how could they ever do that? And then, but, but you know, if you're really, a second later, you also might think, there but for God's grace go I.

• 42:03Speaker 05

  Absolutely. And I would, I would argue that is very much a hallmark of Hollow Bones as well.

• 42:08Jonathan Fields?

  Nah, I agree. Um, so if we're kind of all walking around revising our stories, sometimes mercilessly all day, every day. Is there a cost to that? Like, what would it cost somebody to revise a story they told about themselves? Because if you're making it more palatable or more protected for somebody else, and you feel good, you've got the nachos of like, you know, yes, I'm being good to them. Um, but there's gotta be a cost to you too.

• 42:36Speaker 05

  Yeah. You know, it actually does make me think of Hollow Bones because one of the characters in there, um, Jesse, who is Molly's husband, who returns from My Sister's Keeper, he's all grown up now. And he is a cop who basically is an expert in lie detection. And there's a lot of information in this book about lying. And one of the facts about lying that I learned in my research is that the more you lie, the more fluid you get, the easier it gets to convince yourself and others. You start to believe your own lies. So, you know, you tell, you tell a mistruth often enough and it becomes the truth.

• 43:13Speaker 05

  So to answer your question, I don't know that the cost to you would be so great if you started believing it. But there, your own life is, is tangled with so many other people's lives. And so to erase whatever connections or, or, um, damage you did to somebody else, I think that could be very dangerous.

• 43:37Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. But I mean, erasing, you know, the connection or the damage you do to someone else, I think is one thing, but also you're intentionally leaving a part of your own identity, your experience, your history out of the story that you're bringing forward.

• 43:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:53Jonathan Fields?

  You know, and I've gotta just think that there is a suffering that is attached to that, even if you don't, if it's not surface level. Like there's a seed that gets planted, um, that says like, I am not whole in the life that I'm inhabiting.

• 44:08Speaker 05

  You know, it's interesting. Um, I'll be thinking about this because I've been doing this whole retrospective of 30 books recently.

• 44:14Jonathan Fields?

  I know.

• 44:15Speaker 05

  And so when I wrote the book of two ways and I was doing research with death, um, professionals in the death industry, death duelists and hospice chaplains and stuff, I got to spend, um, a lot of time at the bedside of people who are dying. And one of the things that happens is people who are utter strangers just tell you things when they don't have a lot of time left. So I heard someone say, you know, that they, they had, their, their son wasn't their husband's. Um, I heard someone say they had, they confessed to a murder. I mean, like crazy stuff. I, I had met this person 10 minutes before. But, you know, it sort of goes to your point that if you are aware that you've rewritten the narrative of your life

• 44:58Speaker 05

  and you've buried something and you've, you've spackled over a very big hole. I wonder if at the end of your life, you start to realize that, that maybe the infrastructure is not so great without spackling, that there's still.

• 45:13Jonathan Fields?

  And it's like, what, what then happens if the, the seemingly true story that you've told those, like who rely on the honesty of that? Like, you know, there's a devastating effect.

• 45:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:25Jonathan Fields?

  When, when decades later, that person finds out what the true story is, like there's a grappling and a reckoning that happens that everything you were trying to save that person from, you're like, it may have landed in a compounded way.

• 45:37Speaker 05

  Right. Absolutely.

• 45:38Jonathan Fields?

  You use the word erase, um, a couple of minutes ago also, and that makes me curious, um, actually about your prior book, by any other name. This was a book about two women separated by about 400 years, whose words were introduced to the public under a man's name. Um, one of them historically, um, real, from what I understand from all of your research.

• 46:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:04Jonathan Fields?

  Why was this topic, why, why was this so important for you to explore?

• 46:08Speaker 05

  I feel like I have been talking about this topic my whole life. I have talked about gender discrimination in publishing since I was a baby writer. Because, uh, even when it's not entirely visible, it is glaring, you know? Whether you're talking about the fact that yes, there are lots of female editors in this industry, but very few female CEOs of publishing companies. Or whether you talk about the fact that when a man like George R R Martin writes about dragons and sex, it is high fantasy. And when Rebecca Yaros does it, it's very smut, right?

• 46:48Speaker 05

  So there's always something, uh, that demeans women's voices in some way, uh, or women in this industry in some way. And I, I feel like I've circled, I've circled that over and over again, uh, just even in conversation and interviews. And when I stumbled across this story, uh, thanks to an incredible article in the Atlantic by Elizabeth Winkler, um, which questioned the authorship of Shakespeare and pointed out that, you know, although that, that's been an open secret for, ever since I was an English major, you know, years ago, but, um, but most of the candidates who have been suggested are men. And Elizabeth posed this.

• 47:31Jonathan Fields?

  Candidates for being the real writers behind.

• 47:33Speaker 05

  Real writer of the plays. Yeah. And so she suggested someone I'd never heard of, who was Amelia Bassano. And I did this deep dive into her and the more I learned about this woman, not only did she seamlessly fill in all the gaps in Shakespeare's life that academics have spent 400 years trying to explain away, but she also was on her own merits, an accomplished writer. She is the first published female poet ever in England. Like we should all know her name because of that. And nobody knows who she is. And, um, you know, it, it felt like the right story to tell.

• 48:13Speaker 05

  It's also, I, I paired it with a modern day story about her fictional descendant, who is a young female playwright in New York City and writes basically the story of her ancestor's life and can't get, um, any traction because she's a female playwright and there's a lot of gender discrimination in the theater industry. And, uh, and that's something I experienced firsthand with my own theater experience as a writer. And everything that happens to that character is something that happened to me or that was said to me. And, uh, you know, I, I really wanted to write this book because I told you I have nothing in common with my characters, right? These are the first characters who I'm, I'm literally living their lives every day.

• 48:58Speaker 05

  And, you know, here we are, it's 2026 and, uh, where's the men's fiction? Why is there women's fiction, but no men's fiction? What's up with that? There's just still so many tiny ways that female writers and voices are discriminated against and elided from, from, you know, this, the overarching narrative of time, really, uh, that that's kind of what I wanted to address. And the research that I did on Amelia, I think a lot of connections that I made were things that people had never made before because they weren't looking in the same patterns I was. And I, if you ask me, I am 100% convinced that she is one of the people

• 49:37Speaker 05

  who wrote some of Shakespeare's plays. I don't think she wrote all of them, but I do think that she worked with a bunch of other writers, including the Earl of Oxford, to create those plays.

• 49:47Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. And there's an author's, um, it's more than an author's note at the end of that book, where you basically say like, let me, because I was, right, as I was reading it, I was like, wow, if this is all true, this is really compelling. And then you jump in at the end, you're like, okay, so let me tell you what the real research showed.

• 50:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:02Jonathan Fields?

  And my mind was like, wait, what?

• 50:04Speaker 05

  I know. I mean, that's it. When you, I, I'm writing it as fiction, but when you realize how much of it is true. Again, it is, it's very hard to discount when you see that, when you see the, the parallels in her life and the, the gaps in Shakespeare's.

• 50:18Jonathan Fields?

  Right. And it's like the only way that she could actually have her work meet the public at most times was through the voice and the guise and the facade of a man.

• 50:28Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 50:28Jonathan Fields?

  And what you're sharing is a lot has changed and a lot hasn't changed.

• 50:33Speaker 05

  I say that all the time. A lot's changed in 400 years, but a lot, lot left to go.

• 50:37Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, right? Because somebody could look at you and your career, you know, like 30 astonishing like years of writing huge, huge books that have sold, you know, like 60, 70 million copies and all this acclaim.

• 50:54Jonathan Fields?

  And say, well, but you don't have to deal with this. But if they zoom the lens out more, there's a bigger story here.

• 51:01Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, totally. And just because I I don't deal with it, you know, with in terms of sales, doesn't mean that you shouldn't open your voice and speak up for someone else either.

• 51:11Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 51:11Speaker 05

  You know, but in in my opinion, I I am still dealing with it. I mean, I cannot tell you how many people will call my books chick lit. And chick lit is actually, it is a genre and it's great. If that's what you want to read, that's awesome. Um, it's my books are the worst chick lit because they're supposed to be funny and bubbly and happy. And if you take one of mine on the beach to just whisk yourself away and have a good time, I I hate to tell you this, but.

• 51:37Jonathan Fields?

  You're gonna be crying at some point.

• 51:39Speaker 05

  Right, yeah. So, you know, I there's this, when people call something chick lit, or when they say it's women's fiction, what they really mean is it was written by a woman.

• 51:50Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, and and they're sort of like loading that up with all sorts of assumptions without actually stating them overtly.

• 51:56Speaker 05

  Absolutely. And the number of women who read both men and women, as opposed to the number of men who read both men and women, is very different.

• 52:04Jonathan Fields?

  You have confronted the potential for erasure in the form of banning. You know, that has been something that has present because because you, as we've talked about, like, you look at an issue, you're like, this is a big, thorny, complicated, polarizing issue. And for you, you run to it rather than away from it. And so you have these deep, rich, complex stories built around it, which for for a lot of people, clearly, they want to engage. But then for a lot of people, it also, it really scares them. They don't want that in the conversation. So that that ends up leading them to sort of like, say, like, how can we remove this? And by default, you from the conversation.

• 52:43Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um, I mean, book banning is out of control in America. It has increased over 1,100% since 2020. Um, over, I believe, Pan America has said that over 23,000 individual titles have been banned. It's mostly being done at the school library level, but um, it that has bled out into public libraries as well. Challenges to public libraries have increased by 92% since 2020. Um, most of the books that were being pulled off shelves were being pulled off and not being read. The people who were challenging them admitted they had not read them, but they were written by BIPOC or LGBTQ authors. Then they started pulling what they called mature content, and I put air quotes around that.

• 53:28Speaker 05

  That's where mine fall in. 19 minutes was the most banned book in America in 2024. I'm currently the fourth most banned author in the country. And the reason 19 minutes is banned, as well as more than 20 of my other books, is 19 minutes uh, has the word erection on page 313. Now, they don't care that this is a book about a school shooting. They don't care about the violence. They care about the word erection because in apparently in a high school, school library, high school students don't know what one of those is. So I don't know.

• 54:03Speaker 05

  The other really amazing fact, which we knew, uh, which was just documented by the American Library Association, is that the vast majority of book banners are not individual parents who are concerned about their own child reading something and deciding then that no one's children should read it. They are actually, um, these bands are coming from organized groups that are uh, political uh, advocacy groups, um, that are trying to get books removed uh, on a, you know, at a grassroots level across as many states as possible. Uh, very similar to the way that conservatives sort of rolled out um, uh, changes at local levels to abortion before it was overturned federally.

• 54:46Speaker 05

  Uh, so that in a lot of the red states, they chipped away at protections until even say in Mississippi, the only surviving abortion clinic couldn't perform abortions anymore. And of course, we saw then Dobbs overturn federally the constitutional right to an abortion. Well, just like that, we now currently have a bill in front of Congress that is going to try to create book bans at a federal level, meaning that if schools decide they should not, they're, they don't want to take these books off a shelf, they will not receive federal funding. So now is the time for anyone listening to this podcast to get involved. And I get asked all the time, well, what do we do? How can I make a difference? Even if it's not happening in your town yet, there's a very good chance that it will eventually.

• 55:31Speaker 05

  Um, I say that what you need to do, first of all, is talk about it. When people tell you, oh, a school book ban isn't a ban, you can still buy it on Amazon, it is still a ban as long as that book is removed from a school library shelf, it's a ban. Because um, there are a lot of kids who cannot access Amazon or can't get to a public library. That's the reason there are school libraries. That's why they exist. If you can start a banned book club, put banned books in your little free library, but most importantly, get involved politically. Run for school board. We need voices that oppose banning that are just as loud as the ones that are telling people to ban books.

• 56:05Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm. I mean, when you look at some of the most banned books also, many of them fall into um, what a lot of people would consider some of the greatest literary works of like generations.

• 56:20Speaker 05

  Loved it, Morrison, right?

• 56:23Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, right.

• 56:25Jonathan Fields?

  So it is, yeah, it's it's it's suspect, it's upsetting.

• 56:30Speaker 05

  Well, and we know why it's happening because as we were talking about, it's all about critical thinking. It's all about allowing kids to learn for themselves instead of believing what you tell them. And there are a certain subset of people in this country that are terrified of the thought that books might allow kids to broaden their minds, to find empathy, to find themselves represented in in between pages. Um, all of those things are so critically important to kids in a very complex world. We're giving them tools with books to learn how to deal with it. And when you pull those books off a shelf, it just gets harder. Nobody is protecting children by banning books.

• 57:07Jonathan Fields?

  So you just use the E word, empathy.

• 57:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:13Jonathan Fields?

  I feel like that is the heartbeat of so much of your work. Is that true?

• 57:19Speaker 05

  I think so, yeah. But I mean, I wouldn't say it, but it's nice to hear you say. Yeah, it is. It's really nice. I think it is. It's always about recognizing the things that we have in common rather than the things that separate us.

• 57:32Jonathan Fields?

  As we're having this conversation, it is both the eve of this new book meeting the world. It's also not too long after you had your 60th birthday, something which I had a couple of months before that. As we were talking about before we uh, we came on there, we're also both Long Island kids. 60 for me has been interesting. 50 didn't really do anything. I was like, whatever, whatever.

• 57:56Speaker 05

  Same, yeah.

• 57:57Jonathan Fields?

  60, I'm like, oh, this is landing differently. I'm curious how it's landing for you.

• 58:03Speaker 05

  Same, exactly. I didn't care when I turned 40, didn't care when I turned 50. I started 60 started coming up and I was like, what fresh hell is this? I did not want to turn 60 and it really, really upset me. Like, I was, I was just, like, you know, you can't stop time, but there was something that just really rattled me about it. And I think, I mean, I've I have unpacked this in therapy, I've done everything I can, you know, but I think it's, I think it's multiple things. I think it's that with 50, you can still labor under the delusion that you, you've only lived half a life, right? You still have a year and a half left. 60, the numbers aren't working out for you anymore, right?

• 58:49Speaker 05

  So you know, you're not going to live another 60 years.

• 58:51Jonathan Fields?

  I've tried to tell myself that that's actually not true, but it really doesn't land.

• 58:56Speaker 05

  You know, and I I think too that there is, there's a sense that what's coming, what is, what is yet to come is not going to be great. There's a lot of stuff that's going to be painful and hard that nobody wants to face. You know, uh, whether it's, it's the physical breakdown of your body or um, losing people that you love. My parents are still alive and mentally incredibly there. And I know they're not going to live forever, you know, so I'm thinking about that, too. Yes, am I having grandchildren at an alarming rate? Yes, which is great and I love that. But there's still going to be a lot of loss coming.

• 59:38Speaker 05

  And that, that's something that you kind of have to sit with when you turn 60. I think also it's different for a woman than a man.

• 59:46Jonathan Fields?

  Tell me more.

• 59:46Speaker 05

  Because there is, I know, like, I'm, I feel very healthy and strong right now and I'm very happy with the way I look. And there is this belief that, you know, when you hit 60 as a woman, you need to be shelved, you need to be archived. Uh, you are not supposed to be attractive. You are not really supposed to talk about being attracted to anyone. And I think society tries to um, really make women of a certain age invisible. You know, I I would argue that now in America, where we're only really apparently useful to produce children post-menopause, what am I here for, right? I mean, there's nothing left for me. I'm a husk.

• 1:00:28Speaker 05

  So I think that there's also the sense that I, I am done and I'm not done, you know? So one, here's what I did to combat it. I don't know what you did, but and please don't tell my mother, hopefully she won't watch the podcast, but um, I went out and I got my first tattoo and.

• 1:00:47Jonathan Fields?

  I'm so close to doing that, by the way, so.

• 1:00:49Speaker 05

  So I don't know if you can see it.

• 1:00:50Jonathan Fields?

  I can see it, yeah.

• 1:00:51Speaker 05

  It is the pillcrow sign, which is the paragraph symbol. And what is a paragraph symbol? It means same story, fresh start.

• 1:00:59Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm, I love that.

• 1:01:01Speaker 05

  Right. And so it's like, I am not done yet. And this to me is the physical representation of that. And every time I see it, and I see it a lot because it's on my left hand and I'm left hand dominant, you know, um, I remember I am still here and I'm still vital.

• 1:01:15Jonathan Fields?

  Is what you're exploring now going to end up in a book?

• 1:01:20Speaker 05

  I don't know. It's a great question. Um, you know, I, I just started this podcast by telling you things need to settle. So maybe I'll write it when I'm nine.

• 1:01:28Jonathan Fields?

  Right, right.

• 1:01:30Speaker 05

  Uh, you know, I don't know. I think I'm always amazed when I read a book these days and I'm like, the character is middle aged or older because I'm so used to reading about like thirty, forty years, forty years old, nothing older than that. Um, I, I can't say, maybe one day, you know, we'll see.

• 1:01:47Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. And like similar, similar things. I mean, obviously, you know, like, um, I'm in a man's body. So it's a different experience for me also. But, um, you know, people call me sir.

• 1:01:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, right. Yeah.

• 1:02:00Jonathan Fields?

  And you know, like, I don't have hair, which I haven't had for a long time. But, um, but there's just something that has landed differently. And maybe it's what you were describing is it's like, there's no way that I can sort of like make the math work that says like, I'm like, you know, I'm like smack in the middle anymore. Um, and there's, there's an awareness. And I think also, I'm a lot closer to a time in my life where there are people that I have known who are no longer here. And increasingly, people are grappling with things that are really challenging.

• 1:02:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Jonathan Fields?

  And so it makes you meet your mortality on a much more regular basis. And, and I feel like it's created a sense of urgency in me.

• 1:02:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:45Jonathan Fields?

  But also urgency bundled with possibility. I'm not defeatist or fatalist. Um, I'm weirdly wired to just constantly see what is possible. Um, but there's an urgency that I think has really touched down, sort of like in as I enter my sixties. That feels different.

• 1:03:00Speaker 05

  Time is different. Time just feels different. Yeah. It, it feels a little more compressed, I think, a little more frenetic, because you don't know how much you've got.

• 1:03:09Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, a hundred percent. Um, one of the ways really that showed up for me, um, I've, you know, been a writer for a long time, and it's always shown up as, as writing nonfiction books. Um, I'm working on a novel.

• 1:03:22Speaker 05

  Hey, there you go.

• 1:03:23Jonathan Fields?

  Because I'm kind of like, hmm.

• 1:03:26Speaker 05

  Why not? Yeah.

• 1:03:27Jonathan Fields?

  If not now, then when? Um, but yeah, it's been a whole completely, that's a whole different conversation. We won't sort of like even get into. You're at this moment also, um, where thirty year retrospective, I've heard you describe, you know, like you, this book tour is not just a tour for this new book. It is your quote era's tour for like each one of the thirty different books.

• 1:03:48Speaker 05

  I'm workshopping the chapter store. What do you think?

• 1:03:51Jonathan Fields?

  Right. I like chapter store. Like that works for me. Um, as you think about sort of like moving around and having this conversation, it's not just about, hey, like there's this new book out there. But, um, I want to share moments, um, of the last three decades of work. Why is it important to you?

• 1:04:09Speaker 05

  One of the other things I've noticed about turning sixty in my industry is that in a very nice way, when I meet young writers, they're like, oh, my God, you're Jodi Pico? You know, there's this, this is icon feeling. I mean, that sounds very, I don't know. Um, but I don't want to sound egotistical, but, but they do treat you differently. They treat you like you've been around forever. You know, you're, you are, you have a status they don't have just out of longevity, you know, much less sales. And there's this weird,

• 1:04:48Speaker 05

  there's this weird threshold there too, right? Because, you know, nobody submits you for, um, you know, like, um, the kind of life, a lifetime achievement award until you reach a certain age, right? You're not getting it at twenty five. And there's a part of me that feels a little sad at that, at being treated like someone on a pedestal instead of someone in the thick of it. And I think for me, part of, part of the joy of revisiting all the work I've done over the past thirty years is to see how much of the landscape I was able to leave marks on.

• 1:05:34Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, it's powerful.

• 1:05:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's like, yeah, it's, it's counting the tattoos I left on readers, I guess.

• 1:05:43Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. And in the hearts and minds. Yeah. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

• 1:06:00Speaker 05

  Be kind, be honest, and be strong.

• 1:06:06Jonathan Fields?

  Thank you. One of the things I keep turning over from this conversation is just how easily we let ourselves off the hook. Jodi says, nobody actually thinks of themselves as the villain, that everyone believes they're justified in, in what they do. And once you start listening for that in your own head, you hear it constantly. She also pointed out something that stuck with me since we recorded, that the more you repeat a version of events, even a small one, the more fluid it gets, until you start believing it yourself. And the distinction that she draws between sugarcoating your own life to make it easier to live with, and twisting the truth to protect somebody you love, that's not the same thing. And she's

• 1:06:49Jonathan Fields?

  right, that most of us, often unwittingly, we blur them together. So this week, if there's a story that you've been telling about something, maybe just ask yourself honestly, which one of these things is actually real? Which one is true? And which one is helpful? And hey, before you leave, next week, it's just me. I want to talk about something that's on my mind, the moments in our lives that end without us ever knowing they were the last ones. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss that or any upcoming episode. And do me a quick favor, share this conversation with just one person who you know needs to hear what we talked about today, or maybe just a Jodi fan, and she's got millions of them, and leave us a review wherever you

• 1:07:33Jonathan Fields?

  get your podcasts. It helps us get discovered, and it brings more people into important conversations like these. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Troy Young, Alejandro Ramirez. Christopher Carter wrote our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already, go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcasts, so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

• 1:08:12Speaker 03

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