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1: Sarah Hepola on memoirs, vices, and depopulation
63 Plays8 months ago
Sarah was the personal essays editor at Salon, she’s a staff writer at the Dallas Morning News, and she hosts, with Nancy Rommelman, the Smoke Em if You Got Em Podcast. She is the author of "Blackout: Remembing the things I drank to forget."
Sarah and I talk about:
- Living within a memoir
- Vices (mine, videogames) (Sarah's, Lucky Strikes)
- Guilty pleasures (Howard Stern, MILF Manor, Love is Blind)
- Infertility -- crisis or opportunity(?)
Recommended
Transcript
Technical Glitches and Excitement
00:00:22
kenilg
It's not taking video recording. It's just showing video. You know how this goes. OK, you ready to start?
00:00:33
Sarah
Let's do it.
00:00:36
kenilg
I know I'm doing something right by starting this because excitement is actually an emotion I rarely get to feel, but I've been excited all week just for this chat.
00:00:48
Sarah
Oh, ah that's so cool. I love hearing that.
00:00:50
kenilg
Yeah.
00:00:51
Sarah
Good.
Decade of Reading and Reflection
00:00:53
kenilg
So, um, after every book I read for like the past 10 years, I just jot down a few notes just so I could remember what I spent weeks reading.
00:01:00
Sarah
Yeah.
00:01:04
kenilg
Cause otherwise I wouldn't remember anything.
00:01:05
Sarah
That's smart. I should probably start doing that.
00:01:08
kenilg
So in 2015, I read your book, um, blackout, remember the things I drank to forget. And this is what I wrote.
00:01:16
Sarah
OK.
00:01:17
kenilg
I wrote. memoir about alcoholism, very insightful, nice moments of insight often unrelated to alcoholism, incredibly honest and vulnerable, maybe the most open ah slash vulnerable memoir I've ever read.
Memoir 'Blackout' and Sobriety Journey
00:01:38
Sarah
Oh, oh, interesting.
00:01:39
kenilg
what ah Well, I i would
00:01:42
Sarah
I wonder why. I think that's interesting. You know, a lot of people, ah you know, that is a ah memoir about my drinking problem. And a lot of people focus on the first half of it, which is where a lot of the damage takes place.
00:01:58
Sarah
A lot of crazy shit happens, you know, catastrophes that you're trying to avoid. I was never embarrassed about that. I find the vulnerable section of that book to be the second half after I've quit drinking. And I'm trying to re-engage in the world without armor. And I'm finding even things like sitting across from a man at a table to be kind of overwhelming experiences at the age of 37. You know, like that, that's the stuff that I found very vulnerable.
00:02:32
kenilg
So you found that a little bit hard to to share. You felt some reluctance.
00:02:38
Sarah
Yeah, and I also think because it wasn't cool. I mean, when you have drinking stories, they are, you have like, first of all, you have the best excuse in the world, which is, I was drunk. And and you can kind of blanket over everything by just saying, well, I was drunk. I mean, know it it was, I was drunk. And it's a get out of jail free card.
00:03:07
Sarah
So I had quit drinking for a couple of years by the time I was writing that book and what I think I was finding so cringe inducing was the way in which I found
00:03:23
Sarah
but social encounters, but particularly romantic and sexual encounters to be so scary and threatening, which was so funny because I had prided myself from a young age on being kind of like sexually sophisticated and I don't give a shit.
00:03:37
kenilg
Is that because you don't have the liquid courage and that kind of social lubrication that you get through alcohol?
00:03:37
Sarah
all
00:03:42
Sarah
Yeah. Yeah, it was ah it was a whole, you know, it was a persona and and it came with ah with like this battle armor. I felt like it was it was gone.
00:03:54
Sarah
I just remember feeling like I had turtle skin, you know, like without a shell, like I could get sunburned so easily by life and
00:04:04
kenilg
Do you have a ah shell now?
00:04:07
Sarah
Sometimes I do, sometimes when I get when i get vulnerable um or are anxious and I go through phases. I mean, I've now been 14 years into this thing. And so at first i i you know so I was like a little shaky fawn in the beginning of my sobriety. And I got stronger and stronger by the time I put that book out. In 2015, I felt so strong.
00:04:33
Sarah
and kind of indomitable. I mean, I was going on on Terry Gross and Australian television and all these things. And it just was like sobriety was like an arrow that kept pointing upwards. And then, I don't know, probably around 2017, 2018, I got knocked by life and professional stuff and started to feel, oh, okay, it's not gonna, it's not gonna always go up. Like, it's gonna, you know, i've I've definitely had some
00:05:07
Sarah
some some tricky moments like around you know usually like professional failures we shouldn't call them failures we'll call them learning experiences um and heartbreaks you know where i've wanted to to um retreat again that is kind of one of my ways of protection um but it But it hasn't quite been as as intense as it was that first year. But yeah, so that's what I always think the book, that's why I think the book is vulnerable. But I think other people read it and think, oh, you you told all these really intense things about your drinking life. And and I just, ah those didn't feel, those had been kind of like cocktail party.
00:05:55
Sarah
ah chatter I mean, there are stories that I try to peel back the layers of that performance and tell you what really happened, because a lot of the drinking persona is ha ha ha, isn't that funny? um And the truth is that a lot of it isn't. There's a lot of, especially if you're a blackout drinker, there's just a lot of blank spaces and anxiety that the day before um day after, excuse me.
00:06:24
kenilg
Yeah, but i I see your kind of your dedication to vulnerability. I'm going to pick apart that word in a second, but I see it extend well beyond blackout um
Vulnerability in Podcasting and Writing
00:06:35
kenilg
into your podcast.
00:06:35
kenilg
I love your Smoking Diaries. Your podcast with Nancy Rommelman is just one of the best out there.
00:06:42
Sarah
thank you.
00:06:42
kenilg
um But yeah, vulnerability, it's just like that's ah it connotes weakness.
00:06:43
Sarah
yeah
00:06:47
kenilg
What I'm really trying to say is you are one of the most gutsy fearless and courageous writers, thinkers, podcasters out there.
00:06:57
Sarah
Oh.
00:07:00
kenilg
And I think you have just, ah you kind of crashed into my intro. So this is the second half of my intro.
00:07:05
Sarah
Oh, this is the intro. Oh my God.
00:07:08
kenilg
Yeah.
00:07:09
Sarah
I'm sorry. Ta-da.
00:07:11
kenilg
This is this is the second half of it.
00:07:11
Sarah
Here I am. It's their haphala.
00:07:15
kenilg
This is Sarah Heblat. yeah so and and I think you um you write about yourself never to kind of sensationalize your life, but you do it out of deep respect for the genre, the genre of of memoir writing and its ability to to make us cry, to make us laugh, and to show us our own way through our own life journeys.
00:07:44
kenilg
Um, I asked chat GPT to give, to give me a ah paragraph on you.
00:07:49
Sarah
Oh good, good.
00:07:49
kenilg
Can I give? Yeah.
00:07:51
Sarah
What's that guy got on me?
00:07:53
kenilg
Uh, it was, it was pretty flattering, I'd say.
00:07:55
Sarah
Oh, nice.
00:07:55
kenilg
Heppola's writing often delves into themes of. identity, womanhood, culture, and the complexities of modern life, she uses her own experiences to offer universal insights about the human condition, particularly around issues of self-esteem, purpose, and the pursuit of happiness. Are you content with that?
00:08:16
Sarah
Yeah, I'm pretty happy. and It makes me sound a little bit like a self-help writer.
00:08:28
Sarah
about like the intersection of consent and and sex and you know some edgier topics in there. but
00:08:35
kenilg
There was a lot more, that was just one paragraph. There was like eight paragraphs.
00:08:38
Sarah
No, but it's fair. well And I have always thought that the whole idea of of memoir writing or it should really be about using your life to tell them like but people being able to find the universal in your specifics. That you have these very specific things in your life that people can kind of slot their fingers into yours and walk alongside you. like I think that's one of the really powerful things about the genre.
00:09:01
kenilg
And that's what I loved about blackout, because although I've i've never had to struggle with with drinking at all, I just felt like I was learning so much about. humanity on almost every page.
00:09:13
kenilg
But let me finish the the third part of your intro here.
00:09:15
Sarah
Yeah, shit, sorry.
00:09:19
kenilg
um So you're the you used to be the person personal essays editor at Salon. You're now a staff writer at the Dallas Morning News. We mentioned your Smoke'em If You Got'em podcast with Nancy Rommelman.
00:09:33
kenilg
And I'm so excited to be talking with you, Sarah, because you've been kind of there for me at kind of critical spots in my career. development.
Career Change and Childhood Explorations
00:09:43
kenilg
I mean, you helped publish um two essays of mine for Salon, both of which led to to book deals.
00:09:51
kenilg
Last year around this time, um I got in touch with you. I've never actually met you in person, but I just sent you an email.
00:09:57
Sarah
It's true.
00:09:59
kenilg
I was like, can we, can you give me a therapy session because I'm, I'm considering a midlife career pivot and I need to talk to another writer about this.
00:10:09
kenilg
And you were so, generous with me. And I am kind of committing to that um career pivot. I'm five weeks into a master's of counseling and psychotherapy program.
00:10:18
Sarah
Yeah, which I think is so cool.
00:10:20
kenilg
So yeah,
00:10:21
Sarah
That's that's really exciting.
00:10:24
kenilg
yeah yeah. But this is the Out of the Wild podcast. Out of the Wild, I have no idea what that title even means, but I kind of want it to have like a nature sub-theme and sometimes in your smoking diaries, we catch just a little glimpse of nature in your life with some Texan rainstorms.
00:10:44
kenilg
I think I even remember here hearing frogs croaking in the background once.
00:10:49
Sarah
Definitely, because where I live that in the spring, we get some frogs. And I love the ambient noise of those frogs sitting on my smoking patio and those little, I just i just love it. Yeah.
00:11:03
kenilg
I imagine you, you know, smoking on one of those big southern porches looking out at kind of the sunset, because I know you wake up at like three o'clock in the morning or something, but and but but but could you offer us um an anecdote about either wilderness and nature, or either from your past or present?
00:11:14
Sarah
Yeah, I ah did. do yeah
00:11:25
Sarah
Well, you know, I grew up landlocked in Dallas. ah grew I grew up not that connected to nature, actually.
00:11:39
Sarah
the that when i When I think about the natural world as a kid, like my my cousins lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and the area around their little suburb hadn't been as developed as it is now. And there was like this, I don't know, okay, I was like six or seven years old. So it probably was just like a swamp and some trees. But to me, I swear to God, it was like huge woods. And we would go and adventure in there and play games and swing from this vine into this muddy creek. You know, I mean, it's very like late 70s.
00:12:22
Sarah
We didn't have anything like that around Dallas. I think one of the reasons why I started traveling in my mid-20s was that I had never really seen the the countryside. And so I started i started doing road trips.
Solo Road Trip and Main Character Syndrome
00:12:40
Sarah
First, they were small. Then when I was 27, I took a five-month road trip around the country by myself.
00:12:46
Sarah
And it was this extraordinary adventure. You know, I camped in a lot of the different national parks along the way, which was made it very affordable, felt very safe. People were like, are you worried about serial killers? And I was like, not in the national parks, like not at all. They're very safe. And I just, I remember being in, I remember being in Jackson Hole, like outside of Yellowstone.
00:13:17
Sarah
And this was probably like in June, May or June. And I was sleeping in my tent and I woke up and the whole tent was like... was like, um ah like ah you couldn't see through the tent.
00:13:34
Sarah
And I was like, oh my God, there's been like a landslide. And and i like panic you know I was always like panicking that something was gonna go wrong when I was out there in the wilderness.
00:13:40
kenilg
Mm hmm.
00:13:42
Sarah
And then I unzipped the tent and then there was just like this gentle floating snow all around me.
00:13:47
kenilg
Oh.
00:13:50
Sarah
And I was like, oh my God, it's snowing in June. Like, I didn't, I didn't even know I could do that. And it was so magical. I just, there was all these little moments like that where I just felt kind of beautifully connected to the natural world and also kind of smalled, like I could feel my sense of being like a small person in this larger I don't know. Landscape. I don't know. it was just That was a really profound time for me.
00:14:26
kenilg
buts That's really nice. I can only imagine what it looked like when you finally popped your hat out of the tent. I want to talk a little bit of...
00:14:34
Sarah
And I should also say that snow to a girl in Texas is still magical. like ah yeah like like i didn't I don't see it that much.
00:14:38
kenilg
Oh, I bet.
00:14:41
Sarah
And so just being around it, it's just like you know like being in a walk-in snow globe, I always feel.
00:14:49
kenilg
So I sent you this sub-stack essay I wrote a month or so ago about the concentric, my theory of the concentric circles of your of life. And you're like, I have no idea what that means.
00:15:00
kenilg
um ah So thats let me let me break that down into kind of simple questions for you.
00:15:08
Sarah
Yeah.
00:15:08
kenilg
And I'm i'm curious about your approach to writing both blackout and your unpublished, so far unpublished, um manuscript for unattached?
00:15:19
Sarah
My memoir in in my memoir and process, yes, unattached.
00:15:23
kenilg
Yes.
00:15:24
Sarah
Yeah.
00:15:24
kenilg
So did you know that you were a character in a memoir during your drinking years?
00:15:32
Sarah
Well, that's funny. um
00:15:36
Sarah
i I think that part of my being kind of like a pop culture junkie from a young age is that I often saw myself as a kind of main character, like a person in the story. And I didn't know if that was narcissism or if that was just a really natural outgrowth of somebody that just watched movies and and read books all the time and processed most of life through the idea of kind of stories and protagonist.
00:16:14
Sarah
um I think, yeah, I mean, I do think I had this sense of being, and, and you know, when I was but i was in my my drinking years, I was always kind of trying to be like, ah like a really funny, brassy, outrageous, strong female heroine type. You know, Bridget Jones's diary had come out when I was in my early 20s. Now she's kind of like self-effacing and bumbling, but she was also very, you know, charming and heroic and funny. And and I saw myself in that vein. um I think ah think there's a lot of
00:17:00
Sarah
blackout that is in that vein, it just has an undercurrent of like a little more realness or sadness.
00:17:08
kenilg
So you saw yourself as a, as a character, but did you see the arc? Like, did you know you were on a quest to kind of get past your, your drinking problem?
00:17:18
kenilg
Was this going to be a story of?
00:17:19
Sarah
No. but I mean, I definitely did not want to be on the quest to end my drinking problem.
00:17:21
kenilg
yeah
00:17:24
Sarah
I mean, I always saw myself as somebody that would drink um until I was an old person, you know, like my friends and I.
00:17:32
kenilg
Hmm.
00:17:33
Sarah
And drinking was such a part of my social engagement with people. that, you know, it was kind of like, ah, when we're old, we'll sit around the nursing home and we'll still be the craziest, the craziest people in there. So when my life started to, like, when things got really bad for me in my mid 30s, and it was just kind of hard to, I felt like there were just like a lot of spinning plates and I was dropping them.
Addressing Drinking Problems and Personal Narratives
00:18:01
Sarah
um And I had to pay attention to this that the narrative arc got
00:18:08
Sarah
Like, like i didn't I didn't want that. I didn't want that act.
00:18:12
kenilg
Hmm. So you began to see the end of that story. You began to see the ah conclusion, a new conclusion to your nerve nerve narrative Is that making sense?
00:18:22
Sarah
i had a plot twist I had a plot twist I did not like.
00:18:25
kenilg
There we go.
00:18:25
Sarah
I did not care for. I didn't like what was happening to the heroine.
00:18:29
kenilg
Yeah.
00:18:30
Sarah
Yeah. And and it was that was really hard for me. um I really thought that nobody was going to find me funny or that I wasn't going to be able to write.
00:18:44
Sarah
I mean, I had just a lot of fears around that change. um and I'm trying to think if at that time during that year did I see myself as a character I don't know I don't like like Did I have an awareness that like this is the hard part, kid?
00:19:06
Sarah
you know like like This is what happens. This is the part where the narrator is down. And it's like, I don't even think I had the wherewithal to think that way. I was pretty like just locked in this you know sadness about about having to give up this thing that I had felt was kind of like lifeblood.
00:19:15
kenilg
Hmm.
00:19:26
kenilg
Yeah. I promise not to bring up blackout anymore because I know you've talked about it for like the last 10 years, but it's it's just really, it's interesting just to think about, you know, ourselves as characters in our memoirs and kind of
00:19:33
Sarah
It's okay. I'm, I'm. um
00:19:42
kenilg
when that begins to to dawn on us, when we realize that this is the story we're in. And similarly with Unattached, the one that you're you you're working on right now, like did you know you were a character in that story?
00:19:51
Sarah
Yeah.
00:19:57
kenilg
like Did you know that this was something you were going to write about?
00:20:00
Sarah
Well, i I really backed into this story. it it The second one like, okay, so I knew I was gonna write a story about drinking. I always wanted to write a story about drinking. I think the question was whether I was gonna write a story about drinking while I was drinking or after I was drinking, after I stopped. And obviously it was the latter. And so,
00:20:26
Sarah
That that wasn't really like a mystery but then blackout came out it was a hit. People wanted me to do another one I wanted to do another one what was my next story going to be. I think.
00:20:42
Sarah
I think I took a long time. And in some ways, I think I'm still figuring it out years into this process. mean I sold this book several years ago as a different book. I sold this book as a as a book about my relationship with my body as I was getting older because I'd had some medical crises. But as I started talking about my relationship with my body, I really couldn't separate it from my relationships with men, my relationships in general.
00:21:12
Sarah
And it evolved into something that was about singlehood, being in my 40s, never having children. um you know Also, as I was living, like also another thing is that like Blackout was conceived as a book that would end when I got sober. And what happened was it took me so long to write it that half the book or a third of the book became about getting sober. And I think that that was a very valuable part of it because it was the part that you don't normally hear.
00:21:42
Sarah
um unattached Unattached follows me through these years when I was trying to figure out whether or not I was going to have a child on my own. And I think i think it's very difficult to write about your life while it's in process.
00:21:55
kenilg
Mm hmm.
00:21:56
Sarah
and
00:21:56
kenilg
Yeah, and I find it interesting that and both these in both these books, you know, while your life was happening, you didn't really realize that you were inside of a book or or you weren't sure what that but book was, which begs the question, are you in another memoir right now? And if you had to guess, what is that memoir about?
00:22:20
Sarah
If I am, it is so boring. It is such a boring memoir. I don't think you want to read it. It's not very, it's not a page turner. um You know, I, no, let me, let me answer that question more seriously.
00:22:37
Sarah
You know, if, if I do think that for a woman, you know, I'm 50 years old and the,
00:22:51
Sarah
Trans it's so it's so weird to when you when you grow older and you don't have children, you know children are this like Like marker that reminds you that you're aging and when you don't have that um you can feel a little bit ungrounded from the The age that you really are, you know and um you know There might be something about transitioning into, I don't know, something about middle age. I feel like I haven't found my middle age power. it's like Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in the middle of that. um like like I'm um a little bit stuck between the life I thought I was gonna live and the life that I'm living now, which I think is actually the hang up in my book that I've described at Attach, is that it's never really found a satisfying
00:23:45
kenilg
Hmm.
00:23:46
Sarah
ending. um One of the nice things about blackout, one of the challenges of blackout was that everybody knew the narrative arc, right? It's like, oh, girl has drinking problem, girl gets sober, whatever, tell me something I don't know. So we always knew what was going to happen. And the challenge was to make it interesting anyway. But what I didn't realize at the time was that it was so nice to have a kind of, kind of like already in place narrative arc. Whereas, you know, any other time in your life, you're like, where's the beginning? Where does it end? What am I tracing? What's the... I don't know.
00:24:22
kenilg
Sometimes I feel like it's it's not until we see the end coming or have the end that we know like what the story is about. Like I remember when I was in student debt and like living in places like Alaska working for eight or nine dollars for an hour. And I just thought my life was kind of miserable and sucky and in some sort of purgatory.
00:24:47
kenilg
I was in like a long middle, but I was in ah like a damn good story. But it it wasn't until I got to the end that I could see that it was a good story. And it's because because of that struggle, because that's where the story is.
00:25:01
kenilg
It's when you're struggling. That's when you you know you have a ah good story.
Life Stories and Ongoing Vices
00:25:05
kenilg
But anyways, I want to read what I wrote about my concentric circles of life, just just to bring it back to that.
00:25:11
Sarah
Please.
00:25:13
kenilg
Our lives aren't roller coaster loop de loops where one story or loop follows another. Our lives are more like concentric circles full of many concurrent stories of varying diameters. You might be inside of five memoirs right now. It just depends on how many themes you have going on. That probably makes no more sense than it did before.
00:25:40
kenilg
um
00:25:40
Sarah
um No, it does make sense to me. It's also how, you know, people like Danny Shapiro and Mary Carr and such can write so many memoirs is because they take one little slice of their life, which is, you know,
00:25:58
Sarah
like my my my marriage or my teenage sexuality or you know whatever like they take little pieces and you think how can this one person write like five memoirs but it's because they're taking off a little bit at a time yes yes
00:26:15
kenilg
And that's the thing, we all have tons, you know, we all have like 20 memoirs in our life, even if we're not memoir writers, what we're talking about is a theme in our life. It's a story that has a beginning, a middle and an end. Like right now I'm in kind of like career.
00:26:31
kenilg
journey memoir, and I'm in the middle, and it's long and and sucky, but I kind of do see the end coming, um and it will be satisfying when I get there.
00:26:34
Sarah
Yeah.
00:26:41
kenilg
um i If you don't mind, I'd like to talk about Vice for a second. You've obviously written about Vice in blackout.
00:26:49
Sarah
Yeah.
00:26:50
kenilg
Your um podcast name is Smokum, if you got them, you're often smoking in the podcast.
00:26:58
Sarah
yeah
00:26:58
kenilg
um i'm i've I've got a vice that I can't ah shake off right now, but I'm wondering if you're willing to um be open, sharing an ongoing vice in your life.
00:27:12
Sarah
Well, yeah, I mean, look, i i I was never embarrassed by my drinking. And that probably has to do with my age at the time. I was much younger. um As I got older, you know I was embarrassed by having to quit drinking. but um But then, you know, I got this reputation as a sober person and I was in a sober community and I just started to kind of want a little wild back. I wanted to be a little crazy. And I think there were a couple years where I was like acting that out in relationships and with men and doing kind of crazy things.
00:27:54
Sarah
And then after that, i I went through like this really bad heartbreak and i I just remember this very vivid feeling like I need cigarettes. And I hadn't had cigarettes in 10 years.
00:28:08
Sarah
Like I quit drinking and quit smoking on the same day, but the cigarettes were just like not a big deal to me because I only liked them when I was drinking.
00:28:11
kenilg
Mm.
00:28:16
Sarah
And so I just never really even really looked back on that. you know Drinking was like, oh, built up or like my identity and my romance and the mythology and all this stuff. Smoking was like, oh, good. I don't have to deal with that. Well, all of a sudden, it was like I needed this. And I started smoking. I told myself I would smoke for like a week. And then I started smoking for like, that was like two years ago. um It is something that I think nobody in my life likes.
00:28:50
Sarah
i I say sometimes that it's like my it's like my object lesson in not pleasing other people.
00:29:03
kenilg
Hmm.
00:29:03
Sarah
you know like
00:29:03
kenilg
I don't ah can elaborate on that. What does that mean?
00:29:06
Sarah
Well, I mean like it's my, it's, I don't even know if I used object lesson, right? But, um, but it's, uh, I'm such a inveterate people pleaser.
00:29:16
Sarah
I want people to be happy with me like what I do.
00:29:19
kenilg
I see.
00:29:20
kenilg
So this is like, I don't care what you think. Yeah.
00:29:20
Sarah
And nobody, nobody likes that I smoke.
00:29:24
Sarah
So it's my practice in just gently saying I'm not trying to be rebellious. I'm not trying to be in your face about it. I don't, I'm very polite and demure about it. i'm I'm mostly a solo smoker with a couple of other friends who come by my house and light up every once in a while. um And they're like, I gotta get out of the, kids are making me crazy, you know.
00:29:47
Sarah
um But i I just think it's okay that people disagree with what I do. like It's okay. And and you know people listening to this will say, well, you're endangering your health. And yeah I have to say, I don't smoke nearly as much as I had been for a while. I chew nicotine gum most of the day. And if I smoke, it's in the morning for like a little bit.
00:30:13
Sarah
And also, I don't know, I think people have really underestimated that the health risks of drinking, and I don't get in their face about that, so...
00:30:24
kenilg
Mm-hmm. What brand do you smoke?
00:30:26
Sarah
Oh, lucky strikes.
00:30:28
kenilg
Lucky Strikes? See, I don't know the difference between one. Is that like a really good brand? Is that like the premium?
00:30:32
Sarah
I don't know if it's good, it's so cheap. It's cheap.
00:30:34
kenilg
Oh, it's the chief one.
00:30:35
Sarah
They're 100s and they have really cool, it's a really cool pack.
00:30:39
kenilg
Yeah.
00:30:40
Sarah
um It's just white with like a red bullseye on it, or not bullseye, but like red dot, it's just lucky strikes, it looks cool. And they're $6, so cheap.
00:30:51
kenilg
So it's kind of your thing is it's kind of your way of communicating to the world that, you know, you're not people pleasing. This is your own thing. Like what else does it do for you? I've, I've, got I've, I've had one puff of a cigarette my whole life. So it's a completely foreign concept to me.
00:31:09
Sarah
i I think it's like a relaxing, it's a stress reliever. It's something that like, I just want to go outside and sit down. I mean, it replaces, I think for me, that feeling of like, at the end of the day, you want to have like a glass of wine or something like that. So, and it's just, it's something like, like, it's just, I need something, something.
00:31:38
kenilg
I don't want to come across as like a a moralizer or anything. I want you to have your vice if you want, but is there a part of you that wants to get rid of it?
00:31:46
Sarah
For sure. And I will. I will. And, you know, by the way, people are always suggesting I start vaping. I i think that's a terrible idea if I were vaping.
00:31:55
kenilg
Oh, I can't stand those vapors. Like I'll walk down the street and some like, you know, worker will be setting this big plume of smoke. And then I feel it going into my body. I was like, this was just in this man's body and now it's in my body. It's disgusting.
00:32:10
Sarah
Well, I will say that um if I were to vape, I would be vaping all day. I don't think that's good. One of the things about old fashioned smoking is that it's very tied off to like, I don't do it around other people. I do it like in this very specific time of day. It's it's just it's got like, it's like a vice that has like bumpers on it. And so it's a lot easier if I don't. Yeah, I don't I don't need to be playing around with the vape stuff.
00:32:38
kenilg
Can I tell you about the worst vice addiction I've ever had?
00:32:43
Sarah
Yes.
00:32:44
kenilg
It was a video game.
00:32:46
Sarah
Interesting.
00:32:46
kenilg
I was 18 years old. It was called Dark Age of Camelot. It was an MMORPG. Do you know what that is?
00:32:54
Sarah
Multi um-something role-playing game.
00:32:58
kenilg
Basically.
00:32:58
Sarah
Massively multiplayer online role ga-playing game.
00:33:03
kenilg
so I think you're right. um And I had this um character. And I want, I wanted to find the most like brutal, lethal kind of avatar name.
00:33:13
kenilg
So I got my this online thesaurus out and I found that barbarous had not been taken. So I named my character barbarous, which kind of backfired on me because everybody just called me Barb in there.
00:33:22
Sarah
Mm.
00:33:29
kenilg
And, um, I had like a big claymore sword and I built my character, like an NFL linebacker and I was so addicted to it. This was my first year of college. I'd get on there. I'd quickly do whatever kind of schoolwork I had.
00:33:46
kenilg
I'd get on there maybe eight or nine o'clock and I'd play until about three or four o'clock in the morning.
00:33:53
Sarah
Oh my goodness.
00:33:53
kenilg
And just the dopamine hit of leveling up and kind of, um and like for the rest of the day, I could think about nothing but dark age of Camelot.
00:33:58
Sarah
yeah
00:34:06
Sarah
How old were you?
00:34:07
kenilg
18.
00:34:08
Sarah
18.
00:34:08
kenilg
eighteen and um And i was I was filled with shame. I was i had a dorm mate, his name was Josh, and I was just trying to hide that from Josh. I was just being really sneaky about it.
00:34:19
kenilg
And my grades were just doing, it was just terrible. I was spending like 20 grand in tuition and I came home with like a 2.5 midterm GPA.
00:34:22
Sarah
Yeah.
00:34:29
kenilg
I'm just like, what am I doing? What am I spending all this? money on so Anyways, I was able to to drop it kind of halfway through that semester, but it did give me some insight into what addiction feels like and just how clawing it is and how um life-consuming and the the deceit and the lies and then the pleasure of it it was um yeah, so that was my worst and I've kind of always struggled with video games like Civilization 5, Age of Empires 2. I just kind of get locked into a flow state where I just find myself staring at a computer screen for like nine hours and maybe going to the bathroom once during that period.
00:35:13
Sarah
Wow, that's so interesting. You know, that is something that I've heard that video games are one of the hardest things to quit. It's one of the hardest addictions to give up. And, you know, I don't I don't have that. When I was in elementary school, middle school, I would pretend in my bedroom.
00:35:33
Sarah
kind of like create worlds and make believe. And I can remember that feeling like it was so much more vivid than real life. You know, like I couldn't wait to get to the point of the day where I would walk into my room and then it would feel like real life would begin. And that's kind of what I imagine video games would would feel like.
00:35:58
kenilg
That's interesting. i think I think video games are so addicting because they kind of simulate so much of the best of life.
00:36:07
kenilg
You know, you're mastering a difficult skill. You're kind of progressing in some way. You're either cooperating with friends or competing with friends. So there's like a complete like social aspect to it too. So I get why, you know, some people just lock themselves in their rooms for for years and don't come out and and suddenly you're you're an incel or something like that.
00:36:07
Sarah
Yes.
00:36:36
kenilg
um
00:36:36
Sarah
ah how how did you How did you quit? It sounds like you just stopped.
00:36:39
kenilg
I went cold Turkey. Yeah. I remember I had my midterms and I went back to my parents' home for a weekend. I'm just like, I'm never going to play that game again. And I never did.
00:36:50
kenilg
um so it's just um And I raised my GPA to like a 3.0, which I now look upon as like a Herculean ah victory. i don't I don't know how I was able to pull that off at 18, but just my so slowly um maturing male brain finally kind of caught up.
00:36:50
Sarah
Wow.
Guilty Pleasures and Cultural Influences
00:37:11
kenilg
Along these lines, um, guilty pleasures. It's one of my favorite topics because I have so many of my own and I'm hoping you're coming with MILF Manor because I prepared, I prepared for MILF Manor, but I asked you to bring a guilty pleasure.
00:37:17
Sarah
Mm.
00:37:28
kenilg
What do you want to talk about?
00:37:29
Sarah
Well, I could talk about Milk Manor. I will tell you the first season of Milk Manor was a total delight for me.
00:37:35
kenilg
Mm-hmm.
00:37:36
Sarah
I watched that show kind of thinking that it would be um a joke. You know, that the it's a it's an absolutely, absurd, but ridiculous premise, which is that these older women who are mothers are sent on a dating show and they're going to date younger guys. And then the younger guys come on and the twist, the big production twist is that the kids, the guys that they're coming on are their sons. And so they're dating, not their actual sons, obviously, but they're dating in the context of like being around their sons.
00:38:14
kenilg
And I don't know how they pulled that off. I don't know how they, that must've taken a mastermind kind of general to organize that, to get the moms, to get the kids and to not like ah cross wires, to not let either group know that your moms are going to be on there because I watched that first um episode and they were genuinely shocked and disturbed.
00:38:36
Sarah
They seemed genuinely shocked. I mean, I do think the like making of Milk Manor, that's the big question is how did you keep this a secret? How did the mother and son go on two different shows?
00:38:48
Sarah
um I mean, I guess they just presented themselves as as making two different shows. and and
00:38:53
kenilg
How do you find a mom and son duo who both want to be on a humiliating reality TV show?
00:38:58
Sarah
i I don't know. i I think you just, California, I don't know.
00:38:59
kenilg
I don't know how they pulled that off.
00:39:02
Sarah
I don't know. I don't know. But ah it it was so, oh, gosh, that was so much fun. And then but then I started watching Milk Manor 2 and all the joy was gone.
00:39:15
Sarah
I wasn't interested in it. I.
00:39:18
kenilg
It's a little bit more pernicious of a setup, isn't it? Cause you have the dads now competing with their sons to get to the MILFs.
00:39:26
Sarah
Exactly, yeah. it just it And you know I think it did make me kind of sad because some of the dads would get into competition with their their sons and their sons would feel sort of pushed out and I just, I don't know, it wasn't joyful.
00:39:40
Sarah
the first the What I liked about Milk Manor was that it it was really quite joyful. I i thought that, that um I don't know, people found these unexpected connections and of course none of them worked out, but it was just, it was really, it was sort of delightful and fun.
00:39:55
kenilg
It may have worked out for, for a night or two.
00:39:56
Sarah
um
00:39:58
Sarah
and ah Yeah, exactly.
00:39:58
kenilg
Can I read some, some YouTube comments on MILF Manor?
00:40:02
Sarah
Oh, please.
00:40:03
kenilg
Okay. This is the worst garbage I ever seen in my entire life. And I love it. Freud is spinning in his grave so fast, you could hook him up to a generator and power the whole of Texas.
00:40:18
Sarah
That's funny, that's true.
00:40:20
kenilg
single moms have this weird husband-son relationship with their kids, which is creepy as hell. That's also true, I think.
00:40:28
Sarah
ah Yeah, yeah, I mean and I do wonder too if one of the reasons why I could watch this show take such delight in it is that I don't have kids um You know it seemed like a lot of my mom friends were like really squicked out by this But it didn't it's just so like it was all very detached to me Okay
00:40:47
kenilg
i was I was able to watch it without squirming too much. Naomi Fry, the writer for The New Yorker wrote that milf manor might be a new low for reality TV, perhaps even a rock bottom. my My thoughts are, are these guilty pleasures, are they even that guilty? Because I think they often can teach us so much about human psychology, about humanity.
00:41:14
kenilg
Um, the, the psycho dynamics are always very interesting. So I think there's, uh, even for kind of, um, someone who wants to pretend he's, he's highbrow, I can actually get a lot from, from shows like these.
00:41:28
Sarah
Yeah, I mean, i I think your point about the psychodynamics of the show is is I think why ever is why people are drawn to reality TV. And I think it gets, you know, look, I think there's a lot of reasons why um it does feel exploitative sometimes, oftentimes. But i'm I finally stopped watching The Bachelor, but I did watch The Bachelor for just many, many years. And the opportunity to watch you know, women dating the same man, women in competition with each other, trying to support each other at the same time. First of all, that was such a weird contradiction. You know, it was kind of like, I'm going to be the one that wins. But like, I support you, Queen, you know, like trying to do that thing at the same time. You you don't get to watch that. You don't get to watch people date. You know, my my
00:42:20
Sarah
My current guilty pleasure, although I don't know how guilty it is, you know, would be Love is Blind. That's the dating show that I get really into right now.
00:42:27
kenilg
No, I'm not familiar with that. Can you give me a quick little.
00:42:30
Sarah
Yeah, so love is blind is this basically you you start dating people without ever being able to see them. You're in physical rooms across from each other so the viewers can see each other, but you are just talking. And this goes on for I think two weeks. And the idea is at the end of this two week experiment,
00:42:55
Sarah
You, this is so absurd. It's so absurd. But it makes sense in the context of the show, when you see the show. you have to get engaged to somebody if you wanna finish the experiment. So, you know, you basically, there's, let's, I think there's like 20 people, 20 guys, 20 girls. I don't know exactly what the number is, because they don't show you all of them. But um they're all dating each other. It's kind of a speed dating thing. And then you start to hone in on like, oh, okay, I have a connection with so-and-so. I'm gonna start doing dates with him. And then as it goes on, you're dating these people, but you've never seen them.
00:43:28
kenilg
So where is the date?
00:43:31
Sarah
A date is just you're sitting together, spending time together.
00:43:33
kenilg
but But where? like Are they in a restaurant?
00:43:35
Sarah
So they're in a pod. They they call them the pod.
00:43:37
kenilg
Oh, OK.
00:43:38
Sarah
it's like it it's it's it's a It's just a room. And you're just talking to each other in a room. And you're and and you're seeing these...
00:43:46
kenilg
So you're seeing um you know chemistry. You're seeing sparks fly with some of these couples. And then you wonder, is it going to continue once they get to see each other?
00:43:53
Sarah
and
00:43:57
Sarah
So then if they get engaged, then there's a big reveal and they meet each other. And so then the second half of Love is Blind follows them over the next two months leading up to the wedding to see what they're like in real life.
00:44:13
kenilg
And what are you learning about humanity through this?
00:44:14
Sarah
and
00:44:17
Sarah
Well, I don't know ah humanity so much as you're learning about the dynamics of attraction. You're learning, I mean, you definitely learn so much about fantasy projection. There's so much fantasy projection in love anyway, but when you don't even have the person's like in front of you, your ability, like I really thought going into this, there is no way people are gonna fall in love without having met each other in a pod.
00:44:42
Sarah
And then you watch it and it's like, I realized that there's editing and all this kind of, stuff I swear to God, these people are like really, really in love with each other.
00:44:54
Sarah
And then watching the disillusioning of it, I don't know, maybe I'm just sort of addicted to that.
00:44:54
kenilg
Mm-hmm.
00:44:59
kenilg
oh Okay, so you you said this dissolution of it, so I see.
00:45:00
Sarah
You know, i watch you watch the, disillusioning of it, yeah, because they they're they're so giddy, they they're so excited when they meet each other, and then it's like, you know, it's it's like um it's like a relationship in hyperspeed, you know, um because you It's all the the the sort of things that would happen in the course of a normal life, but a normal courtship, but it's happening in the space of you know one or two months. You see them argue. I'm always fascinated by seeing people disagree and argue and what that's like.
00:45:39
Sarah
Um, because for most of us, that's just something that you have in your own life. You know how you argue or you argue with your boyfriend or your spouse or whatever, but you don't know how other people do it. I always find that fascinating. Then you start to see the family dynamics of how, you know, like so-and-so's mother is really attached to him and that's creating problems. You know, it's just, it's family dynamics. It's love dynamics. It's, um,
00:46:04
Sarah
I don't know. I think, you know, I'm i'm a um' a little girl that was obsessed with this kind of stuff like connection and love from the time she's a little kid. It's like, you know, you just get to see it in this little and this little experimental lab.
00:46:18
kenilg
and And you are the the daughter of a therapist, so you've probably embodied a lot of kind of therapy language.
00:46:22
Sarah
True.
00:46:25
kenilg
How how are you as an arguer when when you're having some conflict with a partner? um Are there, are are do any patterns emerge?
00:46:35
Sarah
I think I'm pretty good because I'm really, I'm very good at talking. um I would probably be potentially accused of being an over-talker.
00:46:46
kenilg
Hmm.
00:46:47
Sarah
An over, like let's talk this out. In fact, I think one of the things I've had to learn in the last five, so years is like, and sometimes it's just good to like not talk about it and just just keep going.
00:47:00
Sarah
Like go on to the next thing. It's not not worth this. We don't have time. And I don't think I lose my temper very much.
00:47:11
Sarah
I do cry though, and I have been accused of using that as a a way to win the argument. It's not. I'm just an easy crier.
00:47:18
kenilg
And is that is that um an unconscious um strategy or is that just not the case at all?
00:47:26
Sarah
it's If it's an unconscious strategy, I don't know about it. like it's It's unconscious. i mean it It is definitely like... um I just, I, you know, I, I cry easily.
00:47:41
Sarah
So, and, and, and more most of the time if I'm in a relationship with somebody, they get very used to this. And so it's just sort of like, it's not and like nothing to see here. Like it's no big deal.
00:47:50
kenilg
Yeah, it gets a little normalized.
00:47:51
Sarah
But the first couple of times it's like, Oh, holy shit. Oh God. And then you're like, Oh, this is not Sarah's crying. It's no big deal.
00:47:57
kenilg
Can I share my, can we go back to guilty pleasures for a second?
00:48:00
Sarah
Yes. Yes. Yes. You're going to tell me, right?
00:48:02
kenilg
Yeah. Howard Stern. Do you have any relationship with Howard Stern?
00:48:06
Sarah
Well, what Howard Stern, when I was in my teen years, he was carried on the local the local radio station here, and I used to listen to him every morning.
00:48:18
kenilg
What years were those?
00:48:18
Sarah
And that was like 90s, it would have been like 96, 97, 98.
00:48:24
kenilg
Okay. Yeah. That's kind of prime stern.
00:48:25
Sarah
um
00:48:26
kenilg
Yeah.
00:48:27
Sarah
Absolutely.
00:48:27
kenilg
He was getting like 20 million listeners every day then. He was just all over the country. What did you like about him?
00:48:36
Sarah
i i I think two things. One was that ah it was just a really entertaining show. Like, it was going fast. You know, there were a lot of characters. There were a lot of things going on. um but But I also think it was my first experience in kind of listening to something that that bugged me that made me mad.
00:48:59
Sarah
um because he would bring on, this was this was really like peak Howard Stern sexist pig era, and he would bring on these women and he would he would um rate them, you know? and and And eventually this became like his, I think he had a show on E! Entertainment Television where you could actually see the women. It was a little bit better, less exploitative when you couldn't.
00:49:23
Sarah
you You were just sort of like women were in there. He was ranking them. It's interesting how that worked on me too. You know, I remember kind of feeling mad like, oh, ah I'll never go. I'll never go on Hallerstein because I'll never make it.
00:49:34
kenilg
You'll never go on stern, yeah.
00:49:37
Sarah
I'll never make it past the gate. Um, but, uh, but i I would get, I would get mad at him and, and, and I remember hearing people say like, Oh, he's a pig, but it was just, I don't know. He was so entertaining. I found, I don't know that he was doing the celebrity interviews as much then.
00:49:55
Sarah
You know, over the years, that that was really what he became known for. And he has a really incredible way of bringing people out. um He's an excellent interviewer. um But yeah, that i I remember having like a real affection for him.
00:50:12
Sarah
I think it was also my learning that I just liked radio too. Like I liked to talk radio.
00:50:16
kenilg
Um, you see, I got, I got started with him around that same time, probably late nineties, um, early 2000s.
00:50:18
Sarah
Because now I listen to podcasts all the time.
00:50:25
Sarah
Yeah.
00:50:27
kenilg
Cause he was on the e E network.
00:50:29
Sarah
Exactly.
00:50:30
kenilg
Um, and I would, it would start around, I think 10 o'clock at night. There was two episodes and you were either going to get an episode where they brought some like strippers on.
00:50:40
kenilg
And they just kind of humiliate them, like like throw a piece of bologna at their ass or something to see if it stuck. And even as a even as a horny teenager, this did nothing for me.
00:50:53
Sarah
I mean, that just sounds like basic cable in the late 90s, just so stupid.
00:50:54
kenilg
It was all blurred it was all blurred out and it it was it was just stupid.
00:51:00
kenilg
It was so stupid. But what I really loved was the kind of the inner politics um of of the station, because, you know, there was a whole cast of characters.
00:51:12
kenilg
There was there was Howard.
00:51:12
Sarah
Yeah, the cast of characters, right, yeah.
00:51:14
kenilg
He was kind of the king. ah Robin Quivers. She was kind of the queen. Fred. He was kind of like the king's brother. And then you had all these like underlings all trying to kind of seek like courtiers.
00:51:25
Sarah
Yeah.
00:51:28
kenilg
They're all kind of like seeking favor and and he would just humiliate them and they would take it and they would get like
00:51:28
Sarah
Yeah.
00:51:35
kenilg
angry, but they couldn't direct their anger at Howard so they would find someone on their level or someone like subservient and then kind of redirect their anger. It's like, no, I'm actually mad at you because of this. And I just, I just love that stuff because it was just interesting psychodrama. um And Howard himself is just like a master communicator. Everything from the timbre of his voice to how he could um shake someone down, how to get information out of someone, how to dominate someone. It was just a masterclass in communication. And I just got to thinking like, I kind of miss that. And I kind of miss that in kind of the national discourse. Cause like when I watched like a Trump interview, he goes on some station and like the interview is just pretending that he's not crazy.
00:52:29
kenilg
Trump gets to say whatever he wants and the interviewer is just like, okay, I'm just going to go along with this. And and like someone like Trump would just call out someone's bullshit in the second.
00:52:40
Sarah
Someone like Howard Stern.
00:52:42
kenilg
Yeah, yes.
00:52:42
Sarah
Yeah.
00:52:43
kenilg
And um and I miss that. and i And I think like his show was an example of someone living without restraint and with complete liberty in the moment, willing to say,
00:52:59
kenilg
almost anything he wanted and yeah there was just some nasty stupid stuff that came out but it all it also it felt so freeing and liberating to hear that and I think it kind of influenced some of my early writings like I was a columnist for my student paper and I'm embarrassed by some of the stuff I wrote but a lot of it was very kind of provocative a lot of it was very kind of shock jockey
00:53:25
Sarah
Oh, that's so interesting. thing Yeah.
00:53:27
kenilg
So I just kind of took a little bit of that that voice with me. Nowadays, I feel a lot more tongue-tied about things, but but early on, yeah, I felt very free that way.
00:53:35
Sarah
Yeah.
00:53:38
kenilg
But anyways, um so Stern, he was huge up until about 2005. That's when he signed with Sirius Satellite Radio.
00:53:46
Sarah
yeah
00:53:47
kenilg
So he went from like 20 million listeners to a lot less than that. And then 2007, the iPhone comes out, the podcasting era takes off and he completely misses that.
00:53:57
Sarah
yeah Yeah.
00:54:00
kenilg
So someone like Joe Rogan, they get picked up by Spotify for like a hundred million dollars and that, that could have been stern if he kind of stuck with terrestrial radio.
00:54:12
kenilg
So he's just kind of like fallen into into cultural irrelevance because he's missed the podcasting revolution. But yet he still gets Kamala Harris on his show.
00:54:24
Sarah
I was going to say, you say that, but like he still gets really big names and he still gets mentioned in the kind of pantheon of of people that matter. I would be curious to know how many people do listen to that show.
00:54:37
Sarah
I don't.
00:54:37
kenilg
it it's It's hard for me to tell. I came up with some statistics here. So just looking at like YouTube, which is not the best you know place to gauge this, but like Joe Rogan has 17 million followers on YouTube.
00:54:51
Sarah
Yeah.
00:54:52
kenilg
Someone like Ben Shapiro has seven million.
00:54:55
Sarah
Yeah.
00:54:56
kenilg
Howard Stern has 2.5 million.
00:54:58
Sarah
Okay. Yeah.
00:54:59
kenilg
And again, like he's not publishing his shows on on YouTube, but it's just a gauge for how the ordinary consumer of of audio entertainment gets their gets their um consumption needs.
00:55:00
Sarah
Significantly less. Yeah.
00:55:13
kenilg
so Yeah, he's just kind of fallen off and I i i wish it and hadn't been that way.
00:55:20
Sarah
Yeah, I mean, he's also had an interesting next chapter or more recent chapter where I feel like he's tried to sort of rehabilitate himself away from that earlier sexist um image.
00:55:36
Sarah
And he went into analysis. He went into deep psychoanalysis and has spoken openly about that, how that changed his life. um He's also become much more like politically aligned.
00:55:48
Sarah
like I don't think he was very political. like and All that stuff back then was so apolitical. All this stuff in the 90s.
00:55:53
kenilg
You could see it though. No, he he did have kind of progressive bona fides.
00:55:58
kenilg
Like he was always a free speech guy. Any like whiff of racism, like real racism, he like he would shoot down whiffs of, um, you know, LGBT, LGBTQ plus stuff.
00:55:58
Sarah
Well, he was always a free speech guy.
00:56:08
Sarah
Hmm.
00:56:14
kenilg
Like he eventually got like in favor of that and really kind of toned down as his language. So he's, he was kind of a precursor to a lot of like these bro podcasters. like Joe Rogan or Theo Vaughn, who kind of have progressive bona fides, but are so devoted to free speech and kind of saying what they want.
00:56:25
Sarah
Mm hmm.
00:56:33
kenilg
They sometimes get vilified by by the progressives on the left. So yeah, they're more alike than different.
00:56:43
Sarah
You're listening to Howard Stern makes me think about ah a long phase that I went to through for a couple years during I think the most kind of fractious years of the culture wars like 2020 and 2021 when I was watching a ton of William F. Buckley on Crossfire. And I couldn't stop watching videos in part because I felt like it was a return to this time when we could have civil conversations across the aisle, you know like like William F. Buckley would bring on like a Black Panther and they would talk to each other. And it was just it was also civilized. I don't know it's and this is you know. William F. Buckley is probably one of the major figures that predates Howard Stern and his shock shock era. William F. Buckley kind of like
00:57:35
Sarah
exemplifies this, I don't know, like PBS sensibility. um But I think i I had, I was feeling so crunched by the culture wars in those years, 2021, 2020, that I just, I liked going back to a time and being reminded that like,
00:57:58
Sarah
It can feel like the the world is shaking and everybody makes it through, you know? Everything's okay.
00:58:05
kenilg
I don't have any relationship with with um William F. Buckley, apart from seeing the Gore Vidal movie, Best of Enemies. And he did not come off well in that one.
00:58:16
Sarah
ah ah Yeah, I did.
00:58:16
kenilg
Did you see that one?
00:58:20
Sarah
I did. I mean, I i i think that's... ah he he uses like a like a kind of nasty slur at Gore who was famously um provocative and also like kind of loved to tear people apart. And I don't know, to to me, that's not, there's a different documentary about We Met Buckley that I think is much more, um you know, ah much more of a better example ah example of his character and his career than like that that documentary that you're talking about just kind of takes like this one moment and expands it out and it feels a little, I don't know, unfair
00:59:00
kenilg
Yeah.
00:59:05
kenilg
Yeah.
Global Decline in Fertility Rates
00:59:06
kenilg
I'd like to hit one more topic, fertility and population. And I thought this is kind of peripherally linked to your ongoing work with your manuscript for Unattached.
00:59:06
Sarah
to me.
00:59:06
Sarah
I mean, not that the documentary shouldn't have been made, but I mean like to judge the man based on that.
00:59:12
kenilg
yeah i'd like to um one more topic um fertility and population and i thought this is kind of peripherally um linked to your your ongoing work with your manuscript for for unattached um
00:59:29
Sarah
Yeah.
00:59:30
kenilg
And I think like the depopulation of developed countries is the most interesting macro level event that is happening in my lifetime. Bigger than Trump, bigger than the internet, bigger than AI, bigger than Russia, Ukraine.
00:59:41
Sarah
Yeah.
00:59:47
kenilg
Cause like, I remember ah coming of age thinking, you know, there's a population crisis, which is that there's just too many people.
00:59:52
Sarah
ah Yeah, too many people.
00:59:54
kenilg
And now suddenly all we're talking about is like, we're not making enough. people. like what ah that What an unexpected twist that was. um So I don't know if you read it, but I sent you a New York Times article um with the headline, can the government get people to have more babies? And the article was looking at countries like Japan and Hungary and some of the Scandinavian countries talking about the US on kind of ways to kind of um promote
01:00:26
kenilg
you know, more babies, ah because because because when you look at replacement level for a country's population to kind of persist at its present level, each woman has to have on average 2.1 children.
01:00:41
kenilg
That's replacement level. Now, when you look at countries like um South Korea, it's 0.9. So that's less than half of replacement level.
01:00:50
Sarah
Oh,
01:00:53
kenilg
Norway, which has, you know, amazing, um, you know, pro family initiatives from paternity leave to free day, daycare, they're still under replacement.
01:00:54
Sarah
oh yeah.
01:01:06
kenilg
Well, they're at, um, 1.5, the USA were at 1.7. Um, the country of, uh, Niger is 6.6.
01:01:17
kenilg
So they're, they're leading the, they're leading the way.
01:01:17
Sarah
yeah yeah yeah yeah oh yeah
01:01:20
kenilg
So they're, so. We're still, as ah as a global population rising, going from about 8 billion, and we're projected to kind of reach a peak of 10 billion before we kind of fall off the cliff.
01:01:35
kenilg
So a lot of this stuff is about why why we're not having babies, and a lot of it's because of um women not wanting to have babies, or women finding that
01:01:41
Sarah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah.
01:01:48
kenilg
um Life is too difficult to have babies. We don't have enough money. and yeah you just you You get your education, you start your career and oh wow, I'm 30, I'm 35. Do you see your story in this kind of macro level event at all?
01:02:05
Sarah
I do think that this change that you're seeing that you're seeing is one of the the complications of feminism. I mean, you know we have freed women up to live richer, fuller lives. And one of the outgrowths of that is that you have a number of women that don't want children, first of all, which they did not have the freedom in the past to say.
01:02:29
Sarah
And you also have a number of women like me that have tried to have both, kind of occupy both lanes, but without success. I mean, I had every intention of having a family. And I feel silly saying that because it's like, well, didn't you know you were 36, 37? Yeah, but I just thought I'd be the exception to the rule. like I didn didn't think it was a big deal.
01:02:54
Sarah
um It's very, very hard to do both. And then you have the complicating factor of probably increasing expectations around around what is, also delayed parenthood, I think, is a part of this. Because the older you get, the more you don't want to give up things. And it becomes more difficult.
01:03:22
kenilg
What do you mean by that?
01:03:22
Sarah
um
01:03:23
kenilg
You don't want to give up your your nice job.
01:03:26
Sarah
Yeah, you don't want to give up your trips. You don't want to give up the, you know, the free time, the sleeping in. i I actually kind of think like, as much as in my generation we cautioned against young people having kids, I'm kind of like, it's kind of a young person's game, you know? To be 40 years old and trying to raise a kid is like,
01:03:50
Sarah
It's a lot harder.
01:03:52
kenilg
so it see it seemed
01:03:52
Sarah
And especially with fertility, look, with women's fertility, um that starts going down in your 30s. And it gets harder and harder to have children.
01:04:03
Sarah
I i was i remember hanging out with my my friend who was you know seven months pregnant and kind of pushing herself off the couch to get up. And she was like, oh, this shit is for teenagers. you know And it really is.
01:04:15
Sarah
like the like
01:04:18
Sarah
We have tried to extend adulthood and coming of age and we've extended adolescence into their 20s and so people aren't even adults until their 30s and then they're trying to have kids and it's just, it doesn't sync up with nature's mandate for us.
01:04:40
kenilg
You know what amazes me is that this species even exists. Like I'm amazed we were able to kind of keep making babies for 300,000 years because, you know, I'm a, I'm a father and I'm around a lot of parents who have not just one kid, but two, and they're usually like, there's a four year old and there's ah a one year old or something like that. And I'm just like, it it's.
01:05:07
kenilg
Um, an amazing feat that this family just doesn't get in their car and drive off a cliff, you know? And, and it's just like, we've, we've done this for 300,000 years, despite it being so hard. I mean, they didn't even have like warm homes and doctors. They were living in caves and stuff like that, but yet we still reproduce. But anyways, these, um, these articles kind of go.
01:05:35
kenilg
One of two ways are people worried about depopulation are thinking about it in two different ways. And the first is like, this is the end of humanity. You know, we're just gonna, women don't want to have kids anymore.
01:05:46
kenilg
We're, we're going to forget how to, how to make babies. This is it. We got to reverse thing. And the other thing, or or they're just worried about like living in a world, living in a civilization, not entirely oriented around growth.
01:06:01
kenilg
So they're worried about the economy.
01:06:01
Sarah
Mm hmm.
01:06:03
kenilg
They're worried about how are we going to support all these old people? And yeah, and my my my take on all this is just like, we'll figure it out.
01:06:08
Sarah
Yeah, yeah, that's a problem. We'll need the robots for that.
01:06:17
kenilg
You know, we have the solution to the problem, which is just people fucking at a much younger age, like where humanity is not going to end. We're going to figure this out um at some point.
01:06:30
kenilg
But it's also like, give the earth a break, you know,
01:06:33
Sarah
ah Yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure. I've thought that sometimes.
01:06:34
kenilg
We got 8 billion people on this planet. Our oceans need a break. Our marine life needs a break. Our soil needs a break. Our air and our water needs a break. It's just like we don't need these alarmist articles right now. And it's just like necessity is the mother of invention. So all these old folks who, you know, may not have a huge young person working age tech tax base to kind of rely on, it's just like,
01:07:03
kenilg
They'll figure it out. We've, we've done harder things. They'll figure it out. We'll figure it out.
01:07:12
Sarah
I think I'm more in that boat. I mean, I don't certainly think it's ah it's something that is cause for alarm so much as I think it's really fascinating that the the more you give people choice and money and freedom in their life, the less they want to share it with other people. Like there's a there's a good book called Going Solo by Eric Kleiningberg. He studies like ah the patterns of people living alone.
01:07:41
Sarah
which this is very you know very similar to. The more affluent you are, the more you just want to be in your own space. And there's kind of great freedom in that. but broad scale, you know i I do wonder like if feminism ends up being something more of a historical anomaly because it doesn't yield as many like offspring.
01:08:08
Sarah
like like Basically, the people reproducing are not the feminists. you know so Just by sheer numbers,
01:08:13
kenilg
And what's the best way to kind of what's the best way to kind of keep all the good things about feminism and and reproduce too?
01:08:24
Sarah
Yeah, ah maybe maybe that's what future generations will figure out, ah you know because ah you know those African countries own the future, the the number of people on that continent.
01:08:40
kenilg
at the same time, there's geographic and resource limits that they're going to be pushing up against because a lot of those countries aren't, you know, lands of plenty.
01:08:48
Sarah
Mm-hmm.
01:08:54
kenilg
um the A lot of them are, you know, surrounded by deserts and there's only so much freshwater.
01:08:54
Sarah
For sure,
01:09:00
kenilg
So it's just like that that can't continue forever as well. And they're going to kind of catch up to, I think these, um, you know, a wave of feminism feminism will just rock those countries too, it's inevitably.
01:09:14
Sarah
Yes.
01:09:16
Sarah
It will. um But yeah, I've, I've wondered if if several of the the sort of fertility dip and isn't just a, I don't know, like the earth correcting itself.
01:09:34
Sarah
You know, when
01:09:34
kenilg
Just kind of we where we we have less desire to either have sex or reproduce just because of the, we're just almost disgusted in some way about the state of nature or all these people around us. We just feel like less of a need. There's less space to kind of.
01:09:56
Sarah
but there But there is actually less of a need. I mean, you know, like basically when you had to work the land and you needed children because you needed extra hands. I mean, the incentive to have children was like and to have employees. You needed a staff. um Now it's sort of more around like.
01:10:15
Sarah
ah I don't know, why do people have children? Self-fulfillment, creating a legacy, making the world a better place, I don't know. Whatever whatever they do, you know. But it but doesn't have the need, it feels like more of a drain, like, oh, you're not gonna be able to go on vacation, you're not gonna be able to sleep, you're not gonna be able to do this, that, or the other thing.
01:10:37
Sarah
But, you know, but ah my friends who who are parents um complain a lot about parenthood, but i it is the most one of the most meaningful things you can ever do on this planet. And i i I think I will always feel, if I don't get that chance, you know, I will always feel a little bit like I missed out on something, a little bit sad. And, you know, i get I get a lot of good things too. I get to travel, I get to sleep in.
01:11:07
kenilg
at At the very least, it gives you kind of a life structure and a life narrative to live out. And that's not that's not something small. um But I tend to think of it as like an 18 year prison sentence.
01:11:21
Sarah
god.
01:11:21
kenilg
and ah how But it gets it gets easier the more you get to know your guards and you get the easier jobs as as you go on. but so it's So it's an 18 year prison sentence, but it's also a 50 year investment.
01:11:36
kenilg
And I know my 90-year-old self is going to be very happy that my 37-year-old self had a child.
01:11:38
Sarah
Yeah.
01:11:47
kenilg
So so um so there's that.
01:11:50
Sarah
I think so too. Yeah.
01:11:52
kenilg
um Okay, that's just about everything. Do you know that I looked up, um I did a little research on Heppola. That's a Finnish name.
01:11:59
Sarah
It sure is.
01:12:01
kenilg
Did you, I'm going to read you a couple statistics about HEPALA.
01:12:05
Sarah
Oh my God.
01:12:06
kenilg
um Did you know that HEPALA is the 3,779th
01:12:06
Sarah
Nobody's ever done this.
01:12:13
kenilg
most common surname in Finland?
01:12:16
Sarah
ah We nailed it with a bullet.
01:12:19
kenilg
ah Guess how many um ah individuals have the surname HEPALA in Finland?
01:12:25
Sarah
Oh my gosh, I mean, it's not that many. ah um I don't know, 2,000.
01:12:31
kenilg
It's 201.
01:12:33
Sarah
Oh my God, that's really...
01:12:34
kenilg
There is a Heppella Films YouTube channel trying to popularize Lapland stories in in Finland.
01:12:39
Sarah
Oh.
01:12:45
Sarah
Lapland is super cool, by the way. I've been there.
01:12:47
kenilg
You've been there.
01:12:47
Sarah
Yeah, it's it's gorgeous.
01:12:47
kenilg
OK.
01:12:49
Sarah
you know It's where the Santa Claus myth comes from and it's it's up in the north.
01:12:54
kenilg
So you've been on like an ancestral journey to Finland.
01:12:57
Sarah
we went We went to Finland. We went to go see like where the grandma and the granddad are from and all that. Yeah, we did it. We went around a lot of different places.
01:13:03
kenilg
Did you know that there's a a town called Heppola, Finland?
01:13:07
Sarah
I think I saw that, but I was shocked by it. I didn't know it was a wrong translation.
01:13:12
kenilg
it's um There's 1,500 people living there. 38% of the town is above 68 years old, which seems like a lot.
01:13:20
Sarah
um Yeah, it does.
01:13:22
kenilg
um And where you look at it, it's kind of like right in the armpit um in between Sweden and Finland.
01:13:28
Sarah
Yeah.
01:13:30
kenilg
I looked at the latitude in the US. It's in between Fairbanks, Alaska and the Arctic Circle.
01:13:37
Sarah
Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah.
01:13:39
kenilg
hala finland
01:13:40
Sarah
A lot of those Finns moved to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, ah which is basically Canada, ah and then also Minnesota, and they worked in the mines because they were used to the cold and the dark, so.
01:13:54
kenilg
Do you feel finish? Do you feel like there's a cultural echo that has kind of been passed down from the generations to the point where you're still a little bit finish?
01:14:06
Sarah
Yeah, but I remember the first time I went into, I did a mine trip with my dad and and I remember it was like cool and and and dark and I was like, this is like a bar. This is why I love bars.
01:14:18
Sarah
um But my mom always says that I have you know this like Scandinavian darkness ah that my that is very much from my my father's side of the family.
01:14:25
kenilg
Mm.
01:14:29
Sarah
You know, my mom's side is Irish, and they're much more, you know, happy-go-lucky, extroverted, um
01:14:39
Sarah
all the ah drunk. I mean, you know, like all the all the stereotypes of Irish people, storytellers. And then the Finnish people are a lot more ah quiet, inward-looking. I'm very much that, too. You know, on both of those things. I always felt like I was about 50-50 of those things.
01:15:00
kenilg
um I need to figure out a good ending to this podcast. You have a wonderful one with what's in your hotbox. Could you just recommend maybe a movie that you've enjoyed recently?
01:15:10
Sarah
Well, I was, you you told me this in advance and ah I was kind of stumped because I haven't watched a lot of movies that I've really liked.
01:15:23
Sarah
I mean, I'm such a movie junkie you and I share that in common, but I haven't seen one um that I've loved, but can I tell you one that I've rewatched and really loved rewatching?
01:15:33
kenilg
yeah course
01:15:36
Sarah
um Was Boogie Nights?
01:15:38
kenilg
o
01:15:39
Sarah
Boogie Nights by Paul Thomas Anderson, one of his early movies about the kind of golden age of porn and its decline. I absolutely love that movie.
01:15:52
Sarah
I love the characters. I love the filmmaking.
01:15:55
kenilg
Yeah,
01:15:55
Sarah
I love the music from the very beginning. It's just such an adrenaline shot.
01:15:59
kenilg
of course.
01:16:01
Sarah
I think some of the performances he gets out of people like Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who who is in that movie ah for like I don't know, two minutes, and is absolutely stunning. um Mark Wahlberg's fantastic, of course. um It's just, i apps I just love that movie.
01:16:24
kenilg
Did you ever watch the the DVD cut scenes from that movie?
01:16:27
Sarah
You know, it's so funny. I have the DVD and I don't think I've watched the cutscene.
01:16:32
kenilg
Oh, you got to watch the ones where Mark Wahlberg's character Dirk Digler is with the John C. Riley character and they're in.
01:16:39
Sarah
Oh, the chest-brock. is Are there chest- They're just joking around.
01:16:41
kenilg
well no they're No, they're in a music studio because it was because Dirk Digler tries his hand at becoming a rock musician and John C.
01:16:44
Sarah
Oh!
01:16:47
Sarah
Those are great scenes.
01:16:52
kenilg
Raleigh is just hilarious in those scenes. It was all cut from the movie, um but yeah, excellent choice. i've um I've kind of been on a ah horror binge recently, just kind of in honor of October and and and and Halloween.
01:17:04
Sarah
Oh.
01:17:07
Sarah
Uh-huh, Halloween's coming up.
01:17:10
kenilg
So i um I watched Robert Eggers, The Witch. He's done some really interesting kind of folk mythology movies like um The Lighthouse with Willem Dafoe, The Northman, which was set in um like medieval Iceland. um Did you see any of those?
01:17:34
Sarah
No, and I don't know when the witch came out.
01:17:36
kenilg
Which came out in 2015.
01:17:36
Sarah
it
01:17:38
kenilg
It stars a young Anya, I think Taylor Joy, who's the Queen's Gambit.
01:17:38
Sarah
Okay.
01:17:42
Sarah
Oh, sure. I like her. Yeah, she's great.
01:17:44
kenilg
And like what he does amazingly is he makes these this this terrific atmosphere, just completely memorable sets. This one is set in the woods in like 1600s New England.
01:18:00
kenilg
But then like the movie just kind of falls apart in the end, all of his movies, he just kind of throws as much symbols and mythology and he just kind of hopes it's all kind of gonna like.
01:18:11
kenilg
wrap up together in an interesting way. he's He's almost trying to like find an ending on accident and he never does. But what I really liked during my little horror movie binge was the Blair Witch Project.
01:18:22
kenilg
I think that holds up the acting and that it it holds up.
01:18:23
Sarah
Does it?
01:18:25
kenilg
The acting from those three amateur actors is terrific and the sixth sense. I watched it for the first time since 1999. it It felt like an American classic.
01:18:37
kenilg
It felt like an almost flawless movie and the acting from Haley Joel Osman.
01:18:38
Sarah
Yeah
01:18:43
kenilg
It directs it just deserves all the acclaim it got. So so that's that.
01:18:48
Sarah
Oh, that's interesting. I loved that movie when it came out was absolutely floored by it. And then I think it became such a pop culture touchdown that I almost started to think about it in like kind of a corny way, you know, like I see dead people, you know, and you forget that like, actually, no, it was like a masterfully done movie.
01:19:01
kenilg
Yeah, me too.
01:19:09
kenilg
It was a masterpiece. it was It was so good. I also watched Poltergeist, which was not so good.
01:19:15
Sarah
Oh god, that scared the hell out of me when I was seven years old though, I'll tell you that.
01:19:16
kenilg
so
01:19:20
kenilg
ah Sarah Heppler, it's been an absolute joy having you on. Thank you for getting me started on and this journey.
01:19:29
Sarah
Can any time, and I mean it, will go out of the wild.
01:19:33
kenilg
Okay, let's go out of the wild. Take care, Sarah.
01:19:36
Sarah
Bye.