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

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 Picoult. 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 that.

0:45What I love about Jodi's work is that she doesn't hand you easy answers.

0:50Jonathan Fields: 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.

1:28Jonathan 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.

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3:49Jonathan Fields: Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com slash 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. 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? 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.

4:37You 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? 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 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 um you know so it it felt to me like the right time it wasn't too soon and it also wasn't it was it was coming at a time when i think uh we're going to see a very natural um uh return to discussions about 9-11 you know now that we have a very big milestone stone coming up.

5:43Jonathan Fields: Yeah. I mean, that lands really strongly for me. I'm in Boulder, Colorado right now, but we were 30-year New York City lifers before that, and we were a pandemic move. 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, 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. Um, and I found myself actually volunteering, um, unexpectedly, um, about 30 feet from what they were calling at that moment, the pile, um, two days later. And so all of that is deep.

6:28Jonathan Fields: It's like in my DNA at this point. Um, 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 you're right. 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, and I'm curious how this land with you, is what happened in New York in the six months that followed, which was the sense of sisterhood and fellowship that I never felt before and I haven't felt since. Yeah. I think it actually bled outside of New York. I lived in New Hampshire then.

7:02And I just remember the goodwill from the world, the fact that we're all grieving with you, that it was a unification. 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. um but yeah there was what i remember about new york was i 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 and i remember authors like carpooling and driving across the country um i wound up flying i think three days after 9 11 oh wow some events so you were like one of the first planes in the air after i remember going into the the uh 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 wow and we all sat down and we looked at each other like do i trust you do i trust you you know um and and everything was fine but i remember thinking that was a very strange feeling um yeah it's uh it i do think too though that like there's so much collective trauma left still in New York.

8:20You 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 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.

8:40Jonathan 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 BN Sony, which you've written about in prior books. We heard of their pots and pans out the windows. Yeah, I have, you know, at seven 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.

9:13Jonathan Fields: 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 place as awful as this moment is more of that. Yeah. You know, it's funny because you talk your first question was about how do you know it's time? Yeah. 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 it. It was really to chronicle it, because I think we're going to forget a lot of what it was like back then.

9:51And 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-librettist 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 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.

10:31And I think about how in about 15 years post pandemic, we'll be ready to really sit down and see that again.

10:40Jonathan 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, called a theme um or question really that i felt was really centered in in this new book and hollow bones um you talk about somebody who has literally prepared her whole life and i'm going to do my best not to give away any spoilers yeah yeah um you know like centered in this is is is a is a a woman who has prepared for 25 years for catastrophe. Right. Yet she is the one who like can get everything figured out when all the awful stuff hits. Yeah. 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.

11:41Exactly.

11:41Jonathan 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. Yeah. You know, 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 9-11, she was two months old and her mom goes to a doctor's appointment and never comes home. 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 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.

12:26uh and and it's you know and in speaking with um the survivors from uh family members of people who died that day they they really grew up feeling like they were in a fishbowl a little bit retrospectives like oh what are the children of the people who died 9-11 like and you know and and 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.

12:58Jonathan Fields: Right. You know, and so there are, 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. Yeah. I mean, that's the whole concept behind the black swan, right? It's like these big, wildly disruptive things. And you can plan and plan and plan, but they are by definition the things that you could never have dreamed would come into your orbit. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So as you just described, you went and found this like the real life person who does this job.

13:41Jonathan Fields: Your approach to writing has been repeatedly to kind of largely dissolve yourself and live inside someone else's interior life from the inside. Yeah. And you do immense research. Some of it is academic, some of it is study, but also often it's experiential. experiential. Like, you're like, let me go. 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. Yeah. What does that do to you over 30 years, just as a human being?

14:23I actually see it as a real privilege. You know, because 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 know who I am. I can 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 it's allowed me to become a lifelong student. You know, 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.

15:06And 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. Because that ultimately is why I think it's why I write and I think it's why people pick up novels. It's to be whisked away, sure. But it's also to find what resonates with you and this fictional character. have you ever found yourself you hear about actors especially method actors in particular

15:41Jonathan Fields: right yeah 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 they go to the bodega and like they're in character right um so that's not you but you do oftentimes go really really deep into these people yeah 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.

16:32And 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.

16:44Jonathan Fields: And something that really doesn't wash off all that easily. I don't want to be with this guy. I don't want him in my head. 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. 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, from our parents, our friends, our religious leaders.

17:25And we don't really 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 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.

17:45Jonathan Fields: No, I think they do that beautifully. I mean, 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? Is there a cost to that just personally for you? Have you felt that at any point where like this is actually – as much as it's opening doors inside of me of empathy and understanding that there's a cost that it's actually – I wasn't anticipating paying? No, if anything, I think it's enriching, honestly, because I feel like it allows me to tick something off my list. Because the things that I write about are the things I worry about.

18:26So 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 nature. But something about being able to explore something that deeply, an issue that deeply, makes me feel like I've, you know, checked that one off. That's a notch in the belt. Another, you know, I can move on now.

18:50Jonathan Fields: It's really at the end of the day, right? It is about, I was going to 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. 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 exactly yeah i mean my favorite books are the ones where i write about something like um abortion rights 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 quite pro-choice but i'm thrilled that they don't know that you know from the book because then it feels very balanced and even Yeah.

19:48Jonathan Fields: Because 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 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 that shares all points of views, and you can figure out where you land with this. Hollow Bones is a really good example of that. Because, you know, there's nothing political really about 9-11. It happened. We can just change that, right? But the after effects of COVID, for example, are very deeply explored through Molly's professional life.

20:29Because one of the things that this woman 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 a state budget for that. They also said that after the after effects of COVID, where there were questions about, do masks work? Should we vaccinate? Vaccines aren't good for you. All of that anti-science rhetoric that has sprung up in the wake of 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.

21:18And, you know, it was really important to me to make sure that I said all that, too.

21:22Jonathan Fields: When you go into issues like that, there's a really big risk that in telling a fictional story, you're presenting things as fact that people assume are fact but get them wrong. I imagine you're very aware of that and you research fiercely to try and make sure that those specific things are dialed in. 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.

22:07You know, I don't want to assume that what I heard was the right thing. You know, that said, sometimes you do get the facts right. And people don't want to believe them. Yeah.

22:16Jonathan Fields: 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? Yeah. And there are actually times where something was in error because honestly, because someone who is 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. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Girl Life Project is sponsored by Function. So, you know, September is World Alzheimer's Month. And here's the thing that stopped me in my tracks. Most of us never look at our brain health until something already feels off.

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25:58Jonathan Fields: One purchase, one donated. Over 200 million donations and counting. It's a good product attached to a good idea. So head over to bombas.com slash goodlife and use the code goodlife for 20 % off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash goodlife. Code goodlife at checkout. Yeah. 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. 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 right moment like i need the right book for this totally um and and this was it because uh the the character who who is our narrator in part two make some very questionable choices.

27:03And you can look at her and see her as a villain, or you can look at her and see her as a hero. 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 to say.

27:16Jonathan Fields: I know. But I guess more generally, just the notion of, you know, we do love to see ourselves in a particular light, even if the world sees us radically differently. right no one no one sits down and says you know oh today i'm gonna be i'm gonna 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 yeah um when you sit down with somebody um who the world perceives as a villain oh i got this one Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A, how do you handle that? And how do you get inside their head?

28:10Well, I'll give you a story. When I was writing a book called Sing You Home, which was about gay rights, 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 I said, well, did you want to talk about the content or the grammar? And he said both. And 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.

28:46But all of a sudden, this book, which I had been writing theoretically about gay rights and gay parenting and what makes a family, 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 Wins Out or Love Won Out. And it 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. And anyway, I went and I talked to the public information officer for this organization at the time.

29:37And it was this woman who had actually been a lesbian and was born again Christian and decided that this was not the path she wouldn't follow and 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, I guess, as non-contentious as possible so that I could, you know, have a conversation rather than be lectured to. We talked about Bible quotes. And when she gave me Bible quotes, I would say to her, okay, are you aware that this word, you know, which is translated as homosexual in the Bible is from the Greek arsenakotoi. And actually, nobody really knows what it means.

30:24And it wasn't actually in the Bible as the word homosexual until 1958. But most Greek scholars think it means somebody who was married who paid for a male prostitute. You know, and I could say things like that because I had done my homework. And she, of course, you know, had some kind of comeback. And then 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?

31:00And she looked at me straight in the eye and she said, well, thank goodness that has never happened. And 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? 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.

31:44And from what I could figure out, she wound up in a relationship with a woman. So there you go. 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.

32:10Jonathan 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 come out to you and then having this conversation, like literally all sort of like unfolding in real time. Right. And as you shared, you have this commitment to sort of I'm going to go out and I'm going to talk to people often who I may just personally fiercely disagree with their point of view. 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.

32:47Jonathan Fields: How do you do that in that particular scenario? You just honestly, you have to fight your inner instincts. Yeah. You know, it's like it's 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, 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. no 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 absolutely it's like how could you not yeah that's why i had all those great bible quotes studies that have been done that you know prove this genetic component to homosexuality So, I mean, I went in there armed, fully armed.

33:54But, you know, but I, there's, there was a wall, and I found this, 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.

34:20Jonathan Fields: you know and they won't go past that yeah and i think you could also extend that to in a lot of ways orthodoxy in almost any philosophy absolutely yeah 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 yeah right it's orthogonal to the way i write which is saying that there are multiple sides. 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.

34:57Jonathan 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 yeah like like i think so and i actually would say i really like gray areas i that's the most fun to walk around in right because there's room and there's nuance and you know you're never going to see me write a character that is 100 good or 100 bad everyone's got some flaws in them um 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?

35:44But what did you do? You could just tell me, right? You know.

35:47Jonathan Fields: It's just us, just the two of us. Come on. Yeah, I so agree. I mean, 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 now you're handing it over to them to sort of like figure it out. Like, where do you land? Right. 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.

36:19Look, I have many, many theories about this and they're all political. It has to do with rational thinking and teaching kids how to think instead of teaching them what to do, basically. I think we've lost the ability to critically think right now. I actually have a master's degree in education. And a million years ago when I was teaching, that was kind of the catchword. The catchphrase was critical thinking and how to sort of enhance critical thought in students. And I think that teachers still care about that, but I think that we're not seeing a lot of it. You know, with the rise of AI, you're going to see even less of it.

37:02Jonathan Fields: And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Good Life Project is sponsored by Wild Alaskan Company. So I think about how disconnected most of us have become from where our food comes from. And something shifts when you can trace it back to the person and the place and the work behind it. It's just one of the reasons why I love Wild Alaskan Company. They work directly with Alaskan fishermen to bring you wild-caught seafood like sockeye salmon, coho salmon, Pacific halibut, Pacific rockfish. Quick frozen, right at the source, locking in texture, flavor, and omega-3s. No GMOs, no antibiotics, no additives.

37:39Jonathan Fields: It arrives individually portioned and vacuum sealed, so no guesswork, no waste. The coho salmon has become kind of like a true favorite for me recently. I especially love just grilling it with just a bit of lemon and sea salt. They back it with a 100 % satisfaction, money-back guarantee. Your first box is completely risk-free. Go to wildalaskan.com slash goodlife for$35 off your first order of premium wild-caught seafood. That's wildalaskan.com slash goodlife for$35 off your first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode. Good Life Project is sponsored by Kohler Smart Toilets.

38:19Jonathan Fields: So here's something I find genuinely fascinating. The places where exceptional design shows up where you least expect it, where someone decided that an everyday object, something completely ordinary, deserved the same level of intention and craft as anything else in your life. That's exactly what Kohler is doing with their smart toilets. Their Veil smart toilet doesn't look anything like what you'd picture when you hear the word toilet. It's sculptural, considered the kind of design that makes you do a double take. And the experience is designed to match. Elevated, personal, quieter than you'd expect.

38:50Jonathan Fields: The kind of thing that transforms your morning routine without you even fully realizing it. That's what good design does. And Kohler has been doing it, refusing to accept that every day has to be ordinary for over 150 years. Discover Kohler smart toilets at Kohler.com. Good Light Project is sponsored by Ernesta Rugs. So you know that spot in your house that's kind of this close to being right? For us, it's the front porch. Good light, chairs I absolutely love, and a rug that I bought years ago, too small, kind of floating out there, like it never quite committed. And it's been bothering me ever since.

39:27Jonathan Fields: That's the project Ernesta finally talked me into finishing. So here's the idea with Ernesta. Instead of guessing a size off a shelf, you send them your spaces, dimensions, and your style. And their design team helps you land on the exact right fit completely free. And then you start with the$10 test, five oversized samples held up against your own chairs, your own light, watching how the color shifts from morning into afternoon before committing to anything. Ours is cut and finished now and it's on its way. I cannot wait to be out there with people I love, coffee in hand, and finally have the porch feel finished instead of almost finished.

40:05Jonathan Fields: Visit Ernesta.com and order five samples for only$10 and you'll get$50 toward any rug of your choice. that's e-r-n-e-s-t-a.com then another thing that tends to show up really commonly and again it's centered in um in hollow bones is this idea that we are um 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 and make us feel better about maybe the world or about how we personally are showing up.

40:52Jonathan 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. Absolutely. 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 trauma. Yeah. You've got to figure out how to tell a different story about what happened to you. Right. But there's a counter argument to that, too. 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.

41:28There are a lot of bad actors, bad faith actors that I can think of right now who are in positions of power who managed 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, sugarcoating your own life to make it more palatable, and twisting the truth to protect the people you love.

41:55Jonathan Fields: Take me into that more. Well, I think that's what you see in hollow bones. Choices that are made that might seem suspect are not necessarily selfish choices, but selfless ones. Yeah. We can't really go deeper into that without revealing a major spoiler. I'm like, ah, let's go that one more step. Six months after it comes out, I know. I know. Dope it. I think that is, I get that, especially as a parent. Right. I get that, you know, because 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 responsible to protect in this world more than anything.

42:43Jonathan Fields: And the way that we tell our own story or even their story is going to be tailored to that, even if we're fully aware of the fact that it's not truth. I get asked all the time, which character of yours are you most like? And I usually say none of them because they live terrible lives. Thank you very much. But the 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. 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.

43:17And everyone's like, what? That's who you are? And I'm like, no, I haven't killed anyone yet. But, you know, I could see myself. That's my mama bear instinct. If you do something to my family, I'm coming after you.

43:30Jonathan Fields: Yeah. I mean, you often hear stories about a parent who's done something horrific, supposedly, in the name of something that they believe strongly in. And you think, well, how could they ever do that? But if you're really a second later, you also might think, there but for God's grace go I. Absolutely. And I would argue that is very much a hallmark of hollow bones as well. Yeah, I agree. um so if we're kind of all walking around revising our stories sometimes mercilessly all day every day um is there a cost to that like what would it cost somebody to revise a story they told about themselves um because if you're making it more palatable or more protected um for somebody else and you feel good you've got the naches of like you know yes i'm being good to them um but there's got to be a cost to you too.

44:23Yeah, you know, it actually does make me think of hollow bones, because one of the characters in there, 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 a mistruth often enough, and it becomes the truth. So to answer your question, I don't know that the cost to you would be so great if you started believing it.

45:10But your own life is tangled with so many other people's lives. And so to erase whatever connections or damage you did to somebody else, I think that can be very dangerous.

45:24Jonathan Fields: Yeah. But I mean, erasing the connections or the damage you use 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. you know and i've got to 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 you know it's interesting um i'm only thinking about this because i've been doing this whole retrospective of 30 books recently yeah i know and so when i wrote the book of two ways and i was doing research with death uh professionals in the death industry, death doulas and hospice chaplains and stuff.

46:11I got to spend 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 husbands. I heard someone say they They confessed to a murder. I mean, like crazy stuff. 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 and you've buried something and you've you've spackled over a very big hole.

46:50I 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 there.

47:00Jonathan Fields: And what then happens if the seemingly true story that you've told those who rely on the honesty of that, there's a devastating effect when decades later that person finds out what the true story is. There's a grappling and a reckoning that happens that everything you were trying to save that person from, it may have landed in a compounded way. Right. Absolutely. You used the word erase a couple of minutes ago also, and that makes me curious 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.

47:46Jonathan Fields: One of them historically real from what I understand from all of your research. Why was this topic? Why was this so important for you to explore? 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 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.

48:31And when Rebecca Yaros does it, it's very smut. Right. So there's always something that demeans women's voices in some way or women in this industry in some way. And I feel like I've circled that over and over again, just even in conversation and interviews. And when I stumbled across this story, thanks to an incredible article in The Atlantic by Elizabeth Winkler, which questioned the authorship of Shakespeare and pointed out that, you know, although 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 candidates for being the real writers behind the writer of the place 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.

49:41But she also was, on her own merits, an accomplished writer. She's 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, you know, it felt like the right story to tell. It's also, 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 any traction because she's a female playwright. And there's a lot of gender discrimination in the theater industry. And that's something I experienced firsthand with my own theater experience as a writer.

50:26And everything that happens to that character is something that happened to me that was said to me. And, you know, 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 literally living their lives every day. And, you know, here we are, it's 2026. And And 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, you know, the overarching narrative of time, really.

51:09that 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 if you ask me, I am 100 % convinced that she is one of the people 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.

51:34Jonathan Fields: Yeah, and there's an author's, 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, 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. Yeah. And my mind was like, wait, what? I know. I mean, that's it. When you, I'm writing it as fiction. But when you realize how much of it is true, yeah, it is, it's very hard to discount when you see that, when you see the parallels in her life and the gaps in Shakespeare's.

52:06Jonathan 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. Exactly. And what you're sharing is a lot has changed and a lot hasn't changed. I say that all the time. A lot's changed in 400 years, but a lot left to go. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, right? Because somebody could look at you and your career, you know, like 30 astonishing years of writing huge, huge books that have sold, you know, like 60, 70 million copies and all this acclaim, and say, well, but you don't have to deal with this.

52:44Jonathan Fields: But if they zoom the lens out more, there's a bigger story here. Oh, yeah, totally. And just because I don't deal with it, you know, in terms of sales, doesn't mean that you shouldn't open your voice and speak up for someone else. either. But in my opinion, I am still dealing with it. I mean, I cannot tell you how many people will call my books chiclet. And chiclet is actually, it is a genre. And it's great. If that's what you want to read, that's awesome. It's my books are the worst chiclet 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 hate to tell you this, but you're going to be crying at some point.

53:27So, you know, there's this, when people call something chiclet, or when they say it's women's fiction, what they really mean is it was written by a woman.

53:37Jonathan Fields: Yeah. And they're sort of like loading that up with all sorts of assumptions without actually stating them overtly. 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. And you have confronted the potential for erasure in the form of bending. You know, that has been something that has present 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 a lot of people, clearly they want to engage.

54:17Jonathan Fields: 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? Yeah. I mean, book banning is out of control in America. It has increased over 1100 % since 2020. 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 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 uh 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 um then they started pulling what they called mature content and i put air quotes around that uh that's where mine fall in um 19 minutes was the most banned book in America in 2024.

55:22I'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 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 apparently in a high school school library, high school students don't know what one of those is. So I don't know. So the other really amazing fact, which we knew, 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.

56:06They are actually, these bans are coming from organized groups that are political advocacy groups that are trying to get books removed on a, you know, at a grassroots level across as many states as possible. Very similar to the way that conservatives sort of rolled out changes at local levels to abortion before it was overturned federally, 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 Ben Dobbs overturned federally the constitutional right to an abortion.

56:48Well, 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 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. 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.

57:26It is still a ban. As long as that book is removed from a school library shelf, it's a ban. Because 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.

57:55Jonathan Fields: I mean, when you look at some of the most banned books also, So many of them fall into what a lot of people would consider some of the greatest literary works of generations. Beloved, Michael Morrison, right? Yeah, right. So it is, yeah, it's suspect, it's upsetting. 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 between pages.

58:40All 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.

58:54Jonathan Fields: So you just use the E word, empathy. Yeah. I feel like that is the heartbeat of so much of your work. Is that true? I think so. Yeah. But I mean, I wouldn't say it, but it's nice to hear you say it. 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. 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 months before that. As we were talking about before we came on there, we're also both Long Island kids.

59:39Jonathan Fields: 60 for me has been interesting. 50 didn't really do anything. I was like, whatever, whatever. Same, yeah. 60, I'm like, oh, this is landing differently. I'm curious how it's landing for you. Same exact thing. I didn't care when I turned 40, didn't care when I turned 50. 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 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 have unpacked this in therapy. I've done everything I can, you know. But I think it's multiple things.

1:00:21I think it's that with 50, you can still labor under the delusion that you've only lived half a life, right? You still have your other half left. 60, the numbers aren't working out for you anymore, right? So you know you're not going to live another 60 years.

1:00:39Jonathan Fields: I've tried to tell myself that that's actually not true, but it really doesn't land. You know, and 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, whether it's it's the physical breakdown of your body or 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.

1:01:21And I love that. But there's still going to be a lot of loss coming. And 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.

1:01:33Jonathan Fields: Tell me more. Because there is, I know, like 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. You are not supposed to be attractive, you're not really supposed to talk about being attracted to anyone. And I think society tries to 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.

1:02:15I'm a husk. 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 I went out and I got my first tattoo. too.

1:02:34Jonathan Fields: And I'm so close to doing that, by the way. So I don't know if you can see it. It is the Pilcro sign, which is the paragraph symbol. And what is a paragraph symbol? It means same story, fresh start. I love that. 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, I remember I am still here and I'm still vital. Is what you're exploring now going to end up in a book? I don't know. It's a great question. You know, I just started this podcast by telling you things need to settle.

1:03:13So maybe I'll write it when I'm night.

1:03:15Jonathan Fields: 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 30, 40 years old, nothing older than that. I can't say. Maybe one day, you know. We'll see. Yeah. Like similar things. I mean, obviously, you know, like I'm in a man's body, so it's a different experience for me also. But, you know, people call me sir. Yeah, right. Yeah. And, you know, like I don't have hair, which I haven't had for a long time. But there's just something that has landed differently. And maybe it's what you were describing is this 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.

1:04:01Jonathan Fields: 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. um and so it makes you meet your mortality um on a much more regular basis and and i feel like it's created a sense of urgency in me yeah um but also urgency bundled with possibility i'm not defeatist or or fatalist um i'm weirdly wired to just constantly see what is possible um but there is an urgency that i think has really touched down sort of like in as i enter my 60s that feels different time is different time just feels different yeah it it feels um a little more compressed i think a little more frenetic because you don't know how much you've got yeah 100 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 non-fiction books um i'm working on a novel hey there you go because i'm kind of like hmm why not yeah 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 30-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 30 different books.

1:05:36I'm workshopping the chapter store. Right.

1:05:38Jonathan Fields: Right. I like chapter store. Like that works for me. 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 I want to share moments of the last three decades of work. Why is it important to you? One of the other things I've noticed about turning 60 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 icon feeling. I mean, that sounds very, I don't know, but I don't want to sound egotistical, but they do treat you differently.

1:06:23They treat you like you've been around forever. You know, you have a status they don't have just out of longevity,

1:06:29Jonathan Fields: you know, much less sales. And there's this weird, there's this weird threshold there, too, right? Because, you know, nobody submits you for, you know, like, the kind of life, a lifetime achievement award until you reach a certain age, right? You're not getting it at 25. 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 the joy of revisiting all the work I've done over the past 30 years is to see how much of the landscape I was able to leave marks on. Yeah, it's powerful. Yeah, yeah.

1:07:25I mean, it's like, yeah, it's counting the tattoos I left on readers, I guess.

1:07:30Jonathan Fields: Yeah, and in the hearts and minds. 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?

1:07:47Be kind, be honest, and be strong. Thank you.

1:07:55Jonathan Fields: 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 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 the 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.

1:08:36And she's right that most of us, often unwittingly, we blur them together.

1:08:40Jonathan Fields: 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 get your podcasts.

1:09:22Jonathan Fields: 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.

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1:11:42Try Temptations Cat Treats, America's number one cat treat brand. Their Temptations Crunchy Cat Treats are the crunchy outside, soft inside treat your cat will love. Butter and Daphne are obsessed. Plus, they're 100 % complete and balanced and under two calories per treat. Seriously, nine out of ten cats find Temptations treats irresistible. Make bonding easier with Temptations cat treats. Cats can't resist.