Twitter vs. Substack, Stormy Daniels, and Jennifer Senior On Grief

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25:25Okay, Olivia, we're back. Twitter users can once again post about their favorite newsletters. That wasn't the case last week when Twitter took escalating steps to block access to Substack, the newsletter service. Here's what happened. First, Substack announced a new Twitter-like feature called Notes. Then Twitter made it harder for users to engage with tweets that mentioned Substack. Eventually, Twitter blocked searches for the word Substack, which I noticed. Twitter's CEO Elon Musk claims the actions were necessary because Substack tried to download a massive portion of the Twitter database. Substack's CEO denies the claim.

25:55I'm with Substack's CEO on that. So are you on Twitter a lot? Should writers stay on? I mean, I view it as a necessary evil to continue to have an account there. I'm not really, I mean, I'm active on, depending on how much I am procrastinating, I might be active on it. I don't, but I don't really look at it anymore. I mean, there was a time when I think like a lot of people, especially in our industry, I was compulsively online and was constantly chatting with people on Twitter. Now I mostly use it just to share my work because I have an audience there. I've been on Twitter since I was 16, Cara.

26:32I know, but that was like last week. I mean, I have really complicated feelings about it because I think that it taught me how to write in some ways. How so? I mean, it taught me about brevity. When it was 140 characters, it was like a writing boot camp in some ways. And it's where I found an audience. A friend of Pivot, Casey Newton, wrote last week, you know, also Twitter is extremely hard to kill. And for journalists who have come to align it, there's almost no indignity. They won't suffer to get there fixed. But Matt Taibbi quit last week after he makes his living off of Substack. But he was also one of the handpicked journalists covering the shitty Twitter files.

27:08Covering. Covering, yeah, covering is a broad term. And journalist is a broad term in that case. Well, he is a journalist. Come on. Yes, he is a journalist. No, I'm talking about the Twitter files. I'm sorry, they didn't do a very good job. They did a bad job of reporting. That's all I'll say. It was weird. It was weird. They didn't, it was cherry-picked in a lot of ways. What about the use for politicians and the media that covers them? Because that's where it really comes alive in a lot of ways. It's that Hollywood doesn't use it that much except for marketing. And fewer and fewer people are using it.

27:40The numbers are going down. But the political media nexus is quite strong, no matter, like, people dunking on each other or putting things out or having a reaction to a reaction, etc. Right. How important is it still? I mean, I think it is important. I think it's important for that class of people the way that Instagram is important for Hollywood, right? It's this direct line where you don't have to filter through any media intermediaries, right? So it's very attractive for politicians or for any type of activist trying to speak directly to people. I don't think it's going to go away, but what do you think?

28:17I mean, why is this, why is he handling this so poorly? I don't know. Everyone thinks there's always a plan with him. I don't think there is. Really? I think he operates completely as an id. No, it's all id. What he feels that day, whether he decides to cover up the W on the Twitter sign, make titter, ha ha ha ha ha. Did he do that? Yeah, he did that, yeah. All it says to me is, hug me. My parents didn't. Would you hug him? No. You wouldn't? No. If he was crying and he asked you for a hug, you would not hug Elon Musk. I would not. I would not hug him. What would you do? Would you walk away? Say, you should get some help.

28:56That's what I would say. You need some help. Asking you for a hug would be asking for help. Go hug your children. Do you think, I'm imagining a succession style hug, frankly, like a awkward. Yes, that's what it would be. I would do that. I would hug Stormy Daniels, though. I certainly would. Well, of course. Who wouldn't hug Stormy Daniels? Exactly. Exactly. I don't know, but let's move off the house for a second. I'm just curious, when you think about it being used by Trump, he still gets on it by using Truth Social. How do you follow him there? Do you just look at Truth Social? Well, they actually banned me.

29:30They removed my account from Truth Social after my last— Why? Did the Chinese government have a problem with you? Sorry. I'm sorry. I wrote a story about Donald Trump around Christmas time where he's on the cover. Yes, it was good. And he did not like the story. And I cheekily used my Truth Social account that I had just to monitor him. And also this account called like Hot Girls Who Golf. Those are the only accounts that I followed on there. But I tweeted or I truthed, whatever the hell they call it, at him with the article. and said, like, you know, thank you for your time or something like that.

30:08And they immediately removed my account. Wow. So I haven't looked at it since then. I thought they were for free speech. I'm shocked and appalled. It turns out that they are not for free speech, Kara. Jason Miller is getting a text from me in a second. Oh, God. Well, that's better you than me. That's true. Although I don't even think he's running it. So do you think it's important for him to have these? It doesn't matter. Not at all. I don't know. I mean, Twitter was so essential to his political rise. It really was. And it was sort of like, it was his art form, right? I mean, this man is a frustrated, failed artist.

30:45And we know that that never ends well in history. And he really, I mean, he was perfect for that platform and fatally with fatal consequences. and it's weird that he is not on it and I kind of assumed that they would find a way to navigate whatever the complicated factories are with Truth Social Yeah, but he's not on it but he hasn't gone back to Twitter He's not, yeah He seems to like where he is He likes his new little home Well, or is he there because he has to be there because of whatever the intricacies of his deal are I think he likes it I think he likes the big all caps screaming, vomiting kind of thing Look, I think from him it's not really a difference, right?

31:29Because he's probably, he says to his assistant or whatever underling is meandering about his haunted mansion, he says, oh, post this, post this, all caps on this word, exclamation, enjoy, Stormy Daniels is a horse face, exclamation point, send it now. And that process is not as if he's sitting there on his phone, typing these things out and reading the replies, although they do, they will print out replies and bring them to him so he can see, which is a process that's existed since he was in Trump Tower. So he's not sitting there with his little fingers in his haunted mansion. Little fingers typing out.

32:05Yeah. So do you think in the election this is going to matter? And the nexus between Musk and him is important? Because there is a nexus now. Elon's moved towards Trump. I think when I was working on that story, a current campaign official told me that he would be back on Twitter, that they did have plans for him to come back. I'm sure that they are waiting until they want to level a particularly devastating insult at Ron DeSantis or whoever else emerges and they will arrive on that platform and he will have some sort of classically Trumpian missive to welcome himself back. And it's good that Elon's running it for them now, right?

32:46They're pretty thrilled. I mean, you know better than I do. I mean, do you think that they're similar personality-wise? Well, Elon's obviously a lot smarter, obviously. I mean, by a factor of a lot. But, you know, Trump has some more sense. Yeah, I do. I think they didn't have very good – they just need attention almost 24-7, and it's sad and pathetic and also dangerous. Do you worry about your data on there following you? I don't put anything on there now. I wouldn't put my credit card. To pay for Twitter Blue? You wouldn't pay for Twitter Blue? I mean, again, I have been on there since I was literally a child.

33:21I assume that my privacy has been violated on there for a very long time and will continue to be violated. But I don't think anything is private. Ah, the young people. I don't think anything is private. I don't think there's anything that you type. I'm not paying for Twitter. Well, of course not. I mean, I think that being verified is mortifying, and I've always thought that it was mortifying. So this has aged very well in the last few weeks, my refusal to get verified. Yes, yes, yeah. Well, here we are. All right. Let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

33:55Jennifer Sr. is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she won the Pulitzer Prize for her 2021 story, What Bobby McGilvane Left Behind. That story is now available as a book titled On Grief. Welcome, Jennifer Sr. Hey, Kara. How are you? Good. I'm glad to have you here and talking to us. Your book is wonderful, as I suspected. The story was amazing. I'm going to have you start. So walk us through your story. Broadly, it's about a family mourning the loss of their son who died on 9-11. It's also about memory and the act of journaling. It's also about misinformation, which I think I found really jarring.

34:31So tell us about it and what prompted you to do this. Well, the crudest answer is Bobby McElveen, who died on September 11th, was my brother's roommate. You know, both in college and when they were young men, they were roommates for eight straight years. almost to the day, right? Like they threw their duffel bags on the same bunk bed, you know, in early September. And then he died on September 11th, eight years later. I knew him, I adored him. It was devastating when he died. And what kind of led me to the story were a couple of things. I mean, it was the 20th anniversary, but those are kind of fake pegs.

35:10But The Atlantic was doing something and Jeff called me, Jeff Goldberg, the editor, and said, do you happen to know any families to whom this might have happened? Do you happen to have any, you know, we have like people thinking about like the policy and foreign policy and blah, blah, blah. And I was, and I said, you know, I do. And at first I thought I was pitching a marriage story because as you point out, you were flicking at the misinformation thing. I thought I was going to be writing a story about, initially, Bobby's father became a huge truther. He embraced all the 9-11 conspiracy theories.

35:50And in fact, he started tailoring his own, made them really bespoke, really arcane, got deep in the weeds about really, in the marshes, about some really weird stuff. And his wife is like totally indifferent to this stuff. She would walk across the street and around the corner and then go halfway across the country to never have to think about 9-11, much less its origins and all that stuff, right? So I thought, you know, screw all of the stories about, like, how do you get along with your Trump-loving uncle at Thanksgiving? like how do you stay married after like 20 years right after you've lost your son and negotiate that unbelievable gulf right that just seems so much bigger and so much more challenging so I thought I was going to be writing a story about a marriage but then I also realized there was a story to be written that was maybe even more to me I don't know if it's more beguiling because I'm a writer or whatever.

36:50Bobby was this diarist. He wanted to be a novelist. He kept all these diaries since he was a teenager. And his last diary was sitting on his desk when he died. And his father, in this total fugue state, gave that diary away to the woman that Bobby was about to propose to because she saw that her name was all over it and she wanted it. And he was trying to be kind, right? But after he did it, his wife was like, how could you have done that? How could you have given away the last thing our kid ever wrote? When this was a chance to hear his voice one last time. It was fresh conversation. Oh, my God.

37:33Are you kidding? She was so broken by this. And she was desperate to get this diary back. And she asked this woman, her name was also Jen, you know, would you give me this diary back? And she wouldn't give it back. And yeah, and I wanted that diary back. And that's the story. Yeah, that's the story. So Olivia, you also write long form and very pungently, same way, I think. What would you have done with this story? Have you written a story like this? I don't think I've ever written anything this tricky. I mean, it sounds like an impossibly difficult thing to navigate. Was it? That's incredibly nice of you to say.

38:11I mean, yeah and no. On the one hand, I'd been obsessed with that diary for 20 years. And in some ways, I'd been writing this story in my head for 20 years. So you'd be amazed at how fast something comes out when you've been unconsciously, subconsciously writing something. In fact, Olivia, I bet you know what that sense is like. I'm sure there are things that have been pent up. Oh, of course. And I think like the greatest impediment for me anyway with writing is when I don't have the time to sit and just think it through even just idly, right? Not even in my conscious mind. But if I haven't been able to take that time, that's when I'm bumping up into not knowing how to phrase something or whatever.

38:54But if I've spent any time at all mulling something over, usually it just comes right out. That's so interesting. And you know, and some of it's not even conscious. Exactly. Right? It's like you don't even know what work your unconscious mind is doing. So imagine having like a 20-year gestation period. Like there's no mammal I can think of that like, you know, is pregnant for 20 years or something. This was like the world's longest pregnancy. Like, I mean, I had this thing going for 20 years, you know? And so like I feel like that's a long gestation. Did you know you were ready? I was so ready to do it.

39:30But I mean, the tricky parts were like the McElveins have become these dear family friends. And my brother has remained very close to Bobby's younger brother. So what I didn't want to do was ruin these precious friendships over a piece of journalism because I had to have my priorities straight on that one. So I, too, had never done anything like this. What happened there? Yeah. How do you deal with that? Can I tell you, I sort of violated a lot of the traditional rules. I made sure that the McElvain sort of knew what was going to be in it. I do that. I read to them. I do that. Yeah, well, thank you.

40:08So I do too. If you're dealing with civilians, first of all, even with politicians. Well, I don't do that with politicians, but yeah. I don't tell them what's going to be in it, but I make sure the quotes are right, right? Of course, and never. I mean, I'm from the Gay-Till-E school of like, there should not be any surprises. If people are surprised, then you're probably being an asshole. Then you're being a dick. Exactly. And why be a dick? Right. You don't have to be a dick. Good journalism. And you're like marvelous proof, right? Because you've got all of these corkers, all of these blockbusters.

40:38And clearly everyone keeps coming back to you. So I think you're doing something. I mean, you are like a guy. I mean, somebody should actually come. They can't quit her. They can't quit her. They can't quit her. And so the question is like, I mean, one day I would love to sit down with you and find out how you manage everyone. Yeah, can we have like coffee or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, ladies, let's talk about this book. So I want to know what happened with the McElveins once they read it. I'll tell you, the best thing about their reaction was this. I mean, they loved the piece because it got everybody saying Bobby's name.

41:12But they also loved it because they're not fancy people. So a lot of people who lost people on September 11th have like annual golf tournaments and walkathons. And they had up their friends every year for money. And the McElvains are not the kind of people who do that. Like, that's not what they do, right? So they didn't have to, right? No, they didn't have to. You've made it that way. Yeah. Can you talk about memory and the fallibility of memory? Because I remember where I was on 9-11. Strangely, many people in the story have forgotten a lot about it. Obviously, they have to in some ways because it's so devastating.

41:54But memory and grief sort of get mixed up together in weird ways, especially when someone dies young. And people have different memories. Can you talk a little bit about when you're writing about it? Because you yourself also have memories that may not be the right memories, right? Oh, my God. Can I tell you the craziest thing about this? Talk about having a fault. Well, first I'll tell you about all the flawed memories that I sort of found in this story that totally transfixed me. so a really good example is that Jen the almost fiance because Bobby had bought a ring for her just hadn't proposed she lived with the McIlvains after September 11th because she just couldn't tolerate the echoing kind of emptiness of their apartment right or of her apartment where Bobby was now spending a lot of time so this is nuts to me if you asked Bobby's younger brother she stayed there with them for six months.

42:49If you ask Bobby's mom, she stayed there for a week. And she remembers having stayed there for two months. But the gulf between six months and a week? I mean, that's... And here's another one that I absolutely couldn't get over. Both Jeff, Bobby's brother, and Jen, they could not decide who slept in Bobby's bed during that time. Someone slept in Bobby's bed. And it was either his brother sleeping in his dead brother's bed, or it was his fiance sleeping in this man's bed that she was not going to marry. And how can it be that they couldn't remember waking up to all of Bobby's things? Wow. Right?

43:38I mean, it is amazing. what we choose. Well, it's part of grief, right? It's grief, right? It's how you choose. I mean, it's grief. It's how you deal with grief. I don't remember what I did this morning, but go ahead. Well, there's some argument that like, while we're grieving, things are more vivid, but I don't think that's true. I think that, you know, and this gets, by the way, you're skating on very dangerous, I don't want to say thin ice. I mean, this is a little bit treacherous because, of course, you want to believe the memories of people who have been raped, who have gone through traumas, who have gone through all kinds of terrible things.

44:14But it was unnerving to me to hear the different testimony, right? And we know this from kind of different eyewitness testimony at crimes that you can get radically different kind of yeah, sort of reports of what happened. But so here's an example. I mean, just to show how fallible my own stupid memory was about this. I was interviewed for a storytelling podcast maybe four months ago. And they said to me like, so what was it like asking the McIlvains to do this story? How delicate was it to ask them? And I was very cheerful. And I said, oh, they were super open-hearted. I wrote them a long, heartfelt, careful note.

45:01And they said, of course, yes, absolutely. We'll do anything we can to help you. And I went back and I looked at that note recently. It was not long and careful and heartfelt. It was like way too short and telegraphic and made me wince when I reread it, like it was too careful. and the Mackle and Helen was so cautious with me. She was not in any way like, oh, absolutely, anything you need. She said that she wanted to only answer my questions in writing. That is how, like, and I think I couldn't tolerate the idea of. Unkind, being unkind. Of pressuring them, exactly. Right. Of being, of pressuring the manticore, like of keeping at it and saying, no, you really do want to sit and talk to me.

45:55But Jennifer, isn't it sort of like when something works out, though, and when the reaction to the story is positive from your subjects, doesn't, I find this happens to me, too, where I forget all of the negotiating that went into getting the access that I got in the end. Or I forget how difficult it was or what the fact-checking process was like or all of that. just fades or gets distorted. And I remember it as an easy process. Like this is the second time I'm going to use this metaphor, which is so bananas. Why I'm doing this, I don't know. But it's like childhood. You forget. You forget the pain.

46:34And it's just like, oh, yay, a baby. Like a totally awesome baby. And yes, right. I was like, oh, yay, a totally awesome baby. And I forgot what I did. But I also think it was just, it was too disruptive of my own self-concept to think that like, oh, I'm an empathetic journalist. I would never have like leaned on the McElvains in this way. But your mind protects you, I think, right? Your mind is protecting your self-image when that happens, I think. Totally. And that's just what happens. I think that our minds are protecting us in all kinds of ways. And that's what happens with mammary. Then how do you go now?

47:09I'm going to ask you a couple more questions. You interviewed Steve Bannon, was not a kind piece, but you were right in there with him. And he answered, you know, I know he's very available. I know I'm aware of that. And you have interviewed him too, Olivia. But when they know, sometimes Olivia did that famous Trump thing when you were in this office. And I kept thinking, why are they letting her in there? What, you wouldn't have invited me? I would not have. Are you kidding? No, no, absolutely not. Not unless if every drawer was locked. So how do you, come on, you both interviewed someone like a Steve Bannon who has, who is not in his best interest necessarily to talk to you.

47:44So I'd love to, you know, in this case, it probably wasn't in their best interest to talk to you, but it wasn't in their not best interest to talk to you in this case because it did preserve his memory in a very lovely way. But how do you think both of you think about that when you're doing these kind of long form things and you have to spend significant amounts of time with people? You first, Olivia. Oh, well, I'm very curious to hear your opinion on Bannon and his calculation. But I think for a lot of people like that, they know what they're getting into. Steve Bannon is certainly savvy about the media.

48:17I mean, he's been manipulating the media for years positively, right? Spinning himself as being central to history. And for someone like that, he just wants attention. He wants to be, I mean, we were talking about last night's episode of Succession. Jennifer, I don't know if you watched it. But when Tom is like, it's important that I was on the plane with him. I mean, that's what all of these guys are doing. They just want everyone to know that they were on the plane. So they'll take the hit. They know that they're probably going to have a negative interpretation of at least some of their story or what they're claiming.

48:52But that's really not what it's about to cooperate with mainstream or liberal media. It's about attention and it's about writing themselves into history. I mean, that is what Steve Bannon is doing, in my view. I think that's right. I mean, I think megalomania plays no small part. I think that also there's, look, he's partly, and we know this, he might deny it, but he is a part of the establishment. He was a Goldman guy. He was a Hollywood guy. Oh, my God, he's going to hate this so much, Jennifer. But the point is, he craves kind of the establishment's approval, right? So the Atlantic, New York Magazine, they're all places to get your passport stamped that I think matter to you.

49:37A lot like Trump, right? I mean, for Trump, it's like he hates the media, hates the media. All that he wants is the acceptance of the New York media elite. That is what animates him. Right, and he came of age in New York. Yeah, he came of age here. So, right, exactly. I think this all matters to these guys. Yeah, I can't believe they talked to you. I still can't believe it. Let me ask you two more questions. We've got to go soon. What should people know about grief? What did you learn about grief from this book? Oh, yeah, that's great. That's a good question. Two things. First of all, telling anyone how to grieve, to move past it, or you should be.

50:12There's a tyranny, I think, associated with grieving in a way that you've got to do it sequentially. You've got to do it in steps. There's a certain point in which you should be done. And no one grieves sequentially or logically. Everybody grieves really idiosyncratically. That's the first thing that I would say. The second thing is that some people never get over their grief. And I didn't realize that some people don't want to get over their grief. They want to live in it, and they want to inhabit it. And it's a way to keep—people live in terror of forgetting someone. I wrote at some point that it's the craziest thing that the dead abandon you, but then you abandon the dead.

50:55And I think that people don't want to abandon the dead, and that that's sometimes why they perpetually grieve. or that they stay in their grief. And you've got to respect that. You know, you can't view it as odd or pathological or it's just another response. I was so floored. I think it came out a few months ago. Some medical group said that they had determined something called, I think, long grief or extended grief. And I thought that was so strange and so silly because the idea that after a year or after six months or whatever the time period was that they determined that it was unusual, how could that be?

51:38Well, pathologizing it or making it like its own DSN category is just completely wackadoodle to me. That's so true. and there have been arguments about that, you know, with obviously the more rational heads not prevailing saying, this is a normal response to the human condition. Are you kidding me? Like, this is just what love looks like inside out. Like, it's grief. Like, what are we talking about here? Right. Yeah. That's absolutely true. I mean, it's interesting. I think you can use it positively too, you know, in a way to keep you going. That's right. That's right. But I think I think that's so interesting, Jennifer, like the idea that people are terrified of exiting that period of trauma.

52:20I always think the hardest part of losing someone is not the immediate aftermath and the shock, but it's that period of time. Maybe it's a week later, maybe it's a month later when people stop calling and people stop dropping by and you stop having cause to mention the name. And so the idea that your story was saving them somehow, saving this family because it put their son's name in people's mouths again is so powerful. That's so lovely for you to say. And yes. You wrote another piece about COVID. I want to end up on this. You have long COVID. I do. And you wrote very beautifully about it in The Atlantic.

53:02I know it's interesting because there's been so much trauma for this country and individually for everybody. between 9-11, the wars, COVID, everything else. Talk a little bit about what prompts you to write about this. Many people don't want to write about their long COVID. I know a lot of reporters who have it who don't write about it. Talk to us a little bit about that. Well, some of it was self-serving. I knew that my byline was not appearing, and I wanted people to know why. Partly inspired by a jackass from the New York Times who one day cared when you and I are really like, when we're face to face and we're deep in our cups, I will tell you who said to me, like, you know, is this your excuse for being underproductive?

53:48And it's like, wow. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. They live in fear of that at the New York Times, but go ahead. Yeah, I know. I know. But no, what it really was, was, you know, I think I was struck by how many people kept saying, are you better now? Are you better? Not understanding that it was chronic and that there is no such thing as better, that for a lot of us, like we don't know if we're ever going to be better. I actually have something that, it's got a big, long, ugly name called hyperadrenergic POTS that most people don't recover from. I was like in the asterisked percentile of unlucky where like I might've got, it looks like I'll have something permanent out of this, although there is a chance that my body will stop attacking itself and that I won't have this autoimmune condition forever.

54:35But people with long COVID, they are looking at possibly, I mean, they don't know when they are looking at ever recovering. And so I wanted to sort of make clear, please stop asking if I'm better. And also, there's a certain amount of prurience once people find out. They will buttonhole you. It's a lot of the things that actually Helen McIlvain had to deal with. People don't know the right thing to say. There's some grief and mourning in this. Oh, yeah. Well, and also I'm mourning just like the fact that I used to be able to like walk without pain. And I can't even imagine what it'll be like. I mean, will I ever be able to like hike?

55:16You know, I mean, I would like just to be able to take a very long stroll without it hurting. And I have been able to do that lately, which is good. But knock on wood, you know, knocking now. But maybe I'll be able to hike one day. But, yeah, I don't know. I think I was grieving hard. I think that's right. And I don't know. I work a lot of things out on paper. That's just like how a lot of writers roll. So I'm interested in the writers who don't want to do it. It was beautifully done. I thought it was a real slap in the face to people in a good way. You know what I mean? In terms of sort of telling them about that when they want to.

55:53You know, as you know, I had a stroke and then I just had a heart surgery and stuff like that. And the way people behaved, of course, mine is much more temporary than yours is. And I was very irritated by it on lots of levels. And I never wrote about it. But when I read it, I was like, uh-huh. Well, but also, I mean, I can understand just because, I mean, you're a lot better known than I am. And I think you would have had to deal with, your inbox would have just been teeming for too many weeks. And people still wouldn't have necessarily, I still got a lot of weird emails in response. Like even after I'd sort of written about all my bet noirs and the weird things that like people would say to me, they would still, and they were so well-meaning.

56:37Explain what one of them was. Explain what one of them was. A lot of them had weird advice. Oh, you should take, you know, orange peel. Yeah, right. Right, exactly. I had a lot of that. I had more than one of those. I had more than five of those, in fact, you know, and it's like, I mean, anyway. Yeah, I had a lot of you should. So now you have to slow down because of stress. I'm like, it's a genetic condition, you fucking idiot. Oh, I got that from, you know, you should take time out to be sick and you should slow down. And it's like, you know, I did do that. And have you met me? Like, I mean, do you know anything about how work identified I am?

57:13I mean, like, that's like, and also there's nothing, I can't walk. There's so many things I can't do. This is one thing I can do. I can lie in bed and type. Like, please let me lie in bed and type. Like, you know. Has your relationship to the idea of loss changed through the course of working on this project? I don't know. I mean, has it changed? I mean, in some of the ways that I said, I think in that I didn't realize, I mean, I'm thinking more about grief, that I didn't realize that people could live in a glass house of sorrow for forever and that that was where they needed to be. You know, that was certainly something that, but in terms of, I mean, I think it's made me very acutely, I mean, because I also lost my health, right?

58:07In a way that I don't know if it's permanent or not. Nine and a half months already feels like forever. so I guess I am starting to develop a more philosophical attitude maybe toward what I have and trying to do that slightly more Buddhist thing of I mean I am the opposite of Buddhist I am neurotic to my core but I am trying to notice things and appreciate things and breathe thing and breathe in and breathe out. Breathe in the bad and live with it and then breathe it out. Take on my suffering and other people's suffering and then breathe it out. I mean, all the things you... I'm reading Buddhist books.

58:54Was I doing that before? I was not. No. Wow. Don't do that. Yeah. Yeah. People gave them to me after I had a stroke and I was like, no. I would be afraid to give you something like that. You should be. I would say people should be afraid to recommend that to me too. And then people I really, I mean, it's like, you really do want to slap people who recommend like that stuff, especially people like us again. But you know what? I've kind of secretly loved it. And I'm doing oxygen therapy for an hour and a half every day where I can't bring a screen inside my little hyperbaric oxygen tank. So what do you do?

59:29You read like a Buddhist book. It's not the worst thing. It's not the worst thing. This is what I'll say. It's not the worst thing. Okay. On that note, and orange peel, orange peel. And Jennifer, how are you doing? How are you doing? How are you doing? Anyway, I love those lines. They made me laugh. How are you doing? And then how are you doing? How are you doing? That's right. No, really. How are you? I'm terrible. Thank you. I'm so awful. Wait, I'm going to enumerate now all the ways I'm terrible because that's what That's what you want to hear. That's what they want to hear. Anyway, Jennifer Senior, you should read her really wonderful book on grief based on an article she did for The Atlantic and won the Pulitzer Prize.

1:00:09It's available now. I really appreciate it. Both of you are two of my favorite writers. And everybody should read this and get a hard copy so that they can keep it and pass it around. Thank you so much. And you two are two of my favorite journalism gals or dames or broads. I think we just said you're on broads. Dames. Jennifer, thank you so much. Thank you so much. All right, Olivia, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

1:00:56Odoo comes in. It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odoo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. That means CRM accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload. No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business.

1:01:30Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

1:01:43Support for the show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in. It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odoo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. That means CRM accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload.

1:02:12No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

1:02:50Okay, Olivia, let's do wins and fails. I'll go first. Obviously, the fail is the Tennessee state legislature full of sexual harassers and strange people, peers on people's seats. They voted to remove two members last week after they joined an anti-gun protest. At the time of this taping, local national officials are expected to vote on whether to reinstate them. That's probably going to happen. Justin Pearson and Justin Jones were expelled by Republican colleagues. A third member who participated in the protest, Gloria Johnson, was not expelled. She is white. Two are black men. It's a very bad look.

1:03:22But as I've come to learn, the Tennessee State Legislature is a mosh pit of weird. Win, obviously Succession, and Jesse Armstrong and Mark Milod, who's the director of that episode. Jesse Armstrong wrote it and is the creator of Succession. Just a beautiful hour of television, I have to say. It was really moving. So those are my wins and fails. Olivia? I guess my win has to be Sting, who it turns out is receiving$5 ,000 a day because Diddy sampled every breath you take without his permission. Wow. So he pays him$5 ,000 a day for those rights. Wow. And he deserves it. That was a great song. Right?

1:04:03Great song. A great song. Yeah, all that sampling is going to be a big deal. Yeah. Especially with AI.

1:04:12I'm not pandering, but I guess it's Elon Musk. It's not going well. No. No. He needs some help. He needs a hug. He does need some help. but you're not going to give it to him. You should hug him. I mean, look, if he asked, if he was like crying and he said, could I have a hug? I don't know. I wouldn't like walk away. That's sociopathic. Hello. Nice to meet you. I'm sorry. All right, Olivia, you can hug him. I will just, let's take that the headline. I'm not offering it. I'm just saying if he asked, I wouldn't walk away because I'm not a sociopath. All right. I'm going to give him your cell just in case.

1:04:48All right. We want to hear from you. send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind, go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. All right, Olivia, that's the show. Thank you for joining me. You're wonderful. It was really good. It was a really good discussion. And you can find Olivia's cover story on Stormy Daniels in the latest issue of New York Magazine. It's on the cover. Did I say that again? It's a wonderful piece. And it's very thought-provoking in a lot of ways. We're excited. What are you working on next? Ron DeSantis. Call me, Ron DeSantis, if you're listening.

1:05:21Yeah, he's not going to listen to this. Yeah. I think his PR person called me a groomer. So, oh, don't assume that'll help you. Oh, why haven't you tried to groom me? What the hell? No. Oh, my God. Stop. This is going to become an internet thing. Anyway, I don't think I'm going to go there. I'm not saying a word. Anyway, we'll be back on Friday for more. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Andrade engineered this episode. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

1:05:53We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Thanks again to Olivia Nuzzi and Jennifer Senior. Oh, God.

1:06:11Support for the show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in. It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odoo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. That means CRM accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload.

1:06:39No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

1:07:14Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.