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1:07

I'm Alan Alda, and this is Clear

1:10

and Vivid, conversations about

1:12

connecting and communicating.

1:17

I took out the maximum amount of loans

1:20

every semester. And

1:23

I used the loans mainly to cover

1:25

living expenses. After

1:28

I graduated, I went home and took

1:30

off my gown and everything and just

1:33

felt so guilty for

1:35

going to college just because I knew

1:37

the

1:38

student loan payments were going to kick

1:41

in

1:41

in six months or so. And

1:43

I was really going to struggle

1:45

with that for the rest of my life.

1:48

And so it was never

1:51

something that I felt entitled to or

1:53

that I even deserved

1:56

just because it was so extravagant.

2:00

That's Stephanie Land. And

2:03

while that student loan may have seemed frighteningly

2:05

extravagant for a single mother struggling

2:08

to survive while cleaning houses,

2:11

it paid off in ways she could never have dreamed

2:13

of. It paved the way to

2:15

a book that became a best-seller, then

2:18

to a television series with tens of millions

2:21

of viewers. The book was

2:23

made, hard work, low pay,

2:25

and a mother's will to survive. Stephanie

2:28

Land now has a new book out today that

2:31

tells in gripping detail the backstory

2:33

of Made, what her life has been

2:35

like since the book and TV series, and

2:38

it lays out a devastating case for the

2:40

need to reform the tattered social

2:43

safety net. I'm

2:46

really looking forward to this because your

2:48

writing is not only so brilliant, but

2:51

the first book you wrote, Made, became

2:54

such a phenomenon of communication in

2:56

this country, explaining

2:58

one group of us to another. And

3:01

that's so powerful. Congratulations on

3:04

that. Thank you.

3:06

That's a new way of describing it. I like that.

3:09

Encouraging a conversation from one group

3:11

to the other. Yeah,

3:12

we don't, because those

3:14

of us who live above the poverty line don't really

3:16

know what it's like. We

3:18

think we can imagine it, but your book is so vivid,

3:21

it's so immediate and present. It

3:23

gives us a glimmer of what it must be like, especially

3:26

because we share so many things with you. Poverty

3:29

was very sudden for you. You came from a middle-class

3:31

family, right?

3:33

Yeah. My parents didn't start

3:35

off that way. They

3:38

found out they were going to have

3:40

me when they were 19.

3:41

We were very poor when

3:45

I was

3:47

a kid. My mom

3:49

was the first generation student

3:51

of our family. She went on to get her

3:55

master's. My

3:57

dad was an electrician.

3:59

By the time I was in

4:01

middle school or high school, I was, you know, considered

4:04

what used to be middle class. So,

4:06

yeah, it was very sudden to find myself with

4:08

absolutely no resources.

4:17

How did that happen? I

4:22

left my boyfriend, the

4:26

father of my child. We were still

4:28

living together. It was obviously not

4:31

great. He was

4:35

very emotionally abusive and just

4:37

really not nice in general. And

4:41

I finally, you know, decided I needed

4:43

to leave. And

4:46

he punched out a plexiglass window

4:49

as he was leaving, and I

4:51

called the cops. And so that just kind of

4:53

set

4:53

off this whole

4:55

flurry of court

4:59

documents and custody

5:01

and a bunch of stuff that I

5:04

really didn't know I was getting into

5:06

until I was there. How old were you?

5:09

I was 28, I

5:11

think 29. I

5:13

was 29. And

5:17

so I moved in very briefly with my

5:20

dad and my stepmom, and then that

5:22

also didn't work out. And my

5:24

only option was to move into a homeless shelter.

5:27

And so when I moved in there,

5:30

I only had like $100, maybe $200, and that was it. And

5:36

I very quickly learned what a precarious

5:40

situation that is to literally

5:44

have nothing. And there isn't really

5:46

that much support from government

5:48

services or, you know, you can't

5:51

walk into an office and say,

5:53

hey, I need some money to pay rent this

5:55

month. It just doesn't exist.

5:58

We hear about all kinds of services that

6:01

are available but it's a tangle

6:04

to make your

6:05

way through it, isn't it? It is. It's the equivalent of a whole other

6:08

part-time job. There's different

6:11

departments

6:11

for every assistance you

6:13

may need. So, you know, there's

6:16

a department for utilities

6:18

and heating bills. There's another one that

6:21

might have a $10 voucher for

6:24

gas for your car. There's

6:26

a different service for child care.

6:29

There's one for food,

6:32

obviously. And usually the food and the cash assistance

6:35

are the same. But the cash

6:37

assistance is so

6:39

impossible to

6:43

figure out, really, that nobody really

6:45

tries anymore, which in

6:47

my opinion is very purposeful

6:50

just to discourage people from signing up.

6:54

And then there's, you know, the

6:56

women infants and children where

6:58

you get those coupons for milk.

7:01

And

7:03

a lot of these appointments that you have with case

7:05

workers are during the business

7:07

day. And so if you

7:09

have a job that's during, you know, traditional

7:12

business hours, then you have to take off

7:14

work to go to these appointments.

7:16

It's all very, very

7:19

backwards. Someone recently described it to me as you're trying

7:21

to get out to a good wave in the

7:26

ocean,

7:27

but waves keep knocking you

7:29

back to the shore. And I really

7:33

liked that metaphor.

7:38

You know, what struck me reading your books is that we

7:41

hear the term single mother all the time. But

7:43

it's seldom thought of in

7:45

the same context as being homeless and then having to

7:47

find some way to have your child

7:49

taken care of while you're working at

7:52

a minimum wage job.

7:54

Yeah, yeah.

7:55

At one point I

7:57

heard a statistic that most people are not

7:59

homeless.

7:59

people who enter homeless

8:03

shelters are, I think

8:05

it was

8:05

like somewhere around 70 or 80% are

8:09

mothers with children who

8:12

are fleeing domestic violence. And

8:15

it's incredibly common.

8:17

And

8:18

there's a lot of stigma surrounding that.

8:21

You know, there's a lot of blame

8:23

put

8:23

on mothers

8:25

in general as a society.

8:27

But like for single moms, it's very

8:30

much, you know, like, well, why did you choose

8:32

that person to be your kid's dad?

8:35

And it just kind of gets

8:37

more and more ridiculous from there.

8:39

And the assistance programs

8:42

start off with the assumption that you're probably

8:44

scamming them. At least that's

8:47

the feeling I get, I think, from reading your book.

8:50

Very much. And, you know, I am

8:52

I'm a very white person. I

8:55

come

8:57

into that situation with white privilege.

9:02

And so for

9:03

me to write about

9:05

my experience, it doesn't even come close

9:07

to what a person of color experiences

9:09

in that situation. And so, but there's

9:12

this,

9:16

I don't even know, it's I

9:17

think it's just a general

9:20

assumption that people

9:22

don't want to work. And

9:25

so, like, they are on food

9:27

stamps, because

9:29

they just choose to be somehow because

9:32

they think it's nice.

9:34

And you describe

9:36

how difficult it is sometimes when you're eating

9:39

the stamps, people look down on you.

9:41

Absolutely.

9:42

I would have to sneak

9:44

into like the grocery store

9:48

in the off hours and use self

9:50

checkout if I was buying like candy

9:53

for my kids stocking

9:55

or something like that because

9:57

someone might feel you didn't deserve to buy

9:59

candy. if you needed stamps. Yeah,

10:02

yeah. But in order to get the assistance,

10:05

I get the impression from your book that you have to prove

10:07

you have no money or jewels. How

10:10

do you prove you don't have something?

10:13

It goes as far as proving

10:15

that you don't have a burial plot.

10:17

How do

10:19

you prove that? I don't

10:21

know. How

10:24

do you do that? What satisfies

10:26

them?

10:27

I mean, you check no for the

10:29

question, but there's always this

10:34

fear that they're

10:36

going to look into it somehow. It's not

10:38

a situation where you

10:41

can just lie.

10:45

I mean, it's the government. And

10:48

so it's something

10:50

that you obviously want to be very truthful

10:52

about, about your situation and everything

10:54

that you have, because you're in

10:56

such a precarious position that

10:58

if you make a mistake

11:01

somehow, and sometimes that's like

11:03

your form getting lost in the mail, like,

11:06

then you can't eat. And

11:08

so, you know,

11:10

as ridiculous as all the questions are, it's

11:12

still just like,

11:14

what is going on here? Like,

11:17

I'm trying to feed my child.

11:19

Yeah. And I was really struck

11:22

by your account of keeping track all

11:24

day long on different pieces of paper

11:27

of what your expenses were and how many dollars

11:29

and cents you had left before

11:31

you'd have to figure out if you couldn't pay your rent

11:33

that month, that you had to be conscious

11:36

of that all the time. That

11:38

was a very telling account to me because most

11:40

of us don't have to think about whether or not we're going to be

11:42

able to pay the rent when we're buying things.

11:46

But every moment, every purchase of food

11:48

or toothpaste, you had

11:50

to see if you could fit it into your budget this

11:52

week. And you said that at one

11:54

point you were so close to the age that you had to

11:56

exist on peanut butter for the last week

11:58

of the month. Yeah.

11:59

Yeah,

12:01

all of a hard time eating peanut butter these

12:03

days. Just

12:05

because I had to survive off of it so much.

12:09

It was just

12:12

constant. I mean,

12:14

it's something that I forced

12:16

myself to think about a lot. When

12:19

the book first came out five

12:22

and a half years ago or so, I

12:24

ended up talking a lot about toilet paper. Because

12:29

that was one thing that still

12:32

today, I need toilet paper and I

12:34

open this door somewhere

12:37

in my house

12:40

and there's a lot of it. I

12:43

can't get over that.

12:45

Yeah, that's one thing. I

12:48

don't have a fear of running out of

12:50

shampoo anymore.

12:54

I take

12:56

a ridiculous amount of vitamins because

12:59

I have the privilege and ability

13:03

to. And before, it was

13:05

just those were so far out of my

13:07

means.

13:09

I had an appointment with my therapist

13:12

this morning who I've been seeing for four

13:14

years. That

13:16

was just another thing that was unheard

13:18

of and I really

13:21

needed therapy then.

13:23

That really struck me in the book, in

13:25

the first book you wrote because we think of the pressures

13:28

of not having money. But

13:30

we don't often think of what that can lead to in terms

13:32

of the damage it does to your emotional

13:34

well-being, to your health, physical

13:37

and mental. And you would have these

13:39

terrible panic attacks, right?

13:41

Yeah. I

13:44

still have them.

13:47

It's not like you can turn off PTSD.

13:52

And so I really

13:54

thought it was some kind of weakness

13:57

on my part that I couldn't handle.

13:59

handle it

14:01

because it's ingrained in you

14:04

to be resilient and

14:06

to, you know, you've

14:09

got this, I know that you can handle

14:11

it. And like even my friends would

14:13

say that to me. And so if

14:17

I've had a moment of weakness where,

14:20

you know, my brain, my

14:22

body was telling me like you definitely

14:24

do not have this.

14:28

I felt like I was

14:29

failing somehow.

14:38

So you managed to write an account, a very vivid

14:41

book about what this experience was like for

14:43

you. And it became a best

14:45

selling book called made. And

14:48

then it was made into a movie for a series

14:50

for Netflix, which was hugely

14:52

popular. It's a big number. 67 million

14:55

households have watched it so far. That

14:59

was an amazing leap forward in your circumstances.

15:01

What was that like, you know, just to suddenly have

15:04

some money and suddenly have fame, people

15:06

coming up to you in supermarkets who didn't know

15:09

you? Well,

15:11

Alan, it was pretty, it

15:14

was pretty overwhelming and traumatizing.

15:17

And I nobody

15:19

really

15:21

tells you

15:23

or gives you pointers on how to handle success.

15:25

And I

15:27

went from food stamps to

15:30

being a public figure to

15:33

being a best seller in three

15:36

years.

15:38

That's why I had therapy this morning.

15:41

Just I

15:42

mean, it's there's so many layers

15:44

to unravel. There's, you

15:46

know, there's the survivor's guilt.

15:49

And there's

15:50

just this feeling

15:52

like you're getting away with

15:54

something. And then

15:57

like the my biggest moment.

16:00

in my career happened

16:01

in the middle of a pandemic. And

16:05

so there was that too. But I'm also

16:07

like,

16:08

I'm,

16:11

I'm really introverted in real

16:13

life, and I'm, I'm really shy.

16:16

And so the

16:17

thing that I really had a

16:20

hard time with was

16:22

feeling like I needed to make space for

16:25

people's

16:25

emotions. When they

16:29

came up and talked to me wherever I was, you

16:31

know, in the grocery store,

16:33

picking my kid up from school,

16:35

and so suddenly, especially

16:38

after the series came out, people

16:41

were approaching me and thanking me, and

16:44

they were very emotional, but they were also telling me

16:46

stories about violence

16:49

that they had experienced,

16:52

or that their friend had. And that

16:56

was, that was really difficult

16:58

for me. I learned a term called secondary

17:00

trauma. What is that? It's

17:04

usually referred to with like paramedics

17:06

and

17:07

medical and therapy

17:10

type, when you

17:12

are experiencing trauma in like

17:15

a secondary way, just because

17:17

someone is having either

17:20

a traumatic experience next to you that you

17:22

are taking care of, or they are

17:24

kind of

17:26

relaying their traumatic story to

17:28

you. And, and

17:30

you are, and it triggers a lot of

17:32

things that you have been through as well. And,

17:35

and

17:36

so I

17:37

didn't,

17:38

I wasn't expecting that, like

17:41

the book doesn't really focus on

17:43

domestic violence,

17:46

mostly because I knew my

17:49

daughter was going to read it.

17:50

And

17:53

so I didn't want that to be the focus. I wanted

17:55

it more to be my

17:59

reaction to what

17:59

I was experiencing. And

18:04

then when the series came out, and the series was

18:06

very focused on domestic violence,

18:08

obviously, which

18:10

I really appreciated. I

18:13

can't think of any other

18:16

visual representation of

18:19

how traumatic

18:21

and violent

18:23

emotional abuse can be.

18:27

So I loved that they focused

18:29

on that. But suddenly,

18:31

people were talking to me about it and asking me

18:33

a lot of questions. And it just

18:36

brought up all of this physical

18:40

reactions and things

18:42

that I wasn't

18:44

really expecting. But

18:47

I guess the body keeps the score

18:49

in that way.

18:50

And you really had to sacrifice

18:53

some of your own well-being in exchange for

18:55

the positive effect that the series had. I've

18:58

heard that there were more phone calls to the domestic

19:01

abuse helpline as a result

19:03

of that series than they had ever had before.

19:06

Yeah, in the month of October,

19:09

the series came out in October 1, 2021.

19:13

And in that month, the domestic

19:16

violence hotline received more

19:19

calls in that month

19:21

than they had on a

19:23

monthly basis in their entire history.

19:32

When we come back from our break, Stephanie

19:34

Land tells how in her 30s, she

19:36

juggled cleaning houses with attending

19:39

college and how that crystallized

19:42

a lifelong passion for writing into

19:44

the book made. Just

19:49

a reminder that Clear and Vivid is nonprofit,

19:52

with everything after expenses going to the

19:55

Center for Communicating Science at Stony

19:57

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19:59

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20:02

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20:04

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20:07

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21:22

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21:25

wound and one train wreck. When

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21:29

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21:32

Follow Anne and Jenny as they travel through hilarious

21:34

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Read it R.

21:47

This is Clear

21:49

and Vivid and now back to my conversation

21:51

with Stephanie Land. We'd been

21:53

exploring both the personal and public

21:56

reactions to her first book, Made.

21:59

So one of the

22:01

things that came out of this was a new book called Class,

22:04

which really is a prequel to Made, I

22:06

guess, because it's how Made got made.

22:09

How you became an expert writer and the experiences

22:12

you had along the way. How

22:14

much college had you had before you started

22:17

writing?

22:17

Well, I've known that I

22:19

was going to grow up and be a writer since

22:22

I was in the fourth grade. And

22:26

so it was a daily

22:30

exercise and habit. I

22:33

kept journals and diaries, but I

22:35

didn't go to school for it or anything.

22:38

And it wasn't until my

22:41

early 30s that I was in

22:43

college in

22:44

writing workshops. This was

22:46

before made was written, right? You

22:49

managed to get to college, even

22:51

though you were still working as a household cleaner.

22:55

How did you manage that? How did you find the money

22:57

to go to college?

22:58

I didn't. I

23:01

borrowed money. I took out the maximum

23:03

amount of loans

23:04

every semester.

23:07

And I used the loans mainly to

23:09

cover living

23:10

expenses. Looks incredibly

23:13

low at that time. Like I think

23:15

about it now. My living expenses were

23:17

usually somewhere around a thousand

23:20

dollars, give or take.

23:23

That worked out almost exact

23:25

to the amount that I was borrowing in

23:27

student loans every year. I remember

23:29

you saying at one point that you expected not

23:32

to be able to pay off the loans as long as

23:34

you lived because of the interest.

23:37

Yeah. You just kept multiplying.

23:40

That must have been a feeling not unlike the

23:42

feeling you had trying to figure out if you had enough

23:44

money for toothpaste.

23:46

Well, the student loans,

23:47

it

23:49

was just this thing

23:51

that you never really thought

23:54

of. Because

23:56

if you started to think about it, you wouldn't

23:59

go to college.

23:59

school anymore. And so

24:03

like,

24:03

it was just something

24:06

that I considered to be an

24:08

amount of debt that I would carry

24:11

with me for the rest of

24:13

my life. I,

24:15

I had this moment of like,

24:18

after I graduated, I went

24:20

home and

24:23

took off my, you know, gown and everything and

24:25

just felt so

24:28

guilty for, for going

24:30

to college, just because I knew

24:32

the student

24:33

loan payments were going to kick

24:36

in, in six months or so

24:38

and, and I was

24:41

really going to struggle

24:42

with that for the rest of my life.

24:44

And, and I, you know, as

24:47

a person with anxiety, of course, that snowballs

24:49

into I failed my kids,

24:52

I'm not going to be able to put them through college.

24:53

And

24:56

so it was never

24:59

something that I felt entitled to,

25:01

or that I even deserved,

25:04

just because it was

25:06

so extravagant. And you had

25:08

no idea that you'd even be able to make some kind

25:10

of living from writing. What

25:13

did you hope that maybe you'd be a teacher or

25:15

what?

25:16

That was the original plan. I

25:19

wanted to get my

25:21

master's degree and master's

25:24

of fine arts, so that

25:26

I could teach on a college level.

25:28

I had assumed that

25:31

that would be a good job

25:33

and job security. And, and

25:36

it would be something

25:36

that could offer benefits and, and that

25:39

I, I could do happily. So when

25:42

I

25:43

found out that I didn't get into

25:45

the MFA program, I had

25:47

to readjust my

25:50

goals and all of my visions

25:52

and everything. And I ended up

25:55

learning how to freelance

25:57

and

25:59

just kind of got lucky and had

26:02

an essay go viral. That

26:05

eventually turned into the book made,

26:08

but I started getting

26:11

a lot of jobs because everyone had read that

26:13

essay.

26:14

And I remember a couple of wonderful scenes

26:16

in the book where you got encouragement, especially

26:18

from one teacher who had

26:20

looked at a short piece you wrote and

26:22

called it solid gold. Yeah,

26:25

yeah. I remember reading it

26:27

and thinking, boy, this is so vivid and

26:29

concrete. What it was like

26:31

to clean out bathrooms of men who didn't

26:33

flush the toilets. There's

26:36

something so clear about that. So

26:39

the solid gold moment was as clear

26:42

as imagining an unflushed

26:43

toilet. Right. Is that what you're saying?

26:48

Well, it's hard to miss the feeling you must have gone

26:51

through. And the other thing that sticks in my mind

26:53

about encouragement was the teacher

26:55

who read your essay, was she read it in

26:57

the coffee shop?

26:59

Yeah, yeah. She read the, the

27:01

concessions of the

27:02

housekeeper was what I was calling it back

27:04

then. And you were off getting coffee

27:07

and you came back with your coffee and

27:10

she said what? She

27:11

said, Stephanie, this is going to be

27:13

a movie. This

27:16

needs to be a book. Don't you see how this

27:18

needs to be a book?

27:19

Yeah, it's so important that kind

27:21

of encouragement from people you trust.

27:24

So important, isn't it?

27:26

It's priceless. I mean, it's,

27:29

it can change the course of your life to

27:32

have, especially a

27:35

person in authority, a person who is

27:37

a mentor

27:39

and, you know, person who

27:41

is like literally teaching you to

27:44

tell you that you're good. You

27:48

know, that you're a very good writer.

27:52

There's another that scene in the book where she,

27:54

it's Deborah Magpie Erling. And

27:57

she told my, daughter

28:00

in front of me, you know, your mom is a very

28:02

good writer and

28:05

my daughter doesn't remember

28:07

that moment, but I'll never

28:10

forget it. Yes. Yeah.

28:12

But you didn't always get encouragement.

28:15

I remember you were bringing your daughter to

28:17

the writing class, the undergraduate

28:19

writing class, right? And

28:22

then you were told by the MFA professor something

28:24

not very encouraging about bringing your

28:26

daughter to class. What was that?

28:29

When I first approached the

28:31

head of the department about wanting

28:34

to get an MFA, she told me babies

28:38

don't belong in grad school. And

28:42

I never understood that one because she

28:45

had children when she was in grad

28:47

school.

28:49

But also why not?

28:53

Like, why just because I have kids, I

28:55

can't get an MFA

28:57

degree? Like that just, it doesn't make sense

28:59

to me. You don't want to bring real things into writing

29:02

class. I guess not. Writing

29:04

might get real. Can't

29:07

bring the subject matter. It

29:11

was a very striking scene where you told

29:14

your daughter that you were pregnant

29:16

and you both chose a name for

29:18

the new baby. It seems like you had

29:20

a very special relationship with her through

29:23

the years that you had this tug

29:25

of war with poverty. Was

29:27

she more knowing, do you think?

29:30

What's been the effect on her?

29:33

Story, she goes by her middle name now

29:36

is

29:36

Story.

29:38

She is the most incredible human being

29:40

I've ever known. She I

29:43

mean, I will say I am biased. And

29:47

hanging out with her is kind of like hanging out with

29:49

myself.

29:51

Where so I

29:53

mean, we look alike, I don't always see

29:55

it. And then like we talk alike, we have the

29:57

same sense of humor. music,

30:01

although she's 16 now so she's listening

30:03

to some weird music, but

30:06

like

30:07

really

30:09

where did this come from? But

30:12

no, she handed me her playlist and

30:15

that's all I listen to right now.

30:17

So

30:18

she has become

30:20

a person

30:22

that is

30:24

beyond my dreams of what

30:26

I wanted for her. And we are

30:29

very

30:29

close.

30:31

We had a very different

30:36

relationship and environment

30:39

like when she was little then you know my

30:42

youngest is now nine and she

30:46

never experienced food or housing insecurity

30:49

like she

30:53

just kind of had a different life.

30:55

And

30:56

Story actually brought that up once. I

30:59

was talking about how

31:01

I Coraline would possibly

31:03

need to be home alone after school for a

31:05

few minutes and that

31:08

I wasn't sure and it thought

31:10

was good for her. And then

31:12

I said to Story, I said that when

31:15

you were her age you just had

31:17

to. It was like seven

31:20

or eight years old and I said

31:22

you know I had to have

31:25

you home alone every once in a while

31:27

or like she knew to go to the neighbors

31:30

after school or things like

31:32

that because I was working

31:35

or otherwise busy in some way.

31:37

And I said you

31:40

know it's so different that just how

31:42

you two are in that

31:45

sense. And she said yeah

31:47

well Coraline had a very different life than

31:49

I did. And so that

31:53

really just I bring that

31:55

up all the time because it really speaks to just

31:59

I don't know, it was a moment of like compassion,

32:02

but it was also this like really acute

32:04

self-awareness. And

32:08

I think, I

32:10

don't know, story and I sometimes like

32:12

we get nostalgic

32:13

for the times it was just

32:16

me and her. I try

32:18

to do stuff with

32:20

her

32:20

alone as much

32:22

as possible. Like last

32:24

year I got to take her to

32:26

Lizzo and in

32:28

Seattle and

32:31

we went, she came with me to Seattle once

32:33

and we got to meet Neil Gaiman

32:35

who was the

32:37

person who kind of came up with the name Coraline.

32:40

And so

32:42

it's really nice to be able to just have

32:45

one-on-one time with her.

32:53

I want to ask you something you mentioned a number of

32:55

times in the book, in both

32:57

books, that there seems to be

32:59

a systematic nature to poverty.

33:02

And many aspects of the ordeal

33:05

that the impoverished person has to go through

33:07

to get any assistance is deliberate

33:10

in some way.

33:11

Could you tell me more about that? Yeah.

33:15

So our country

33:17

relies on low-wage

33:19

work, especially domestic work.

33:21

The people who clean up after us, that's

33:24

the work that makes all of the work possible.

33:27

It's not a great job

33:31

from

33:31

experience. It's not

33:33

fun to find a toilet that hasn't been

33:35

flushed and now you have to clean it.

33:39

I think there's a lot

33:41

of purpose in keeping

33:44

poor people poor so that

33:47

they are desperate

33:49

enough for work that they will do the jobs

33:51

that nobody

33:52

else wants to do. There's

33:53

a lot of racism wrapped

33:55

into that. There's a lot of

33:58

blame and stigma and... And you know, it's

34:00

been going on since forever

34:02

and like the Reagan administration and

34:05

the stories that he would tell.

34:07

So I have always seen it

34:10

as part of the myth that

34:12

we live by as Americans, the

34:15

pull yourself up by the bootstraps so

34:18

that you can live the American

34:20

dream. But what they

34:22

don't consider is that people

34:25

don't have any shoes.

34:27

We've done an enormous favor to the whole culture

34:31

to help us see what the problem is in such fine

34:33

detail. I'm

34:35

one of those people to thank you for what you

34:37

may be tired of hearing.

34:39

Thank you. Not from you, Alan

34:41

Alda. We're

34:46

running out of time, but we always end our conversations

34:48

with seven quick questions. Oh, goodness.

34:51

Okay.

34:52

Of all the things you could understand, what

34:54

do you wish you really understood?

34:57

You know,

35:00

I just got a horse. It's

35:06

technically stories horse, but I am

35:08

her groom.

35:09

I am the one who caretakes. So

35:12

I've kind of been

35:14

thrown into this world of

35:17

horse people

35:18

and people who know a lot about horses.

35:22

And I have wanted a horse my entire

35:24

life and I knew nothing. That

35:30

would be one thing that I would like to understand

35:32

a little bit more

35:33

is how to take care of my horse. So

35:37

you help us understand what it's like to be a maid.

35:39

Now you're understanding what it's like to be a horse.

35:42

I guess so. So you're crossing over

35:44

another boundary. Okay. Next

35:47

question.

35:48

How do you tell someone they have their facts

35:50

wrong? Oh, boy,

35:53

it

35:53

depends on the situation. I'm a huge fan

35:56

of per my last email. Or

36:01

just saying, you know, wow,

36:03

that might be your perspective. I

36:07

kind of like throwing in a well actually

36:09

and having

36:11

a moment to mansplain a little bit. So

36:15

I get a little

36:16

creative with that. Okay,

36:19

next.

36:20

What's the strangest question anyone

36:22

has ever asked you?

36:23

Oh, goodness.

36:25

I get a lot of questions

36:27

on cleaning tips.

36:29

But someone's like, someone

36:33

really detailed information of how I got

36:36

toilet bowls clean with a pumice stone. And

36:39

so that was an odd one.

36:44

How do you stop a compulsive

36:47

talker?

36:48

Well,

36:50

I try just

36:52

by default to

36:56

not engage. I'm

36:58

thinking of like people on planes, you

37:01

know, like I am very obviously

37:03

involved in whatever

37:05

I have in front of me,

37:06

whether it's a book or my phone

37:08

and like I have headphones on

37:10

even if I'm not listening to anything.

37:13

And just

37:13

I try very much

37:15

to not be approachable. Okay,

37:20

let's say you're sitting at a dinner table next to

37:22

someone you never met before.

37:24

How do you strike up a genuine conversation?

37:28

Usually if I make some

37:31

kind of comment that is very blatant

37:34

and, you know, something

37:36

that is kind of stark,

37:40

or just very vulnerable

37:42

about myself, you know, like

37:44

that usually encourages people to talk

37:48

a little bit like, okay, she's cool.

37:50

I can be real with her.

37:51

Good technique.

37:54

Okay, next to last. What

37:56

gives you confidence?

37:59

I wish I knew.

38:05

In the context of public speaking, I get

38:08

a lot of confidence from laughter.

38:13

When I'm trying to be funny, that

38:16

helps.

38:18

Okay, last question. What book

38:20

changed your life?

38:24

The one that probably

38:26

comes to mind the most is Travels with Charlie

38:28

by John Steinbeck.

38:31

I read that

38:33

in the middle of winter in Fairbanks,

38:35

Alaska. I had been there

38:38

for quite a few years. The

38:42

section where he talks about Montana was

38:44

what got me to where I live now

38:47

in Missoula, Montana. I

38:50

would say that's pretty life-changing. Yeah,

38:52

it certainly is.

38:54

This conversation has been that to some extent

38:56

too. I'm really glad we had it. Thank

39:00

you for making the time for this. I know you've had to take

39:02

time out from talking to thousands of people

39:04

about your books and your life. I

39:07

appreciate it very much.

39:09

Oh goodness, thank you. Thank you for reading

39:12

my books

39:12

before you talk to me

39:15

and

39:16

having such wonderful questions.

39:21

I was absolutely thrilled to be able to

39:22

talk to you. Thank you so much. Thank

39:25

you. This

39:32

has been clear and vivid. At least I

39:34

hope so. Stephanie

39:36

Land's breakthrough book was made

39:39

hard work, low pay, and a mother's will

39:42

to survive.

39:44

Her new book published today is Class,

39:47

a memoir of motherhood, hunger, and

39:49

higher education. This

39:52

episode was edited and produced by

39:54

our executive producer Graham Shedd

39:57

with help from our associate producer Jean

39:59

Chumet. Our publicist

40:01

is Sarah Hill, our researcher

40:04

is Elizabeth Ohini, and the sound

40:06

engineer is Erica Huang. The

40:08

music is courtesy of the Stefan Koenig

40:11

Trio. Next

40:21

in our series of conversations I talk with

40:23

Marcus Dusotoy. He's

40:25

a renowned mathematician and professor

40:27

of the public understanding of science at

40:29

Oxford University, but his true

40:32

passion is games. And

40:34

I think there's something rather wonderful

40:37

about playing a game together because you're actually

40:40

sharing a space and exploring in

40:42

a way each other's consciousness. It's

40:44

a bit like a dance when you play a game

40:46

with somebody and just

40:48

in the same way as we sat around the

40:50

campfire telling stories as

40:53

a way of sharing our inner worlds

40:55

and exploring the inner worlds of the other. I think

40:59

it's maybe one of the motivations for

41:01

why games are so popular.

41:03

Marcus Dusotoy's new book explores

41:05

what games will tell you about a country

41:08

around the world in 80 games.

41:11

Next time on Clear and Vivid. For

41:14

more details about Clear and Vivid and

41:16

to sign up for my newsletter please

41:19

visit alanalda.com and

41:21

you can also find us on Facebook and Instagram

41:24

at Clear and Vivid. Thanks for

41:26

listening. Bye bye.

41:39

Ah Sunday. You take a morning walk

41:41

to pick up burgers and beers. You

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tidy the house, pretend fellow football

41:46

fans, and your biggest chore? Floating

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all pays off because nothing is as

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easy to enjoy as a Sunday full of football

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