0:01

We have a sun named Henry as well, also

0:04

enjoys the hot pocket now and then I tried

0:06

to make them. I tried to make them because

0:08

I was like, Okay, if you're gonna like a hot pocket, it's

0:10

not that far off like a CalCon so

0:12

that's been feeding Italians from time immemorial,

0:15

So perhaps we should just have a girl making a hot bookt

0:17

And Henry was like, what is the Italian

0:19

word for kelson and men again? And I was like sock

0:21

And he was like, yeah, mom, you made a sock to

0:25

taste like a sock. Nice.

0:29

Hello, I'm Mini driver. Welcome

0:32

to Many Questions Season two. I've

0:34

always loved Cruce's question. It

0:37

was originally a nineteenth century

0:39

Harlag game where players would ask

0:41

each other thirty five questions aimed at

0:43

revealing the other player's true nature.

0:46

It's just the scientific method

0:48

really. In asking different people

0:50

the same set of questions, you can make observations

0:53

about which truths appeared to be universal.

0:56

I love this discipline, and

0:58

it made me wonder, what if these questions

1:00

were just the jumping off point, what greater

1:02

depths would be revealed if I ask these

1:05

questions as conversation starters

1:07

with thought leaders and trailblazers

1:09

across all these different disciplines. So

1:12

I adapted prus questionnaire and I wrote

1:14

my own seven questions that I personally

1:16

think a pertinent to a person's story. They

1:18

are when and where were you happiest?

1:21

What is the quality you like least about yourself?

1:23

What relationship, real or fictionalized,

1:26

defines love for you? What question

1:28

would you most like answered, What person,

1:31

place, or experience has shaped you the

1:33

most? What would be your last meal? And

1:35

can you tell me something in your life that's

1:38

grown out of a personal disaster. And

1:40

I've gathered a group of really

1:43

remarkable people, ones that

1:45

I am honored and humbled to have had

1:47

the chance to engage with. You may not hear

1:49

their answers to all seven of these

1:51

questions. We've whittled it down to

1:54

which questions felt closest to their

1:56

experience, or the most surprising,

1:58

or created the most fertile

2:00

ground to connect. My

2:04

guest today is the author Anthony Door,

2:06

whose book All the Light We Cannot See

2:08

One the Pulitzer Prize. This,

2:10

it turns out, is not surprising at all

2:12

if you have ever read a single word

2:14

he has written. His more recent

2:17

novel claud Cuckoo Land is genuinely

2:19

one of my favorite books ever, and

2:21

the level of lyricism present in his writing

2:24

is there when he speaks to I

2:26

wrote down so many things he said

2:29

all the way through the interview, you know,

2:31

as though the whole thing wasn't being recorded

2:33

and I had to take notes. I

2:36

hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as

2:38

I did. I'm very

2:40

interested. Do you mean to start up with since

2:42

my mother died? But since my mother died,

2:45

I think about the things that I didn't realize

2:47

until after she'd gone, that went into the basic

2:50

architecture, the stuff that was impassing,

2:53

rather than the big moments. And it was

2:55

weird. It was like it was like having the foundation

2:57

of something revealed when I'd really

2:59

just been looking at the building the whole

3:01

time, this beautiful building, because

3:04

she was this amazing person. It's

3:06

been like this weird posthumous

3:08

gift to feel all these other things.

3:10

So now when I do something and my son rolls

3:12

his eyes and like things that I'm super embarrassing

3:14

and that we've spent five hours making a sock, I

3:17

do go. Now you know what he's going to remember

3:19

this because we listened to New

3:21

Order while we made this cow zone and

3:24

we chatted about some something that's

3:26

so interesting, because that's kind of the lesson

3:29

for like beginning writers want to write about

3:31

the big architecture, you know, they want to write about

3:33

love for what it feels to be confused.

3:35

But the only way to deliver that to another person

3:37

is through detail, through like these moment

3:40

by moment details of life. That's

3:42

how memories get built, you know, is New Order

3:44

and making a cow zone exactly.

3:46

And you know what, I had this teacher who

3:48

I dedicated my book to my English

3:50

teachers. My three teachers were so

3:53

huge in my life as a whole, but Alistair

3:55

one of them. On a Monday morning, a piece

3:58

of a four paper would be posted on the notice

4:00

board in my school from the age

4:02

of ten onwards, and there would

4:04

be a list in his really beautiful, strange

4:07

italic handwriting, and it would

4:09

be like drinking a cup of tea, tying

4:12

my shoelaces, getting out of bed,

4:14

and you had to write two sides

4:16

of a four describing this extraordinarily

4:19

mundane thing. And

4:22

he was like, this is just like exercise.

4:24

He was like, this is the same as you're running around

4:26

playing fields, playing hockey, basketball, whatever

4:29

it is. So many years later, when

4:31

I was still working my way through the anthology of what

4:33

he told me to read in my Life, he

4:35

said it was about getting you to pay attention

4:38

to not just having to do this thing. The

4:40

thing was not the thing, but to your life, to

4:42

all those things that it would trigger that whenever

4:44

you noticed something, it would trigger

4:47

the memory of your interest in the fact that

4:49

you've had that muscle built in from an early

4:51

age to appreciate it and to be able

4:53

to kind of develop ideas from it. Yeah,

4:56

detail is how you communicate with people. If

4:58

you had said I had this teacher our stair

5:00

he was meaningful to me, that would kind of bounce

5:02

off me. But if you describe his handwriting

5:05

and you describe this list on his

5:07

door and the details of what he was asking

5:09

you to do, described telling your shoelaces, it

5:11

means something to me. That's how you communicate a motion.

5:13

It's ironically it's like you're reaching for the stars.

5:16

But the way to do it is like the tiny little

5:18

pieces of broken glass on the ground,

5:22

and that we keep retrieving memory, Like I've

5:24

just moved back to the town that I'm from.

5:26

I don't like how it feels because I don't feel

5:28

like I can make new memories here. I'm so in the

5:30

trough of what went before

5:33

and I'm fascinated by At the same time,

5:35

it's feeling incredibly sad. It feels

5:37

palpable. I keep asking everybody,

5:40

how do you create new memories in a

5:42

totally familiar environment. That's

5:44

super interesting. It makes me think about Germans

5:47

and like the seventies trying to deal with like

5:49

the weight of the memory of all

5:51

the stuff that had happened, and you're just trying to listen

5:54

to music and be eighteen years old, and there's

5:56

always this impulse to renew. I

5:58

mean, I think that's what's so beautifu. Those grass

6:00

always ends up growing over the battlefields

6:02

and it's so important to remember that

6:05

blood was spilled there, but at the same time

6:07

allow space for young people to move

6:09

around. So our twin boys just went

6:11

off to college. Oh wow, Yeah,

6:14

I worry so much about you know, this world,

6:16

Like I keep saying, like a little world's warming

6:18

up, oh, and like it's gonna get worse. You

6:21

know, he doesn't need that, he needs to be able

6:23

to go make new memories and discover

6:25

the world anew and go to a party

6:27

as if it was like the first time anybody

6:29

ever went to a party? Did you go to any good parties?

6:32

And what you're busy going? Can you believe

6:34

the ice caps? Not? What about that Kappa Kappa

6:36

gamma

6:39

that's totally it? Yeah,

6:41

And then his mom's like, ask him about COVID.

6:45

She's like the cherry on top, that's

6:47

really funny. Well, God, I'd better

6:49

get on because I could really just ask

6:52

you about a thousand questions that have

6:54

nothing to do with these seven questions, but I will

6:56

glean all the answers that I would like to ask

6:59

you. If these having questions allow a ski,

7:06

will you tell me where and when you were

7:08

happiest? Of course I thought

7:10

about it. I'm gonna choose a

7:12

general when, but a specific

7:15

where I love to ski. I

7:17

live in Idaho, in the mountains in the United

7:19

States, one of the last places middle

7:22

class families can still ski, and

7:24

you know afford it. We raised our

7:26

boy skiing on this mountain called Brundage Mountain,

7:28

about two hours north of here, where you know, they

7:30

just put a keg of beer in the snow and like grill

7:33

Hamburgers and you could still get a seasons

7:35

pass for about two bucks. Oh my god.

7:37

There's something about joy for me

7:39

that's always connected to the ephemeral, and for

7:41

me, it's fresh snow is like this great

7:43

reminder of it, when the whole world's

7:46

like made new again by

7:48

a big dump of fresh white snow.

7:50

To be there with my boys, like moving

7:53

downhill, there's some joy and speed

7:55

are linked in my head too for some reason.

7:58

But skiing through fresh snow like your

8:00

joints filled twenty years younger,

8:02

because you can just land without pain

8:05

and moving and hearing them like whooping.

8:07

You can hear like the joy of other people. And

8:10

you know what's gonna go away. It's going to get tracked up,

8:12

but I'll get too warm. The moment of freshnow

8:15

is unpredictable. You just have to be

8:17

lucky enough to be there when it comes, and

8:19

then to feel yourself dancing.

8:22

It's really a kind of dance moving down through

8:24

that all of your troubles kind of vanished

8:26

and evaporate, and you're just present in

8:28

the now and you're

8:30

creating like you're dancing. Is especially

8:32

if there are trees you're dancing down through them,

8:34

so you're kind of improvising and making

8:37

music in your head. It's really sharing

8:39

that with somebody is so special. Oh

8:41

my god, for how you describe that. It is

8:43

so akin to the ocean.

8:46

I mean, I know that snow is visited upon

8:48

us and the oceans are always there, But

8:50

that's feeling. That is what surfing is

8:53

like. For me. Everything feels young.

8:55

It's only the next day when you feel your knees

8:57

and my shoulders in my back and the thing

9:00

in that moment, that's it. And

9:02

the waves aren't always predictive, but me you're waiting

9:04

to see what way will common. Sometimes

9:06

they aren't there and sometimes they're too big, and

9:09

so it's very very similar. Yeah, and you're using

9:11

gravity the forces of nature to move

9:13

you through an environment something so

9:15

deeply human. It connects us to our

9:17

ancestors. Yeah,

9:20

it really does. It really does that. Moving

9:22

through nature, particularly like the mountains,

9:25

feel particularly sort of atavistic

9:27

because there's it's so much to do with survival,

9:29

Like I don't know, the part of my brain is always

9:32

on a mountain or high up or on a glacier

9:34

like super super super, more turned on than

9:36

it is anywhere else, even in the ocean where

9:38

I know that there are great white sharks. They swim

9:40

right by me to go up to the seal colony and eat their breakfast.

9:43

It's not switched on in the same way as

9:45

it is in the mountains. It's funny, but there

9:47

is always a thread of injury. There's always

9:50

there's something that makes you feel a little more alive.

9:52

I'm not chasing like down crazy

9:54

cool wars or something, but a little bit

9:56

of threat of danger does help keep you

9:58

kind of present and in a mind like mine

10:01

that's always like what do I have to do next Friday?

10:03

Or why can't I solve this problem in the

10:05

book I'm working on right now, to just be present

10:08

is something I'm chasing, and it's

10:10

always so leading,

10:12

you know. I just want to grab on that and remember,

10:14

like, my boys are going to get bigger, you know,

10:16

they won't always ski with me. I'm going to get older,

10:19

sort of have those moments when you get to be

10:21

with them and to try to appreciate them

10:23

for what they are before they're gone. Yes,

10:26

my son barely looked over I mean he did,

10:29

but he did barely look over his shoulder when he

10:31

went off on this camping trip. His first

10:33

week back at school, and I was like,

10:35

I carry him around in my pocket if I could, Like

10:38

I would be in the back of his class, being

10:40

like this an agent ron great,

10:43

Like I'd be you want to sit together at what

10:46

should we have the lunch? Like I would

10:48

be his worst night matter if I possibly

10:50

could. But I called his name out, and

10:52

I must have There must have been something. You know

10:54

how when you hear someone shout and

10:56

you can tell that they're in vain, you

10:58

know it's not a shriek of Joe way, You

11:00

really know that they've trodden on the thumb tack or

11:03

stuff. That time, I must have said his name

11:05

with something in it, because he turned around

11:07

so quickly, and I sort of like cheshire

11:09

cat grinned at him, and he was like,

11:12

mom, it's gonna be okay.

11:14

Yeah, And then I asked him if I was damaging

11:17

him. Well,

11:19

yeah, we just we have twin boys. Will just drop

11:21

them off at college, so it's like the same

11:24

thing. God, that must have been really

11:26

hard. Your whole job is to get them

11:28

to live on their own, and

11:31

yet you're trying to make your deepest

11:33

emotional connection of your life really over

11:35

and over with them and then you're expected

11:37

to kind of say okay and let them go.

11:40

Yeah, let them go. I know it's way

11:42

more evolved than humans actually

11:44

are, which makes me feel like we used

11:46

to be so evolved, because

11:48

clearly we used to do it, We've been doing

11:51

it for this long, but like it doesn't hasn't gotten any easier,

11:53

Like how come everything else is supposed to evolve

11:55

and there are these things that just do not. It never

11:57

becomes easier, or you can't intellectual

12:00

qualify. Maybe we didn't evolve to

12:02

send our kids three thousand miles away at the university.

12:05

There's a lot of things that are kind of artificial demands

12:08

that modern life puts on us that maybe our ancestors

12:10

didn't have to deal with. I think, you know, we would

12:12

be around our elders a lot more, we would be

12:14

around our grown kids. And the way

12:16

we segment kids in schools, for example,

12:19

like all the twelve year old shipped together now, but

12:21

the village is like kids of all different

12:23

ages would be helping each other. The three year olds

12:25

would be attended by the nine year olds,

12:27

and the fifteen year olds are helping the nine year olds.

12:29

Sometimes I wonder, you know, all this segmentation

12:31

in the distance. You know, our kids got into so

12:33

called good universities, but they're far from home,

12:36

and maybe that's a little artificial, I

12:38

know for people listening.

12:40

Clokkleland is honestly one of my favorite

12:43

books I ever read, and the part that I

12:45

cried in the most was one of may is

12:47

leaving home, being forced to leave

12:49

with his cattle, yeah, and knowing

12:52

that he will never see them again.

12:54

This idea that even if one returns. There

12:56

was something particularly unbearable about

12:59

how going to I don't know how far Constantinople

13:01

was from where his woods were, probably

13:04

only three hundred and fifty miles, but

13:06

you know, in those days, that's forever.

13:08

The whole book really is about returning and

13:10

how you can never step in the same river twice,

13:13

and yet that's part of life. Like letting your

13:15

son go off camping. You know he'll come back

13:17

slightly changed and he'll still need

13:19

you for a few more years, but you have to celebrate

13:22

his growing independence even as he's pushing

13:24

against those boundaries that you're building around

13:26

him. Our boys need to go build new families,

13:29

new tribes, and they're not rejecting

13:31

us. We're not losing them as much as kind of sharing

13:34

them with other people. As what I keep trying to tell

13:36

myself. Anyway, you're a little bit ahead in terms

13:38

of like the college thing, but Henry goes

13:40

to boarding schools. There is something of them

13:42

like going off and taking what you've

13:44

given them out into the world and saying, this

13:47

is what we did. This was the point was to build

13:49

good, strong, kind, intellectually

13:52

curious, independent people

13:54

who can go out and be a nice addition

13:56

to whatever environment they find themselves

13:58

in. Yeah, that's so BEAUTIFU fleet put, that's

14:00

a kindness. I mean, I think we're successful

14:03

if we build kind people for the next generation.

14:05

Yeah, I mean I will saw later obviously,

14:08

but I will remember these what

14:23

relationship real or fictionalized?

14:25

De find love fear? This was your

14:27

hardest of your questions. I've been reading a lot

14:29

about Rachel Carson. Her most famous book was

14:32

called Silent Spring. It came out in the sixties,

14:34

and as she was dying of cancer, she

14:37

made a very persuasive and emotional

14:40

and beautifully written to argument that d

14:42

d T this pesticide that humans

14:45

were spring everywhere, was going to lead

14:47

to a silent spring. It thins that the shells

14:49

of bird eggs, and so it really makes

14:52

bird reproduction complicated. You know, it's an insecticide.

14:54

In World War Two, it arrived as like this magic

14:57

silver bullet that could eradicate,

15:00

especially during war when everybody's all close

15:02

together, these diseases that you know, these

15:04

awful pandemics that were occurring, especially

15:07

saying Naples, and they

15:09

shower a million people with D d T and

15:11

all the life sty and then there's no typhus anymore,

15:14

so saving tons of lives and also

15:16

malaria. It's amazing mosquito

15:18

eradicating pesticide, but if the collateral

15:21

damage is immense. So anyway,

15:23

Rachel Carson was living at a time when

15:25

I definitely wasn't okay to be a lesbian or

15:27

even just be interested in sexuality

15:29

in a different way. And she had a relationship

15:31

with a woman named Dorothy Freeman. And there's about

15:34

nine d letters that survived between

15:36

them, and they had this amazing romantic relationship

15:39

that was always kind of fearful

15:41

of being found out Dorothy was married to a man.

15:44

And so I've just been reading through some of those letters

15:46

and trying to understand they're very different,

15:48

and I think what's so interesting about loves. We

15:50

often think, what do we have a comment, you

15:52

know, like, hey, let's go out on the scorpio.

15:54

You're you like skateboarding. But

15:57

a differences, I think are what ultimately

15:59

make relationship. It's interesting the way you

16:01

try to embrace what's different about each other,

16:03

and that's how you learned and evolved

16:06

together. It's like, oh, man, he likes

16:08

to go to bed at ten and I like to go to bed at

16:10

eight thirty or whatever. I think those kinds of things

16:12

that really help push you to grow as

16:14

a person if you can embrace the differences of your

16:16

beloved. So called beloved, were

16:18

they very different Dorothy and Rachel

16:20

Carson. Yes, Rachel

16:23

kind of had a little ego, which is interesting to learn.

16:26

And you know, she became a famous writer about ten years

16:28

before Silent Springs, so she had to deal

16:30

with fame. Of course, she didn't have

16:32

another person in her life, so there's always

16:34

that kind of strange jealousy too,

16:36

where Dorothy has this husband stand. But

16:39

they shared so much love for beauty

16:41

and for the natural world that they could,

16:43

you know, be out just like in their dresses

16:45

in their nineteen fifties dresses tiebooling

16:48

together, and they took such joy and

16:50

sharing that, so sharing the beauty of

16:52

the world with each other, I think was this

16:54

thing they had in common. But then Dorothy would

16:56

go back to her so called heterosexual

16:58

life and all these worms that are pressed

17:01

down upon these women so that the time they

17:03

could spend together is so intense.

17:05

There's something really beautiful. That's

17:07

amazing. I love that. I love that

17:09

that's in a book, But it's not fiction. That's really

17:11

cool. What

17:17

quality do you like least about yourself

17:20

in patience? I take a long time

17:22

to write these books, like how long. My

17:24

book before Cloud cook Land was called All the Light

17:27

We Can't See. It took me ten years to write.

17:29

I started it when I was thirty and

17:31

I finished it as forty. Took me forever.

17:34

You did win the fullest surprise for its or maybe

17:36

it was worth it. I guess that was

17:38

an epically beautiful book. The Shell Collector

17:40

was my gateway book, and then All the Light we Can't

17:43

See and then Cloud Cookie Learned, and then

17:45

your memoir Thank you so much. He's

17:47

so sweet. But anyway, you know, at least

17:49

Americans were kind of taught to worship efficiency,

17:52

like don't waste a chapter. Don't

17:54

like, oh if you would take a research trip to

17:56

France for this book. Every minute better be

17:58

productive or you're failing, like you

18:01

know, especially leaving my wife back at

18:03

home with two kids, taking a financial

18:05

risk to go there. You just put so much

18:07

pressure on your stuff, Like I can't just go entering cider

18:09

and look out at the sea. I've got to be working

18:12

to the point where I think, you know, through my thirties,

18:14

I was teaching myself if I'm stuck in a line

18:16

at the grocery store, you should be back at your

18:18

desk, like this is a waste of time, Like you should

18:20

at least be reading something, like you should

18:22

be researching while you're waiting three

18:24

people deep to buy this lettuce. And

18:27

I'm trying, as I can get older, to accept

18:29

that sometimes you can't control

18:31

life, like you just get stuck in traffic or your flight

18:33

is delayed, and there are real pleasures

18:36

in trying to find moments

18:38

of the day to just breathe. For example,

18:41

I was just on the flight and it was right on time.

18:43

Everything was going great, but it was like the third flight

18:45

is long flight back home from Europe has probably

18:47

happened to you, and the gate people

18:49

aren't ready to like dock the plane

18:51

with the jetway and you know your bladders

18:54

full, and I'm like, I've timed my patients

18:56

just for this last thirty seconds

18:58

so i could get off the plane. I'm just telling myself,

19:01

like, here's an opportunity for you to just breathe, sit

19:03

in the chair. I'm totally failing at this, by

19:05

the way, but I'm trying to say, like, now you

19:07

can exercise patients and say you're

19:10

alive. You have so many things to be grateful

19:12

for. You have a book in your bag, Just pull

19:14

the book back out. It's gonna be okay. But

19:16

I'm not that great at that. So in patience, I wish

19:18

I was more patient. What do you think would happen if

19:21

you were more patient? Maybe you would lose

19:23

like some kind of engine. I think that's

19:25

okay, Like the engine of like

19:27

that makes you write books, or that makes

19:30

you go say yes to the film project

19:32

that's probably landing in your email box right

19:34

now. Sometimes saying yes to those things is so

19:36

valuable because you go to Fiji or whatever,

19:38

You'll meet people and you'll give you participant

19:41

in this great team making this film.

19:43

But sometimes if you tone down the engine,

19:46

maybe stillness is something that we

19:48

need to embrace a little more. At least

19:50

for me as I'm getting older, the pandemic

19:52

really helped teach me that I used to think, like I've

19:54

got to have a list of things I've got to see before I

19:56

die. Like you've never been to the multi coast, Tony,

19:59

like you ever read all of Edith Wharton Tony

20:03

to take Washington Square

20:05

to goddamn a most exactly, and

20:07

then while you're there, make sure you also go for

20:09

a run and to push ups. And you know,

20:12

I think I've got to say it's okay.

20:14

Like there were these moments, especially early in the pandemic,

20:17

and there's no airplanes in the sky. You know,

20:19

we have these beautiful blue spring

20:21

skies, and the snow kis were migrating

20:24

like a mile above our yard. You'd see

20:26

this little thread, this little like bracelet

20:28

of white birds and you could hear them because

20:31

there was no other sound. You hear them honking

20:33

at each other, and you realize, like, just here

20:35

in our backyard versus many miracles as

20:37

I've been chasing. When I'm trying to like go all

20:39

the way to Kenya or something. So

20:42

I'm trying to learn that right

20:44

around us there's all these gifts and that

20:46

I don't have to always be running the engine as

20:48

high as I think I should in

20:54

your life, Can you tell me about something that

20:56

has grown out of a personal disaster.

20:59

So we've been talking about our kids just heading

21:01

off to school. They're eighteen years older. Twins.

21:03

Are they identical? Twins? Are they fraternal? Their

21:05

fraternal? They're quite different looking

21:08

at inside too. But we got

21:10

married two years ago and dated for a few

21:12

years before that, and we both wanted

21:14

to be parents and it wasn't working

21:16

out. I forgot married, were like, let's see if

21:18

we can make babies, and it wasn't happening. And

21:21

in the beginning we were kind of like in

21:23

this arms race with some friends who were

21:25

getting pregnant, or like semi

21:27

unconsciously bragging about it, and you

21:29

just sort of like, oh, I guess it is hard

21:31

for us. We're struggling. And it felt

21:34

very much like a personal disaster, even

21:36

though I know there are many worst problems in the world.

21:38

And thanks to science and UH

21:41

in detro we were able with quite a bit

21:43

of expense that wasn't covered by our healthcare plan

21:46

able to get pregnant, got pregnant with twins.

21:48

When I look back now, I am so grateful

21:50

that we went through those thickets

21:53

because I want I

21:55

knew I wanted these kids, and every

21:58

minute that I was with them,

22:00

I was pumped. I was so

22:02

grateful that I got to see those kids run

22:05

around and jump in puddles and play basketball

22:07

and skin their knees and yell at me. And

22:09

I just really had to go through that

22:12

journey to understand, like, this is an immense

22:14

privilege to get to have an offspring

22:17

that I get to hang out with. I've just

22:19

been thinking about that lately, how that

22:21

so called personal disaster at least the troubles

22:23

we were going through really helped us appreciate

22:26

what we had. That's really what their

22:28

childhood was. M you

22:31

noticed it happening, and now noticing

22:33

that it's so there in all. I mean, I

22:35

know that that is It's sort of what you're famous

22:37

for in your books, is the detail with which

22:40

you tell these stories. But it is very

22:42

interesting that that is like how you live your life

22:44

as well. I'm trying my favorite

22:46

art, whatever does film or a painting

22:49

or a symphony or like a quilt. It

22:51

shows you the world with new eyes. It wakes

22:53

you up to the miracle of being alive, because

22:56

I think the worst crime you can commit

22:58

is to sleep walk through your life, you

23:01

know, And of course there's days when you're tired and

23:04

it's fine too, you know whatever. Taken

23:06

a junkie film where you know every single

23:08

thing that's going to happen, But to challenge yourself

23:10

occasionally to wake up and see

23:13

the familiar with unfamiliar eyes.

23:16

That's what I try to do in my sentences,

23:18

to try to disrupt little patterns so that

23:20

you're disrupting cliche at the sentence level.

23:23

And then stories that kind

23:25

of disrupt expectations in surprise

23:27

the reader. They bring me so much pleasure. So that's the kind

23:29

of stuff I'm trying to make anyway,

23:42

So, now, what question

23:45

would you most like answer to? I was

23:47

thinking about this and I was like, oh, it's obviously gonna

23:50

be aliens, Like are there aliens? And I

23:52

thought, that's okay. Here's my midlife

23:54

journey is just like tying in with my

23:56

previous answer, trying to get more

23:58

comfortable with not knowing, like not knowing

24:01

when the dudes are going to use their little joystick

24:03

and put the jetway onto the plane. Get

24:05

more comfortable with that, and so I think I

24:07

would just say it's okay, I'm happy with

24:09

not knowing what I don't know. Like you

24:11

know, the classic exercise if they handed any

24:14

driver and envelope and said inside is the

24:16

date and the cause of your death, you know,

24:18

would you open it? No, right,

24:21

because knowing would suck. Knowing would

24:24

suck, totally

24:26

suck. Like again, why are we

24:28

not better at it? All we do is humans?

24:30

Is not nice stuff? How we know better

24:33

at this? Like I'm I want to know that. I

24:35

want to know about why these parts of ourselves

24:37

don't evolve when we have so much information,

24:40

Like you just saying, I just want to get more comfortable

24:42

with the unknown, Like it feels so freeing,

24:45

it feels like like a

24:47

breath, Like God. That's the way

24:49

to do it. It's not to seek to you know.

24:51

It's like God isn't in the God, It's in

24:53

the faith. If you can get into

24:55

the notion of faith and you can really get into the idea

24:57

of God. I mean, this is how my Christian friends have fixed

24:59

my and got to me. And I understand that

25:01

because they're wanting me to just cozy

25:04

up with the void. And I feel differently

25:06

about that on any different day. But

25:09

it's interestingly we haven't developed a better relationship

25:11

with not knowing. Yes, for me,

25:13

that's all time with the future. Like my anxiety

25:16

is often about like what is coming, what will

25:18

come next? What will happen next Tuesday

25:20

when I have to talk to a French journalist, how

25:22

badly will I flame out? And if

25:24

I can just be more president like the Buddhists,

25:27

maybe like Christians. You know, Buddhist idea

25:29

of living now and accepting

25:31

now means you have to

25:33

be comfortable with not knowing what's coming

25:36

and whatever comes, being comfortable

25:38

with your ability to cope with it. And I'm

25:40

just saying words. I'm not good at following

25:42

any of this, but well, okay, well, which leads

25:44

me to what I'm going to have to ask you this. How

25:46

does one get from the self

25:49

awareness and the knowledge that the words

25:51

create of what it is we need to

25:53

know, and then the not doing of that, and

25:56

the continuing not doing of the thing that we

25:58

know would make us feel better? How do bridge

26:00

that schism? Tony, come on quick.

26:05

The novelist friends who meditate.

26:07

For me, it's yoga in the morning. The moments

26:10

that you can just take in the day to practice

26:12

being comfortable in the now, even if

26:15

it's twenty minutes, I think can help prepare

26:17

you to make you a little more resilient for

26:19

the rest of the day. When you're uber

26:21

is late and you're like, when will he get

26:23

here? I have to be blank. And then also

26:26

I think for me, like accepting the invitation

26:29

of like the night sky of the universe

26:31

often helps me. Right before we dropped our boys

26:33

off a college, I took them backpack and we're really lucky

26:35

to have smoke free skies. And remembering

26:38

how tiny you are can sometimes

26:40

be so helpful because our problems

26:43

start to seem like we're the center of the universe.

26:46

And if you remember, like the Earth's four and a half billion

26:48

years old, like percent

26:50

of species have gone extinct, you

26:52

know humans will be the same eventually.

26:55

You know your life is small and

26:57

huge, and that's kind of like that's the paradox

26:59

in fiction, right think, Really, you know you're dealing with the

27:01

details of some person's life, and

27:04

yet this person's life in the pages of

27:06

a novel becomes enormous but

27:08

it's also tiny because you're connecting with readers

27:10

across time and space, and so you can remember

27:13

somehow your smallness by exercising

27:15

that imagination, that imaginative empathy.

27:18

To say, oh, Minny driver has felt the same

27:20

way as I have felt about saying goodbye

27:22

to her son before he goes off to camp. Means

27:25

I'm not alone, and it means my problems

27:27

aren't so unique in the history

27:30

of the world. And I think reading is one way

27:32

to really help me exercise that and just looking

27:34

up at the stars and contemplating, you know, our

27:37

tiny little whirling kunk

27:39

of carbon that's like whirling around

27:41

out here. We're just tiny. Even

27:44

the Milky Way is just a tiny little galaxy

27:46

in a sea of galaxies. God,

27:48

it's nuts when you say that the Milky

27:50

Way is a tiny little galaxy in a sea

27:53

of galaxies. As my mother

27:55

was dying, which is the kind of the agonizing

27:58

everyday pot of grief subsides

28:00

and like, you start watching it grow into something

28:02

else if you've developed a relationship with it,

28:04

which I think it's incredibly important to do.

28:07

And the days where you can approach your loss

28:09

in this more robust way and remember

28:12

and think about that person, and

28:15

I think about my mother. And she did say a version

28:17

of We were lying in her bed pretty

28:19

close to the end, and she

28:21

said, I just I can't believe

28:24

how fast this is all happening. And

28:27

I said, do you mean dying? And

28:30

she said, I do. I mean

28:32

dying, but I also mean living.

28:35

She's like it happened so quickly. And

28:37

then she and she didn't not and she wasn't

28:39

in a self pitching when she said, and you know the other thing

28:41

that was crazy. She was like, the lack of significance

28:44

and the significance of my life is

28:46

happening in real time and in

28:48

real awareness, and it is the trippiest

28:52

feeling and thought to hold that

28:54

it meant everything and it

28:56

meant nothing. And those two things

28:58

are existing in time and space and here

29:01

in my physical body, which is soon going to be gone.

29:03

And it was so interesting because

29:05

you want I wanted to have a really

29:08

evolved spiritual reaction

29:10

to that, but invariably, because again

29:12

one is comforted and also confounded by

29:15

your humanness, all I could do is just squeeze

29:17

her hand just so tightly.

29:20

And I suppose in recognition or

29:22

in comfort or in whatever it was she needed to get

29:24

out that squeeze. But it's wild remembering

29:26

that. Yeah, that's beautiful. And

29:29

don't be impatient with yourself if that

29:31

spiritual moment doesn't last,

29:33

because you are alive, Like eventually you

29:35

have to go eat and have breakfast and change

29:38

your shoes. And these revelate,

29:40

these like epiphanies that we have don't last.

29:42

That's just part of being human and we kind of have to

29:44

keep relearning those lessons of our vast

29:47

significance and our massive insignificance

29:49

all at once exactly. So,

29:56

will you tell me what person, place, or

29:58

experience most a to your life.

30:00

Yeah, I think my wife Shanna

30:03

gets a shout out here. She's taught

30:05

me patients. Shauna grew up in a family.

30:08

She had three sisters and her oldest has

30:10

an intellectual disability, and as

30:12

a consequence, her house was filled

30:14

with patients in a way mine wasn't because

30:17

Kelly just takes much longer to do

30:19

everything. And also they just

30:21

kept conflict to a minimum. I had three

30:23

brothers, was kind of this other yin yang

30:25

household, and there's just always movement in mud

30:27

and creatures and action in our

30:29

house. And I think Shanna has taught me so

30:32

much about patients, and she'll

30:34

just drop me. She teaches me about love every

30:36

minute. She'll just drop whatever she's doing to talk

30:38

to all of her friends, our kids, me about

30:41

our problems, you know, versus me. I'm

30:43

like, I'm tying being a very important email. You

30:45

know. Can I hear about your heartbreak later?

30:47

You know, kindness patients.

30:50

When we first got married, Like if we're in the grocery

30:52

store and I'd be like, oh, I decided

30:54

we don't want this pancake mix or something, and I'm

30:56

just gonna put it back here in the soft drink style.

30:59

She'd be like, no, We're gonna walk

31:01

all the way back to Aisle three and put it back

31:03

where you found it. Oh my gosh,

31:05

are we okay?

31:08

Oh we are? Oh wow, we're doing this all

31:10

right. Okay. Education

31:13

of being a better person all the time. That's

31:15

a great that you love that though. That's

31:17

clearly obviously why she loves you, because you don't

31:20

mind things that are kind of making you a more thoughtful

31:22

and considerate humans. Yeah, the love is

31:24

especially you know, over decades, it helps

31:26

you grow as a person. You know, if you

31:29

can keep challenging each other and

31:31

help each other evolve and appreciate that changes,

31:33

like the only music and the world that

31:36

you know, change is going to keep coming, and how

31:38

do you help each other through that? You know, I remember

31:40

the first days in the pandemic when we thought like we're

31:42

going to be dragging each other's corpses to the

31:44

curb or who knows. I remember both of

31:46

us saying like, we are so grateful we have had

31:48

this time together, and those little

31:51

resets are so important. I think,

31:53

Yeah, how is she doing with your

31:55

son's being off for college.

31:58

Yeah, thanks for asking. Since we're

32:00

only eight days in, we just neither

32:02

of us really know. Sevent of the

32:04

traffic and our house came from our boys and their

32:06

pals, and so it's super

32:09

quiet. Thankfully. My career is kind

32:11

of busy, so that kind of helps me maybe

32:14

ignore feelings that like the

32:16

dumb men aren't good at this way and

32:19

she's probably a little farther along

32:21

and processing this is part of the journey.

32:24

But you know, phones are interesting. You know, when I went to

32:26

college, I called my parents every other Sunday

32:28

and that was it. And they're texting her

32:30

a lot, and so I think she's getting connected

32:33

to them. Because of technology in a way that's

32:35

mostly healthy. I don't think they're ignoring their

32:38

experienced to touch base with home,

32:40

but it does make you feel connected to them,

32:42

like, oh, they've figured out what dining hall

32:44

to eat at, or they figured out how to do their laundry, or

32:46

they figured out how to get a package. You know that stuff

32:48

is kind of nice. Yeah, No, I

32:50

love the mundane. I checked the weather

32:52

where he is right now, he's on this camping track. I'm

32:54

obsessively refreshing the met office

32:57

here in England, which is notorious and they useless

32:59

and predict weather. But I'm looking at it in real time,

33:01

not ahead, So I feel like I'm staying very

33:04

present with the weather where he is.

33:06

So that's good, isn't it. I'm

33:09

in the now and he's in the rain. It

33:11

is just raining and it's quite

33:13

cold, and are you comfortable with that? Can you

33:15

sit with that? Be like he's called? Yeah,

33:17

because I know how many socks he's got because I packed

33:20

them and I realized, really what

33:22

you need is you need fifteen

33:24

pairs of socks, because really what you want

33:26

is your feet to feel dry, even if

33:28

your boots are wet, putting on dry socks makes you feel

33:30

better. I know that from having done a lot of trekking.

33:33

And if you've gotten wet, you have to have warm clothes

33:35

to change into. So I'm not worried. Boys

33:38

are so funny that I guarantee doesn't

33:40

even know everything that's in his back. I swear

33:42

to you he will have won the same two pass socks

33:46

and the one sweater you know I packed five.

33:49

Yeah. I like being connected by mundane things

33:51

that makes me feel safe in the world

33:53

rather than being connected by the loftier

33:55

stuff. I just want him to text me and go, can

33:58

you get some salt and vinegar crisps for when I get back?

34:00

And I'll be like, yeah, totally, and like that's

34:02

it, And that's what love is, though,

34:04

that's love. That's what love is. It's like it

34:07

doesn't need to be she experience

34:09

on it, you know, it's Yeah, you have

34:11

those moments or they volunteered them. That's

34:13

what's great, those moments. The poetry of

34:16

your children comes in the rarest, most

34:18

amazing moments, you know,

34:20

not when you necessarily need it

34:22

or are asking for it, but when they deliver it.

34:24

And there's something I mean, I tend to write

34:27

down a lot of the stuff that he says. But I sometimes

34:29

I do write down the Crisps conversations too,

34:31

because they are incredibly comforting, like

34:33

verbatim. I'll do it and they make me chuckle. That's

34:36

great, and you'll love them in twenty

34:38

years. And I've been doing it since

34:40

he was about three. I've been writing down the

34:42

weird ship that he says, and it's really

34:45

good going back and reading and knowing

34:47

that he's wound up where he is currently

34:49

and we'll continue, Yeah, making

34:52

that unscheduled time for that. You know, corporations

34:54

are always trying to sell us on like come to this

34:56

resort and have meaningful family tough.

34:58

But you know you can just do

35:00

that by being president dinner, you

35:02

know, just burned some pork chops. By

35:04

the way, I went to hear Rumdus speak

35:07

when I was quite young. He came

35:09

to London and I went and sat on the floor and listened

35:11

to this. You know, he was amazing

35:13

and amazing being in person,

35:16

and his whole thing was you

35:18

know, not only not only can

35:20

you, but you will and you should

35:22

think about it. If you won't think about anything, having

35:25

your big spiritual experiences

35:27

in the butcher's shop, in picking

35:29

your tomatoes, waiting in line

35:31

at the dentist in the waiting room

35:34

as you will, like sitting under the Banyan

35:37

tree. It goes back to what you were saying about detail,

35:39

like there is such life in detail,

35:41

and that is mundane and that is also

35:44

poetic. The mundane

35:46

and the sublime are linked there, like braided

35:48

around each other all the time. Boy, they

35:50

really are. I love sort of videgar

35:53

crisps. They are the food of the

35:55

gods. Thank

35:58

you so much for coming and chatting

36:00

and where all these ideas. It is absolutely

36:02

brilliant. Thank you so much. Mini. I've really

36:05

enjoyed diving into the podcast, and I think it's

36:07

so cool that you're exercising your curiosity

36:10

and you get to bring all these different

36:12

people together. So wonderful. Thank

36:14

you, Tony, and please say hello to your

36:16

wife and your boys. Okay,

36:19

same, say hi to Henry. We'll do

36:21

well when he gets back with his clean socks

36:25

socks. Anthony's

36:29

newest book, Cloud cookoo Land, is out

36:31

now in hardcover and paperback,

36:34

and be sure to read his other incredible

36:36

works, including All the Light We Cannot

36:38

See About Grace and

36:40

This wonderful collection of short stories called

36:43

The Shell Collector. Mini

36:46

Questions is hosted and written by Me

36:49

Mini Driver, supervising producer

36:51

Aaron Kaufman, Producer

36:54

more Than Levoy, Research assistant

36:57

Marissa Brown. Original

36:59

music Sorry Baby by Mini

37:02

Driver, Additional

37:04

music by Aaron Kauffman, Executive

37:06

produced by Me Mini Driver. Special

37:09

thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will

37:12

Pearson, Addison No Day,

37:15

Lisa Castella and a Unique Oppenheim

37:17

at w kPr, de

37:19

La Pescador, Kate Driver

37:21

and Jason Weinberg. And for

37:23

constantly solicited tech support, Henry

37:26

Driver.