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I spend a lot of time thinking about families. This is due in part to the turmoil I’ve experienced in my own over the past year, but true even at the best of times.
Which brings me, of course, to podcasts.
In an effort to branch out from the steady diet of British mysteries, celebrity memoirs and speculative fiction I chew through monthly, I’ve been exploring podcasts. One of the ones I fell for is fairly new, and I blasted through it pretty quickly. It's called Search Engine.
To feed my jones while waiting for the next episode to drop, I fell to online sleuthing the host; I'd heard of him, and of his former boss, and was trying to connect the dots among a bunch of podcasters and shows I like.
Soon I came across a brouhaha around his earlier, wildly popular podcast (Reply All) and its demise. This host, P.J. Vogt, and a producer, Sruthi Pinnamaneni, were accused of creating a hostile work environment, primarily by opposing a unionizing effort on the part of other employees.
The idea that lefty thirty-something Brooklynites would oppose unionization of any kind is pretty suss, so yeah, I guess they were protecting their status and potential earnings without regard for their colleagues who didn’t have it so good. Many of them people of color, of course, because, America.
The author of one article I read said (more or less) that this guy is maybe problematic but makes really great podcasts and he’ll be enjoying the new one while feeling a little weird about it.
Hey, me too! In fact, I’m now devouring Reply All, the one the wronged employees likely wish would vanish from the airwaves.
This is the thing about living in a world brimming with information. We have too much access to too many details, and no way to corroborate them, and because we are human our brains are struggling to categorize information; otherwise known as judging. And then we’re trying to make behavioral decisions based on that information and balanced against a million other factors.
It’s hard, and in my case can lead to some pretty sideways thinking. By which I mean that I’ll listen to Michael Jackson’s music but will not watch Woody Allen’s movies. 🤔
This brings me back to families, because the problem is so much more intractable in that setup. We’ll put up with a lot from the people we love. Add in behavioral patterns cemented in childhood and feelings of obligation and you’ve got a chex mix of thoughts and emotions and ingrained conduct.
It’s hard to eat around the weird-tasting bits.
One of my daughters once asked me what she’d have to do to make me stop loving her. (Apparently she’d already recounted the plot of every episode of Avatar:The Last Airbender and we were looking for other conversational gambits.) The only answer I could come up with was that it'd be hard to keep loving her if she killed her sister. (Yikes, sorry for the dark turn.)
But that's not even true; it would just make the love more painful. Once you're tied to people through bonds of love, obligation, proximity and longevity it's super hard to just let them go.
When you’re dealing with your family you might do what I’ve done with my podcaster, (not to mention family members); recognize the misbehavior and decide to engage anyway. Or you might decide that their Truman Show antics are just too much to swallow and bow out of all future holiday dinners. (Also I thing I've done vis-à-vis my family.)
And I guess when you're looking for a new podcast you might ignore the character and past actions of the host because who are you, God's henchman?
And while my opinion about your decisions matters not a fig, please let me do the thing that brings me joy: remind you that whatever you decide to do is okay. That includes watching Kevin Spacey movies and refusing to spend Thanksgiving with your misogynist uncle, or vice versa.
We’ve gotta live in the world, let’s do our best and keep moving.
Recommendation!
She really is!
Talk about a family member acting inappropriately (were we?), I devoured this book and would come back for more. I'm Glad My Mom Died, by Jennette McCurdy. Read if you must, listen if you can.
And if you're in the mood for something a little more scholarly, here's a book that tackles the question alluded to above: can we, should we, enjoy art made by morally questionable people? I liked this even more because I didn't always agree with the author. Monsters, by Claire Dederer.
Monsters. They’re real.
These are affilliate links, which means that if you buy one of these books I will make a small commission, AND independent bookstores around the country will receive a much bigger commission. 🙂
Learn more about using Bookshop.com and Libro.fm to support local bookstores by shopping for both your physical and audio books online - just not at that one really big online retailer.
I guess I should have known this?
It's true, I can be a dictator when it comes to grammar (don't get me started on fewer vs. less) but I do get tripped up sometimes. I've been noticing the word comprised pop up a lot lately, and current usage doesn't match what I'm used to, though honestly it feels more... right.
Here's what Merriam Webster has to say about it.
And here's the story of a guy who takes the correct usage of this word very, very seriously. (It's in the second half of the show, but the first half is equally interesting.)