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Give Them LaLa presents The Just Enough Family · Untraditionally Lala

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, my loves, I just want to tell you about
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: a new podcast called The Just Enough Family. It's the
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: story about the rise and fall of the Steinbergs, who
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: were once one of the richest families in America, and
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: this story is told through the eyes of the family's
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: most charismatic member, the fashion designer Liz Lang. Liz is
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: the niece of the infamous corporate raider Saul Steinberg, who
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: amassed a fortune before he was thirty years old, and
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: he brought his entire tight knit Jewish family along for
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: the ride. But the family fractures and loses everything after
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Saul suffers a stroke and his little brother, Robert takes
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: control of the family business. Robert presides over the largest
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: insurance company collapse in American history. The Just Enough Family
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: is hosted by New Yorker's staff writer and best selling
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: author ri l Levy, who had unprecedented access to the
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Steinbergs because of her very close friendship with Liz. Profound
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: intimacy over the top parties, staggering success, unexpected loss, and
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: shocking betrayals are woven together into a high profile family
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: therapy session. The conversations the Steinberg's have with Aril are startling,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: frank and revealing and will leave you dying to find
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: out what happens next. Here's a clip from the Justino Family.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: We're going to hear Liz and her little sister Jane
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: talk about how differently they experienced their childhoods. And we're
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: going to hear their parents talk about how differently they
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: thought of their daughters.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Did she treat you and Liz differently?
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: I don't feel like much was like demanded of me.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: Everything was demanded of Liz. Everything you've got an A minus?
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: Why isn't it an A? You know? And I feel
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: like for me it was like.
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: You got to see in French, well that's not your thing.
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: You don't want to go to Hebrew school. Don't go
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: to Heber school. You know. Liz was like you were
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: going to Hebrew school.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Well, Liz was very smart.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: She was a voracious reader.
• 1:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean she also had great grades and.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: She was always at the top of her class. We
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: never heard from Jane.
• 1:55
  Speaker 5: They kind of had us in two buckets. My sister
• 1:58
  Speaker 5: was the pretty one and I was a small one,
• 2:01
  Speaker 5: and so we kind of hated each other because I
• 2:03
  Speaker 5: bought into that theory and I thought my sister. Again,
• 2:06
  Speaker 5: it could be further from true, and she is my
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: best friend today, but I really I just agreed. I
• 2:10
  Speaker 5: thought she might have been like the dumbest person on earth.
• 2:12
  Speaker 5: That's what I thought, genuinely. So I felt like I
• 2:18
  Speaker 5: had nothing in common with this creature who was just
• 2:20
  Speaker 5: obviously so stupid but so beautiful, this hot, dim way.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: I feel like I mentally wasn't there. I would play
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: with my food, I would go to the bathroom a
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: million times during meals to escape. I played with candle
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: wax on the table like I did anything I possibly
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: could to not be mentally present. Liz has different memories
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: than I do, because I just was like, I don't want.
• 2:47
  Speaker 6: To be here.
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: She was literally like eyes wide, like feed me, give
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: me more? Like what like like on a Saturday, she
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: would walk Madison Avenue with my parents and go have
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: lunch at the jewelry store at fred Layton.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: So you didn't go to Uncle Marie's for these brunches.
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: Never in my entire life. Like I looked at what
• 3:07
  Speaker 5: they had and I liked it. Jane looked at what
• 3:10
  Speaker 5: they had and she hated it. She was not looking
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: to replicate it. And I was thinking if I'm super lucky,
• 3:17
  Speaker 5: I'll grow up and live this lifestyle. So I kind
• 3:20
  Speaker 5: of liked I always saw it if I went along
• 3:22
  Speaker 5: with them on Saturdays, you never know, a little bubble
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: might come my way, a little dress might come away,
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: and she to her again, I really mean this to
• 3:29
  Speaker 5: her credit just didn't care. She'd be like, the price
• 3:32
  Speaker 5: is too high. I mean, I don't know if that's
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: what the word she'd use, but I know that was
• 3:35
  Speaker 5: what was in her head.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Whereas you were like a little hooker.
• 3:37
  Speaker 5: I was a hooker's hooker. Jane used to have this
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: joke about me where she'd be like, ouch does fire
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: still burn?
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: Ouch?
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: Does fire still burn? I had this whole thing. I
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: was always desperately trying to make our family kind of
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: what I wanted it to be, what I thought the
• 3:53
  Speaker 5: world thought it was. I was still trying to like
• 3:56
  Speaker 5: square that with like the actual experience. And Jane, I
• 3:59
  Speaker 5: think I saw from like a very young age, this
• 4:02
  Speaker 5: is horrible. It's not fun. And I was somehow like
• 4:07
  Speaker 5: can I get more? Can I get one? I don't know.
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: I was just always wanting to be attached to the family.
• 4:12
  Speaker 6: The financial freedom was great. What was bad about it
• 4:17
  Speaker 6: was that the money became too important. I used to
• 4:21
  Speaker 6: say to Bobby, we have all form and no content.
• 4:24
  Speaker 6: I don't need to be this rich.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Really, yeah, because why what was bad about being so rich?
• 4:30
  Speaker 6: It was just a bad things. They were too many things.
• 4:36
  Speaker 5: So like I always had like a big, fancy bedroom
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: decorated by some famous decorator, and I never liked it
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: that much. Not because I don't like fancy things. I
• 4:43
  Speaker 5: love fancy things. It was because it just wasn't really
• 4:46
  Speaker 5: my little girl taste. It just wouldn't be my little
• 4:48
  Speaker 5: girl taste. And whatever my little girl taste was was
• 4:50
  Speaker 5: considered taking not okay, not allowed. And again I'm not complaining.
• 4:54
  Speaker 5: It's not sad. It's just like at the time, like
• 4:56
  Speaker 5: I had this best friendly son. And Lisa's mother was
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: divorced in the nineteen seventies. It wasn't that common, Like
• 5:02
  Speaker 5: I didn't know a lot of people at divorced parents.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Oh no, it's a big deal.
• 5:04
  Speaker 5: It was a big d They were divorced, and looking
• 5:06
  Speaker 5: back on it, I'm sure her mother was kind of struggling.
• 5:09
  Speaker 5: They lived in a one bedroom apartment and Lisa's mother
• 5:13
  Speaker 5: slept in the living room and gave Lisa the bedroom,
• 5:15
  Speaker 5: and they were like so tight Lisa in her mother
• 5:17
  Speaker 5: because there was nobody else. It was just Lisa and
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: her mother in this tiny little apartment. And I thought
• 5:21
  Speaker 5: that was the coolest. That was my gold standard, Like
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: I just wanted Lisa's room. Sometimes Lisa got to sleep
• 5:27
  Speaker 5: in the pull out couch in the living room and
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: her mom slept in the bedroom. Sometimes they might have
• 5:31
  Speaker 5: even slept together. In my house, everything was I was
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: in my room, my sister Jane was in her room,
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: My parents were way down the hallway in their room.
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: If I woke up in the middle of the night,
• 5:41
  Speaker 5: this is not poor little retch girls, just the way
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: it was. If I were to be scared or set
• 5:44
  Speaker 5: in the mill of the night, I wouldn't have walked
• 5:46
  Speaker 5: down the hallway to my parents room. A housekeeper would
• 5:49
  Speaker 5: have been the person that I would have gone to
• 5:54
  Speaker 5: to go back to that just enough thing. I think
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: that was all just part of the craziness and the
• 5:59
  Speaker 5: gas lighting and why I would just be easier if
• 6:01
  Speaker 5: we all if we were just part of that just
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: enough family.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Well, and it sounds like she had some fantasies about
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: that too, because she said to me, you know, the
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: money got too important. There was just too much stuff.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: We had too many things. She told me that she
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: once said to your father, we're all form and no content,
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: or we're all form and no substance.
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: I think she used to think that. I think they
• 6:23
  Speaker 5: used to talk about that. I think that was a mantra.
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: I think you're right, well, what does that mean.
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: I don't know that we've got all the trappings, but
• 6:29
  Speaker 5: I think maybe it was what I sense. We have
• 6:31
  Speaker 5: all the trappings, but things just aren't that good, like
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: I know, and again that sounds like I'm not saying
• 6:37
  Speaker 5: like the trappings were good. They were fun, but somehow
• 6:41
  Speaker 5: things were just off the rails. Things just always felt
• 6:43
  Speaker 5: so out of control. And I know it's like, well,
• 6:45
  Speaker 5: what do you mean? But it just felt like we
• 6:46
  Speaker 5: were just hurtling and speeding towards something bad. Like I
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: remember one of their friends. Weren't said about my parents shopping.
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: I mean, even a train has to stop sometimes. Shut up,
• 6:59
  Speaker 5: Shut up.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Listen to The justin Up Family, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: or wherever you're hearing me now. Boom show la La boom,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: show la La boom boom, show la La, show
• 7:12
  Speaker 5: La la show La La shall Laga shout black.