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Episode 1: Yes and No · The Oldster Radio Hour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: I've learned at my late age, just say yes.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: You don't know what's gonna happen when you decide to do something.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: You do know what's gonna happen if you say no, which is nothing is gonna happen.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: But if you take a chance on something, just say yes.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: What I saw in doing the book and what I felt in my own life is that as I got older,
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: no became more of an option for me.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's the Oldster Radio Hour, Episode 1, Yes
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: and No.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the Oldster Radio Hour.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Sari Botten, your host and the founder of Oldster Magazine.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: This podcast is produced by Brian Macaluso and sponsored by Ruthann Harnish.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_03: This is our first episode, which we're calling Yes and No.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: We've got two segments,
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: one in which someone changes their life later on by saying yes to things,
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: and another in which someone finds the courage in midlife to say no more often,
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: which, in a way, is saying yes to herself.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: We begin with an interview with 87-year-old Annie Corzin,
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: a character actor best known for her roles on Seinfeld,
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: and also a storyteller, author, and late-in-life TikTok star.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: For Annie,
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: saying yes,
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: where other actors may have said no,
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: has led her to many wonderful opportunities she never would have seen coming
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: when she was younger.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: And later,
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: we'll introduce you to Anna Holmes,
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: an author and founder of the feminist website Jezebel,
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: who's got a new book called The Power of No.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: So welcome, Annie Corson.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: Annie wrote a beautiful piece for Oldster Magazine a few years ago about Being
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: a late bloomer about becoming a success later in life.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: Let's talk about that.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: Much later in life.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: You had wanted to be an actor.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: You had wanted to tell a story at the Moth.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: You wanted to be an author.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: So tell us about how you broke into acting later on.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it was later in life and I didn't really break in.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not a good type as an actress in Hollywood.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm considered ugly, character-y.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I studied a lot.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I got a job here and a job there.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then quite accidentally, my agent called in 1991 and said, look, there's this new show.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know much about it.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: One of my other actresses turned it down.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: The park wasn't big enough for her.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: Do you want to audition for it?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: I said, yeah, I'm not going to turn down anything.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a couple of lines that I got the job and the show was Seinfeld.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: And my role repeated.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: And they liked me, so I did a second role.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was Doris Clampus down in the Florida condo.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: At Del Boca Vista.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_03: Those Del Boca Vista episodes of Seinfeld that are just indelible.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: My husband Jack is always fighting with Jerry's father.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then they liked me, and I got along with them, so they cast me in a second role.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: I always play obnoxious characters, because that's what my looks suggest to Hollywood.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm this obnoxious airline passenger that Elaine is stuck next to
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: while Jerry has been upgraded to first class.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: But here's the thing.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: My work on that show was not very significant.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: There were just a few lines here.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: I was not a major character.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: But Hollywood being what it is,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: being associated in any way with that show just opened doors for me.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: The idea that I had had a recurring role on suddenly Agents were looking at me differently.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: Casting people were looking at me differently.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: And over the years, I did that first show in 1991.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: And as I say, I have very few lines.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: I really have little to do.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: I figured out that since that time, I have earned in residuals over $100,000.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: That is incredible.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I sometimes think of the actress who turned her down.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: She said...
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's not enough.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know the show and there's not enough.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: The character doesn't talk enough.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I was thinking,
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: it's one of the themes of my book,
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: we'll talk about my book, is that I've learned at my late age, just say yes.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: You don't know what's going to happen when you decide to do something.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: You do know what's going to happen if you say no, which is nothing is going to happen.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: But if you take a chance on something Just say yes.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: You don't know what the results are going to be.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the moral of that story and one of the themes of my book.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_03: How old were you when you appeared on Seinfeld?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: I can't figure out numbers,
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: but if it was 91, I mean, it was definitely, I must have been in my 40s.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: 35 years ago, so you were probably in your 50s.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_03: Was I that old?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you would have been 52.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's funny because, you know, I'm 60 now.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: Now, if I was born in 1938, and this was 1991 that I started the show, I can't do numbers.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: You would have been 53.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, my God.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: I thought I was younger than that.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I was already middle-aged when I got my first, you might say, big break.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's amazing to me.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm glad you told me that because I didn't know that.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: So sometimes not everybody's an overnight success.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it takes time and you've got to find ways to fill in the time while you're waiting.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: I actually shouldn't say waiting because that word sounds so passive, right?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: We don't wait, people like you and me.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: We don't wait.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: We make, we create, we try.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: We keep moving.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, waiting sounds like...
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: So you're not really waiting for things to happen.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: You're expecting them.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: You're hoping they'll happen while you keep busy doing other things.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: That is a better way of
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: putting it.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: And another example of that is you really wanted to appear on the moth
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: and you pursued it for nine years.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: For nine years, you kept sending them.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: Every time I did a Story of the Moth is this wonderful storytelling organization.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: They appear all over the country.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I had an introduction, but nothing ever happened.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: I would do a storytelling show.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: I would take a video, send it.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Annie.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: Keep sending us your stuff.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: And finally, and I just felt I belonged there.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I finally, I sent them one piece I did and I didn't hear from them.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember walking into my husband's office and saying, that's it.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think after nine years, they obviously don't feel I'm, I know I belong there.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: And they clearly don't.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to do that.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: I can't torture myself.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: It was really painful.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I swear, the very next day, I get a call from New York.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: Annie, we love your last story.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: Would you like to appear with us in Los Angeles, Berkeley, St. Louis, Boston, I mean.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: And now, actually, I've prepared another story.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to do another one with them.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: How wonderful.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: But it took nine years.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there's really...
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: A very positive message in that that is very much oldster adjacent,
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: which is that it's never too late.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: And also that you're not too old.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: You just have to keep going.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: And that know to me what I learned in my career with with a lot of late starts is
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: that know The word no just means not right now.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's the way I think of it.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I like that.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: I think of it as no means not right now,
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: and that doesn't mean that later something could happen,
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_03: and that it doesn't matter that I'm older,
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_03: or I shouldn't think of myself as too old, I've expired.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not expired milk.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: It hasn't happened yet.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: Just keep going.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: And it seems like you really subscribe to that.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: But you know what you're saying is,
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: and I agree with that, you've got to turn negatives into positives.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I learned that when I was interviewing to find agents.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I discovered this thing, and this is true for anybody who's interviewing for anything.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: Prepare yourself for the negative remark they're going to make And prepare
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: to turn it into a positive.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_03: How do you do that?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: Give me an example.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I remember going to a meeting with one of the toughest commercial agents in New York.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: She ate actors for lunch.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: You couldn't get in there, and she was negative.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: And she said something like, well, Annie, you're a very, very difficult type.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: There's very little work for you.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, you know, you're absolutely right.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: I am aware of that.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: On the other hand, When I'm right, I'm really right.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: Who do you have in my category?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's wonderful.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: And she signed me that day.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: So you're kind of a character actor.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: But the thing is, what I'm saying is I didn't argue with her.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't say, no, no, you're wrong.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: I can do everything.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because what she said was true.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody's going to say, you know, you know, bangs are not in style anymore.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: You shouldn't have bangs.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you're right.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: But they look good on me and they make me special.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: Instead of saying, oh no, no, no.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know what I mean?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: You take any negative thing and show
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_03: what's positive about
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: it.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: But agree with them first is what I'm saying.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_03: That makes a lot of sense.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_03: Find a way to make it your brand.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: Which is what
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: you did.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I wish I had known more about this earlier.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: I always thought of myself as unattractive.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: I always thought I talk too much.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm too opinionated.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: All those things that I apologized for all of my life, now I'm being celebrated for.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: It only took 85 years to get there.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: But there were certain expectations about what a woman has to be.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't fit any of those expectations, not in looks, not in behavior.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was always a battle.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: It was always a struggle.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: But it made you special that you were different from the mainstream.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, now I can see that, but it caused me a lot of pain in my life.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: I really felt I was not feminine.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: Not attractive, not womanly.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: Now my fans, my social media fans, are saying, Annie, we love your voice.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: We love your opinions.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: We think you're beautiful.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: I've never been called beautiful, ever, until now.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: So your social media friends, let's talk about that.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_03: So you have become a TikTok star.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: Crazy, right?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: How did that happen?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm not even on TikTok.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: Just by saying yes.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: Just by saying yes to what I thought was an absolutely insane idea.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: A young friend, I was talking about storytelling, which I love to do.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, gee, I'd like to find a larger audience.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: And a young friend said, you should be on TikTok.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: You would go viral.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: I said, are you insane?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: TikTok is about young girls, you know, wiggling their tushes and putting on makeup.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: And who's going to want it?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: She said, trust me, you will go viral.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I said,
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: I don't believe this for a second,
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: but if you will, Produce it and show me how to do it.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: And this was March 20th.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: It was a week before lockdown.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I think my timing was lucky because I think during lockdown,
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: people had nothing else to do but watch an old lady on social media.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think for once in my life, I got lucky with the timing.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: So how many TikTok videos have you made?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how many I've made,
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: but right now I have like around 600,000 followers from all over the world.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: Amazing, amazing.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I love them, and they start me, and they're very unexpected.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's not my expected audience.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's kids of every shape, color, color, and you know, whatever.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_03: And how many do you make a week?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's changed.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: When I started, During COVID, I posted twice a day, seven days a week.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lot.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Now, when I started, you couldn't do over 60 seconds.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: Now they've extended it.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: You can do 10 minutes.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: But even at 60 seconds,
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: coming up with material twice a day, seven days a week, that takes some effort.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: Now I cut it down.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now I do maybe...
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: I post like every other day,
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: maybe three, sometimes four times a week, usually around three times a week.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: And they get a huge viewership, every one of them.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: What's interesting is you never know.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I've seen some of yours that have like a million views.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them get a million views and some that I think are brilliant get no traffic.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: And there's that thing that I do not understand at all called the algorithm.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't understand how that works.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: Me either.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: So you also published a book.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: Tell us about how that came about.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, because I had that TikTok following, I was able to get a publisher.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's The Book of Annie, Humor, Heart, and Chutzpah.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: From an accidental influencer.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just a combination of what I do on social media.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: Stories, personal stories, some little short bites.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: All hopefully humorous and some of it hopefully inspiring and heartfelt.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I like to combine both.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: I don't like to just do gags.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's the difference.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: I call myself a humorous because I'm not a standup.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: Standup's about laugh, laugh, laugh.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they're going for the laughs.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: As storytellers,
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: we want to combine the laughs with something maybe a little deeper emotionally.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: So that's my aim, you know, is to combine those two things.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_03: And you,
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: so in the book and on your TikToks,
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: you talk about the things, your opinions, your outlook, your perspective.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, my opinions, my outlook about what it means to be a wife, a mother, a daughter, a friend.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: And also I discovered that I have peculiar interests
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: that have turned out Have universal appeal, which I did not expect.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: I've always been a thrifter.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: I was brought up poor.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: Money was very scarce in my house, so I never have wasted money ever.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: I take leftovers home from the restaurant.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: I use today's tea bag tomorrow.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I never buy retail.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: I've never bought retail.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: Everything I'm wearing, $2 in a thrift shop, $3 in a thrift shop.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I do.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, and these are my new earrings.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: Are they cute?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: Very cute.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: I slurred, six bucks.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I started writing about this just because it's me.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: I had no idea that thrifting is a big trend.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: Huge, huge.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: I had no idea.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: So when I talk about yard sales and thrift stores and estate sales
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: and all these young people are saying, oh, I do that all the time.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: So the young people really relate to that?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, they do.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm glad they do because it's good for the environment.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, really, nobody should go to North Shows and spend $400 on a T-shirt.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: That just bothers me, quite frankly.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: Or $6,000 on a pair of shoes.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: If you have that kind of money,
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: there's other things you could do with that money to make the world a better place.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know what I'm saying?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_03: I do.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: I do.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm wearing thrifted shoes.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: I love those.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: Let's switch gears now from yes to no.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: Recently,
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: I got to chat with Anna Holmes about her new book,
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_03: The Power of No,
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: A Celebration,
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: and how in midlife she's gotten comfortable issuing that two-letter word.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's very relevant to the Oldster crowd.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: Again and again in Oldster questionnaires and personal essays,
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: contributors to the magazine declare that later in life,
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: they've found the courage to say no,
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: something they'd struggled with when they were younger.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's a recurring theme,
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_03: especially with women who've been conditioned by our patriarchal culture
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_03: to be compliant.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: It rings very true for me,
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_03: an inveterate people pleaser,
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_03: who, in my 60s, is finally learning to turn some requests down.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's still never easy.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes I have to force myself to count to 10 or even wait 24 hours before making
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: a decision, especially if I feel iffy about a yes.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_03: But something has changed for me on that front now that I'm older.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_03: I'm more inclined to say no and less worried about any fallout from that.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_03: Editing Oldster Magazine, I've learned I'm hardly alone.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: The book is an extension of a 2015 commencement speech Holmes delivered at
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: the Emma Willard School and then a 2021 article she published in The Atlantic.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's a slim but potent volume with lots of ideas about why it's difficult for us
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: to say no, but also imperative for us too.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: How saying no sometimes means making room for saying yes to things we'd prefer.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: And also finding and establishing important personal boundaries.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: It includes quotes from many notables and great thinkers like Deborah Tannen,
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: Oprah Winfrey,
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: Roxanne Gay,
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_03: Cheryl Strayed, Brene Brown, Anne Lamott, Melissa Phoebus, and many others.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: There are also some suggestions for how to get comfortable uttering
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: that difficult two-letter word,
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_03: which also needs to be recognized by more people as a complete sentence.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: Let's talk about this book, which I really love.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: I will refer to this again and again because I am a yes person and it is a problem.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's a mixed bag.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, a thing I often say about myself is that I default to yes.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: And some of it's bad and some of it's good.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: I have friends who I admire who default to no.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: I have a couple of those too.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you ask for something, no matter what you ask for, no, no.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: And what I've realized is the people who default to no
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: a much better bargaining position,
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: that inherent in an instant no is your offer isn't good enough.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: Make me a better offer or don't waste my time.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: So I admire these people and I try to learn from them.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: I would say I've gotten a little better at no.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: I'm also a Libra.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that means because I only know about my own sign, but not anyone else's, yeah.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, what is your sign, by
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: the way?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a Gemini on the cusp of cancer.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay,
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: yeah, I know what
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: that means, yeah.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: I also like, I only selectively believe in astrology.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: You talk early in the book about that it took you a long time to stop saying yes immediately.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'll read what you wrote.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: For a long time during my youth,
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: I believed that by saying yes to things,
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: I would increase my odds of success in life.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: But what I didn't know then is that rather than ensuring my future success,
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: I was increasing the odds that I would become spread so thin that That I'd forget
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: who I was and what I wanted.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: That I would continue privileging others' needs and desires above my own to
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: the point where I didn't even recognize that there was a difference between them.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I think I can relate to this.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: The idea that someone defaults to know,
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: as you mentioned,
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: and I have a couple of friends who are like that,
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: definitely feels like In some cases,
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: it's not necessarily an assertion of their power,
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: but it's reflective of their relative power.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe in that situation,
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: in that situation alone, I didn't feel particularly empowered when I was younger.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so saying no was something that was very difficult for me.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: And related to that was the fact that I didn't always know what I wanted.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And to know what you want Opens you up,
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: frees you up for saying yes or no,
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: to come at an answer like that with more intention and strength, I suppose.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: What I find interesting and what I tried to do with the book was,
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm not sure how much this is being picked up on by readers,
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: but I think that most of the time it is,
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: is it's kind of, it covers kind of a woman's lifespan.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like we talk about Childhood towards the beginning of the book and the ways in
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: which young kids are socialized and for girls to be accommodating and to not say no
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: and then goes into adolescence and then later years and then ends up in a place
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: with older women, by which I mean women over the age of 50.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what I saw in doing the book and what I felt in my own life is that
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: as I got older, Know became more of an option for me.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that was in some part because I felt I had more relative power,
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: particularly mostly in professional situations.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that I had more power in my friendships.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think of friendships as being a power dynamic.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: It feels very cynical.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: But as I got older, I started to know better what I wanted.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that That coupled with the fact that I was wiser about the world
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: in general,
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: and then I had enough practice saying no and seeing that the world didn't end
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: when I said it.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: That was the fear,
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: was that something was going to come down from the heavens and slap me away or
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: that I'd lose friends or lose a job.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, it's still very hard for me to say no.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's just less difficult than it was when, let's say, I was 25.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: You do talk later in the book about trying to figure out what you want, what you don't want.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I found that really useful.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to skip ahead to a question and go back.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: You talk about older women having more courage to say no.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: And it's something I encounter a lot, too.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'll read a quote from Cheryl Strayed.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: Who is in her 50s, late 50s.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: No is golden.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: No is the kind of power the good witch wields.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's the way whole,
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: healthy,
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: emotionally evolved people manage to have relationships with jackasses
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: while limiting the amount of jackass in their lives.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_03: And that's really powerful.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: And you also quote Oprah Winfrey, Brene Brown, Anne Lamott, Shonda Rhimes, and others.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: And you talk a lot about a shift that happens in midlife.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: Where we stop caring as much about pleasing others.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: I see that a lot with Oldster contributors.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: People who respond to the Oldster questionnaire or write personal essays.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think accounts for that shift?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I've read that in part,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: it's also hormonal and how our hormonal shift affects what happens in our brain.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to know.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I would love to look into that further,
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: the hormonal shift,
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: because When I've talked about the relative ease that I've had over my lifespan
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: and saying no,
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: I locate the easier no's in my much earlier youth and then found it getting harder
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: as I hit pre-adolescence and adolescence and then,
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know, majority of my adult life.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: But when I was like six, seven, eight,
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was very spunky and knew what I wanted most of the time and was not afraid
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: to either ask for it or reject it.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I've often wondered, is there something to the hormone thing?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because by the time I was 10, I kind of started collapsing into myself.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of this is like the ways that we're socialized in school environments and
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: the reinforcement again and again and again of what it is to be a girl or what it is
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: to be feminine and insecurities that arise about how we look and who we are
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: and what we want to be.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: However this sounds,
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've spent a lot of my adult life wishing I could get back
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: to this funky seven-year-old.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I only feel like maybe that started to happen recently.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And again, it could be, it's probably the combination of wisdom, hormones.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can throw hormones in there too.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: It might also be,
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: there's a certain invisibility that women of a certain age have to contend with.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that can be a superpower as well.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: As well as that,
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: if we're not under such scrutiny,
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: and I think that's what also happens sometimes in youth is that as you get older,
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: as a girl, you're under more scrutiny.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a kind of superpower in the invisibility or
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: the relative invisibility of women over a certain age.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that frees us up to Be more ourselves because we're not performing
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: for other people so much.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore,
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: if we're not performing for other people so much or we're not subsuming ourselves
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: for their happiness, comfort, et cetera, we're more likely to feel free to say no.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then lastly, I'd say, and this is just like a jumble of thoughts.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: You do have a relative...
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: We often have a certain amount of power when we're,
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: let's say, 45, 50, 55 that we didn't have when we were 25.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that can be both because of life experience and wisdom,
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: but also perhaps professionally as well.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's most common to our own professionally around those ages.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: And being able to say no is a reflection of power in many ways.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think that So it's easy for me to say,
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: we need to say no more often, but it isn't easy for a lot of women.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't easy for a lot of people who are people of color.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take, for example, Black women.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I mentioned this a little bit in the book and more so in an article that I wrote
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: for The Atlantic about, no,
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: a couple years ago,
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: but how Black women,
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: for example,
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: have to contend with Stereotypes about angry Black women and saying no or being,
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: quote, obstinate can be interpreted as being aggressive.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's added complications when you factor in things like race
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: or economic class or gender orientation, sexual orientation.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that this is all making sense because I'm kind of going off on a tangent.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's making total sense to me.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: But you're talking about hormones and I'm like, yes, let's...
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let's, let's learn more about that.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, some of the women that I admire the most are peri or postmenopausal.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, a lot of women who take the Oldster questionnaire talk about how perimenopause
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: or menopause has returned them to the child version of themselves.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_03: Elizabeth Gilbert in her Oldster questionnaire talks particularly about returning
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_03: to her nine-year-old self.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, And she also feels freed from the hormonal shift.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: She also identifies as a love and sex addict.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: So for her, it's really nice to feel less inclined to perform for men.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I also wonder about when we're eight, nine, ten, like I was a very late developer.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think I was really having like,
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think I was as drawn to boys hormonally,
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: sexually, but
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: they were ahead of me.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: And when boys start paying attention to you, I think that maybe is the beginning of it.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: Like when the boys are 10 and they're Kind of having,
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: these hormonal shifts and they start paying attention to girls
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: and they're paying attention to some girls and not other girls.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: That's when we start performing gender in a way that can really divert us away from ourselves.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like I know that was true for myself.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: My fifth grade best friend had all these boyfriends and no, I didn't.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember sitting up at night with both my parents and saying,
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: why don't boys like me, you know?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: And my mother literally said to me, you should wink and wiggle.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was 10.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my God.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: You should wink and wiggle.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: I feel the same way.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: I developed later.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: I also was, I grew up in a very white milieu.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't think that this was in the seventies and eighties.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't think there were models for these white boys of girls
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: who weren't Caucasian being attractive to them.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's,
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: I may be painting it with too broad a brush,
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: but women of color were not considered in society to be sexually attractive in ways
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: that weren't pathologized.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that my late development plus what I looked like and who I was
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: in terms of identity, I didn't get a lot of attention from boys.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: But yes,
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: the girls who developed earlier learned to carry themselves in
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: a certain way Looking back on that, I'm glad I developed later.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad that I didn't feel sexualized from a young age because I think that
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: that poses its own problems.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think perhaps that maybe I was more,
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was therefore more able to be of myself for longer than if I might've been
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: if I was conventionally pretty or had developed breasts at a young age
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: or had these secondary sexual characteristics that boys were noticing
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: and being attracted to.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: it's interesting that you said Elizabeth Gilbert located around the age of nine,
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: that she, yeah.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like the seven, eight, six,
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: seven, eight, nine time period when there were other things that were happening.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know,
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: I would,
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if this happens so much with kids nowadays,
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: but I also knew how to play by myself at those ages and enjoy my own company in ways
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: that I didn't so much when I was a little bit older and a teenager.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: I read books when I was a little bit older,
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: but just finding joy in play and in imagination and creativity and not feeling,
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: and therefore liking myself.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, playing by myself was about liking myself and liking myself was about feeling confident.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: these things all ladder up to our ability to enforce boundaries, say no and say yes.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you're making me realize something.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things we talk a lot About at Oldster is internal age versus chronological age.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's the second question on the Oldster questionnaire.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_03: Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind?
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_03: And then Jennifer Sr. did a piece on that phenomenon for The Atlantic and she quoted me.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: And the first internal age,
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_03: I have multiple ones,
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_03: but when I first flashed to myself in my mind, I'm 10 and a half
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: years.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the reason for that is because it's before all
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: of this stuff starts happening where you have to perform for people,
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: especially as a girl,
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_03: for the boys,
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_03: for the approval, for you're competing with your friends who are more developed.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_03: So that's just helping me really understand that.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't thought, I haven't asked myself that question.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like when I think of myself as being a certain age.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, do you have like a vision of yourself?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: I would say seven or eight, maybe even nine, seven, eight, nine.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you know,
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: at the beginning of this book, Well, okay,
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: the book came out of an article for The Atlantic,
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: which came out of a commencement speech I gave.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: And in the commencement speech I gave,
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: and maybe in the Atlantic article,
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mentioned one of my favorite books from childhood, Harriet the Spy.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Harriet the Spy is spunky and bratty and ridiculous.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: I love that line because she's saying so much in it and the assertion not just of her own
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Agency, but she's saying that she doesn't want to do something overall,
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: but then she's also pushing back on the idea without saying so explicitly
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: that she needs to be tamed somehow by dancing school.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I find that I love that book.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've written about it multiple times.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: I do think of it as somewhat of a sad book,
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: as well as very funny, because in the end, she gets in trouble for...
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Her obstinance and then has to be kind of brought down a peg.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then she finds,
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: at the end,
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: she's found a balance between,
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know, being somewhat well behaved and kinder to people than she was before.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: it's the first part of that book that I love the most
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: because she is just balls out herself.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: I do see the later iterations of her life in that book as being a little bit
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: of like, Just taming her.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: And just like I felt like I got quote unquote tamed when I hit 9, 10, 11, 12.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's what the author Louise Fitzhugh is getting at.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe she's not so much writing the story of a girl,
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: a sad story,
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: but just something that's a reality,
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: which is that when girls at a certain age,
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: they are expected to go to dancing school, behave well, be kind to others.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious, did you ever get Report card commentary about- Pleasure to have
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: in class.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: Pleasure to have in class every goddamn time.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was reading some report card analyses of myself and there were a couple.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: One was that I was bossy.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is when I was younger, like when I was like seven.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this isn't older stuff.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: Bossy, anxious.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, wow, I was anxious even back then, but also kind to the other kids.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that the bossy and the anxious evaluations were probably not positive.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think the teacher was like,
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: it's great that she's bossy or it's great that she's anxious.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I do think that the liked by other kids and kind to other kids,
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: you know, was a positive evaluation.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing wrong with that.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: I would rather be liked by other kids or nice to other kids than mean to them.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: But just in there is like a subtle undercurrent of, you know, well-behaved girl.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's interesting.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's why you founded Jezebel.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I am a person who still struggles with being spread too thin.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: Speaking of being spread too thin.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_03: So I have largely been approaching my life and career from
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_03: an improv inspired perspective of saying yes and.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: And it has led me in a lot of good directions, but I could definitely benefit from more no.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm getting a little better with it.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, and I'm also going to show everybody this pennant that I have in my office
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: that helps me say no now and then.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: Let's see if we can see it.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: Who the fuck are they and who cares what they think?
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_03: This was sent to me by a friend.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: And it is very useful because I definitely care too much about what people think,
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_03: even though I am postmenopausal.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe I care less.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: But I think a lot about an essay,
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_03: the writer Melissa Feebos,
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: who's a friend and an inspiration,
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: something that she wrote for Catapult years ago with the title,
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: Do you want to be known for your writing or for your swift email responses?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_03: How patriarchy has fucked up your priorities?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_03: That article comes to mind every single day when I'm confronted with 300 or more emails.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I feel like I have to get back to everyone right away and say yes.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_03: And say yes.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, my God.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: I mean...
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_03: Have you eradicated this from your life?
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, not at all.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a very quick email responder, which you actually may have realized this morning.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yes,
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: I did.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: The fact is,
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't see your initial email until like 10 minutes after you sent it,
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: which for me is an eternity.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: If I had had my email open and it had come through,
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: I just would have responded within a couple minutes.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I had a hard time prioritizing still.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: The thing about the book is that it's not prescriptive,
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: and I don't purport to be good at saying no.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope that comes across, that it's more of an exploration than it is a An advice book.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not prepared to give advice about how to say no,
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: but I am prepared to talk about the ways in which it's difficult for others and
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: for myself as well.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: So no, I'm not good at prioritizing.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: Unless faced with something scary, like a deadline is looming, then I can get my stuff together.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: But it's interesting that you say you approach your life from an improv, how did you put it?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: An improv orientation?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: I called it an improv.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_03: Inspired perspective of saying yes and.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's actually a good strategy as is saying no and.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can say no and then Provide alternatives or apologize.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is where we get into weird territory.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, do you need to apologize for saying no?
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: There is something about softening a no.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very hard for a lot of us to say the word no,
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: just no, without couching it or contextualizing it.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a reason for that.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's called human connection and conversation.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to tell
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or suggest to readers that they just say no, N-O, to things and then walk away.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Unless, of course, it demands it.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: And there are situations in which that is demanded or suggested.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm on a WhatsApp thread with two of my female friends.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we named the thread after...
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's an acronym.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have the acronym in front of me because it's so long.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: But it's an acronym for the phrase...
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't fucking care if you like it.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that phrase, I don't fucking care if you like it, is a phrase that was used by Amy Poehler.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's a story, I think it was a New Yorker profile of Tina Fey.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the writer was talking about how in the writer's room at SNL,
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Amy Poehler had written a joke that Jimmy Fallon took issue with
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: that he thought was gross and said something like, ew,
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: or that's gross, or,
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: you know, uh, He didn't say unladylike, but that's exactly what he was getting at.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then Amy Poehler said to him, I don't fucking care if you like it.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I aspire to, I don't fucking care if you like it, which is its own way of saying no.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: And not dissimilar from the pennant on your wall.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_03: I cannot believe I'm just remembering this now.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: But a few years ago,
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_03: I was on an email thread with a bunch of women writers where we would report
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_03: to each other times we said no.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_03: How did I not remember that?
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: It was started by the writer Sejal Shah, who's a friend of mine.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: And we would just like support each other in saying no by sharing when we said no
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_03: and cheering each other on.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_03: And at a certain point, I had to say no.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: To the email thread because it was like it was taking up too much space for
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: me.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_03: But it was it was helpful.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_03: Also helpful is that you have in the book some suggested ways to say no.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_03: Including are you serious?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of me being cheeky.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's kind of me being cheeky,
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: although, you know, sometimes are you serious is a warranted response.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to clarify,
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: that's a list of ways to say no,
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: that is more, that isn't actually that prescriptive.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't expect, I mean,
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: there are definitely ways to say no,
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: but it's also, it's also kind of a cheeky part of the book.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's flippant, yeah.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's flippant.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's fun.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_03: I'll also say, like, I try to respect people's boundaries when they say no.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: as someone who is often trying to assign things to people,
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_03: filling up anthologies,
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_03: hopefully with well-known writers,
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_03: I will respond to an initial no with a better offer.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_03: And often that yields a yes.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_03: But if I get a second no, I completely back off.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_03: I really want to respect people's boundaries, but sometimes no is just a starting point.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, no, I don't have the time.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: You're not offering me enough money.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's too many words.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_03: I'll say, oh, well,
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_03: what if I lowered the stakes and made it a shorter piece that I want
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: or I can pay you more?
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_03: I try to have my own boundaries and I try to respect other people's boundaries.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_03: But I think sometimes there's a little room.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes no isn't like the end.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, you're right.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: There were a couple of people that I wanted to interview for the book who said no.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_03: I saw you wrote about that, yeah.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then I thought, well,
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to return to them in a couple of months or a year and say,
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: just thinking about this,
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: wanted to see if maybe you had the time or the inclination because I'd still love
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: to include you.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then sometimes they said no again and then I dropped it.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't going to keep pressing them because there's nothing worse than saying no
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: and then having someone not hear it.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or bulldoze over you when you say it.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so I feel like two times was was good.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then you may notice I asked a couple of people for blurbs for the book and they said no.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they said no very nicely that they were overwhelmed, overscheduled, et cetera.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh, I'm going to put I'm going to use those as blurbs.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to use the no's as blurb because they were great examples.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I did ask them for permission.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: The two people are Anne Lamott and Roxane Gay.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't just throw it up on the back of the book.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: I then said, okay,
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: I get that you can't read the book and blurb it, but can I blurb you not blurb me?
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: Which I thought was fun, a fun way to make the point that the book is trying to make.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I found this book really inspiring.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_03: There are lots of great quotes in here, too, from so many different thinkers and not just women.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_03: You've got men in here.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_03: I find this book really useful.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_03: I will return to it again and again.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_03: I recommend it to everybody.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_03: Anna, thank you so much for speaking with me today.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: This was fun.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_03: So I guess there are times in life when it's appropriate to say yes and times
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: in life when it's better to say no.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: And the older we get, the easier it is to be truthful.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_03: But I know it's also hard for you to say no.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it is.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I acknowledge that it's also even more difficult for women due to
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: the cultural pressures on them to be compliant, like you said.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I also have my own problems with saying no.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_03: Something that we do,
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_03: which I'm going to share with our audience if it's okay with you,
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_03: is when one of us is going to ask the other for something we suspect
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: the other doesn't really want to do, we introduce it with no penalties.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_03: So would you like to do this?
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_03: No penalties if not.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_03: And it kind of makes it easier to say whatever is the true answer.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to be mad if you don't.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: Do what I want you to do.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_03: I like that we do that.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_03: Also, I want to tell a funny story about you that is related to this.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_03: When we were first moving in together 23 years ago,
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_03: 2003, you had to kick out your roommate to make room for me.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_03: And you were so trepidatious about saying to him,
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_03: you can no longer live here, even though you had a month-to-month arrangement.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember you sitting down and pretending to write a note to him.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_03: His name was also Brian.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: At the top of the stairs.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yep, sitting at the top of the stairs.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_03: This was an incredible undermarket loft that we lived in where we had to fix everything.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_03: But I remember you pretending to write a note.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_03: You said, Dear Brian, Sari wants you out.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_03: I think about this all the time.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's hilarious.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was very funny.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: It broke the ice and it made it easier to actually go through with it.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then he was really cool about it.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: He was quite cool.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_03: He didn't even question it.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_03: He was like, okay.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is the way it goes about it.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's the end of the road.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you for joining us for the first episode of the Oldster Radio Hour.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get podcasts.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: The Oldster Radio Hour is produced by Brian Macaluso and sponsored by Ruthann Harnish.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: We are considering taking additional sponsors,
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_03: so if you're interested, reach out to us at oldstermag at gmail.com.