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Emily St. John Mandel

lines on the record: 85
first: 2020-04-08
most recent: 2020-04-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah. This is a controversial statement. I know a lot of parents who hate it, but. Yeah, I find it more interesting than Frozen One.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Make sense to you? Is that how things should be? Yeah, it does. Yeah, there's this longing for familiarity in really chaotic times. I think that's what that's about. And, you know, I see it in my four-year-old, frankly. I'm pretty strict with screen time, except now we're in quarantines. Like that's out the window. So she gets a movie every morning. She can watch any from a long list of Disney movies. She just wants to watch Frozen 2. She's watched it for the last seven consecutive mornings. And for a while, I was trying to push her out of the comfort zone. Like, come on, ratatouille, Milan, like there are a lot of great options out there. No, she wants frozen too. And I realized, you know, she's lost.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. But what I realized in Bindagan was, which I haven't watched yet, it kind of came to my senses. There's just such a longing in times of uncertainty to see how it ends. Yeah, we just don't know what the world will look like in three weeks. And yeah, so there's something soothing about narrative, I think, in these moments. That was the only way I could rationalize that impulse purchase of that movie on my part.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there's something real there. When I started seeing a lot of people talking about Station 11, like in the last few weeks, you know, my reaction was total bafflement. Like, why would anybody in the right mind want to read Station 11 during a pandemic? I was like, God, that's crazy. So, you know, I closed the Twitter tab. I went to iTunes and bought contagion, Steven Soderberg movie. I realized. So you're like Frog.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Possible, but station 11 is a fundamentally hopeful book. And I've, you know, just going from the extremely unscientific metric of my Twitter timeline, I get the impression that a lot of people are reading it because of the hope at the end of the pandemic, not necessarily because the pandemic sends them reeling when they read about it”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. I'm going to disagree with Kafka on this one. Why does reading have to be something that stabs you in the heart every time you pick up a book? Isn't it nice in a moment when the country is reeling under a historical pandemic to just read something that makes you, that just transports you to a different world for a minute? I would maybe flip that around and say that if you're a fiction writer, you know, maybe just any writer of books, maybe you should, I need to think this through, but maybe you shouldn't write books that don't knock you over and stab you in the heart and gut you and push you to the furthest remotest edge of your talent. But yeah, as a reader, I don't really agree with that. I think it's important to read those books, but”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think that's a simplification. But God, that's a depressing environment. Yeah, I would expect there to be a much higher baseline level of depression in the population in prison.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Work in the prison system, teaching inmates how to write or running writing workshops. And she talked about women in prison practicing this opposite strategy of trying to make every day as similar as possible in order for time to speed up. You know, it's just the day just kind of run together in that rhythm. So yeah, I think the way to slow down time is to have a lot of experiences.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would travel. It's interesting. During periods when I'm traveling a lot, I've done a lot of lectures over the past few years for Station 11. The months when I'm out on the road, like every week for a couple of days or every 10 days, those months are so unbelievably long. And I'll have these moments of not quite panic, but thinking, oh my God, my friend emailed me like two weeks ago and never got back to her. And then I'll go back to the email and the email came in four days ago. You know, it's just that time has been incredibly extended. So my feeling is that the way to slow down time is to have a lot of experiences, you know, to see different places, to meet new people, that makes every day feel longer. And it's interesting. I got a glimpse of the flip side of this a few years ago. I was in a festival with Kay Ryan, an American poet. And we were talking about this phenomenon. And she's done some.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A great question. I don't know. I don't know enough incredibly wealthy people. These households have gone quiet. I do know a lot of people who have nannies, which is pretty common in New York City because none of us live in the same city as our parents pretty much. Any childcare, you have to pay for. And that's just been a different challenge. You know, all of a sudden we're all homeschooling because nobody as child cares. Yeah, that does make your house a bit quieter, you know, when your kid's nanny stops coming.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you know that book, like this is not to denigrate the book. I believe in my work, but I've always been aware that there are any number of books in the world that were at least as good as Station 11, if not better, that didn't sell nearly as many copies. You know, so there's just an incredible level of luck, even in quote-unquote earned money. So yeah, it did always feel like a sort of lottery ticket to me. And then by the same token, like, you know, I see kids who are raised in these upper middle class families that allows for, say, SAT tutoring and they get into a really good college. They go from there into the internship, from there into a really well-paid job. You know, they're earning their money, but they kind of had lottery tickets too. So, yeah, it's not clear to me that it feels very different to earn your money versus inheriting it. Either way, there's just such an element of”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't know, you know, something that I think about a lot is just the element of luck involved, even in earning money. You know, any money that I have comes from the wild success of Station 11, my previous book.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is huge. If you grow up without money, which I did, and then you have really no money in early adulthood, so much of your brain is taken over through all of every day with these endless, tedious calculations. You know, if I buy a MetroCard this week, can I afford groceries? What if I just get like half the amount of groceries and a $5 metro card? What if I didn't get the metro card and walk home over the Brooklyn Bridge and then I'll get paid on Friday? You know, just it wears you down. It's exhausting. So not having to have that constant calculation running the back of your head can kind of feel like freedom. Yeah, so I would say it's a huge impact. And, you know, of course, we're all humans. We find other things to worry and obsess about. But yeah, not having to worry about that is incredible.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. I think you'd have to have it with other trophy wands. Yeah, which is definitely the case in the Glass Hotel. Vincent's closest friend is Morella, who's basically a trophy wife, although you could argue that her relationship is a little more real. She's a look, right?”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How well are they doing? You know, I would say probably pretty well. Like, if you can reconcile yourself to that trade-off, which it would not be crazy to call that an offshoot of prostitution. You know, there's a very, there's a pretty clear mercenary trade happening there. If you're okay with that, then you could live a pretty great life. You have what you need. You have a lot of downtime. You could develop some deep friendships. I have time to read. I think that I think that the risk would be the kind of emptiness that comes from not having a fulfilling career. But there's no reason why you couldn't be a trophy wife and have some kind of thing you were passionate about on the side. So yeah, I'd say as jobs go, you could do a lot worse.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ancient Greece, and then much more recently the fall of the Berlin Wall, I think that just would have been an incredible thing to see. You wouldn't even need three months there. Just like, you know, give me a half hour. That was, yeah, that would be amazing.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's generally more right wing politically. And the reason, the sort of stated reason why so many British Columbians I grew up with were anti-American. Like it had to do with US foreign policy. Like it wasn't really personal. I think in Alberta because it is a little bit more right-wing, there's very broadly speaking less of an issue with certain aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Also oil. You know, that's a huge thing in Alberta. You know, I think you have Texas oil executives flying up into Alberta all the time. So, you know, maybe just encountering more Americans helps.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, accent, there's, you know, I feel like I can say this because I have dual citizenship. There is a real strain of anti-Americanism that I frankly find a little bit embarrassing, but I grew up with it. It's pervasive. Yeah, so it's like they're on the lookout for Americans. And when I say they, I should say like, you know, I was one of them. I grew up there. There's not a lot of acceptance of Americans, put it that way.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I go there, no, because there are so few people. The Russian mafia would show up at the one cafe in town and say, who's that new guy from the US? They'd be like, oh, he lives down that street. They'd find you in 20 minutes.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Only semi weird, like it depends on how weird you find up for people to like bake their own bread and grow pot. You know, like it was, it was pretty mild to tell you the truth. Yeah, there was never that edge of anarchy that you get and the, you know, the Florida man stories.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, like there's just nothing that doubly. You know, you can talk about polar bears, but very few people deal with those. They're way up north. Yeah, you know, the thing with Canada is that it's not as weird as the United States because we don't really have the population base is really the situation. There are 10 Americans for every one Canadian, basically. And, you know, you get weirdness in a big population that you just don't see where there's a smaller pool to draw from. Yeah, yeah, there really is no Canadian Florida.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's already weird. Yeah. Like, what is that half time zone thing? Yeah, all of the new fees I've met, they just have these amazing, slightly warped senses of humor I love. It's a place that lived in a state of economic collapse for really a very long time. You know, the fisheries collapsed and it was devastating economically there. There's a kind of dark sense of humor and way of getting by happily in difficult circumstances that's but I think offsets it a little bit from the rest of Canada. On the other hand, British Columbia, where I'm from, that's where all of the hippies and draft dodgers went on the 60s and 70s. You know, that's a coast that attracts some weirdness, but there's just no clear Canadian Florida. Like, you know, there's no Florida man meme equivalent in Canada.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can make an argument for Newfoundland, which I feel like. I feel like Newfoundlanders, Newfoundie, is my acquaintance might actually agree with that statement. They are offset by a half hour in the time zones from any other part of the country. That's already...”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a risk, yeah. I mean, like, obviously, the moral of the story is try to stay on the right side of the Russian mob. But if you, yeah, if you are in that position, you know, I don't know. It might be something that I want to think through a little bit more than in the context of a podcast interview. There's got to be a way. People do it.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How would you do it? I have dual citizenship with Canada and the US. So I would think about the Canadian location to which people would least expect me to go. You might expect a New Yorker to flee to Toronto. That's kind of the closest equivalent in Canada. So I wouldn't go to Toronto. I would go to some province that I'd never visited, like Manitoba. Yeah, change my appearance and slip into life in, I guess the biggest city I could find, you know, in a relatively low population place. So, yeah, I think that would be my method.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Although here's someone working in your favor crews are small, people don't realize this, but these massive cargo ships, there are maybe 20 guys on board. That's a lot of payoffs, but you might be able to make it work if you paid off the whole crew.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's actually a pretty good method. Yeah, as long as you have enough money to pay off a couple of crew members, there are cargo ships that will accept passengers on a very small scale. And there's nothing luxurious about it. The point is that it's not a luxury cruise that you are on a cargo ship. But yeah, you know, you eat dinner with the officers, you hang out on the ship and read all day. So yeah, your method is good. Yeah, pay off a couple of crew members and you're good. The people in that industry are not particularly well paid. So you wouldn't even have to be terribly wealthy to pull that off.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a great site. It's wonderful. I'm haunted by this one postcard on the site. I don't remember what the image is, but let's say it's the Twin Towers burning. That's the theme. The back of it says everyone who knew me before September 11th thinks I'm dead. Imagine if that's true. And of course, there's no way of knowing if any of the post secrets are real. But imagine that position. You'd come up the stairs from the subway into Lower Manhattan. You look up, you see the towers falling, and you think, this is my opportunity, and you disappear. So, you know, I think if life presents some horrific moment like that, then faking your own death would not be difficult. But otherwise, yeah, I think it's hard to pull off.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay. You want to fight your own death normal world. That's not easy. You know, I feel like we kind of live in an era where you kind of need a body for that to be convincing. On the other hand, what if you'd been thinking about faking your own death and some spectacularly unexpected event happens? Like to give an example, I used to be obsessed with this website called Post Secret. I read it like every day in my 20s and early 30s.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a good point. Yeah. You know, they've always gotten away with it so far. So, why would this moment be any different? Yeah, there's probably something there.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I wouldn't quite call myself qualified. But, you know, something that fascinated me about the Bernie Madoff story on which the crime in the Glass Hotel is based. And just to backtrack a little bit, none of the people in the Glass Hotel are real. It's not a novel about Madoff, but the crime is the same. So I did a lot of reading about it. What Madoff says is that it never occurred to him to flee, which I find absolutely baffling. You know, imagine yourself in that position. You have an extraordinary amount of money. You realize that your Ponzi scheme is falling apart. What are you doing going home to your house in New York? Go to the airport, get out of town. And yeah, it's honestly kind of baffling to me. I don't know if it's a manifestation of guilt, this sort of subconscious desire to be caught and to face consequences. But yeah, it would not be difficult for these people to flee. And yet they usually don't.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is a great question that I almost feel like you'd need to interview a psychologist, not a novelist, to figure that one out. But a novelist.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, okay. That is a really tough call. None of the countries without extradition treaties really called to me. And, you know, full confession, I finished writing this book some time ago and I don't actually remember what that list was, but I don't remember feeling a burning desire to relocate to any of those places. I do often wonder if Canada might not have been a better idea. That's where I'm from originally. I've lived in the US since I was 22. So it's been a while. Yeah, Canada's looking pretty good these days. So in an imaginary alternate universe where Canada had no extradition treaty, that's probably where I go.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Could I invent the lack of an extradition treaty or just have to be one that actually has no extradition treaty? Let's do.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, here's a follow up question. Do I have to stay in Dubai or do I have to stay in a country or in a country with no extradition treaty with the United States? Because that's a broader range of locales. My impression of Dubai, which I have to admit I haven't visited. I've just read about it a lot, is that like most places in the world, you know, with enough money, you can have a really pleasant life. So I think it would depend on my financial situation. I could certainly imagine worse fades. On the other hand, I do sunburn quite easily. So yeah, it's probably not the ideal location for me.”
2020-04-08 · Conversations with Tyler · Emily St. John Mandel on Fact, Fiction, and the Familiar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source