Episode 514
with Anna Sale, Elissa Washuta, and Juliana Hatfield
Host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello discuss two wildly different yet equally inspiring graduation stories; podcaster Anna Sale reveals how she gets to the heart of the matter in her podcast Death, Sex & Money and in her new book Let's Talk About Hard Things; writer Elissa Washuta explains how magic and witchcraft helped her get sober, as detailed in her collection of essays White Magic; and indie rock icon Juliana Hatfield performs "Mouthful of Blood" from her album Blood.
Anna Sale
Podcaster, Author, & Journalist
Anna Sale is a journalist, memoirist, podcaster, and an expert on having tough conversations. As creator and host of the WNYC podcast Death, Sex & Money, she explores “the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more.” After debuting at the top of the Apple Podcasts chart in 2014, Death, Sex & Money was named the #1 podcast of 2015 by New York Magazine and won a 2018 Webby and a 2021 Ambie for best interview show. Before developing Death, Sex & Money, Anna covered politics for nearly a decade. In her 2021 book Let’s Talk About Hard Things, she dives into five of the most fraught conversation topics—death, sex, money, family, and identity—to illuminate the ways honest, difficult conversations can teach us about ourselves, others, and the world that we make together. Website • Twitter
Elissa Washuta
Author
Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, an assistant professor of creative writing at the Ohio State University, and the author of three nonfiction books. She co-edited the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers and has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, Artist Trust, 4Culture, and Potlatch Fund. Her 2021 book White Magic is a collection of intertwined essays in which she writes about land, heartbreak, colonization, and how she became a powerful witch. Interlacing stories from her forebears with cultural artifacts from her own life—Twin Peaks, the Oregon Trail II video game, a Claymation Satan, a YouTube video of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham—she explores questions of cultural inheritance and the particular danger, as a Native woman, of relaxing into romantic love under colonial rule. Website • Twitter
Juliana Hatfield
Indie-Rock Singer-Songwriter
Juliana Hatfield is a prolific singer-songwriter who Guitar.com has called “indie-rock royalty.” known for her work with the bands Blake Babies, The Lemonheads, and Some Girls, she released her best-charting work with The Juliana Hatfield Three, including the critically-acclaimed album Become What You Are (1993) as well as the singles "My Sister" (1993) and "Spin the Bottle" (1994). In 2014, she re-booted The Juliana Hatfield Three and released the album Whatever, My Love, which was named one of the most anticipated albums of 2015 by multiple outlets. In 2016, she collaborated with Paul Westerberg under the moniker The I Don't Cares to release the album Wild Stab. In 2018 and 2019, she put out two cover albums: Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John and Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police. Her latest album, Blood, was released from American Laundromat Records in 2021. Listen • Website
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Luke Burbank: Hey, Elena.
Elena Passarello: Hey, Luke. How's it going?
Luke Burbank: It's going well. It's going real well. Glad to team up on this radio project once again this week. Are you ready, though, to start off with a little "Station Location Identification Examination"?
Elena Passarello: Yes, I am.
Luke Burbank: This is where I'm going to tell Elena about a place in the country where Live Wire is on the radio. And you've got to try to guess where I am talking about. Okay. This place is known as both the RV capital of the world and the band instrument capital of the world. In fact, over 84% of the nation's RVs are made in this place.
Elena Passarello: Oh, I don't know anything about RVs, but I used to sell band instruments.
Luke Burbank: Really?
Elena Passarello: Yeah. That was my high school job. The Atlanta Music Center in Gwinnett County, Georgia. And I feel like there's some company in, like, Indiana, Illinois.
Luke Burbank: Yes, Indiana.
Elena Passarello: Indiana.
Luke Burbank: In fact, it's...
Elena Passarello: Gary, Indiana!
Luke Burbank: Close. Elkhart, Indiana.
Elena Passarello: Oh.
Luke Burbank: It just doesn't rhyme. It doesn't flow like the Gary, Indiana, song in the Music Man.
Elena Passarello: Oh, I love that song.
Luke Burbank: Elkhart, Indiana. Elkhart, Indiana.
Elena Passarello: Indiana, Indiana, Elkhart, Indiana.
Luke Burbank: We are on WVPE-FM in Elkhart, Indiana. Other fun facts about Elkhart that I could have shared with you, Elena: it's also the birthplace of Alka-Seltzer and the Flintstones vitamins.
Elena Passarello: Really? That wouldn't have helped me at all, but that's great.
Luke Burbank: Shout out to everyone tuning in from the Hoosier State there in Elkhart, Indiana. All right. Should we get to it with the show?
Elena Passarello Let's do it.
Luke Burbank All right. Take it away.
Elena Passarello: From PRX, it's Live Wire. This week, writer Elissa Washuta.
Elissa Washuta: Magic was a really important part of this transformation that took place for me that the book is really about.
Elena Passarello: And podcaster Anna Sale.
Anna Sale: It's important to be honest and to name the thing that's happening, but also all of these conversations are happening in the context of a relationship. So you need to tend to that relationship.
Elena Passarello: With music from singer-songwriter Juliana Hatfield. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now, the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank. Yay!
Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone for tuning in from all over the country. We have a really interesting show scheduled this week. Of course, we asked the Live Wire listeners a question. We asked them to tell us about a trivial disagreement that they can never seem to resolve. This is because Anna Sale, one of our guests, has a book out about having hard conversations. So we wanted to hear what our listeners' experience was with that. We are going to read some of those responses a little bit later on in the show. First, though, we've got to kick things off the way we always do with the Best News We Heard All Week. [Music plays.] This is our little reminder at the top of the show that there is still some good news happening out there in the world. Elena, what's the best news you saw this week?
Elena Passarello: Well, you know, it's graduation season.
Luke Burbank: Right.
Elena Passarello: High school graduation, college graduation, maybe preschool graduation, I don't know. But this is a graduation of the college variety. Specifically Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, where there were five valedictorians. What?
Luke Burbank: So five students had a perfect GPA, basically.
Elena Passarello: Yeah. Or better. I mean, I think you can, some people are so good now they can get like a 6.0 or something.
Luke Burbank: I was in no danger of being the valedictorian of my college, that is for sure.
Elena Passarello: Me either. But the way that they decided to work it in terms of who gave the speech. All the five valedictorians voted and they selected Elizabeth Bonker, a fascinating, amazing, intelligent young person who also is a non-speaking individual.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Elena Passarello: Elizabeth lives with autism that affects her neuro-motor control, which affects speech and writing. So she delivered her speech by text-to-voice technology.
Luke Burbank: Yes.
Elena Passarello: And she looks wonderful in the video. She's wearing this amazing mortarboard hat covered in flowers and a beautiful flower necklace and all of her cords and sashes and all the things you get from being like a valedictorian. And the speech is just really, really moving and really good. And, you know, she's a valedictorian. It's super well-written. It begins with her saying that she's typed it basically with one finger and with the help of someone with a keyboard and opens up to this larger conversation about how it's a blessing to be able to have that power to communicate. And in the speech, she quotes a lot of different people: Viktor Frankl, Martin Luther King, Alan Turing. But she starts with this little anecdote of Rollins College's most famous graduate, who is Mr. Fred Rogers. [Luke gasps.] And she notes that when Mister Rogers passed away, they found in his wallet a little slip of paper that said, "life is for service." And so at the end of this speech, valedictorian Elizabeth Bonker asks all of the graduates of the class of 22 at Rollins to tear off a tiny square of their diploma and write "life is for service" on it. There were pens underneath the chairs and they all wrote "life is for—" Oh, Luke's doing it right now!
Luke Burbank: I'm doing it right now.
Elena Passarello: He's like, I can't hold the microphone and rip paper at the same time, but I'm going to do it too.
Luke Burbank: What an amazing little exercise to remind us of kind of why we are here on this planet. That's incredible.
Elena Passarello :Yeah, and she said, you know, she's going to go on, she already has her own nonprofit called Communication for All that she's going to devote her life to giving voice and allowing and embracing the communication of non-speaking individuals. She's got a great path planned for her, and so do many of the other graduates. But now they all have this new tradition, this little piece of paper in their wallets that are going to remind them of what I think is the most beautiful sentiment that can be said right now, especially in the trying times that we're in. Let's not forget that we're here to serve other people as best we can. I just love that.
Luke Burbank: And now our listeners can do that as long as they're not driving.
Elena Passarello: Yeah! Nope.
Luke Burbank: Like if it's safe where you are.
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Find a piece of paper. Make yourself a little note.
Elena Passarello: Put the beer down, and write...
Luke Burbank: Yeah.
Elena Passarello: No, I'm so grateful to her for for starting that tradition and I can't wait to carry it on. And I'm glad you're doing it, too, Luke, that's so cool.
Luke Burbank: Absolutely. Hey, I've got a graduation story that I saw this week as well that's the best news that I found out about. It involves a young woman named Cierra Bosarge-Fussell. Now, back in 2013, she was going through sort of a hard time. She was about to graduate from high school, but her parents, who had adopted her, had been dealing with addiction issues and were at the time incarcerated. And she was a big fan of the rapper J. Cole. So she calls, she calls a radio station in Philly, Hot 107.9 in Philly. And she gets on the radio station. She asks if J. Cole will wish you a happy birthday because it's her birthday.
Elena Passarello: Was he there?
Luke Burbank: I don't think so. That's where this plan was a little confusing to me. Okay. She puts it out on the air and then doesn't hear anything back, doesn't get the happy birthday message, but three months later, she actually gets a call from the rapper J. Cole, who had somehow found out about this thing. And he said, Hey, would you want to get together in person and I'll wish you a happy birthday? And so they did. And Cierra brought this typed letter to this meeting.
Elena Passarello: Aww.
Luke Burbank: With J. Cole of her life story, and again, of a lot of the really challenging stuff that she had been through. And so J. Cole made her a promise. He said if she was accepted to a four year college, he would come to her high school graduation. So she worked really, really hard under, you know, what were some really trying circumstances in terms of family stuff. And she did. So she gets into Rowan University in Pennsylvania. So J. Cole comes to her high school graduation and it's like a cool thing, you know? And it was a big part of what inspired her to really stay the course and get her education, you know, on track. So then flash forward to this year, 2022. She's graduating from Rowan University and J. Cole shows up again.
Elena Passarello: He does?
Luke Burbank: At her college graduation as well.
Elena Passarello: What a mensch!
Luke Burbank: There are these, like, amazing pictures on Instagram of Cierra and J. Cole. And she's all, like you said, talking about the graduate that you were talking about earlier, just all done up in her kind of cool graduation outfit. And...
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: It's just an incredible picture. Then she tweeted out the caption was some of the lyrics from J. Cole's song Nobody's Perfect, most of which I can't really say on public radio. But it does end with, Look, Mama, we made it.
Elena Passarello: Oh, my God. I love that story.
Luke Burbank: J. Cole out there inspiring the, the students of America, so...
Elena Passarello :That's so cool.
Luke Burbank: I know that's the best thing that I saw this week. [Music plays.] Let's get our first guest on over to the show, Elissa Washuta's book White Magic is a collection of essays that talk about land, heartbreak, colonization and how she became a powerful witch. She also teaches creative writing at The Ohio State University. They get mad if you don't say The Ohio State.
Elena Passarello: The definite article. You need the definite article.
Luke Burbank: So let's take a listen to this. It's our conversation with Elissa Washuta recorded last year.
Elissa Washuta: Hi. Thanks for having me.
Luke Burbank: I'm in Portland, Oregon. I am not too far from Cowlitz country, which is the tribe that you're from in Washington State, but you grew up in New Jersey. What was your, kind of, relationship with with that part of your family history, being that you grew up on like the opposite end of the country?
Elissa Washuta: Yeah, we would get back to Washington maybe every other summer when I was growing up. So I certainly knew my family really well. My mom's side of the family. And I had, of course, a sense of who I was as a Cowlitz person and a Cascade descendant. But it wasn't until I moved to Seattle in 2007 that I really more fully understood what it meant to be Cowlitz, because it was more of a part of my everyday existence to be in relationship with the land. I was going to Tribal Council meetings for the first time and just had, like, a fuller sense of what it meant to be a member of my family and of my tribe.
Luke Burbank: When I saw that the title of this book was White Magic, I guess I thought maybe that was just kind of, you meant that, like, figuratively. But like, the book is really about magic. Like, that plays a big role in the book. When did you start having a relationship with magic and being a witch?
Elissa Washuta: I was always interested in it as a kid because I had seen it in my children's books like the The Dorrie Little Witch Series. I really wanted to be inside those books and any kind of witch representation, I had like this yearning to, to be part of that. And especially after I saw the movie The Craft, when I was about 12.
Luke Burbank: Wow. So my evangelical Christian parents were right. Consuming that kind of media would make one get involved in witchcraft.
Elissa Washuta: For sure, for sure. And it was just sort of a curiosity when I was a kid and when I was a teenager. It still seemed really off-limits because I thought I needed to have some kind of initiation into the world of witchcraft. You know, I needed to have a coven or something like that. That's what the Internet said. So I just kind of, you know, left that into the realm of the imagined until I think I was in my early thirties. I had a few friends in Seattle who were witches and who read tarot. I had a therapist who was very practiced in astrology, and I started with tarot and a little bit of astrology. It got really deeply into those. But that's that's kind of how it started, just by having my cards read by a friend and realizing this is just storytelling in a way.
Luke Burbank: Mmm. Yeah. One of the things you write about in the book is, is using magic in relation to some experiences you had, particularly with men who were not great. Did you feel like the magic and the spells, did that work? Did it have the desired effect?
Elissa Washuta: Huh. No. [Laughs.] But, you know, I learned early on that when I was setting my intentions, if I was asking for something like, you know, I want this person to love me or whatever I was asking for, I would write that down and write down "or something better for all involved." Because I knew, I knew deep down that what I wanted was a bad idea. And, you know, it was, it was, it was selfish and it was foolish. But, you know, I think magic was a really important part of this transformation that took place for me that the book is really about. So I got sober actually on this day six years ago.
Elena Passarello: Hey, wow!
Luke Burbank: Congratulations. This is auspicious for this chat.
Elissa Washuta: Yeah, super auspicious. So after I got sober, I just realized I needed to find a way for life to mean something to me, to feel like things made sense in the world. And I started to try to believe in some kind of power in the universe. And then I did believe. And then in 2016 I had a breakup that really, really hurt and it was really hard for me to take. And that's kind of at the center of this book that this relationship, as much as I tried to, you know, carve my intentions into candles and cast spells and make it work that way, it wasn't going to work out. And so I had to find a way to trust that things were going to be okay. And magic did that for me.
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire from PRX. We are listening to a conversation we had with Elissa Washuta about her book, White Magic. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. We will be right back.
[Interlude]
Luke Burbank : Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm your host, Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are listening to a conversation with the writer Elissa Washuta recorded last year. Take a listen. [Music fades.] A big part of this book, as we were talking a little bit before the break, Elissa, is you getting sober, and as you mentioned, today happens to be your six year anniversary of getting sober. Congratulations.
Elissa Washuta: Thank you.
Luke Burbank :That is absolutely no small feat. What's it been like for you as a writer before and after your relationship with alcohol?
Elissa Washuta: It was a huge change. What I didn't realize was that getting sober changed so much that didn't seem related back when I was drinking. I hadn't been writing super consistently in the couple of years before getting sober. I'd been trying to work on another book, but there were just sort of fits and starts and I didn't really know exactly what I was working toward. And life just felt like such a struggle that I didn't have time. But after I got sober, my life just started changing for the better in such huge ways. I had to figure out what was actually making me feel bad in my life and actually do something about it. And it took a little while. Probably a year or more to really earnestly get back into writing. But once I did, I was able to come to it with this focus and this clarity that I had never had before. And in 2017, that's when I really got rolling with writing White Magic.
Luke Burbank: Well, speaking of the book, I was hoping you might be able to read the section that kind of describes for people that hear, a book, it's called White Magic. It, to some degree about your relationship with magic and tarot and witchcraft. And they're trying to kind of like wrap their head around what this is like for you. I feel like this, this part of the book kind of is a good snapshot of that.
Elissa Washuta: I was born just before the dawning of the Age of Aquarius or maybe a couple of decades after it. Or maybe it hasn't even dawned, and anyway, I didn't know what that meant until I looked it up on Wikipedia. We crystal witches of the internet think what we're about is not New Age, but it surrounds us like water surrounds a fish. I'm learning from Wikipedia that it's exactly what we're about. Only we get our horoscopes as tweets and find our psychics on Yelp. We want the divine. We want to be healed and we want to fix. Most of all, we seek what we can't locate in the vast universe of the internet. Reassurance that it will be okay. New Age eats the ancient, trying to digest old systems. It's a collage of angels, magic numbers, incantations, and stolen beliefs. A collage is made not just of what's there, but also of the absence of the material from which the pieces are cut. I got good at working gaps in essays, but not in life. Instead of fearing silence and disrupting stillness, I want to be ready to set down my cards, close the jpeg of my natal chart, and ask the quiet to tell me what this life should be. I'm inclined to now list the things I know about the occult. This seems like the place to talk about witch picture books that introduced me to written words, episodes of Sabrina the Teenage Witch that wormed into my brain as backdrop to my homework, and haunted houses across the ghost-obsessed pocket of rural New Jersey where I spent my first 18 years. I've been reading about witchcraft and spiritualism and Carl Jung and all kinds of mysteries, and I feel I should introduce a literature review here to show that I know the history of the dark arts, but I actually don't. The purpose would only be to convince you I'm not stupid. I couldn't convince any of my boyfriends, so I doubt I could convince someone looking at me through the thick veil of this page. Anyway, I don't care about Crowley or Salem, only about my own conjuring. I haven't memorized the entries in the catalog of demons. I don't even know the name of the one inside me.
Luke Burbank: That's Elissa Washuta reading from her new book, White Magic, here on the Live Wire House Party. One of the things that that that you were doing from a writing perspective that you talk about in the book was, you got this gig writing from inside a drawbridge in Seattle, and then you kind of really found a way to write about, you know, Native people in the Northwest that made sense for this project. What did you end up doing?
Elissa Washuta: Yeah, you know, I proposed this project about this serpent spirit that had at one time been sort of living in or above Lake Washington and at several other points along the Seattle fault. It's written about in some research papers on earthquakes. It was mentioned in Forbes a couple of times in 2016. Once I got in the tower, which, it was like a little terrarium, and I was just this, this little plant growing inside, it was so hot in the summer. And I just started doing research and, you know, ended up learning so much about the history of the shaping of the land that became Seattle, the regrading, dredging, the creation of the ship canal itself, the moving of so many tons of earth...
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Elissa Washuta: Was just absolutely fascinating. It kind of became a larger essay than I really thought it would, as I thought about the idea of impermanence and the way that settlers were insistent upon making the land, the state of the land permanent. No more, you know, seasonal flooding, no more effects of the tides. It would just be the same always. And that had become so destructive in my own life. This desire for permanence was keeping me from, you know, accepting the fact that things change.
Luke Burbank: Did you have a sort of a specific person in mind or an idea of the reader for this book when you were writing it?
Elissa Washuta: I mean, I think my reader was just myself for a lot of the process. After failing so much at trying to write essays I thought would be palatable and would be interesting and, you know, write toward a reader, that wasn't working. And eventually I really did have to write for myself and, and I did it in earnest. But then also I think I was writing for my Twitter mutuals. It was good for me to feel like I had a connect, an actual connection with this audience as I was writing it, because I knew that I didn't want to rush this book and I didn't want to try to reach my readers sooner than, you know, sooner than was good for the book. And so just, you know, sending out my little tweets was really good for feeling like I was connecting with that audience in some way and allowed me to be patient with the writing process.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. And I mean, you have, you have a part of the book where you where you say, like, hey, I don't know if this is meeting your expectation as the reader, you know, I mean, you, you sort of call it out. And, and of course, then, the irony is that it's a really great experience to read this book.
Elissa Washuta: Thank you.
Luke Burbank: So I think maybe you, sort of, naming it helped create this very readable, very compelling book. The book is White Magic. Elissa Washuta, thank you so much for coming on the Live Wire House Party.
Elissa Washuta: Thank you so much for having me.
Luke Burbank :That was a Elissa Washuta right here on Live Wire. Her book, White Magic, is available now. [Music stops.].
Luke Burbank: [Music Plays.] Live Wire is brought to you by Alaska Airlines, a member of the OneWorld Alliance, connecting you to more than 1000 destinations worldwide with their global partners. Learn more at Alaska Air dot com. Support for Live Wire comes from SelectQuote, reminding listeners they can check a big item off their to-do list and find life insurance that fits their budget. For over 35 years, SelectQuote is where customers can shop multiple life insurance carriers in one place. More at select quote dot com. This is Live Wire, of course each week we ask the Live Wire listeners a question. This week, in honor of Anna Sale's book, Let's Talk About Hard Things, we wanted the audience tell us about a trivial disagreement that they can't seem to resolve. Elena has been collecting up those responses. What are you seeing?
Elena Passarello: Here's some saltiness from Mark. Mark says, I am pro Crocs. You know the shoes? Crocs?
Luke Burbank: Yeah.
Elena Passarello: They are extremely comfortable, and you can hose them off. But my boyfriend disagrees. Crocs are like back.
Luke Burbank: They are having a moment.
Elena Passarello: I do not understand. If you want to make me feel old, make fashionable, something that I can't even conceptualize why it would ever be considered aesthetically appealing.
Luke Burbank: You know, there's a little strap on the back of the Croc, and people sometimes will have that strap down just to easily slide their foot in and out of the shoe. But some people say when they put the strap up, they're in four-by mode, like four-by-four. [Elena snorts.] We're gonna do some real, we're gonna do some real adventuring. So you see people putting their Crocs on, putting them in four-by mode and and going out there. It's very, they're very, very popular shoes right now.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, no. Pass. Also I have size ten to ten and a half feet. It's better to have a more diminutive shoe on these water skis. [Laughs.]
Luke Burbank: What's some other trivial disagreement that one of our listeners is not able to resolve?
Elena Passarello : This seems like a no brainer for me, but let me know how you weigh in on this. It's from Tracy. Tracy says, when making a peanut butter and jelly, is it appropriate to not wipe or clean the knife that was in the peanut butter before putting it in the jar of jam.
Luke Burbank : Whoa. That's a real, that's a conundrum. I think you should wipe in between because I think it's a little gross when you look in the peanut butter jar or the jam jar, and it's got a bunch of the other stuff mixed in with it.
Elena Passarello: Agree. Unless you only use the jam for peanut butter and jelly.
Luke Burbank: You know what my big move is? You'll know that I'm considering making another sandwich, like leaving my sandwich options open, if you see the butter knife.
Elena Passarello: If you leave the knife out? [Laughs.].
Luke Burbank: But I leave it so that it's perched over the sink. So half of the knife is on the counter and half of the knife is over the sink. For some reason, my brain says that's the most sterile way to, I don't, I'm not going to fully commit to washing the knife and I might make another sandwich later. That's what I do. All right, one more small disagreement that one of our listeners has been bedeviled by.
Elena Passarello: Controversy from Scott, who argues pizza is an open-faced sandwich.
Luke Burbank: Well, I mean, think about it. If you were to make another kind of open faced sandwich, let's say, and you put, you know, some kind of delicious sandwich she filling and then cheese and then you kind of maybe baked it or something, open faced. How is that fundamentally different than a pizza?
Elena Passarello: Because the bread is already made in a sandwich. In a pizza, the dough is not yet finished. It cooks with the ingredients.
Luke Burbank: Oh, wow.
Elena Passarello: That's just me playing devil's advocate. I don't. I don't have any skin in this game. I just. That's how I would argue my way out of that.
Luke Burbank: I think it's a very, you made a very logical argument. So. All right. Thanks to everybody who wrote in. We've got another audience question for next week's show, which we're going to read at the end of this episode. So stick around for that. In the meantime, speaking of hard conversations, our next guest might be America's foremost expert at them at this point. She's the creator of the podcast Death, Sex & Money, where she's talked to Jane Fonda, Madeleine Albright, Mahershala Ali, and lots of others about touchy topics. She's got a book out, too: Let's Talk About Hard Things. And in it, she dives into five of the most fraught conversation topics: death, sex, money, family, peanut butter and jelly, and no, actually, not that one, just identity. And she shares what she's learned from having all of these really pretty intense conversations for her podcast. So let's take a listen to this. It's our interview with Anna Sale, recorded last year.
Luke Burbank: Anna Sale. Welcome to Live Wire.
Anna Sale: Thanks. I'm so glad to be here.
Luke Burbank: I'm wondering, Anna, before you started hosting Death, Sex & Money, what was your just kind of like resting comfortableness with conversations that could be really intense or awkward? Were you somebody who was pretty good at it already or is that a muscle you had to develop with, with the podcast?
Anna Sale: I'm not sure if I was good at it, but always that's been the like thing that I've like, zoom, like been magnetized towards. Like I was one of those kind of insufferable teenagers who would say things like, ugh, I just, small talk, whatever, let's just get into it, you know? So that's been my way. Like, I think that I have developed some skills over the years that I did not have, but I've always really liked just locking in with someone and whether it's talking about something that's tough or just something that's like helping me really, like, learn something about somebody, it's, it's, it's more curiosity than kind of like, pressing on a bruise that, that gets me excited.
Luke Burbank: I'm curious about how you prep for an interview because, I mean, you've been a reporter for a long time. And if you're interviewing a politician, you can like just check out their voting record. There's the sort of obvious research. But when you're going to talk to somebody about the death of a loved one or their sex life or whatever, like what's, what's the prep for that like?
Anna Sale: Well, it's it's less like, ooh, what's the, how do I get them to, like, be as graphic as possible about the pain or privacy in their bedroom? What I'm interested in is like moments in their life, maybe where they lost the script. So in a prep for me, I really like starting, like, we have a team of producers who work on Death, Sex & Money who are all excellent at their jobs and, and at the top of the prep, I like to have a timeline of someone's life and where it's like, okay, this is where they grew up. This is when they moved here. This is when they moved here. This is when they got together with this person. This is when they split up. And I just kind of like, look first at that to be like, Oh, that looks like an interesting life period for them. I want to know what was going on there, you know, and then, oh, now they're like in middle age, what happened there, dadada, you know, it's less about, now I'm going to ask about the hard thing. I'm going to be like, Oh, it looks like something's shifted here in your life. Maybe it was a sad thing. Maybe it was a big opportunity. Let, let's talk about that.
Luke Burbank: This book starts and kind of ends talking about your first marriage, which ended in divorce. Sounds like you and your ex are are pretty amicable, but I'm still wondering if you were kind of nervous about, like, committing that stuff to paper. It's one thing to say it on a podcast or talk about it in an interview. It's another thing to, like, have it in a hardback [laughter] book in the psychology section of the bookstore, published by Simon & Schuster. Like, were you worried about that?
Anna Sale: I mean, I actually found that to be one of the biggest places of kind of growth while I was writing. I, I, I remember Mary Karr wrote a book called The Art of Memoir. And one of the things that she writes about in there is, for her, something she's chosen to do is when she writes about people in her life, she shares the pages with them as she's doing it. And I did that with my parents. I did that with some of my sisters, and I did that with my ex as well. And like, you know, that's like the weird email to write. Hey, it's been a few years, I know, we don't really, we're not in close touch, but I'm writing a book.
Elena Passarello: And you're in it.
Anna Sale: And here are some pages about how our marriage fell apart. And and it was like it was really cool. It was really cool to, like, get to just have that correspondence with him. I ended up interviewing him in person about like, What was going on? Like, because, we were, there had been enough time that all the like hot emotions had sort of dissipated and we were in really different places in our lives now. And so we could be like, How do you remember that? Like, Oh, I remember that, you know, without sort of like feeling the things that we felt at the time. So it just made me, going through that process, like, I feel really grateful for him for, for like sort of giving his blessing. And I also just feel really compassionate for both of us. Like we were both trying really hard and it just was a marriage that wasn't going to be forever. And, and I feel like kind of writing about that and being like, Oh, those were hard conversations because they made us face something that was hard and sad, which was we wanted different things and it was a shock to both of us. And then it took us a while to accept it. And then I think we've, our lives have unfolded for both of us in ways that are, we both wanted, but apart.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. Do you feel a responsibility since your show, Death, Sex & Money, since you're really asking the guests to just be as honest as possible? Do you feel like you really have to reflect that back, you know, as the host and when you're writing this book and talking about your marriage that that ended in divorce, things like that, like do you have to kind of lead by example with the, I mean, you do actually say, too, that this book is not a manifesto for radical honesty as well.
Anna Sale: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: What do you mean by that?
Anna Sale: Well, okay, so it's not a manifesto for radical honesty, because I feel like radical honesty implies a sort of like, I'm going to tell you how it is, and I don't care how you feel about it. I just need to be straight. You know, my philosophy about hard conversations is that, like, it's important to be honest and to name the thing that's happening, but also all of these conversations are happening in the context of a relationship. So you need to tend to that relationship while you're having the conversation. And also, like, there's not a lot in here. I mean, I, there's a lot of private things that I write about in the book, but also, you know, it's stuff that I'm like proud that I worked through. So I don't feel, I didn't feel as sort of like, oh my God, I'm really going to have to push myself to make this public. It was more like, this is what happened to me. I'm going to tell you about it.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. You wrote about something with your husband where you were trying to decide if you should rent an apartment and how you were being very concerned about the finances of that and if that was going to be something that would be affordable, etc.. And I think you write that what you figured out later was you were really just trying to kind of have control of a situation.
Anna Sale: Oh yeah, 100%. [Laughs]
Luke Burbank: Which maybe that's sort of like psychology 101, but I hadn't thought of it caused me to reexamine like 80% of the arguments I've had in my life with people I've been in relationships with where I'm like, What? What's really going on there? Oh, I was probably trying to be in control of stuff.
Anna Sale: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Do you feel like hosting this show and thinking about this stuff as much as you do now and now working on this book? Do you feel like it's changed you as a person or are you, like more able to kind of step out of your experience and kind of analyze it more accurately?
Anna Sale: Well, I analyze it more accurately, but all that stuff is still there. Ask my husband, Arthur. He will tell you I am annoying and not fun to make financial arrangments with. [Laughs]
Luke Burbank: We're interviewing him right after this, by the way. So.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, he's next.
Luke Burbank: It's an equal access thing. So half the show is you and half the shows is Arthur.
Anna Sale: I mean, he's a good interview. I'd recommend it. It's it's like now we just like, okay, here's Ana doing her thing that she does where she seizes up and gets freaked out and, like, thinks that everything's going to fall apart if we buy a rug, you know, and then she'll come around, you know, and and and this and therapy has helped with this, too. I have this wonderful therapist right now where we're in that little like voice of mine who's like "[screams]" She's like. My therapist. She's like, "Let's just listen to her for a minute. What's she afraid of?" And she lets me, like, sit in the voice of the afraid person. And I just get to say all the crazy, wild stuff that I'm afraid of. And then once she's like, had her little piece, said her little piece, we'd be like, "okay, we heard you. We don't agree with you about everything but it's out, that's out there". So that's more what I think, like making the show and writing the book and, and also like living in close proximity all the time with my partner during this pandemic. Like, you get really used to your patterns, you get to know them. And I don't think I've changed a lot, but I can move through it more quickly because we just like here is happening again, you know?
Luke Burbank: We're talking to Anna Sale from the Death Sex and Money podcast here on the Live Wire House Party. She has a book out called Let's Talk About Hard Things. Do you find yourself being emotionally drained from hosting Death, Sex and Money, particularly that stuff around death?
Anna Sale: You know, people have asked me that. And the the bigger feeling that I have is like, "wow, I'm just so honored that that person shared this with me", you know? And usually when even if it's a really heavy burden or something really hard, you can hear a little bit of lightness towards the end of the conversation from just their experience of getting to talk to somebody at length about something.
Elena Passarello: Mm hmm.
Anna Sale: Certainly, like there are guests that just haunt me and conversations that haunt me. And I want, you know, I think, like, wow, I wonder if that person is still struggling with that thing. I guess I do, I do have a hard time with the loss of children as a parent. I think about that a lot. Those those kind of get stuck. But I think because I'm not a therapist, I'm not a social worker and I'm not a doctor who's who people are coming to and saying, like, "help me fix this, help me, help me, like work through this in my life". Instead, I'm this person who's like, "I'm here to listen", you know, that's it's less like I feel a responsibility to fix their problems and more I just feel really glad that we got to have the conversation.
Luke Burbank: Is that a big takeaway from for you from hosting the show and from working on this book? That just, you said it's not about necessarily fixing the problem. It's about holding space. It's about just kind of I mean, listening. And because I think there's this very natural response when someone is sharing something hard with us that we want to give them advice, tell them how it could be worse. You know, there's like this really strong human impulse to want to fix it or somehow contextualize it. And maybe the best thing you can do is just be there with the person.
Anna Sale: Yeah. I mean, I sort of like came to that halfway through writing that because the book is five chapters Death, Sex, Money, Family and Identity. And I was like, "Huh, it's interesting that all of these things feel really hard". They're really hard in different ways. So what if? And part of each chapter, I say like "money is hard because we don't like to admit that people have different amounts of resources. And part of that is because of things they've done. And part of that is because of luck and history". And we just don't like that fact, so we just pretend it doesn't exist. So if you start with like "that's what makes money hard and I'm never going to fix that dynamic by being a skillful communicator". Instead I can just say, "Well, this is why this is hard to talk about". And then you can kind of have a conversation about it. Or like with death, you can't comfort someone who's in deep grief by saying, "you know, you're going to get through this". Like that is not comforting. It is much more comforting to hear, "I am here and I am sorry and I know your life is shattered and I'm going to be here with you as you feel all the feelings. That can be like so healing just to have someone who can sit with you in the hard stuff and not try to fix it. Because then you don't feel, you feel less stigma, you feel less shame, you feel less isolated. You just feel like this is some this is something I'm working through. And I have, like, someone alongside me while I try to figure it out.
Luke Burbank: Do you feel like you should be at this point, an honorary therapist?
Anna Sale: [Laughs]
Luke Burbank: Like you should have like sort of like, you know, you took like you got enough credits, like life credits that you were just accumulating by hosting this show and writing this book. I mean, you could fit in in any, you know, sort of therapist's office on the other side of the desk or whatever.
Anna Sale: Well, that's a real honor. I feel like therapists always just, they just have had - [Laughs]
Luke Burbank: I've had therapists that are way worse than you, and you're not even trained. I've had some great therapists, but I've definitely had that therapist where I was was like, you know, "Anna would probably be better at this". [Laughs]
Anna Sale: I mean, that is sometimes an interesting hard thing with listeners or with, you know, I'm a journalist. I am doing this because I'm trying to, like, collect stories that I think sharing is in the public interest. So I am not your therapeutic advocate. I am trying to collect your story. So sometimes I have to be really clear about that. But but I do feel, just like therapy, that sharing more of these stories is really healing and not just healing. It has a really important social function right now. I mean, I feel like we are living in a time in America where our trust in institutions is falling apart, where all of us feel sort of more on our own in going through things in life that we used to just have more places and rituals and conventions to sort of like carry us through. We don't have that as much now and now instead it's like you and your buddy, who's your other 40 year old buddy of mine, you know, I'm 40. My buddy's 40. Like, "Huh, this is hard". You know, people going through midlife forever, you know, since people could live past midlife and it's like, oh, now we just have to like, we need to help each other and we need to, like, push ourselves to say, "this is the hard part for me, what's the hard part for you", to help each other.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. Well, Anna Sale, the book Let's Talk About Hard Things is a great read. And of course, the show Death, Sex and Money is a must listen. So thank you so much for coming on the show.
Anna Sale: Thank you.
Luke Burbank: That was Anna Sale right here on Live Wire. Her book, Let's Talk About Hard Things is available now. And you can also check out her podcast, Death, Sex and Money. This is Live Wire from PRX. We got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere because we are going to talk to Juliana Hatfield after the break and even hear a song from the indie legend herself. So stay with us. This is Live Wire.
Luke Burbank: Welcome back to Live Wire. I'm your host, Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. Okay. Our musical guest this week is maybe best known for her time as part of the Juliana Hatfield Three. She put out the singles, My Sister and Spin the Bottle, which were both big hits. I see Elena rocking and rolling.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, that's the guitar riff just started in my head right now. I love that song.
Luke Burbank: The memory of that music. She's also put out lots of albums over the years. Her latest is Blood. It's out now. Let's take a listen to this. It's our conversation with Juliana Hatfield, who we caught up with last year.
Juliana Hatfield: Hi. It's so nice to be here.
Luke Burbank: I understand you recorded your latest album, Blood. And you had to learn how to operate the program GarageBand to do this.
Juliana Hatfield: I did. I used to record onto an old digital eight track machine, which was an actual, it's kind of a big hunk of machine and it had faders and I would burn mixes to a CD. This machine had a built in CD burner and it would spit out a CD with mixes on it. And when that machine broke and died, finally I decided to figure out how to record at home. And when lockdown started, I took that opportunity to finally tackle GarageBand and yeah, recorded most of the album at home.
Luke Burbank: I've heard that you're not the most sort of like, naturally technical person.
Juliana Hatfield: Oh god, no.
Luke Burbank: Did you recently upgrade your Nokia cell phone?
Elena Passarello: [Laughs]
Juliana Hatfield: Well, I did, actually. I finally, I just finally got my first smartphone.
Elena Passarello: Whoa.
Juliana Hatfield: I feel like I was kind of forced into it. But yeah, I had this little smartphone from, I think 2004. Yeah, everyone laughed at me about it.
Elena Passarello: I'm jealous though. I would love to go back to what my brain was like when that was what my phone was like. I feel like a smartphone has made me not smart.
Juliana Hatfield: Yeah, I think I was trying to preserve my brain by holding on to that phone. And now I just feel like, I give up. My brain is shot like everyone else's. Might as well just embrace it. Embrace the scattered, scatteredness of modernity.
Luke Burbank: We're talking to Juliana Hatfield. Her new album is Blood. I just watched this documentary about you where you said you feel like you're have not had the greatest success in relationships. And I think you said "shared domesticity fills you with terror".
Elena Passarello: [Laughs].
Juliana Hatfield: Yep.
Luke Burbank: And that you're just kind of like, you've just, you're just sort of making peace with the fact that you may be a fairly solitary person in your life. I'm wondering about that affect on your music making. Like, could you have made all these albums and been so prolific if you if you weren't spending a lot of time alone?
Juliana Hatfield: Maybe not. I don't, I don't think so. I think that the music making always took precedence for me over anyone else, over anyone in my life, over any relationship. If I ever had to make a choice between the music and a relationship, I would choose the music, the work. It's just more important to me. Or I would say it's just more successful. The music making has a better result for me than intimate relationships do. And yeah, all my life I was sort of fighting against my loner tendencies. And because there's a lot of pressure from from everywhere, really, from culture, society, other people. Pressure to do the things that the majority of people do, to partner up to, you know, get married, have kids, own a home, all that stuff. And but I never really, truly wanted those things. I tried, but I realize now that, I can stop trying because I don't - I prefer solitude. Work and solitude. It works for me.
Luke Burbank: Well, speaking of your very prolific career, you have this new album, Blood, that's coming out and you're going to play us a song from it.
Juliana Hatfield: Yeah, I'm going to play the song Mouthful of Blood.
Luke Burbank: This is Juliana Hatfield on the Live Wire House Party.
Juliana Hatfield: [Music Starts] If I say would I want to say/ It might just get me killed/ There's no freedom of expression/ And I don't think I will/ Let you in/ On my thoughts/ I bite my tongue/ My mouth's full of blood, I bite my tongue/ My mouth's full of blood/ Pressure from every site/ General consensus/ They decide who's crucified/ For having the wrong opinions/ Hold on to what yo've got/ And smile for every camera/ I bite my tongue/ My mouth's full of blood/ I bite my tongue/ My mouth's full of blood/ Feeling some doubt/ I pray they make no sound/ I bite my tongue/ My mouth's full of blood/ I bite my tongue/ My mouth's full of blood/ I bite my tongue (bite my tongue)/ My mouth's full of blood/ I bite my tongue (bite my tongue)/ My mouth's full of blood (bite my tongue)/ Bite my tongue, bite my tongue/ Bite my tongue, bite my tongue/ Bite my tongue, bite my tongue/ Bite my tongue, bite my tongue [ Music Ends]
Luke Burbank: Juliana Hatfield here on the Live Wire House Party song off her new album, Blood.
Elena Passarello: Woohoo woohoo!
Luke Burbank: Juliana, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Juliana Hatfield: Oh, thanks for having me.
Luke Burbank: All right. Before we get out of here, a little preview of next week's show. We are going to be talking to New Yorker writer and Pulitzer Prize winner, Kathryn Schulz about her incredible book, Lost and Found, which talks about the passing of her father and also at the same time she was falling in love with her now wife. Then we're going to talk to a high school football coach who managed to disarm a student with a gun, using a hug. It's a really incredible story. Then we are gonna get some music from one of our favorites, John Craigie. And as always, we're going to get your answer to our listener question, Elena, what are we asking the listeners for next week's show?
Elena Passarello: We want to know what is the coolest thing you ever found?
Luke Burbank: Oh. Sweet. Yeah, cause we're talking about lost and found next week, with Kathryn's book. So send in your response to that. What's the coolest thing you've ever found? We're on Twitter and Facebook at Live Wire Radio.
[Closing Music]
Luke Burbank: All right. That's going to do it for this episode of the show. A huge thanks to our guests, Anna Sale, Elissa Washuta and Juliana Hatfield. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our Executive Producer. Heather de Michele is our Executive Director. Tim Harkins is our Development and Marketing Director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. And our assistant editor is Trey Hester. A. Walker Spring composes our music. Molly Pettit is our Technical Director and Mixer. And Viviana Castillo Serrano is our intern.
Luke Burbank: Additional funding provided by the Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation. Live Wire was created by Robin Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we'd like to thank members, Adam Lane of Portland and Amanda Bird of Seattle, Washington. For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast head on over the Live WireRadio.org I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire team, thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
Announcer: PRX.
