Fresh Air - Molly Jong-Fast Grew Up With A Mother Addicted To Fame

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

MSNBC political analyst Molly Jong-Fast's mother Erica Jong became famous from her 1973 novel Fear of Flying, which was considered a groundbreaking work of feminist literature. But Molly's mom became addicted to the fame and couldn't bear to lose it. She talks about her childhood and a year of great loss in her new memoir, How to Lose Your Mother.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

These days there is a lot of news. It could be hard to keep up with what it means for you, your family, and your community. Consider This from NPR is a podcast that helps you make sense of the news. Six days a week, we bring you a deep dive on a story and provide the context, the backstory, and analysis you need to understand our rapidly changing world. Listen to the Consider This podcast from NPR. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, Molly Zhang-Fass's new memoir begins with this sentence, I am the only child of a once famous woman.

Her mother is writer Erica Zhang, who became famous for her 1973 novel, Fear of Flying, which sold about 20 million copies and was considered a groundbreaking work of second wave feminist literature. The story's main character is a married woman who feels the passion has drained from the relationship. Her fantasy is having passionate sex with a stranger with no commitment, no relationship, maybe not even knowing each other's names. Erica John called that kind of relationship a zipless sex word that we can't say on the radio. That expression caught on. Erica Jong wrote a

couple of other popular novels and then wrote novels that didn't catch on. Molly writes that her mother had become addicted to fame and couldn't bear losing it. From Molly's perspective, the addiction to fame and alcohol meant she got very little attention from her mother. The book goes back and forth in time, but its focus is on the worst year of Molly's life, 2023, the year when she put her mother and stepfather in a nursing home because of their dementia. Her stepfather died later that year. The family dog had to be euthanized and her husband was diagnosed with metastasized pancreatic cancer. When the memoir ends, the treatment for the cancer has been effective and he's cancer-free. The memoir

is titled, How to Lose Your Mother. Molly has a level of fame now too. She's a political analyst on MSNBC and before that made frequent appearances on CNN. Molly Jungfast, welcome to Fresh Air. Your memoir is really interesting. I want your capsule summary of your mother's book, Fear of Flying, that made her famous. So I think when you think about Fear of Flying, it's important to remember exactly what that year looked like, 1973. So the pill was made legal in 1964. So there was a sort of buildup. And then in 1973, besides Fear of Flying, which really became a bestseller sort of after it was published around 74, the Roe v. Wade decision came down from the Supreme Court, which made abortion legal.

So these were two sort of seismic events that changed the world for women. And then my mom did this thing, which was she wrote this book that, for whatever reason, I mean, this is the big question about books, this is the big question about all of this, but it just captured the American imagination. And I think that American women were really primed. They needed to be given permission and to sort of go forth and explore sexually, and my mother was happy to give it. And it was also a time where standards were changing. People were living together outside of marriage. There was an LGBTQ, well, it was mostly just like

a gay rights movement at that time. There'd been an expression in the late 60s and early 70s, smash monogamy. So, you know, standards were really changing, and women were expecting to have sexual pleasure. And I don't know that women before that felt that they had the freedom to express their own sexual needs. When I think about my mother's story, because my mother's very much a product of 1942, the

year she was born, as much as she's a product of anything. And in the 40s, women just were not necessarily independent of their spouses, right? Like, you could not have a credit, a bank statement without a man as a co-sign. I mean, it really was you couldn't get a mortgage. The world was set up as women were sort of, you know, accessories. And I think that this shift to women being autonomous was actually a very profound shift. Now, I think my mother was an imperfect messenger for that moment. And I think that that added to some of her problems.

Well, you describe her as writing what was perceived as, you know, a second wave feminist book, but that your mother in real life went from man to man trying to find an identity. And she related mostly to men she thought she could seduce. Yeah. And she related mostly to men she thought she could seduce. Yeah, I mean, it's funny because so we, one of the parallels in this book is my grandfather. And my grandfather was Howard Vast and he was jailed during the House of American Activities. He wrote Spartacus, he wrote a number of books. And he and my father had this sort of death spiral, this kind of powerful same-sex parent who was so jealous that my father was going to live longer than he was. I mean, really ultimately that was the thing.

And for him, in some ways, becoming an icon of the time, becoming a sort of political hero was much more fit. It was much more of a fit because even though he wrote novels too, he was really committed to some of the, you know, he wrote this very beautiful thing about his FBI file. He had this endlessly long FBI file, the kind that, you know, the kind that happened that we used to have during McCarthy and who knows, may have some day again. And this file, he said, you know, the worst things about me were not in this file. The selfishness was not in this file. What was in this file was my work with anti-segregation and my work with civil rights and my work with unions.

All of my best qualities were in this FBI file. And I really do think for him it was much more of a natural fit. For my mom, she didn't, you know, she was a feminist, but she was also very much a product of 1942. You describe your mother as getting addicted to fame. What do you mean by that? And how do you think it affected her behavior and her ability to parent you? So I think my grandfather also had this problem of being addicted to fame. And look, fame is in this country amazing, right? It is the closest thing we have to magic.

It is a thing that makes people have a different relationship with reality, with the world. This is not a case against fame. It's sort of a warning of the power of it, if that makes sense. And so what I would say is that when my mom got going with it, she could not. Losing it became incredibly traumatic. But my grandfather had a similar experience, you know, just could not, the sort of loss of fame was something his ego could not recover from. And it's interesting because I was interviewed by a very wonderful writer and we were talking

about this sort of like losing fame and he was saying, you know, it's okay. Like I just, there's, you know, it doesn't necessarily matter. It's not who I am. And I think unless you have a very strong sort of level of self, a sort of core ethos that is you, it becomes very tough. And that's why I think we see a lot of famous people kind of hit the rocks. How did it affect, like your formative years, especially when you were becoming sexual yourself, to be the daughter of a mother who was famous in part for writing about sex? I personally have always wanted to talk to my mother about sex as little as possible.

And in fact, like probably, you know, she would always be like, I remember when I was little, she'd be like, do you want to have the talk? And I would be like, please, dear God, my whole life is the talk. What do you mean by that? Right, like it's just, you know, she's talking about sex. I'm in a green room waiting for her to hear her talk about sex. I mean, I said to my husband when I married him, I said, you know, my mom is going to wear a robe and you're going to see her naked.

And I apologize in advance. I said, you know, this is not the norm. You know, he comes from like a nice sort of bourgeois, intellectual family where people are not, you know, getting drunk and taking off their clothes. And I said, you know, welcome. Yeah, so your mother would walk around in a robe that was not tied. Yes.

That was peak Erica Jong. And you know, is it, I said to him, you know, this is what's going to happen to you. So I'm sorry to tell you. And actually the other day I was saying to him, like, you know, you marry into a family like that, it's, you know, you have to be emotionally prepared for the, for what you will witness. Can you describe what your parenting was like when you were a teenager and you were doing cocaine and you were drinking a lot before you checked into rehab?

So I was, I mean, I did delight in being a terrible child. I think it's important to mention this. I really did, there really was quite a lot of payback for the bad parenting I felt I had had when I was young. So I do think we ultimately got square. And I do remember one night being in Atlantic City and the next morning calling my mom and being like, Mom, you'll never guess where I am. And I was like, I'm in Atlantic City.

And it just was such, I don't know how she survived that period, I think it was very, very stressful for her too. But she downplayed your issues with addiction. She didn't think you needed to go into rehab. Well, she didn't, and then she got very into it. But the reason why she did that was because when you come from an alcoholic family, when people start going to rehab, it can be very worrisome.

If you want to keep drinking, that's not good. You mean if you went into rehab, maybe it meant that she should go into rehab and there was no way she was going to do it? It threw the whole, I mean, she did end up stopping drinking a bunch of different times. And I write about this in the book where she, she'd get, the drinking would cause problems and she'd stop. But yeah, I mean, it was such, for her it was very, you know, if you come from an alcoholic family system, once one person gets sober, it throws the whole thing into chaos.

Right. You know the children of other famous parents. And I'm wondering if they've had similar issues with how they were raised and what are some of the patterns that you see? I am fascinated by this because I am not nostalgic about my childhood, but I appreciate history. And so I find my mom sort of interesting at this point. I'm a little bit removed from it, I feel like, and my grandmother. I'm just interested. And so I'm quite friendly with Jacob Bernstein, who is the son of Carl Bernstein and Nora Efron. And I love Jacob. I think who is the son of Carl Bernstein and Nora Efron.

And I love Jacob. I think he is one of the smartest writers out there. He also made this incredible movie about his mom called Everything is Copy. And so we have these discussions about who is the best Nepo baby, right? Like who, what is the, you know, and we both have a theory that it's Tracy Ellis Ross. She's the best Nepo baby because she has like an incredible career. Everybody loves her and thinks she's so nice. And also her mother is Diana Ross.

Like that's the best Nepo baby. And the rest of us are just trying to keep up. A couple of your friends who are the children of a celebrity parent were kidnapped with the understanding that the parent was famous and probably had a lot of money. Yeah. That was a very 80s thing. People don't do it anymore. I actually knew a couple of people who were kidnapped with varying degrees of success. But it did capture my mother's imagination. And she was very worried that I was going to get kidnapped slash also slightly hoping.

Is it seriously? I mean, when you come from a writer family, there is always, you know, as much as you love your family, you know, content does come knocking at the door. I mean, it is, you know, I write about that in the book, that often I would see her, the wheels turning, wondering if she was sort of hoping that something might go off the rails. I'm critical of it, and yet, when my husband, when they found that maths on his pancreas, I said to him, and you know, we had been married at the time,

I don't know, it was 19, 20 years, I said to him, look, I'm going to have to write about this, I'm sorry, but I have to, I can't process this information without getting it on the page. Was he okay with that? But I have to, I can't process this information without getting it on the page. Was he okay with that? You know, it was still so much better than his fictionalized version in some of my mom's books that he was.

But this is actually pretty interesting. So I said to him, I got to write about this. This is too intense and I'm so upset and really the only way I can make sense of it is putting it on the page. And I wrote the book, then I gave it to my husband and in the beginning of the book there's this thing about how when he got cancer I could smell it. And this is something that has been written about ad nauseum, that the people who have cancer sometimes have a smell. And I have this, for whatever reason, very, I can smell things. So he had this smell, this sour smell. And I was like, and he read that and was like, so upset that he couldn't

go on with it. So he stopped for a while. Did he not know that he had that smell? I guess he, you know, he said, well, I had the smell because I was in the hospital, because da-da-da. And I said, okay. I mean, it's not, you know, this is a memoir. This is what we do. We don't, we get at the computer, we open a vein. Like, there is no option for looking good. This is not, this is not a press release.

This is, the reason you buy this book is because it's everything, right? We go, you know, you are in a, I think of a memoir as a sacred covenant with the reader. You know, I'm not going to invite you, I'm not going to ask you to pay 20-something dollars unless you get everything and you also get it, you know, in its purest, most memoric form. So you write that you have three children, you write about your husband having cancer and the treatment that has, you know, has been effective, but you don't give any real details about who your husband is. We know he's an academic, we don't know what he teaches.

I'm careful. Yeah, and you don't reveal details about your children. I think after your mother basing characters and novels on you, you were like super protective of your family. Yeah. Not of your mother, you're very revealing about your mother. But super protective of your family. Yeah. Not of your mother, you're very revealing about your mother, but super protective of your husband and children.

I'd like to know what it was like to have characters in your mother's novels based on you. So my husband reads the book finally, and he says, you didn't write anything about my investing. So he's a, he invests in education companies. And I said, yeah, because it's not publicity. It's a memoir. I said, it's not a PR, I said, it's not a press release. And he said, but getting cancer made me know that my job was about helping kids and investing

in these companies and I was going to stay at work even if I was dying. And I said, you don't get to choose, you know. And that I think is a fundamental conflict with memoir is that you don't get to choose, right? It's not, you can have someone be careful. You felt that your mother, I think I can use the word betrayed, that your mother betrayed you a little bit by basing characters on you who weren't really you. I mean, they didn't reflect accurately who you were.

In other words, like you had a really bad delivery when you gave birth to twins. You nearly died. You were bleeding profusely. Your placenta had attached to the uterus. Things could have gone either way. And in your mother's novel, where this is fictionalized, you were exaggerating what happened. Your character was exaggerating what

happened in the delivery room. So you felt betrayed by some of that and by some of that and by some of the representations of the character based on your husband. But now you've written a book which is kind of brutally honest about your mother. Do you feel that you have betrayed her?

And I'll mention here too, now she has dementia and probably wouldn't know the difference one way or another. I doubt she could read your book. She doesn't remember anything. So I guess as a two-part question, do you feel like you betrayed her? And would you have ever written the book if she was in her full senses?

If she had a memory, if she had a discerning memory, and could read it, interpret it, and then talk to you about how she felt about it? Yeah. So the first question is, yes, I would write this book even if she were 100% clear. And I think that what – it's funny because the journalists in the Times who write about publishing and who really knew my mom's oeuvre, right, and have read those books and interviewed

her, she really books and interviewed her. She really wanted to call her. And I said, oh, I don't know about the ethics of calling her. She's got dementia. You know, if you can't sign a check, should you be able to weigh in on? And I thought, no, she should call her. I know Erica Jong, and Erica Jong would be delighted by this book.

Even if it said, my mom always said to me, you can write anything you want about me. I feel that way about my children too. I mean, my mom wrote about me and that changed the course of my life, perhaps in a very good way. I'm not convinced that it hurt me. I actually think it really helped me.

Again, that's the question when we talk about nepotism, like having a famous parent is a huge advantage. That's why it's so complicated. If it wasn't a huge advantage, people wouldn't care about it. But I do think with my mom, I did actually, you know, she talked to her and my mom said, like, I am delighted. And I do believe for my mom, for Erica Zhang, that her legacy is always, will always be

the thing. And quite frankly, like I love my kids and I think I'm a pretty good mom, but a writer's legacy is a pretty big deal to all of us. Well, let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Molly Jongfast. Her new memoir is called How to Lose Your Mother. She's also a political analyst on MSNBC. We'll talk more after a break. I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air. Public media is facing the most serious threat in its history. Congress is considering a

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You're achieving a level of fame now and are recognizable because you're on MSNBC as a political analyst. Before that, you made frequent appearances on CNN. What kind of promises have you made to yourself about being a public figure? So I've had a really interesting and strange and also delightful, I want to add delightful career, which is that I had a little bit of notoriety when I was very young, and then I sort of had kids and disappeared. And I just did the kids, and then I started writing politics.

I started writing these little essays about politics in like 2015. And I just wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and chopped wood and carried water and got better and better and better places kept coming to me. I started back at the Daily Forward and then I went to this and then that and then the Atlantic and now I write for Fannie Fair. And I started podcasting and people started liking my podcast Fast Politics and they started getting interested. And I started being able to get better and better guests and get better at sort of talking about the news in a way that made people not so depressed.

And so I have my, what notoriety I have has come to me in my 40s, which is the dream. Because, you know, my husband still thinks I'm ridiculous. He's not a fan. He's a person. You know, like he, it's funny because we were walking somewhere the other day and I was getting agitated and he said, are you going to angry cry? He said, do you feel you're not getting what you deserve? And it was like one of those moments where I was like, this person really knows me. So let's talk about 2020 of three, which is a major focus of the book. It's the worst year of your life. Your mother had dementia, your stepfathers, Parkinson's had led to dementia. You put them both in a nursing home,

and you described that nursing home as the most expensive nursing home in the world. You had to sell their house, your dog was very sick and was euthanized. I think your father-in-law died that year too. Yeah, and my aunt. And your husband was diagnosed with metastasized cancer. Yeah.

And thankfully the treatment worked and he is now cancer-free. And during all of this, I mean, you also have three children. I think that's more than anyone can handle. And you always felt like you were in the wrong place. If you were with your husband, you felt maybe you should be with your parents, or if you're with your parents, maybe you should be with your children.

And then, you know, all the time it's like, oh, I have to get to work. How did you cope with all of that? So, I had a... I mean, the reason why I ultimately wanted to write this book was because I actually did cope with it, and I had all, I mean, the reason why I ultimately wanted to write this book was because I actually did cope with it and I had all sorts of little tricks. And I know that a memoir that's meant to be a sweeping literary memoir should not have these sort of self-helpy moments. But I really did, because I'm sober such a long time, I really did see a lot of self-helpy

stuff in it. And there were a long time, I really did see a lot of self-help-y stuff in it. And there were a couple things that I realized. So the first thing is that you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself first. You can't, you have to sleep, you have to eat, you have to do the things that keep you from completely losing your mind. And I did those things. And that was very helpful. And I do truly believe in the power of going to bed.

Sometimes things were so bleak that I would just go to bed. I'd get my pajamas at six. I'd be in bed by seven. I'd be asleep by 820. There were moments where I just needed to go to bed. And when you did that, did you feel like you were being selfish? Because there was work that needed to be done, people who needed your help, care that needed to be given. Yes. Yeah, it was terrible. I mean, the whole caregiver thing is like that. And I also had

a lot of, I found work to be amazing. Like, I loved going to work. I just found it was so great because it was like something I could, you know, with so much of caregiving, you care for the person or you do things for the person and they're mad at you or it doesn't go the way you want it to. But with work, it's input, output. And what I found with so much of my life during that time was that I had to focus on things in a very small increments. And, you know, that's a very AA thing of, you know, a day at a time. But I would take it, you know, a few minutes at a time. I would say, I feel so bad right now.

I just can't even make sense of how bad I feel. I'm going to go for a walk. So you always imagine worst-case scenarios. Yes. And when you were worried that your husband was going to die because of the metastasized cancer, when you imagined yourself as a widow in your 40s, what scenarios played out in your mind? Yeah, that's a good question.

I mean, it was so unbelievably strange to sort of go down that rabbit hole of, I mean, in some ways, what was good about that moment was that there was so much going on and it was happening in such a avalanche that there wasn't a ton of time. You know, I remember being at a funeral for my father-in-law at this funeral home in Connecticut and then being back three weeks later for this aunt. And the funeral director's seeing me and my husband and being struck by, he came over to us and said, are you guys okay? And so there was a sense in which it was so much that I would sort of, in my head, play things out, but

I wouldn't have really enough time to examine what it would look like. But I was not excited, let me say. It did not seem like it was gonna be great. And the thing that I was the most worried, I mean, there were all sorts of things I was worried about. But the thing I was really the most worried about were the kids. Because I knew that having a parent as when you were a teenager is just the kind of thing that it shapes you in ways that are, you know, you can't necessarily calculate.

Some people who might be in danger of dying from cancer or another illness can talk about it. And some people who know that the possibility of death is real can't talk about it. Were you and your husband able to talk about the real possibility that he would not survive the cancer? It's funny because I never thought that I would care about getting older because I never thought of myself as a person who's particularly involved with the way I look. And something happened when I got to be about 44, and I think some of it was about him getting sick.

I became obsessed with the idea that this was all going in one direction, right, that we were just all sort of spinning out towards death. And then here he is in a way on the way to it, perhaps faster. And then we have his father who is in this, you know, he goes, the father goes into a sort of coma and they can't decide whether they're going to take him off the life support and the doctor wants them to. And then we have my stepfather and my mother, and my stepfather dies, but my mother is, you know, in this trajectory where she's not necessarily herself, but she's very healthy otherwise.

And so we get into a whole thing about what is life? What does it mean? What is quality of life? And can you sort of cheat death. And I think he was very concerned with the sort of mechanics of what it would look like if he died and how that would work. And part of having anxiety, and we both have pretty bad anxiety, was that it was sort of weirdly

gratifying, right, because you've worried about the worst-case scenario forever and then all of a sudden it comes. But it was also terrifying. I mean, the idea of we just don't know what happens after you die and we all are heading towards it. I mean, for me, that's still really scary. Let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Molly Johnfast. Her new memoir is called How to Lose Your Mother. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. Before talking to computational social scientist Sandra Matz, I asked her to spy on me. I did some snooping around your online life yesterday night, which was extremely fun to do. Our lack of digital privacy, especially in the age of AI, and what we can do about it. I'm Manusha Zomorodi. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR.

Keeping up with the news can feel like a 24-hour job. Luckily, it is our job. Every hour on the NPR News Now podcast, we take the latest, most important stories happening and we package them into five-minute episodes so you can easily squeeze them in between meetings and on your way to that thing, listen to the NPR News Now podcast now. You decided to put your mother and stepfather in a nursing home when their dementia had gotten you know pretty bad and they they needed more help than they could get at home. So you did it at the same time you also felt guilty about it and I think so many people go through that that mix of like I know I have to do this,

the parents are upset. A lot of people with dementia don't even admit that they have it. Maybe they don't just don't experience it that way. How did you deal with the guilt part? Yeah, I really felt bad. And also, I had, I really felt, I mean, I still really struggle with the guilt. I felt like I should have, I really would have liked to have moved her in with me, and I felt that I had made a sort of wrong choice by not moving her in with me. But, you know, what happened was it was the alcoholism. I just couldn't have somebody drinking in the house

because I'm sober and because I have these teenagers, I didn't wanna have the alcohol in the house. I just felt like that was, I've been really, because I got sober at 19, I know how teenagehood is and I know how tempting it is and how, and I also, I truly believe like the longer, again, I don't necessarily think I don't want my kids to be alcoholics because I think from me, at least in my experience, I was genetically locked into it.

So I kind of think that if they are, they are, and if they're not, they're not. But I really wanted them to be able to, for as long as possible, have their brains develop without substances. So I've been pretty careful in the house about not having, keeping alcohol in the house. If we have a party, we sort of get rid of it. And I couldn't have my mom drinking in the house, like that just couldn't fly. I also, I needed things to be calm and sane, and I just felt I could not keep that going with her there. Is your mother still drinking? Yes.

Oh, okay. Well, because the school of thought is, and I really do believe this as someone who's sober, is that I didn't think it was fair to tell her she couldn't drink for the period of her life when she really probably needed to drink. It's not like she's going to get healthy. She's already lost her memory. So I guess what's to lose? Is that what you're saying? Yeah.

Well, what's to lose? And also if you believe alcoholism is an illness, which I do. Like, for example, when my grandmother had dementia, they would hide alcohol from her. And I thought that was perverse, right? If you're going to let somebody drink, let them drink. If they can't get sober, then it's, I think, torturing them or saying they can only drink one glass of wine. I feel very passionate about this. Alcoholism is a disease.

I don't think it's fair. Are you saying especially at the end of life, like- Yeah, it's so unfair. You're not gonna be recovering from dementia. Nobody's relying on you to take care of children or earn an income or do anything. Right. When you were going through the worst year of your life, were you afraid that you would

lose your sobriety? No, because, I mean, yes, I always am vigilant about my sobriety, but I went to a lot of meetings as I still do, and I talked about it, and I went to therapy, I went back to therapy. I went back to therapy. I hate therapy, but I went back to therapy for a little bit. And I did all the stuff that you need to do and I got very, you know, committed to calling a sponsor and doing all the stuff I needed to do. I mean, yes, I always, you know, I think that the fact that I don't drink is a miracle, and so I never want to take that for granted. But in this case, I was just, I knew I had these smart feed, and I knew what to do.

And I've always been careful about going to meetings and making sure that I see what alcoholism looks like for my mom, and I don't want that for my children, and I don't want that for myself. How would you compare what you consider feminism to what you think your mother would say? So I feel bad for my mom because she really was in an impossible situation, right? Born in 1942, the difference between

being born in 1942 versus being born in 1978, right? Post-Roe, unfortunately, now we're post-Roe again. But I think that I have, I know I can be without a man. Like, I've been married for a long time. I adore my husband. He's hilarious and the smartest person I've ever met. But I know that I can survive in any way. I don't think that my identity is so dependent on him, though I appreciate him a lot. And I think for my mom, it was very hard.

That period, you know, their marriage broke up in the early 80s and there was this period where my mom just, she could not, you could see her searching to have an identity. And she had all these men and she was like, there was a brief period where she was like engaged every month. Like I just remember being like, this guy can't, we just had a stepfather, now we have another one, you know. And then she had this young boyfriend and then she, and when she found my stepfather, it was like, oh, now this is an identity she can live with. I don't have that. But I wouldn't have who I am without the Erica Jones. There is no whatever feminism I am, third, fourth, fifth, whatever, without the second wave feminists.

Betty Friedan walked so we could tweet. We are very much the product of those women. Danielle Pletka Molly Jungfest, thank you so much for talking with us. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Molly Jungfast is a political analyst on MSNBC. Her new memoir is called How to Lose Your Mother. After we take a short break,

John Powers reviews a new Netflix police detective series. This is Fresh Air. It all starts with listening. To the person in front of you and the person you'll never meet. To the person living a story and the journalist who helps you see it in a new light. The NPR Network is built on listening. With microphones in every region so where there any time a voice or sound demands to be heard. Hear stories in the first person, hear the bigger picture on NPR. Hola, it's Sarah Gonzalez. At Planet Mani, when we say we want you to understand the

economy, sure we mean tariffs and global supply chains and interest rates, cosas así, but also we shot a satellite into space. We made our own vodka, became a record label, made a comic book, all to help you make better sense of the world around you. Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR. The new Netflix series, Department Q, stars Matthew Goode as a crack Edinburgh police detective who brings together a team of misfits to help search for a woman who vanished several years ago. Our critic at large, John Power, says it's one of those crime series that's less about

the solution than watching the by-play of the characters. The limitation and allure of genre stories is that they reshuffled the same handful of ideas and characters. Romance fiction is teeming with Cinderella's and Darcy's. Sci-fi and fantasy keeps cranking out chosen ones, like Luke Skywalker and Katniss Everdeen. As for cop stories, they're addicted to anti-social loners, who, from Dirty Harry to Inspector Morse, are as good at raising hackles

as they are at solving crimes. One of this band is DCI Karl Mork in the new Netflix series Department Q. Based on the first of ten Nordic noir novels by Danish writer Jussi Adler Olsen, the story has been retooled by Scott Frank, who's done everything from scripting Spielberg movies to making The Queen's Gambit. Frank transplants the action from Copenhagen to Edinburgh and makes the hero, an English outsider in Scotland, even less likeable. Matthew Good stars as Mork, a detective chief inspector who doesn't suffer fools gladly and finds virtually everyone a

fool. He's recovering from an ambush that killed one officer, and left Mork both wounded and feeling guilty that his one good friend, DCI James Hardy, was paralyzed in the shooting. Because his colleagues can't stand him, the boss puts Carl in charge of a brand new section, Department Q, which has been created to solve high-profile cold cases that will give the police good publicity. Sounds like a prime gig, except that Department Q has only one detective, Carl, and is housed in the precinct's grotty basement.

At first, Carl approaches his mission in the same cynical spirit. He can't be bothered with the stack of cold case files he's been given. This changes thanks to the Syrian exile Akram, drollily played by Alexei Manvalov, who does menial work for Department Q. Here Carl discovers that Akram has read the files. Have you read them? Yes. All of them?

Many of them. Very interesting cases. Murders, kidnappings, rapes, assaults. I think many are good mysteries. Good. Well, many of them. Very interesting cases. Murders, kidnappings, rapes, assaults. I think many are good mysteries. Good? Worthy.

At home in Syria, there are a lot of cases like this. Unsolved. People go missing, no one knows anything about it. Most of the time I was the only one looking. Well, you work for the police? Sort of. Sort of? Well, you work for the police? Sort of. Sort of? Well, it's complicated. You will solve them, these cases?

Who knows? Which will you work on? I don't know. I'm supposed to choose one. There are many that can be solved. Oh, and you know that from what? Just reading them, yeah? Don't you, when you read a file, sometimes you're able to just know.

I haven't read them. Perhaps then I could assist you read through all of them. It's not your job, is it? Though he's sniffy, he does let Akram help choose a case. They begin looking into the disappearance five years earlier of Merit Lingard, played by Chloe Peary, a prosecuting attorney whose spiky intelligence mirrors Carl's own. Merit has scads of people who might have wanted to harm her. Crooks she jailed, lovers she dumped, even her ex-boss, the Lord Justice, who may be corrupt. Carl and Akram soon get help from two others, a young constable named Rose, that's Leah Byrne, whose bounciness masks her PTSD, and

his laid up old colleague Hardy, that's Jamie Seavis, who does online digging between bouts of physical therapy. This pairing of an insulting boss with a motley team recalls slow horses. Except here, it's all played straight. What Carl doesn't know, but we do, is that Merritt is being held prisoner in some strange metallic container. Indeed, even as we follow the team's investigation, we get flashbacks to Merritt's past. Ultimately, the two tracks come together. In truth, it takes quite a while to get there. When the source novel, The Keeper of Lost Causes, was adapted into

a Danish movie, it was 96 minutes long. Department Q runs more than seven hours over nine episodes. If you're in it for thrills, you may find your mind wandering. Frank clearly cares less about the mystery than the characters, starting with the abrasively supercilious Carl, who spends many scenes arguing with his housemates, confronting local tufts, sparring with a police therapist—that sly Kelly MacDonald—and sneering at the detectives trying to solve his shooting. Lanky and good-looking, Good has a gift for portraying charismatic unlikeability, as he showed playing Princess Margaret's smugly nasty husband, Lord Snowden, on the crown.

Here, he captures Carl's reflexive haughtiness. It also lets us glimpse the revealing moments when he registers the existence of people other than himself. The rest of the largely Scottish cast is equally strong. While the red-haired Byrne gives Rose an appealingly wounded spunk, Steves imbues Hardy with a menschiness that impresses even Carl. Most enjoyable of the bunch is Manvalov, whose acrum is a paragon of seductively low-key intelligence.

His confident calm suggests a personal history back in Syria that it may be better not to know. Although Karl is supposedly the brains of the group, nearly all the useful discoveries are made by his team. And this hints at one of the very Nordic themes of Department Q—the superiority of trusting teamwork to unruly individualism. Carl thinks of himself as the smartest man in every room. But without the help of those around him, he's just an unhappy soul with intelligence to burn.

John Powers reviewed Department Q. It's streaming on Netflix. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, Elon Musk is gone from Doge, but Doge is still at work. Some Doge staffers now have positions within government agencies. We'll talk with Washington Post reporter Hannah Naitenson. She's reported on how Doge has made the government more inefficient and bureaucratic, fired too many people, and what Doge is up to now. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical

director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Boldenado, Lauren Krenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Yacundy, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C. V. Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. everything that happened in Washington and help you figure out what it all means. Give politics a chance with the NPR Politics Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. The Constitution, the border, the rising costs of everything. Issues this important can't be explained in a one-way conversation.

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