Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Jason Reynolds (Update)

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

One of Apple’s top 10 podcast episodes of 2025. Jason Reynolds returns for another Wild Card question about the challenge of setting an example for children. He also speaks with Rachel about the value of being a crier and the advice about rest he got from LeVar Burton.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's Rachel, and I am here to wish you a very, very happy Thanksgiving. Today, we're re-sharing one of our favorite episodes. It's my conversation with the writer Jason Reynolds, which was just named one of Apple's top podcast episodes of 2025, which is very cool. I hope you enjoy this, but please, please stick around until the very end of the episode because I called Jason back up and we talked and I asked him one more wild card question. How easily do you cry? If the ASPCA commercials, come on, you're going to say something.

The moment I see them dogs, I can't help it. I am a crybaby of all cry babies. It is my favorite thing about myself. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wild Card. The game where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life. questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one question back on me.

My guest this week is poet and author Jason Reynolds. Rest feels a little bit irresponsible. It feels a little disrespectful to all the people who want to be sitting where I'm sitting. For the people who deserve to have their stories told, but for whatever strange reason won't get their moment. I want you to think back to when you were a kid. Was there an adult in your life who didn't talk down to you? Someone who instantly just treated you like a person with your own perspectives and life experiences.

Jason Reynolds has built his entire career around not talking down to kids. His bestselling and award-winning young adult books include Long Way Down, Ghost, and two Miles Morales Spider-Man novels. All of his stories come out of his own experience as a black kid growing up outside Washington, D.C. Kids are complicated people, and Jason Reynolds treats them that way. Jason won a MacArthur Genius Award in 2024. His most recent release is an original audio book called Soundtrack. It is my pleasure to welcome Jason Reynolds to Wildcard. Thank you for having me.

Are you ready to play our game? I'm sorry. So you don't know this about me, but I'm such a competitive. I love any kind of game. You do? I do. Okay, great. Then we're off to the races.

I mean, you're sort of like competing. I don't know what you're competing. You're competing with yourself. That's even better. It's even better. Okay. First three cards. One, two, or three?

Let's go with one. One. Yeah. Is there a meal from your childhood that brings back strong memories? My mom had this thing. I don't know where she got it from, by the way. She had a weird obsession with feeding us turkey wings. And so we would have turkey wings like every night.

Turkey wings and like a broccoli every night. A turkey wing! Yes. Like that's a particular choice. It's not a turkey leg. No, no. A wing. My mom would make a whole pan of wings on Sunday,

and we would eat off that pan for the rest of the week. Turkey wings and broccoli every single night for dinner. And at some point, it gets a little boring and gross and it's fatty and it's weird, and you're like, I don't want any more. And no one else is eating turkey wings. So everything is that no one else is eating turkey wings, right? It's like you go to your friend's house. Right.

Like a chicken wing. No one else is eating turkey wings. turkey wings every night. And so what it brings back memories of is just the simplicity of my life, even in the midst of actually, it's funny because it was complex. It was simple, but it was, but it was torrential at the same time. But the turkey wings is what kept it grounded. I just talked about this in therapy last week. We were talking about this same, it's a similar question, right? But it was a question around safety and where do I, where can I go to in my mind to where I would feel the most safe. And it would be back to that table.

and that version of my mother, which is long gone, that version of my older brother, which is long gone, and that version of me, which is long gone. And there's a part of me that becomes, that gets very emotional thinking about it, only because in these moments you realize that life is moving and it's changing, and it's this strange amorphous thing that I really don't have that much control over.

It's like I can consider. control what I can control, but this thing is going to change. And there's nothing I can do about it, right? The taste of my mother's turkey wings will never change. Every single thing around those wings is different now. What was going on in life that felt turbulent, that the table felt safe? I mean, my dad, my parents split, you know, you go through that thing that so many of us go through around that age, right, 10, 11 years old. My grandmother dies. I'm experiencing death for the first time. The first of many, many, many to follow. I mean, my teenage years were full of death. But

I'm starting to, so I had my first moment with it. I'm finding whatever my vehicle of communication and expression is, because this is also the year I find writing, and I start tapping into this new thing that would eventually change my life for the better

and save my life, arguably. I've got family in and out of the house who are living with me, people dealing with different things, you know, and no matter what was, I'm being bullied in my new school, I'm going to in new school because my parents split and my mom felt that to raise these boys without their father around was a bit more dangerous. And so she sent me to Catholic school, which I was not for because I'm a neighborhood kid who missed my neighborhood friends. And, you know, I'm failing

school. And, you know, all of this kind of stuff. That's a lot. It's a lot. But those turkey wings were there every night. But those turkey wings were there every night, right? And there's something, you don't see it at the time. It's so interesting what you don't see as a child, right? You don't see it at the time, but as an adult, I look back and I'm like, God, they were an anchoring point. Your mom knew that, though. My mom. She knew that. She definitely knew that.

It was important to put a meal on the table and have people gathered together and a turkey wing and some broccoli. That's a healthy meal. Exactly. Shout out to my mom. I'm going to tell my kids that when they complain about having the same chicken every night. This is your stability. Exactly. You don't appreciate it now, but you're going to look back.

Thank you. Remember that this is your safety net. That was lovely. Three more cards. One, two, or three. Two. Two. How do your parents show up in you?

Oh, God. I have an answer to this question, and I will answer it. But I'm curious, this is because I like you. I want to hear this. I want to hear you at. This is my flip time. This is your flip. Yeah.

How do your parents show up in you? Thank you for that one. I mean, very strongly. Like, I really feel half and half of my parents. Both my parents were really religious people. My dad was like a very establishment Presbyterian attorney. That's what he was. He was like a tax lawyer who always sort of thought he had a calling to God.

So I have like a very. I was about to say I have a really strong spiritual life. I don't know if I actually do, but I'm keen on those questions because of him and my mom. And I like people. I'm like really deeply curious about people, and that's my mom. My mom was an artist. She was endlessly fascinated in why people are the way they are. So those are just some examples.

That's awesome. That's awesome. For me, I like to say that, My mother taught me how to think about the world. And my father taught me how to be in the world. My dad was life with a party. He had such a golden personality. And he was such a sweetheart.

He was a progressive, open-minded, open-hearted man. At a time when that was a no-no. I mean, a man covered in tattoos, in a black man, specifically covered in tattoos in the 1970s. But on the flip side, my dad was also a psychologist. So he was grounded in like, he would go to work every day. He was very sort of like, this is sort of what life is.

We try to understand each other, but also tattoos, motorcycles, fast cars, craziness, right? Rock and roll, rock and roll, rock and roll, rock and roll. Then my mom, this Southern woman who has worked the same job since she was 15 years old, she's the one who is like, You know, I put on my suit every day. I go to work. Conservative, right?

And then I'd come home from school and there's like, you know, it might as well be. My house is like an ashram because my mother was very much into all things that were sort of, you know, all sort of Eastern spiritual practices and all this other stuff. So she'd go to work in her very fancy, you know, conservative business suit to work in insurance. So she didn't have a fancy job. But she would put on her suit, right? And then she would come home and it would be. all about like helping me understand the law of Dharma, right? And talking to me about the Bahagavad Gita and asking me if I had any questions about

the eightfold path and if I wanted to have conversations with her about, you know, like it's about anything that is that in today's time, by the way, it's very much on vogue, right? Yeah. It's hard to overstate how unusual that was. It's so unusual. I'm like, I, totally. I grew up in a house. when my mom was smudging our home every morning with Sage and Palo Santo.

Oh, really? Yes, I grew up like that. And crystals, crystals everywhere. My mom is very much this sort of hippie-dippy woo-woo lady and has been since the 1960s. And so I was raised in this house where both of them. Did you take any of that with you? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Not as much these days, but as a foundational part, like as part of my foundation, the idea that the idea

of belief, despite my logic and reason, has been really healthy and helpful for me only because I'm smart enough and I have enough enough, I have enough sort of critical thinking skills to know that I'm choosing to believe in these things as coping mechanisms. I am choosing, right? It isn't that I believe that without a shadow of a doubt, all of these things are true. It's that I am choosing to practice them as ways to balance and manage my life. And to me, that feels healthier than a blind faith, right? My ideas around all of this stuff is like, look, life is hard. And it helps to believe that there is something more intelligent than I am.

It helps to believe that the universe is some sort of grand mathematical equation far beyond my ideas and my capacity to understand. It helps to have faith in each other, let alone in the natural processes that we live, the natural rhythms of our lives. Like these things are just, to me, they feel very practical, but also I'm choosing this as a way to manage the complex life that will get, no, that will never, ever, ever, ever, ever be simplified. Yeah. And that's because of my mom. Do you drive a motorcycle? I've always wanted to. And then I got past the point where I got too old.

You know, some things you got to do when you're young when you got the courage. Now, I talked to my buddy the other day, like, I think I want to get a motorcycle. And then I was like, because my dad's dead now. And I'm always looking for ways to connect to him. Yeah. And I'm like, I should just get a motorcycle. And I'm like, I don't, I just, my hoodspa isn't what it used to be, you know. I know.

Okay, so before we get to round two, we're going to pull back and talk about soundtrack. Okay. Because this is your latest project. This is a new thing to make an original audiobook. This is not, you can't get the book. No, there's no book. It's an audio experience. Yes.

Can you give me the snapshot of these characters and what's going on with them? Yeah, I mean, simply, this is a story about a young man named Stey. And he, you know, it's funny, because the more I talk about it, the more I realize it's really a very standard story structure about a kid who's looking for a community. It's no different than like the little rascals or, you know, we've seen this many, many times where it's like, these are kids who need each other, right? They're kids who don't have much and they don't have many people, but then they find each other, they find soulmates within themselves,

and the glue to each soul is the music, right? They're all musicians. And they use this music to sort of build family amongst each other as they tour underground, physically underground in the New York City subway system, and they become the soundtrack to the city. It's just an homage to New York City and homage to young musicians, which I, you know, I dabbled in music as a kid and loved me. Yeah, you're a musician.

Yeah. And it's an homage to what I believe is our most potent form of self-expression, which is music. Though I'm a writer for a living and I love writing and I will always dedicate my life to literature, I don't think it's up for discussion or argument what the universal language is. Other than food, other than food, I would argue, is music.

It calcifies in the brain longer than anything else than any other physical expression, right? You could have dementia, but you will remember your favorite song. Right? It's special in that way, and I wanted to honor music because I'm so grateful for the alchemy of it all. They could have been into anything, these kids, in this story. They're into jazz.

Yeah. Are you a jazz guy? I'm a jazz guy. Yeah, yeah. I'm, my musical taste. My dad introduced us to everything, you know. Like, my dad was the man. My dad introduced me to Nirvana.

Right, my dad, right? So I always am so proud because I, you know, when you get older, you realize who the cool parents were. And I'm like, it was my parents. I had the cool parents. And everybody in the neighborhood knew this, but I was living there. So it's like, like, you don't see it, right? And then you wake up one day, and you're 28, 30, or 30. or 40 or 50, and you're like, oh, wait, it was my parents.

My dad is the one who would play Tracy Chapman's 1980 Tracy Chapman album, right? When he was cutting my hair, that's what we listened to when he cut my hair. He would play the Tracy Chapman album on cassette tape. And then one day he said, hey, I want you to listen to this. And it was Nirvana. Right? My dad is who introduced me to Phil Collins and Hall of Notes,

and I listened to all that, Zeppelin and Clapton, Bob Marley, and Hendricks, Muddy Waters and Howland Wolf Taj Mahal, right? The blues, the jazz, we listen to Miles Davis, listening to John Coltrane. Like, Lee Morgan, my dad is playing all of this in the house. And so, you know, I love it all. I see value in it all. And I'm grateful for him for opening us up like that

and really exposing us to the beauty and the diversity of music. So these kids, like you said, are playing in the subways on the platforms. Getting huge crowds. Are you someone who stops and listens to the buskers, to the street performers, to the people playing on the subway train? If you make me, right? If you got something that catches your gear. You got to be, if you tapped in, it'll work when it's supposed to work. Look, we all, if you're in New Yorker, you know there's this one guy.

I don't even know if he's still going around who would play the horn, play the trumpet. along the F line. He would be on the F train downtown. And there was no way you couldn't stop and listen to this man, play this horn, because it seemed like an extension of him. He seemed like a man who had fallen on hard times, and this was his way of crying out.

Instead of him asking for money, instead of him telling you his story, this was his way of telling you what he'd been through. This was his way of crying out and saying, I am dealing and coping the best way I can. Can't you hear? The beauty in this brokenness. Can't you hear the brokenness in this beauty?

Right? It's really difficult as people who live in the city that is 100% challenging to not gravitate to a person that is trying to tell. He's playing your story. It's not just his. You waiting on a train in a hundred-degree weather underground. Is he playing your story too? You wiping tears from your eyes trying to figure out how you're going to make the rent this month. Or you just found out that your landlord is selling a building.

and you got to figure out where you're going to go in the most expensive city in the world. Like this is a real, you see what I'm saying? Like that, that. Oh, yeah, totally. I think of those people as my, they're like big, big stop signs for me. Like New York is, everyone's just doing their thing.

Everyone's just trying to get from point A to point B and you're moving and everyone's anonymous and it's got to stay that way because there's so much to absorb and there's so many people that if you absorb all the people's stuff, then you'll just explode. and what stops me is when someone is playing something or singing in particular gets me. It's amazing.

You're using your voice, that instrument. And it's like, you must stop and acknowledge the vulnerability that that person's putting out there. And the humanity that they are projecting into this cacophony of the New York City subway system. And it's just, it's so powerful for me. So I also, I'm obsessed with thinking about those backstories. of each one of those people who in that moment is giving that gift to people of music? Yeah.

It's a beautiful thing. And, you know, it kind of breaks my heart these days because now New York, much like D.C., years ago, we had phone lines in the subway, right? You could talk on the phone in the subway. This was a long, long time ago. New York has finally figured that out, and they've got that together.

And I kind of wish they didn't. They need to, for safety purposes, it's important to be able to communicate while you're underground. But it also means that everybody is sort of on their phone. when the buskers are busking. And it's like there was something about being suspended. Everything was frozen while you waited for the train. Yes.

And so they could capture an audience differently. That's right. Because you had to just wait. And then you were sharing this experience with all these random strangers. With random strangers. It's one beautiful ephemeral moment. Amazing. Okay.

We got to get back to the game. Let's do it. Let's do it. Round two. Round two. Insights. Let's start with two or three. Let's start with two.

Two. Are you good at being alone? My favorite thing in the world. When you, I think when you... Truly? Truly. Truly. I think that when you work as a writer, you value time to be alone.

I need to think and I need to... I mean, I'm a person. I spend a lot of time by myself and I love it. I love it. And I love being around people too. Yeah. But that requires a different kind of energy. To refill the well, I need some alone time.

I go to the gym in the morning every day, and then I come home and I take a bath. Every day I take a bath, like an actual bath. Every day, sometimes twice, sometimes at night too. Two a day bathing. Yeah. With the bath, like bubble bath, just straight water? Listen, I put everything in there. I put, listen, I'm one of those people.

I got all kind of salts and flowers and all kind of. I really, there's something about sitting in that, and I have a very, I'm a very, I'm a, large person. I'm a big guy, so I have a very big stone tub that I sit in. It's something about being enveloped in a stone cocoon.

And I just sit there. I just sit there into the water is cold. And I just think, or I just be and breathe, or I imagine and daydream. I think we really underestimate the importance of imagining,

of just taking a moment to imagine and to be weird in that imagination. Yeah. Everything's a go if it's just inside your brain, right? So, like, the things that I would never say or do outside of my brain, I get to sort of be a different person in my mind. I get to imagine, and that shows itself in my stories. It's like, I can't write these things if I can't take a moment to imagine

what would happen if this, this, and this went down. Yeah. I need that. It taps into a part of my youth and my playfulness and my child. and my childlikeness and sometimes my childishness, which are not the same things. Because I think when I was a kid

and I had lots of friends in the neighborhood, but we still, our imaginations were easily accessible. It was much easier for us to go outside, take a walk, or go get candy from the store and pretend the candy made us stronger or gold. You know what I mean?

The power pellets. These are our power pellets. So we could, right, the imagination was always right at the sort of, You were always brimming with it. It was right at the lip of your psyche. And now it's not that way. I have to go and tap in.

And that requires silence. Two more cuts? One. You knew right away. One. How easily do you cry? If the ASPCA commercials come on, you're going to say something. The moment I see them dogs and that.

I don't know why I'm laughing. They are very sad. I can't help it. I am a crybaby of all cry babies. Are you a crying? It is my favorite thing about myself. Why? Because it reminds me that the expectations of masculinity didn't get me.

That I avoided it, that somehow, some way, I was able to maintain a sense of freedom. I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful. And there are moments in which perhaps it puts me in precarious and embarrassing situations, but the people who love me and the people who are around me understand me well enough to know that he's going to need a moment to get this out, and that's it. There's nothing to talk about. There's no, I don't need, I'm fine. I just need a second to shed these tears and to feel what I'm feeling, and then we can move on with the conversation. I have no problem crying publicly

in front of audiences of people, because I don't mind telling people that I appreciate folks bearing witness to a man who is able to somehow remain free. I'm grateful for it. I really, really, really am, and I'm grateful for my mother and father and for my friends that I grew up with who are still my same friends today for allowing me space to be myself

without forcing me into a box that I do not belong in. So, yes. That makes me cry. I am also an easy cry. But I love that as the mother of two boys. Yeah. I love it. And I want to,

I want to lift that up and it's hard to be a boy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's hard to be a boy. Oh, my God. Tell me about that. But this is the reason why I am grateful to have writing. I can put it somewhere, right? And that's what it did for me when I was 10.

That's the reason I started writing in the first place. It's because my mom was crying. I was okay. I mean, I was going through what I was going through with my dad, but it was my mom who was hurting. And I was trying to figure out how to make her feel better. And that's the reason I started to write poems for her. to try to figure out how to help her.

Right? So I think as long as, you know, it's important for people like us to just make sure we have a canister for this. We have to put it somewhere. And then, you know, we'll be able to manage our health differently. Yeah. Okay. Three more.

One, two, or three. Let's go with three this time. Is there anything you long for? Rest. Rest. Yeah. Rest. You're not getting enough of that, huh?

No, I don't get enough rest. And there's a part of me that's also just not at peace. And I don't know. I've been working on it, you know, just trying to sort it all out. I've been, I take my mental health very seriously and, you know, because I'm one of those people who have to, you know. And I think I'm restless, and I'm okay with being a restless person. I'm okay.

Some of us are just restless. Our lives are circuses forever. And I'm totally cool. I would love to sign up for an interesting life more than anything, right? Like my life doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be interesting. But I need to find some peace in that. And I haven't quite sorted that out yet.

And it probably is connected to my rest. I probably can't find one. I hear this very deeply. I can't find one because I can't find the other. And I can go in either direction. I can't find rest because I can't find peace and I can't find peace because I can't find rest. And so I'm trying to figure that out.

You feel like you're getting better at it, though? Like you're moving in the right direction? I'm moving in the right direction. I'm moving in the right direction. I got a ways to go, but I'm getting in. Yeah. Yeah. We're at the last round.

It is about beliefs. Here we go, one, two, or three. Let's go with three. How do you think your life should be judged? By my efforts. By my efforts, you know, I think... Your actions. Yeah.

My actions, yes. I guess efforts is different. But my efforts, yeah, because I... My actions... Look, I'm a person who believes that action overweighs your intention, right? Like, the truth that a matter is, is what you were intending and what you did. Unfortunately, they often are dissonant. and the person, the people who have been affected by your actions don't care about what you intended them to be, right?

It's like we have to take account of the actual fallout of the decisions that we make. That being said, if I had to choose how my life was judged, I would say judge it by my effort, by what I was trying to do. Right, and it's the trying. It says it's an intentional word. It's not your accomplishments. It's not what you did. That I was trying. that I was trying and that I was trying relentlessly.

And in my particular case, that I was trying to make sure that our babies were loved and felt love, that I was trying to make sure that my family, all of them and all of our complicated relationships, they knew that I was trying to change the trajectory and show us that there's more. And that I am a product of them, that I am, this is what you made. Are you trying? It's easy to say you are. right are you trying it's even easy to stumble into success one time right it's a possibility that you could like it happens all the time but do you do you have the effort can do you have the

stomach to be effortful for the long haul that he lived in consistent effort that he lived an effortful life in every part of his life and everything that he chose to pour himself into I sit you know and if I could do that people could say like man that do really lived this thing. Like, he really, he gave it everything he had. I'll take it. Oh, but my dear, I hear in that your longing for rest. Exactly. Like when you're trying so hard, when everything is like, when you view your life as being judged by your effort, then you're going to keep, keep, keep going. I know. You're going to keep efforting, and that is exhausting. This is the problem. I mean, look, my dear friend and everybody's favorite human, LeVar Burton,

told me one day, told me one day, he said, He said, he was chastising me, scolding me about this very thing. And he said, I know, I love you because I know you well enough to see, to see myself in you. And he said, when I was your age, I was in the same place and I didn't learn to rest until I was 50. And he said, that meant for 35 years of my life I was living like somebody was chasing me. That's no way to live. Right now, I know this to be true. But for some of us, it's just a really hard thing to turn.

It's almost pathological. It's a really strange thing to turn off. I mean, I come from a person. Does it feel selfish? To turn it off. Yeah. It feels... And rest.

It feels irresponsible. And it shouldn't, right? I have an unhealthy relationship with rest, right? Because to me, it feels... Look, there's not a moment in my life where I'm not aware of the privilege and of of the gift of a life that I have been afforded. I also know that there are many people who are more talented and who has worked harder than I have and who could turn a phrase sharper than anybody in the world who may never

get their opportunity to live the life that I live. And so for me, my job is to justify every day why it's been given to me. My job is to honor them by doing my very best to make the most of the fact that it happened to me. So rest feels a little bit irresponsible. It feels a little disrespectful to all the people who want to be sitting where I'm sitting. For the people who deserve to have their stories told, but for whatever strange reason won't get their moment, if this is my lot in life, then part of me just wants to kind of shoulder that knowing what their lot in life might be. You know what I mean?

And so it's hard for me. Yeah, at the same time, I'm just a person, a human. You know, I need rest. Yeah, I hear you. Okay. One, two, or three. Let's go two. Are you preoccupied with the past, the future, or neither? Oof, this is a good one.

Right? I like this one. This is a good one. I actually haven't asked anyone this one. This is a very good question. I love future thought. I love projection. I love, you know what it is, is that, like, I've got heroes. And because I have so many heroes and because I'm a

student. And in this particular context, I'm talking about like work stuff. Like being a writer and being a student of literature and being a person who gets to know so many of your heroes. And then a person who gets to grow up and come up with all these young writers and all of us are getting older and then all of our lives are sort of changing or have changed. It's really hard for me to not mythologize who we become. Yeah. I love a good story. My life is about. a good story, right? And so I watch all the documentaries and you see, oh, look, there's James Baldwin talking to Maya Angelou at a table. They're smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and they're having a conversation around love and whatever else. It is impossible for me to not be like,

I wonder what it might be like one day if I'm sitting at a table with judgment ward and we're having a same conversation, but we're 70 years old. Or I wonder what it would be like someday when all of my friends and these lovely people that I've known for all these years, right? Nicole Hannah Jones, me and Nicole Hannah Jones are hanging out, but now we're 70, right? We hung out or we hang out at this age, but what does it mean to hang out at 70?

And now Nicole Hannah Jones is in the history books. And you, right? Like what, I, so I, the future definitely intrigues me. But it sounds like a healthy way. You're not pre-opat. It's not a preoccupation. It's not anxiety. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It doesn't bother. It's an excitement around just seeing where the road takes us and just like, do we get to step into our hero's shoes one day? And then in terms of the present, every day I wake up just completely like, I'm 6.30, I'm jumping out the bed, though. Like, I'm getting to it. Like, I attack the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I attack the day every day. I'm talking like I hit the gym, take care of my body.

Like, I'm talking like, I'm, and by the time eight, nine o'clock, I'm like, who, I'm ready to go to sleep, right? And I lay it down. But I really am a person who, and my father was this way too. He believed that you have to chase your life down. Don't wait for life to come get you, right? Go get it. All right, chase your life down. And I do feel that way, that can cause a little bit of anxiety because if I don't do it or if I feel like I had a lazy day,

this comes back to that rest conversation. Then I feel like I let one get away. Can't get the day back. It's like, oh, man, you got a limited amount of these. It's a finite amount of these things. Can't let the day get away, man. You've got to make the most of these moments and try to find some joy, try to be productive, try to help somebody, try to have a good belly laugh,

move your body and be grateful that you got a body that moves, right? Give somebody a hug. Oh, my God. Everything you just said, I want to put on a poster. and put in my kitchen. It's true. For my children and for me. Like, these are the things, do these things today.

Wake up in the morning because you need to hug a person, you need to have a belly laugh, you need to help a person. Yeah, got to tell somebody you love them. Have a good cry. Like, these are the things. Seriously, right? I'm really, like, and I try to get all those things done on a daily basis. That's a good day.

Last one, Jason. One, two, or three. Let's end with number one. Is there anything in your life that feels like, praying. What a great question. You know, my yes is the answer. My mother is 79, almost 80. She's dealing with some health challenges. And these health challenges over the course of the last year has put me in position to be a caretaker. And part of that caretaking means that my mother, I have to take care of very intimate things as it pertains to my mother.

I have to wash her and have to clean her. I have to, you know, I pull her panties up and do all sorts of things that, to be honest with you, I, you know, I did some of this stuff when I was 18 when she was ill with cancer a long, long time ago. So it isn't that it's jarring. It's that at this age, it feels different. And at this age, it feels in the midst of its burden, because it is that, if we're being honest, it is burdensome sometimes. Yep. It also feels like prayer.

It feels like I'm praying at the only creator that I've ever actually physically known. Right? My mother, I'm bowing at the feet. I'm washing the feet of the only God I've ever physically touched. And does it feel like praying? It feels like praying and everything else. This is the hallelujah of all hallelujahs. And I really, really mean that.

It doesn't mean it's not difficult. It's painfully difficult. But I'd be lying to you if I didn't tell. you that difficulty is only a piece of this experience, right? I went through this with my dad. As my dad was dying, we went through a similar experience. I felt the same way. To be honest with you, as a person who's not very religious, I've known prayer. This has been, these two moments have probably been these two moments and driving through the desert in Arizona, which seems so far away from these things, but it's not. It's the, it's the

acknowledgement of a bigger thing and the acknowledgement that there are bigger things to acknowledge. In Arizona, it's the mountains in the sky. It's the openness and the emptiness of a world unmuddied by buildings and architecture. This is God, if I've ever known God. in my mother's bedroom, it's a similar thing. It's me acknowledging a vessel that has given me everything that I've become. And as that vessel continues to sort of to empty, right, it's seeping out. She's not on E yet, and she's fine, but E is coming. The tank is emptying, right?

And to be there and to maintain this vessel, to maintain her comfort, to keep, to maintain her dignity by making sure that she's clean and cared for. Come on. I mean, what else could prayer be? Prayer can't just be asking. Right? Sometimes, I mean, it's me saying I'm so grateful for everything you've given me that, that me taking these 45 minutes to bathe you is a very small drop in the bucket of the gratitude that I actually owe you. And I will do everything I can to refill, to, to pour into this until I can't pour or you don't have a bucket anymore for me to pour into. What a gift. What a gift. Honestly, and I, you know, it hurts to say, and I can feel my tears welling up in my eyes, but seriously, I wish my mom wasn't going through what she was going

through, but I'm so grateful to be there so that she, so that she don't have to go through it by herself. She can go through it with, she can go through it with what she made. You made the thing that is meant to come here and make sure that you're all right in the midst of this process. I'm going to help you slide on a body. I'm going to help you transition. I'm going to make sure that there's comfort for you. The least I could do after teaching me how to be bold, how to be caring, how to be sensitive, how to cry, how to be a person whole and unfettered by the pressures of this life. Come on, the least I could do. That is prayer. Freedom. Space. Like, that's prayer. For sure. Oh, that was a good one, Jason.

This is a good game. We end our show the same way every time. With a trip in our memory time machine, you pick one moment from your past. It is not a moment you want to change anything about. Just a moment you want to linger in a little longer. Which moment do you choose? Oh, I, Father, when I finally made it, It started to make a couple of dollars, you know.

I went and I bought myself a 9-11, a Porsche 9-11, cherry red, guard red, as the portion people say. And I took it to my father's house. My father had been fighting cancer for a while at this point. But he was home. He had done some surgeries. It was looking good. And I took it. He was a car man.

specifically American muscle. He loved the Mustang. He loved, you know, a corvette, you know, those were his cars. And he did not like anything other than those cars. But I took my German sports car to his house. And he came outside. And at first he thought I'd bought a Tesla because I had been teasing him that I was going to buy Tesla, which he was very much like, are you crazy?

We don't like, you know, all of that. And so he comes outside and he sees this car. and his eyes light up and he's like, let me drive it. And he gets in the car and we pull out onto the main road. He lived in the country. And we drove about,

we pushed it to about 150 miles an hour maybe. And I remember him slowing the car down and I'm looking at him and I'm like, man, mind you, I'm white knuckling. And he's like, and we pulled back into his driveway and he's like, I won't lie to you, I was a little afraid. Right. And we just bust out of laughing.

We had this moment. And then right after that he told me that he was going to die. So right after that he said, look, I'm not going to be able to beat this thing. And I probably got six weeks. And so I just want to, you know, so we started to have a very different conversation. And it was all very lovely, honestly, but painful, you know. And if I could extend a moment, me and the old man, we would have driven a lot longer. We would have taken a road trip.

And we had taken a road trip two years before, but we would have done it in the Porsche. And we would have just, we would have just tore the road apart because it was the last time that I saw my father alive. He was living for another six weeks, but the last time I saw that thing in his eye

that reminded me of who he was and what he had given me, this knucklehead kid who had a, pinching for toys and, you know, I'm just like them, you know, fast cars and all the things, all the stupid stuff of boyhood. I, you know, I think about that often, you know, this is after telling me that he had a fake Rolex, I always thought he had a real Rolex and he was like, like, all of these, like, you know what I mean, like just, you know, like he set all these standards for me that I grew

into this man who got all the better versions of the things he was pretending to have. And so I just wish he would have lived a little longer for me to give him. and show him some of the sweet bits. Oh, I hope you enjoyed that episode. I loved listening to it again, honestly. And if you're wanting more, you are in luck. Because I called up Jason last week to talk a little bit and ask him one more wild card question. It's a question that I wish had come up during our first conversation.

But as you know, the cards control everything. And it won't surprise you that we ended up talking more about his mom and the example that she is to him. Here's more with Jason and me. Jason Reynolds Rachel Martin I'm really happy to get to talk to you again because you know you and I did an episode

many months ago for our show and it stuck with me for a long time our conversation and apparently it stuck with a whole lot of people the clip that went viral was about you caring for your mom like I would have people

like reference it to me like a clip that they saw of you you where I'm not in it, they would be like, oh my God, do you see this guy? Jason Reynolds talking. I'm like, I did see it actually. And I was there. It was funny enough. I mean, it's so funny. You don't know what's going to resonate. You don't think about it because you don't think about it that way. I'm just trying to answer these questions as honestly as possible. And honestly, just trying to have a moment with you. Right. So like that's the thing about the internet is that we technically were having our own moment. That's right. It's between you and I. And then it just so happened

that millions of other people heard this thing, but that was never, it's not what I was thinking about. Right. So it was cool. I got a lot of really lovely messages, a lot of, a lot of people are going through this. And it felt like a, you know, it's funny because I think so much, many of us feel alone in that, in that responsibility. And it felt like a communal moment where a lot of people could then say like, me too, me too, me too. I'm also dealing with this. I'm also thinking about these things or this helped me thinking about, think about these things differently, or maybe there's a bit of a recalibration I need to do, or thank you for saying that it is, that it is hard, right? That it is, like, don't shy away or sort of, thank you for not sugarcoding the truth about it,

that it is a weighted experience, but also that it's more than just weighted, right? That it's complex in that way. Lovely, lovely, lovely, human beings, from the biggest of the big to everyday folks, all of whom matter when it comes to this very human thing that we're all doing. It's very caring. Your money doesn't absolve you from this. No, it does not. And to be the caregiver and to watch someone you love suffer and be strong in the face of that and love them no matter what through it.

Yeah. It's all that stuff that really connected with people. So now, because I have you, I'm going back to the well. Okay. I'm going to ask you a question from our deck that we. we didn't get to last time. It didn't come up, but I sort of wish it had. It's from round two.

And the question is this. What do you find most difficult to model for children in your life? And I picked this because children are your life's work. Because you're a writer for young people. It's a good question. It'll be no surprise that I would draw from my mom. because it turns out that it's the same for me. When I was young, my mother, like most moms, they have this, like most parents in general,

there's a, there's this sort of a constant, that's a part of the familial constitution or like the, the child-rearing constitution that says that you don't want your children to be followers, right? This is like a, it's sort of baked into the job, right? It's like, be a leader, don't be a follower. Be a leader, don't be a follower. And I think it's true. But what one could never see coming is that that would mean that someday your child may not follow you, right? That there will be a time where that child goes their own way because that is what you train that child to do, right?

And I think for me, I model, I'd like to believe that I model a certain kind of leadership. I model a certain kind of a me-ness, right? A me-ness. A e-ness. Right. A me-ness. Right. Hopes to inspire a me-ness in children, which just by default would mean that there would be moments where I am outrageously frustrated with their choices.

So what I'm trying to model, and just by default will bite me. It will get me, right? And I'm okay with it, but I have to control myself in the way. those moments to then tap into another thing that I must model, which is grace. Yeah. Right? Like one begets the other. But I'm the one who is encouraging you to do your thing.

I'm the one encouraging you to shake the table. I'm the one encouraging you to be irreverent. I'm the one encouraging you to be yourself. Then you've got to live with the consequences of that. You have to live with the consequences. Right. Right. And so do I.

Yeah. Because you being you makes my life inconvenient. Right? You being you, my default. And it raises my blood pressure because I am concerned. And then you look at me and you say, but you told me that you wanted me to be myself. You told me that you, but this is who I am.

This is who I am at 14. This is who I am at 15, right? Now, I might be somebody else at 25, but today this is who I am. And I have to kind of stand on that and do my best to guide from beside, right? Guide from beside. I think we spend so much time sort of leading. the way. And I think sometimes it's best to just guide from beside. If this is who you are,

then I'm going to stand next to you, just so that I can make sure you see where the fire is. That's it. I don't want to change you. I don't want to tell you which way to go. I just want to make sure you know where the fire is so that I can hopefully, you know, divert that moment, right? But you can go ahead and make a mess of things. You can go ahead and do your dance, right? That is what life is about. And I think that is what I'm always kind of wrestling with, you know, for you sure. So the kids who are in your life, do they ask you explicitly for advice as like mentee, mentor, or is it more just like you're leading by example? And are you comfortable in that role, like giving explicit advice about decisions or life choices? I think it depends on the context,

you know. I think there are, I think there are certain, there are certain pieces of advice that I think, sometimes should be withheld. I think that there are, you know, I look at my, my mother, when I left home, I remember I left home and I told my mother I wanted to be a writer and she didn't understand what that meant, you know, sort of like you go to get a job and pay your bills and build a, build a, you write whatever you want, but like. But you build a stable life for yourself. Safety first, right? Like build a stable life for yourself. And I fought her on it. We would bicker and bicker and bicker. The only time we ever butt heads in my life was during this time.

right my late teens early 20s were just fighting fighting fighting fighting because i'm like my you don't understand you know i'm doing the whole thing right you don't get it you don't understand me i've got a dream i've got this i've got that you know the whole i got i got i'm selling her the whole thing and at 26 25 26 my mother called me i was working in a clothing store in new york city and my mother called me and said uh you know maybe it's time you quit your job now this is not anything my mother would ever say. This is an old lady from the South who worked her entire life. Like, this is not a thing. And she's like, I think you should quit your job. And I said, what do you mean? She said, well, you know, maybe you should give the book thing a real push.

Give it a real try. Give that writing thing. Did she? A real try. She did. And at 27, my life changed. Right. And around 27, 28, we sat down and she said, hey, I have something I want to say, I want to tell you. And I say, what's that? And she said, I want to tell you, I'm sorry. because I was trying to get you to be somebody that you weren't. I'm sorry. And also that I'm proud of you for not listening to me. I'm proud of you for standing on your own. You understood what was at stake.

You understood the consequences were going to be yours and yours alone. But you did it, and I'm proud of you for not listening to me. I said, well, she would have killed my dream. Right? My respect for my mother, right, because of the way I looked at her, would have killed my dream. always was trying to get her to understand is that all of the sacrifices you made for me, you made not so that I could do what I have to do, but so that I could do what I want to do.

That was the point of these sacrifices. In order for me to truly honor what you laid for me, to honor how much you bled for me, I got to take a swing at my dream. One of us get an opportunity to be free because of your sacrifice. To not go for that is dishonorable and disrespectful for all that you did for me and my siblings. Right? And she understood. And then I said, but mom, I don't know if you should apologize because I think you were right. And she said, and you were right to. Right. That's really what it is. It's not that like me giving advice to the young people is, and that my advice is wrong. It's that we're both right in the situation. Oh, God, I feel this so profoundly. I mean, my kids are 11 and 13 and they're, yeah, they're in that stage of trying to lay the groundwork of. of who they are and you have to balance your guidance with, yeah, their dreams and preferences

and, you know, it's tough. And they're going to bump their heads. They're going to knock up their list. But that's how we learn. I don't, I'm grateful now for all of my mistakes. I'm grateful that she'd let me go ahead and make a mess of things. And I'm more grateful that they were, that all of those mistakes were, were reparable. Right.

Yeah. But you learn that way. Yeah. God from beside. That's good, Jason. Now I'm going to think about that for a long time. Okay, Jason Reynolds. I love talking to you.

Thank you for coming back to do this. I'm glad everybody was into that episode. It meant a lot to me. It meant clearly a lot to other people. And I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving, by the way. Thank you. Same to you. And it meant a lot to me, too.

It should be known. That didn't have a lot to me. And we got to get coffee, Rachel. Oh, my God, totally. Yeah. Can we make that happen? I would love that. This episode was produced by Summer Tomod and Lee Hale.

It was edited by Dave Blanchard. It was mastered by Patrick Murray. Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sangweni, and our theme music is by Romteen Arablewee. You can reach out to us at Wildcard at npr.org. We're going to shuffle the deck and be back with a new episode next week. Talk to you then.