Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Taffy Brodesser-Akner is finally home

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

Taffy Brodesser-Akner built her journalism career with her incisive celebrity profiles and then found additional success with two novels that examine wealth and class, including this year's Long Island Compromise. She and Rachel talk about what makes fame and fortune so compelling, whether some people are just innately restless, and longing for a conversation with a burning bush.To listen sponsor-free, access bonus episodes and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard 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

Have your feelings about God changed over time? No. Isn't that crazy? I'm willing for new information to come in. I'm willing to be told by a burning bush. I hope, every day I hope, that a burning bush will tell me what's going on. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard, the game where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest chooses questions at random from a deck of cards.

Pick a card one through three. Questions about the memories, insights, and beliefs that have shaped them. My guest this week is writer Taffy Brodesser Ackner. I was kicked out of so many schools. I was kicked out of the best schools, and I was kicked out of four schools. I just, like, couldn't find my place as a child. I was introduced to the idea of wealth pretty early on in my childhood. My dad was an estate lawyer, and he dealt with all these families that would fight over money

after someone died. He saw wealth bring out the very worst in people. And by God, he was not going to let that happen to his family. So instead of bouncing us on his knee as toddlers and teaching us wheels on the bus, my dad sat us down and taught us about the evils of entitlement, how a lot of money could turn perfectly fine, generous people into lazy, selfish jerks. So while I was pondering all this in Southeast Idaho, another girl around my age was doing the exact, same thing across the country in New York. Taffy Brodusser Ackner spent a lot of time imagining the lives of the super wealthy on Long Island, where she would visit her dad. Her thoughts set on one family in particular. The father, Jack Teich, was this super successful businessman. In 1974,

he was kidnapped at gunpoint on his way home from work and held for a week until his wife paid a ransom for his release. Taffy Brodesser Ackner has been preoccupied with this. Taffy Brodesser Ackner has been preoccupied with this episode ever since. She wrote the bestselling book, Fleishman is in Trouble, which was turned into a show starring Claire Daines and Jesse Eisenberg. Her newest novel centers on a kidnapping and the limits of wealth. It's called Long Island Compromise. She also writes for the New York Times Magazine,

and if you haven't read her 2018 profile of Gwyneth Paltrow, please go do it. Taffy is, in my opinion, the queen of the celebrity profile. She goes deep into what really makes someone who they are, so I am very excited to turn the tables and the spotlight on her. Welcome to Wildcar Taffy. It is such a pleasure to be here, Rachel. Thank you. I'm such a big fan.

Oh, I am so, so looking forward to doing this with you. Congrats on the new book. Thank you. That's a big deal. So the launching point for this family saga, which is what it is, is a kidnapping, which was based on a real-life thing that happened to a family friend of yours. How old were you when he was kidnapped? I was minus one.

He was kidnapped. I was nary a glimmer, but I grew up knowing that someone I knew and cared about had been kidnapped. Yeah. Which is a very strange thing for a kid. I mean, that's like ultimate kid nightmare, right? Well, it's strange. When you grow up knowing about it, the closest corollary that I could consider is the amount of people I knew growing up who had, concentration camp numbers on their arms. And you grow up knowing it and you know that it was bad and

it was sad. And then one day you sort of wake up to it. Like you wake up to, oh my God, that happened to you. And that's how it was for me with the kidnapping. That at first, I'm embarrassed to say this, and yet I keep saying it, I guess because I'm fine with embarrassment. Growing up, I would think, imagine being so rich that someone would kidnap you. And then I developed human empathy and compassion at all the regular phases and stages of life. And I one day woke up to the idea that, oh, my God, this horrible, horrible thing happened to someone I know and care about. And also by then, I understood that when something like that happens, even if you're returned home safely, the ripple effect. of it are so vast that even if you're over it, even if you're functioning, which he was,

which he was thriving. In my book, Carl Fletcher, who is the patriarch of the family, the fictional patriarch is not thriving. He is more what my imagination imagined would be the state of a person whom this had happened to. So you grew up not rich. I grew up not rich. Sure. But as you nodded to, you were fascinated with the super wealthy. Yes.

So what tension about the rich is interesting to you, is sticky enough to have centered this book on it, on them? The thing that always interested me in money was the question of security and survival. I always felt like if I just had enough money to feel safe and like I could survive without working this heart or without being up at night, then I would feel fine in the world. And the reason the kidnapping was such a good vessel for these ideas is because it asks the question, If this money is what brought you security in the first place, then how is it that it also put you in danger? Yeah, it shattered your security. Yeah.

So what is it? Is it better to be somebody with money or is it better to be someone who has felt the wolf at the door and can survive? One last thing. One character in the book, Beamer, goes around pretending to be on the phone in order to get out of awkward social situations or awkward situations. He does. Do you do this? A million percent I do. Oh my God.

A million percent I do. And sometimes when I hear the thing I'm saying into my fake phone call, my blood runs cold. And I think I am screaming for help. I'll never say anything neutral. I'll say, this is terrible. This is an emergency. Like, I will say things like that. And I will not have planned that.

And I hear myself and I think, oh, my God, what is wrong? Okay. I've got a deck of cards in front of me. Okay. Each of these has a question on it. I'm going to hold up three cards at a time, and you're going to choose one at random to answer. There are two rules. You get one skip.

If you use your skip, I'll swap in another question from the deck. And you get one flip. You can put me on the spot and ask me to answer one of the questions before you do, if you are so inclined. We're breaking it up into three rounds, memories, insights, and beliefs with a few questions in each round. And because it's a game, there's a prize when you make it to the end. Amazing. Is there a fourth option where I could take a fake phone call if I don't like one of the questions? Phone a fake friend.

Phone a fake friend. Oh my gosh. We're keeping that. Okay. Are you ready? I was born ready. All right. This is memories in this round.

We're looking back at things that shaped you. Three cards in my hand. Pick a card. One through three. Two. Two. Where would you go to feel safe as a kid? Oh, my gosh.

when I was a kid, my mother had a brown Volvo station wagon. I think it's a 240. It was the one that everyone had at the time. And in the way back, which ironically is not a safe place. Like no seatbelt. You're just sort of bobbing around and hoping that your mother who is smoking cigarettes while she's driving has her eyes on the road. That was the place. I was always. I was always. I've always felt safe when I was in motion. Really? Yeah, which says so much about kind of what a disaster personality I am. First of all, what specific motion, not the car with your mom driving? The car, yes. Oh, you did feel safe. Being in transit, being not there yet.

Because once you get there, you have to do something or arrive or be or accomplish. But when you're in transit, which I, always was. My parents were divorced. And recently I took my children out to the east end of Long Island, and we passed the exit where my father lived. And they said, you did this every weekend? And I said, yeah. So I don't know if that's because, if I feel safe because I'm so used to it, or because I think that being in transit is actually the only time you can stop. And now when I'm on airplanes, I have a couple of rules about airplanes. I'll always watch a movie. Like I feel very safe when I'm protected from the demands of others.

Wow. Yeah, it's weird. I guess I'm telling the truth here. I'm into it. Do you feel that way now? I mean, this isn't really a memory thing anymore, but I'm just curious. Do you feel that sense of security if you're in transit today? You know what?

Last night I was coming home from New Jersey. from an event for the book, I was in a car and I saw New York, I saw the city where I live, across the river. And I thought, I'm so glad I'm not there yet because when I got home, I'd have to pack for today and figure out what the morning would look like. But right then, I was just in this state of isolation. I wonder if a lot of sort of working mothers can relate to this, being trapped in a state where you can't do anything but exist. It's the closest I think I get to stillness, weirdly. Yeah. And there's also like, sorry, we have so many more questions to go through.

But I'm stuck in this one because there's like potential too, right? I've always been really sort of addicted to the potentiality. Like it might be great when I get home. It might be amazing. I haven't screwed it up yet. Yes. Yeah. I agree.

I agree. I agree. And so let me just stay here before I actually know. I mean, put me in traffic. Oh. Oh. I'll make snow angels in traffic. I'm not going there with you.

I actually hate traffic. It is not relaxing to me. Okay. Taffy, we got, okay, next question. And I'm going to have to take a fake phone call in a minute. Girl, you got to hold that one. We're barely into this. Okay, three more cards.

Okay, still in memories. One, two, or three. One. One. Oh. What's something you thought was normal about your childhood that you now realize was unusual? Oh, that's a good question. Oh, I wish I hadn't talked about my two-hour commute already. You can skip it. Yeah, I'm going to skip. Skip.

Because I think I used it, so I'm going to skip. Skip. I'm replacing it with another one. Okay. What's something about the place you grew up in that felt confining to you? So I grew up in Canarsie, which is the last stop on the L train. The L train has since become very, very chic once Williamsburg developed. But actually, it was this very isolated, lonely train that never, ever, ever came. We were on the last stop. And once you got off, you had to take a bus about six stops to get to my house. And I just felt like, I know I grew up technically in New York City, but my God, you could have fooled me. I remember just plotting that one day I would just live in the city and I would live on one of those blocks that had a dry cleaner and a movie theater and everything you wanted. And I think people liked Canarsie because it had houses there and it was a little isolated. But I felt so.

Oh, let's see there. We've got to take a quick break, but when we come back, Taffy talks about finding success in life sometimes against the odds. Okay, we are moving to round two. Okay. All right. So this is insights. Okay. Stuff you're working on now. Things you're learning about yourself now.

You got a, oh no, you don't have a skip. Sorry. No, but I have a flip if you want it. Yes. So here we go. Three new questions, three new cards. One, two, three. Three.

Three. What's something people praise you for that doesn't feel like a compliment? A thing that people praise me for that does not feel like a compliment is sometimes people ask me how I was able to publish a story so long. Like, how did anyone let this go by without cutting it in the half that it should have been cut in half is I think the way I hear it. But I try to do a poker face. Or also someone said to me recently, you cry so often in your stories.

And I don't even know if that was meant as a compliment or just as an observation. Wait, you cry so often in your stories? Yeah. Like as you're telling stories? No. It pointed me toward doing an accidental inventory of some stories. I never go back and read anything that I have written. Yeah.

But I do end up in certain stories. I like to tell what happened in the interview or what happened in the writing of it. Thank you. You're there in the moment. And so you're describing your reaction to a certain situation. And I guess, yes, and I guess I am an easy crier or, you know, an earned crier, putting myself in harrowing situations. And I cry a lot in my stories. Right.

So in December, I was on an episode of The Daily, the podcast for the New York Times, where Michael Barbaro and I were talking about Taylor Swift, of course. And it was sort of an explainer of why she took over the emotion of so many people. Like, why is she everywhere? And I told a story about a Taylor Swift song that means a lot to me. And I started crying. And I left that studio thinking about the colleagues that I have who are in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Israel. And they are coming back and they are on the daily. They don't cry.

Why am I crying? You don't know, Taffy, what they're doing at night when they have seen all the miseries. of the world and they put on a Taylor Swiss song and then all of it comes out. Sure, but they're holding it together on the podcast. And I was thinking maybe that's why they don't send me to Ukraine.

Because they know that I'll just show up crying. Okay, that was a very generative question. All right. Next, three cards. Three new cards. We're still in insights. One, two, three. I'm going to go to two again. Two. When do you feel most like an

outsider? I guess that's a great question because I have inferred from the fact that I work at the New York Times from what's happened in the last few years that I am firmly a member of, say, the media establishment, and I still feel like a scrappy upstart. I mean, I'm sitting here in an NPR studio. I do not know what I'm doing here. I do not know what business I have being in an NPR. I know. But I know. But I also know that that's a crazy thing to say that that risks sounding like like either humble bragging or false modesty but I'm actually using the opportunity to say like look this could happen to you and you could still feel like you don't belong here but I don't think some people would call that where does that exist for you I'll tell you because some people would call that imposter syndrome I'm going

to remark at that as awe, as like not taking for granted the attention of people, which is so easy, but I'll tell you where it comes from. I was a terrible student. I was kicked out of like six schools. You should see my parents at my book party or at a reading. They are just like walking around kind of like stymied by the way and stunned by the way this turned out like you I cannot I'm so happy for them that they lived long enough to see me in a place in the world because if were you kicked out of school I was kicked out of so many schools I was kicked out of so many I was kicked out of the best schools and I was kicked out of the worst schools. Equal opportunity.

I was. Yes, yes. I was kicked out of everywhere. I just, like, couldn't find my place as a child. And when friends of mine talk about their child who is either a rebel or is just can't make school work for them, I tell them that story. And I say, it could just, like, I think the job of being in a. adult or a parent is to tell children, because no one told me this, that if you are not successful at school, that does not mean you're not going to be successful as a person,

that some people are just going to work better as adults. Some people, as much as we've gotten into this world where we're so lucky we live in a world now. The parents of the world are so lucky, and the children of the world are so lucky right now, that you live in a world of early interventions, if you're not talking on time, if you're a little all over the place in a sensory way, because we find that, we intervene. But what's not great about it is that even though the purpose of those interventions is to undo the pathology of that, it actually reinforces it in a way. You're like, I was a late talker or I am a strange, like I have, I have, I sit in a weird way.

Those are things that sort of might get into your head. But someone turned it around for you or you did it yourself. I mean, I'll take credit for it. I turned to. I also have to say that I had parents who also felt that their children should do what will make them happy in the world. So I just did what I wanted to do because you only have this one life. Yeah. And it worked out.

It's doing okay. Here I am. We've got another quick break, but afterwards, Taffy talks about how religion makes sense in her life. We are going to round three. Okay. This is the final round. Great. And this is where we get into the beliefs that shape the way you see the world.

So here we go. Three new cards. One, two, or three. One. One. Ooh. Have your feelings about God changed over time? No. Isn't that crazy? I was indoctrinated to a belief in God from the time I was so young that this is what has changed. I used to feel fairly disappointed. in myself that I could not picture a world without God. I felt like understanding agnosticism or atheism was part of the human experience. And I've tried. And I cannot see this world without some sort of design or without some sort of crime and punishment, without some sort of, like, without the hope that something is in charge. Right. Do you need a crime and punishment, God? I, I mean, I've read the Old Testament a few times. And you better, I mean, in that first chapter. My name's Rachel. I'm not Jewish, but I've spent some time in the Old Testament. There is a lot. I mean, there's some innocuous crime and punishment. I went to the Met the other day with my husband and my friend, Tani. And we, I had the urge to see some like Christian art, some like blood on the canvas. Sometimes I get that way. Yeah, and the Met is great for that. And I saw, for the first time, this painting of Lott and his children walking away from, I guess, Sodom and Gamara. Just in case, no one knows the story. Lott was the guy. He's in the Bible. His whole family was in Sodom and Gomorrah.

He's Abraham's brother-in-law. That's right. And God said, this is a bad place. Bad stuff's happening here. And you've got to leave and I'm burning the place down. And Abraham says, we got to get out of here. Don't turn back and look. And Lott's wife, I think about her all the time, she turns around to look at the punishment, and she turns into a pillar of salt. And I was looking at this painting, and I was thinking, wow, she just turned around. I mean, I think about the punishment in the Bible, you know, which is not to say that Genesis isn't. a, you know, a parable, right? Like, I'm not, I, you know, God is different from the things we have decided that God did and said. So my jury is always out on all, I'm always willing to believe anything.

I'm willing for new information to come in. I'm willing to be told by a burning bush. I hope, every day I hope, that a burning bush will tell me what's going on. But I do think that, like, the punishment for women in childbirth. The punishment for eating from the tree of knowledge was to be kicked out of the Garden of Eden and an all sort of misogas when it comes to giving birth. Well, right. So do you just discount those parts of the Bible? Like, I'm fine being punished. No, I don't discount. I'm just, but every time I hear a horror story, including my own, I always think it's so unfair that we're still paying for someone else's sin because sometimes God and the Bible are very useful tools for a dramatic state of blame.

This is so bad that it's biblical. This is so, this. And you like that. I don't like it. I just, my brain needs to make sense of things. What is it about you're either an order Muppet or a chaos Muppet? Like, I like things to go from chaos to order. And God helps you get there.

And anything does. Any explanation will do. And when the regular explanations don't work out, you can always go to God. So three more cards. One, two, or three, still beliefs. Okay. Three. Three. How has your idea of what it means to live a good life changed?

I'm going to flip it. I've flipped it. What? That's for you, Rachel. Out of the blue. Rachel, take your fake phone call now because it's flipped. Well, my abridged version of this story is that I, for a long time, was very very, preoccupied with things like notoriety and status. Even if I didn't come from a family like that, and I think that was part of it, is that I came from this family of farmers and lawyers in Idaho. And I was always like, oh, but in, I don't know, New York and in these places, there are other people who are leading better lives. And if I can get there, and if I can get those jobs, then I'm, I can get those jobs, then

I'm going to be this really sophisticated, important, influential person. And so I hung a lot of my definition of what happiness and success looked like and a good life looked like on professional ambitions. And it has only been recent. I mean, having kids had a lot to do with it too. It's like the most, you just have to get out of your own head in your own way when you have kids. But also you made it to some sort of pinnacle and you realized that there you still were.

Yeah. It's the outsider question. It's that, oh, wait, I thought this would cure me of me. Right. Nope. Still here. Still here. And then you have to figure out just how to be.

That's what I was always so interested in about celebrities is here you are a person who is getting a celebrity profile because you are a celebrity having a moment. Like, what does that create in you to be where you want? wanted to be. God, it's life. But now you have to answer it. Has your idea of a good life changed? My idea of a good life had, no. I did not ever want anything extraordinary beyond.

I wanted someone. to share my life with and I wanted to live where I wanted to live. And before I met my wonderful husband Claude, people would say to me, you know, but wherever you go there you are, you know, and it's not true. Like having someone who just roots for me is, has been pretty. profoundly life-changing. You know, again, I'm from a big family. Having someone who is partisan only to me actually did fix a lot. And I always knew I wanted to live in New York.

And I spent 17 years in other places, 10 years in Los Angeles and then seven years in New Jersey. But I felt so adrift. And I felt so I would look out the window and I would say, I know people love it here. What is wrong with me that I can't? And so we finally, three years ago, came back to New York. And my husband, who, again, had never lived with me in New York, had said to me the same thing people said to me before I met him, which is, I think you're just always going to be someone who might want something else. Maybe that's part of even your charm.

And boy, is he shocked that three years later, I wake up every day and this sort of layer of my personality, which is, you. the constant explaining of myself for why I feel temporary and unhappy, it's gone. Wow. I think it says in Jewish mysticism that home is a matter of the soul. And I believe that more than I believe anything else in Jewish mysticism that I know about. You won the game, Taffa. I did. You won.

You won. Oh, my God. I know. I really never win anything. I'm really excited. Oh my gosh. Okay. So this is the deal. Wait, does anyone ever lose? I'm just, shh. Oh, okay. Yeah. Zibbit. Okay. The prize is a trip in our memory time machine. Uh-huh. Revisit one moment from your past. This is a moment you would not change anything about. You would just like to spend a little more time there. Which moment are you going to choose? It's funny that you're asking me this. on this very particular day, which is the birthday of my second son. I had a very awful birth with my wonderful first son. I was so afraid to have a second child, but I was more

afraid of not giving that child the thing I had, which is someone for life that is that you can't really replicate outside of a sibling. So I had this second child, and it was this amazing experience, made all the more so by how awful the first one was. And I remember holding him, and I remember I just couldn't stop shaking my head in wonder about how life, how life can be different, how surprises are still there, about how wonderful a moment could be, and how you get to revisit it forever. And if it's the birth of your child, once a year, you get to remember it. You get to face it fully and say, this was glorious. Ooh, that is a good one. Thank you. I'm so glad you asked me on this.

particular day. And by the way, on the sort of switchboard you have here, I've been just staring at the date, which is his birthday. That is a lovely, auspicious thing to have occurred. Taffy, Brodesser Ackner. Her newest novel is called Long Island Compromise. You can also find her in the New York Times magazine. Taffy, thank you so much for doing this. It was so fun. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. If you want to hear more from Taffy, we've got a bonus episode where she talks about how her mom and sister. converted to Orthodox Judaism. I had to learn how to make sense of what these people I loved were doing. And I had to learn a little bit like how to respect it. You can hear that bonus episode and you can listen to every one of our episodes sponsor free by signing up for Wildcard Plus. You can do it at plus.npr.org slash wildcard. And if you like this episode, you should go back and listen. to my conversation with comedian Taylor Tomlinson. Taylor's also working through how her concept of

religion and her family's experience with it has shaped how she sees the world. She's also very, very funny. This episode was produced by Cher Vincent and edited by Dave Blanchard. It was fact-checked by Greta Pittenger and mastered by Quasi Lee. Wildcard's executive producer is Beth Donovan. Our theme music is by Romteen AraLouie. You can reach out to us at Wildcard at npr.org. We'll shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. See you then.