Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus - Julia Gets Wise with Roz Chast

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Julia sits down with 70-year-old New Yorker cartooning legend Roz Chast, whose humor and unforgettable illustrations Julia has adored for decades. They dive into Roz’s anxieties, obsessions, and the worldview behind her award-winning memoir “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?” Roz chats about raising kids through constant worry, caring for her aging parents, and how her work helps her make sense of the chaos. Plus, Julia’s mom Judy recalls how she handled the sex talk with Julia when she was growing up.   Follow Wiser Than Me on Instagram and TikTok @wiserthanme and on Facebook at facebook.com/wiserthanmepodcast. Find us on Substack at wiserthanme.substack.com.   Keep up with Roz Chast @rozchast on Instagram.   Find out more about other shows on our network at @lemonadamedia on all social platforms.   Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today by hitting 'Subscribe' on Apple Podcasts or lemonadapremium.com for any other app.   For exclusive discount codes and more information about our sponsors, visit https://lemonadamedia.com/sponsors/.    For additional resources, information, and a transcript of the episode, visit lemonadamedia.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, it's me, Julia Louis Dreyfus. We are officially back with a brand new season of Wiser Than Me. To celebrate your out-of-this-world support for our show, we've been brewing up something special, a wiser than me, mere traveler. It's a versatile, sustainable travel mug to keep your coffee hot and your tea cozy all year round. It's perfect for wise women on the go. Head over to wiser than me shop.com to grab yours now. Okay, here's the show. If you've been listening to our Wives with Me podcast for a while, you've heard lots of episodes that were recorded with me sitting in my cozy little office in Pacific Palisades, California, surrounded by my beautiful things, momentos, photos of my family and my friends, books that were very important to me, and art that made me comfortable or inspired. me, or both? Definitely both. Well, all of that is gone now, burned up in the Pacific Palisades fire at the beginning of the year. It was a fire that destroyed everything in our home, and of course the structure itself. It was a 1929 Spanish revival home built and designed by a painter named George Barker. I remember a long time ago when we drove up to look at that house, 32 years ago. It was a lot more house than we could afford at the time, and we pulled up in front of the house, and I took one look at it, and I said, uh-oh.

So in these little stories that I tell before episodes of the podcast, in those stories this year, you're probably going to hear a bit about what we lost in that fire, because, you know, it's actually, it's totally on my mind. This was a community tragedy for the whole. whole palisades and Altadena. And to tell you the truth, it's still raw. Every once in a while, I'll think of something, something that I need that's in a file in my office or something, and then I'll realize, oh, God, no, it's gone. It's burned up. It's gone forever. And that just happened to me a few days ago. I love a good cartoon, a good magazine-style one-panel cartoon. I actually think cartoons are like poetry in a way. Poetry is the most

distilled form of literature. The poet has the incredible ability to choose the right words and only the right words in just the right order for a poem. And in the same way, a cartoon can almost magically, in just a drawing and a caption, paint a comic picture that has all the elements, surprise, cleverness, wit, and sometimes even real profundity. But first, they're funny. God, I love cartoons so much that I have, well, I had a file in my office of cartoons. And now, of course, they're gone. These were not necessarily the best cartoons I've ever seen. Those were in books on my shelf, the Conrad's, the Gary Larson's, the Linda Berries, the Roz Chas, those were just up on the shelf. They're gone, too, but I can replace books. These were just random comics that had made me

laugh so I'd cut them out of something. Here's one of them. A caveman is showing a stone wheel with a hole in it, maybe the first wheel ever to another caveman. And the one caveman, who appears to have invented the wheel, says to the other caveman, what am I going to do with it? I'm going to fuck it. It still makes me laugh. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a great cartoon. I mean, yes, It's crude and it's vulgar. My memory is that most of the cartoons in that file are, but I can't tell you how many times I pulled that cartoon out, and it made me laugh every single time.

In fact, I'd argue that there's much more to that caveman cartoon that it might seem at first, starting with the stupidity of man. Since it burned up, I've really tried to find the cartoon. I've Googled it. I've used AI. I just can't find it. Or I couldn't find it. And then, just a week ago, I was looking through photos on my phone of the house for insurance purposes, which is so much fun, you guys, dealing with insurance and everything around that.

And I was going through 2016, those photos. And for some reason, I had snapped a photo of this caveman cartoon. It's yellowed because I've probably had it for 30 years, but, I mean, there it was. I was very happy to find the facsimile. It's not the same as having the real thing. turns out that the cartoonist is Carol Zahn. It's so odd the things that are precious to us, isn't it? I mean, not being able to put my hands on that little file of cartoons is just an agony. But that agony makes me realize more now than before the fire, actually, maybe more lastingly, how much laughing matters to me.

It's just everything, especially a deep, great cartoon laugh. There's nothing quite like it. So how happy I am then that our wiser than me guest today is the great Roz Chast. I'm Julia Louis Dreyfuss, and this is Wiser Than Me, the podcast where I get schooled by women who are wiser than me. Few artists have mapped the emotional terrain of modern American life in quite the way Raz Chast has. Roz has been a contributing cartoonist with the New Yorker since 1978.

That's nearly 50 years of nervous characters, apartments packed with way too many lamps, and families on the edge of total collapse. In addition to New Yorker cartoons, Roz has written some of the funniest, most painfully honest work about the things no one really wants to talk about. Death, aging, and the daily panic of just being alive. She's taken what could easily be grotesque, dysfunctional moments in life, and somehow flip them into stories that feel intimate and truthful and funny. And that, my friends, is a big trick, and it's a very excellent trick. She's written children's books with Steve Martin. She's illustrated essays and published collections like going into town and what I hate from A to Z, each one expanding her peculiar kind of genius. Truth is, she's just entirely thrown out every cartoon convention. Her memoir, can't we talk about something more pleasant, just killed me. It really did. I absolutely loved it. And I can't recommend it highly enough. It's hilarious and it's heartbreaking, which is why it's won basically every award a book can win, the Kirkus Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, National Book Award finalist. And in 2024, President Biden gave her the National

humanity's medal for God's sakes. What is so striking to me is that Roz can tell an incredibly personal story and make it comical without ever trivializing the subject matter. Her work reminds you of your own life. The difficulties of being a person are her very source material. And somehow her way of drawing it, writing it, naming it, it's soothing. It's like a salve on a wound. When her mother suddenly regains her appetite, close to her death, Roz wrote, where in the five stages of death is eat tuna sandwich? Please welcome a mother, a grandmother, and a woman who's been married forever to a lovely man who, by all accounts, can decorate the hell out of a house on Halloween.

Please welcome the brilliant, bewildered, a complete original, and truly so much wiser than me, Ross Chast. Hi, Julia. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. I'm such an admirer of you and your work. Oh, my God.

I can't believe you're saying that. I feel the same about you. I'm goo-gou-gaga to meet you. I'm so excited. Well, me too. Me too. I'm like, ah, you know. I'm like, oh, I'm telling the same.

I have been an admirer of yours from afar forever. It feels like forever. You have, I just have followed you. I read all your cartoons. Every time your cartoon comes up, I'm fangirling out, but it's the truth. Well, it's totally, totally mutual here. I mean, I've Seinfeld, you were my character. I mean, I just loved it.

I loved so much about that character. I loved that it was a girl whose friendships with, like, guys, like kind of awkward guys, but very, very funny. and I don't know. I never felt like there's a lot of shows I feel like on TV that the way that the person acts as a sort of female character, I can't relate to it at all. It's just, I don't know, I don't know what it is. But Elaine, I definitely got. Well, that's the highest compliment, and I'm very happy for it. So anyway, are you comfortable if I ask your real age?

Yes. And how old are you? I am now 70. Wow. I know. I know. That was a kind of a, yeah. A biggie.

A biggie. How old do you feel, Ross? Ah, I don't, I don't know. Somewhere probably less than that. But I don't know. I mean, because 70 is, it's so abstract in a way, you know, to say, well, what does 70 feel? Well, I don't know. I haven't been 70 before. And everybody is so different, you know, the way they age. So I don't know. What do you think is the best part about being your age right now if you could identify it? I think that every moment that I'm not in pain or that somebody I love is not in pain or that I'm not dealing with some crisis just feels like, whoa, fantastic. Whoa, that rocks.

You know? Like I, it just, and you just become more aware as you get older. It's like you're walking through like an asteroid field, except the asteroids just get like more numerous. And maybe closer to your ear as they whizz by? Yeah, exactly. And you see like friends get hit by them and, you know, and it's just sucks. It's really stupid.

It's really completely. idiotic but you know what choice do we have so yeah you carry on you carry on yeah so talking about your work the thing that i just admire and my jaw drops at is how you have successfully cultivated your own sort of inner anxiety into something that is joyful and do you perceive it like that Do you think about it like that? Probably not. I don't know. I don't know. I feel like there's some relationship for me between anxiety and hilarity. Yeah, for sure. But I'm not quite sure what it is because it's not usually at the same time. There's like some time gap. It's like maybe it's that everything seems to alternate between like hilarity and anxiety and

hilarity and anxiety. And there are funny things, you know, that happen sometimes even when you have, you know, have something that's making you very, very nervous. I mean, I've had, you know, laughing, you know, attacks when I'm on stage, supposing, you know, to be talking about something really serious or something. And then suddenly, like, I can't, I start thinking about something and I can't stop laughing. That's the best kind of laughter and the worst kind of laughter. when you're not supposed to laugh. Oh, my God. Yes.

Totally. I mean, it's like you're on a drug or something. Yeah, and you can't stop. And you can't stop. Yeah, and it gets the worse and worse. And you know you're getting in trouble or I remember when I was in high school, I was in this, they called it Glee Club, and we had to sing some horrible song about raising kids. It was like, turn around in your one, turn around and you're two or, you know, some horrible

song. And I became during the concert, I became hysterical laughing. And I had to put the thing up over my face, the music up over my face. I got in so much trouble. It was such a stupid song. Oh, yeah. I mean, that used to happen to me. There were words

when I was a kid, the word pimple, made me laugh like a crazy person. And it wasn't like it came up every 10 seconds or anything. But if for some reason it came up, it would just make me laugh and laugh and laugh. Have you used the word in your cartoons ever? I have not. I did do a

cartoon about mosquito bites and naming them because, you know, I guess I'm so boring. I'm allergic to them, so they tend to last a long time. And you can get sort of nostalgic. It's like, oh, there's, you know, Sheila. I remember when Sheila, when I got Sheila, and I can still see like the scar and she's going away. I'll miss her, but, you know. RIP, Sheila. Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. And what kind of child were you like and can you sort of walk us through, you know, whatever, 9, 10 year old, Roz? What were you like? I just fucking hated being a kid. Just really hated it. Yeah. You know, I was so weirdo. I was, you know, an only kid. My parents were super overprotective to the point where,

they made me feel like, you know, you really shouldn't, you know, kids carry diseases. They were dirty. They spoke with Brooklyn accents that, you know, somebody had bad posture and I shouldn't play with them. They were bad influences. They were smarter than me. They were more sophisticated so they could take advantage of me. You know, this is mostly my mother, not my father. My father, I think, felt sorry for me, but he was afraid of her, too.

I think she was trying to keep me safe. Right, because they had lost. a child before you. Exactly. And they didn't want that to happen. So, yeah. Yeah. And I really had no idea how to play

with other kids. I was really, hated it, just hated it, waiting to grow up. I was actually like that myself too. I wasn't, I didn't have those same kind of anxieties, but I couldn't wait to get older.

I couldn't wait to get older. Oh, me too. You know, some people, love being children. They loved it. And I was not one of those people. Yeah, I have friends who loved being a kid. And they tell me about their adventures and things they did and they got to trouble and they did this. And it was like, I never did any of those things. I was not allowed. It was not fun. It was not interesting. I hated school. I was really waiting to grow up. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad we're talking about this because there's a cartoon of

that I love. It's you as a child lying in bed, surrounded by books. Can you tell us about this cartoon? Sure. This is a cartoon that I did. I can't remember what it was. It was for a magazine that asked me to submit a photograph of myself as a child. And for some reason, I said, is it okay if I do a drawing? And they said, fine. So I am nine years old. I'm on my bed. I have a plate of, looks like a couple of Oreos or something, and I'm surrounded by books with titles like everything you always wanted to know about scurvy, but we're afraid to ask, diseases of the tropics, a child's garden of maladies, lockjaw monthly, I was really afraid of lockjaw and gangrene. I had a lot of hypochondria issues, the big book of horrible

rare diseases. And the main book is something that was a book of my childhood that I think forever, it changed me, which was the Merck Manual, which we had in our house because my mother's sister, my aunt, was a registered nurse, and she would give outdated copies of the Merck Manual to my mother, who loved to read them. But what is the Merck Manual? Because lots of people don't know what that is. Okay, the Merck Manual is basically for doctors, and it lists every single disease and how to treat it and symptoms. And the, the, the, the, the, you know, the, the suggestions for treating the disease with the different dosages of drugs and stuff, that was way over my head. But I was not stupid. I knew what symptoms and signs were. I knew I had leprosy

more times than you could count. You know, I have a 24-hour leprosy, many, many, many times. Were these things that all lived in your head or did you, you didn't articulate them to your parents? I would try. I would try, but there was just no, you know, my mother would say, You know, she was the typical kind of thing. She would say, you know, you're depressed. You have a roof over your head. You know, what are you complaining about? Because, you know, they were first generation Americans.

They grew up incredibly poor, both of them. Right. Their parents didn't speak any English. So to them, I was like, you know, the queen of Sheba. What was I complaining about? So how have you managed that childhood anxiety as you've gotten older? Has it popped out in other ways? Have you been able to wrestle it down?

I guess in some ways I ignore it. I mean, I don't cope with it very well. Let's put it that way. I mean, ignore it as in like I don't go to the doctor. I have, I still have a lot of health paranoia, even though most of the time I feel pretty good, knock on wood. Yeah, I'm knocking on wood because I'm superstitious. Yeah, me too.

Um, we have to, we have to do that thing. I don't know if your grandmother ever did the thing where they blow away the evil spirits. The, who, whit, whew, whew, whew, whee. Oh, no, but that's a good one. Didn't do that. Yeah, they, but over people's shoulders. Oh, I see. Yeah, like if you were standing right in front of me, I'd go, left, right, and left again.

Left, right, left, right, left, right. And it's, you know, you're dispersing the evil eye. All right. You do that at the same time you knock wood? Uh, you could do either. You could do both. You could add this all, you know, depending on, you know, how bad it is. But, no, I don't cope well with the health thing at all.

And I try to repress it and just not deal with it. And I think, you know, most of the cartoonists I know tend to be sort of anxious people. Yeah. It's time to take a quick break. My Conversation with Roz Chast continues in just a moment. And by the way, we just launched a Wiser Than Me newsletter where you can get behind-the-scenes details from my conversation with Roz Chast and more.

You can subscribe at wiser than me.substack.com. You'll get photos and videos and letters from me occasionally. Think exclusive bonus snippets, glimpses behind the scenes of the making of the podcast, a deeper dive into every guest, plus a place to connect with other Wiser Than Me listeners. I hope you subscribe at wiser than me.substack.com and stick around to see what we have in store. Be right back.

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places on earth. But care can't do it without you. Help provide life-saving care around the world. Donate today at care.org slash wiser. When you were a child, did you realize that it was a dysfunctional situation that you were in? Or was it sort of a slow realization as you got older? I'm just wondering when you, it started to dawn on you that it was kind of a little bit mad in here. I think I started to realize it when I was around 10 or 11. I have this very clear memory of playing with a girl who lived in my building. And, you know, because you have building friends. Yeah, I remember.

People who live in your building. And I wanted to, I guess I was like 10 or 11, and I wanted to start a club called Against Mothers called A. M. And she was like just baffled by it, you know, she didn't want to do it. And I remember like sort of taking that knowledge in and thinking, oh, because, you know, when you're a kid, you think, oh, I hate my mother, everybody must hate their mother. Sure, because that was your universe that felt like the norm, yes. You know, she was just fucking mean. Yeah. So much of the time, she was mean.

Uh-huh. And I think she was tired, she worked really hard, and she just didn't want a deal. Right. And I think also, you know, as I got older, you know, I think that losing that first baby really did her in. Sure. You know. Understandably so. So, I don't know, maybe that's a misreading of the situation.

I don't think that's, it doesn't sound like a misreading to me. It's like the trauma was the fuel that that sort of kept her in place in a weird way. As a mom, this trauma just was the driver. Yeah, I think it really kind of ruined a lot more than, well, certainly more than I was aware of when I was a kid. Yeah. Because I didn't even know until I was 12. Oh. How did that come up?

I was in the garage of my mother was the driver in our house. My father was too anxious to drive. So we were like leaving the garage. I'm sitting in the back seat. And I asked my mother, tell me something about yourself you've never told me before. Oh. And she told me. And it was like, well, that's something I didn't expect.

Wow. So she'd been carrying that, you know, herself. And when she told you, Roz, Did she tell you in a matter-of-fact way? Was she emotional telling you about it? I don't exactly remember. She would get emotional later, but at the time she told me, I don't remember her being particularly emotional.

I remember it just being like, well, yikes. Yeah. Were your parents, I don't think your mom was funny. Was your dad funny? Not intentionally. He was extremely anxious, and sometimes his anxiety was funny to me. in the moment in the moment oh yeah and they were funny to me in a weird way even though they didn't intend to be like they would have these crazy fights and i don't know they were just so um maybe they were just

very typical for like children of immigrant first generation american people i think in a lot of ways, but they would just have these arguments and fights and, you know, about how many olives my father should eat. And, you know, like he would, he would want five olives. And then she'd say, George, are you crazy? And then he'd say, okay, I won't have any olives. And then she'd say, no, you should have olives. Or like he'd be sitting on the chair in like this way that she didn't like. And she'd say, George, sit straight.

You're twisting your kishkas. You know, and Kishka's being intestines where people don't know. And, you know, just like these insane sort of discussions. But they were funny in this way that was very old-fashioned. They told jokes. My mother did, not my father. But my mother would tell, you know, and all over their friends. You know, they told those kind of, Herman goes to the doctor.

La-la-la-la-la. Punchline. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And I know your dad carried around that New Yorker, or actually, was it a New Yorker cartoon? No, it was from the Saturday Review.

But it was about New Yorker cartoons. Tell what it was? It was, I don't know who did the cartoon, but it was somebody at their shrinks lying on the couch, typical shrink cartoon set up. And the caption was the patient telling the shrink, I feel inferior because I don't understand the cartoons in the New Yorker. So my father loved this cartoon. He carried it around. My dad passed away, I don't know, 10 years ago or something now. And he used to just go on and on about other people I was working with, about how good they were.

Yeah. Yes, yes. Yes. And my father would ask me sometimes, like, very strange questions. And it's like, what sort of fellow is? He'd named some cartoonist that I didn't really know that well. And they're like, I think he's nice. I don't know.

Why are you asking? I don't know. Yeah. Strange. That's so funny. And how does it work at the New Yorker? Like, are you on staff? Can you just talk us through the actual process of all of that and what your role is in it?

I am under contract. So in some ways it's staff, but also it's, there's no guarantee of anything and I don't make a salary. So it's also sort of freelance. Jeez. Yeah. So you mean, so they only pay you when they take your cartoons? Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. There's probably about 40 or 50 people, maybe more, who submit regularly. And by regularly, I mean, like submitting every week. Is that you? Every week? Yes.

Yes. every week and you don't submit one cartoon, you submit a group, which since I started has been called The Batch. And so if you're talking to some cartoonists, it's like, did you send in your batch yet? How's the Batch going? The Batch, the Batch. Yeah, so I usually aim for like six or seven cartoons and, you know, let's say there's 50 people under contract and just to make the math easy, let's say 10 cartoons, it's 500 cartoons.

And then another like at least thousand. and maybe more come in over the transom. Wow. And they only buy between 10 and 20 a week. So it's from 1,500 cartoons to 10 to 20 a week, which is why if somebody says, you know, my niece or nephew or my kid, they want to be a cartoonist, you know,

do you have any advice? I always say, if they can do something else, they should do that. They should do another thing. You know, don't do this. This is really when you don't have anything else that you can do, you know, this is what you do. Does you have anything else you can do?

No. No. No. Nothing. Nothing. I mean, you've been doing this since, what, 78, right? Yeah. 1978. Okay. So what have you learned? I guess I've learned that maybe I'd rather do this than not do this. Oh, I hear you. And the thing about art, one thing that's really good is that unlike being an athlete or a dancer, you can continue.

Yeah. There's, it's not like, right. Yeah, I mean, you can just kind of keep making work. And I do find that working knock on again would, there's always, always new stuff. Yeah. There's always new stuff to learn and always, you know, new inspiration and new ideas and things to get excited about and I mean that that is life for me yeah I mean do you do you this is I have to say before this is like just jumping a little bit here yeah sure who cares that um

the last fuckable day is one of the most brilliant things I have ever seen every line is so hilarious it's so great and Is it you that goes off at the end with a cigar? Yeah. Or no, no. Yes, it is. It's me. I go off in the canoe.

In the canoe. Yes, yes. Every bit of that is just the greatest. How did that come about? Well, that came about because, let's see, it was for Amy Schumer. It was for her show. And Nicole Holliswinter, who's a writer-director with whom I've worked to. Oh, she's great.

Yeah. Well, she directed that. that particular sketch. So she called me and she said, doing this, does this appeal to you? And I'm like, I mean, the title alone and the concept was like brilliant. And so I said, a hundred percent. And so we went off into some woods somewhere and we shot it. It was really fun too because we got to improvise and play with it. The baby lamb that like I don't remember it was Tina Facing like some 80 year old like guy like married not just somebody who's 20 somebody who was 24 years younger and it was actually a baby lamb and oh I died that was just so so and everybody's oh yeah exactly yeah and not even mad it's like so stupid it's so stupid I think that's the key is that the reason that the reason that that really did work is because people weren't mad about it at all yeah we were just um in a weird way almost delighted yes it's like good now you're not pestering me anymore now you're not like with you're just uh it it just every note it hit was just great it's like thank god nobody's asking me to walk around with my you know tits out to here and like here comes here comes here comes

comes a sex bomb, you know. Here comes Titty McGee. Yeah. Here comes Titty McGee. I know. I know who wants that. And then you see these like, you know, 75, 80-year-old people who are still like being Titty McGee.

And you're just like, what are you doing? Like, I don't know. I don't know. It just cracks me up. But like, if it makes you happy, then go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. I know. Oh, and I'm so happy you like that. I really am. Do you ever say no to projects?

Do you? Like, have people come to you and said, I don't know what it would be, but it's like it doesn't appeal to you. It's like gross or I don't know what it would be. I probably should have said no to more projects than I have. No, no. Well, I ask like, I'm such a prostitute. It's like, well, what's your budget? You know, you want me to do a commercial for? for, like, tinfoil? Hmm. You would be great in a commercial for tinfoil. I got news for you.

I will buy so much tinfoil if you are a hocking tinfoil. Oh, I would love to. It's like all the things you can do. You can just, like, quit your job and make one of those tinfoil balls. Just like, and then open up, like, a store where you sell them. Tinfoil ball store. And then you could do, like, different things. You could make, like, cubes and pyramids.

And it's like, that's your life is just now tinfoil craft. I am here to tell you, but you have got this gig wrapped up. I know. I'm, like, waiting now, like, maybe Alcoa or whatever the company is. Reynolds' rap. Reynolds' rap. We'll call me up after this and say, we never thought about that. Like, an Etsy-adjacent, craft-adjacent tin.

Totally. I'm Roz Chas with Reynolds wrap. Exactly. Come on over. You can make a hat. We're going to make it two. Yeah. And tinfoil balls.

We can turn it into a necklace. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Oh, God. It's hilarious. Okay, we need to take another break here. More with Roz Chas right after this. From morning walks to bedtime cuddles, dogs shape the rhythm of family life.

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Forty... What year is it? Twenty-five. Forty-one years? Forty-one... Something like that. Yeah. Yeah, something like that.

So what was your courtship like? Well, our first date was Eraserhead. Oh, really? Yeah, midnight show at the Elgin, so... Yeah. Oh, wow. Did you like him right away? Yeah, I did. I did. I actually thought that he was too normal and too cute for me. So that's always a good sign. So you had lived in New York your whole life and then after you had your second child, you moved to Connecticut. And I know that was a very rough transition, right, leaving the city. Well, yes and no. I have what a friend of mine

calls a pumdeteer in the city, which I got 11 years ago. And I'm in the city a lot. I'd say three out of five weeks I'm in for a few days. Oh, I see. Because I mean, I really, I think the hardest thing about moving out of the city was the driving. Well, one of the hardest, because I didn't learn how to drive until we moved out of the city. And I really hate it. I really do not like cars. I don't like driving. I don't like putting gas in my car. I don't like the noises it makes. I have like car hypochondria, you know, where it's just like, what is that smell? What is that sound?

What is it supposed to be doing that? Yes. What kind of car do you drive, may I ask? It's a Subaru forester from 2008. Yes. And I vaguely like it because I sort of know how to turn it on. And I know it's like weird things. And I'm afraid of like new cars.

I don't like the button cars. Oh, yeah. The button cars are tough. I fucking hate them. I hate, hate, hate. I will not do that. I will not do that. Because you live in fear of not turning it off for starters. That's it.

And even people who are like, oh, what are you afraid of with a button? It's so easy. They sometimes like, oh, I forgot it. Is it on or off? They're not sure. And that's like really creepy to me. I just don't like it. I don't like anything about it.

I it's yeah so being in the city it's like you don't have to drive you can go anywhere so you do everything you can to avoid driving like would you have somebody else yeah okay got it yeah yeah um and and then you became a parent in the suburbs yes ay yeah yeah yeah and so talk about that I love the story you told about somebody giving you you were at a parent something or other, and they gave you ice to break up? Oh, yeah, that was awful. You know, there's a lot of people who have somehow, they know how to do everything like this. And I was at one of those horrible field days, you know, they have for kids. Were the kids and the parents are all playing outside? Yes, and somebody gave me this giant bag of ice to break up,

and I had no idea how to do this. And she just like sort of took it away from me and like dropped it a few times on the ground and, you know, sort of wordlessly, but just disgusted, you know. With you. With me. Yeah. When you told that story, I thought I have to tell you this story, which is I was at my kid's school and it was like Pilgrim Day or something. And I know, already you're unhappy.

And some mother had made a bunch of cookies in the shape of, I don't know, colonial things. I'm not sure. I can picture the hats. Yeah. And the kids were going to decorate them. And I was sort of bringing them over to the kid table. And I dropped like a plate and a few of them, you know, sort of crumbled. And she looked at me and she goes, try not to break the cookies like that.

Wow. Wow. Try not to break the cookies. Yeah. I was like, oh, yeah, that's such good advice. Yeah, yeah, because I was really planning them going through them one by one. I wasn't before, but now I will. Yeah, tell me about it.

Right. Because before, when we were living in Brooklyn, I remember I was in a play group and the other mothers did other things. You know, they were like, they had other jobs besides being a mom. But when we first came out here, it was like Planet Eisenhower. You know, it was just. Fascinating. You know, by the time somebody was 35, they had. had like three kids and maybe like a kid who was like 12, you know, it was a different thing.

And their husbands had like corporate jobs. And their excitement was like redoing their house or redoing their kitchen or having a pool put in or gardening or. But it was weird. You know, being a freelance person, I tried. I would sometimes be a class mom or. Did you ever do that? Yes, I did. I was a class mom for the, like where I would organize the kids to make sort of a group art project and then it would get raffled. And so we did some kind of neat things. Oh, that's cool. That I kind of liked.

And there was always this tension between mothers who are always available for school, always available. And then people like me who I was not always available. And then I felt unbelievably anxious and guilty about that. Yeah, same. Same. How did you get through that? And did you find a person or anybody that you could, you did? I did.

I had a very good friend who actually I just saw she came over on Halloween. So we're still friends. But she's a painter. And the people, shockeroo of shocks, the people that I became friends with were generally artists. So, you know, they were people who had like other pulls on their time and their attention. and because, you know, I think when you're a mom, there is this kind of weird part of you that's maybe something in society that just says, you give up everything. You're a mother, you must drop everything and just be a mom.

And if you're not that, then there's something wrong with you. I mean, I know you talk about you parented your first child one way and your second child a different way, right? Yeah, I did. I did because when, And I only knew two modes, which were screaming and hitting, which I was not either of those things, and being a doormat, and I was more of a dormant, and passive, and that didn't work either.

And I learned a lot from a couple of very good parenting books. I'm not a self-help. book reader ever. But I had a sort of like a crisis moment with my older kid in a grocery store when he was around five where usually I was so anxious about my husband is very laid back. You know, he's one of three kids from the Midwest and just a much more sort of laid back sort of person. And he got along very well with my son because he would let him do things like climb up really high in a tree because he felt confident that if he fell, he could catch him, whereas I didn't, you know, so he could go to the park with him and, you know, my son could do

all these kind of crazy stunts that I would not let him because I would just be seeing like ambulances and blood and, you know, horrible things, bones sticking out from skin and, you know, death, death. Anyway, we were in the grocery store and I decided, I, I, decided, I, I am not going to be my usual, don't do this, don't do that self. I'm going to be more like my husband, more laid back. And sure, you want to spray. Remember, like, there used to be, like, vegetable sprayers with water and it would be like a hose. Oh, yeah.

You know, and I'm going to let him do that, you know? Sure, you can do that. I'm going to let you, like, pick up products. And at the end of the day, at the end of this trip, I'm like sweating bullets. You know, it's just like I'm keeping all of my anxieties. all of my, sure, this is fun. This is really great. Look, it's fun. He did something. He's like started swinging the cart and he let go of the cart and it went into this whole thing of like glass jars. There's glass everywhere. There's glass and sauce and it was a huge disaster. And it wasn't like

one glass. It was like many, many, many, many jars. And it was so bad. So your anxiety, your fever anxiety dream came true. Oh yeah. We left the cart. I said to my son, I said, I'm so angry, I cannot even speak. And we went home and he ran upstairs and I was telling my husband about this and I was altering. I was crying and laughing like snot just pouring, you know, because it was funny but it was so horrible and I was so angry and so upset. And also because I had gone against my instinct of like trying to control and the next day I went to the library and I took out a bunch of books, you know, all, everything that I could find about how to do this. And I found two really good books. Which books? I'm so curious to know. One was called, um, how to talk so

your kids will listen and how to listen so your kids will talk, which I just thought was so good. Wonderful book. Wonderful book. And it was something that I had that book. It was just so good. And what was the other one? Stop struggling with your child, it was called. And they were both very similar in that it was a third path. It was not being a doormat, but also not screaming and hitting and yelling and just losing a third path. A third path. And some of it was just about good things to remember when you're bringing up kids.

Like, don't blame, but you can describe, like the wet towel is on the bed, not like wire. are you so lazy you've left the towel you always do this not like accusing and starting a fight and if they don't get it you pull the and if they go so you bring them back you point you can say it like really direct the wet towel is on the bed and they put it together the jacket's on the floor your jacket is on the floor you know and I need you to come to my house I need you to come to my It was great. It was so good. And it really helped a lot. It's funny because I had, I still have a lot of anxiety as a mom. And I love being a mom, of course. But I don't know how I would characterize my anxiety, except to say that I am always trying to keep it at bay. Yes. Yes. Same. Which is it, which takes a lot of energy. Can we just say that? Maybe it's just, I don't know whether it's encoded genetically. you know, for me, having very anxious parents.

And, you know, I don't know if there's anything I can really do about it. It does seem like this is part of... How are you even pregnant as being... I mean, were you a basket case when you were pregnant? Yes, I was a basket case. And I do think that my body must have secreted some sort of anti-anxiety hormone to kind of, because right now when I think about it, It's like, how did I do that? Like, that's so horrible, the idea of a person inside of you.

I much preferred labor to being pregnant, you know, because at least that was like, you're getting it out. I'm getting it out. There's doctors. Something goes wrong, something, you know, whatever. But pregnancy, it's like there's a whole person. It's just, it's the horrible thing. You're growing a person.

It's disgusting. There's like eyeballs. There's like another set of eyeballs inside of me. I don't like that. But, you know, so that's why I think there must have been, like, some sort of weird, like, calm down Roz hormone sort of being. I'm sure. I'm sure that that is actually the case. When you, you know, your hormones are all going so crazy when you get, when you're pregnant anyway, that there was probably something that, I mean, it got you through it. You did it. You did it twice. To me, it's like a miracle to have a relationship with my kids that I did not have with my mom. mother. So I am grateful to them every day that they've allowed that.

Yeah. And you've obviously done something to cultivate that so that you do have a relationship. I mean, for example, you went and you got the parenting books. I mean, you worked at it. Yeah. Yeah. I did not assume that I knew everything because I knew I didn't, you know, And I think that was different from, I don't know if they had that when my parents had me. I mean, there was Dr. Spock, but. There was Dr. Spock. But I think that even when I was growing up, I think that parenting wasn't yet a verb. I think you're right.

I think that happened in my generation as a parent and in your generation when you were a parent. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But I think that that became a verb later. I think you're right. Yeah. Speaking of parenting as a verb, we have another cartoon of yours that I'd love to talk with you about. It's the cartoon about the sex talk.

Oh, my God. Does this make me laugh so hard? Can you read this for the listeners, this cartoon? Yes, this is a heart-to-heart talk. It's a mother talking to her teenage, young teenage daughter. And she's saying, in my day, it wasn't like nobody did anything. but certain things you only did with certain people. I'm not talking about certain things.

I'm talking about certain other things. Nowadays, it seems like people do certain things with people because they think that those things are less intimate than certain other things rather than vice versa. And we know what those things are. Oh, it's so great. Certain things. So wonderful.

That is a marvelous cartoon that really made me laugh Did you have those conversations with your kids? I think only when forced to, you know, they're kind of, I don't really remember. I think I probably did some, or I had with my daughter, who is now actually my son. I have one kid, my younger kid is trans. so I might have had some sort of talk like that with her that went along with the need to use deodorant that sort of thing.

I had with one of my sons, he was youngish and he was using the word hump a lot. And I said to him, honey, do you know what that word means? Because it was inappropriate, right? And I said, do you know what that word means? that word means? He goes, no. And then I sort of took the opportunity to tell him what humping was and how sex worked. And I told him pretty sort of scientifically, kind of. And I remember we were in the car. And he looked at me and he just goes, why did you just tell me that?

You know what? I just suddenly remembered when you were describing it, the sex talk I had with my daughter. Tell me. Oh, my God. I mean, it was as weird, almost as weird as that. It was because she at the time was in maybe like third grade or something. And some little girl in the class told her that if a boy held your hand, it would put a baby in your tummy. And she was very upset about this. So then I thought, okay, I have to tell her about the whole situation. to that and I just for those of you who are listening I just made that like horrible like junior high you know bar mitz for hand gesture of finger going into hole yeah finger going into hole and after I finished describing like what things where things went she looked at me and she said I feel like I'm dweeming. You're kidding.

Swear to God, I feel like I'm dreaming. And I want to think I'm dreaming. I feel like I'm dreaming. And I wanted to tell her, yeah, yeah, it does kind of, it is like that. Exactly. That's adorable. I love that. Yeah, I feel like I'm dreaming.

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I do want to talk about your memoir because it really, it is so helpful and honest and helpful in the sense that, because I, you know, my dad passed away and my mother-in-law is, is very aged and with caregivers. So we're sort of in the throes of, yeah. And is there anything that you wish you had known in the beginning? of that caregiving adventure that you had? Oh, man. I don't know. I don't know whether it's better to know about it in advance or, you know, because there's aspects of it that are just so awful.

Awful. That maybe it's better not to know, you know. There were things that were very helpful, like a friend of mine connected me with an elder lawyer. And that was an extremely helpful thing. Because you had trouble talking honestly and openly with your parents about end-of-life decisions and so on and so forth. Yeah. Yeah, it's just awful.

And it's weird. I'm kind of, I'm going through it in a much more muted way with my aunt right now. My mother's baby sister, who is now 106. What the hell? Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. She is, she's outlived both of her kids and, of course, everybody else. But she is, and she's okay. I mean, she uses a walker and she's hard of hearing, but she's mentally, you know, she says, oh, I'm more, I'm forgetful and stuff, but she's very much still there. I mean, she's in a home? She is, yes, last September, she was living independently until a year ago, September. And I got her into an assisted living place nearby and sold her house and, you know, all that stuff. I'm amazed that you've had you had to do that after having done this with your parents.

It's different, though. First of all, she was much more pliable. pliable and she had taken care of a lot of things like she had a lawyer that I would work with a lawyer sometimes my parents never addressed any of this I say yes and I have this card on the refrigerator that has you know the name of the funeral home and yeah like she wants to be cremated and this is the company and this is like you know the numbers for when I so yeah it's different but it's just it's such So, I don't know, I guess not to be like soapboxy about it, but it's just like one way that I feel like our society just doesn't really give a shit, you know, about like if you are, if you don't contribute to the economy, why don't you just fuck off and die? You know, why don't you just be dead right now? Because if you're not making money, if you're not contributing to the economy of this country, you might as well be dead. Yeah, there's really no system in place, you know, other than nothing, yeah, other than family and, and if you're lucky, if you're lucky, you have means to figure it out. Right. But it's an expensive undertaking.

Oh, yeah. I mean, she had a little house in New Jersey and that is slowly going to her care right now. I mean, slowly it's like, you know, $10,000, $11,000 a month, which is still good compared to a lot of places. I mean, they really know these places. is it's almost like a black comedy. They know they have you over a barrel. Yeah, because they do. Because they do.

You know, there's no, they'll just take it all. And with my parents, I mean, it was particularly hilarious in a kind of black comedy way because they were children of the Depression and had grown up so poor. And they were such scrimpers and savers. And they would come up here and my father would say, so what are they charging for fig Newton's in your area? And, you know, I couldn't tell them. It was like, if they were $22, I'd know.

But, like, are they $3.49? Are they $419? Are they $2.99? I don't know. But they were such penny-pinsures and self-deniers and, you know, no, you can't have that. You can't have this. You can't have that, you know. And then at the end, it all, it all went.

All. So that was that was that. Well, I think that the, I have to say that, if anyone who's listening to this is in that situation, I would recommend reading your book. I mean, I mentioned it in the intro to you, but I think it's a good salve for the kind of wound that is opened up when you have to really, truly take over in terms of caregiving for a loved one. I think your book was very helpful. Did you write that book after? I mean, my father died in 2007 and my mother died in 2009.

And it was published in 2014. But I was starting to get this idea that I think I want to write something about this. Because it was such, it was all like new information to me. Yeah. You know, I just had no idea how much a person is on their own dealing with end-of-life care. Right. How much it's like you and your parents and you're on this little boat and there's nobody around. Yeah.

when my dad died and the end of his life was a bit of an agony and then once he was dead there was sort of a new way to frame him it was sort of like all the sudden you knew the whole story of him and and I remember speaking like at a service that we had for him and I could sort of talk about him now that he was gone in a way that I couldn't when he was alive I guess is what I'm trying to say yeah I think that there is something about that that you don't see things until until they're gone. I don't know, where you see it in a different way. Maybe more fully. Yeah. Or something. Yeah. And maybe you also understand that you're next and that's, you know, you understand on this sort of really intense level

that just gets more and more intense the older you get that this is life. It sounds like such a cliche, but that's kind of what it is, you know. Yeah, but is it kind of freeing maybe? Yeah, it is kind of freeing in a way, I guess. That's, no matter what you do, this is how it ends, you know. I know your parents, even though there was funkiness there, they were very close to each other, I guess you would say. Very, very. And what was your takeaway from that in your own marriage?

I think I have a different sort of marriage. My parents were very much each other's, like they had a blended, very much of a blended world. They really, as I wrote about in the book, they did everything together. They were never really apart. And like the idea of taking a vacation separately from your traveling solo to some place or traveling with a girlfriend or whatever or whatever would never have occurred. to them. They barely went to the grocery store separately. They did everything in lockstep and I don't have that relationship. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like whether that would be good, but I don't think so. I don't think so either. Yeah. I think one of the reasons why we've been

married a long time is that, you know, he adores Halloween. I'm not so into it. It's not like, you know, some crisis that we need to throw $100,000 at a couple's counselor about. It's like, you do this. And he's not a big fan of New York. New York is my life. I mean, he's joked that the great love affair of my life is with New York City, which is true. I just love it so, so, so much. I do too.

You know, I sometimes feel embarrassingly in love with it. And like I want to say, no, I'm not being paid. by some, like, tourist association. I just, I adore it. But he doesn't feel that way. So, and I have an apartment there, and I go there a lot, and it's okay. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah. Oh, well, I just can't tell you what a delight it is to talk to you, honestly. What a great conversation. Okay, I'm going to ask you a quick little couple of questions, and then I'll let you go. Okay? Yep. So, is there something, Roz, in your life? that you would like to go back and say yes to?

Yeah, around 1979 or 80, I was with some friends, and they were going to some club downtown to hear this new singer that was apparently very good named Madonna. And I said, nah, I'm tired. I'm going to go home. So, yeah, yeah, I'm a little bit bad about that. Is there something that you wish you'd spent less time on? Cooking. Even less than now.

I'm guessing people in your family might laugh at that answer. Yeah, maybe, because they would say, it's not like you spent like that much time, Mom. I still remember rock pizza, which was, Do you know those, like, that Pillsbury dough that comes in the thing and break it open, it goes, ble? Yeah, it's like a biscuity piece, dough? Yes, it's a biscuity dough, and it has a certain chemical taste because it's all like, and... Because it's chemicals.

Because it's all chemicals. But somehow every time I made it, the dough came out very hard, and my kids would call it rock piece. so yeah yeah so maybe less time on cooking is a good idea yeah and is there something you're looking forward to uh yeah thanksgiving oh that's nice yeah everybody the kids are going to come where their partners and their families and so yeah oh that's lovely i don't really like thanksgiving food to be honest with you but i like being together as a group yes that's very happy making it. Yes. I like the colors. I do like Thanksgiving food actually. I like that the way the cranberry sauce looks. And speaking of colors, I want to just end by telling you one thing.

So I have this. I got to get my phone. Hold on. Don't move. I'm not moving. I'm not moving. and I got flowers because I'd like to have flowers around and I was getting ready to talk to you and I was looking at these flowers which are zinias. I had them in a vase and I thought you know this reminds me of Ross Chast because it's your colors and even and even the flowers themselves look like you to me. It looks like flowers you would draw. And so I just wanted to tell you that, that you remind me of Zinias. Well, thank you. Thank you. I'm taking that as a compliment. I love Zinias. It is a compliment. Yeah. Yeah. They're great flowers. They're great flowers. They're hearty and they're very colorful. Yes. And I can't tell you how much I've loved talking to you today. Well, vice versa.

This was really a pleasure. This was really fun. So thank you. Okay, I just have to call my mom. She has been so looking forward to my conversation with Roz since I told her that Roz was coming on the show. So let's get her on the Zoom now. Hi, Mommy. I love. Hi.

Mother, I spoke with Roz Chas today. And you can only imagine how charming and fantastic she is. I want to marry her. Yes, you do. I want to marry her, too, because that is how wonderful she is, for real. Everything she does is wonderful. I've never – do you know what I mean? Yeah.

She's just – everything – and by the way, I read a memoir of hers. I thought I read sometimes that she had a baby sister that they never talked about. She had a sister who died before she was born. And here's what's so fascinating. So I said, were you aware of the fact as a kid that you had had a sister who died before you were born? And she said, well, I found out when I was 12. And I said, how did you find out? And she said, well, I was in the car with my mom.

And I said, tell me something about yourself. I don't know yet. And her mother just told her in that moment. Can you believe what I just told you? That is incredible. Can I ask you that question? Maybe another time. Okay, yeah, maybe it's not for public consumption.

Yeah, I was going to say, for our listeners, I'll plant a secret recording device and I'll let you know what you says. Oh, oh, we'll fool them. So listen, one thing we talked about was this particular cartoon that I'm I'm going to ask our folks to pull up right now, and I had her read it aloud, Mom, and this is her heart-to-heart talk. Look at the face of the mother and the daughter. So this was the sex talk her mother had with her. Look at the face. Look at the face of the girl on the sofa. She's just miserable.

So, Mom, do you remember? Do you remember sex talks that we had growing up? Do you remember any of that? Well, I don't remember that did we have many? No, that's what I was wondering. I think we have yet to tell me how it works. Yeah, well, I figured to leave you alone you would find out. Yeah, I think that was it.

You left us alone, and we all found out eventually, I guess. Well, I figured that you could tell each other, and that would be a help, and you had some good friends. So that would, oh, that was a huge shortcoming of mine. That was, I mean, just in terms of communication because I was, I mean, my parents never mentioned, my mother never mentioned sex to me except to say that only men liked it. And that was her talk to me. And then I never really had anybody to ask, so I just, you know, talk to my friends and I sort of learned whatever I learned. whatever I learned. And Judy A. and I would talk about it, and we would try to get books about it. And then we would sometimes ask her father, because her father would talk to us about sex.

But, you know, we asked such funny questions, which was, how long does it take? That's a legit question. And so he told us 20 minutes. Mm-hmm. So I've always thought 20 minutes. 20 minutes was the time. Here's your watch. Wait a minute.

Now you've got it. Now you're all finished. Well, you know, when I was little and I had my friend Jessica and somehow we got it in our heads that fucking meant if two people sat on the toilet at the same time and went pee-pee. So she and I, when we had to go pee, we would go sit. on the toilet together and go pee. I mean, that shows you how tiny we were, that both of our bottoms would sit on top of the toilet, and we would pee

and we would call it that we were fucking. Oh, isn't language wonderful? Yeah. I mean, the whole, what the word opened up in you, it's just the whole universe there, that, you know, it's just, that's so marvelous. Okay, my mom.

Mommy. Well, so there you go. That's Roz Chast. Well, I'm so, it was, it's just a, I'm getting, I'm getting a floating blessing from you for, from her, just because thank God there are people like that. Isn't it? I know. Isn't it the truth, Mom? You're featuring somebody like that. And it's, it just should be known and known and known. Yeah. Yeah, I feel lucky that today was a lucky day. Yeah. Okay. Love you. Love you, my mom. I love you, too, and take care, and I will see you soon.

Okay. Okay. Bye. Bye. Ooh, yeah, yeah. There's more wiser than me with Lemonada Premium. You can now listen to every episode, ad-free, plus subscribers also get access to exclusive bonus interview excerpts from each guest. tap that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, head to Lemonada Premium.com to subscribe on any other app

or listen, add free on Amazon Music with your prime membership. That's LemonataPremium.com. Make sure you're following Wiser Than Me on social media. We're on Instagram and TikTok at Wiser Than Me and we're on Facebook at Wiser Than Me podcast. We're also on Substack at wiser than me.substack.com. Wiser than me is a production of Lemonada Media. created and hosted by me, Julia Louis Dreyfus. The show is produced by Chrissy Pease and Oha Lopez.

Brad Hall is a consulting producer. Rachel Neal is Consulting Senior Editor and our SVP of weekly content and production is Steve Nelson. Executive producers are Paula Kaplan, Stephanie Whittles Wax, Jessica Cordova Kramer, and me. The show is mixed by Johnny Vince Evans with engineering help from James Sparber, and our music was written by Henry Hall,

who you can also find on Spotify or wherever you listen to your music. Special thanks to Will Schlegel and, of course, my mother, Judith Bowles. Follow Wiser than me wherever you get your podcasts. And if there's an old lady in your life, listen up.