Richard Gadd is looking at the ‘dangers of repression’

he officially proposed a known Holocaust-dinner joint estate commission overseeing history lessons

“in public schools. A story about extremism, normalized, and creeping into mainstream politics.”

This week on Consider This, listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air, I'm Tanya Mosley. My guest today, Emmy Award-winning actor, writer, and comedian Richard Gadd writes complex stories about the parts of being human, most of us hide. His Netflix series Baby Rain Deer became an instant phenomenon in 2024. It's an unsettling story of a struggling comedian who is being stalked by a woman while grappling with the sexual abuse he

endured from an older man early in his career. The series became one of the most

watchnet click shows ever, winning six Emmys and made Gadd almost overnight, one of the most

scrutinized writers in television. Well, now he's back with half-man, a six-part HBO

“limited series set in 1980's Scotland. It's about two boys who become brothers after their mother's”

fall in love. One is volatile just out of juvenile detention. The other is quiet, sensitive, and afraid. Over 30 years, the show traces what happens to them and to each other. Critics have already been calling half-man a show about toxic masculinity and Gadd has pushed back on that. He says it's more about repression and what happens to boys who learn early that the parts of themselves they need most are the parts they often feel forced to bury. Richard Gadd

welcome to fresh air. Thank you, that was a lovely introduction, I appreciate that. Well, you know, I am sure that people are going to want to slot this series next to kind of this Manisfier conversation and you have pushed back on that pretty firmly and I just want to know more about that. What about really the themes that you're trying to explore? Well, it's interesting because the Manisfier kind of was a word that I came across about three months ago and I actually wrote

the script back in 2019. I wrote a kind of pie of the script, kind of exploring. I guess men,

male violence, but I didn't really set out with any social political aim. I never really do in my

work. I always just try and capture something that I believe to be hopefully interesting in human all at once. And so it's about expression, it's about vulnerability, it's about the difficulty of male relationships and the dangers of repression. Yeah, you know, the two characters, Nile and Ruben, to me I felt like they both kind of represent two sides of how to be a man.

“They're like on two sides of the spectrum, is that how you saw them and what did you need to”

imagine and to existence to write them? Well, I thought the most interesting thing is you do take two archetypes of, I don't like these words because these words are subjective, but if you take an alpha male and a beta male, even though I think everyone's idea of an alpha and a beta, it's very different, you know, person to person. If you take the stereotypical alpha and beta and you put them in a two-shot opposite each other, you know, one's kind of mussely and, you know, terrifying

looking in the other kind of world dressed up and timid and you start to kind of deconstruct that from there, I thought that was an interesting starting point. But I like to think as the show progresses the boxes in which we meet them in become a bit more blurred and a bit more complicated. I actually want to play a clip that gives us a deeper lens into the two of them. So in this scene that I'm going to play young Nile was played by Mitchell Robertson and young Ruben who was played

by Stuart Campbell. They are together in the room that they share together and by this point, they have earned each other's trust. Ruben has beat up Nile's bully. Nile has helped Ruben pass an exam. He needs to stay in school and he's also Ruben has also brought a girl over to help Nile lose his virginity. And in this scene, they're lying on the bedroom floor talking about their mothers who are a couple and then Ruben hands Nile a present, a boxing glove. Let's listen.

Can I see something? It's like a romance, you know. Yeah, pretty sad. There's a bother here, some. No, I'm not really as long as they're happy, I guess. I don't know they don't see no other happy. There's a lot of you don't know about it.

you'll look after yourself. Why do you care? We're family now. It's the most important thing.

My brother, some another lover. Richard, that gift, a single boxing glove. Ruben is genuinely trying to give Nile something he thinks will help him. But what he is offering is kind of the only language he has, which is

“violence, boxing glove. Tell me about that scene. What were you trying to do in that moment?”

Well, I think you've hit the nail on the head there with this kind of offering. I think Ruben reacts to the world and violence. It's all the understands. It's his safety net against the kind of terrorist of life. And I think he knows fine well due to his nature that there might be a

world where he's not always there. So he wants the tough and Nile up and make sure he's there.

I mean family means everything to Ruben, you know, as the story unfolds will understand why. But family means everything to him. So, you know, they're in this kind of very hybrid household. This kind of weirdly dysfunctional kind of way of coming together. He wants now to not only learn to defend from himself because I think at this point he's genuinely really fond of Nile and love seven seasons family. But he also wants there to be a mask

“in the presence within the family household when he goes and so I think in a weird way it is”

it is Ruben's love language given him a pair of boxing gloves. Can you describe the characters of Niles and Ruben and how their relationship progresses? Nile and Ruben, they form a kind of really close bond like a really, you know, layered and complicated bond that they just can't shake. And no matter what happens in the life, no matter all the good and bad experiences they go through, they see one able to shake having each other in their lives.

I think as they move through lives and as they change and the characters go through all kinds of different changes for other series. One thing that they cannot escape is that feeling they had for each other when they were in their youth, which is this very confusing, very complicated love that they seem incapable of expressing. And the series kind of mutates through that and takes you through that feeling of cant that was someone cant live without them,

that forms the very basis of their relationship. The intimacy between Nile and Ruben is so charged it almost reads to me as sexual and I've been wondering is that on me are we just so not used to seeing real intimacy between men that we automatically coded that way? You know what I'm saying and I was wondering if you were thinking about that as you wrote them and how men can't show

affection. I certainly always get worried about spelling things out too clearly because I think

I like all of my work to be open for interpretation but I certainly wanted there to be a charge almost unexplainable energy between them. Like I think there's feelings that they have for one another that they they cannot express or even pin down in size of themselves and I think that there is a there they certainly work away on subliminals that even they aren't aware of and I think that only grows during the course of the season they are inextricably bound and I think they

have complicated feelings that are almost impossible to grapple down. You see in a lot of men you know like they're like sometimes like close male relationships can be so close they they sort of teach her in a boundaryless place you know even between alpha males they're kind of the boundaryless but there's a there's a like a physical closeness that they need to have with one another. You wrote this and you also star in it and you you put on something like 50 pounds of muscle

to play the adult Rubin is it right? I think it might have been more than 50 pounds. I work on the old kilograms work more on the different system on me but yeah it was so skinny in baby range and I lost a lot of weight to be done. He'd done it and be thin and be frail in my body and feel that vulnerability was such a commitment and then you know this was like the opposite way just like ballooning up and ballooning up and yeah I just really wanted to be believable. I

knew that people who had seen baby reindeer you know like they they had to go on a journey and buying that the guy in the comedy suit was the guy on the motorcycle and the leather jacket and

“the tank top and I felt the only way people were going to see me as a strut and example of”

bravado and masculinity would would be to change kind of everything about myself or who they

You know you you have me also thinking about maybe what's been intoxicating about the performance

of masculinity for you. Well I guess I never really performed it before I did rub in a thumb

exercise but it was interesting just going around life kind of as a big person and just how people sort of treat you differently and all that kind of stuff and well you just they feel like people are

“kind of nervous or especially I think it was like I gave off an intimidating vibe even though”

I was just an actor with a beard and a mad haircut and a big sort of body. I always remember going down I think at my biggest I was on a flight and I I walked down like the middle aisle and there were like seats on the right left and I just remember people kind of just putting the heads down as a past I think people are attuned to think oh that's danger you know that guy looks a piece of looks a bit mad and he's massive and so I'm gonna I'm not gonna provoke him but I guess that was

the visuals that I wanted from Ruben so I guess in that respect it worked. You being recognized it's a fairly new experience for you since baby reindeer I mean it was really almost like especially here in the States for you an overnight thing. Yeah it was crazy I mean it's calm down a lot either that I've got used to it but I remember in the height of baby reindeer it was it was really quite something I I couldn't adjust to it and even

if nothing happened you would wander around kind of like what's coming next and you know

who's gonna come up to me and invariably you always hear you know people talking and whispering

and that would also make me worried I'm so used to this now it doesn't bother me but you know

“baby reindeer was crazy it came out on the Thursday April 11th I think it was two years ago”

and I think by Sunday it just felt like everyone in the world was stopping me just coming on to me speaking to me because there was a steering around baby reindeer it was the zeitgeist it was the hottest thing on the planet it was crazy. Okay Richard I want to go back to 10 years ago on a stage in Scotland your one man show called monkey sea monkey do and in the show you talk candidly about a very devastating thing that happened

to you that you were raped and in this clip I'm going to play you describe one of the three mistakes you made after this this thing happened to you and I just want to note that it's kind of a bit of comedy and a bit of seriousness all in one let's listen. All the things that bothered me and trust me there was a lot of bothered me it was a lot the bothered me the one thing that bothered me most and it seems ridiculous in retrospect

the one thing that bothered me the most the one thing that bothered my monkey but most this idea that I was no longer a man this idea that I've been feminized and six years on what is masculinity what is that really mean just the word just the box for people to put things in it doesn't exist I let it bother me for six years and if masculinity does exist the masculinity is the problem with everything is the problem

my side in terms of not speaking out but it's the problem the other side as well in terms of doing

something like this in the first place like a power and a man's head driving into with

pride and all sexual monkey dominance masculinity greets wars feminine it doesn't create wars what women do we know create wars invaded other countries well fatter in Argentina right here first off I watch that clip with my brother and my cousins and um they were all really moved about it and it just started a conversation and what I wanted to talk with you about is this idea of being a victim of sexual violence somehow disqualifying you from manhood

I think it's a common experience I think it's a common experience to feel shame and to repress and not want to tell and so I think it's pretty remarkable that not only did you speak about it you spoke about it on stage you wrote a one man show wrapped around it

“I want to know that moment if you sang the only way out of this for me is to talk about it”

because so many men and people in general will go to their grave with it because they don't want that on them they don't want to be associated with maybe the worst thing that has

um extreme but it's the truth I am I couldn't keep it in anymore uh yeah I was done thinking

“about it I I think I believed maybe naively that I could think my way out of it that I could sort”

of land on a thought or a sense of clarity on it on my own but I would just be synaptically firing the the kind of doubts and thoughts around my head to the point where that she got great and great and great her and it just got to the point where I just felt like I was done and I

I think I told my mom first maybe one of my friends and it was like always painful I was

remember like the adrenaline was kind of unbelievable but then you would always feel like a way it'd been lifted you know and and then I suppose meanwhile I was I was going up to the Edinburgh Fringe in all of this stuff and I was I was putting on wigs and wearing daft teeth and doing anti jokes and doing these kind of really mad cap jokes that were wacky humor and but meanwhile I was sort of dying inside and it was just this juxtaposition you almost kind of right to just

is what baby rain is all about the kind of sad clam thing but it was like that to the extreme it was I was sort of you know I was going through all that trying to come to terms with all that while simultaneously going on stage and trying to make people laugh in the most kind of wacky way yeah I mean I'm really sitting with this because in your case you okay here you are performing this pain night after night and then you put it on screen for millions to see in baby reindeer

has it really been healing to talk about this really bad thing that happened to you not just once but like over and over and over.

“Well I think it's time to leave it behind now you know baby reindeer was kind of like well it's”

nothing I mean it was a two countries in the world it was number one in of something like that I

think over you know 250 million people have watched that I mean talk about catharsis and come

to terms with something I mean it's so odd to look back on me you know all those years go over decade ago and and sort of think I know one can know no one can know and now it's almost like you know 250 million people know and it does lead to a sort of sense of acceptance I watch baby reindeer three times I really really I was really moved by it and there's something very specific I was moved by and I want to play a clip to kind of get to it so in this clip it's

from the first episode of baby reindeer and this is the very first time Donnie which is a fictionalized version of yourself played by you meets Martha the woman who will go on to stalk you for years and she walks into the pub where you work she's overweight she looks upset and your character tries to be kind to her you give her a cup of tea on the house let's listen I felt sorry for her that's the first feeling I felt it's a patronizing arrogant feeling feeling sorry for someone

you've only just laid eyes on but I did I felt sorry for her five replace mate you gotta get you something no thanks you sure cup of tea

“you have to buy something can you afford something I may have a cup of tea”

I have a bag give you a cup of tea on the house what do you do I'm a lawyer how'd you get into that then what trained in criminal law moved to England retrained opened up my own practice one several awards now I'll lead an advisor to the government you won't allow for amongst other things flat and pimple the co overlooking a private garden one in vex the heat to a bell-sized park god doesn't like a brager but when you go to for the biggest political

minds in the game you've earned a brager to no no I'm not gonna say who so don't even go there find

David Cameron Nickleg Alex Hammond but you didn't hear that from me oh you must have amazing

dinner pies she had this incredible laugh this giddy slightly disconcerting laugh her name was but all like the thing was before this is true then why can't you afford a cup of tea that's a clip from the first episode of the Netflix series baby reindeer created by my guest today Richard Gad will be right back after a short break I'm Tanya Mosley and this is fresh air you know Richard one of the things that makes baby reindeer different from almost any other story

about stalking that I have ever seen is that you don't let yourself off the hook as the victim of

by being seen even by someone you knew was unwell and I felt like that seems to be a very uncomfortable thing to admit publicly so why was it important to you that you show that that you hold both things at once that you were a victim and that you were also someone who's liked being wanted

well I just thought there was like a fundamental human truth to it like I always tried

digging to like the complicated stuff like I think I think in a lot of times like on TV it's too

“obvious who the good guy and the bad person is you know and it's just like life is not like that”

I think and I think that we're all made up of good qualities and bad qualities and mistakes and successes and all these kinds of things and I just dug into it now it kind of goes all the way back to the stage show because I remember you know when I was I wrote the stage show which later became the TV show I I would try it and and the story went you know I offered this person the cup of tea and look at what happened my one act of kindness my god and I remember just feeling like

it wasn't coming to the forward like it wasn't working and I think it wasn't working because I was

avoiding the truth of the truth is that you know I acted on and I indulged in it and I indulged in it

because I was you know going through a lot and and I would take any attention wherever I got it just because I anything that would take me out the mirror of what I was feeling and experiencing and that to me was the heart of baby reindeer and that was what I was avoiding when I was trying to workshop the live show into something that was worth watching because I I realized that I wasn't

“really writing the truth of what happened in truth is it's the fundamental key to writing something”

you know authentic and interesting but baby reindeer you know it was tough because it was like you know not many people would do that especially in this day in age of kind of more than lighten and and oh hey look at all the mistakes I made like it felt very daring and it felt very like vulnerable and exposing but really in a lot of ways I think I think they're in light that lay the success of baby reindeer because I think I think people recognize something in that and in the flawed

idea of human consistency like I think a lot of people struggle I wanted donkeys like big struggles was his inability to put up boundaries like his inability to say no or inability to hurt someone's feelings I think a lot of people relate to I think a lot of people struggle to be honest there's not that they're good liars is that they struggle to not circumvent the pain of having honest

“conversations and I think that's what donny the way I think the donny character resonated so much”

and I think people could just appreciate that honesty you know like it was a radically honest show and I think because of that it it was a success okay Richard I want to go back to your childhood in Scotland you have said one of your earliest memories is writing a book when you were about five years old it's called Felix the verbal tell me about you remember I can't remember if that's like the early memory like I have I actually have an early memory of running up my own colinance wedding

running up the aisle I was a page boy and my mom would be like no come back come back and I just bought it up the aisle because like that's probably my early memory I don't know how old that was then but I remember very early memory of me kind of buttonbashing like mad at a computer and yeah right in Felix the verbal I mean I mean it was about a fluff the go piece of fluff the go blown up the house and had to find his way back into the house and that was genuinely every chapter was kind of the same

and I just kind of wrote it obsessively I almost think my writing styles never changed this kind of like

just a smash smash smash like you know get out like stream of consciousness your dad is a micro biologist a professor your mom worked in schools it sounds like you had a very stable household supportive parents but the town you grew up in was really really small tell me about being a kid in Warmet Scotland what did boys like you do all day well you even know the name it's funny because then people people even in Scotland haven't heard a woman oh really okay I remember it's been

more going to Glasgow yeah going to Glasgow and university you know that away from us at Warmet they're like where and then I'm like oh well it's next place called new port and they're like where then like well there's next place called tape or and they're like where and I'm like over the water from Dundee and then that's when they go oh right it's funny because even in LA if you say on over the water from Dundee they they they're still aware yeah so but so it's funny to hear

Warmet with a US accent it's funny but but yeah it was this tiny tiny place it was very picturesque

my bedroom window but you know there wasn't much to do like I grew up and it was just a corner shop

like that was all there was in the whole town loads of fields at the back you know and there was no like bust links really like there was a bust that would kind of take you to Dundee every now and again but there was nothing like the other way like it was one of those kinds of places so me and my friends just hung could down I had great friends I hung out in the fall with a guy Dave Craig and Amy and we're still we'll take to this day and we just made the most of it

made each other laugh you know we were kick a football about a street you know a car would pass every like three hours it was just it was beautiful but it was it was really quaint and I I don't

“think every that's how small it was until I kind of left I mean I remember how old were you when”

Glasgow yeah I left for university I must have been 18 I think and I I remember Glasgow felt so big

to me like so big and now it's funny because I've lived in London and been to LA been all around the world and I went back to Glasgow to film Half-Man and it suddenly felt so small to me compared to everything but I remember when I moved to Glasgow I couldn't get over the size of it made me anxious because I was so used to such a sort of small town existence I suppose yeah did you watch television when you're growing up me and my friends would watch it obsessively you know listen to music

obsessively but I mean you know television was my ultimate outlet and you know were you actually do all the sitcom all the sitcoms was everything you know everything it was the goal-nature DVD was when I grew up you know where where the way of consuming things was DVD and and it was just you know for Christmas what you get a DVD and it was so beautiful but you know everything from the UK office to people show black books you know I go back I watched 40 towers black adder I go back and

“you know everything was consumed and that's why I developed my love for comedy and everything like that and”

everything we arrested development I remember you know we were on the US side where it was the wires the prannos you know all that kind of stuff and and I just consumed television like from an early age just loved it I thought it let's take a short break if you're just joining us my guest is Emmy winning actor writer and comedian Richard Gad is new HBO series half-man which he wrote in stars in is the story of two boys who become brothers when their mothers fall in love and follows

their bond in 1980's Glasgow Scotland into the present day Gad is also the creator of the 2020 four Netflix phenomenon baby reindeer will be right back after a short break this is fresh air when did you decide I think I want to do this thing I think I want to get on stage and try comedy I must be about 20 I think and I went to my student union comedy night that was on and I remember just being in the crowd and kind of being full of admiration I guess a feeling of

sort of wanting to feel what that must be like to make people laugh on that like that I just remember thinking what that must be a thrill like it must be a thrill and it is when it goes well

“I think that comedy night I look back because if I remember correctly it might be in a freshest”

week or something like that so I think I think like there was probably quite a lot of people were really kind of off for it which isn't the same as a lot of comedy night some people were those a lot of drunken vivaciousness and and I think every comedian that was on that night absolutely semester roof off the place and I think it gave me a slight fourth impression that that is the way all gigs run that it's kind of like you it's almost like a bulletproof thing once the atmosphere

is set up and I remember I but I was like I got to give this a shot and I I went to the promote and I said look do you take students because they were all professional comedies come into do a comedy night and I said you take students like any any study give me five minutes like in a couple of weeks time and I said okay I'll take it and then I was just nervous nervous like three weeks but I just worked up some sort of five minutes set if I remember correctly I packed my mates

in the place a bit and I remember my first gig went really well and it gave me an idea of oh it

is it is like this it is like this and I think it was my second to a thousandth gig that went badly when I figured out how to do it without my friends in the room yeah but that's how I go into it when you first started performing people did not really get you I mean is kind of off the wall it was a little bit you know and you couldn't figure out why like give us an example of something that you were performing out there when you first got started

that people were like what else I mean I could tell you the whole journey it's kind of I like talking about it in the way because when I first started I tried to do the man microphone thing

other day and I was I was talking about a dog now I've never had a dog but I was talking about

owning a dog because I must have thought well this is just some material about owning a dog you didn't even own a dog right okay no no it shows the kind of why it was probably never works in the room in place of Austin Disney but I did a routine about a dog but I don't know

“it's just like what am I talking about I think the dog was called Keith and I think that was”

all joke that the dog was called Keith but I looked at it and I was like oh you can I can tell that I'm not honoring my voice on my what I find funny in a lot of ways but I remember having a kind of watershed moment when I'd be you know because when you're doing comedy and you're going around you you often see comics at the back of a comedy club and they kind of stand and they

watch the acts and and that was what I used to always do I'd always watch and just try and study

all the acts and figure out where I was going wrong what they were doing right but I often found that I would laugh at the stuff between the jokes and the stuff that didn't learn like I would always find it quite funny if a comedian made it sounds mean spirited but it wasn't that but if a comedian made a joke and didn't get it together laugh and they went okay moving on I would I would just by burst that laugh and I realized that I would what I found funny was stuff the

kind of didn't land and our humour that kind of wasn't funny in a way like and I realized well why don't I do that like why don't I why don't I just do jokes that kind of aren't funny and then do a really awkward be a really awkward comedian that does bad jokes and has a kind of almost a bit of a breakdown on stage and kind of is really nervous and anxious I make my that humour sweet spot my act and I did it and there is a large portion of society that really really

go for that alternative stuff and so there would be gigs that I go to and they would be great but there would be like some crowds I remember Friday and Saturdays were really tough where you would hear a pin drop I mean I I've had some deaths that people comedian still

talk to me about to this day like that they've never seen people die as bad as me I remember I was

in Edinburgh stand and I remember there's this thing where like you fill your time it's like comedy law if you're booked for 20 minutes no matter how good the gigs go in you play 20 minutes

“and I remember going out and I think I remember wow that didn't land that didn't land that didn't land”

that didn't land and I was racing through and I looked at my watch and I was almost done with my sex I was clearly not landing I was racing through and I had about 17 minutes ago and you could I heard a pin drop and I just remember like once a crowd sucks up an atmosphere of tension and oh my god this is awkward and I come to know about what you do sometimes you cannot get it out it sounds like okay I mean in a way when it goes bad it's almost like a humiliation ritual

but you continue to do it like you continue to put yourself up there and out there and expose yourself so that intoxicating feeling of having a control of the room must be really intoxicating can you describe it well I mean humiliation rituals funny I've never heard it put like that before but it can feel like that it can feel very self-diaming you know when it's not going well you know the the month of long drives I've had home is crazy you know just being like wow my god like

like the feeling of a bad gig I said it to people like there's nothing like the feeling of a bad gig it's like it's all in specific feeling it's hard to describe it's like it's like a humiliation tins with sort of existential doubt it feels like you know we've all experienced like embarrassment or whatever in our life but it's a very specific feeling of bad gig you know like the adrenaline of holding an audience in your hands and sometimes like you know we're working

subliminals and all that kind of stuff and sometimes that comedy it can be kind of transcendental in a way like sometimes you feel like you just plug in in a weird way like a jigsaw piece and the audience plug back into you and you sometimes feel like almost like moving your eyebrow makes them laugh and you just suddenly go into this almost like suspended place where you're almost completely in the moment and you just feel like you're completely in tune with the audience and

it's times when I've gone off stage and I've like cried you know like like because the adrenaline and the euphoria was so great to experience that my body was just like oh my god like shaking to the point of crying it's kind of incredible it sounds like those experiences for you were worth all of the bad gigs is that what kept you going yeah I'm super proud of comedy comedy's giving me so much like comedy's it's a great training for life like it really is you

“know you have to think in the moment as a comedian so much because you have to be able to”

adapt all the time to what people want and sometimes you give them something and then that well we don't want this and you're like well I got 20 minutes to go I better adapt I remember the other day I was at Cannes wonderful festival Cannes series and you know front of 2005

and I just spoke from the heart launched into something that I think the audience took away

as hope and powerful I hope but I remember thinking thank god for comedy because it's in

their life space like that it allows you to think in the moment to almost have a way of tapping into a sort of psychological space where you can sort of think very clearly and react in the moment

“I think it's it gives you what it gives you most of all as an ability to think quickly on your feet”

and I think that's such a life skill in a way well Richard Gad it has been a pleasure to talk with you and thank you so much no thank you everything try that really appreciate the great questions thank you Emmy winning actor writer and comedian Richard Gad his new HBO limited series is called half man coming up book critic marine core again recommends three ideal spring reads this is fresh air our book critic marine core again recommends what she calls three ideal spring reads novels

that are light breezy and funny with an undercurrent of chili reality sometimes girls just want to have fun right I've been in a spring time mood of wanting to dive into a cartoon colored ball pit

“of comic novels with spunky heroines and I found some good ones but what I also found is that”

much like the classic scrupal comedies of your escapism in these playful novels links arms with edgy social commentary yesterday year an intricately plotted debut novel by Carol Claire Burke has been getting lots of attention and deservedly so the main character here is an online trad wife named Natalie Heller Mills on camera Natalie Rebels in activities like spending four hours making a loaf of sourdough bread and then adorning it with the nativity scene made out of herbal

stick figures from her own garden naturally a little of this goes a long way for those of us who share the attitude of the late Joan rivers rivers famously quipped i hate housework you make the

“beds you do the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again amen so imagine my”

glee when Natalie who only plays it being a pioneer woman wakes up one morning to the realization that she's been transported back to the year 1855 welcome to the real pioneer life where if you want milk for your morning gruel you'd better hustle out to the barn and find a cow if Burke had only stuck to this plot line yesterday year would be a fun one-note snark at retro lifestyle influencers

but instead it tells a more ambitious, suspenseful and yes ultimately melancholy story of its heroine's

aspirations and capitulations to ideas of how women should live their lives i thought Gary Steingart's brilliant twenty twenty four essay in the Atlantic about his agonizing seven nights aboard the icon of the seas the largest cruise ship in the world had ruined me for all other tales of enforced frivolity on the ocean but I was wrong Emma Straub's latest novel American fantasy starts off sharing Steingart's cynicism and ends up affirming the right of women especially middle-aged

women to party without self-consciousness or apology our main character here is a fifty-year-old divorced woman named Annie who's been persuaded by her younger sister to join her on a four-day themed cruise the theme is on board namely a gone soft round the middle boy band of the nine days named boy talk that both Annie and her sister loved almost every other passenger aboard is a woman of a certain age otherwise diverse in race politics ability in come bracket and even sexual orientation

all were rabid boy talk fans the cruise production manager a gay woman named Sarah reflects that

these were the guys who had launched a million sexual awakenings and even if they had awakened

something other than heterosexuality they had still been present like distant guardian angels of

members a thoughtful guy named Keith who like Annie is at a crossroads this is a novel that

“makes the radical move of honoring rather than ridiculing female fandom here Straub's description”

of Annie's epiphany about her own fandom as she's standing in a packed crowd during a boy talk performance the music was a direct vein to her own childhood the least complicated part of her life

all around Annie women were dancing and singing and for a second she closed her eyes and thought

no one else will ever understand this except of course everyone's standing beside her who all understood it perfectly I've shared the premise of Lori Frankl's forthcoming novel enormous wings with a few friends based on how instantly they entered the book's title into their cell phones

“the premise is all you need to know about this wild but all too timely story about female”

autonomy or lack thereof so here goes Frankl's heroine pepper mills is 77 and a reluctant new resident

of the vista view retirement community in Austin Texas surprisingly she meets a nice man there and has sex and then through a medical fluke that Frankl almost makes plausible pepper finds

“herself pregnant her doctors expect the pregnancy to end in miscarriage when it doesn't”

pepper seeks an abortion but she lives in Texas and she's now such a media sensation that it's almost impossible for her to leave the state complicated gutsy and entertaining enormous wings folks fun at life's unpredictability and stokes anger at situations that aren't at all funny marine corgan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University she reviewed yesterday a american fantasy and enormous wings Russia's executive producer is Sam Brigger

our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham with help today from Connor Anderson at WDET and Detroit our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Philis Myers Roberta Sorock and Marie Boltonato Lauren Crenzel Teresa Madden won't eat Nazareth Susan Nakundi and Abalman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler our digital media producer is Molly Steven Esper they a challenger directed today show with Terry Gross I'm Tanya Mooseley