Give Them LaLa presents The Just Enough Family

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hey, my loves, I just want to tell you about a new podcast called The Just Enough Family. It's the story about the rise and fall of the Steinbergs, who were once one of the richest families in America, and this story is told through the eyes of the family's most charismatic member, the fashion designer Liz Lang. Liz is the niece of the infamous corporate raider Saul Steinberg, who amassed a fortune before he was thirty years old, and he brought his entire tight knit Jewish family along for the ride. But the family fractures and loses everything after Saul suffers a stroke and his little brother, Robert takes control of the family business. Robert presides over the largest insurance company collapse in American history. The Just Enough Family is hosted by New Yorker's staff writer and best selling author ri l Levy, who had unprecedented access to the Steinbergs because of her very close friendship with Liz. Profound intimacy over the top parties, staggering success, unexpected loss, and shocking betrayals are woven together into a high profile family therapy session. The conversations the Steinberg's have with Aril are startling, frank and revealing and will leave you dying to find out what happens next. Here's a clip from the Justino Family. We're going to hear Liz and her little sister Jane talk about how differently they experienced their childhoods. And we're going to hear their parents talk about how differently they thought of their daughters.

00:01:18
Speaker 2: Did she treat you and Liz differently?

00:01:21
Speaker 3: I don't feel like much was like demanded of me. Everything was demanded of Liz. Everything you've got an A minus? Why isn't it an A? You know? And I feel like for me it was like.

00:01:31
Speaker 4: You got to see in French, well that's not your thing. You don't want to go to Hebrew school. Don't go to Heber school. You know. Liz was like you were going to Hebrew school.

00:01:41
Speaker 1: Well, Liz was very smart.

00:01:44
Speaker 2: She was a voracious reader.

00:01:46
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean she also had great grades and.

00:01:51
Speaker 1: She was always at the top of her class. We never heard from Jane.

00:01:55
Speaker 5: They kind of had us in two buckets. My sister was the pretty one and I was a small one, and so we kind of hated each other because I bought into that theory and I thought my sister. Again, it could be further from true, and she is my best friend today, but I really I just agreed. I thought she might have been like the dumbest person on earth. That's what I thought, genuinely. So I felt like I had nothing in common with this creature who was just obviously so stupid but so beautiful, this hot, dim way.

00:02:26
Speaker 3: I feel like I mentally wasn't there. I would play with my food, I would go to the bathroom a million times during meals to escape. I played with candle wax on the table like I did anything I possibly could to not be mentally present. Liz has different memories than I do, because I just was like, I don't want.

00:02:47
Speaker 6: To be here.

00:02:48
Speaker 4: She was literally like eyes wide, like feed me, give me more? Like what like like on a Saturday, she would walk Madison Avenue with my parents and go have lunch at the jewelry store at fred Layton.

00:03:01
Speaker 2: So you didn't go to Uncle Marie's for these brunches.

00:03:03
Speaker 5: Never in my entire life. Like I looked at what they had and I liked it. Jane looked at what they had and she hated it. She was not looking to replicate it. And I was thinking if I'm super lucky, I'll grow up and live this lifestyle. So I kind of liked I always saw it if I went along with them on Saturdays, you never know, a little bubble might come my way, a little dress might come away, and she to her again, I really mean this to her credit just didn't care. She'd be like, the price is too high. I mean, I don't know if that's what the word she'd use, but I know that was what was in her head.

00:03:35
Speaker 2: Whereas you were like a little hooker.

00:03:37
Speaker 5: I was a hooker's hooker. Jane used to have this joke about me where she'd be like, ouch does fire still burn?

00:03:44
Speaker 4: Ouch?

00:03:44
Speaker 5: Does fire still burn? I had this whole thing. I was always desperately trying to make our family kind of what I wanted it to be, what I thought the world thought it was. I was still trying to like square that with like the actual experience. And Jane, I think I saw from like a very young age, this is horrible. It's not fun. And I was somehow like can I get more? Can I get one? I don't know. I was just always wanting to be attached to the family.

00:04:12
Speaker 6: The financial freedom was great. What was bad about it was that the money became too important. I used to say to Bobby, we have all form and no content. I don't need to be this rich.

00:04:26
Speaker 2: Really, yeah, because why what was bad about being so rich?

00:04:30
Speaker 6: It was just a bad things. They were too many things.

00:04:36
Speaker 5: So like I always had like a big, fancy bedroom decorated by some famous decorator, and I never liked it that much. Not because I don't like fancy things. I love fancy things. It was because it just wasn't really my little girl taste. It just wouldn't be my little girl taste. And whatever my little girl taste was was considered taking not okay, not allowed. And again I'm not complaining. It's not sad. It's just like at the time, like I had this best friendly son. And Lisa's mother was divorced in the nineteen seventies. It wasn't that common, Like I didn't know a lot of people at divorced parents.

00:05:03
Speaker 2: Oh no, it's a big deal.

00:05:04
Speaker 5: It was a big d They were divorced, and looking back on it, I'm sure her mother was kind of struggling. They lived in a one bedroom apartment and Lisa's mother slept in the living room and gave Lisa the bedroom, and they were like so tight Lisa in her mother because there was nobody else. It was just Lisa and her mother in this tiny little apartment. And I thought that was the coolest. That was my gold standard, Like I just wanted Lisa's room. Sometimes Lisa got to sleep in the pull out couch in the living room and her mom slept in the bedroom. Sometimes they might have even slept together. In my house, everything was I was in my room, my sister Jane was in her room, My parents were way down the hallway in their room. If I woke up in the middle of the night, this is not poor little retch girls, just the way it was. If I were to be scared or set in the mill of the night, I wouldn't have walked down the hallway to my parents room. A housekeeper would have been the person that I would have gone to to go back to that just enough thing. I think that was all just part of the craziness and the gas lighting and why I would just be easier if we all if we were just part of that just enough family.

00:06:03
Speaker 2: Well, and it sounds like she had some fantasies about that too, because she said to me, you know, the money got too important. There was just too much stuff. We had too many things. She told me that she once said to your father, we're all form and no content, or we're all form and no substance.

00:06:21
Speaker 5: I think she used to think that. I think they used to talk about that. I think that was a mantra.

00:06:25
Speaker 4: I think you're right, well, what does that mean.

00:06:27
Speaker 5: I don't know that we've got all the trappings, but I think maybe it was what I sense. We have all the trappings, but things just aren't that good, like I know, and again that sounds like I'm not saying like the trappings were good. They were fun, but somehow things were just off the rails. Things just always felt so out of control. And I know it's like, well, what do you mean? But it just felt like we were just hurtling and speeding towards something bad. Like I remember one of their friends. Weren't said about my parents shopping. I mean, even a train has to stop sometimes. Shut up, Shut up.

00:07:00
Speaker 1: Listen to The justin Up Family, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're hearing me now. Boom show la La boom, show la La boom boom, show la La, show

00:07:12
Speaker 5: La la show La La shall Laga shout black.