Jonathan Goldstein on Wild Card

Pushkin.
Hello everyone, Hello, Hi, hello, Hi. Here we all are
in the studio. Yes, indeed, and today we've got something
a little different.
Ooh but kayleie, I don't like different things.
Well, Jonathan, you might just have to give it a chance,
because sometimes trying new things can be scary but rewarding.
Yeah yeah, okay, well here comes the chuo choo train
of listening. What do we got here?
Recently you're a guest on a show called Wildcard? Do
you remember that?
Of course? I remember? How can I forget? I was
interviewed by Rachel Martin.
How did it feel, Jonathan to be in the guest seat?
It felked. I didn't like it. It's a tremendous loss
of control. I have to say. It was like the
spider had become the fly or something. But you know,
here's the incredible. This is nuts. It doesn't even make
sense to me. I'm just looking at their past episodes. Okay,
of wild Card, you know who was on two weeks ago?
Someone that's so famous they're known by one name, sure, Adele.
It wasn't Share or Adel someone more? Actually, dare I
say maybe someone more famous?
Obama?
I'm gonna say as famous as Obama may be more famous.
What all right, I'll just tell you Oprah interviewed Oprah
last week, she interviewed Melinda Gates.
She's got more money than you.
Oprah has more money than me. Let's see who else has.
I would say almost every guest is probably richer than you.
You know, honestly. So I'm on her website right now,
on the wild Card website, and I'm schooling, and I'm like,
I'm looking like Melinda Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Harrison Ford, I
mean crazy, And then I saw my name and I
got nervous. I thought, like, that's a mistake.
Do you think they had someone fall through that week?
Well, it's funny, okay. So I did ask her that,
like why am I on the show? Basically? And I thought,
you know, the answer would be something like, oh, what
are you talking about? Like of course you you know,
But she was honest. She was like, well, you know
how it is, like sometimes you do like a biggie
and then sometimes you just do a small one or
something like that.
I don't know.
I think she was more compliment than that.
I don't know.
If she called me a small sounds like.
She just wanted to talk to you, which is really nice.
It is it is what thank you? That is very nice.
You know, Me and Stevie usually are in on like
the you know, we're producing the conversations you have. This
is one that we got to come to just as listeners.
We just heard the edited version at the end, and
I really enjoyed it. I felt like it covered a
lot of territory beyond just the typical like how did
you come up with the show? Like, like I felt
like you guys kind of went deep in a really
interesting way.
I got an interesting text from my mother in law
after she had listened to it. She said that she
had never had anybody express something about life and death
that she had always felt. WHOA, yeah that's cool.
Yeah yeah.
And after I got the text, I told my wife,
I said, Emily, you married your mother gradually. Yeah.
So we're going to listen to that episode.
I think listeners will really enjoy it.
Yeah, we did.
And if you don't, will we'll we'll send you a
check returning your full purchase price.
If you don't, try try the Oprah episode. You know
maybe I like that.
But first, a word from our sponsors, just.
A heads up. This episode does have some strong language.
Do you think people can really change?
Oh?
Yes, I mean I have to believe that. I mean,
even if I don't believe it, I have to believe that.
And I think that's the struggle. It's like the paradox.
I mean, like we are who we are, but I
think as long as we're alive, we're able to change.
I'm Rachel Martin and this is wild Card, the show
where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers
questions about their life, questions pulled from a deck of cards.
They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one
back on me. My guest this week is Jonathan Goldstein.
I was writing and no one was buying what I
was selling. I just couldn't get anywhere, and I just
kept doing it because I felt compelled to do it,
like a spider spinning a web.
Jonathan Goldstein believes enclosure, which is what is massively popular
podcast Heavyweight, is all about helping people move on from
some kind of unfinished business in their lives. Maybe that's
helping someone make amends or to say thank you to
a stranger, or to help a person turn a page
on a traumatic experience. And yes, the word heavy is
in the title, but it doesn't feel that way, in
large part because Jonathan is very funny, and he's also
got this lightness about him. He's the kind of guide
who makes it clear no matter what happens around the
next bend, he'll be there rooting you on. I am
so very happy to welcome Jonathan Goldstein to Wild Card. Hi.
Hi, thank you so much. It would have taken me
about ten tries to get that, and so much editing.
I don't believe you, but it is, it's true, and
yet it's true.
I'm going to hold up three cards. You pick randly one,
two or three. Okay, first three cards, First three cards.
Now, one is on my left.
I tend to think of one being this on my right.
Oh yeah, okay, that's my left.
Okay.
I'm trying to make this as confusing as possible for
perfect because I'm hoping, I guess my my subconscious wish
is that you're just going to say, you know what,
forget it, We're gonna do a rerun this week. Okay, sorry,
it doesn't matter, you know what. I get the impression,
as a as a child magician, that you're trying to
force the number two cards. It's poked out a little
bit more. Yeah, yeah, Okay, now you're forcing the one
in the two. I just I just want to please you.
I'll take I'll take the number two.
I'm not pushing, I promise, Although I do like this question. Okay,
look what happened there? Okay, what's an ordinary place that
feels extraordinary to you because of what happened there?
Okay. You see, it's very difficult for me to talk
about places because I I'm not very place aware. Oh.
I live so much of my life up in my head.
For many years, I thought of it as like internal
and then like through therapy, I've begun to see it
as disassociative. Possibly, I will say broadly, movie theaters I
are kind of like I think Pauline Kle called them
like her church, and I think that's a little bit
the way that I feel about movie theaters. Yeah, and
there's one particular. I live in Minnesota, Minneapolis, and there's
an old mid century theater that used to be walking
distance from my house, and I would just go see
anything that was playing there and always sit way way
way back in the back row because I like to
take it all in by yourself, by myself. Yeah, it
had I'd like going there with people, but I you know,
if I had my drothers, it was by myself, and
that just felt like my place in the dark, looking
up at this big screen, feeling like a baby being
held by somebody. You know. Maybe that's a part of it.
I don't know what was the extraordinary part of that experience.
I think this particular theater because it's mid century. I
had the experience last Christmas of going to see It's
a Wonderful Life there and I found it to be
a very emotional experience. Like it it's just I mean,
it's just a room. But I don't know, all of
this stuff sounds very corny. I mean, my father used
to watch these black and white movies and refer to
it as like a time machine, and it is kind
of like that. There is this feeling of the past
kind of erasing, and you're kind of existing in all
times at once. Beyond that, it's probably just pretty banal.
It just yeah, there's just something extraordinary about in this
day and age being able to kind of like turn
your phone off and shut out the world for a
couple of hours.
I mean, thank God, hold on, there's one sound on
here I need to make sure goes away.
Is it my voice? You figured out the one thing
that's dragging down this podcast?
Okay, three more cards.
I'll take one this time.
Were you intimidated or excited about leaving your parents' house?
Leaving my parents' house? I have to say, And you know,
and this is kind of like you just don't know
what you don't know back then, But I was nothing
but excited. I didn't enjoy my childhood very much, and
the idea of being able to make my own rules
was very exciting. And I remember when I I harken
back to it now that I got a kid, I
think about how sad my mother was. She was sitting
on the edge of my bed and yelling at me
for what she called dismantling my room, for the stuff
that I was taking, you know, And all I was
taking was these milk rates. I didn't even have like
a bookshelf. It was just like I kept my books
and stuff in milk crates. And she was like very
upset that I was taking them. And I remember I
wore cowboy boots, which were a very impractical thing to
wear in the summer when you're moving boxes. But there
was something about it that felt very romantic. I had
these cowboy boots that I only wore like once a year. Yeah,
and it felt like that was an occasion for the
cowboy boots, even though they were slippery.
Where were you going to? Where were you moving from
and to?
So I was living in Montreal, That's where I grew up,
and I was moving to a very cheap part of
town called Pointing Charles.
Yeah.
It was probably no more than like a half an
hour car drive.
Yeah, but it can be a whole world away.
Yeah, it felt great. There was a five dollars liter
of apple wine that they sold at the corner store,
and there was all these like dollar ninety nine breakfast places.
It was like nineteen thirty four.
It was yeah, back, this is back in the thirties. Yeah.
I could listen to all the jazz music I wanted. Yeah, No,
I don't know. It was just yeah, it was just
the feeling of being free. It really Yeah, it felt
it felt free.
Yeah, last one in this round one, two or three?
I guess three.
Oh, I feel like I'm putting all these place questions
to you. What details do you remember about your childhood.
Bedroom, the milk crate, the wall to wall posters of
David Bowie. Nice, very big David Bowie fan. To this day,
my father will call me up on the phone if
David Bowie's on TV and I'll say, oh, your buddy's
on TV. He just didn't get it.
That he knows that you like him, and he was
like trying to connect with you.
Yeah. Yeah, just a lot of like pictures taken out
of magazines and newspapers. And I don't it must still
be the same way for kids, But it was like
your whole personality was splayed across your bedroom walls. Like
if it wasn't on your bedroom wall, then you weren't
in the world properly. You know, you had to lead
with all of these things on your wall. I had
this little card table that with a type with an
electric typewriter that I wrote on.
What were you writing at the time?
Such junk. I remember when I applied into the creative
writing program at the University in Montreal Concordia with such
high hopes because from a very young age I was
always writing and making plays and making radio plays and
you know, forcing my friends into performing in them. And
I applied put together what I thought was my best work,
and I applied to this creative writing program and the guy,
the professor running the program rejected me. And I couldn't
understand why. And I made a meeting with him, and
he said that someone that wrote the way that I
did needed a therapist more than they needed a creative
writing program, which was probably true, but was still like
a very heavy thing to hear at like eighteen, you.
Know, not helpful guidance.
But it was all like nuts. I mean, like young
men are, or at least me and my friends, I
mean we were just nuts. We were just really pushing
boundaries and you know, loved Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac.
There's nothing, no offense, but there's nothing extraordinary about that.
That's that doesn't signal depression. That's just being an angstret No.
I was just depressed on top of that. Yeah, that
was that was just a whole other side project. Yeah,
various dark places, you know, very caught up in like
what's it all about? I had, like during my teen years,
like a foray into becoming religious and then kind of
losing my faith and feeling that that brought on a
really heavy depression. I wanted to believe and I just
couldn't figure my way into it. And yeah, just like
very from a very young age is very caught up
in the big questions, I guess, and not that that's
necessarily a formula for depression, but for me, I don't know,
there was something very dire and desperate about it. Remember
asking my father like at a like at a very
very young age, like where God came from? And that
feeling like a very basic question because God was given,
but like, okay, so then where does God come from?
And I remember him telling me that I should look
it up, and I had these childs encyclopedia set and
looking up.
What did you look at God?
And under g yeah, like God, And like I thought, oh, well,
I'm going to get to the bottom of this in
two seconds. Everybody wanted to hear this, and it wasn't.
I remember like looking at the Bible and thinking like, oh,
it must be before Genesis, like before but you know,
there's like no preface, there's no you know, it just
starts with the big bang and that's it. But I
don't know, it was probably also more banal, like I
probably couldn't meet any girls, you know.
Yeah, that's a big existential stew of things.
Yeah, yeah, very profound, very yeah. Well Schopenhower asks, is
that a word?
Sure?
Now, yeah, yeah, but I think dealing with that the
uncertainty of life at that end, but.
I couldn't see. Yeah, but I know, you know, it's
still something that I struggle with. I mean, I just
want to really let go and and give myself over
to life. But I don't know, there's always just been
this feeling of like if you're not totally invested in it,
it'll make death easier. You know, like if you live
your life as though like you're kind of you know,
here's life and here's death, and they kind of are
side by side, adjacent to one another on a shelf,
it'll be more of a lateral move. Good night, folks,
it's not too it's not too late to like run
the rerun.
I'm just trying to understand it. It means putting as
much effort into the thinking about death as the thinking
about life, and they are equal experiences, and so then
it's a lateral.
Yeah, if you're sort of like braced for death from
a young age, you know, if you don't fully you know,
throw yourself into the whole life thing. Then when the
carpet is yanked out from under you, you're going to
be braced for your fall.
No, I get it. I like do this in my
own mind. I am the worst case scenario person. It
is how I live My life is to prepare for
the worst things, and so I practice not being around anymore.
It's dark.
But and you don't want to model that for your No, I.
Have two of them. I don't think that's a great
way to live. But it actually doesn't bring me down.
I don't get bummed about it. It just go there
for a little bit. I try it on, and then
I come back and I'm like, everyone was okay. Everyone
when I was gone in my imaginary death, everyone grieved
and then they lived beautiful lives and then it was fine.
Oh that's wonderful. So you're thinking about your own absence
from the perspective of those you love, Yeah, I guess
that's the mark of a superior human being. That's not
how I was thinking about it. I was thinking more,
fuck all, y'all. No, no, no, I'm just kidding.
Let's talk about your show for a few minutes, because
it is a wonderful thing. It is a wonderful thing
that you have made.
Thank you.
Have you wait been nine years? Over nine years?
Yeah, they were doing their ninth season.
Yeah, there was a little break the show was cancel
was yeah, at the end of twenty twenty three, and
then it found new life and it's as a listener,
I think this is a wonderful thing. I'm sure when
it was canceled you were like, yeah, maybe maybe I'm
going to do something else, lean into my writing and
you know, but but you were given this other shot.
What do you love about making this show?
Well, the simplest is that I like having a job.
I found out when the show was canceled that I
wasn't very good at not having a job. I had
been kind of on various deadlines, Like before this, I
had a show in Canada on the CBC for eleven years.
It had been just kind of like twenty years of deadlines.
This is wiretap right wire type. Yeah, that's right. I
found not having a job difficult, and being back at
it has given me a renewed appreciation. But I love
I think I love it is a way from me
to feel things and live, interact with people, and life
in a way that for me is preferred. I guess
there's a certain kind of safety about being alone in
the attics studio a lot of the time and thinking
things through in a way that I can't in real time.
I don't feel like I'm great in real time.
We should just take a second and explain to people
who haven't heard the show. I mean I nodded to
it a little bit in the intro, but you really
are getting into very intimate parts of people's lives. You're
helping them through specific regrets and longing and helping them
find closure, like someone who's you know, did something to
someone wronged them twenty thirty years ago. More. You literally
go find that person for them and help them sometimes
come confront them and have a one on one exchange.
Sometimes you don't find the person, but somehow through the
journey they've been able to understand their life in a
more intimate way. I mean, it's very emotionally intense work.
I mean, you say you do this work in part
just to feel things. That's a lot of feelings, Jonathan, Like,
it's a lot of living that you are You're navigating
through other people's experience.
Yeah, Yeah, there's definitely, like you say closure, I think
like that is. Yeah, that is always kind of like
the imaginary finish line. I don't think most of the
episodes get there, but it is true what you also
say about the process of getting there, and sometimes it's
the thing that people are searching for is somewhat of
a mcguffin. Like there was one episode called Scott where
this former heroin addict had sold all of like many
prize possessions that belonged to his father, among which was
this gun that his grandfather, his father's father had taken
off a Nazi in World War Two, and he had
sold this this gun to a pawn chop to buy
drugs and he wanted to get the gun back and
he felt like he owed it to his father and
spoiler alert, he gets the gun after I mean, I
didn't think we were ever going to find this gun again.
It might have taken him a couple of years. We
finally got it. He gives it to his dad and
his dad's like, oh, thank you, you know, and it's
just sort of like Jesus Christ, like that's not going
to make a very satisfying end. It is the closure
that we thought we wanted. But then it turns out
that the conversation he ends up having with his father,
the gun is merely a pass key that allows us
into this emotional space where his dad is able to
talk about his feelings about his dad and that gun,
which he never liked, and he had mixed feelings about
his own father, And it ends up getting to this
point where the dad's able to say to him like,
I don't really give a shit about the gun. I
was afraid of losing you, and I'm so glad to
have you back, and I don't care about getting the
gun back, but I got you back. And it's sort
of like we spent two years searching for the gun
just to get us to this other place. So it's
sort of like sometimes like if things wrap up too
neatly and too quickly, it's not good. There needs to
be that struggle in order to get to really get someplace,
and you know, to get someplace emotionally and internal, and
it's it's hard to dramatize that. You know, sometimes you
just need the gun. You need that mcguffin.
I really love interactions with strangers. They make me very happy,
They give me life, They make me feel connected and alive.
And I think you might love strangers even more than
I do, because it's your whole thing. Is like a
random person will come into your inbox and all of
a sudden, you, I imagine you fall in love a
little bit with them and their plight or their struggle.
Yeah. Yeah, it's complicated. When you said that about like
loving to talk to strangers, I don't even know if
this is really if this makes sense, but it occurred
to me this morning. I was on a run and
I saw these two kids. There's something very sweet about
the two of them. They were they were wandering, you know, wandering.
I was kind of like a on a running path
and they were just taking a leisurely stroll and they
were coming towards me, and they had such open faces.
They looked like they were wearing pajama bottoms. Maybe that's
just what kids do. It had the affect of like
feeling like they just rolled out of bed and maybe
they were, you know, in love and we're just happy
to be spending the morning together, and or maybe they
were on ecstasy. I don't know, but they just their
faces just seem so open, and I felt like stopping
and telling them that that's a wonderful thing to see.
And then I also thought about how like if I
was their age, that would be like yeah, and made
me also it makes me aware of just like how
like clenched my faces like I'm just waiting to get
punched in the face, and like I'm just all like
you know, and it's my natural like at this age,
I mean, this is what my face has become. And
I realized that a part of my fear is going
through life with my face open like those two kids,
for fear that a weirdo like me is going to
come up to them. And so I kind of keep
I've kind of like, after fifty odd years, my face
has just become this.
Closed and don't talk to me.
Yeah, And like what am I afraid? What would be
the worst case scenario if I did walk through the
through the world with an open face and meeting people's
gaze and not afraid of having people approach me, strangers
approach me? What would be the worst case scenario?
But you've developed a way, You've made a whole job
for yourself where you get to meet strangers under your.
Infety in a way like in with parameters and the context.
Round two insights cars and.
I haven't even skipped a.
Flipped but you're not judged either.
I mean, I don't know what's in there. There might
be something that's so embarrassing. So that's why I've been
saving them. We've moved from the yellow carts of the
blue cards, so I believe. So I can only imagine
that this is.
Getting more intense, okay, one two three one. What's a
sound that instantly puts you at ease? That's a person
who lives in sounds. I think a laugh, maybe anyone
in particular or all of them, all the laughing.
And this is coming from someone who does not, unfortunately
for me, like have an easy laugh. Being in the
business that I am in, it would be a nice
signal to somebody of like, hey, I'm enjoying you. But
I think, yeah, all kinds of different laughs. It lets
me feel like the person isn't taking me too seriously.
I feel dangerous when I'm being taken too seriously.
You feel dangerous or the situation that erous.
I kind of feel like I shouldn't be taken too seriously.
And I feel like my old friends don't take me
that seriously. Like my friend Jackie, who opens the show
who I phone, who has a very endearing, distinct, kind
of insane laugh. I like hearing it. It makes me
feel like it makes me feel free to say all
kinds of really dumb things, you know, because I feel
like I'm not hurting anybody. When I hear the laugh,
it's a signal that I'm not hurting anybody. And I
think that's a big eie. I have a friend who
told me a while ago, He's like, is this stupid?
I go through life just always being afraid that I'm
gonna get yelled at? And I was like, no, I
think I relate to that. You're afraid that you're gonna
hurt somebody get yelled at or Yeah, you just want
to be You just want to feel like you're not
you're not messing anything up. And I don't know. Yeah,
laugh is like a really nice thing.
Yeah, one, two or three?
Three?
How much do you rely on the validation of others?
I think, in some ways not a lot, because you know,
hearkening back to that story about trying to get into
a writer's program when I was eighteen, for a very
long time, I mean, I was writing and no one
was buying what I was selling like and I was
getting rejections and I'm not talking like big magazines, but
like zines and chapbooks, and no one would I couldn't.
I just couldn't get anywhere. And I just kept doing
it because I felt compelled to do it, like a
spider spinning a web, like I I And in that sense,
I think I was kind of like free of needing
any validation. And maybe that's just the cockiness of youth
or not knowing any better, but I think I still
have that. I think I would still be doing what
I'm doing regardless of whether anyone liked it. That being said,
I do like to know what people are thinking. I
think laughter, you know, getting a laugh or something is
a form of validation, and I like that.
That sounds like just the right healthy amount of caring.
Not that you need me to validate your sense of
whether validation is important.
I can't believe I'm doing something healthy.
We're moving to round three.
Beliefs, all right, Oh, the red cards?
Red cards one, two, or three?
I'll take one.
Do you believe in ghosts?
I don't not believe in them. I don't know that
I've ever seen one or experienced one, but I believe
in the idea of them. We moved in a couple
of years ago into this turn of the century Victorian
that I catch all kinds of weird smells in that
I feel are kind of like ghostly remnants of people
that lived here, that died here probably.
And do sensations like that? Are they pleasant to you?
Is that something you enjoy thinking about or is it disconcerting?
Mm?
Or neutral?
Neutral? Yeah, Like I'll smell cigarettes all in a sudden
and I'll be like, that's so weird. So there must
have been there's something about the weather that's bringing out
the smell. But it you know, of some long dead
smoker who lived here. It feels like you just kind
of passing through.
That.
Maybe one day you'll just be a faint smell. I
think it's probably more towards the positive. Yeah, if I
had to, if I had to choose, yeah, yeah, I mean,
you know, if I saw someone crab walking on the
ceiling less so, but just something subtle, you like a
wisp face right right, like a kind of spectral sort
of you know, zero mostelle. Maybe one of the first
long text exchanges I had with my wife was about ghosts.
She had finished reading a book about ghosts, and I thought, wow,
this is a real kooky chick.
Tell me more. I mean not not you tell me more,
but you were like, tell me more. I'm into this. Yeah.
I was like, yeah, bring it on.
Yeah, three more cards one two or three two? Have
you made peace with mortality?
Some days I feel like, yeah, take me, this is
a good day to die, and I feel like one
of these stoic guys in a spaghetti western. And then
other days, no, I guess it. Really it's crazy to
think that something like that would be so mood dependent.
Is that possible?
It's so final.
Sometimes it just feels okay, and sometimes it just doesn't.
Sometimes it just doesn't make sense, and then other times
it just feels like, well, we all got to go sometime.
That's one of the things I liked about drinking, was
that feeling of like of getting philosophical about that, like
I was someone I'm not a great flyer, and that
was when I relied the most on. You know, I
would travel with the little bottles of booze in my pockets,
so it just feeling them there gave me a sense
of security. And sometimes during turbulence. I'd pop one of
those or two of those, and it just felt kind
of like, yeah, you know, we all got to go sometime.
Yeah. I think that AH planes often summon internal conversations
about living and dying. I mean for me for sure
too as well.
But but and sometimes it's like sorry, go ahead, no no,
you say no, no, I was just going to ask
you like it. It's that's sometimes not a bad feeling.
It's sort of like you feel like crying sometimes when
you watch sentimental movies on a flat.
Oh yeah, and the complains are my favorite place to cry. Yeah,
it feels like safe. There's like strangers around and that
I find comforting. One of them might say something to
me and I might be open to that or I
might not. I don't know, but I like the idea
that it could happen.
What did they say to you?
Oh?
Just the possibility that they could say, are you okay?
And then that look at it makes me emotional thinking
about it. That breaks me. When you're in a vulnerable
place and a stranger extends themselves at all, it makes
me feel good. But now I pivoted this to myself
and I didn't want.
To No, no, no, no, not at all. What do
you say? What do you say if someone asks you
are you okay? Do you say not at all? Or
do you say yes?
Oh?
I'm thinking of one circumstance in particular, and I said no,
And I didn't want to talk about I didn't want
to say anymore. But I really appreciated that.
They asked, did you tell them that?
No?
But I said no, but it's okay, And that was it.
And and I think, am I trying too hard to
sew this together? But I do think there's something about
being suspended in air in a situation where you could
die because planes don't make sense, and those being more
truthful spaces because what the hell do you have to lose?
So I get I get the plain thing for sure.
And I also think that, yeah, yeah, you said no,
I know, please please no.
I was just going to say you you were saying
at the beginning that it feels like dangerous to be
so dependent on one's emotional state to determine whether or
not one is okay with dying on a particular day.
But I all, maybe this is just me.
I think that's a sign of a healthy person who
wakes up and and like observes the question, you know,
like how is my life? And and when you're saying
today's a good day to go, what you're really saying
is I have lived a good life.
Yeah. I don't know if this is a quick story,
but I felt I feel like I kind of got
felt like I got the license to think about it
in that way. From a story, a heavyweight story. It
was about this woman who was in her forties and
felt like her life had kind of gone off track
because her foster mother didn't allow her to stay in
stay with basketball because her grades weren't good enough, and
she felt like her life would have been better if
she could have pursued basketball, she would have gone in
a scholarship. And so we went and found this foster
mother who she hadn't spoken to in years, who was
now this ninety four year old woman, to ask her
why why didn't she allow her to pursue basketball when
she saw it was her one passion. And this woman
was a tough old bird, like it would have been
so easy to say, oh, I'm sorry, and like she
just wouldn't, and she had had a hard life herself,
and I and I felt it was almost like she
was unclear on the concept of regret, you know what
I mean, And I was trying to explain it to
her and she was like, no, no, no, I know what
you're saying, and I don't. I honestly don't know if
I had a chance to do it over again with her,
whether I would have done it differently. And I think
it really depends on my mood, what mood I was in.
Wow.
I was like, wow, Wow, that is something that is
seldom acknowledged. It is, you know what I mean.
It is, but it isn't the whole ballgame. Not to
make that bad pun but it.
Is like, yeah, I get or more of it then
we acknowledge. You know, just how drunk a lot of
these Founding fathers were when they were coming up with
their laws and ideas, you know what I mean, and
they echo through the years.
That was a journey. That question, this is the last one,
Jonathan one, two or three?
Three?
Do you think people can really change? Oh?
Yes, I mean I have to believe that. I mean,
even if I don't believe it, I have to believe that.
And I think like that's the struggle is to really
try to believe that. And I do think people are
capable of change within limits. You know. It's like the paradox.
I mean, like we are who we are, but I
think as long as we're alive, we're able to change.
You know. I'm working on a story that should come
out this season. It's about a woman who is one
hundred and two years old who one day her kids,
who are you know, in their seventies, said, you know,
you're getting on in age, we should probably clean up
the storage room. And while they were doing that, they
found this box containing two hundred and fifty six letters
that had been sent to her by her fiance at
the time when she was like twenty, who was in
the war, this was World War Two, who died in
the war. And she had not opened up this box
and looked at these letters in over eighty years, and
had never really mourned the loss of this man and
this relationship. She put it aside, and she married a
man named Irving, stayed married with him for sixty odd years,
had three kids, and then finds his box and then
finds herself at the age of one hundred and two,
falling in love with this with this long dead young
man from her past, and in that process like she,
you know, a person who was very used to and
maybe that's a little generational. Two is like you just
pack it up and put it in a box and
move on, but it sticks with you, you know what
I mean. And like you know, she went through a
lot of changes even at that age, which is kind
of like a beautiful thing to see, you know what
I mean. As long as like we're alive, and as
you know, as long as we keep going, there's always
going to be change. You know, maybe not the change
that other people want to see, but we're there's going
to be changes.
We end the show the same way every time, with
a trip in our memory time machine where you go
back and revisit one moment from your past. It's not
a moment you would change anything about. It's just a
moment you'd like to linger in a little longer. Oh,
I know, there are many you could pick anything whatever
comes to the fore.
I mean, I guess the first thing that comes into
my head is my child's birth. Yeah, I guess. My
wife says that. I you know, like I was saying,
I don't. I'm not an easy laugh. I don't. I
wish I smiled more. But she said that like all
through labor, I had such a big smile on my
face which kept her going. Just such a wonderful, wonderful
day and just filled with so much hope and wonderful
expectation and beginning. And yeah, I think that. And I
also really love the hospital cafeteria. It was at NYU.
It was really good.
Jonathan Goldstein, It's been such a pleasure. You can hear
Jonathan on the newest season of his amazing show, Have Youweight.
Thank you so much, Thank you, thank you.
Thanks so much for listening. If you liked this episode,
I think you would also dig my interview with Jonathan's
former boss and host of This American Life, Ira Glass.
Ira was super open and honest and way funnier than
I expected.
Check it out.
This episode was produced by Lee Hale and edited by
Dave Blanchard. It was mastered by Patrick Murray and Jimmy Keeley.
Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sangwini. Our theme music is
by rom team Ara Bluie. You can reach out to
us at Wildcard at NPR dot org. We're going to
shuffle the deck and be back with more next week.
Talk to you then.
Hi, it's Jonathan here again breaking out of the straight
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