Maria Glymour, PhD on the path to finding her career and riding cows in Oklahoma

Today, my chat with the amazing Maria Glymour, ScD, Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California - San Francisco. Maria tells me about being lost after college and her winding road to epidemiology, growing up in rural Oklahoma, riding cows, the Beastie Boys, a dinner party with Jaws, and the 'flavor' red. I don't think I've ever laughed this hard during an interview. Enjoy!

Transcript

Copy

Maria Glymour:

And I want to tell you, I'm kind of pleased with this slightly slower pace this season because I'm still behind, but I have a chance. It's kind of like Shiny Epi People and the New Yorker, they're competing for the backlog in my...

Lisa Bodnar:

Hey everyone, welcome back to Shiny Epi People. I'm Lisa Bodnar, really thrilled that you would join me today. Remember that you can find the show on Instagram and Twitter at Shiny Epi People. I'm still selling vinyl Shiny Epi People stickers. If you would like to buy one, you can send me an email shinyepipeople@gmail.com. If you would like to become a patron of the show, please go to patreon.com/shinyepipeople. Thanks to all the current patrons for all of your love and support. I also found out that Spotify allows ratings of podcasts now, so go in and rate the show if you can, that would really mean a lot to me. So if you are a regular listener, you know that I've moved to a bi-weekly episode schedule, but I am putting out today's episode only one week after last week's. I decided to do this because pretty much everyone I've talked to this past week and really since the start of January, has expressed some level of sadness, anxiety, frustration, exhaustion. And I've also had a difficult time. 

              So as this week was progressing and I was feeling my own feelings, I thought about what I needed that was in short supply, and that was laughter. A lot of us are feeling like we shouldn't be going out socializing as much as we did before the latest COVID surge. And we may have kids at home or we're isolated, and connecting with our people outside of our home is harder. Some of you have generously told me and I'm so flattered by this, that listening to the show is like sitting in on a conversation between two people openly sharing and laughing together, and that it might serve to give you a tiny dose of what it feels like socializing in person. I'll let you in on a secret, don't tell anyone, that when I'm feeling down sometimes I listen to old episodes so that I can hear laughter, and it reminds me of that wonderful connection that I sat and had with someone for an hour or an hour and a half, and it gives me a boost. 

              So with the shitty weeks we've had, I've thought that actually putting something into the world that might make others feel a bit of joy might actually help me and help other people, too. So here I am with a new episode today. It is with the fabulous and epi famous Maria Glymour, Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California at San Francisco. Maria got her doctoral degree in social epi from Harvard, and completed a post doc at Columbia in population, aging and dementia. Her research now focuses on how social factors experienced across the life course from infancy to adulthood influence cognitive function, dementia, stroke, and other health outcomes in old age. You probably also know that Maria is an expert in causal inference in social epidemiology. I've listened to today's episode more times than I can count, far beyond what's normal for me, given the editing I have to do to prepare the recording. That's because Maria and I laugh so much in this interview. I don't think I've ever laughed this hard during an interview for the show.

              When I got off this call with her I felt like I was vibrating, I felt so good and happy and connected and energized. I really hope that you can feel some of that energy that I felt as you're listening in the next half hour. Maria is fucking delightful and hilarious. I hope you enjoy this chat. Oh my God, hello!

Maria Glymour:

Hi! How are you?

Lisa Bodnar:

I think the last time I saw you, you had some red glasses on.

Maria Glymour:

I know. I've decided Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen is wearing red glasses, and I just feel so like I'm mimicking him. And I don't want people to get confused, so-

Lisa Bodnar:

So now he wins. Does he know he won?

Maria Glymour:

Eric should always know he wins. There's no competing with Eric. How are you?

Lisa Bodnar:

I'm really good. I'm so glad that you would agree to do this with me.

Maria Glymour:

I love the podcast.

Lisa Bodnar:

My gosh Maria, I have so much to talk to you about. You are from rural Oklahoma. 

Maria Glymour:

Yes.

Lisa Bodnar:

This blew my mind.

Maria Glymour:

Yeah, I'm from a really small town, there are like 2,000 people on a big day, and we lived outside of town so it was three miles into town. I went to school at an even smaller town because my mom taught there, and so we'd drive 30 miles to a town that's like... I was just back visiting my mom and it's a little bit heartbreaking, but rural Oklahoma is not flourishing. But it was a really... There were lots of things that were amazing about it, and in retrospect I value it more than I probably did when I was a kid and I really hated it. But there were lots of things that were really...

Lisa Bodnar:

Yeah, what was? What's a great thing about living in rural Oklahoma?

Maria Glymour:

You spend a lot of time outside. I remember my childhood was mostly itching, I just itched a lot. I had bug bites all the time, yeah. I had lots and lots of old people relatives, spent a lot of time with cows more than the average epidemiologist, probably. 

Lisa Bodnar:

What did you do with the cows? Were you milking, were you... I don't know what else one does with a cow. So that's it, that was my list. Please tell me to add to my list of cow things. I don't know.

Maria Glymour:

Well when I was really little, part of my campaign to lobby for a horse, I really wanted a horse which I think is not unusual. And we had space for a horse, that would have made sense. But my parents thought that was ridiculous and nonsense. So part of my campaign was that I... We had this little calf that I bottle fed the calf. When it was little I bottle fed it, because it didn't have its mother. And really, so it was very tame with me. I figured out that I could get onto it, I would make him stand underneath the tree and then I'd climb up the tree and then climb onto the cow. This was part of my campaign to get a horse. 

Lisa Bodnar:

Wait, but hold on. Is it safe to ride a cow?

Maria Glymour:

Probably in retrospect, not. My parents were strongly opposed to this and I said, "There's a simple solution."

Lisa Bodnar:

Get me a horse.

Maria Glymour:

Exactly.

Lisa Bodnar:

Nowadays, what is the most Oklahoma thing that you still do?

Maria Glymour:

Oh, wow. 

Lisa Bodnar:

I mean, you've been a big city lady for a long time.

Maria Glymour:

Yeah. I still wave randomly at people. Because when I grew up there was a really good chance-

Lisa Bodnar:

I love that.

Maria Glymour:

... That somebody who was driving by was a relative. So you didn't want to not wave, because they'd be calling your grandma and saying what's up with your... What's up with her? She didn't even say hello to me. So just sometimes it just comes out and I'm like... And then I realize they're total strangers, and it seems really weird.

Lisa Bodnar:

Any big city, I imagine it's not like the friendliest place on earth, right? Everyone's running to do their own thing, and you're just like hey, hey. Hey.

Maria Glymour:

Exactly. Well, I thought... When I got to New York... I had lived in New York for a couple years, and when I got there I was really daunted because I'd heard that people in New York are not very friendly. I think people were very nice to me, and I think it was just because I looked like such a friendly dolt. But I was like, "Oh, hi." I mean in Manhattan I'm like, "Oh, hi." People, I just thought that people were really nice to me because I looked so dopey. And so here I am.

Lisa Bodnar:

What was your favorite place to be when you were growing up?

Maria Glymour:

There's just cow pastures all around my house, so we'd just go out in the cow pastures and goof off.

Lisa Bodnar:

What's the deal with cow tipping?

Maria Glymour:

I did not engage in cow tipping. I was not a cow tipper, tipping person. No, I love cows, cows are lovely beings. They like each other and they're nice, and they form emotional relationships.

Lisa Bodnar:

Do they really?

Maria Glymour:

Yes, cows like each other. I mean it's not like pigs. Pigs are this whole... Yeah.

Lisa Bodnar:

Pigs are what?

Maria Glymour:

Pigs are not nice.

Lisa Bodnar:

I thought that they were smart like dogs, people had them as pets.

Maria Glymour:

They are smart, which makes it so much worse. They're like evil geniuses. They are smart, but they're not nice. Cows are nice.

Lisa Bodnar:

Oh my gosh, I learned so much about you already. You told me that you were really lost between undergrad and graduate school. What were you grappling with at the time?

Maria Glymour:

I really had no idea what I wanted to do. I had worked in bench science and I loved the science, but I did not like the bench. I really liked the ideas, but I didn't love... It was like oh, pipetting, gosh. Transgenic mice, not... It was a really cool idea like biology's really cool. Then I really liked... I mean, I think as many people are in college, I was really worked up about inequality and social justice, and I cared a lot about that and I wanted a job that would allow me to do that. Then I had no idea what was there. I was like okay, between pipetting and social work, is there anything in there? I worked in a memory care unit with older people. I wasn't a CNA, but I was kind of doing that sort of job. So there's a certification for a nurse's assistant which I never had, I was just there to help people get their clothes on and be dressed and be safe and eat and so forth. 

              I really loved the people, and it was just a really amazing experience because I never worked with people with memory loss before, I had no idea really what it was like and how intense that was. I didn't have any idea how to connect that with a job that was actually a career. I remember actually, my first... One of my jobs I worked and I made $5 an hour, that was my salary was $5 an hour. And at the end of the three months’ probation period they were both, "Okay. Well Maria, you did a good job, you did really well and everything, so we want to give you a raise. And we're going to give you our maximum raise, which is 3%."

Lisa Bodnar:

Wait, I'm trying to do the math, hold on. That's not good.

Maria Glymour:

And I was like, I need a different career. So anyway, it took me a long time before I sort of found, sort of figured out what to do. And it was really public health I guess, that was appealing to me.

Lisa Bodnar:

How did you figure it out, though?

Maria Glymour:

I was living in Boston at the time. And I moved to Boston with my best friend, who I totally did not have my shit together and she totally did have her shit together. So she would be like, "Why don't we go to Boston?" And I'd be like, "All right." So we were in Boston and she was doing her internship at Mass General, and so there were lots of people who actually were in public health kind of, in that circulating. I heard a few people talking about different projects and I was like, "That is cool. Who's doing that work? How does somebody do that?" I would go to random lectures, and I heard lectures of people and I was like, "I never thought you could use quantitative methods to do work that is about social justice." And that was really compelling. That was how I sort of figured out this is what I want to do. But it was definitely after a period of, what on earth am I going to do with my life. 

Lisa Bodnar:

Since then, I mean obviously your career already up to this point has been so successful. So I was surprised when you told me that there have been some major professional crises that you've gone through. Can you tell me what led to some of those periods of questioning what you were doing, and then how you kind of coped and dug your way out?

Maria Glymour:

Yeah. I mean, so first of all it always feels funny when people say things like you've succeeded, it's always so funny like oh well, I don't know. But day to day there are things that are awesome, there are lots of things that are awesome, but there are also things where I'm like well, I'm behind on 27 things. I think that in graduate school you're just so vulnerable, and you just have to... I feel like I was really lucky because there were times that I was like, this is just... I would get critical feedback from one direction and some of the work that I did on my dissertation didn't agree with some of the methods that were being used, and that led to some criticism. I was just really lucky that I felt like I had senior people who really backed me up and said, "Oh, let's talk about that, let's engage on this thing that you've done that's kind of controversial." So I felt really, really lucky about that. But it was also definitely very, very stressful for me at the time. 

Lisa Bodnar:

Sure.

Maria Glymour:

Then when I was a post doc, I remember talking to a friend as a post doc and be like, "Nobody told me how much failure there'd be." But my papers would be rejected, my grants will be rejected, I wouldn't get jobs. I had no idea. But you just get so much nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. And yeah, I was just talking to a really good colleague the other day. I'm like, "I just think tenacity is kind of the key thing, because you just have to keep going," and believe in what you want to do is important. 

Lisa Bodnar:

And trying to not take that stuff personally is so hard.

Maria Glymour:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There have been many times in my career where I thought this is pretty much hopeless, and someone... And I'm just really grateful to the people who were like, "No, it's not. It's fine, this is just a bad moment, keep going." That's happened often.

Lisa Bodnar:

Do you worry it's going to happen again?

Maria Glymour:

I think... I'm sure it will, absolutely. And the best thing about getting older is I'm like, "Oh, I've been here before." The key is to keep going, and it gets better. 

Lisa Bodnar:

So when I told people I was talking with you and I said, "What would you want to hear Maria talk about?" The people that I asked all said, "Maria is the most amazing mentor, and I want to hear her talk about mentorship." Because it seems like you've got this shit down.

Maria Glymour:

Okay, I definitely do not have it down. I think mentoring is really hard because it's like every person needs different stuff. Right? People come with different things and some people it's like oh, I really need to get out of your way. That is the most important I can do for you is to get out of your way. For some people, the most important thing for you is to have a little space to recover from the trauma that was your PhD program or whatever is... I think there's just so many things about mentoring that surprised me. First of all, bad things happen to people all the time, and you have to help them get through that and know that this is part of life and it goes on, and your career is a long thing, and the bad things are like sections and then you'll get through and keep going. 

              And you have to be ready to deal with people who are not like you who have different... I try to be really honest about my own limitations and just be upfront with people like, "Okay, so these are some ways to manage me." Also, I've really benefited from talking to other people who are mentoring about challenges that come up. A really common challenge that comes up in mentoring, is in academia people just think you're supposed to be an academic, which is a crazy thought. Why would we ever just want to train academics? But there's a lot of pressure to say that's my path. So helping people figure out is that the path that you actually want, or is that the path that you think everybody wants for you, and what really gives them joy. Sometimes it goes both ways. There are people who are like, it doesn't seem like you enjoy these things that are actually part of day to day academic life. And some people, they say I don't want to be an academic. 

              And you're like, "Okay, you are... You seem like the greatest joy that you get is thinking about how to correct the selection bias problem, so I just feel like you might be an academic." So just, they make people feel confident enough to pursue the thing that they want to pursue. Then honestly to me, I think I've just been really lucky in getting to work with people who teach me stuff and who I... They're just fun. 

Lisa Bodnar:

So Maria, you do work in Alzheimer's disease research. And at the same time, you have close family who have either Alzheimer's or memory impairment, dementia. Can you tell me what that's like?

Maria Glymour:

I mean honestly, when I did that time working in the nursing home and memory units, there were a lot of people that I adored and I came to adore who had memory loss. And they were... I mean I'm laughing because they were so funny and wonderful in these quirky ways that... I didn't know them when they were healthy, so I can't compare if they had those funny lovely quirky characteristics before they had memory loss, or if those emerged as they had memory loss. But they were people that I really adored, because they were just wonderful. So I think that has always made Alzheimer's very compelling to me as a topic. Now as I have family members affected, it makes it more compelling and it makes it more frustrating when I see how slowly the research is going. It is such a dreadful disease in its final stages in terms of what it takes from people. So that's kind of heartbreaking.

Lisa Bodnar:

Is your mom okay living alone right now?

Maria Glymour:

We were definitely very nervous about that during the pandemic, and I think that it's a mixed bag. My mom has had this amazing life. So when my mom figured out her kids were not coming back after college, that we left rural Oklahoma, she joined the Peace Corps. And so-

Lisa Bodnar:

That's so fucking cool.

Maria Glymour:

Yeah. She's so cool. So she joined the Peace Corps-

Lisa Bodnar:

Second life, yes.

Maria Glymour:

Yeah, exactly. She was super nervous about going to someplace where she needed to learn a foreign language, because she was scared that she was too old to learn a foreign language. So she ended up being assigned to the Island of Antigua, so she was in Peace Corps for three years in Antigua. She had an amazing time, she just had a phenomenal time teaching math in Antigua and just living there. She learned a ton, and I think her experience was amazing. Then she lived in different places, but when she retired she decided she was going to move back to this little town where I grew up, and I think easier for her to live alone there, because it is a very small town and people check on her. When I went back after the pandemic I was like, "Oh my gosh, how do you even have time to get any work done. People are always coming by and saying how are you, are you okay, oh, your daughter's here, okay." 

Lisa Bodnar:

Nice.

Maria Glymour:

It's wonderful, of course. On the other hand it's really far from services and any kind of formal support, and it's 10 hours door to door to get there. From my door to her door is 10 hours.

Lisa Bodnar:

For people who don't know, your dad is also an academic. He's a famous academic. 

Maria Glymour:

I mean within philosophy.

Lisa Bodnar:

Famous quote unquote. Okay, I see you do it. You put famous in quotes, fair. 

Maria Glymour:

Yeah. My dad is a philosopher of science. His interest is about how do we learn as sort of a systemology, like how do we develop knowledge, how do we learn things. But at some point he got interested in causation, and he's done causal inference work. So now he's his own controversial self in philosophy and science, and he works at Carnegie Mellon now. So that's sort of relevant for my causal inference interest. Actually, I tried to be as far away as I could, and obviously I totally failed. But that, it's not my fault. Philosophy and science is very broad. And to my dad's credit, he has always been extremely supportive of whatever I've been interested in. When I was tutoring English literacy for adults, he was like, "Oh, my daughter tutors English literacy, she does this awesome thing." And when I wanted to go to grad school he was like, "Is that really a great idea? Is this really what you want?" 

              At some point, he's like "Okay, you're at Harvard. I do know this one person at Harvard and he's really smart. You should probably take his class." I was like, "Okay. Well, I'm not taking any of your advice Dad, but I will go see about this class. But not because you told me to, I'll just go see about this class."

Lisa Bodnar:

Yeah, right. Let's keep that in mind. I was going to do this anyway.

Maria Glymour:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So actually, the one person that he knew was Jamie Robins. And I went to Jamie's class and I was like, "Wow, somebody should have told me about collider bias earlier in life." 

Lisa Bodnar:

So I want you to put that on a Christmas ornament. 

Maria Glymour:

It's true. Because everything is what I was... It's funny to be an academic brat, because you try really hard to be like okay, I'm my own person. And my very first faculty retreat at Harvard I was like, "Oh, I have a faculty job at Harvard. I'm so special, I get to go to the faculty retreat, I'm like a big kid." I go to the faculty retreat, and one of the faculty members says to me, "Oh, oh. You're Maria Glymour, huh? Any relation to Clark? I know your father." I'm like, I’m my own professor here. It was very humbling, I was really put in my place. 

Lisa Bodnar:

What age do you feel like you finally figured out who you are, you felt comfortable in your own skin?

Maria Glymour:

I don't think that's a binary thing. I don't think that's like oh, this part I'm totally good with. I think that's a constantly evolving thing I mean, and the parts that are hard change over time. In my 20s, there was a real crisis about what do I want to do with my career, what would that look like. Then I'd never doubted that I really wanted to do health research. Since I decided that, I was very happy and passionate about that. But there have been lots of just times that I was doubting in what setting do I want to do it. So I think that the challenge is just change. And there are things that are still difficult, and then there are things that are oh yeah, that part I got down.

Lisa Bodnar:

Do you want to talk about some fun stuff?

Maria Glymour:

Sure.

Lisa Bodnar:

Can you recall a time when you met an epidemiology celebrity for the first time?

Maria Glymour:

Yeah, my first SER. I met Jay Kaufman in my first SER.

Lisa Bodnar:

Did you? Tell me what that was like.

Maria Glymour:

I'd read something by Jay Kaufman in Nancy Krieger's class. And I saw Jay was at a poster, and I saw this poster and I saw this person standing in front of it and I read it. I was like, "Oh, Jay Kaufman, I've read something about Jay Kaufman." And I was like, "Oh wait, are you Jay Kaufman?" It was just like this crazy... Jay was so gracious. I was like, "Oh. Well, I read something by you and I disagree. I think you were wrong."

Lisa Bodnar:

Wait. Were you a student... Like what-

Maria Glymour:

I was a graduate student, I was a graduate student-

Lisa Bodnar:

Oh, my God.

Maria Glymour:

I was so rude.

Lisa Bodnar:

I love this so much. 

Maria Glymour:

And Jay was like, "Oh, yeah. Let's talk about it." Because he's so kind. He's like, "Oh, well that's interesting that you've read, and you apparently have an opinion." Then it's so funny. He was like, "Oh, we should talk to Sander Greenland about this." And he took me over, and he's like, "Come on, we're going to go meet Sander Greenland." I was like, "Really? Okay." 

Lisa Bodnar:

Were you sweating? I would be sweating.

Maria Glymour:

Oh yeah, I was totally amazed. I was like, oh.

Lisa Bodnar:

What music that you hear today brings you back to your college days?

Maria Glymour:

Oh, my gosh. Beastie Boys. 

Lisa Bodnar:

Yes.

Maria Glymour:

And I think it's like a U2 album that was played, overplayed so much. I went to the University of Chicago, which is the geekiest school in the country.

Lisa Bodnar:

Is it?

Maria Glymour:

I mean we're totally down being geeky, I'm not saying anything bad. I was on the student group that organized the music, so we'd bring in the shows for our music concerts, which was a ball. It was so much fun. This is so funny. I was in charge of being host, I was in charge of the little rooms where the artists hung out, so I was in charge of making sure they had food and stuff.

Lisa Bodnar:

You were a green room manager. Did people send you their riders, like I need only green M&Ms?

Maria Glymour:

Yes. I swear to God they did. And the funny thing is, I was so bad at this job, I was so bad. I did not know how to make coffee. But anyway I had a ball, it was so much fun.

Lisa Bodnar:

So you were like a big music head?

Maria Glymour:

Why did I do this? I thought I'd be cool. I just thought it'd be cool. My best friend was doing it, and she was really... I mean she is really cool. And she did lights, that's intrinsically cool. Right? They were like, we don't know what to do with Maria, she can't even make coffee, but probably nobody will really care that much. 

Lisa Bodnar:

Oh, my God. I never would have imagined you did a job like that. That made this whole podcast that you were so good. Okay. What's your favorite Jelly Belly jellybean flavor?

Maria Glymour:

Anything red. I like red. I'm not-

Lisa Bodnar:

Red flavor, red flavor.

Maria Glymour:

I was just listening to the one where you asked somebody about jelly donuts.

Lisa Bodnar:

Jaimie.

Maria Glymour:

I don't want to give the impression that I like jelly donuts, because I do not. But red jelly beans are good.

Lisa Bodnar:

Okay. Red isn't a flavor, but we're going to go with that. Okay, anything red. 

Maria Glymour:

Except not watermelon, but that's not red.

Lisa Bodnar:

I mean-

Maria Glymour:

It's like pink.

Lisa Bodnar:

Okay. That's semantics, but all right. Okay, fine.

Maria Glymour:

Come on.

Lisa Bodnar:

Do you like amusement parks?

Maria Glymour:

I get seasick really, really easily. So it's very dangerous to do things with me that have a lot of-

Lisa Bodnar:

Dangerous.

Maria Glymour:

So I do... Now I've really tossed my cookies in a lot of settings, more than the normal person. 

Lisa Bodnar:

Okay, please tell me the places.

Maria Glymour:

Well, it's been many countries, onshore and offshore, certainly in amusement parks. It's usually cars because that's the best is cars and the like, yeah. But yeah, I just like to... If we're going to go someplace curvy it's best to have me drive, even though I'm a very bad driver. It's still-

Lisa Bodnar:

You're also a bad driver? Oh, my God. This is what this show is about, learning all these crazy things about celebrities like Maria Glymour. She's a shitty driver, she throws up everywhere she goes, she thinks watermelon isn't red. 

Maria Glymour:

Watermelon is not red, it's pink. It's not a good flavor like red. Cherry-

Lisa Bodnar:

Like the flavor red. 

Maria Glymour:

I mean they have names for it, but come on. It's red. Look at the package, it's red dye.

Lisa Bodnar:

It is. Okay. What's the best food to eat when you're sad or stressed?

Maria Glymour:

Oh, mashed potatoes.

Lisa Bodnar:

Oh, okay.

Maria Glymour:

Or ice cream. Wait, is it... Why are you sad? Are you sad because you miss your family and you love them and you're lonely, or are you sad because you just broke up with somebody?

Lisa Bodnar:

Let's do the first first.

Maria Glymour:

Oh, it's mashed potatoes.

Lisa Bodnar:

Okay, because you ate a lot as a kid?

Maria Glymour:

Oh, yeah. I definitely ate a lot of mashed potatoes as a kid. That's not really comfort food, but yeah.

Lisa Bodnar:

Okay, so then you have a broken heart. What do you eat?

Maria Glymour:

That's ice cream. I think that has to be ice cream. 

Lisa Bodnar:

Fair.

Maria Glymour:

I mean, nobody eats mashed potatoes after a breakup. You would never be like, I'm going to turn on The Smiths and eat some mashed potatoes. Like no. No. But it's happened, right? Smiths, ice cream. That's the breakup.

Lisa Bodnar:

Okay. Is your office messy?

Maria Glymour:

Oh, my God. Yes. Yes, it’s a little messy. Can you... I'm not going to adjust my screen, I'm just hoping that everything is below-

Lisa Bodnar:

No, you should. I want to see it, please.

Maria Glymour:

I'm not going to do it. No. Lisa, I love you. But no. 

Lisa Bodnar:

Come on.

Maria Glymour:

No-

Lisa Bodnar:

I want to see it. 

Maria Glymour:

It's really bad. Okay. Okay, so let's see. So there's the dog thing, there's the empty Coke can, that's the half dead plant. See, you could get a sense of how grim things are.

Lisa Bodnar:

Yeah, but I don't see a ton of stacks of papers or anything.

Maria Glymour:

There are stacks of paper. It's like they're definitely... I have stacks of paper, empty Coke cans, 17 coffee cups, and yeah. I mean I was really scared in the pandemic because I was like, I could have left something really bad at work that could be like a serious health hazard. I think it hasn't... I went back to my office and nothing seems to have gotten out of control, but I think I was just lucky. 

Lisa Bodnar:

If you could choose one of these three groups of people or things to be at your Christmas dinner table, which group would you choose? The Grinch, Donald Trump Junior, and Freddy Kruger. Let's assume Freddy has had a little bit of therapy and he's not going to murder everyone, but he's still angry. Or Pennywise the Clown, Charlie Sheen, and Jaws. Okay, you're making a hand, bird, geek, Jaws the shark.

Maria Glymour:

The animal?

Lisa Bodnar:

Yeah.

Maria Glymour:

At Christmas dinner?

Lisa Bodnar:

I mean, just use your imagination.

Maria Glymour:

Do they come as a group, like they're coming as a party?

Lisa Bodnar:

Yes. Yeah, you can't choose three, you got to choose-

Maria Glymour:

I can't just have the Grinch, because I'd be good with the Grinch. I can totally get that.

Lisa Bodnar:

Or okay, you could choose three among these.

Maria Glymour:

Okay. I'm good with Jaws, I'm good with the Grinch. 

Lisa Bodnar:

Jaws. You're good with Jaws.

Maria Glymour:

Well you told me that Freddy Kruger has gotten therapy, so I assume Jaws has also gotten fed.

Lisa Bodnar:

Fed, that's right.

Maria Glymour:

But I think Jaws, you can't blame him too much. He doesn't say anything politically offensive. No, I'd go with Jaws.

Lisa Bodnar:

Okay. Last one.

Maria Glymour:

How do you come up with these?

Lisa Bodnar:

If you could trade net worths or nets worth with Jeff Bezos, what's the first thing you'd do with his money? It doesn't have to be responsible.

Maria Glymour:

I really have not thought about this. 

Lisa Bodnar:

No, well I didn't give you any warning. I'm putting you totally on the spot.

Maria Glymour:

We should all be ready, though. What would you do if you had unimaginable wealth? What would you do? Shouldn't we be ready?

Lisa Bodnar:

Do you imagine that actually could happen?

Maria Glymour:

I don't think it's very likely for the epidemiologists in this crowd.

Lisa Bodnar:

No, it's not. You're right. What would you do?

Maria Glymour:

I would travel, I would probably travel. I would start by traveling with my mom, because my mom really loves traveling, and it just gets harder and harder. But with plenty of money, it'd be like we could have a ball. Mom and I, we have fun traveling together, we get into happy trouble. After that, I don't know what I would do. I think I would buy a humongous piece of land that was really beautiful, and then I would hire people to make music all the time, so there would just be always live music around so we could go wander in and listen to music.

Lisa Bodnar:

Like Beastie Boys. Is that what you had in mind?

Maria Glymour:

It could be so awesome. It's too late for the Beastie Boys, but...

Lisa Bodnar:

I wonder if they're still alive. Do you think they are?

Maria Glymour:

No, one of them... It’s sad how I know this. Some of them are, but no. Yeah. I would travel, and then I would buy some big land and decide what-

Lisa Bodnar:

Okay. You're going to have land, you're going to have music. What else are you going to do on this island?

Maria Glymour:

I would want some cows, some riding cows-

Lisa Bodnar:

Of course-

Maria Glymour:

... Preferably. 

Lisa Bodnar:

Are animal rights people going to be mad at us for talking about riding cows?

Maria Glymour:

I mean, I don't think the cow minded. The cow would have loved me because I fed him.

Lisa Bodnar:

How would you have known-

Maria Glymour:

We didn't get a lot of lot of miles. He was like...ugh ugh. 

Lisa Bodnar:

Okay, all right. 

Maria Glymour:

Okay, wait. Strike the cows, because I think everybody's going to make fun of me for having cows on my island.

Lisa Bodnar:

But that's my favorite part so far. 

Maria Glymour:

I don't what’d I’d do Lisa, I just hang out with my friends and sat, and we'd probably run regressions. I don't know. 

Lisa Bodnar:

Okay, can I come to your island?

Maria Glymour:

Yeah. I would love it if you came to my island. 

Lisa Bodnar:

Can I bottle feed some calves?

Maria Glymour:

Bottle feeding cows was really fun. Bottle feeding animals is really... Have you ever bottle fed an animal?

Lisa Bodnar:

Just at a petting zoo, like a goat or something where it's a gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp. Yeah.

Maria Glymour:

Yeah. Yeah, and their little eyes look up at you like, you are cute. 

Lisa Bodnar:

I bet it is. Wait. Do you feed... Okay, you feed calves cow's milk out of a bottle, okay. 

Maria Glymour:

Yes.

Lisa Bodnar:

That sort of threw me for a second because I was like wait-

Maria Glymour:

Oh, no. I think actually, now I'm trying to remember. I think we made it. I think it was like a formula, yeah. It wasn't like we milked the cow and then fed the... Yeah, no.

Lisa Bodnar:

Okay. It didn't come from the teat, let's say.

Maria Glymour:

No, because then we would have just connected the... There would-

Lisa Bodnar:

There'll be no middle man Maria, no middle man. 

Maria Glymour:

Exactly. The issue was we didn't actually... 

Lisa Bodnar:

You're the best. 

Maria Glymour:

All right.

Lisa Bodnar:

Thank you for doing this with me, I really appreciate it.

Maria Glymour:

It was really fun.

Lisa Bodnar:

What a wonderful hour.

Maria Glymour:

It was really fun. It was really delightful. Take care.

Lisa Bodnar:

Goodbye.

Maria Glymour:

Bye-bye. It was so much fun.

Lisa Bodnar:

This little calf that you had, did it have a name?

Maria Glymour:

I don't remember what its name was. It must have had a name. But we ate it. I was not thrilled with this, obviously. But my parents did... We ate the cow.