NYT Writer Susan Dominus: "I Couldn't Risk It"

She's a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, a Yale lecturer, and one of the most celebrated journalists working today. So why does Susan Dominus still feel like she's figuring it out? In a candid conversation with Maryam, Susan gets into the imposter syndrome that nearly stopped her from calling herself a writer, the sibling rivalry that quietly shaped her ambition, and the career regret she wishes she could go back and fix. Plus: what AI has changed about her reporting, why she thinks Substack isn't enough, and the advice she gives every student who wants to break into media. If you've ever played it safe when you knew you shouldn't have — this one's for you. 
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Key Moments

01:28 - The Psychology Behind the Byline 🧠
Susan explains why people tell journalists things they've never told anyone else, and why being truly seen is rarer than we think.

03:15 - The Bookish Kid Who Pretended to Read 📚
Susan paints a vivid picture of her Westchester childhood — the youngest of three, already pretending to read before she could, and processing her entire emotional life through books.

09:29 - The Piano Teacher Ultimatum ⏰
Her piano teacher forced a choice: piano or the school newspaper. Susan didn't hesitate for a second. 

13:07 - Imposter Syndrome at Yale 😰
Getting into Yale didn't cure the self-doubt — it deepened it. Susan opens up about feeling like a "pretty average suburban kid" surrounded by legacy admits, children of academics, and people she found genuinely intimidating.

14:25 - "I Couldn't Risk It" 😶
Susan admits she avoided Yale's competitive writing classes entirely, not because she wasn't interested, but because she was too afraid to find out she wasn't good enough. 

21:13 - The Good Girl Who Waited Until 30 ⏳
Despite always wanting to be a writer, Susan spent her entire 20s as an editor — partly for job security, partly to please her parents.

27:08 - How AI Changed Susan's Entire Reporting Process 🤖
Susan goes from AI skeptic to convert in real time. She breaks down exactly how she used NotebookLM and Google Gemini on her most recent NYT piece, and why she can't imagine going back to the way she did her job before.

30:17 - The Wasserstein Book Origin Story 📖
Susan traces her obsession with the famous Wasserstein family, and reveals the question that consumed her childhood: what would it feel like to grow up in a family where someone tells you "the sky's the limit"?

33:42 - The Limits We Put on Ourselves 🪞
Maryam holds up a mirror: Susan has won Pulitzers, teaches at Yale, and writes for the NYT Magazine — and yet she still talks about herself like someone playing it safe. 

40:24 - The Twitter Regret She Can't Shake 🐦
Susan confesses that when the NYT begged her to tweet out her column back in 2011, she was too uncomfortable with self-promotion. Her advice to young journalists: get on the edge of what's new, even when it scares you.

43:11 - What She’d Tell Her 30-Something Self 💡
Susan closes with a deceptively simple piece of wisdom: if something new is forming around you at work, stop wishing it away and get involved.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I tell my students I didn't take a single, I only took one writing class at Yale because you had to you had to apply to these writing classes. And some of them were very competitive.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

And why didn't you apply? Because you didn't think you would get in? I couldn't risk it.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

If they told me I wasn't a writer, I knew I wasn't going to be a writer. And I needed to hold it close to me. And I I couldn't, I couldn't put it out there and risk having Yale, which had already told me many times I wasn't something enough. I couldn't also have Yale tell me you're not a writer.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Today on the Messy Parts, we're going to have on Sue Dominus. She's a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at the New York Times. She has a book about family dynamics, in fact, called Family Dynamics: The Secret to Sibling Rivalry and Success. But what's so interesting is how much we oddly had in common, or maybe that's not so odd because we all have a lot in common. Messy parts that really start from a young age and continue on through our adult lives. She has a lot of good lessons and a lot of good stories. I can't wait for you to listen. Susan, I'm so excited to have you on what I now call the infamous Blue Couch. You know, what's interesting to me as I went down the Google rabbit hole and started reading about you is that you're interested in psychology. I mean, you write about a lot of things, right? Culture, things related to medicine, science. But really in the end, it seems like you're interested in the psychology of it all.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Do you think that's true? I do think that's true. And I think that a lot of magazine writers are drawn to that because whenever you're telling someone's story in depth, um, if you're really doing your job as a magazine reporter, a lot of the time you're going to see connections and patterns that they themselves haven't seen, which I think is one of the reasons why people speak to journalists in the first place. They don't realize it. But it's very rare that somebody is sitting across from you and really taking the time to take in all the details of your life and show that, you know, level of attention and care to what's happening in your life.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

It's interesting because actually, one of the first things you said was that when we sent you the prep doc, that you actually felt seen, which by the way, we were all very amazed by that. But I think one of the things I also find in doing this conversation on the couch is people will tell you things that they may not have talked about before. And people say to me, How is that? And I say, usually people say nobody ever asked.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

I think that's exactly right. And people go through their whole lives waiting for people to ask. And people go through their whole lives thinking, oh, it would be rude to ask. But there's all sorts of social science research that suggests when strangers strike up meaningful conversations, you know, on a train or a bus, both parties leave feeling a little bit fulfilled and also surprised that they were as comfortable with it as they would. All of which is to say that people underestimate how willing people are and really how eager people are to open up and say something true.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

This is the perfect messy part. Um, so one of the things I've discovered in 50-some episodes now is it really a lot of it starts in childhood for people. We know a little bit about your brother and your um sister. You obviously are very interested in family dynamics. But when you think back to who you were as a young child growing up in Harrison, like paint that picture for me.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

I was the youngest of three, which I think meant I did a lot of observing. And um, I always joke that I talk really quickly because I felt like I had to speak quickly to get a word in because I was the youngest of three. I was born a bookish child. I can't say my parents, you know, read to me for hours or um there was some retreat into no, I just always loved a good story. I loved books. I was pretending to read before I could read, and I read very young. A huge amount of my emotional life, I would say, transpired, you know, in the process of reading books. I wish I could connect two books now the way that I did then. I mean, they, my whole mood, my whole feeling about the world was dictated by it. And I think a lot of it was my curiosity about adult life. You know, what's why do people divorce? Why do people get married? What's that? Why were you interested in that? I just was curious. I do, I do not know. I honestly think I was just born a curious person. But I loved writing. I loved reading from a young age. I, you know, went to a perfectly good public elementary school where I was encouraged and told pretty early on, you know, I think you're a writer. Whether they had said it or not, I just think I was going to be one.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Were there messy parts in your childhood? Because it sounds like you had this like idyllic perfect Westchester life.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Yes, there were definitely messy parts. Um, so you know, one of the reasons I think I wrote the book is because I always just assumed I would be a novelist. All I did was inhale literature. My mom grew up on the lower east side in um real financial hardship and had, you know, was in constant amazement to find herself living an upper middle class life. There wasn't a lot of pressure to get great grades necessarily. They were pretty, I always say they were bathrobe till noon kind of people, you know, on the weekends. But their the main emphasis was just um make a good living. That was sort of always the focus. And I think there was a little bit of preoccupation with um finances. Um, and my father had a very high-pressure job, which didn't always make it easy to get- What did he do? He ran ad sales at CBS, but historically it's kind of interesting. He ran ad sales at CBS right at the moment when those three networks were losing their stronghold on advertisers because a flood of competitors on cable were starting to come in. And your sister followed in his footsteps at Viacom. Precisely into his footsteps. Yes, exactly. Uh, my sister was a well, it's funny. Ellen, what Ellen ended up doing, which I always think is interesting, is my dad was the business side and I was what you might call a creative. And Ellen bridged the gap between business and creative when she left Viacom. That's the role that she was filling, which I kind of loved.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

And was there different roles each of you played in the family, including your brother?

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Um, let's see. My brother was six years older than I am. He was pretty quiet. You know, my dad is like a real hail fellow, well-met kind of. He was an ad sales guy. I mean, you so you got it. Yeah, exactly. Super outgoing. My friends always told me that he looked like he should be president. You know, he had this like, he was very corporate looking. And my brother was a little bit quieter, I would say, a little bit maybe more bookish. My sister was very much, she looks like my dad, and she was interested in similar things. They were both very good with their hands, I would say, and very visual, which I am not at all. Like if you send me a postcard, I will read every word of it. I will not even notice what's on the cover of the postcard, you know? So all very different. Yes. And my sister and I, people, my sister and I looked so different, in fact, that when we were little, we went to a summer camp together. And people found it so hard to believe we were sisters because Ellen was fair and straight-haired and very blue-eyed and pink of cheek. And I do not look like that. And they actually put us in different rooms, these kids, and they like grilled us about things like what's your father's middle name, because they didn't believe that we were sisters. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

And we are temperamentally very, very different, also. Do you think there was more sort of competition with your sister or comparison with your sister growing up? Because you write about family dynamics, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Oh, yeah. It was very, very intense. I mean, we each had sort of different things going for us and we kind of stayed in our lane a little bit. And of course, that's always this interesting question about siblings, you know, when they are so different, is it because they're desperately trying to individuate? Is it that they were genetically inclined to move in different directions and they're encouraged to do that? I myself have fraternal twins. Um, you know, I always say that we fed them the same food, we read them the same books, we, you know, had the same job charts, whatever it was. The joke I make is that one of my sons was the social chair of his fraternity at the University of Wisconsin. Oh big school. Yeah. And then and then his brother's form of Greek life was studying ancient Greek at this very unusual and tiny school called St. John's College, which is like a great books program.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

My roommate friend Barner transferred to St.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

John's. Oh so I've actually been. Oh, wow. So he was at the one in Santa Fe. He just transferred to Haverford, but he's still studying ancient languages and he is not a fraternity kind of guy. You know, it's the literal opposite. They are, they could not be more different. I mean, I console myself, or you know, I tell myself that they're both very kind. That's what they have in common, is they're very sweet boys.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Growing up, I read that your brother basically convinced you to start a school newspaper because he saw something for you, which you didn't even. I mean, it sounds like you knew you wanted to be a writer, but he pushed you to sort of take a step that's actually further than that, right? Starting something is almost like starting a business. So that's maybe the part of your dad.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Well, that's really funny because I would say that um to this day, I am highly not entrepreneurial. I'm not a natural leader of any kind. I don't, I'm not a starter of something.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

I don't know because you started a paper.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

But that was kind of the one and only time that I've ever really taken on something like that. I wouldn't say I'm a private person, but I'm not somebody who necessarily is someone that people are like, that's a girl I want to follow into battle. You know, I just, I, it's just not my role. My sister is very, maybe it's because I had an older sister who was, I think she wouldn't be surprised to hear me say this a little bossy. I myself was not, you know, a particularly bossy person. Um but you're not recessive. No, I'm not. But I don't feel the need to run things. I sort of zone out at restaurants when people are deciding what to order, let them figure it out. You know, I'm not, I don't love making decisions. I don't, I don't find any of that particularly fun. So you don't think of yourself as entrepreneurial, and yet you start this paper. Yes. Although I would say what was really formative about the moment was not that I was leading the newspaper, but that I loved the work of doing it so much right away. Like I played piano, I was not necessarily inherently talented, but I did love it a lot. I played a lot of piano, I ran track pretty seriously. And at a certain point, my piano teacher said to me, Look, it's gotta be piano or newspaper. You can't do both. And I was like, it's been nice working with you. I mean, I just knew the second I showed up at the paper that that's where I belonged. And how did you know that? I just enjoyed it and I felt like I was my most me self and I felt my most confident and my most comfortable.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

So if you had to give advice to somebody graduating now into what seems like a pretty messy world, you seem to have found yourself in that moment of doing the newspaper to your point. It was like you were in flow. There was something that connected for you. What is that people should be looking for?

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Well, it's interesting that you say that because I always feel a little bit guilty when I give people career advice because I think I was a little bit unusual in that I knew the environment in which I felt most comfortable and most myself. It was very apparent. But to the extent that you can feel in yourself when you feel most at home, I'm sure you're familiar with Jody Cantor's book, How to Start. I think Jody makes a great point, which is what is the role that you play with your friends? Are you the person they come to when they need help with math? Are you the person they come to when they need advice? Are you the person they come to when they need like a big idea of a project to get started? Those things really do tell you how other people see you. And chances are if they're coming to you for it, it's because they know you like doing it. And that's something to pay attention to.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

It's almost like you're deconstructing yourself through a journalist's eyes in order to be able to understand yourself.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Yes, what you're describing. Yes, I think that's true. I mean, it's what's interesting is I was obviously reading about you before I came here, and I'm so amazed by how many different kinds of things you've done. And they all do require a certain amount of creative and entrepreneurial spirit mixed together. Um, but I feel like I'm a rubber band that can only stretch so far in one direction in terms of where my talents are. I do teach also now, um, and I do love that. And I sometimes think it would be great to be able to do that with all of my resources and all of my attention. Um what do you like about that? About teaching. First of all, it's it's almost like writing. You start and then by the end of the day, you have a page full. I'm lucky enough to teach at Yale, and those kids have a tremendous learning. I want to undergraduate. I just enjoy their company. Um, I it's a way to keep in touch with the future. You know, the New York Times is not the youngest of institutions. Um, God bless it.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

And how do you pick what to write about? Like, how does that work for you? Because you have a pretty wide range from the really crazy IVF mix-up story, which I really wanted to like go down that rabbit hole much, much deeper. Yeah. Um, you know, to menopause to writing about translators. Like what you have a very wide range.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Yeah. Um, I've I mean, I've written about politics, I've written about banking. Um, I used to work at a magazine called The American Lawyer, started by Steve Brill. I think my curiosity serves me very well. And so I always say that if you ask me to come up with a topic to write about, I'm not, I don't always have that many ideas off the bat. But if you give me a topic and I start digging into it, I will have ideas. So I think just being a very naturally curious and probing person helps me be eclectic. And since it is the messy parts, I would say sometimes I've wondered if that's too bad, you know, if I should have like a brand or if I should focus on a certain thing, or should I just be throwing myself really into investigative work, you know, in order to make policy change happen.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

So you graduate from high school and you go to Yale. What was that like? Did you feel like you just landed like the perfect dream scenario and like life was gonna be great?

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Definitely not. I um I when I got in, I thought that certainly. Um, having been like a bookish person in a pretty like John Hughes movie kind of high school where there weren't a lot of kids who wanted to say, like, yes, I also loved the unbearable lightness of being. Let's get coffee and talk about it. At Yale, there were kids like that. So that was fun. The truth is that I think imposter syndrome is endemic at Yale, like and you know, at a lot of these schools. Um, and I suffered from it pretty badly. By by that you mean you felt like somehow you weren't worthy to be there? Yes. Even though I didn't get in, I wasn't a legacy, I didn't, my parents weren't donors, I wasn't an athlete, but I felt like a pretty average suburban kid. And there were, it's funny, you you go to Yale and there's a lot of people to be intimidated by. There's the beautiful people, there's the children of seventh generations. It's so funny. Every school has the beautiful people. Yes, and every school has like the seventh generation version and the, you know, and the very wealthy. And the young people I was most intimidated by were the academ, the children of academics. And there were a lot of those too. So I, yeah, I had a lot of imposter syndrome. My sophomore year, I was like, oh, I get it. They have a patter. I can learn that patter too. And I I have things to say. I tell my students I didn't take a single, I only took one writing class at Yale because you had to you have to apply to these writing classes, and some of them were very competitive.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

And then why didn't you apply? Because you didn't think you would get in. I couldn't risk it.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

If they told me I wasn't a writer, I knew I wasn't gonna be a writer. And I needed to hold it close to me. And I I couldn't, I couldn't put it out there and risk having Yale, which had already told me many times I wasn't something enough. I couldn't also have Yale tell me you're not a writer.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

But that's so interesting because right, you would think like you get into the school and all of a sudden you find your path, but really all of a sudden you're just with like all type A's at all time. And it actually makes you feel more alone rather than finding your tribe.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

I know I think it was its own form of class anxiety. Again, my parents were very upper middle class people, but they didn't go to graduate school. That my my grandfather was my cousin always said he wasn't the guy who uh hired the guys to paint your house. He wasn't the contractor, he was the guy the contractor called, you know, one of the five men who shows up and you know paints the house. Even though, of course, I did come from an upper middle class home. In some ways, my background was at that time pretty unusual. I mean, most of my friends' parents were academics or PhDs or, you know, had gone to graduate school, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Sorry. So we go back. Your brother tells you to start this thing. You said you wanted to be a novelist. Yes. And you tried it once before you actually wrote your book.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Well, I mean, not even. I think I went, I had a summer job once and it was run by this resort by this wonderful, now dearly departed woman named Jane Orange. Um, it's called Quisisana, this resort. And um she said, you know, after you're done at one being a chambermaid, there's this empty cabin. If you want to write fiction, you go write. And I was like, great, I'll finally be a fiction writer. I won't be busy with my academics. And it turns out I really do not have much of an imagination.

unknown 15:59

Really?

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Uh well, I don't know. I've so now that my kids have gone and we're sort of empty nest, I joined a writer's group of wonderful people in my community, um, Hastings on Hudson. And I've been messing around with fiction and I've been having a wonderful time with it for the first time in my entire life. For somebody who's listening who's like, oh, I want to be a journalist, what does that mean? It means you're 53 years old. It's 110 degrees on the campus of New College in Florida. Somebody says to you, Oh, that's the kid who showed up at that thing and said that thing. And you in 103 degree heat at the age of 53 are literally running across campus to try to corral an 18-year-old into talking to you. Like it is a humble pursuit, you know, and it can be um, it can be scary, it can be uncomfortable. There's a lot of asking of questions that people don't want asked. For me, the reporting is both the best of the job, um, but also the thing I am very happy to have done. It's so much safer and easier to be in your studio, um, tap, tap, tap on your laptop, um, no longer putting yourself out there or making yourself invisible or trying to overhear or asking dumb questions. I mean, it's complicated reporting.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

It's interesting because in some ways you're a loner, but you're also not shy, right? Because the act of reporting requires you to put yourself out there, to chase, to try and get the source to speak, right? That's a pretty in-your face kind of thing that you have to bring out of you, somebody who likes to sort of recede and go right.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

So it's funny because my son always says that he's an introvert, but he says that doesn't mean he's shy. He is he's confident. He just doesn't crave time with other people necessarily. I think for me, I'm realizing is I do very well one-on-one. In almost any one-on-one situation, I'm pretty comfortable. Put me at like a big group at like a dinner party or a big party or a gathering, a weekend getaway. Um, that's not always as comfortable for me. But a lot of reporting is one-on-one. And I think that's why it works for me. But yes, I am I have a lot of anybody who knows me well would say, I'm sure this is true of you as well. I have a lot of hustle, you know. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Oh yeah. I say that's one of the things that's common about everybody who's come on the couch. Like you can't get to someplace without hustle. I mean, it requires hustle. You can't just manifest from your bedroom.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Yeah. And it requires creativity and it requires like digging deep to find the energy to do the weird thing or the hard thing or the thing that's starting from zero, you know, getting on a plane or, you know, saying goodbye to your kids when they're three years old and have a fever.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

I mean, I, you know, it's funny because we started this thing you may have read about called the longest table, where people put the table down and people come. And it really, it's kind of this amazing thing because it's a moment of community. And I had to go Friday to one in Miami. I went by myself, which, you know, to your point about you get on the plane when you have the job, it's lonely. Yes, right? I agree. And I I remember checking into the hotel. It was a few hours before, you know, I had to find the event. And I was like, you know, it's so interesting. I'm here for this moment of community, but I'm spending several hours by myself feeling lonely. Yeah. Right? Yeah trying to figure out the metro rail, like, you know. And then I got there in this moment with 400 people. And it's amazing how like you can just, you know, you go to that story, you get your story. It's very exciting. And then on the other side, there's sort of again the lull as you're coming back. Okay, so you graduate from Yale, and what what what's the first thing you end up doing?

SPEAKER_01 19:18

I um applied for like a bunch of editorial assistant jobs at various magazines and didn't get them. If you're interviewing to be an editorial assistant at a women's magazine, maybe better not to say in the interview. So do people who work at women's magazines ever leave women's magazine? It really signals you want the job. I did not get that job. Um, but I did get a job at Glamour magazine. I was an editorial assistant for three and a half. Who was the editor-in-chief then? The beloved and legendary Ruth Whitney. The thing I always say about Ruth Whitney is editors, if you got called to Ruth's office, I would watch these grown women literally run down the hall while applying lipstick. That was how much they respected her. It wasn't really fear, it was just people really, really wanted to impress that woman. She was incredible.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

So, how did you end up that job? Because it seems like not the job you would have wanted.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

It was not the job that I wanted. I very much wanted to work in magazines. I think it's important for people to know that the world used to work in a way that wasn't always so great. My dad worked in ad sales. He knew somebody who did ad sales for Conde Nast. I think there's a lot of favor trading back then. So I got an interview. I didn't get guaranteed the job. By the way, the same person who got me the one at Glamour also got me the interviews I didn't get. Yeah. But I did get a foot in the door. And I worked for this woman named Judy Daniels, um, who had um been the first female editor of life. And she always said she was gonna write a book called I Met Everyone Once. She had an insane Rolodex. I don't know if even people listening to this know what a Rolodex is, but I can I still use that word. I can turn it around. Yes, I can still picture her handwriting and all the insane names on it, including Gloria Steinem and people like that. So she was great. Um, and one of the things she said to me is if you want to be a writer, be an editor for as long as you can stand it. Because when you're ready to be a writer, all those people you worked alongside will give you assignments and they know you and they trust you. Why as long as you can stand it?

SPEAKER_00 21:08

I didn't want to be an editor because really you didn't want to be an editor.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Now, why was I an editor and not trying to be a writer of some kind? Because my parents wanted me to have a job that had security and a career track. But I did it till I was 30. My students think that's like insane, you know. Well, everything seems like an eternity when you're young. Exactly. I know. Um, but I was I was a full-on editor until I was 30 years old. And were you writing for yourself on the side? Barely. Um, I was running actually, I did sort of, I think not particularly well, but I was running a print magazine called Nerve. Nerve had a huge online presence. They started a print magazine and brought me in to do that. And that was an incredibly creative, wonderful, wild place. They ran out of money at a certain point. And um I had just met my husband. And how'd you meet him? Uh we met at a party. And my husband was uh it's much more of an Artist than I am and much more of a free spirit. And he'd basically been living from artist colony to artist colony. And what was that like? I got a lot of debt along the way. I wasn't, I wasn't always pretty. And I think it was also quite lonely not having an infrastructure. Um, but he definitely encouraged me to make the leap and become a writer.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

And uh at 30, that's what I did. It's funny because um I we went at I went to longest table at NYU and I happened to sit next to kid. We'd actually spoken at a panel about the longest table to his class. I happened to sit next to him and he asked me a question that he didn't get a chance to ask when I was in the room, which is how did you have the guts to just pick up and move to Argentina, which is a crazy thing I did after graduating college. He was so interested in that. And I was like, Well, why don't you go take the risk? You have no debt. I mean, this is kind of the moment to take the risks. Yeah. And he was worried about disappointing his parents. Sure. And living up to his parents', you know, expectation. And so here you are, right? You're like, I'm gonna be an editor and do the right thing, be the good girl, right? Versus, you know, I'm just gonna go off and live in a colony and write. Right. Like, what was it that needed you to satisfy your parents instead of just satisfy yourself in that moment?

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Well, you know, one thing I think is something that I did observe writing my book is that people who want to impress their parents usually respect their parents a lot. And my parents are, you know, strong, resilient people who did come up from, you know, poverty, basically, especially in my mother's case. They have no idea how much we all still want their approval. And um, it's because we think they're impressive.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

You're an editor for a good period of time, you said, until you were 30. Did you enjoy that?

SPEAKER_01 23:37

There were things about it that I enjoyed. I remember, you know, you get to a certain level and, you know, people are kind of listening to you, and that's nice. And and you, there are perks that come with it. But I I, as I said, group dynamics are are maybe a little hard for me. So working in an office wasn't always that easy. People say that you should do the career. That's not just the thing you want to do, but is the life that you want to lead. And as a writer, I I love going to the office. I love my colleagues at the New York Times magazine. That is an incredible group of people. For me personally, it's also, and probably for everyone else, it's probably nice that I'm not there every single day.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

You basically grew up in the media business. I spent a good amount of time in the media business. It's an industry that's completely being disintermediated. I was thinking of that actually as I was reading some of your articles that are long form, because you know, doing a podcast, it's all about the shorts. I mean, it is like literally the inverse of everything we grew up with. Yeah, yeah. Um, you'll come on, we'll do the full episode, people will listen to it, but most people will see a very short clip because that's how now people consume content. Yeah. Uh-huh. Like a clip will get 110,000 views. Yes, including me. Yeah. Uh-huh. So as you think about this industry, right? And you're teaching students, what advice do you have for people who want to go into this business that has, I don't know, I feel like it's been disintermediated for like my last 30 years.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

It's it's interesting because I think that people are still, first of all, they're still writing books. And I don't know if people are reading books, but the publishers are still buying them. And so sometimes I tell my students, you know, maybe you want to think about writing a book. If you have an idea that no one else has had and you are uniquely positioned to tell it, publishers also love young people. And other colleagues of mine who teach would never tell young people that because it is hard to write a book. But I'm not sure it gets easier with age. It's hard for everybody to write a book. I all I can tell you is that my students get jobs. They go work at The Atlantic, they work at Politico, they um, you know, some of them do it for a while and then go to law school. It's true. But most of the kids, if you are committed to it and you can get, you know, an ally behind you, um, they get jobs.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

They do get jobs. I just actually was in an event. I met a young writer at a magazine that was much bigger in its heyday than it is today. And I was like, why are you not on Substack? Why are you not doing other things? Because the the move forward is almost no longer just gated at the Atlantic or Politico. Everybody's doing everything at Substack. We had somebody on actually not that long ago who actually is incredibly successful now on Substack, yeah, way more so than when she was gated at a job.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

But it is nice to build a following at a more mainstream publication. It's also nice to learn some skills from people who are more senior than you. And it's also nice to have the resources to go report. I mean, that is, of course, like what journalists worry about with Substack, is there aren't that many people who have the time and ability to actually report out new things that have not been said to the world. And that is pretty much democracy is like built on. You know, somebody has to find stuff out. And I do think it's worth getting training in also just journalistic ethics. I don't think you need to go to journalism grad school. I don't even think you need to take classes at Yale in journalism. I mean, it'll help you get a job, but journalism is not sacred. It's talk about the messy parts. It is a messy business. And the sausage can be really not pretty, but there are some basic rules that every journalist I know who's well trained stands by and would sacrifice a lot to uphold. I don't know if you get that if you just get out of school and you start writing a Substack. And so how has AI impacted your life? Well, it definitely is intimidating and intense. And I went from being somebody who really never used it at all. In the last piece I did that was a very complex science piece, I came around feeling like I don't actually know how I did my job before I had this. I I now use Notebook LM. Isn't that an amazing tool? Oh, yeah. Oh my God. I uploaded every interview and was able to, you know, obviously pull quotes and check them against the originals. It hallucinates, it makes mistakes. Notebook LM was just for somebody who's not that naturally organized, saved me a huge amount of time. But also Google Gemini, I was writing pretty complex scientific stuff. You know, the Times magazine, we have the luxury of this incredible fact-checking department. But I, for myself, would write a version of something that was new to me and I would put it into Google Gemini. The New York Times has its own accounts that we use, so it's feels more secure to me. And I would just say, is this accurate? And it would get me closer to something that would be closer to what the fact checker would ultimately do.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

I love that you can put reams of research into Notebook LM and it'll make it into an audiophile so you can listen to it walking.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Yes, that too. Yeah. I mean, it can do many, many, many wonderful things.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

I mean, it can't do everything and there's many issues, but yeah, yes, it's kind of incredible. Yeah. I want to go back to the book because I have a sister who's a journalist, and there were two of us growing up. We're seven years apart from each other. And people often say to us, Oh my God, what was in the water in your house? Like, oh my God, what happened? The two of you. Yeah. And it was interesting that you became interested in that.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Well, the other thing that happened I talk about in the book is that my parents used to go away for a long time. Yes. You'll find this funny. I used to say uh when I spoke about the book that my parents would go away for two weeks at a time on business trips. My mom raised her hand at an event and said, Excuse me, we were on vacation. It was the 70s. Parents went away without their kids. Oh, yes, without kids. And they parked each kid with a different family when they went away. We never went on family vacations. Well, you did. You just were going in at somebody else's house. Well, I guess a vacation was, I would say, with the Goldies, who are close friends of my parents. And it was a very different family culture around um enrichment over there. Like, you know, we did they did math for fun at the dinner table. And, you know, there was an expectation that you could talk about the news. And, you know, it was very pointed at the end of this very sophisticated meal that Gail would prepare.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

I like that you say at my home, we would just focus on chewing, finish chewing your food.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Oh, yeah. Manners, that was what we were focused on. And also, you know, we were sort of like quarreling amongst ourselves when my parents were talking about my dad's day. Did they not quarrel at these people's homes? Oh, they did. But um, but but they also had these other conversations that we were most definitely not having. Um, what really interested me was what would it be like to grow up in a family where people told you all the time, the sky's the limit. Whatever you want, you can do it. Because my parents were so supportive and wonderful. They paid for my college, they, you know, took me to the library. There wasn't a message of, sure, you know, sure, why not you?

SPEAKER_00 30:03

No, it was much more conservative than that. I mean, I definitely grew up in a family where they were like, why not you? Even though I don't know why they would have thought that.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Look, they were immigrants.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Those people have nerve and verve. They are not fearful people, a hundred percent. And now I think back to my own parents because we moved here in the middle of a hostage crisis. And my dad was a banker, my mom did TV strategy in Iran. So already they were kind of different. Yeah. Young, both working parents, but they moved there and decided to open up a French bakery. Yeah. They knew nothing about that. I was like, what occurred to them? Because those are usually successful businesses. Like, we're gonna land here and we'll open up a French bakery. I so distinctly remember I wanted to be a journalist and a friend of my dad's, and I was gonna go to school and um study English or journalism or whatever. And he was like, English is not your first language. That's not a thing for you. So you don't need your environment, isn't just the one in your home.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

Oh no, your environment, your parents are a tiny bit of your environment, but that's but also Harrison High School. I can't think of a single journalist who came out of Harrison High School. You went to law school, you became a banker, you took over your dad's pizza place, you went into schmata trade, you went into fashion, you know. I can't explain there was not a lot of modeling of the creative life.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

You say you're an introvert, but actually you have this incredible community that you, you know, from camp and otherwise. Oh, lots of you say that you weren't necessarily creative or have imagination, you've won polls surprises, right? There's this like that you weren't told you could do everything, but frankly, you kind of have done everything. Despite all the things you think or say, your lived experience is different.

SPEAKER_01 31:35

Well, but of course I could sort of go back to you and say that I am those things within a very narrow bandwidth. You know what I mean? In the sense that, like, I do think I'm creative. That doesn't mean that I can write fiction, that I, you know, that I have that particular skill.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

What if you change that narrative for yourself? What if you said, I actually can do that? Well, I'm trying. I am trying. I'm just saying maybe the limits are the ones we put on ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

I am sure that's true. And um, I think my whole life has been um the practice of trying to dismantle the sense of limits that I probably have imposed on myself out of a culture of conservatism in my own loving family.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

I do think there's some actual science to if you put it out there. I might I saw a documentary years ago called What the Bleep Do I Know, which was about the actual science of manifesting in some ways, right? If you put it onto the universe, it was like at a particle physics or something. But I would say to you, like, what if you switch that narrative for yourself?

SPEAKER_01 32:33

Um, I love that idea. And maybe I'll I'll start working on it. Uh, you know, and by the way, I'm not complaining either. I hope that's clearer. Yeah, it's not, it's not a complaint. It's more just a it's a mirror. Yes. Yeah, no, I think that's this is like talk about an edifying and psychologically um bitch. Yeah, the blue angel, we'll call it. I think I basically am I've been somebody who just puts one step in front of the other and am not great. I really admire people who are great at taking a pullback and strategizing and who are those people?

SPEAKER_00 33:02

We all we just name a few. No, I think really because I like you. I'm one step in front of the other.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

And all you can do is create the time for it and the space for it. So, even more important than telling myself that, you know, Sue, if you really want to write a great novel, you are going to write one. I think even more important than that is saying, Sue, you really want to write a great novel. Why don't you carve out two hours every morning before you do anything else? Exactly. Why don't you join a writer's group? I yeah, and I am in a wonderful writer's group and I love it very much. What I need to do, and I'm happy we're having this conversation because now I will, is I need to make that a regular practice, not just when I'm on deadline. That's the messy part gift for you.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Thank you. I'll take it and run with it. I love it. You do have that great girl inclination. I have that, right? Like, I mean, I knew people who didn't turn things in. I didn't think that was an option. I know. Right. It was like, if you give me an assignment, I will do it. That is just how it works. Yeah. So if you make that an assignment for yourself, which is kind of a good no for all listeners, right? It's like I went to coffee with a friend and she wants to do a podcast. And I was like, why is she asking? Why isn't she just doing it? Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

So yes, yeah. Um giving yourself that permission. Giving yourself the permission, giving your, you know, and taking yourself seriously enough to build in something as boring as structure. That is part of the creative process, is doing the structure to make it possible.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

You know, and I so it's interesting. So I was saying to you, we're seven years apart, me and my sister. And in your book, one of the things that I sort of took away was this idea that the siblings sort of make the road for each other. We sort of had that as living embodiment because we were seven years apart. So I had things that I could in part because I went first by a long shot. Yeah. And then our parent, or you know, my dad drowned and um my dad died. And then mom really sort of fell apart. So I remember saying to her, we really need to send Susie to boarding school. I'll I'll meet you to make it easier for you to bring her. Wow. Like if we can't afford it, maybe there'll be a scholarship. I mean, in some ways it was like being a parent without being the parent. Yeah. Wow. Um, or saying, you know, she actually ended up in boarding school in Connecticut at Taft, and I was here in graduate school. And I was like, she can stay with me for the summer because she needs to get a job. She can't just come home and do nothing. And I remember like help introducing her to um now Senator Koons, but at the time he was just working at the Eugene Lang Foundation, Chris Koons. I at the time I knew Chris Koons. At the time, he was running the um I Have a Dream Foundation. He wasn't the senator. And I said, Oh, I have a sister, she's, you know, whatever, a sophomore in high school. And he said, Oh, oh yeah, we have internships. I remember she was actually interning, and I had a summer job in investment banking, so I was never around. So basically, like, that was a crazy idea because she was in New York City by herself doing all kinds of crazy, I don't know what, while I was at a 24-7 job. But in that way, it was like I felt a responsibility to help because there was nobody else to help her.

SPEAKER_01 35:51

And you had a vision that your mom couldn't have just by virtue of her background and her experience.

SPEAKER_00 35:56

I don't know, because my mom had the vision to be like, oh, you should go to Columbia.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

So she had it in her. That's one step, but the the like, let's get her an internship with this person who seems like a good mentor who's going places, that's probably one level beyond what your mother might have been able to figure out.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

Well, I mean, I would say to you, I think that was one level beyond what she could figure out once my dad died. So, in writing the book, what did it show you or what did it reflect for you about your own upbringing and your relationship with your siblings?

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Well, I hadn't even reflected on that moment with my brother until I was writing the book and suddenly we met. Because I was writing about Marilyn Holyfield, who was a civil rights activist who grew up in Tallahassee, basically, uh, you know, Jim Crow era. And her brother, she was telling me, bullied her in he had gone to Harvard Law School and founded the Black Harvard Law School Association, Students' Association. And he sort of bullied her into going to Harvard Law School because he saw her talents and knew that it would give her opportunities that she wouldn't get elsewhere. I remember thinking he kind of reminds me of my older brother. And then I remembered that story. So I just think you see things in a way that you don't. Um, I thought a lot, I wrote something for Oprah for O'Daly about my sister, also because my sister had a really different path for me. She went into corporate America and which is a much more professional place. And it's all about the um, there are a lot of like very clear rules about how to operate in a workplace that journalists never get briefed in. I think it was invaluable to have my sister to turn to to say, like, I have this slightly sticky professional situation. How do I handle it professionally? How do I negotiate? How do I take this opportunity? And how do I say no to this while not losing standing? You know, Ellen will tell me when I'm out of line, when I'm being ridiculous, when I'm being unreasonable. I think your friends are often, it's their default, you know, to say, like, good for you. You should ask for more.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Like, why would I say that? Yes, of course. Like, no, your siblings are there to be brutally honest.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

They are there to be brutally honest. And I think there are wonderful benefits to being an only child to have that constant attention from your parents and to have those financial resources that are undivided. Um, even developmentally, we know that like full-time attention from parents is huge. But the reality check, I think there's only one relationship that really provides that in the same way, that that fearlessness uh and frankness, I think that's a sibling.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

I'm gonna go back. So I have one final question for you. You know, I think a lot about the younger generation, right? And what we can pass on that'll be useful. And I mean, invariably they say, okay, boomer, even though we're not boomers, so we'll put that aside. What piece of advice would you give to somebody like in their 30s now?

SPEAKER_01 38:35

Try to be the person who can see into the future. In other words, try to the extent that you can't take a step back. And if there is um a new working group that is starting to focus on something that feels down the road like maybe it'll be a thing, try to get involved in whatever is the future. Why why is that your advice? Um, I just admire people who do that. And I think that it is, it's first of all, the world is interesting and to be on the edge of where it's changing is just, I think it could be very stimulating. But also that that often is the place where all the energy ends up going. I mean, there were working groups being formed at the New York Times about artificial intelligence, you know, six years ago. And I remember saying, I that's not something I would have done, but to all the editors I knew and admired, I was saying to them, get on that working group.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

Why do you think that you see that opportunity when other people want to just wish it away?

SPEAKER_01 39:28

You know, my father was um an executive at CBS when CBS was the Tiffany Network, and he had the opportunity to go run a cable network. And I think he might say that he didn't quite have the vision to realize that some of those cable networks would go on to become that that actually the forces and that, you know, it it was cable was still like the sad little siblings to use a sibling dynamic. And it became, you know, really, really um a thing. Even when I was interviewing um people for my book, uh you hear these stories about people who were like, oh, my father had this incredibly thriving, beautiful um millinery business. He made beautiful hats and he didn't see that hats were about to go out of fashion. And then they did, and that was that, you know. You hear stories of people who could have sort of seen a little bit ahead and planned for it. My friend Virginia Heffernan, whom I adore. She's a wonderful writer. As a high schooler, she went to her dad taught at Dartmouth, and because she was in a university system, she had access to things like email that nobody else had access to at that time. And I think it made her very digitally comfortable. And she ended up writing about technology and you know, file stories from her phone at a time when all of us and a thing. Yeah, or even something like Twitter. I mean, I'm embarrassed to tell you, it's of course the the rise and fall of Twitter, it doesn't really matter now. But when I started at the New York Times writing a column twice a week, they were begging me to tweet it out and engage and reporte with people. If I had started doing that every time I published a column in whatever year that was, 2011. Yeah, if you started tweeting twice a week with a New York Times account, I would have had a gazillion followers. And I kept saying, I saw that people I admired were doing it, but I was like, I don't know, I don't really like to self-promote and I'm not really comfortable with it, and it's just not what I do. And I look back and I'm just like, dummy. If you see people working on something that seems new and fresh, and maybe you think it's extraneous to your job or it's something for other people to worry about, if it's on the edge, if it's pushing forward, if it feels new, even if it's not your comfort zone, try to get involved. Try to make it your comfort zone.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

It is, it is actually a really great piece of advice. By the way, it's also not lonely because you're like with other people trying to figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

Yes. And by the way, that is the other thing I would say to somebody in their 30s, if they're unhappy with their job or they're not feeling great about it. If you can get yourself into the office more often, if you can move towards a job where there is more interaction in an office, or you can create that community yourself by gathering people, you know, outside of the office, those only good will ever, ever come of that in a million different ways.

SPEAKER_00 42:04

Also a good piece of advice. I hope you enjoyed this amazing conversation I had with Sue. I know you're gonna want to pick up her book and also look for her next article in the New York Times. Remember, tell 10 friends, we're all now sandwich boards because we want more people to listen and also more people to come on and share their messy stories. So like it, review it, and share it with friends.