Amherst Reads Transcript

- Hey Claudia, how are you?

- Hi Tim, good.

- Good, well, I'm thrilled to talk about "Spark." And the chance to actually dive into what I thought was a fascinating read.

- Thank you.

- Yeah, or I should, for all our viewers, I should give a little bit of background. Claudia, and I know each other, since our Amherst days, I was a senior and you were a junior at the South dorm, AKA Party Central hall. We became good friends then, and fortunately for me stayed good friends ever since. And I've seen you through an amazing career of journalism and now doing journalism and writing for magazines and writing books, and speaking of books, I want to bring up this the New York Times bestselling book, "Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder," which is a phenomenal book. And it's sort of a, I think, a good springboard to start this conversation about "Spark." All right. So rather than me talking constantly about what I think, Claudia, can you give me a description of "Spark," and sort of a thumbnail of the book itself?

- Yes, well, first of all, Tim, thanks for doing this. I'm so happy to be here. We've found some ideas off each other for, I would say years, but it's actually been decades and it's really a gift our friendship. So thanks, thanks for doing this. And "Spark," is a book that looks at the evolution of a life journey. So interestingly, when I was at Amherst, I started out thinking I was going to be pre-med, although I always loved writing. I was an English major, but I was interested in psychology and science. And when I left Amherst, I did start initially working as a paralegal. So, my journey to becoming a journalist took a little while it kind of zigged a bit and it zagged a bit and eventually I became a journalist working at Newsweek, but it was a number of years after graduation. And I've always been interested in how people find their sort of moment of what they know works for them and fits for them as their life arc. So in looking at the 12 books, 12 profiles that are sort of deep profiles in the book and then Leonardo da Vinci who is sort of my go-to genius. I looked at different moments in people's life journeys, starting with Prodigies and how they somehow find some kind of ability really early in life to sort of teenage early 20s and then to midlife being kind of the 30's, 40's and then later life, 50's and beyond. And I was, I just found it very inspiring to look at these arcs, because people found these moments at such different times.

- Speaking of which, how did you actually get the, you know, the "Spark," the inspiration for this? You've mentioned Leonardo, did it all come from that?

- Yes, I started reporting on Leonardo da Vinci for National Geographic magazine. And, was really amazed at what I found in terms of some of, you know, some of the obvious things about Leonardo, I think that everybody knows. The scope of what he studied, the many subjects he looked into. I mean, botany and architecture and military engineering and anatomy. I didn't realize how many drawings he left behind thousands and thousands of drawings and sketches as compared to the paintings, which were numbered about two dozen or more. And in the drawings, you just see his ability to observe, to understand, to ask questions, to think. I went to a conference about Leonardo in 2017, started really just diving into his life. And he just raised questions for me in terms of how do you define genius? What are the qualities that he had? And what do you look for in other people? I was able to go to his hometown in Vinci, Italy and, you know, learn about where he was born? Looked at the landscape that he would have looked at as a young boy, and then kind of tracked his life all the way up to his death in France, in the Lower Valley. So, from there I kind of was the springboard, what can I learn about genius and how can I find it in other people?

- And that raises a question about genius, I mean, how did you define it?

- Right, so genius. I kind of think of it in different ways. The first way is sort of the big definition of genius and talking to researchers. I mean, there's no PhD program in genius. It's really, a subject that people take on to study and figure out what are the elements. And they've kind of come up with four main categories. One would be intelligence, but a cautionary note that that doesn't necessarily mean a soaring IQ, you know? It might be a different kind of intelligence or ability. And then, creativity, which is sort of, you know, linked to imagination and curiosity, then grit, you know, some kind of a perseverance or a sticktuitiveness that this person just kind of is, is drawn into the subject and doesn't ever want to leave it, you know? There's a passion about learning more. And then, the one I almost love the most of these elements is luck, because so often there is good fortune in some way, and it might be a parent in the case of somebody like Mozart or Yo-Yo Ma, who are profiling the book, whose father was a musician and his mother a singer. And that's how he became introduced to music. So that could be a parent, it could be a mentor. I profile Eleanor Roosevelt in "Spark." Who met at her mentor, a boarding school in London, who really was the first person who sort of saw her, the curiosity of her mind, her ability, her potential. You know, some adult in the person's life that cultivates that journey. But you know, it also might be one of these crazy moments like Julia child, who's in the book who has this meal in France, the first meal of her life in France. And it sparks this incredible desire to learn more. So, those are sort of the four elements. And then, just to move past the big definition, in the book, I used genius almost as I stretched the definition to also include moments of genius in people's lives. So, I may not be the genius you think of and sort of on the pedestal kind of genius like Einstein or Marie Curie or somebody like that. But they, have these moments of genius and leave some element of genius behind.

- Hmmh. Well, and what's also remarkable about the book is you touch on the science, the history, and then the biography, obviously the arc of their lives or the arc of what, of that spark, and how they've changed generations after them, or in some cases, people are still alive, but have changed the world around them.

- Right.

- So how did you pick these, the 12 and not... There were 13, but Leonardo seems pretty clear, how about the other 12? What was the process?

- Right, so I kind of, you know, I really made a list of many, many names. Where, I wanted to find a group of people who stretched to historical, you know, a nice number of years in history, let's say a couple of centuries, at least, because I actually go back to Isaac Newton's life in the 1600's, and then up to contemporary. I wanted to include men and women, I wanted to have some diversity, I wanted to have some level of difference in livelihoods. So I didn't want 12 artists, I wanted a politician, an artist, a scientist, a chef, so that people, you know, reading the book and also for my own interest, these different kinds of careers, how do they evolve? How do you find them in each of these lives? And then I wanted to piece it together in a way that you would start in the beginning. And, my first chapter is Pablo Picasso who was, you know? Drawing in the dust outside of his home in Malaga, Spain when he was just still a tiny kid. And then progressed by age of discovery all the way up to my last profile, his grandma, Moses. The sort of the quintessential late bloomer didn't start painting until her 70's at her first art show at the age of 80 and then had a two decade career. So, that's the kind of arc that I was looking for along with those other qualities of differences and interesting people, people that interested me.

- Yeah, maybe one thing that just came to me now, is how often do you get the question, is there still hope for me?

- Yes. But I think I like--

- But is there hope for me?

- Yeah, there's definitely hope for you, and I think there's hope for anybody watching this, because that was definitely the message I got. I mean, if you think about people like Eleanor Roosevelt, who one of her proudest moments was spearheading the UN declaration of human rights, which she did in her early 60's. You know, somebody like Peter Mark Roget who I just, his life was very, very unknown to me in the sense that I knew. Roget is the source, of course I was an English major, I used that constantly and I still use it, but who was he? And it turns out he was a scientist, a really accomplished scientist, a medical guy throughout his life. But he wrote this, the source back, it was a childhood interest he came back to and it was published in his 70's, he went on to oversee multiple auditions. So, I think the lesson is absolutely, there's still hope, there's still time. I think that we all, it's sort of a societal thing, I think we tend to give ourselves a kind of a point at which things are said to be on the decline or a sort of retirement has this very heavy sort of sense of it's the end and you're just going to piddle around, but that's so untrue in terms of people's possibilities and potential. So I really see genius and even in a small way as like the pinnacle of each person's potential. And I think, you know, if you have good health and you are able to persist into later years, that there's absolutely, there's still hope and there's still time.

- So who was the hardest person to cut from the list? You must have had a much broader list to begin with.

- Yeah, you know, there were, there were so many interesting people I had to choose between somebody like Mozart, who I thought would have been really interesting as a musician, interesting life, kind of a, kind of a crazy personality, but decided, you know, let me try a contemporary figure here because I hadn't done that in the first book, and I thought it'd be really interesting to go there and spark and chose Yo-Yo Ma as my person who fit into the musical category. You know, I thought about all sorts of people ranging from Aretha Franklin to JFK, to Jackie Robinson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, all different moments. By the time I, you know, they were all in a way hard to cut, but by the time I was cutting, I hadn't gone deep into each of those lives enough to really feel, a deep connection that made it so hard, because by that time I was done with calling through the list, the kind of the 12 kind of emerged as these fit together, almost like a puzzle. But there were certainly plenty that I'd love to go back to.

- Ahaa, and when you say fit together like a puzzle, do you feel like they each serve cover a different aspect of genius and accomplishment?

- Yes, I mean, I think I, you know, when I went through the people on the list and tried to come up with, you know, markers for that chapter. So, Eleanor Roosevelt for example, is sort of the grit and resilience piece of it. I profile Sarah Blakely, who's another contemporary figure. I wanted a woman in business and I thought it would be interesting to have a young woman who's contemporary. I'd heard her talk about her story about founding Spanx on the radio. I thought it was fascinating and it turned out for her, when I got to know what her story was when I talked to her. You know, failure became the theme that she grew up in a family where her father nourished this idea, that failure was a good thing that only through failure do you appreciate and understand and work towards success. So she kind of...

- Well, you see that would make me a genius. If there is in failure.

- You must count failure as part of your life journey because you know, otherwise if you don't fail, first of all, you probably don't get to success because any genius. Now, here I'm going to kind of go to Maya Angelou, who I profile also. She talks about how people would often say to her, you make it look so easy. And it drove her crazy 'cause she said writing is so hard. They don't see the hard work, and I know people have told me that throughout my reporting career, I interviewed an incredible scientist named Judah Folkman once who, was in cancer research. And when I went to his library, he, you know, we were talking about his success that I was interviewing him about, but he turned around and he pointed to his bookshelf kind of like a shelf behind me and said, "those are all things that didn't pan out. You need to remember that those are all the failures, and I only got here, because I also went through all of that." And so I think it's such a critical point that no matter who the genius is, they're never these light bulb moments that just happen and turn the person, you know, from one day into the next into somebody brilliant. It's always hard work and it's time invested and patience.

- Yeah, well, it's funny, you said light bulb too, 'cause I instantly thought of Edison who, you know, was famous for trying thousands of different ways to get somewhere.

- Right.

- He knew where he wanted to go, but not how.

- Right.

- Failed repeatedly.

- He did. And he, I think, talked about it repeatedly and he had, you know, if you look at the photographs of him with all of his people, I mean, he never did any of it alone either, that's another really crucial, crucial element of genius is the idea that it's collaborative.

- Collaborative. But he's out of the books, so let's stop talking about--

- He's not, he was, he was considered, but...

- Well, yeah, but, but you do cover other people who are inventors and business, huge successes in one in particular, you know, several in particular are still alive. So I was really curious what it was like to write about people who are alive, 'cause in "Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder." Everyone was dead in that. So I'm curious what that was like to write about people who are still in this world.

- Yeah, it was a little nerve wracking. I decided to do it because I thought, you know, the last book was all historical, as you mentioned. And I thought it would be really interesting to bump this up a little bit in the sense of add this, a level of contemporary life people, names that people identify with. I mean, in Andy Warhol, I had people as sort of old as Dastoevsky and I thought, you know, it'd be nice here, If I'm going to do Isaac Newton, let's also do Bill Gates, Sarah Blakely, as I mentioned of Spanx and Yo-Yo Ma. Get some contemporary voices, so I can really, you know, in a way go go to the journalism that I love to do, which is go onsite and do interviews and meet people and talk to their families, versus digging deep into historical records, which I also love to do. But it was a nice opportunity to open it up a bit and to give it a little extra charge in terms of some of the moments today. So, you know, I interviewed Bill Gates during the pandemic by email, which was just a fascinating experience and being able to get answers from him to questions, Yo-Yo Ma I was able to meet and follow around when he was doing some of not only playing Bach Cello Suites, which he's been on a journey for the last couple of years doing, but also, see him see him interact with, with communities that he visited. And Sarah Blakely, I heard her speak at an entrepreneurs conference. Part of NPR is how I built this summit out in California. Heard her speak, got to talk to people who heard her speak and then got to talk to her. And it really, it was, I think really invigorating for me to be connected to people alive today who've done remarkable things and who've, you know, whose lives will leave remark, you know, long past our own. So it was, it was a really nice opportunity and I'm glad I pushed myself to do that in this book.

- Yeah, and one thing that I thought was really interesting is how often you actually went to the physical places with, especially with historical characters?

- Yes.

- And can you talk about why you did it and what, what difference you felt it made?

- Right, I mean, I was really eager to get to the places more than I had been able to do during the Andy Warhol reporting, because I wanted to be able to give a sense of kind of freshness when I described the scenes of where I am. And so I decided I'm going to, I get to Isaac Newton's home, where he fled, I mean, interestingly, this is all pre-pandemic reporting thankfully. Not knowing when I went that I was going to go to from Cambridge where he was studying and drive up towards Fortman there where he fled during the bubonic plague in 1665. Just like now, when universities shut down and the kids went home, same thing back then. He had to go back to his family estate, at Woolsthorpe Manor, which was sort of rural England. And you drive up there and you can kind of, you know, tracing that journey and realizing that was the place, his, his initial ideas, his formative ideas about optics and gravity and all that stuff came to light. I saw the apple garden, I saw his bedroom where he did a lot of his experiments. And it really, you know, seeing that same Vinci, the home place with Leonardo. Seeing, I went to Eleanor Roosevelt's home, Val-Kill, which was her, you know, heaven where she spent so much time and it was her place, not FTRs and walking in the woods on her favorite trail through the woods. It really humanized the people in terms of being... I felt connected to them, I felt, you know, these are human beings with bedrooms and paths in the woods and, you know, homes and landscapes they saw and I can, I can be a part of it and bring this to the readers, so that they're not just historical figures deepenly, you know, annals of history, but there are people who lived and were breathing in a life, like we are, you know, today. So all of that was fantastic, it really made me feel connected and I thought, I took a little more leeway actually in the book, you know, describing that I was careful about not making the book about me as little as I could, but also inserting certain passages where I said, "here I am, and here's what I see." 'Cause I think that's really interesting to readers and it's something you never do in more traditional journalism, so it was kind of a new thing for me in this book.

- And did you feel that being there physically, I mean, did you get a sense of the source of this inspiration a little bit more clearly? I mean, I know being there had to have helped in some ways just to set the context, but also just in particularly in Newton, you talked about the science of the sort of Eureka moment?

- Yeah.

- But also I'm curious about, is there something about the place? And then I also, I'd like to come back and talk a little bit about science, but let me, I'll remind you that there's a note.

- Yes, I do think that it gives you, I mean, one of the things it does is it gives you a sense of time spent, so at Isaac Newton's home. You know, he was there for about 18 months when he fled to Cambridge. And you get a sense of being there in this place that is so serene and so beautiful. I mean, it's just a glorious gesture of, you know, these trees, the apple trees, the garden. You get a sense of how he was away from the, the sort of every day kind of craziness of being in Cambridge where there's so much going on, and he was here in this place. So you can understand how he needed that space, he called it, you know, one of those important times at this moment in his life. So he could really focus on his thoughts and bring them to the fore because that's harder to do when you're around a lot of people. And, you know, even walking in the woods for Eleanor Roosevelt, I also went to grandma Moses's home up in upstate New York and seeing that it was sort of the same idea that I can see how the people, the places where they lived and had their most important moments. Also are places that, you know, you and I both know, you know that, so it doesn't have to be so special in a way that they made it, you know, they made those places special and used those places for their sources of inspiration. And you and I could find a similar place, you know, of our own that provides. So, it sort of is I think a lesson and you know, it's not, not entirely never too late, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that place, you know, it can be your place. So that was, I think another lesson learned from visiting.

- Right, and like, when you talk about the colors there's Picasso.

- Yes.

- Yeah, what an influence that had on him but I guess it could have been colors of any place it just said who he was.

- Right, and there, I think, you know, there probably is something to that place, the colors of the flowers, the trees. He did grow up in there, I would say it's, I would point back to that idea of good luck in a way, because he was born, it's the Southern coast of Spain. And he sees also this complete mix of religion and history overlapping. So there's an old, you know, Islamic building, there's Jewish history there there's the, the Spanish history. And, you know, he takes this all in and that becomes part of the way he thinks in a way about his art, because he is constantly mixing and layering and drawing on his memory. So I think, you know, in some cases that I think that did inspire him, that that place did inspire him in a way that was pointed for him.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- One thing that really struck me is that. I think in both books, but especially in "Spark," I think there are only about 30 pages per character, which is incredibly tight and you're covering the history and the context and the science and then the arc of their biography. So, can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, 'cause that's, it's a real skill to be able to write something that sharply and pointedly in it's same time still be, moved so beautifully. It's all very smooth. It's not like you're delivering bullet points or something like that.

- Well, thank you. Right, and it is, you know, it's hard, and certainly when I was writing Andy Warhol, it was my first experience doing that. And I learned in a way from that book, how to do it in a way that I felt comfortable when that worked. I do a lot of outlining. I mean, I read and read and read and I do my interviews, I do a lot of, of course, historical reporting, trying to go back thankfully to the internet, I mean, so much has been digitized. It's just, it's a gift to go back to, you know, letters that Isaac Newton wrote, you know, things that, that people wrote about him and all through history, taking that all in. And I try to kind of outline as I go with points that just emerge, you know, themes that start emerging as I read. And then, there is a point in writing that you kind of have it all in your head and you've got your notes and then you sort of have to take a step and just let it flow a little bit because it can be too restricted often. But for me, I need the outline to organize my thoughts and it is hard to keep it short. You know, there's a point at which in every chapter I'm thinking, how am I going to get to 30 pages? You know, how do I do this? It's going to be impossible, I don't have enough. And then, you know, and then I start and I realize, you know, I do, and I need to pair it back. I started my journalism career at Newsweek and I had to write within a word count, that was pretty tight. I mean, the old days of Newsweek, the stories tended to be a page or a few pages in a magazine. And this was a new experience, and what it allowed me to do was to kind of go with an idea or a theme or a description for longer, which was just such a, you know, a gift in that way. I just loved being able to spend something out a little longer, but I think my Newsweek training also allowed me to keep things tight. I'm often writing those Newsweek stories I would have to weave in and sort of literally, it's almost like, I don't know how to describe it, just kind of pinpoint places where I could stick in a little piece of information that would, you know, stand for much more information that people could understand it. And I think that helped me contain the pages and also I was allowed to go longer a little bit so.

- That telling fact.

- Yes. We kind of call it surgery actually, now that I remember it, like it's surgical, it's sort of like you go in and you have to cut words surgically, but you can also add little snippets.

- Little snippet talk and implant?

- Yes, exactly.

- Well, I'm really curious about the transition from journalism to writing books. And I know you're, you're still writing for Smithsonian, at least you were, and for National Geographic and a number. But, first describe to me your career as if I don't know it. And then, so what it's like to write for books, write books versus for journalism?

- Right, so I think I mentioned after Amherst I actually worked as a paralegal for a couple of years and I decided law wasn't my path. And I did, did a trip actually Southeast Asia, where I took a little backpack and one of my own on a trip to Southeast Asia, which lasted about nine months. And it was kind of during that trip that I thought, you know, I remember the moment seeing these farmers in the rice fields, working at their work of, of cultivating the rice. And I thought, you know, these people all around me are working, they've got a purpose. I'm just kind of traveling around I need to figure out my purpose. I mean, then these guys, you know, everybody's working hard except me. And I decided there to apply for graduate school. And at Columbia where I did a, kind of a, it was an international affairs degree I had thought about foreign reporting, but it also had a component of journalism because I was able to take courses at the journalism school in Columbia. And, I did get a great sort of tutorials at the journalism school and then also at the School of International Affairs in writing and in journalism. And then got a job at Newsweek, where I started out as a researcher, and then eventually was able to start writing and kind of found a niche in medicine and health, which was great for me because it went back to my interest in pre-med initially. And I was up in Boston in the bureau for a couple of years, it was a great place to be writing about medicine and health. And then in 2011, Newsweek changed hands I was ready for a change. So that was about 17 years at the magazine. And I decided to try out freelancing and thinking about book writing. And so at that point, I lucked into a great relationship with a book editor at National Geographic for the first book who then introduced me to the magazine I was able to start writing some stories for the magazine and also doing some independent, I'm independent now so I'm freelancing for other publications. And, you know, the book process is so different from daily daily or weekly magazine writing, which was my thing, but also builds on the foundation and all of the building blocks of that. So, the reporting I learned at Newsweek, the writing I learned at Newsweek served me really well and allowed me to use those as I mentioned, sort of the crafting of being able to write tightly and craft a story. And so in writing books, it's a personal journey I mean, I think no one can teach you how to do it, it's really slogging through. And I remember how hard it was for the first book to figure out how do I write about biography? How do I write in a longer format? How do I, you know, feel comfortable with speaking more of my own voice? You know, that was very different from the, news magazine writing. And it's been a real joy to be able to stretch in that way. So I've loved having, and I love still writing magazine features, although I tend to have so much leftover that you know, I report them like a book and I have to figure out now, what do I do? What's next with that?

- That's the material for your next books.

- Yes, I have a need to think about it.

- So, if you were to sort of compare the process of writing your first book, which was a New York Times bestseller, I'd like to point out.

- Thank you Tim.

- Versus this one. What were the differences?

- I would say--

- Or the similarities?

- Right, so the similarities was, I had kind of a template to do biography at about, you know, 30 pages of individuals looking at them through some lens. So Andy Warhol is more psychology and mental health, and this is more inspiration, creativity, moments of discovery. So I had that, those were the similarities, and I was able to come to this book with more experience and more confidence about how to do it. But then, you know, differences, I would say for sure. The contemporary figures added a new element, my ability to get out and report more for this book added a new element, that was really wonderful. And so those would be sort of, I would say the main differences, the similarities also include the kind of digging into the archives of history and all these figures and talking to experts about, you know, their lives. You know, the Andy Warhol book, it's a little bit dangerous to go under, you know, to go down the path of a person's mind and especially when they're no longer around. So I had to be in a way more, much more careful about saying I'm not diagnosing these people with a certain mental health condition. These are people who've either spoken about it themselves, or there've been lots written by experts in the field. And this book, in "Spark." I wasn't doing that, I was more exploring their life moments and in a way, I think I had my own ability to kind of assess it with more confidence because, I wasn't judging anything around or writing about anything that was sort of off limits. I was kind of assessing a life journey based on my own reporting and experience, and it allowed me a little more, I think, a little more freedom to do that.

- When you're writing about science, are you concerned, you know, new discoveries or shifting researches to kind of alter what you discovered, what you found, like coming back again to this idea of the Eureka moment that occurred seems to, I think it's called a brain blink.

- Right.

- That you wrote about what, I mean, what happens if five or 10 years, or maybe, maybe it doesn't matter if the research changes.

- Right, I mean, that's a great question. And I think, you know, I can only go with what the science is now and sort of touch on the idea that brain science especially is evolving every year, every decade. And you know, when I talked to brain experts, they always tell me, we're just beginning. And I try to make that point that there's still a lot to learn, but since you know, I'm writing now, I'm going to tell you what we know as of today. And I try to pick out one or two studies that kind of, for me are the most informative, the most, you know, the ones I can describe to readers and kind of a visual way, like the brain blink I think is fascinating the idea that, you know, you kind of go in internally, your brain almost blinks and blocks out all of the external distractions. It would be as if I'm talking to you and I close my eyes because I'm distracted by the photographs on your wall or something, and I can't focus my on my thought. But so you close your eyes for a second and that's kind of like the brain blink. And I just thought that's, everybody can relate to that, that's a really interesting, but I looked at a lot of other studies that were much more, you know, complex also, and I didn't want to put everything in, it would get too heavy. So I pick out a few... And then I just figure it will, the science will evolve, but science has always, it always builds on the studies that have come before. So they're all important. And so I think it's, it's always interesting to see where we are at the moment.

- Well, study, I hope that they don't overturn or disprove is, is the one that you talk about where it seems to be the brain is more, not regenerative regenerative, but that's not the right phrase, but that it's, it's, there's more, there is hope for--

- Yes.

- I love that--

- I can only come up with that word.

- Yes, and that's a perfect, actually, that's a really interesting example where science, there's still no resolution on that, that particular study or the studies in that cluster of studies. There are people who disagree on that and there are different findings, we don't know. But, I wanted to highlight that study because I think it's, it's a good study and it shows a really important finding, which is that the scientists found neurons in the brain that had yet to, you know, the new neurons that were proliferating even in older brains. I know science's long assume that your, the dynamics of the brain are sort of done at a early age in life. And this study found that no, you know, that there are new neurons developing in the brain even much later in life. And so, yeah, I feel like that if you put that together with the lifespan of humans, which is now increasing, you know, pandemic aside, but increasing in general. It means we have more time potentially, and it means our brains are going to give us more time if this science is really true and pans out. So I think it's, I think it's just fascinating to, to link the science to human potential and say, yeah, there's still there's hope.

- Yeah, and the way you, you linked it to their biographies also, biographies, biographies was also fascinating.

- Yes.

- Right so.

- I think.

- Go ahead.

- Yeah I think, I mean, I think for me science, I love science, but when science gets too nitty gritty, I'm not capable of appreciating it enough scientists do who love getting down into the molecular details, love that stuff, I love it more when it connects to people, and I think biography it's storytelling. And I think for anything in any field storytelling is what is the, that's the way people learn best. So my kind of hope is that through the book, people do learn about science, but not as if it's a, if it's a lesson, but as if it's revealing in the course of a human life so.

- All right, so tying it back to Amherst. What role do you think going to Amherst has played in your move, into writing and then from writing magazines into writing books, or maybe it hasn't?

- No, it has. Amherst absolutely has. You know, I took courses at Amherst in different fields. I mean, I studied history, I studied art history, I studied some political history, I studied some science, since I was pre-med. I was an English major, I took Russian literature course that really inspired me with Professor Rabinowitz, to really, then I realized I loved Russian literature, which was one of the reasons I chose Dostoevsky for my first book, as one of my profiles. The idea that you can go to a liberal arts school like Amherst and really take, you know, take chances in different disciplines and fields learn whatever you want to learn. You're not on a specific path that's regimented you can cross the borders and boundaries of disciplines and that's what also curiosity is about, and learning is about, it's about stretching. And so I think at Amherst, laid that out and just the way you get educated and the way you're alive, you're given that freedom to choose different courses, even though you have a major of study. And so I think, and also I think, you know, being able to move from journalism to writing books, I mean, I think having been at Amherst and, you know, in an academic environment and learning through my, especially through my English major, how to write and analyze and think all of that absolutely, you know, plays a role in what I do every day I think.

- So then what is next? What are you thinking about as the next step for Claudia Kalb?

- Right, so I'm still thinking I've got quite a few story ideas for magazine features, and I've got a couple of ideas thinking possibly of going deeper into biography, possibly with one person. But I also, haven't given up on this idea of, of multiple lives, because I think it's interesting, I think people who don't have time to read straight through big tomes sometimes appreciate shorter biographies. So I'm kind of thinking that through it's an interesting phase after the book comes out, just came out in April at the end of April. So I'm still in the phase in June of trying to still work with the content, write stories about it, do interviews about it like this, which is great. And then start writing up my story proposals for magazine articles, and then start on the side, thinking deeper about the next book so.

- Well, and magazines had gone through just an amazing often bad transformation. It's been a tough couple of decades for them.

- Yeah.

- I'm really curious what sort of receptions out there for thoughtful ideas like yours and also just what is your, what are your thoughts on the future of that, that part of the business?

- Oh yeah, the business has changed completely and it is very difficult. On the other hand, I think there's a lot of potential certainly on digital reporting and journalism and being able to do experiment with that a bit. And there are still, you know, these magazines that I'm lucky enough to be connected to and write for like National Geographic or Smithsonian. I wrote something for Scientific American recently. Being allowed to write for some of these places that I've managed to, you know, kind of make it through these crises and financial crises and advertising and all of that, that has changed so much. So I still have faith, I think storytelling is going to be important in any format, forever. So even if I have to adjust my skills at some point, I know you're in the field of storytelling, Tim, with your production for television and series. I think, you know that it's--

- Claudia.

- You know, it's important. So I think in that way, for both of us, let's have faith, that that story will continue to be important.

- Yeah, and are you thinking really interesting to me, are you thinking at all about podcasts, podcasts are probably almost by now. If I'm interested in them, you know, it's almost.

- Yeah, now I'm with you there. I mean, yes. I think podcast could be really interesting, but I kind of do need to know, I think it'd be nice to know, what's the next thing after the podcast, because that's what you and I need to strive for to go like catch up, but podcasts, I listen to them, I love them, and I think it's a great format. So, we'll see.

- And thinking about it like Warhol and "Spark," they're actually pretty well set up for that format.

- Right.

- Right.

- Right.

- Depth, I mean, they, they move along at a clip, but they also go into, they touch on a lot of fascinating...

- Yeah. Might be something to pursue, I need to take a class in podcast making.

- Well, I know I've forgotten something important that you want to talk about. So what would you like to talk about? Caught you off guard.

- Well, I think you've covered, I think you've covered quite a bit and, you know, we could probably talk for hours, but we might want to give our listeners probably a break at some points in. So, I would say that, you know, I'm just privileged and really thrilled to be doing this, first of all, I love that Amherst has a community of readers, people that write books, many of whom, you know, when I dig through the Amherst reads and realize, wow, I didn't know about this, this author or this subject, is phenomenal. So I love this program. So I want to give kudos to Amherst for doing it. And I just, you know, am grateful that people are still reading. I think the pandemic, you know, really gave us that reassurance, that people are still reading, not only reading, but like to hold books in their hands. And so that's great. So I'm, I'm leaving it on a high note. I am, you might want to turn that around, it's upside down. But that's okay.

- Is okay?

- Yep.

- Well, it's just because of the way it looks, on the monitor. Now I wanted to end by saying that I strongly recommend anyone who's, I haven't bored to death with my questions. This is a fascinating book and you really go out and buy it, order it from your local bookstore. Get it as soon as you can and give it five stars, it's awesome.

- Thank you, Tim.

- Yeah.

- I also want to just mention, I do have a website and it's claudiakalb.com. And I think it can be first of all, helpful for just people who might want to be read about some of the other writing. But also if you buy a book, I would be thrilled to write a book play. I can inscribe it for gifts for anybody, and I just say that because I think sometimes a personalized note can be a nice thing for book readers. So, but thank you, Tim, I appreciate it, and thank you for doing this.

- Yeah, and thank you for letting me do it.

- Next one, next one, we'll come back maybe in a few years.

- Oh yeah, we will exactly.

- Well, thank you.

- Thank you.