Magic Lessons Ep. 205: “Call Your Real Life By Its True Name” featuring Gary Shteyngart

Magic Lessons with Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert and Maximum Fun

Arts

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2016

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on Magic Lessons, Elizabeth Gilbert advises Colleen, an advertising executive in New York City, who dreams of being a storyteller but fears it's a frivolous pursuit. Colleen hopes to create a one-woman show, mining stories from her childhood growing up in an Irish Catholic family that ran and owned a bar. Liz calls up the writer Gary Shteyngart for additional expertise on the pain and relief that comes with telling family stories.

Special Guest: Gary Shteyngart is the award-winning author of the novels Super Sad True Love Story, Absurdistan, and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook. Born in Leningrad, his memoir Little Failure is a candid and moving account of growing up as a Russian emigre in America. Find out more about him and his work at garyshteyngart.com.

This week's sponsors: Audible, The Great Courses Plus, and Stamps.com
Use the promo code: Lessons

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Magic Lessons is supported in part by Audible.com.
0:03.0	Audible content includes more than 250,000 audio programs
0:07.0	from leading audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, magazines,
0:11.0	and newspaper publishers, and business information providers.
0:14.8	Audible content is downloaded and played back on your smartphone, portable device, or PC.
0:20.1	Magic Lessons listeners might enjoy naval gazing, true tales of bodies, mostly mine, but also my
0:26.2	moms, which I know sounds weird. It's by Michael Ian Black, the incredible comedian, actor, and
0:31.4	writer, who is also one of my guests this season on the podcast.
0:35.0	Audible is offering Magic Lessons Podcast listeners a free 30-day trial membership.
0:40.0	Just go to audible.com slash lessons and choose from over 250,000 titles and start
0:46.8	listening. It's that easy. Go to audible.com slash lessons. That's audible.com slash lessons and get started today.
0:55.0	Just a heads up everybody.
0:57.0	These are adults having adult conversations,
1:00.0	so there is the possibility of adult language.
1:03.0	Hi everyone and welcome to Magic Lessons,
1:10.0	a podcast produced by maximum fund.org.
1:13.0	I'm Elizabeth Gilbert and last year I wrote this book called Big Magic
1:18.0	Creative Living Beyond Fear. But even when I was finished with the book, I was definitely not finished with the topic because I'm still as much as ever fascinated with the
1:32.0	with the intricacies of the creative process and how we find our way
1:35.8	through that strange journey, the obstacles we made along the way and the joy of what we ultimately
1:40.7	create and it is through my desire to keep having that conversation
1:44.0	that this the Magic Lessons podcast was born. So here we are season two and we are
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -3138 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Elizabeth Gilbert and Maximum Fun, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Elizabeth Gilbert and Maximum Fun and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.