GenX Adulting Podcast (00:15)
Welcome to GenX Adulting and today we have Vanessa Grigoriadis with us, the host of So Your Parents Are Old podcast. Welcome Vanessa. It's our pleasure. We've been waiting for this one because I think we scheduled this one like six months ago or something. So this has been a highly anticipated one on our end for sure.

Vanessa (00:24)
Thank you for having me.

Yeah, and I even thought it was last weekend and was like trying to reach out to you, but maybe you guys are like just devices off on the weekends because you need to protect your piece.

GenX Adulting Podcast (00:51)
You know, so that would have been we were out of town, I think, when we originally before we switched that day because it was us that switched the date, right?

Vanessa (01:00)
I think so, but I didn't switch the cal because I had put a reminder

for myself and then I didn't switch my personal cal reminder, but forgot that it was me who had actually put that on. So yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (01:06)
Right.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, because

we were out of town and when we're out of town, typically, I think we were out town with our kids. We took them on like a little mini vacation to Savannah to see Billy Strings. Do know who Billy Strings is?

Vanessa (01:23)
how nice.

I don't, but I mean, anything in Savannah that involves jazz, right? Is that jazz? Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (01:28)
Yeah.

no, no, he's like, he's bluegrass jam band. Yeah, although I did come across. ⁓ They played the New Orleans Jazz Festival not too long ago and then they kill it. But it's bluegrass rock. Just you should check him out. He's awesome. So we took our kids for the first time. And especially if we're doing something like that, we don't check the work, the podcast stuff. We're just like, yeah, you're right. We clock out.

Vanessa (01:41)
Cool.

I was impressed. also, since my life is comprised of Gen X adulting, what I was doing that day was driving my daughter to go see some friend of hers 45 minutes away. So I had then called that local library and been like, hey, do you have like a soundproof room where I could record a podcast episode? And it was a very she-she town. So they said, yeah, we have it. And I was like, amazing.

GenX Adulting Podcast (01:59)
you

my goodness.

Vanessa (02:28)
And then when I realized it was the wrong day, I actually just got to sit in the library and read for a couple of hours. And I was like, sweet, this is amazing. I love it. Thank God it's canceled.

GenX Adulting Podcast (02:33)
Wow. Okay. Now I don't feel horrible.

You got that quiet, peaceful time, which is so rare. that that's good. Okay, our first question is always what year were you born?

Vanessa (02:45)
Yeah.

1973.

GenX Adulting Podcast (02:52)
So you are Gen X.

Vanessa (02:54)
Very, yeah. I said to somebody, when people started wearing like 1973 t-shirts around, I was like, wow, people think it's like cool the year that I was born. But then I realized it's like an activist t-shirt for Roe v. Wade. I believe so, yes. I think it was 1970. When you see like a young woman, they're not saying, I think that year is cool. And you.

GenX Adulting Podcast (03:00)
Okay.

Oh, it is? Oh, was it Robie Wade was the year that, uh, Oh my God.

Vanessa (03:22)
lady are cool, they're saying I support Roe v Wade.

GenX Adulting Podcast (03:25)
Oh my God, that's

amazing. I did not know that. Although now, I don't know how it is with your kids, but we have our youngest is 16, but the 90s, they're all obsessed with the 90s and like Nirvana and grunge and all this stuff is coming back. My son put on Smells Like Team Spirit on the radio the other day and he's like, have you heard this song? I'm like, yeah, yeah, I heard this song, but I love it.

Vanessa (03:28)
Hehehe.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

No, it's I mean, it's on one hand, you have like the butthole surfers put out a new documentary and Gibby Haynes actually lives in my neighborhood and my daughter wanted to go see it. And I was like, OK. And then on the other hand, you have, you know, the JFK Junior, Carolyn Bissette Kennedy love story, which I watched and, you know, I lived in New York City in the late 90s and I didn't

GenX Adulting Podcast (04:05)
No way.

Vanessa (04:22)
live in Tribeca, but you know, I would go down there and it was really very true to the way it looked and that kind of minimalism and you've got like her in this like slip dress and she's smoking and she's like flipping her highlighted hair around and I was like, my God, I forgot we used to flip our hair in this weird way all the time, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (04:42)
Yes.

Yes, it's true. I

actually, I didn't officially meet him, but I was a hostess in a restaurant in Michigan. And he was having a meeting. And so I took his coat, his trench coat, and I to hang up his trench coat. And then when they were done, you know, I did didn't smell like any, it didn't smell bad, but didn't smell like cologne or anything. So that's I hoping. And then before when he was done, before he walked out, like all of us

Vanessa (04:58)
Wow, okay. And smell it.

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (05:13)
the female workers all sat on a bench where you wait for a table. We all lined up just to stare at him as he left. And as he came around the corner, he actually was so gracious. He kind of laughed to himself. And he's like, thank you so much. But he knew what we were doing. And we're just like, we just want to watch you leave. And then he almost forgot his coat. And so I ran and grabbed him. I was like, sir. He's like, thank you so much. But I thought, ⁓ I should have kept that coat.

Vanessa (05:37)
You

need to come to my apartment tonight. That's where the code is.

GenX Adulting Podcast (05:41)
I don't My heart will understand. Yeah, he was

very, very sweet. Where were you born?

Vanessa (05:47)
In New York City, yeah, in Manhattan.

GenX Adulting Podcast (05:49)
Okay, in Manhattan. And

how many generations back does your family go in Manhattan? Like, was it your great-grandparents, your grandparents, your parents?

Vanessa (05:59)
No, so my dad grew up in Istanbul, but he was Greek in Istanbul. ⁓ So we would call it Constantinople, which is what the Greeks call that Turkish city. ⁓ He came here to go to Lehigh, ⁓ know, typical immigrant story to become an engineer. And my mom's parents were both from ⁓ Greece and came ⁓

you know, like in the 1920s and her mom worked at a hat factory and her dad ended up working in restaurants and ⁓ she lived in New Jersey. She grew up in Fort Lee, but then she went to Barnard and the two of them met actually in Manhattan.

GenX Adulting Podcast (06:48)
Do know how they met?

Vanessa (06:50)
They met through some Greeks, like through some like Greek Americans who were setting each other up and they didn't really, I think it was an engagement party. They didn't really like each other that much. And then they actually went on like a Greek American skiing weekend to, I don't know if it was Stratton, but someplace in Vermont and decided that they liked each other on this trip. Yeah, cute.

GenX Adulting Podcast (07:16)
So funny. That's cool. Do know how old they were when

they met?

Vanessa (07:20)
Um, I think my dad was probably 30 and my mom was maybe 22 or 23. Maybe, maybe, yeah, that's probably right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (07:31)
Okay, and so they didn't like each other at first. So I'm sure there was like the sexual tension or anything else. Usually if you don't like each other at first and then you do, that's what it is.

Vanessa (07:37)
You

I mean, I try not to think about things like that, but sure, yeah. Well, my mom was an artist, is an artist. My mom is still alive, she's an artist. And ⁓ my dad ⁓ was more of a suit and she was looking for something, maybe, who was a bit more sort of avant-garde, I think. But he was a very...

GenX Adulting Podcast (08:04)
Right.

Vanessa (08:06)
like a rebellious thinker and, you know, ⁓ like counterintuitive in the way that he perceived the world. So I, you know, I think eventually she figured that out.

GenX Adulting Podcast (08:18)
they connected. Right. That

would have been was that during the 60s? So and they were in in the city. Yeah. So was she part of that whole beatnik? Like cool, you know, I'm picturing Bob Dylan that whole vibe. She's an artist.

Vanessa (08:23)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Early 60s.

Very much.

She very much was. Yeah. So she went to Barnard and she was class of 1963, which was, an incredible class of women. So Twyla Tharp, if you know her, like the modern, you know, mother of modern dance, Erica Jong, who wrote Fear of Flying and you know, a million other books and whose daughter, if you've read this book, it's great. Molly Jongfast wrote a book about her last year called How to Lose Your Mother, which was about her mom having

dementia. And Martha Stewart was also class of 1963. And so my mom and Martha Stewart were not borders, at least like the first couple of years. So my mom was not allowed by her parents to live at Barnard. And so they would take the bus, you know, across the George Washington Bridge. And then, yeah, so my mom was an artist and she

was like, had fabulous, amazing clothes that she made herself and like, yes, beatnik, hippie, long, long, like black, straight hair. It's, yeah. I've just digitized a ton of photos of her, so I'm, you know, experiencing that really for the first time, right? Because I was not around. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (09:48)
them.

Yeah, right, right, right. No, I mean, that is

so cool. yeah, imagining that and then your dad's a suit. So I'm sure at first she's like, you know, know, but maybe during that ski trip, she got to know get a little deeper into the levels and he has some depth and he actually has some thoughts that aligned with hers. So that's actually kind of cool. Yeah.

Vanessa (10:06)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah,

I mean, he was in a lot of ways, you he hated the church, the Greek church, and was like, you know, if you grow up in a country where you're the minority, you know, and there was in 1955, like a kind of crystal knocked kind of night for the Greeks there when he was still living there, ⁓ you're gonna really not trust, ⁓ like political leaders, right? So he was, I mean, in a lot of ways, she was

the milder person, even if the way that you would have perceived her when you met her was, you know, this very experimental lady.

GenX Adulting Podcast (10:57)
But his feelings were actually probably a little more extreme. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, he semi-escaped something in many ways then, Getting out of there.

Vanessa (11:00)
For sure. Yeah.

Right, I mean, her

life was really quite charmed. mean, as I said, her parents came from Greece. Her dad grew up in a town without a well, like an island town without a well. Comes to America, he's able to send his daughter to Barnard and drive a Cadillac. And she got her wedding dress from Bergdorfs. And I mean, her life was quite, you know, and then.

GenX Adulting Podcast (11:32)
That's amazing.

Vanessa (11:35)
Both she and my dad became much more, you know, they really were leftists and they really became very anti-materialistic in a lot of ways. They really shunned a lot of that stuff. My father then became a professor after being an engineer and working at IBM. So.

GenX Adulting Podcast (11:52)
When you say he went to Lehigh like Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, okay

Vanessa (11:56)
Right, yeah. So

he was like, you know, the guy on the plane who's, you know, the immigrant guy who's coming to get a science degree in America, but he stayed.

GenX Adulting Podcast (12:05)
Yeah, yeah.

And that's worlds apart from New York, like from Manhattan. It's a nice area. It's beautiful, but it's not terrible. ⁓ yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa (12:13)
Totally. Yeah. Well, but that is, but Istanbul is a very cosmopolitan city, you know, so he had grown

up, he had gone to an American school there also, you know, but yeah, he also worked at, so yeah, he was an engineer, then he worked at IBM, and then IBM actually sent him and my mom went with him to University of Wisconsin to get a PhD.

GenX Adulting Podcast (12:29)
So he worked at IPM.

Vanessa (12:42)
And then when he finished and they came back to New York, he was like, I don't really want to work at IBM anymore. Ready to not do that.

GenX Adulting Podcast (12:50)
Thanks for that, but no. I'm out. That was like

black pants, a white shirt, maybe even a tie back then. Right? was very... yeah. You had a look. Yeah, the no tie thing's just really recent in the last probably 10 years, would No, no, much longer than that. you think? Yeah, definitely. I don't know. Okay, so how long did they know each other before they got married?

Vanessa (12:59)
Yeah. Right.

God, I don't know, but maybe a year, if that. I mean, people used to get married so quickly, right?

GenX Adulting Podcast (13:15)
Okay.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah. And he was quote unquote older for back then 30. So would have been like, okay, like she wasn't but and she wouldn't have been considered young back then either. That would have been normal as a 22 year old to get married, right? How long were they married before you came along?

Vanessa (13:22)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Right, yeah.

quite a while, so she was 30, I believe, when I was born, so yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (13:41)
So what did she do once they got married? Did she work? Was being an artist what she did for work?

Vanessa (13:49)
So in addition to these photos, I have also just digitized a video of my mom that she gave for a grant, a New York state, like, you know, we used to have things like this, right? Like Council of the Arts grant. So, ⁓ you know, she explains, and there is a Bob Dylan reference in here. So, you know, she had had this friend, she didn't know what to do.

basically graduated with a master's from Columbia and, you know, then said, well, what shall I do? And the answer is like, well, do you know how to type? You know, people are not hiring. It's been 1965. Like people are not hiring you ⁓ as a professional, like ladies just off the bat. ⁓ So she had

a friend who I guess was dating Bob Dylan. I mean, I feel like when you talk to women of this era who were in Manhattan and glamorous, almost everybody will tell you they either dated Bob Dylan or had a friend who dated Bob Dylan. So she had a friend who dated Bob Dylan and they went on the QE2 together to Europe and the it's like a cruise, like an old school cruise ship. Boat. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (15:11)
like the Cross the Atlantic type of thing? Yeah, cool.

Vanessa (15:14)
So went to Europe and then she did this and that and she ended up walking into the Guggenheim and getting hired as an assistant, like just walking in and being like, hello, do you have any work for me? And they were like, the chief curator is looking for an assistant. Like, do you know how to take speed writing notes? And she said, well, I know how to type but.

you know, I don't know about that, I'll learn, you know, they say this, will you learn? And she said, yes. And so she ended up working there for ⁓ a bit of time. And I'm like sort of mixing up the dates, but basically after she went to Wisconsin with my dad, ⁓ she realized when she was in Wisconsin that she needed to paint and have art as an outlet and that she really couldn't be a curator and work at a museum.

And so when she came back to the U.S., she was a painter and she actually started the first women's co-op art gallery with some other women on Worcester Street in SoHo in 1972. How crazy is that? Yeah. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (16:26)
Wow.

amazing. Okay, so

they get married. Did they go to Wisconsin fairly soon after they got married? So she goes to Wisconsin and she during that time has an enlightened moment where she's like, I need to paint like this is what I need to do. But then she goes on this cruise.

Vanessa (16:38)
I believe so, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

I think the cruise actually, not

what I'm thinking about, the cruise may have been first, but she basically, I think the cruise was back when she was like right before she got this curatorial job. Then they got married and then they went to Wisconsin.

GenX Adulting Podcast (17:03)
Okay.

Okay, so she worked over in Europe for a little bit before she got married, basically. Was Bob Dylan on that cruise with her friend?

Vanessa (17:11)
Right, exactly. then... No, don't think so. The way

she always told the story was that she got on the boat and she was sitting on her bed and putting all her things away in the drawers. And the friend came in and was crying because she was like, Bob, I have to leave my boyfriend Bob and I feel so sad.

GenX Adulting Podcast (17:39)
Oh my god! Me? No, Bob's probably fine. I think Bob-

Vanessa (17:41)
Yes.

Yeah, Bob

was like, okay, whatever, flavor of the week, you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (17:47)
Yeah, Okay, so

wow, what an experience. When she walked into the Guggenheim, she had to have had a vibe where they were like, definitely, you know, because she was naturally had that artistic vibe or whatever she had going on just to walk in and be considered like that.

Vanessa (18:01)
No, she was really a knockout.

And looking at this video, you know, I remember her telling me that, you know, she grew up in New Jersey and she had like a Jersey accent. And when she went to Barnard, they said, you need to take elocution lessons. So you listen to the way she's speaking in this tape. And it's really that, you know, I don't know what they call it transatlantic or whatever the way that like the upper class sort of women would speak at that.

GenX Adulting Podcast (18:27)
Yeah.

Vanessa (18:31)
time, you know? And so, yeah, I she was very like dignified, very good manners, kind of like, well, came off as like an extremely well-bred, beautiful woman who also was really talented, you know, and had an enormous amount of success. I mean, we could also bring up the part where I'm born, but like, you know, the story in my family is that, you know,

My mom was a painter and I was born and she, not she gave up her painting for me, that wasn't it, but more like.

you know, I became so important, I became like the number one thing in her life. And I'm very involved in working on her archives now. And I'm just like looking at all of these paint, you know, images of paintings that were created enormous, like six foot by six foot, very complicated paintings that were created in like 73, 74, 76. And I'm like.

Wow, like where, I'm just curious where I was. I don't know. mean, so I lived in a small two bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side and my parents made a wall in my bedroom. So I slept on one side of the wall and she painted on the other side of the wall. So I might've been there. She might've been painting. I don't really know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (19:43)
Yeah.

⁓ Right.

I see, okay, so. don't have like early childhood memories of like waking up and seeing like a half a mural type of thing?

Vanessa (20:09)
I really

don't, I mean, I don't really believe that you can remember anything before, like what, seven, maybe six? Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (20:15)
There is a certain point. Yeah. Yeah.

So yeah, that makes what an, know, just to be a fly on the wall of that, right? Because she's she's she got married and she's an art she will know she worked at the Guggenheim. She got married, goes to Wisconsin comes back when she came back to the city. Is that when she started painting before she had you?

Vanessa (20:39)
So she was painting in Wisconsin because she was so, you know, isolated and felt that she was just the wife. Suddenly she's like the wife of the promising graduate student. You know, I don't know if you've had that experience of, you know, when you're in a university, nobody cares about the spouse.

GenX Adulting Podcast (20:43)
Alright.

Yeah.

Vanessa (21:06)
Right? Like a lot of deals people make to become professors, they have to say like, you have to make my wife or husband an adjunct, right? Or we're not moving here because I know you're after me, but you got to help that other person. But there's always that like sort of power imbalance. And I think she just felt like, you know, she didn't grow up being some like incredible cook, homemaker, you know.

that wasn't like her role and now suddenly she's the wife of the promising graduate student sort of sitting at home going to dinner parties and nobody wants to talk to her, right? And like, is she gonna make like a dinner party at her house? Well, she's not even really so sure of how to do that. And she started painting as an outlet. again, in this video that I saw, you know, she had never said this to me, but it really tracks and makes sense. ⁓

you know, within, working at the Guggenheim with like this chief curator, there was this sense that art was this holy thing and it was made by very special people. And the curatorial staff is there to support these special people with like this special connection to, I don't know, whatever, God or a higher, you know, your higher ability is to create, right? And so the way she characterized it is like,

GenX Adulting Podcast (22:29)
I still. Right.

Vanessa (22:34)
I would never have actually felt self-confident enough to create art if I had stayed at the Guggenheim because I would have felt that my life was in service of these other people and I was not worthy to do it, you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (22:53)
Wow.

Yeah, her imposter syndrome would have taken over. I'm picturing her in Wisconsin outside of the sophistication of New York having to play a role. So it's like painting had to have been an outlet and I'm sure she yearned to get back. Right? I'm sure she was like counting the days. I got to get out of here. How long were they there?

Vanessa (22:57)
Right, exactly, yeah.

Right, well, there's also that. Yeah, it's like, you know.

she said she

cried. She says she like cried every day. I don't know, three years probably? Something like that. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (23:19)
Sure. Yeah. Well,

being an artist wouldn't have been, especially a woman, have been anything back then. Anyone would have cared to talk to her about it at a dinner party and it wouldn't have held any validity. have more like, oh, that's a nice little hobby. How cute. And patted her on the head and continued on to the next important person. So to feel insignificant, that would have been such a struggle, especially in that location. I'm picturing her running around the village.

Vanessa (23:36)
Right, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (23:47)
on Worcester Street and Bleecker Street and down that whole area during that time, I'm extremely jealous.

Vanessa (23:55)
I know. Yeah,

well, it's not even the village. It's like Soho. It's like where I where I grew up going down there. So I lived on the Upper West Side and we would go down there for openings of her, you know, her gallery. And it was like the scary place. You know, now it's like Louis Vuitton. I mean, I'm not like exaggerating. It's truly, you know, the most expensive real estate in America is where they had this little gallery. And ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (24:14)
What does it mean?

Yeah. Yeah. Well,

did that happen? So they leave Wisconsin and they go back to the city, right? And then is that when she started like she was started to pay in Wisconsin, but did she start to show in when they came back to the city?

Vanessa (24:37)
Pretty quickly, yeah. Pretty quickly. After that she had a few shows and then was one of the first, there were like four or six women who sort of started this gallery and then they recruited and it was 20 women to start. so pretty quickly after that she was involved in that. Extremely, yes, totally, yeah. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (24:57)
amazing was your dad supportive of her art yeah see and that's that part of him right there from the outside

you wouldn't think but that's really cool because that would have been totally the norm so that that's

Vanessa (25:08)
Yeah. Yeah. They had

a really loving relationship. You know, they had a good, very good marriage. I mean, they were, you know, whatever, difficult in their own ways as well. I'm also an only child. So was like, you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (25:19)
Well, that's okay.

So basically, what I'm picturing is is those first eight years or whatever before you were born or so she's an artist she's showing your dad is a professional where do you become a professor when they came back to the city?

Vanessa (25:36)
He

was actually a professor in Rutgers in New Brunswick, so he drove to New Brunswick.

GenX Adulting Podcast (25:39)
Okay,

so they're doing their thing professor artists thing so they're up on the Upper West Side and he's commuting over to like Okay

Vanessa (25:45)
Mm-hmm.

I know, very annoying. Yeah, but he only had to go like a couple days a week because he was more

of a research, you know.

Yeah. It's definitely a pain in the butt. It was definitely the bane of his existence. He tried everything. He tried taking the train, that he would bike to the train. I mean, he tried everything, you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (26:07)
I

actually grew up in New Jersey, Northwest corner. So we go into the city and stuff. And at a certain point I had to work out in Brooklyn. So what a nightmare. And I drive into Hoboken, catch the path over to like, I think it was the A train out to Brooklyn and do that nightmare.

Vanessa (26:10)
Okay.

Totally.

Yeah, I mean, he wanted to move to New Jersey and my mom just wouldn't hear of it. She was like, I got out of New Jersey, I'm not going back there.

GenX Adulting Podcast (26:30)
Yeah.

It created such is the gallery that she started. Is it still in existence?

Vanessa (26:39)
It's still

around, yeah. I mean, it's in a totally different location now, but yeah, she had a long career. mean, her career definitely dropped off in like the 90s, but then she's had a late in life like, ⁓ you know, resurgence. ⁓ As people say, like as a female artist, you know, you can look forward to not getting a lot of recognition until you're 80. And that actually is what happened.

GenX Adulting Podcast (27:04)
That's what's happening today.

Vanessa (27:05)
But she

did have recognition. mean, she was definitely like a well-known within the art world artist in the 70s and probably early 80s.

GenX Adulting Podcast (27:12)
Yeah.

Has that museum that she started, not museum, what would it be called? Gallery, have they, is she acknowledged somewhere inside the gallery? Do they have a picture of her as a founding member?

Vanessa (27:20)
Gallery. Yeah, gallery.

I mean,

I wonder, I'm not really sure, but they're like working on a book. I mean, there's an amazing, I'll send, know, if you guys wanna see it, you can put it up if you want. I'll send you a picture. There's like amazing photos from that time of the original group of women. It's like the kind of thing that's studied. If you're an art history major today and you're really interested in post-war feminist art, you're gonna learn about this gallery, right?

GenX Adulting Podcast (27:37)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

us.

Vanessa (27:56)
But if you're just like a fancy art person, maybe you don't know about it. Or if you study old masters, maybe you don't know about it. But she was, you know, I don't know, it's really hard. My mom is not well. So like I say was, but it's, I mean, she's live, you know? So it's.

GenX Adulting Podcast (28:00)
Right. Right, right, right.

What is her name

for our listeners if anyone is listening and wants to look further into her?

Vanessa (28:17)
⁓ Mary,

Mary Grigoriadis. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (28:20)
Okay,

and for our listeners, we'll include her name in the show notes too, so you can reference that. But that's really cool. Okay, so they're doing their thing. And then you come along. And, ⁓ know, now she's a mother, did she and you said it sounds like she continued to do her art while raising you. Did that continue through your childhood? Or does that feel more like in the first, like six, seven years of your childhood? And then

Vanessa (28:28)
Yeah.

You

GenX Adulting Podcast (28:50)
they kind of tape it off.

Vanessa (28:50)
No, it continued.

So basically, you know, my parents, we lived in one apartment and then there was like seven or eight apartments on the hall. And my mom rented an apartment on the hall that was a studio, right? Without a bedroom or anything. And she began painting in there when I was probably like seven, so that, you know, it wasn't like she was painting in my bedroom.

GenX Adulting Podcast (29:12)
In your bedroom.

Vanessa (29:19)
And

so as a teenager, that was deeply annoying because I would come home and then I'd be like, yes, sweet, I'm all alone. Watch TV, have Cheetos, do whatever I want. And then you'd hear the creak of that. I had a very discernible sound, the studio door, when she would be opening and closing it in the hallway. this is just like a regular apartment building, right? Nothing fancy.

GenX Adulting Podcast (29:47)
Right.

Vanessa (29:48)
And I would just be like, ⁓ she's in the studio. She's about to come in here and turn off the TV. Like.

GenX Adulting Podcast (29:55)
So

that was that like elementary, junior high age or was that what?

Vanessa (29:59)
think junior

high probably, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (30:02)
Were you not supposed to be watching TV?

Vanessa (30:05)
I was not really permitted to watch TV very much. I was allowed like a half hour of TV a day. Yeah. I didn't, I wasn't allowed to play any video games.

GenX Adulting Podcast (30:11)
from the.

So did you not have an MTV arrow like a lot of Gen X kids that came home from school?

Vanessa (30:19)
I mean, I was not

allowed to have MTV. My parents didn't have cable television. I, the thing is like, you know, I write a lot about pop culture and a lot of it is because as a person who then became in her twenties and thirties, I became fascinated by this stuff that I wasn't able to really access. You know, I mean, my parents, my friends in high school would just be like, you know, it's like your parents sort of.

you know, sort of think you guys are like so hoity-toity and perfect a little bit. Like my father only listened to classical music, you know, we didn't really have a TV. I we have one TV without cable. Like, ⁓ you know, my mom's obviously an artist, you know, they spoke Greek to each other. You know, there was just a little bit of this sort of like not like so holier than that, but just

intellectual, ⁓ you know, we don't really have any use for you. They had really no, interestingly, because they both grew up not with tons of money, but well off, really renounced all of that. They were also very involved in like the Vietnam War protests and all of that. So they didn't want really anything to do with bourgeois life. know, like never in my life did I hear my parents.

have a long conversation about how good this coffee maker is and how they're gonna buy it. They're just like, whatever, this is a Mr. Coffee. Almost in a way where it was like, it was almost too much. It was like you could get, you don't actually have to always drive a secondhand car, you know? ⁓ But that's what they thought was cool, know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (32:05)
Yeah. What did your dad teach? What did

he teach? What was he a professor in?

Vanessa (32:12)
He was a computer

scientist. So he went from engineering to like IBM where the computers were like an entire story, right? Of like the Chrysler building or something. And then I'm sure the stuff that he did in computer science, he did something called linear optimization, which is sort of like what Google is, right? Like coming up with these equations that, know, one of the only things I understood that he did is he,

worked with Germany and like program, he wrote the equation to program all their buses. So it was like, okay, if there's rain, that's one variable. If there's like a huge mountain, that's another variable. ⁓ You know, those people who did what he did, they're like out of, they're out of work now, right? That kind of like high level math thing. I mean, that's what AI is made for.

GenX Adulting Podcast (33:01)
Yeah. Yeah.

That's that technology

is the foundation of like you're saying Google and algorithms and modern computing. IBM created all of that. So it's kind of cool. was very probably linear in his thinking, which is interesting though, to become say a leftist activist. We're not going to participate in commercialization type of guy, right? Yeah. It is. very interesting. It's almost like, I wonder if he felt, if he went so far.

Vanessa (33:13)
Right.

Totally, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (33:34)
anti materialists and anti capitalism, all that stuff to counteract his the way his brain thought like that. When I wondered to I bet your mom brought that out of him. Because he was smart what you're describing to get a PhD in this stuff. He's a smart dude. Right. And your mom's an artist. So he probably that what is the other let his left brain was overdeveloped or on point. And your mom brought out the right probably balance. That's what I'm saying. they

Vanessa (33:45)
Yeah.

For sure, yeah.

Yeah.

No,

definitely, but you know, he was also the dominant person. Like he really was the dominant ⁓ force in the house and the person who made the big decisions, right? But he was also an over-thinker. So she was very involved in like reading the emails and trying to strategize whatever this thing is. you know, there was always some like, you know, problem with.

GenX Adulting Podcast (34:04)
other.

Vanessa (34:31)
whatever the building didn't fix this thing and it would turn into like a two month like back and forth. And you know, I would just be like, my God, I so don't want to be part of the whatever this weird thing is you guys are going through together. But yeah, it's fascinating because she of course being at this feminist gallery and also being, you know, a female artist of that era and a feminist herself, you would think.

GenX Adulting Podcast (34:45)
That's hilarious.

Vanessa (34:58)
that she was actually the one who was more dominant, but it wasn't really like that, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (35:04)
But with

some of that because of just the Greek culture.

Vanessa (35:07)
I think some of it was because of the Greek culture and I think she was brought up to be a lady who, you know, listened to her. Her father was also like very much the, you know, the sort of gregarious ⁓ man in the family who took care of the other relatives and everybody respected and looked up to. So she felt that way, that that was where she was like comfortable, you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (35:30)
All right.

Vanessa (35:37)
But it's been this fascinating experience of, know, my dad passed away in 2017 and, you know, so much of the home life was about him having time to do his work because he would stay up very late writing his papers, you know, he wrote a lot of journal articles or whatever. And then of course I was always studying, you know, I was, I mean, only straight A's were acceptable, right? And...

My mom never talked about her art. She really kept everything very close to the chest. And in the end, you you look at my dad's, you know, he's got 70,000 papers that nobody can understand or read, right? Cause they're like almost hieroglyphics, right? A lot of them are these math equations. And I write articles which...

you know, they basically sort of start disappearing after like five or six years. You know, they're the first after the fifth really, but then they get forgotten. And in the end, whose career is gonna be the one that's gonna be remembered in 50 or a hundred years? It's actually my mom's, you know? So it's been a very fascinating time to... ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (36:48)
Yeah. Right. Right.

Vanessa (36:58)
sort of realize, you know, as you unpack your parents' life, you learn all sorts of things, not only about them, but about you and about how you grew up and yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (37:06)
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Especially this time in our lives, right? You know, when we have the space to do it. Well, I find it so fascinating because she was obviously this just force of feminine energy and life and this talented artist and a vessel as they've

Vanessa (37:09)
Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (37:22)
as artists I think view themselves as a vessel is what you were kind of referring to earlier of just this talent and projecting it out for society as a gift almost. It's like once it's out there, it doesn't really even belong to them anymore. It belongs to whoever reads it, views it, listens to it. It's theirs now. It's the person that you're sending it out there to. And that's amazing. That's like there's so much there. And then to counter that with

Vanessa (37:31)
Mm-hmm.

red.

GenX Adulting Podcast (37:49)
She was even in that as a woman, she was kind of shushed. That part of her was kind of just because she didn't speak about it. You said like with you, it wasn't like discussed in the home regularly. Her art, she was down the hall doing her art. Even though she started this gallery, it doesn't sound like in the home it had as much prominence as your dad's work. So it was still kind of like it was still kind of that concept of that's nice that you're doing that. But you know how how cute not literally, but just kind of like that's her thing.

Vanessa (38:09)
Not at all.

GenX Adulting Podcast (38:19)
and not given the reverence that it deserved, obviously.

Vanessa (38:24)
Absolutely. mean, I think somebody said to me like, is your mom like a trad wife? And I was like, I don't think she was a trad wife. She really never cooked. You know, we ate a lot of takeout Chinese. So I don't think that that doesn't really track. But, you know, they I think neither my dad nor I were blessed with any sort of visual gene. So we didn't know what we're looking at. We don't know what this art is. We don't know why it's good.

GenX Adulting Podcast (38:32)
Yeah.

Thank

Vanessa (38:54)
I don't think she wanted to talk to us about any of that, because it was just not interesting, right? And then, you know, what else is there? Okay, I'm trying to sell this painting, this person's interested, but now they're not interested, or something along those lines. You know, I don't know what she would have really discussed with us. think that, you know, she just...

GenX Adulting Podcast (39:14)
Great.

Vanessa (39:24)
I don't know, look, I'm in contact with a lot of her friends now for various reasons. And one of them said to me, you know, I was close with your mom. Her husband was my dad's best friend. And of course I spent a lot of time with your mom, but I have to admit, I think I knew your dad better. Because, and this was like her best friend, you know, because...

GenX Adulting Podcast (39:48)
Mm.

Vanessa (39:51)
She just was so quiet and so reserved and didn't really want to disclose that much. She really had no patience for fools. She was just one of those people who would be very like, this is not interesting to me.

GenX Adulting Podcast (40:09)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah. It's almost like the way she communicated was her art. Yeah.

Vanessa (40:14)
Yeah, I think so. I

I also had this friend say to me, so this is another realization that I had. So, you know, we go through life and I get very, play violin, my dad played violin, you we played a little together. I played very seriously until I was basically like 16 or 17. And then I was just like, whatever, I'm in college. This is great. ⁓ But

You know, I distanced myself from my parents in my 20s. Like I was sort of like, I'm out of here. Like I don't need to be sheltered by you guys and be told like, this is the way to live. And this is, you know, it was almost like a very immigrant mentality of like we're the best and nobody else is. And I was like, I'm meeting other people and they feel pretty good and interesting. So like, I'm not sure if I totally trust this. ⁓ But so I always felt like,

God, you my parents loved me so much and I'm the one who pushed them away. And this friend said to me, know, Vanessa, your mom really only had three loves and it was your dad, you and your art and her art in that order. And I was like, wait, no, not me. Number one, you know, just like, oh my God, like of course it was in that order, but.

GenX Adulting Podcast (41:22)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (41:34)
know, part of going through all my parents' stuff is this realization of like, in some ways was I not cool enough for my parents? I always thought that they were not cool enough for me. But I'm looking at these people's lives because my dad died very suddenly, my mom got, you know, has dementia, got very sick and then didn't really clean anything up or anything and they saved everything. So I'm like responsible for everything, every piece of their.

GenX Adulting Podcast (41:45)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (42:02)
lives has to be processed and either thrown away or kept by me, right? And of course I'm gonna look at it. God, it was pretty cool. Like they have a lot of cool stuff and cool letters and you know, a whole life, right? Like.

GenX Adulting Podcast (42:08)
Mm-hmm.

Were they hoarders? Yeah,

yeah. Did they hoard a lot of stuff like save?

Vanessa (42:22)
Totally beyond.

but it was organized. Like, I mean, not my dad's. My dad also was super DIY. You why would you hire somebody to fix this? I can fix this, you know? And my, yeah, my husband, who is a contractor and architect, he was just like, you know, okay, we've got to do something. You know, the electrical's not working. Like, we've got to do something. And like, the electrician will come over and be like, what is?

GenX Adulting Podcast (42:25)
Let's go.

you

Yeah, Brian.

Vanessa (42:51)
happening in here. Like there's like 16 things wired together. Like I don't get what is going on. you know, but yeah, and his stuff like that kind of stuff, like his workbench was not organized. But in terms of, you know, the filing cabinets and everything was like super organized. But why? Why are you keeping this? What is the purpose of these credit card receipts from 1993? Like I do not understand the purpose of this.

GenX Adulting Podcast (43:11)
I'm

Yeah.

Vanessa (43:21)
you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (43:21)
I think some of that's that generation. I think that generation felt very much like even his mom who she actually is a hoarder, but she's kept all paperwork. She has file cabinets of paperwork, paper. I think some of that is that they think you're supposed to keep everything, keep every receipt. And for us, everything's so digitized now. But even when you're done with it, you shred it. You're done. You let it go. I don't think that generation. But I was just thinking about like

Vanessa (43:24)
very much.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (43:49)
to be raised by two such talented people in their own right, uniquely talented and on a higher level in their area. And then the way they raised you was on that same level, like disconnected from the mass, from general pop, gen pop as I call it. You were raised away from general population. And so, you know, and then I get what you're saying. It's almost like,

Vanessa (44:12)
Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (44:18)
Were they, was I not cool enough to like, to be at their level? But obviously that's not true. But it was almost like they didn't, it sounds like maybe didn't connect that level of themselves with you, let you in on that level where you could feel a connection there. It was like they're here and you still stay here in a way. Does that make sense?

Vanessa (44:37)
Yeah,

I don't know. I mean, it could also just be that I was just an only child brat, you know, teenager and just like, I mean, I didn't like really grow out of that in some ways until way later. ⁓ I think part of the issue is just that they, you know, I went to a private school, I kind of wanted to have what the other people had and like,

GenX Adulting Podcast (44:46)
Yeah.

Vanessa (45:06)
you know, why are we have a Honda from like 20 years ago, you know, and they didn't like, they didn't like that. They didn't like that kind of that vibe kind of killed the vibe in some ways. And I think they loved me so much and they were really proud of me. So it's not like I feel they were not in any way abusive or weird or cold or anything they were like, but.

GenX Adulting Podcast (45:18)
Right.

⁓ right, right, Yeah.

Vanessa (45:32)
I think that my mom was just really naturally very private and reserved and I'm sort of the opposite and very, you know, externalized and my dad was too and that just, you know, just maybe wasn't the right balancing. mean, a lot of families, a lot about balancing, I realize now that I have my own and having one kid is kind of great for the parents as people say, like it's the ultimate life hack, like great, okay.

Sweet, you come along on my life. ⁓ But it is hard for the kids. it's particular, I mean, the reason I'm making this podcast, the So Your Parents Are Old podcast is because having to deal with elderly parents when you're an only child is, like, there's support groups just for that, because it's so difficult, you know, practically, logistically, emotionally, it's just like.

GenX Adulting Podcast (46:03)
Yes. Yes.

Vanessa (46:30)
Oh my God, what a whopper, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (46:34)
It's all on you.

Vanessa (46:35)
It's yeah, you don't have the thing

that people normally have, which is like, the brother does the finances and you do like the day to day care and one person lives far away, but like when they come, everybody gets a break. Like you're just like, you're it.

GenX Adulting Podcast (46:51)
Yeah, you're the person you get no break. You said you went to private schools. So ⁓ during those elementary years, were you even you know, were you and you weren't coming home just picturing so you weren't having that Gen X latch key, typical after school life the rest of us were having a lot of us were having I should say. ⁓ But during that time, did your interest in music show up that early? Like were your interest music or were you ever interested in athletics or

any other type of art.

Vanessa (47:21)
I mean,

I was not interested in athletics to the point that I took like dance in high school, because you were allowed to opt out of athletics. ⁓ I don't know. I mean, there's always that question of like, what did you like and what did your parents like? You my dad played violin and I wanted to play violin because he played violin. I started when I was five. So I was like one of those little kids who plays Suzuki and like I played by ear. So like I didn't read music and you're just like, you know, memorizing stuff. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (47:28)
Yeah.

Vanessa (47:50)
I I went to public school until ninth grade and, you know, I don't know. guess the part I'm not saying is just like, there was, you know, I went to a magnet school and ⁓ there was a lot of focus on how I was smart and other, like kids weren't as smart as me. And a lot of focus on performing because I got very interested in violin and dance and theater.

You know, it's something that I have been trying to think my way through in my life. Like how much of that was me feeling I had to perform for my parents, that this was a way to get them to pay attention to me, and how much of it was like, I just really liked violin, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (48:40)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (48:41)
⁓

And then later in my 20s, very quickly, I became a journalist and I worked for New York Magazine, which is read by like all their friends. So suddenly I was also in a very performative role of, my God, I saw Vanessa, she read this article, that's so great. Like blah, blah, you know? And so that is something my parents really liked. mean, again, like going through all their stuff, it's like, okay, what is this box? my God, it's a copy of every magazine.

GenX Adulting Podcast (48:52)
Thank you.

Vanessa (49:10)
from this year that I published something. Then here's another box with all the magazines from that year that I published something, you know? And so, I don't know. I I think of it more as like I had the reverse Gen X thing where I almost had like too much of a smothering kind of experience growing up. And I didn't have that.

GenX Adulting Podcast (49:31)
Right.

Vanessa (49:37)
you know, okay, parents divorced, whatever, you're able to do what you want. But my friends did, so I wanted to have that. Like I wanted to be the person where I could have my friends over in the afternoon and nobody would be at home and like, you know, whatever, drink wine coolers or whatever we did at that time, you know? Yeah, exactly. There was definitely, you were not coming to my house and...

GenX Adulting Podcast (49:55)
You wanted to drink from the hose. You know, you wanted to be frail.

Vanessa (50:04)
doing any like whippets or you know, whatever, the beer hose thing, a name of which I forgot.

GenX Adulting Podcast (50:08)
Alright.

⁓

What's the funnel? Yeah, the beer. They do. They do it at college. Yeah, the beer. we did we did it in high school my god and the wine coolers and I never did Whippets personally, but people did Whippets for sure. Well, what's funny is, I was probably that kid I grew up in Northwest New Jersey, we'd come into the city when I was like 14 or 15.

Vanessa (50:15)
Yeah, the funnel, right? The funnel. I don't know if people still do that. I don't see people with a funnel that often. OK, all right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (50:39)
Walk the streets, go to the delis, buy a beer, put it in the brown bag and walk around and drink it. And then we could buy Whippets, little canisters. So yeah, you was out there doing that. was killing brain cells while you were playing the violin. Would you characterize yourself as a high achiever?

Vanessa (50:48)
Yeah.

Right, exactly. Yeah.

think I'm, yeah, I mean, I don't know if I'm intellectually that high an achiever, but I'm a very highly efficient, organized, achievement-oriented person, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (51:10)
And back then

as a child, like, because you were, you were, you're talking about a lot of Gen Xers ⁓ did seek out affection and love through performance based activities. A lot of those are also high achievers and they can remember it as early as like six or seven, like that feeling of you got the high, you're the highest testing when it comes to reading and the whole class, you get the most stars and that feeling and then chasing that.

Vanessa (51:22)
Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (51:39)
feeling of being the best, being the top through all of their, through elementary, through junior high, through high school. Does that line up at all with your experience?

Vanessa (51:49)
for sure,

but isn't it the same for kids today? aren't they, isn't that why they're all getting trophies every two seconds?

GenX Adulting Podcast (51:56)
No, because they don't have to work as hard because they are getting those trophies. Everyone's getting something. You know what I mean? So it's almost like I don't obviously there are kids like that for sure. But I think we've made it all OK if you don't get that. I wonder. You know what I mean? Like it's OK to not get that. I wonder what you're describing. You had intellectually superior, for lack of a better word, parents, right? They're very smart.

Vanessa (52:02)
Yeah.

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (52:25)
high achieving, ⁓ I wonder if you, when you got the grades or the certificate, if it meant as much. I wonder if your parents celebrated it as much as maybe the the kind of person you're describing. The regular feral kids drinking.

Vanessa (52:42)
They

celebrated it. I think it was more just that there was not an acceptance of if it didn't.

This is like the baseline. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then, you know, later in my life, they would always just be like, I don't understand why you can't relax. And I would just be like, God, I don't understand that either.

GenX Adulting Podcast (53:09)
You consider yourself because you did have the parents home and the parents involved. So you wouldn't have had that ⁓ hypervigilance of those of us who were like on our own. Because along with that being on your own, that independence becomes a lot of hypervigilance, fight or flight, a lot of other issues.

Vanessa (53:25)
Mm-hmm.

GenX Adulting Podcast (53:26)
Would you say even though you had the parents attentive and they were present and you weren't necessarily feral and on your own, did you still grow up with hypervigilance and fight or flight or walking on eggshells for other reasons?

Vanessa (53:41)
I don't think so. I think that I don't, I'm not like a people pleaser. I'm not like, ⁓ let me help you. sort of like, I would like to help you if I genuinely want to help you. And if not, I don't really, you know, like, and, ⁓ just sort of the way I always felt. but I don't, I think what is more my issue is

GenX Adulting Podcast (53:48)
Thank

Man, that's awesome. That's awesome.

Vanessa (54:10)
always feeling like I have to do more, you know? That feeling of the anxiety over like, are things not progressing? And every high that you get, you just forget immediately that that was good and then you move on. And I think actually part of why it's been so difficult for me taking care of my parents this whole, like, you it's been almost 10 years that I've been dealing with my dad, you know, died and...

dealing, whatever, in some fashion it's been 10 years, ⁓ is that it's just like a to-do list that doesn't stop. And I don't know how to handle that because I'm used to just being able to knock things off and then just be like, I did it, you know? And with just general Gen X adulting, it's just like, and then there's the list for the kids and then there's the list for, you know, and suddenly you're like, my God.

I have to come up with a system. mean, somebody told me, and this is actually working quite well for me, like just write down everything you have to do. And then it's not like separate lists, like one for the kids, one for my mom, one for my work. It's like one and massive list because that's actually how I'm processing it. And then every day you just like move three things up and do those three things. And I'm like, yeah, but I need to do 10 at least right to keep like ahead of it.

And I don't know how to, I don't know what to say about that. Like I was talking to somebody the other day, a friend of mine who doesn't have kids and she was like, yeah, I feel like I need to do three things a day that are like life things, like pay my rent. And I was like, I need to do like 20 things that are like pay my rent, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (55:35)
Yeah.

doesn't make the list. ⁓

Talk about a baseline. So relate to what you're talking about. get a dopamine hit over crossing things off my to do list. I first have to write everything down the whole doing things in your phone or that my to do list is not digitized. It's totally organic. ⁓ I have to write it. It's what do they call analog? I have to write it down. And then when I cross it off,

Vanessa (56:16)
Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (56:19)
I literally sometimes do pat myself on the back. If I do something big, I go like this. I do. Because I have had to grind through some things just to get to that end. But I know what you're talking about, that end. God, it's so defining. Because it's then you can actually let it go, but you have that dopamine from the accomplishment of the task. And you're like, OK, I did it. And then there's that.

I don't know that validity that you feel inside it validates something like your existence for that day. And if I don't have things, I feel anxiety. Because it's tied to meaning. Does that make sense? Are you getting that same buzz? Are you more like, list is still 500 lines?

Vanessa (57:07)
think it's like, I think what the issue for me is is a lot of the things are so ⁓ emotional, like actually figuring them out is like a three or four step highly emotional process. ⁓ And so when I can get to the end of one of those processes where it's like, have to call this person and say this thing that is uncomfortable for me. And then I have to call that other person, say that other thing, go back to the first person.

make sure they're okay with it, tell the other person that person's okay with it. You know what I mean? Like once I get to the end of that complicated round of calls or emails or whatever, yes, I feel like an immense amount of satisfaction, but it is the kind of thing where I'll probably wake up in the night being like, my God, here's the next one. Like the next wave that's about to crash. I will also say that it has occurred to me that

GenX Adulting Podcast (57:53)
That's disgusting.

Vanessa (58:05)
Because my parents were so focused on, you know, the better things in life or whatever, like the more esoteric things in life, and they were so weird about like fixing the drain. I mean, as I said, was like, my father wouldn't call anybody, it would become this multi-step process or, you know, something about, you know, the house insurance and they're screwing us.

right, would become this long, you know, not diatribe, but like, it would be part of the dinner topic for multiple days, right? We need to get new house insurance because these people are so awful or whatever. That part of maybe why it's so hard for me to do all these adulting things is that I associate it very much with that and being, not wanting to engage in that. And now I'm...

having to do it and it's true. Like they are screwing you. Like, you know, you don't need that rider. Like, and so it may be part of that, but I think that it's, it's.

GenX Adulting Podcast (59:08)
Yes.

Yes.

Vanessa (59:24)
I don't know, I I feel very much like connected to the culture of the moment because we're living in this time when like there more scams than ever. There's more like trying to get something done at Citibank is like super, super complicated. And I really feel.

GenX Adulting Podcast (59:40)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Vanessa (59:43)
In some ways as somebody who covers like what's happening in America, I'm like, wow, I'm really in the middle of what's happening in America, which is like, you know, I'm a dual working family and we, it's hard for us to like make all our bills make sense and ends meet and all of that. And there's never enough time to do anything. And you know, the phone is sucking down like, you know, both pleasure and pain and you know, it's just like, it's the whole world is on this.

phone now and I'm addicted to the phone and everybody else is addicted to the phone. mean, I don't know. Sometimes it was just like, wow, this is like, I feel like I live in like a one act play about like a woman who's slowly going crazy by all her responsibilities or something. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:00:29)
Yes. Like how did this happen? Yeah, but it's like

at the same time in that moment, do you almost think, okay, I get why my parents totally unplugged and we detached from all of like they almost like it's not equivalent obviously, what's going on now to back then as far as phones and everything but you grew up completely unplugged from so much of whatever was going on at the time, you know, and now you're in it. It's almost like there is validity to what they were doing.

Vanessa (1:00:51)
Totally.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:00:59)
But that was also, that was an extreme scenario.

Vanessa (1:00:59)
100%. And their point of view

was like, what you need to know about money is that you need to have enough money to never think about money. So you live sort of, you know, lower middle to middle class and you have enough saved that, you know, you have the money for the rainy day or whatever it is. It's just things are not, doesn't work that way anymore.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:01:08)
Yeah.

Vanessa (1:01:23)
can't be a professor and an artist and have like a nest egg and own your house and like, blah, blah. Like, you know, I taught, ⁓ you know, at a very nice private school and taught a course there and they paid me $8,000 as an adjunct. And it was like two thirds of my time were taken doing this course. So it's, you know, the adjunct lifestyle is not like, ⁓ and being an artist is really hard. I think,

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:01:42)
Yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa (1:01:52)
But I do have to say one thing, even though I just mentioned the thing about the house insurance, one thing that they would always say to me, I do now understand why, which is like, don't switch your bank, don't get a different credit card, like it's never worth it. And I'm like, you are so right about that. Like.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:02:10)
man.

Vanessa (1:02:13)
Whenever it says like you can get 3 % or 4 % in this account it's really only for like two or three months and then reset it at point one and screw you and like you know

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:02:16)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. There is some

reason for that because we've had the same car insurance now for, ⁓ God, almost 20 years or something. And I've had people say, why don't you switch? Why don't you switch? But ⁓ it's been fine, even a little more expensive at times. But I'll tell you, being with them so long, we have like amazing accident forgiveness. Like they we continue to more and more discounts. Like the reputation we've built with them has paid off now.

Vanessa (1:02:44)
Right.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:02:52)
So there I go. I get that in a way. the bank, we've had the same bank, the same credit cards, the same car insurance. We've had to shop home homeowners. We're in Florida. this is scam capital of the world. to do it in Florida. So you to your toes down here. got to stand your toes. But so during OK, so you said for elementary and junior high, you were in public, but then you switched over to private. Was that mainly because the public high school?

Vanessa (1:03:03)
Okay, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:03:20)
Was it just like really bad at that time or?

Vanessa (1:03:23)
think

that was probably just like a stupid decision of mine because friends of mine were going to private school and I wanted to go and my parents went and saw the school and they really had like all these, you know, opportunities that I wouldn't have had otherwise. you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:03:36)
Okay. So during

that time of elementary and junior high, you were playing the violin, you were ⁓ fairly sheltered, you know, in that sheltered environment, you're exceeding academically, it sounds like, checking all the boxes needed. When you got into high school, was there a rebellious period? Did you start to not put as much attention towards things you were doing before that?

Vanessa (1:03:44)
Mm-hmm.

A hundred percent. Yeah. Like by I would say sophomore, junior year, I was just like, whatever. Screw this violin. Are you joking me? Like what is happening here? Yeah. I mean, and my grades weren't that good. And, you know, it was.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:04:10)
And then.

Vanessa (1:04:21)
Yeah, I think, and then I went to college and I like partied my way through college because it was easy for me because I had gone, like I worked so hard before that I had understood how to do, you know, these papers or tests in a way that kids just coming like from the suburbs didn't understand.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:04:29)
Yeah. Right.

and understand.

I ⁓ bigger question maybe. What's it like growing up in New York City? Like, ⁓ for me it was a playground and a novelty, but you live, what's that like? That's gotta be cool.

Vanessa (1:04:49)
Yeah.

I mean, you know, it's, I think that it's just so colored by the specific way that my, like my family was that, you know, I grew up up sort of near Columbia. You know, I was in a building surrounded by like empty lots in a very black area. Not like, I didn't grow up in a nice like area or in a nice place really. And it was.

maybe a little scary. I didn't think it was that scary, but it did mean that my mom like walked me to the bus. I wasn't allowed to go outside ⁓ by myself very often. And so yeah, I would take the bus home, that's true. And then like get off and walk half a block. Like I never, I never walked through Central Park by myself till I think probably I was like in maybe a junior or something like 16 years old and I live right near Central Park. So.

It's crazy, my daughter wants to like go hang out in the park at night and like meet all her friends. I'm like, I wasn't even allowed to walk through the park like in the day, you know? So at the same time, yeah, like when we were 14 or 15, it was like, OK, you know, taxis coming to pick you up and we're going downtown and, know, we're going to go to a nightclub. Like we just like fully just walked into a nightclub at like 14 years old or we're going to go to Washington Square Park or.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:05:57)
Yeah, yeah.

Vanessa (1:06:19)
whatever it was, it's like, and I see this now with my kids, there's just like a day where suddenly there's a, you're like, ⁓ you mean this subway goes anywhere I want by myself? Like it's a little scary taking a subway by yourself, but it's also super exciting, right? And you mean this thing like just will take me wherever I wanna go. And now they have phones so they can all like figure out, you know, how to meet each other at any moment.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:06:36)
Yeah.

Vanessa (1:06:47)
and it just sort of switches and you're just like out in the city alone. And then you like never really go back from there.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:06:53)
In the late 80s into the early 90s, probably into 2000, early 2000s, the city, call it Disney. Because like, you know, when I was younger, you could hit 42nd Street as all peep shows, know, prostitution was big, drug dealing was big. Then I left for college came back and it was like, wait, there's like a Disney store. There's, you know, it was like there's, it was safe. It was weird. So you kind of grew up when it was still a bit sketchy.

Vanessa (1:07:18)
Yeah, it really switched.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:07:23)
then hit your, I think you're two years younger than us. you probably, New York started to get kind of good as you were probably like a senior, right? Junior, senior in high school, a little bit safer.

Vanessa (1:07:33)
Yeah,

think it, I mean, I felt that it got safer definitely once I graduated college and then I moved down to the village and I felt like I was in a safer place. So that was like late 90s, know, mid to late 90s. I mean, I don't know that I felt scared is the weird thing because I think I just grew up there and that was what I knew. But looking back on it, it is sort of bizarre.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:07:47)
Yep.

Vanessa (1:08:02)
Like I grew up in, it almost looks like Soviet block housing. It wasn't like public projects, but it looks like that sort of like, you know, very middle income housing, very much, you know, I'm not joking you. They were like burned out lot, burned out buildings all around where I grew up. Now, of course, there are Whole Foods. You know, like, so it's really a totally different thing. I, you know,

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:08:20)
Yeah.

Vanessa (1:08:29)
Whatever my parents did, they gave me lot of confidence. So at least overtly, like I just always, my whole thing was just like, anytime I would be walking around at night and there would be a single man, like walking down the street or a pack of guys, anybody without a woman, I would just cross the street. Like I would just cross the street. Like not even break like a, you know, sweat about it or change the way I was walking. I would just suddenly just like, you know, everybody jaywalks, just like jaywalk across the street, just get away from them, you know? And that was always.

my thing, how I would sort of navigate in the city. But it's, yeah, it's hard now. You know, I have a 14-year-old daughter and she wants to go wherever she wants to go. you know, what can you really do ultimately? You can say no, but you know, she can always say, I'm sleeping over at my friend's house. I don't know, you know, what am I going to do? Like, I guess we can track them now, which is the difference.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:09:22)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing

we can track them. Now. I was just thinking you almost when we're talking about hypervigilance earlier, you almost have the hyper grew up with the hypervigilance of someone who grew up in the city. It was not as much of a Gen X hypervigilance. It was just growing up in the city because that's hypervigilance, right? Your body automatically crosses the street, but that's from hypervigilance. So you had a different even though you might you were sheltered, you know, to some degree by your parents, but

Vanessa (1:09:34)
Yeah.

Right, yeah.

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:09:51)
it was contrasted with growing up in New York City. So in a way you weren't sheltered because there's things you experienced that the rest of us didn't even though some of us were feral. ⁓

Vanessa (1:09:54)
Yeah.

That's true. Yeah. But it's

also like, wasn't in, you know, I didn't, I wasn't in a sorority. didn't like get into like Greek life or places where you like maybe are gonna get date raped. You know what I mean? Like I wasn't, I was never a person who like went to big like, you know, that like just more of like the big party culture or like the music scene culture. Like it was much more of like a sort of.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:10:12)
Yeah, yeah,

Vanessa (1:10:29)
you know, not stay out like that late person, but always be out and about. like, I mean, one of the other fascinating things is like, because I was a only child or I am an only child is just like, was so into my friends, just like wanted to be with my friends all the time. And so now like being very sandwich generation, you're like, wow, like I really haven't seen now this person that I was friends with.

⁓ because we're both so busy. And then for whatever reason, a lot of my friends are not dealing with sick parents. So that has created, I think, a little distance where it's like, you don't really want to hear about this, do you? You know, this is like really intense. My mom is at home and you know, I'm the only person for her. She lives with an aid, so it's not as though.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:11:23)
Right.

Vanessa (1:11:23)
I'm

there doing the physical labor every day, but like, you know, if I didn't visit her, like there are very, very, very few other people who would, and this is like year five of this, so.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:11:35)
You

both live, you live in New York City today? You're in Brooklyn, is your mom in the city? Okay, wow. Is she really? Wow. Wow.

Vanessa (1:11:37)
I live in Brooklyn, yeah. She's in the same apartment where I grew up. She's in the same apartment, yes. Yeah, they

really never changed anything. They were like, don't change anything, anything. So yeah. They were very consistent the way they thought people should live, yes. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:11:53)
They were consistent. were consistent. You know, I'm just picturing. Yeah, yeah, She held to it. ⁓ But coming home,

because I wasn't only, I had half siblings and step siblings, but they lived ⁓ with my dad in Michigan. I grew up in Oregon. And then when my mom, my mom remarried twice, there was a period where I had step siblings in Oregon, but they only visited like every other weekend or whatever. So in general, I was an only child in my regular life.

Vanessa (1:12:21)
Mm-hmm.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:12:22)
And so I would come home alone after school, have to call my parents, let know I'm in, lock the doors, all that. But I found such comfort in television, in MTV, in watching shows. ⁓ I'd make my after school snack as unhealthy as it was. And then I would do my chores and I would watch TV. I would be able to go out in the neighborhood and just be out until like my mom came home from school or from work. So I was...

Vanessa (1:12:32)
Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:12:49)
Farrell doing in the woods doing weird things doing like, you know, building forts and all that totally unsupervised. But there was that period where I had that comfort of TV is that the other noise in the house, like almost like a person in the house with me. So I'm picturing you coming home and not having that. Like, what would you do? Would you play the violin?

Vanessa (1:13:03)
Mm-hmm.

Well, no, definitely not. But I mean,

I would I would like well, that's I wanted to watch like the facts of life or, you know, 21 Jump Street, like and ⁓ and I would get to watch a little of that, especially if my parents weren't home or if my mom would stay in the studio. ⁓ But I read I mean, I was an English major. I read and read and read and read books over and over. And it was like they were my friends.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:13:21)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Okay.

Okay, okay. Because the other thing that was like, quote unquote, my friends were my albums. Like I would listen to music. Am I 45? Guys remember 45s? I mean, you put the little plastic thing in the middle so could put on the record player. Music, I became obsessed because it was music or TV was music. Did you have albums? Did you have your own record player?

Vanessa (1:13:43)
You know.

Mm.

I had, ⁓ I don't know if I had my own record player. We had a record player, but I had like my CDs and I had my tape things and I would make tapes for people and all of that. Yeah. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:14:13)
Make mixtapes and stuff. That was more

books than music. you can see them. We have a bunch of cassettes up here.

Vanessa (1:14:19)
can, ⁓

yeah, no, I see a little bit of them, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:14:21)
Those are his grateful

dead bootlegs. ⁓

Vanessa (1:14:24)
I love it. Amazing. Yeah, what's gonna happen when you get old? are those? Well, hopefully

those can, somebody is gonna want those, hopefully.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:14:34)
Our oldest is a big deadhead. a big deadhead. he'll take that. I'd have to buy a cassette player though I have one but it's... I'll have to get a new one. You'll get a jam box. Okay so books and music then. But that makes sense, books. Who's your favorite author?

Vanessa (1:14:36)
Okay, good. Yeah.

Yeah.

my God, I don't even know. I mean, I would read like one book that we would read in school and then I would read everything by that person. I mean, everything from like, I mean, like it sounds crazy to say this now, but like I was so into Henry James. I think I read all Henry James's books, like Bret Easton Ellis, or, you know, I read all of the like Rabbit Run books, like anything that was sort of.

a like the great American novel kind of stuff. know, something like, I actually don't like Jonathan Franzen, but the way people talk about like the corrections or something like that. You know, I didn't read lots of mysteries, ⁓ but I mean, I was not above like reading some, you know, Scott True book also and like.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:15:25)
Thank

Vanessa (1:15:46)
⁓ Just like anything, really anything. I didn't, I, you know, I was always a good writer and that was always like my thing. So I really liked to read like really serious books.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:16:02)
So were you, did you do the typical Gen X, S.E. Hinton, where you read everything by S.E. Hinton? Okay.

Vanessa (1:16:06)
I definitely read some some essay. My

daughter just read the outsiders and I was like, oh my God, which is actually on Broadway now. I think there's a yeah. And I was looking at all the different guys who are in the movie. I was just like, wow, God blast from the past, you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:16:15)
yeah, I saw that. Yeah, that.

Yeah. Totally. I

read that book so many times. My gosh, talk about best friend like that in my Rick Springfield and Loverboy albums where I held on to those. Did you go through a John Hughes phase to like most like like all that stuff?

Vanessa (1:16:35)
I definitely watched, Yeah,

I mean, I think the Breakfast Club, showed very often, and 16 candles very often on non-cable TV, so I would get to see those. And I mean, I probably, I probably at one point knew like every line to the Breakfast Club. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:16:44)
Yes.

Yeah, okay. So you still

had access to all the typical media you got you you ingested it at some point basically like maybe not as early.

Vanessa (1:16:59)
Yeah,

I was always trying to get out of there in high school and go see my friends. So that would be what we would do at their house. But I definitely didn't see, there's a lot of music videos that I for sure would not know who that band was, right? Because I just don't know, I don't know what all these people look like really, because I didn't watch any of that stuff when I was growing up.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:17:05)
Yeah.

Thank

Right.

Right.

It's to think that you were in the city where that was sort of the epicenter and, Hollywood's got its thing, but MTV was New York.

Vanessa (1:17:31)
Mm-hmm.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:17:33)
what I was going to ask you was ⁓ in high school when you kind of started going out that rebellious path and your grades weren't as good and you were

doing more what you wanted to do. How did your parents handle that?

Vanessa (1:17:40)
Mm-hmm.

I think it was not the greatest time in our lives. I I think when I think about when that happened, it was, you know, like the late 80s, which ⁓ was also like a downswing in my mom's art career. And I remember there being a lot of fighting, like there was a lot of fighting between ⁓ my mom and my dad and me and my mom and my dad and.

I think it really took me moving out, so it was like not so present in their lives, you know? No, but as soon as I graduated high school, I went to college and I never really lived there again, you know? And I mean, it's so funny now, like they really didn't like my friends, you know, because my friends were sort of like party girls or, you know, guys, party guys or whatever.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:18:22)
Did you move out before you graduated from high school?

Vanessa (1:18:43)
And now, of course, you know, when you have like teenagers, you're like, OK, I can kind of see where I'd rather have this one over than this one over, you know. But you can't like let your kids know that because it's not your place to really be telling them who to hang out with their lives. So I don't know. It was just like I wanted to have that. You know, I didn't never go to the mall. Like I wanted to go to Victoria's Secret at the mall and.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:18:55)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa (1:19:11)
have that kind of hanging out experience and then ended up, know, city kids just like make it happen however you can.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:19:20)
Was that in high school when you started having those experiences then?

Vanessa (1:19:23)
Yeah,

I would say late high school, like junior and senior year.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:19:27)
What would be the mall? Would it be like, was it ANS Plaza?

Vanessa (1:19:32)
was more like going to like, you know, where there would be a lot of stores and like, you know, 72nd Street where Tower Records was on the east, the west side or on the east side around 86th Street, which is like sort of where my kids hang out now, which is like, I don't even remember what was there, but like now there's like an H and a this and a that. It's like an outdoor, it might as well be a mall, right? It's all the same stores every place anyway.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:19:41)
Okay.

Don't you like them yet?

Yeah, cool.

That was the how was the tower records like I grew up in Portland and in Beaverton to be official and we had a tower records, but the one in the city, that was the one like you were able to go to the one. ⁓ yeah, that's really cool.

Vanessa (1:20:10)
That was great. Yeah. Yeah. But when

you're a kid, you don't know that you're at like the one. I mean, it's only afterwards that you recognize like how cool these things were. Right. Exactly. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:20:15)
Now.

Well, you don't know you're in the good old days until you're out of the good old days. That's how that goes. I'm assuming

you were raised though was assumed you were going to go to college. That was never.

Vanessa (1:20:30)
Yeah, that was never a question. I was definitely going to have to go to college. Yeah. I went to Wesleyan, which is a great school in Connecticut. ⁓ And, you know, with no core curriculum, you're sort of allowed to do whatever you wanted to do. My dad wanted me to go to University of Chicago very much ⁓ because he thought that was a much more serious school. And I was like, no, it's so cold. I'm to have to do math. But.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:20:32)
Yeah. And where did you go?

Okay.

Vanessa (1:20:59)
Yeah, it was great. I had an amazing time. course, now, you know, Wesleyan's really well known for like MGMT went there, like lots of musicians has great film department. ⁓ But and then I came back to the city and I started working at New York magazine pretty quickly because back then you just be like, what do I do? Like, I like to read. I like to write. Like, I want to maybe I work in a magazine and they just like give you a job there. You know, it's totally unlike. I mean, that whole.

know, the journalism, I've really watched like journalism basically sort of get more and more commercial through the 90s and the 2000s, you know, running up to essentially 2008, I would say it was like the downswing. And then it just never recovered.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:21:44)
Did you

major in that in journalism or in media?

Vanessa (1:21:50)
No, I was an English major. So I just was, you know, I was a writer and a reader. But again, like, I mean, I went in there, I didn't know anybody, but they liked me. You know, I probably had the right resume for them. But it was one of those fluke things where it was like, you know, when everybody's getting promoted up a chain, but you have to replace the bottom person. And they had had somebody commit and then pull out.

and say, I'm gonna go to graduate school or something like that. And so they really needed this bottom roll to be filled, because everybody was pissed that they were still not promoted. And so it was just like a right place, right time thing. Yeah, Guggenheim, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:22:32)
of like your mom with the Guggenheim, you know, just walked in and was

like... So when you went to college, ⁓ did you live in the dorms?

Vanessa (1:22:41)
I lived in the dorms, yeah. And then in-house. I did not have a roommate. ⁓ I'm trying to think if I had a roommate. Okay, I did not have a roommate freshman year. You lucky. Yeah, the dorms were really gross, but I did not have a roommate. Then sophomore year, I did move in with somebody and I moved out after like a month because I was like, I can't handle this. Like you're awake all night, you have a ferret. Like I can't do a ferret and like 5 a.m. And so...

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:22:42)
Did you ever remain?

Lucky.

you

Vanessa (1:23:09)
I moved

in with some other people, but it was like, yeah, very small. I mean, it was like a closet that I threw my bed into, but I was able to, It was like an on-campus apartment, basically, yeah. I had two other roommates.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:23:17)
like in an apartment, like off campus.

And how many roommates then?

So was that your first time living with other people besides your parents?

Vanessa (1:23:29)
Other than, I mean, I went to camp and stuff like that, but yeah, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:23:32)
Okay.

And was that an adjustment, especially being an only child, not having siblings?

Vanessa (1:23:38)
I liked it. mean, again, like

I loved being around my friends. My friends were like the most important thing in the world to me. And so those roommates became my friends and I liked it, but I don't think I could be with somebody with like in my room with me. That was like a little, a bridge a little too far.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:23:50)
that you threat.

Yeah, so you never went through that because you didn't have a roommate freshman year and then you had your own room sophomore year you'd like the rest of us had to have a room with someone you got to over that. It's a it is a bridge too far. I had a roommate. It's crazy for a semester. The guy failed out and I got to keep the whole room to myself and I've never looked back. Yeah. So you're you didn't miss too much. You're good. So my daughter, our daughter, ⁓

Vanessa (1:24:01)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:24:27)
Our son only had to share with one person, but when our daughter went to college, they had to share three to one room. Like a quad or something? Yeah. Remember? that's right. And it went bathroom. It was I was I was appalled. I was like, this is insane. Three girls in a dorm sized room. Now, now I think she she had meant she was like tweaking that whole year. But no, that's awesome that you never even had to share a room. That's cool. So then your junior year, did you miss out? No.

Vanessa (1:24:43)
Ugh. No.

So great.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:24:57)
Did you, that was one rite of passage, but it's fine. Dear Junior, did you live with the same people that you lived with sophomore year?

Vanessa (1:25:00)
Yeah.

I

lived with different people, but again, a similar situation, like an on-campus apartment with like little bedrooms. Yeah. Same thing. I think it was more like a house, was more like an actual house, but it was owned by the university. And I did. What? And we definitely partied. I mean, I definitely did not. I mean, again, I worked so that I had good grades because that was the thing I was known.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:25:12)
And then what about senior year?

And you partied? And you partied?

Vanessa (1:25:33)
I had to do that. You know, I had straight A's. And I think really what I started to do is I started to take easy classes because there wasn't a core. So I was like, cool. Like, if I take this, you know, astronomy for poets or whatever, that'll be good enough. And, you know, I just, all I wanted to do was just be with my friends and be free and read books. And I would always, you know, my thing is like I would

show up in the library like Sunday morning at 9 a.m. and just study all day and just basically cram and that would be like the studying for the week kind of thing, till finals.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:26:14)
that dichotomy of

pleasing your parents with your good grades while figuring your shit out and who you are and living and having some fun. Yeah. So when you say there wasn't a core, did you not have to do any prereqs?

Vanessa (1:26:18)
Yeah.

Right, exactly, exactly.

Nothing. Nothing. I just was like, I took, I took like West African dance one and two. I took like gay literature 1890 to like 1910.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:26:31)
That's amazing. Did you have grade?

Like, is our freshman year, we went to the same college, ⁓ our freshman year, like you had to take like a bio one or, or psych. Most colleges. Yeah, you had to do, I guess so, right? Evergreen in Washington is, I don't know. Well, did you have grades or was it more evaluations? Okay.

Vanessa (1:26:59)
No, we had grades. We had

grades. I might have had to do a couple of things for my English major, but I don't really remember them being onerous. They were things I wanted to read anyway. I do recall that there was quite a bit of sort of Plymouth Mount speeches that I probably didn't want to read. ⁓ Those were probably core to the major, but there was no ultimate core curriculum to graduate.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:27:08)
anything.

so cool. I would have failed all those. No, I would have thrived with that. That's awesome. So you graduate and you get this job in the city that just everything falls into place. And it was at was it a magazine? Yorker New York magazine.

Vanessa (1:27:41)
Yeah, it was New York Magazine, which still

exists today and is like, you know, I mean, you guys have like Ocean Drive or something like that. It was better than that. It was more like a Sunday magazine that goes with your newspaper, you know? ⁓ But I just answered phones and, you know, like wrote about like the best focaccia in New York and like where you should park when you're in Midtown and things like that. And then

slowly sort of worked my way up from there. But it was so fun. I mean, it was like a Sex and the City kind of lifestyle, right? Like in the way of just like, okay, you're hanging out, you're running around with your friends and blah, blah, blah, blah, know, doing whatever, writing little articles that are of no note whatsoever. And...

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:28:33)
What years

would that have been when you first started there? Yeah.

Vanessa (1:28:36)
What years? I

started in 96.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:28:39)
Okay, so into the late 90s. mean, so was it boots on the ground? Like if you're talking about the best place to park, are you going and actually researching and going to that place? ⁓

Vanessa (1:28:48)
Totally, yeah. I mean, you know, the

meatpacking district, which is now like this cool place with all these like, you know, sushi restaurants and like whatever, Diane von Furstenberg, was an actual meatpacking district. I remember they sent us down there during the day to write about like, wow, something's happening here. Like, stores are gonna open. And it was just like, you know, it'd be like there's blood on the street, you know, there's like these plastic curtains. You see all these like.

know, jowls, whatever they call it, of meat hanging behind them. Yeah, it was really fun. It was a really, I mean, in some ways it's not that different than what an influencer is doing now, except that, you know, I didn't have to be on camera, so I really enjoyed that. But people are really nice to you also. You can put them in the magazine. They're pretty happy about it. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:29:36)
Yeah, you

were were living that Carrie Bradshaw life while that show was going on. If you think about it, it was parallel, you know.

Vanessa (1:29:43)
Very much so, yes, it's true. Yeah, they were

a lot older, right? The whole thing was supposed to be that they were a bit older and that they were choosing not to be married or whatever. But yeah, I mean, I for years only drank like a Cosmopolitan when I went out, because that's like what you drank, you know? With like my little Manolo Blahnik, I mean, wearing the most uncomfortable shoes. don't, somebody said to me like, I look at the clothes that I had from New York in the 90s and they look.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:29:50)
Right. Right.

Right.

I'm sorry.

Vanessa (1:30:13)
like a doll's clothes. Like they're so tiny, these little black dresses we would wear and black heels and you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:30:21)
Was it with Friends going on then too? Yeah, yeah, Friends started in 94. So Friends is going on. Yes, yes it was. It's funny because while you were drinking your Cosmos in the city doing that cliche thing, right? All of us in the rest of the country and probably the world were also doing that. Like we were trying to mimic that same lifestyle, but you were actually in it, living it. If you look back on that now, it's...

Vanessa (1:30:25)
Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:30:48)
me personally thinks that's pretty cool because that was something for us that was just so untouchable.

Vanessa (1:30:54)
It's for sure something that I can exploit in a memoir or something. ⁓ It's definitely, mean, yeah, because things are popping up and I'm like, my God, I was there for that.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:30:59)
Yeah, for sure. For sure, like you missed it. You you were doing it.

Yeah.

Now, how long did you work at the New Yorker? New York Magazine, I'm sorry.

Vanessa (1:31:13)
New York Magazine. I worked there, I

worked there on and off. I mean, I still have worked for them more recently. So like on and off, I became more of a features writer. So I was just like sort of working on contracts. I think in 2003, I started working for Rolling Stone and I started interviewing a lot of pop stars for Rolling Stone. And then I like sort of decelerated at New York, but I kept writing for New York, but.

I became a bit more of like a mercenary. Like you can hire me if you have somebody you want me to interview, you know, kind of freelancer.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:31:50)
So were you working for New York Magazine during 9-11?

Vanessa (1:31:56)
I was working for New York Magazine, I think I had, I mean, I guess I had already started working for Rolling Stone because I was living in SoHo ⁓ and I was supposed to go interview somebody in Chappaqua in Westchester for Rolling Stone. I probably just started working there ⁓ the day before and I had been like too lazy to do it. And I was like, whatever, I think, you know, actually what I was going to do, which is so crazy to think about it now is,

⁓ There had been like a scandal at this high school of a bunch of kids went over to the parents were home. They were from the football team and they had had a party and they'd hired a stripper and it like got really out of control. And so Rolling Stone thought this was, you they were doing these very slice of America kind of stories. Like this is going to be a pretty funny story. Like you should go see what was happening and what the parents think. And so I was going to, I

Like, it was like, okay, I'm just taking my backpack and go walk around the school or just pretend I go to school there even though I'm older, you know? Like I don't think do the like never been kissed thing or whatever. It's not that hard to walk around to high school, you know? And so I was like, I just don't feel like doing that. Like that feels like a lot to do today. I'll do it tomorrow. And then that tomorrow was 9-11. And so actually...

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:33:04)
Right, right, right.

Vanessa (1:33:20)
I heard something and I was like, is that a plane crashing into a building? my God, I gotta take my shower because I have to go to Chappaqua to do my assignment. And didn't process that that would actually have been, that sonic boom was something really that was serious. And then I got out of the shower and my mom was calling me she was like, the terrorists have hit the World Trade Center. And I was like, no, they haven't. What are you talking about? I was going up, I was gonna take the subway up to her apartment on the Upper West Side and get her car.

to, because I didn't have a car to drive up to Westchester. And I was like, I gotta come up and get the car. And she was like, you don't understand what's happening. Like you can't come up here. And I was like, I have to, I told them I didn't go yesterday, you know, and then I like turned the TV on and I was like, okay. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:34:08)
Yeah.

How being a New Yorker growing up in the city, I mean, for the rest of us, we were in Jersey at the time. It was obviously shocking to America. But for someone from the city, can you describe that feeling?

Vanessa (1:34:26)
I mean, it was so surreal. was like, then I went up to the roof and I saw all these other people on their roofs and everybody was like, you know, had like a little digital camera or something was tape recording. And, you know, I saw the second tower, sort of like the, just caught like the antenna basically coming, like a whole second tower had come down. I just saw the antenna sort of like bump up. ⁓ And then when I went down on the street was like every like 30th

person walking by was like covered in dust because they were starting to walk uptown, right? Because you couldn't get out of there unless you walked out of there. So people were wearing suits with like a briefcase totally covered in, like white, just like white dust. mean, that was really, really scary.

You know, I went away for the weekend and then when we came back into the city, I remember driving back from Long Island and you could just see this huge plume of black smoke over the whole city. You'd been like five or six days, but it was still there. My father was very worried because I lived so close to it, like about the health repercussions and you know, I didn't look close enough, hopefully, you know, knock on wood to it to have the health, you know, I'm not like part of the 9-11 fund.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:35:37)
Yeah.

Right.

Vanessa (1:35:53)
but yeah, it was a very scary time, you know? And then you have like Giuliani in the middle of it who nobody really trusted.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:36:02)
Yeah, no, think the smoke, probably the wind took it away from you thinking about it, right? But I don't know. Was there a feeling of because outside of the city, America kind of came together, right? Like everyone was displaying flags and there was that feeling of unity. What did that transcend onto the city as well?

Vanessa (1:36:07)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

I think so. mean, it's, you know, it's such a blur back that time because, you know, I had to show my license to get into my apartment, right? Like a piece of mail to say, like, I actually live here, because they had closed everything with canal and lower. So I don't feel like I was just still living my life, but just in this.

very weird way. And at that time, all of my friends were journalists and my boyfriend was actually a New York Times reporter. So it was very much like about the unfolding story, you know? mean, nobody felt that what had happened was okay in any way. And everybody felt that some, you know, reaction was justified, right? But then it kind of quickly became like, well, are we

you know, are we in Afghanistan too long? you know, should we actually be in Pakistan? Like, what exactly, who are these people? Like, I remember many more of the conversations because it was a journalist being like, who are the people really behind it? What are we gonna do about the Saudis? Like, what exactly is happening here? Like, there absolutely has to be a reaction, but are we going after the right people? And then many friends of mine, you know, went.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:37:25)
Right.

Vanessa (1:37:50)
went to like the war and reported from the war and you know I did not and I sort of felt like well I wish I had gone and I remember I said to my editor at Rolling Stone like the next year like well I want to also report on some you know war like and he was like do you want to go to Sudan I'm looking for somebody to go to Sudan and I was like no I do not.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:37:54)
trip.

Vanessa (1:38:16)
No, actually, I do not want to go to Sudan. Okay. Thank you. I would like to interview Shakira. That's fine.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:38:16)
Enjoy.

Did you ever end up doing any piece though on 9-11? Did you ever write an article about it?

Vanessa (1:38:31)
think I

really did. mean, I, you know, my work that I have done is largely pretty light, you know? I'm more of like a lifestyle and scandal reporter. And I do make like assertions and I do think things through. But, the most I've ever done is, you know, I think I interviewed Hillary Clinton once. I interviewed Nancy Pelosi once. I wrote about like, you know, when I was...

trying to figure out, who am gonna cover in Trump world? I covered Ivanka because she was close enough to my world in New York City that I was able to find some people who knew her who hadn't spoken before. So I've never really been a political writer or a geopolitical global person who covers all of that. It's such a different thing.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:39:25)
It's such a fascinating perspective though to know people who had to tell the story. And I'm sure they had diverse opinions and angles to how they might want to tell it, right? But as for a lot of us, we were consumers. And so we're forming opinions on a lot of input and a lot of data. You were in the world where you knew some people that to your point that went over to Afghanistan or Iraq and

Vanessa (1:39:31)
Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:39:51)
to the front lines and reported on this stuff. What a fascinating perspective. That alone, I think, is a story.

Vanessa (1:39:58)
Yeah. Yeah. mean, I

feel like, you know, I very much came from the mainstream. I mean, I'm still like a mainstream media person. it's, to me, it's just, these are the people I know and they're not trying to like screw anybody over, do anything underhanded. But it's just like, this is the way human beings work is like you work at a place.

for certain number of years. And there's a way of looking at the world, like whether it's liberal or conservative or whatever it is that you get rewarded for, right? So over time, your viewpoint becomes more and more of that type. But the journalists that I know, especially because there's so many repercussions for getting things wrong, work so hard to try to tell like the truth of the story, you know?

I mean, now there's less repercussions. Like you can billage yourself outside of, you know, the media and you can have your own sub stack and you can say what you want to say. And it's not as fact-based as it once was. But a lot of the job used to be like, if you worked at the Wall Street Journal, like the job was like not getting a correction. Like there's repercussions for that. Like you can't spell somebody's name wrong. Like too many things of that nature go into your file. You're not going to be working there. You know, like

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:41:13)
Yeah.

Vanessa (1:41:23)
It's sort of like being a doctor in some ways. It's like, you get a couple of malpractice suits. Like, that's not okay. Like the hospital's not, I mean, I don't know. I'm making that up because I don't really know. But I assume that's like the hospital sort of like, wait, are we really going to have you working here? So it's like actually very tedious to try to get the, be like, did this happen in 1980 or 1981? You know, but people do really, yeah, they do try to do that. So, you know,

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:41:35)
Right. Yeah.

It's like your next matter type of thing. Yeah.

Vanessa (1:41:54)
I very much come from a place where I don't trust a lot of the things that I see now, but I think that if people are coming to it with the, again, it's also like, that is the legal standard by the way of journalism, is you have to believe that what you're saying is true, right?

And so I believe at least if people believe what they're saying is true, then at least we can have like a conversation. It's more like if you're trying to get clout just by like making up some crazy thing, like about whatever it is, like that, you know, the conspiracy theory is sort of like get out of control. I mean, as I'm sure you can tell from this conversation, like I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist. Like I was brought up to be extremely like pragmatic, you know, and like.

look at things pretty clear-eyed, so I don't like that stuff. Like, I really don't.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:42:55)
Man, I think the single scariest thing I've ever heard is what you just said in that the legal standard is you have to believe in what you write. whether you're right, left, center, whatever, there's so much out there that's just not right on a daily basis coming from the quote unquote traditional or legacy standard media, right?

Vanessa (1:43:04)
Yeah.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:43:19)
wild to think of it that or or not like a seaside just there's just so much out there no you can be a right-wing youtuber left-wing youtuber and and you're doing it for clicks right you're just

Vanessa (1:43:30)
Well, think, yeah, I mean, think what's really interesting is

there's people who I know, you know, who were like, were mainstream media and they got so frustrated with the sort of box that they had to be in, that they wanted to say more. And then now those people are like a real grab bag. Like some of them are still awesome and I totally believe what they're saying. Others of them, you know,

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:43:49)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (1:43:59)
because you really change the incentives. Now you're no longer just a journalist who's being paid and you've just, you know, picking up your check, whatever, you're trying to make it with like clicks on YouTube or something. And we all know that like, you've got to pick people up within like 30 seconds, right? Of the conversation on YouTube. When you see the drop off, it's stunning. So you've got to have this headline that's so extreme. That's like the Martians come.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:44:22)
Yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa (1:44:27)
you know, to earth kind of level of headline. And, you know, it's, you've got to make a living. I mean, look, a lot of the people who I know who are not journalists anymore, because you can't, because like a fire did and there's needs like fully musical chairs, right? So you, you don't have a lot of choices. Either you're within the few remaining institutions, you know, or

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:44:30)
Yeah.

Vanessa (1:44:57)
you're outside that institution and you're doing the creator economy thing. And it's really no different than any other creator. Everybody's using the same tools. Everybody's making the clips. every, you know, it's just a question of scale. obviously Mr. Beast has scale, you know, but there's no, you know, influencer or creator. It's all the same thing now. ⁓ Or you're going to go and you're going to either be a publicist, which is what a lot of people I know are doing. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:45:05)
Yeah.

Vanessa (1:45:26)
Other people, a lot of people are becoming therapists because a lot of what a good journalist knows how to do is listen, right? ⁓ Some people going back to education, becoming teachers. ⁓ But there's not like, it's not the way it was in the 90s where it was like a career you could choose. I honestly don't even know if people should really be going to school for this anymore. I feel like it's almost unfair to think.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:45:54)
You

said, I think it was at New York Magazine, it changed in 2008. What was the change? Was that the internet? Or is it kind of what you're touching on now?

Vanessa (1:46:05)
⁓ it was the advertising

off of that crash in 2008. It was the internet that everybody was sort of denying, right? It was a problem, which had been a problem since the nineties. And then was just, you know, things were getting better speeds, whatever it was, were getting better. ⁓ also I'm not really sure when social media started, but maybe it was, was it around then maybe it was later.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:46:23)
Yeah.

Facebook was a

wasn't Facebook like that was around there 2008. What was the other one? My space. My space was going on for before that. But as far as yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa (1:46:35)
Yeah, it might have been social media.

Yeah, mean,

social media really, for the kind of work that I was doing, social media is the thing that really changed the whole game because it was like, I was writing stories like, you know, either about celebrities, right, who can now put out their own photos, pictures, everything, their entire own media machine, or like stories like, you know, I did write a story about when New York became the only child capital of the country, only, know, when only children.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:46:56)
Yeah.

Vanessa (1:47:09)
you know, were higher in percentage than siblings in New York City. I wrote a story, I mean, I used the phrase, so it was like the only child capital of America, right? And it was about, you know, the problems of being an only child and the advantages and everything. But like those kinds of stories, you know, they're lifestyle stories, they're fun, they're really fun to write and they're fun to read and they're really just about cocktail chatter. Like they're the idea that you might say to your friend who you know is an only.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:47:20)
Interesting.

Vanessa (1:47:38)
Like, hey, should, you know, check this out, read this, this is good. And social media does that now for you, you know? Yeah, the connection.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:47:39)
I'm

connection. Yeah,

connection. We almost have to go seek that lifestyle story out. Right. I still go to Yahoo. Even though Yahoo so you know, it's feels dark ages, but they have a lot of lifestyle stories that you can read.

Vanessa (1:47:56)
Yeah.

That's true. They do. Yeah. Life's

yeah. And AOL also like they do have stuff there that's just like, okay, let's just take this down a peg. This doesn't need to be like political like, yeah, exactly. And

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:48:07)
Yeah, yeah.

It's an escape. Yeah.

It's almost like what you're talking about, though, ⁓ where you had said, or no, you both had discussed about how legally the as long as the intention is there, it seems to be what then they believe what they're putting out there, then that lines up legally. But it sounds like it's intention melding with accountability needed to happen there where.

Now I don't know if there's accountability with the intention, right? Where before with journalism, you believed what you were putting out there, but you were also held accountable because the facts better be straight down to someone's name needs to be spelled correctly or else you're gonna, somebody's gonna get in trouble for that. Where I don't think that's the case. I can't tell you how many things I read. And I'm like, who wrote this? know, like.

Vanessa (1:49:01)
Well, now

they're gonna be written, I mean, they are written by AI and they will increasingly be written by AI, but that is what's so interesting for a show like yours is like, you know, is it going to be the kind of thing where if you're actually making a human show of multiple hours and putting that effort into like, you guys have a great set, you know, you have a vibe that actually in the AI slop, like as AI slop increases.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:49:07)
Right.

Thank you.

Right.

Vanessa (1:49:29)
does

actually the value of people who are doing something that's really human with a lot of intention and that's time consuming, et cetera, does that increase? that's sort of, mean, I don't know if you've heard anybody say like last year people were saying it's like, it's the last year to get famous. Like it's the last year to sort of put yourself out there before this like wave comes, because people are gonna grab on to those things that are human.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:49:59)
Well...

Vanessa (1:49:59)
know, the jury's out on that, but it would be great, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:50:02)
I think

that whole analog concept, right? I think that things are gonna get so, the pendulum's gonna swing so far to that AI world and where there's gonna be distrust. Like what I'm looking at, is it a person or is this an AI person? What I'm reading, was this written by a person, was this written by AI? And there's gonna be this distrust and I think more conspiracy theories are gonna come out about it and there's gonna be a whole movement and a whole rebellion against it but I think from

those added that distress, there's going to be a craving for real organic content that you can prove. These are real people. These are real people talking. A real person wrote this. You know, ⁓ I think that's going to happen. Real faces. Because, you AI is getting pretty good though, and it's upon us know, but I think almost like faults in our faces are going to be, ⁓ people are going to seek that out more than perfection.

Vanessa (1:50:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:51:01)
because it's going to counter what AI is creating. I think that's going to be the future is wrinkles and cellulite and carrying gray hair and carrying things that AI can't perfectly duplicate. don't know unless they may figure out how to duplicate faults and aging and they probably will. But I think they're going to be perfect. Yeah.

Vanessa (1:51:01)
Yeah.

yeah. that would be great! i mean, that would really be great!

I mean, have you seen the plastic surgery that people are getting now?

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:51:31)
I think it's gonna flip. think it's gonna, people are gonna crave the opposite of that. do think, I think natural faces are starting to be craved more even in movies, in media. They're looking more for imperfections than, because everyone's, they're looking the same.

Vanessa (1:51:34)
I would like that.

Yeah.

Yeah, well yeah, a prestige actor

is not like really allowed to mess their face up. But if you look at what people are doing in terms of like facelifts, it's so, you know, it's, yeah, you live in Boca. Okay, there you go. Yeah, like, you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:51:52)
Right. Right.

alarming. We live in Boca.

Vanessa (1:52:06)
⁓ I mean, I was with a friend of mine who had a facelift and she's my age and you know, she was telling me how I need all these lasers and stuff like that. And I started to feel like, my God, like what, is this okay the way I look? And then I was like, it's fine. Like I'm really not into any of that stuff because my main complaint is that I have a lot of spots like sunspots. And so, you know, they can give you a laser and then you can never go back to the beach basically.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:52:20)
Yes, yes.

Vanessa (1:52:34)
you know? Like so you know just like reverse it was like worth nothing so I don't really you know I'm not benefiting from it with my particular issue um anyway no shade to other people I don't want to like tell people that they shouldn't do what makes them feel good but I also don't I think that it just gets to the point where it's too much people are looking too different from human beings um

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:52:39)
Yeah.

That's how it's here. No, no, no, no. It's-

Yes.

I

agree. And it's the normalization of it to like you said, your friend was like, should do this, you should do that. hear that constant like I've done nothing. And I hear that constantly. And it's not just me. Like I have friends who we've all done nothing. And again, I have friends who had work done. And I and so it's no shade. It's no judgment. It's truly, especially women supporting women. It's whatever you want to do. I 100 % support. But it's the normalization of why almost like why don't you like you

Vanessa (1:53:21)
Mm-hmm.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:53:29)
we are every why wouldn't you automatically go get lasers or why wouldn't you automatically want to have your I have horrible under eye bags why wouldn't I get a lower left done and it's more it's become so normal to have that done then if you choose not to that's abnormal at least in where I'm living

Vanessa (1:53:38)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah, I also am a little afraid of something going wrong and looking weird. And often like people don't, that's what nobody talks about is like often you have to go back because the first time they didn't like quite get it right. I don't know. I just also don't know when I would have all the time to do these things because like I still have to pick up my kids. Like I guess I could just like wear like a mask. I mean, but it's a it's definitely becoming a

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:53:59)
Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And the money. And the money. ⁓

Vanessa (1:54:14)
Like, I don't want to say like plastic surgery is a socioeconomic issue, but it almost is becoming an issue of people who have money are doing this so they look rich. So, you know, you know, there's reporting that like people are not buying fashion the same way, which, I mean, makes perfect sense. Why would you buy this thing from Chanel when you can get almost the exact same thing from H That makes literally no sense. So, but.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:54:38)
Yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa (1:54:41)
you know, the idea of this, you know, grotesquely expensive handbag is now like not as exciting to people as, you know, the facelift that people will recognize as, you know, $100,000 facelift or whatever it is. It's not a car. I mean, as we all know with kids, it's like they could care less at this point about their cars. Like they're just like, I just want the new iPhone, you know, cause they want to stay inside and just interact with kids.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:55:05)
Right. Right.

Vanessa (1:55:10)
friends in that way and I don't know what about your son though you have a son did you say he was 16 does he want a car he has a car does he want like a fancy car or he's like okay wants a truck okay that's cool cool looking

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:55:12)
It's so interesting.

Yeah. yeah. He wants a truck. He wants a truck. He a truck. Yeah, yeah, he wants a truck. mean, truck

with a GPS. well, yeah. But remember, we're in Boca. So it goes, you know, we have kids who drive Maseratis all the way down to kids who are driving hand-me-downs. Like, Boca has the wealth of the wealth down to regular people like us, you know. So it's and what's cool where he goes to school, he goes to public.

Vanessa (1:55:34)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:55:43)
They went to private K through eight, but then public high school. and everyone's, they're all pretty chill. what, what they don't judge each other. Totally. It's weird, but it's like their friends were when we were growing up, I guess I would say at least where I grew up, you kind of word there was clout chasing status and all that pretty strong about if you had a BMW and if you didn't, there still is clout here. If you have the Maserati, you have the Audi, you have the BMW, but they also don't care if you don't.

Vanessa (1:55:50)
Mm-hmm.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:56:13)
they're still gonna treat their friends the same if they don't even have a car. And I think that's a generational thing. They're much nicer to each other than when they were younger. Yeah, they're not as cutthroat. And this is coming from an area where, you know. We have billionaires here with mass Yeah, so it's crazy, but I've had kids, my older kids, we have a 29 and 25 year old, and our house has always been the open house. Everyone can come here, I have a snack drawer, I have mini fridges full of water and Gatorades.

Vanessa (1:56:13)
Right.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:56:39)
When they were in high school, I don't care if your friends arrive here drunk. It's a safe place to be. You just can't. You're not drinking my alcohol. you're not. We don't want to know if there's drinking going on it out in our back. We don't know anything, but this is the safe place. And we've had kids here whose parents are multimillionaires and kids whose parents aren't. And they're all the same. Like everyone. They're all the kids are all intermingled. But but no, he still wants a truck. Don't make no mistake.

Vanessa (1:56:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

okay.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:57:08)
He still

wants the truck and they are they do they're out like he was out last night till midnight in his friend's truck so but he still wants the new iPhone too like so he they want it all. You know, they want it all.

Vanessa (1:57:18)
Right. They want both of it. Yeah. No, they want it all. They do want it all. But I mean, yeah,

I do think that's true that they don't care in the same way. But I don't know if kids ever really cared about who had money and who didn't have money the way that you do later when you're an adult. you're because like you're being taken care of by your parents and you're just like, all right, whatever. But the you know, when you're older, it becomes I don't know. I mean, for me, it's more like

I would like this money because I do not want to die penniless. I'm very obsessed with how I'm going to age. I think that that has been a real shift for me in the last few years dealing with my parents stuff is just like, oh my God, like, am I going to be able to retire like comfortably? What does it mean to retire? I always just assumed I would work till the day I died sort of because I'm such a workaholic, but

you know, I'm also a journalist. So the thing that I'm doing is being affected by these tectonic shifts in media and entertainment. But just like the overall question of how do you want to live your second, you know, fate, like the second half of your life is really, I mean, I hope I have second, maybe I don't quite have a second half and I don't want to spend 10 years in like suspended animation in that.

Most people say the marginal decade, like that last decade of your life where you're just either in pain or like everything sucks or whatever. But I just never thought about how, about that part. Like I never understood, I would just say that I never understood what money was really for other than like, I wanna go out to this, you I wanna go out to dinner and not worry about what.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:58:47)
You know what?

Vanessa (1:59:10)
I'm paying on the menu or something, even though I have that also ingrained for my parents to like order the cheapest thing, blah, blah, blah, until I really started thinking about like, wow, I'm gonna get old. Turns out you need a lot of money to get old in this country or you need no money to get old is the other thing. You can maybe work it out, you know, if you're savvy with the Medicaid. Yeah, but if you're in that messy middle, whoa, you gotta really figure.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:59:11)
Thank

Right.

If they're in the middle, it's... Yeah.

Vanessa (1:59:39)
figure it out, you know? Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:59:39)
Yeah. Well,

and I think Gen is going to redefine aging. And we are pioneering that second act because we're not going to go into it sitting in the armchair watching the TV like we are reinventing ourselves. We're continuing to learn, try new things. And we're very active, very conscious of our health, very into wellness.

Vanessa (2:00:04)
That's the

big difference, right? Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:00:05)
That's the big difference. Very

new wellness, very trying to be a step ahead, trying to be proactive, trying to we see what maybe our parents have gone through or our parents, friends have gone through our friends, parents have gone through. And we're like, how can we prevent that? How can we stay ahead of the game while also still thriving and living like actually living and attacking life still? So I wonder if our generation will have that suspended decade or I'm not sure what you called it.

or if we're just gonna keep going until we're not anymore. And are we going to truly retire in that traditional way?

Vanessa (2:00:35)
Marginal decade,

I'm

very curious about it as well. mean, I think the only thing is like, we know how to fix your body, but we don't know how to fix people's minds. So, you know, there's a lot of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, like these diseases that go on and on and on, you know, a lot of slow growing cancers too are out there. like, there's, I think people are living longer, but what is the quality of the life that may affect?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:00:53)
Hmm.

Vanessa (2:01:14)
us, because I think you're right, we're taking care of ourselves in a way that like, my god, what did our parents even eat? Like, what were they even doing? You know, did they walk? Like, I don't know, like, I sometimes the refrigerator back, you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:01:21)
Right. Yeah.

Right.

we're talking about it, right? So our as peers, we can all learn from each other. And then hopefully the younger generation, like we'll learn from us like look at talking about perimenopause and menopause. No one discussed that with us. All of all of Gen X women pretty much went into it blindly. There might be the few that their moms did talk about it, but in general. So now we're talking about it for each other.

Vanessa (2:01:33)
Yeah.

It's true.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:01:54)
but also for the millennial women and the Gen Z women coming behind us. And that's health, that's women's health. And that also ties to, I think, dementia prevention, because they're finding.

Vanessa (2:02:01)
Definitely.

Well, I think that estrogen,

I think people taking estrogen actually may have enormous health benefits like across the ⁓ spectrum. Yeah, ⁓ think that's all true. I just wonder like, where is the country gonna be? Are we gonna still have social security? Are we gonna still be able to rely on some of these social safety nets? Are they gonna be sort of blown away?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:02:14)
Yeah.

Vanessa (2:02:30)
and the way that healthcare keeps going up and up and up. Where does this end? It's not, it's not, I think part of the reason I get so mad when I'm talking to Citibank and I'm just like, you're making me jump through 17 hoops to just become a POA on my mom's IRA, which is about to reset, because you're psyched if it resets, because then you get to trade off of this money.

for another year. you know, I just think about like old people going through that experience of trying to deal with their finances and people in India picking up the phone and blah, blah. Like, we just made it really hard for people to do all the sort of retirement planning and for old people to continue to manage their lives. If you were talking about the scams before, it's just like, you know, my mom.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:02:57)
Jeff.

Vanessa (2:03:25)
turned off her landline because she was getting so many scam calls, it would have been great for her to have her landline, because half the friends she had didn't have her cell phone number. And so that just like cuts you off from all of these people who might wanna call you and say hi like once a year. So there's just like things like that where I'm just like, how can we have a government for the people who care about the people if it's just like the most basic things are not being.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:03:34)
Yeah.

Vanessa (2:03:54)
taking care of it for old people. It's like, and by the way, those are the people who vote. So I don't know how they're getting away with not dealing with some of these things, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:04:01)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah. I don't think those things you talked about are going to be in existence in a meaningful way. Social Security ⁓ type things. And I think because we're inflating ourselves out of it. Everything's so damn expensive. Maybe if we're in Florida, and you're in New York, too higher. We're very expensive. Yeah. ⁓ But no, I think we're gonna inflate our our ways out of that. It's almost like are you does everyone have to make just so much money just to

Vanessa (2:04:09)
Yeah.

Right, that's true.

No, we're in expensive places, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:04:30)
have a normal life as they age. It's not even a... What happens when you stop burning? Yeah.

Vanessa (2:04:33)
But you can't really make,

the problem is this like with AI, there's definitely an argument to be made that whatever you have today, you better protect it and grow it because who knows how you're, what's gonna unfold. Like so many people are gonna lose their sort of the middle management job is gonna be over, right?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:04:59)
You know who I think it's going to impact the most? Cause I'm in tech and I'm watching this and I'm living it and I see it and I embrace the AI as a means of survival. And what the folks that's going to impact the most is actually going to be the offshore, the Indias, some of the other we've off like we've talked about this. mean, I'm in IT, I'm in tech. I started

Vanessa (2:05:10)
Mm-hmm.

interesting. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:05:26)
in a call center in Beaverton, Oregon on the Nike campus, helping people get connected to the internet. On the hall was Microsoft's tech support and HP's tech support and Symantec's, right? But all of those jobs that got me started and allowed me to launch a career are all gone. They're all over. They're all offshore. And now that all those jobs are offshore though, AI is kind of coming for those. So

Vanessa (2:05:32)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:05:55)
there's gonna be some wave of activity back here. What it is is not defined yet. That's the wave that I think is happening. So it's really an impact.

Vanessa (2:05:58)
Yeah.

Yeah.

And what about in those countries,

have they been going to school for coding and doing things that are now obsolete, like as of like last year? I feel bad for the people who trying to be middle class there and spending all this money trying to get educated and now those jobs that they're educated for don't exist.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:06:18)
Yeah.

They're going to go through what we went through over the last 20 to 30 years. I'll give you an example. You ever hear of the term vibe code? Vibe coding?

Vanessa (2:06:28)
Mm-hmm.

I have

heard of that. That's like when you like put something into Claude and you come back after dinner and it like made you a website or something. Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:06:39)
So kind of, I wish it was that easy, geez. If

you go to our website, I made our website and the most of it was not vibe coded. But where I needed it to scale is I vibe coded functionality so that when we launch an episode, I can press a button and it goes out and it does different things and it updates our website. And it's literally, it takes me longer to log in than it...

Vanessa (2:06:49)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:07:08)
does for that process to run. And it's a huge, huge efficiency gain. So it's a wonderful thing. And we're harnessing that piece of it. And that's that was AI driven. I vibro'd it, help me write this. This is what I want to do. I want to be able to click a button, update the website and okay, I need your credentials. So you know, it gets it's wild. Because what he's referring to is whenever we launch an episode.

Vanessa (2:07:15)
Yeah.

Right.

That's cool.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:07:35)
our most current guest is featured on our homepage. And so once we launch it and it's out there, once I launch it, then I tell Brian it's launched, he hits that button and it automatically replaces the episode on our homepage with the newest episode. Instead of him having to go in, it would have taken so much time each time. Two to three hours. Right, he's Modifying multiple files. Yeah, so now he's kind of on the front lines.

Vanessa (2:07:38)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, yeah.

Right, right, right. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:08:02)
of witnessing what AI is doing and how it's changing the landscape. what's fascinating too, I mean, in journalism too, AI and journalism, that's gonna get messed with. It already has half the shit on Yahoo's probably AI written, right? Or some agent. But what I'm seeing now is, and you might see this too, but you get, if you want to create content, you might use AI to write a nice email. Someone now may respond.

Vanessa (2:08:18)
Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:08:31)
saying with AI saying respond to this email with these three points then an AI bot writes it back so now you're of all the content that's AI generated but human prompted. It's wild. It's almost like the humans have just become the prompts.

Vanessa (2:08:41)
Yeah.

Right.

Right. Yeah, I mean, I also think maybe this is like the last year that you're gonna have to talk to Citibank like 16 times about, you know, a certain forum because maybe I'll have my agent that will talk to Citibank's agent, right? You guys talk to me once you've worked it out, tell me what the decision was and I'll approve or disapprove, you know? I mean, I'm not...

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:09:08)
Right. It's an interesting concept actually.

Vanessa (2:09:15)
I'm not against the, again, if you can make your life easier on a practical level, but what do you say to your son in terms of, well, these are the careers that I feel would be good for you? Because would you be wanting him to go to be an engineer today, or would you be like, no, no, don't, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:09:31)
That's it.

No, no, I

would say it's something with your hands and your feet and your eyes and the contractor architecture is probably going to be you still have to adhere to laws and stuff. But maybe as an architect, could say launch AI to go design something and then touch it up around the edges and stuff. But I would love it. I would love it. I've already told him consider he really wants to go to college because he saw as older to

Vanessa (2:09:44)
Yeah.

Yeah, do the initial drawings. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:10:05)
his siblings go to college. He wants to go to FSU like his older siblings went to FSU. And I'm like, that's fine. But I really think you need to consider HVAC, plumbing, you know, the old school jobs, those are going to be the new multimillionaires. The plumbers, the electricians, big time. So he wants to open up his own business. So he's 16. So you know, but you could open up your own HVAC business. A finance degree is

Vanessa (2:10:06)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Totally.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:10:35)
Still valuable though because the stock market's not gonna go anywhere and if you can write right prompt that helps you identify the next big winner or trade on the margins and be automated and stuff like that a lot of money to be made

Vanessa (2:10:38)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, I mean, I think they're just gonna have to figure it out, but it'll be just the world they know, know, like it'll, it will seem so different to us, but for them it is just what it is. My daughter's a really ⁓ talented, like visual artist, you know, and it's like, well, you know, probably actually fine art that you can hang on your wall is, you know, still gonna be something people want. People are still gonna want masseuses, like.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:10:56)
Yeah.

Mm.

Vanessa (2:11:17)
I don't know, the podcasting and the writing is a really interesting question because right now you can tell if AI wrote it, but that may change, right? And the voices, the AI voices, they're not quite good enough. you know, you hear them on ads, right? Like Casper mattress, you can totally hear that person is AI. But to...

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:11:26)
Yeah.

Vanessa (2:11:39)
do a podcast episode with the way there's so many like intricacies and strange things that people do when they're talking to each other that I'm not sure.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:11:48)
Mm-hmm.

nuance. ⁓

I don't think AI, like even when you talk about calling and speaking to someone in India, I've called numbers and it's an AI and I know it's an AI. They're trying to be all cool like to try to imitate a 25 year old influencer asking me, you know, where do you want me to send you?

Vanessa (2:12:03)
Mm-hmm. Yes. I know they now have vocal fry. It really is. I said to somebody

it like, it's like the return of the basic bitch or something. Like, why didn't everybody get all these like fake eyelashes and vocal fry? I was supposed to be the only person. I'm doing it ironically. Like, are you guys doing it ironically? But yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:12:16)
Yeah.

But

on that topic, no one's going to replace, AI is not going to replace your story about your parents and their background and how you became a

Vanessa (2:12:36)
Yeah, no, that's

true. But if you think about like, if I wasn't invited as a guest on your show and I wanted to share this with the world, would I take the time to write like a finely crafted book about it right now? Or would I, you know, maybe have Claude write me at least like a...

you know, ingest a bunch of notes and then see if Claude could write a first draft or something like that. Like a lot of people who do what I do, they ghost write books, they ghost write celebrities books like Demi Moore or somebody like that. And you can see a situation where a Demi Moore then comes to you and says, well, I wrote the book. Here it is. I wrote it on Claude by ingesting all my memories. And now the ghost writer's job is to really level that book up and make it a lot.

better, but it might just be the initial, like the initial. I mean, look, and this is also not a bad thing. Like a lot of people who wanted to write novels or wanted to write screenplays, it's sort of like vibe coding, right? People don't quite have good enough coding skills. Now they can do all these things. It's like they have a superpower. People who probably even somebody like me, who's like hasn't written a novel, but has always wanted to, my, my God, I should have just.

never say publicly that I would be using any AI for any of this because you're not allowed to do that. like, even the ability to just ask AI, hey, would you, ⁓ would you like spell check this for me? Or do you think my idea is good or whatever it is? It's like having ⁓ a, you know, as people say, like an assistant or somebody. It's not so doing things that are complicated makes them a lot less lonely.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:14:21)
personal assistant. ⁓

Well, and

that goes into, don't know if you're about to touch on this, but it's also completely infiltrated and filled a void socially for a lot of people ⁓ who ⁓ maybe don't feel a connection with enough friends or are craving a partner but don't have one or struggling in the dating world. I mean, I have, ⁓ I know people our age.

Vanessa (2:14:34)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:14:51)
all the way down to my daughter's age that will talk to AI like it's their friend, like why ask chat and chat said this and that's so foreign to me because writing is also my is my love and my outlet. And so my first thing with AI is like, ⁓ like I'm writing this, I'm writing this. So to even like think of personally ⁓ conversing with ⁓ AI about my my needs, emotionally, my needs personally.

Vanessa (2:15:07)
Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:15:18)
That alarms me, but I do think there's AI boyfriends, there's AI girlfriends, you know? And I think then you get into, how is that gonna affect humanity as a whole? You know, like it's gonna disrupt our.

Vanessa (2:15:29)
Yeah,

we don't want to just be like just bags of flesh with like, you know, a feeding tube and like wearing those, you know, dumb eye glasses that they keep trying to get us to buy that are the ones where you like blink and it shows you your email or whatever. Like, you know, all the tech titans are like, this would be great, you know? At the same time, like I am sure that it could do some therapy that's basic.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:15:44)
Yeah.

Vanessa (2:15:56)
Like I'm too paranoid, like, you gonna sell my innermost thoughts to like really upload my innermost thoughts? Cause I still have that gen X thing of like not trusting anybody, not definitely tech people, tech titan people. But I think it works. think like, you know, my one experience with it is I had some friends came to my neighborhood. were going, they told me like two hours before I live in a really isolated neighborhood, like two hours before they told me they're coming.

They're all going out to dinner. Obviously I'm not invited to this because they're telling me two hours before they've made this reservation. But like, will I come to a bar and meet them afterwards? And I was home with my son who's nine. And I was like, well, I'm with my son. You know, you guys, why don't you guys come and like stop by and say hi or whatever on the way. And they...

were like, no, have to go. Because they were like sort of in going out mode. They didn't really want to come and like sit around with my son. And so I had been on the computer because I was working on something. I asked the like chat GPT like, well, what do you think about this? And I was like, that's really rude, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, God, I feel really bad. Why are they not like coming to hang out with me? And then the next week, one of them was like, why didn't you come hang out with me? You could have just come in.

said hi to us, like we felt like we were in your neighborhood, which is like so hard to get to. And we were asking you to come out to a bar and like it was like 830. You could have left your son for like half an hour and walked over and said hi. And I was like, okay, I could kind of see. I still think I was in the right, but having chat GPT tell me what I was in the right then just made me feel bad and made me more like isolated, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:17:23)
Yeah.

Right.

Right. Double down. It doubled down. You know,

it's, it's, almost, it was like a self-fulfilling prophecy, you know, instead of playing devil's advocate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa (2:17:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what it does. That's what it does. It's always like, you're

so smart. You're so cool. You know. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:17:58)
Yes, and that's that's

a whole and then you you couple that with like filters on social media and just all of them make believe and and it almost it makes me concern people not only are they not are going to lose connection with others but they're also maybe going to lose connection with themselves because if you use enough filters on social media if you talk to chat enough about your normal thoughts and they're just validating validating I think you lose a sense of who you are.

Vanessa (2:18:18)
Mm-hmm.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:18:27)
to some degree.

Vanessa (2:18:28)
Yeah, well, and there is

the question of if you really will do the higher level work, like will you actually write like a novel that is any good or is it gonna just be sort of trash because it's like half a I written or whatever. You know, a friend of mine said to me like he's not on social media at all. And I was like, well, why aren't you? And he was like, it doesn't help me like get done the things. He's a screenwriter that I need to get done in a day. Like it's not actually gonna help me. It's not like gonna.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:18:33)
All

Yeah.

Vanessa (2:18:57)
you know, put me in touch with the right director and help me actually finish this thing and make it really good. It's just gonna distract me and try to get like little bit of clout off of it, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:19:08)
Yeah,

no, that makes sense. That makes sense. So I wanted to go back to around 9-11 is when you first started with Rolling Stone. So you were still kind of tied to New York Magazine that was always there, but you've then pivoted. What made you pivot to Rolling Stone? Did you have a connection over there or ⁓ did they reach out to you?

Vanessa (2:19:20)
Mm-hmm.

They reached out to me because they liked my writing and I wanted to do things that were more national. ⁓ I didn't at that time realize how much business travel sucked. So I thought like, I would love to get on, do some business travel. Like, can't wait to like get my mileage up and stay in this, know, Radisson. like, yeah, stayed in so many bad hotels all over the country. So.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:19:36)
⁓

Good upgrades.

Vanessa (2:19:56)
So yeah, I started working for them and it was great. I mean, it was really fun. was a, again, because I didn't get to watch TV and stuff like that, that it was so fun for me to be able to experience like, well, what is it like to really like hang out with Justin Bieber or, you know, Lady Gaga or these different stars that, I mean, you were at that time getting an enormous amount of access, right?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:20:22)
they did you know going in that you were going to be focusing on celebrities that was what they were going to be sending you out to do was interview celebrities

Vanessa (2:20:33)
At first I didn't really do that. I did these slice of life stories. Like I did a story about, know, they were, you know, they, I mean, it's so ridiculous, I did this story, but ⁓ they wanted to find like a guy in college who was donating to a sperm bank all the time and talk to him about like what that experience was like, you know, and sort of ask like, well, what would, you know, now you fathered like a thousand.

So I went to to Berkeley, UC Berkeley. It was like the crew team had all decided they were going to make money from donating their sperm. So I interviewed this guy, you know, I mean, I probably don't know. It was probably 16 computers ago. So I probably don't have like his phone number anymore, but I'd to know how he feels now. Like 45, you know, people finding him on 23andMe all the time. mean, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:21:03)
Yeah.

Right?

That would be a good follow up if you could.

Vanessa (2:21:32)
That would be quite the follow up. I probably use the pseudonym, so I have a feeling he's

gone. But yeah, that's definitely a corner of the world that's changed. So I was doing sort of like weird stories like that. And then I think they realized like, okay, we need to focus more on celebrities or bigger names. And I wasn't really much of a music writer because I didn't know, you know, I mean, I have done a couple of more real bands.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:21:40)
you

Vanessa (2:22:02)
But yeah, they started sending me, like I interviewed Katy Perry. mean, there a bunch of people where it was like really full access. Like it's like, okay, go meet Katy Perry. Like I went to Santa Barbara. Actually, she had a documentary, like an MTV style crew with her. Then I had dinner with her in Santa Barbara. Then I came to LA, went to her house. She was at that time living with Russell Brand. And then like I went and saw her practice.

you know, drove with her someplace else. mean, crazy, like, you know, almost famous, not like that, like not on the bus kind of stuff, but lots of access to try to understand the person. was often people's first Rolling Stone cover. I wrote Taylor Swift's first Rolling Stone cover. So that was crazy. I was in her bedroom. I could have like, you know, rolled around on her bed if I wanted to. Like, I mean, she was showing me like.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:22:37)
Right.

Wow.

Vanessa (2:22:55)
This is how I have my sweaters organized. our childhood bedroom. you know, and yeah, people are so excited to be, you know, this is the call they've been waiting for. Now they're going to get to be in Rolling Stone. Oh my God. So that was, it was a very fun job. I mean, I think it was probably like 2003 to maybe like 2010, something like that, 2012.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:23:00)
Wow. Wow.

What years was that? What years was that?

That was like the still do anything for

rolling stone? Alright, so I can pick on it. No. I can pick on them. You were doing it when they were still rolling stone.

Vanessa (2:23:25)
I haven't in a long time. ⁓ I mean, I've been making podcasts for like six, six, seven years. Yeah.

Well, I mean, there are a lot of people who say they weren't Rolling Stone by then, but yeah. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:23:38)
I can go there too, but they're still rolling stone. They're not

anymore. And it's so disappointing because they used to do that. And there were great insightful articles about cool people.

Vanessa (2:23:46)
Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, they still have articles in there, but it isn't like, it isn't the same thing it was for sure, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:23:59)
Like when I go to

the, we have Publix down here and every month it's a Grateful Dead cover. They're selling the Grateful Dead or they're selling another retread of Bob Dylan. I love both, but you can only do it so many times, know, and it's just the sell. do remember growing up where I remember the Rolling Stone cover was a big deal and I was always excited to see who was next and next on the cover.

Vanessa (2:24:02)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:24:28)
haven't felt that way in years and years and years. So there was a shift. There was a shift.

Vanessa (2:24:32)
Yeah, well, I mean,

it is true that like, you know, their best selling covers, at least back when I was there, were like Bob, it was like Bob Dylan, you know, or, or it would have to be somebody like Johnny Depp, like somebody who's in that culture where like he's close with Hunter Thompson, he cares about like a certain, you know. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:24:40)
Yeah, Jerry Garcia, Bob Dylan.

Yeah.

Vanessa (2:24:52)
But for advertisers, know, people chase younger readers, right? And then the younger readers want to know like what's hot and it's like a boy band or whatever. Britney, like.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:25:03)
But even that was hot, like putting Britney on or putting Justin on or Katy Perry. Like that was still in the... She was still there, I think, in the heyday. that was... 2008-ish? Well, no, the fact that you... I mean, I think it's really cool that you got to be a part of these celebrities first time being contacted by Rolling Stone. You got to be a part of their dream, right? That is so special. Like for Taylor Swift and for Katy Perry.

Vanessa (2:25:07)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

my God, it really is true, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:25:33)
And the celebrities where you were that phone call, you were part of that phone call of Rolling Stone would like to do a spread on you. I'm coming out and you got to be boots on the ground as part of their dream was coming true. That's a very unique experience to be part of the chapter in their lives like that.

Vanessa (2:25:41)
Yeah.

Yeah, mean, Katie, I'm not sure if it was her first cover, but I did write Usher's first cover. And I mean, I will never forget it was like because he was so religious. So he was like, this is it. Like God has spoken, like God has sent you here, you know. And then we finished the interview and it was really late. And he was like, you want to like stay in like my extra, you know, my pool house or whatever. And I was like, OK, you know, I'll stay in there. And I ended up sleeping over there. And then in the morning, I couldn't get out.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:26:08)
here.

Vanessa (2:26:23)
like there was a gate, you I got up really early and didn't want to like wake him up and like couldn't figure out how to get out the gate. I like jumped over this thing and my editor was like, that had to be a setup. And I was like, I don't know. I think he really like just felt bad because it was like late and he lived in Alpharetta and I was staying like halfway across, you know, Atlanta. He was like, ⁓ no, he knew what he was doing. And I was like, well, I don't know, whatever. I was, I was happy to sleep there. But, you know, it's a, it's a really, it's a, it was.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:26:42)
Yeah.

You jumped the gate, I love it.

Vanessa (2:26:51)
It was fun. And look, those jobs are still happening. They're just reformulated in it. There's a different, it's like Alex Cooper or whoever the person is. I think the issue now is that everything is so at hyper speed that it's like as soon as Alex Cooper is done with, you know, this interview, she's got to rush off to do like Taylor, Frankie, Paul from the Bachelorette is coming in, you know, and she's trying to like build an empire at the same time and like, we need to have more podcasts and

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:26:59)
Right. Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Vanessa (2:27:21)
You know, we have to have a water deal and a this deal and like the people who are doing the interviewing are also now often the CEO of their creator company, right? She's got her husband, like they're, everybody's in this bizarre role of both, you know, the journalist is, it is journalism, you know, and also like media executive. And that's busy with Zooms and like deals and you

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:27:48)
Yeah.

Vanessa (2:27:52)
Everybody wants to say hi and touch base and blah blah. So it's like.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:27:56)
and branding and all of it. And what you were doing, sounds like, what was the average amount of time you would spend with a celebrity when you...

Vanessa (2:28:03)
I mean, it was like

we wouldn't even show up if it was less than two days. We're like, we were not even coming. You know, it's got to be three locations, you know. So I flew. it's for like a paragraph. I would fly someplace like later on. I was starting to be like, this is stupid. Like, I don't really I could have just now it's like I can just watch the live feed of this person's concert and write something up about what you know what they said interstitially between the songs. And that would have been good enough.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:28:11)
You're embedding. You're storytelling.

Yeah.

Yeah, but with that you're losing, you're not capturing nuance. I was just about to say it because by going there through your writing, the nuance will be projected. And I think that's where I feel it's more special. You're embedded with them.

Vanessa (2:28:34)
You

Totally, it's just, know,

rock stars, are not on time, right? And particularly if you're dealing with rappers, they're not gonna be on time. So like there's times, it's it's a more of a young person's game. It's hard to do when you have kids because you're not sure when you can get out of there, because you're on somebody else's schedule, right?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:28:55)
Yeah.

That makes sense. have a question on that. I read your piece and I'm going to get his name wrong. The guy who ran Chanel or yeah. So I read your piece on that and I love your writing style. I'm curious how you do it though, because you, you inject quotes, but like you're in the room and you heard it. Right. So it's not like you asked, Hey, what do you think? Or a question you were just in the room.

Vanessa (2:29:18)
Karl Lagerfeld, yeah.

Thank you.

I was in the room. Yeah.

Okay, I will tell you about that. So basically what happened is, you know, that was for New York Magazine. New York Magazine has a fashion editor. know, everything is very formal in fashion, right? So we're requesting that we will send this lovely reporter, Vanessa, to go interview Karl Lagerfeld. And, you know, okay, what does he think about this? And their answer was like, she can come to a photo shoot.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:29:40)
How does that work?

Vanessa (2:30:10)
but he's gonna decide when he sees her, like if he wants to talk to her or not. So there's no guaranteed interview. You can send her and we'll take it from there. And I was like, okay. And then I got there and it's like five people, you know, it's like a model, a couple of stylists, some caterer and Karl Lagerfeld.

and it's like, you can sit here. And I was like, you mean I can just sit here and not even have to interview you guys and just observe everything you're doing? This is like the best assignment I ever had. Like, this is amazing. I'm just gonna sit here? Like, this is exactly what you want, right? Like, as a writer, like not so much to a journalist who really wants answers to things, but if you're doing color writing.

It's so amazing to just sit there, you're chilling out, you're just listening, you're writing down the things that are interesting. So I think that's how you're able. But yes, that's what a lot of these, when we say two days or something, it's not like I'm sitting there being like, you need to tell me your childhood trauma for two days and I need to understand why this song on the B side has this riff in it and blah, blah, blah, and what are you trying to communicate? It's more just like you're in their world.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:30:58)
Yeah.

Vanessa (2:31:24)
you're able to roll around with them and see the world sort of through their eyes and like what's behind the curtain, right? ⁓ So yeah, that's how, you know, look, there's still people writing great. There are still stories like that being written. You just have to look harder for them, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:31:26)
Cool. Yeah.

And you just, it's not out

there though, right? Cause like there's a cool thing on, on the Kindle, Kindle unlimited. can get the old playboy interviews. ⁓ Have you ever seen those? Like.

Vanessa (2:31:50)
Mm-hmm. yeah, those are so good. Yeah.

I haven't seen them in Kindle Unlimited, but that's like often the research that I would do if I'm getting assigned to Celebrity is one of first things you do is see if there's a Playboy interview because they're so good. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:32:06)
Yeah, like

they do Martin Luther King is available. think Conner as Thompson is, John Wayne is, like he's just people, but it's the dialogue. It's like, you know, you're sitting here, I'm here and someone's there and it's, what about this? And what about that? I just like yours is more of like an observational style in some ways, right? Or what would the right, is that the right term?

Vanessa (2:32:09)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah, no, they're great.

Yeah.

No, I think it is more observational. It's a little more aloof, a little more stepped back and like more sort of, you know, looking at the person. I mean, I think that I, as I've gotten older, are more interested in the intimate interview. And as I've gotten more ⁓ like ⁓ just confident as an interviewer, because I used to be like, I'm not getting.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:32:32)
Impedded.

Yeah.

Vanessa (2:32:57)
the answers I want from somebody. And, you know, it's really hard when you're interviewing famous people, you often are like, you're trying to find a way in, but they've heard everything. you grew up that way? I grew up that way. You know, like the number one thing you can do is shut up. Like just be quiet, ask them really short questions and let them answer. But sometimes people are having bad day and sometimes they didn't want to do the interview because of your...

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:33:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Vanessa (2:33:27)
particular outlet screwed them on something else or it doesn't work with what they think they should be doing. They think they should be on CNN right now and they're stuck giving you an interview or whatever and they're just going to give you a bad interview. There's like, you can only move people. I mean, you know, cause you guys are talking to people all the time. Sometimes you get off on the wrong foot. That's definitely true. There's sometimes you just rub somebody the wrong way at the beginning and it's really hard to get it back. But ultimately people come.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:33:47)
Mm-mm.

Vanessa (2:33:55)
at a comfortability level and your style, you can move them further for sure, but some people are just not that open, you know? Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:34:07)
Yeah, you're just not going to get them there. What was your,

well, ⁓ if you don't mind saying and you don't have to, but who was your most challenging interview?

Vanessa (2:34:17)
Well, okay, so I interviewed Madonna and that really did not go well at all. She was very not happy with the interview. I was not super psyched either. She was like somebody I idolized, you know, obviously of my age. Like she was the first concert I went to. Like I wanted, I had the gloves, I had the bow and the hair. Like I just loved her. You know, I loved all her work and you know, she's famously very tough.

interview-y, like she doesn't like journalists and she doesn't want to give you much, but the thing about her that is not great is, and you do get this sometimes when you interview people who are artists, less with musicians, she has a vast like visual memory, right? Like she's really knows a lot about art and different music videos and

She's pulling from different references for fashion and blah, blah. I don't really know anything about any of that. So she sort of expects you to be somebody who's very educated in that, which I was just like never gonna be that. But I went to London to interview her and she just really was not very nice through the whole thing. was not, like I wasn't able to grab on to something and...

to the point where, you know, I was just like trying to make conversation just to see what, like, let's just try to make some conversation, you know? Like we were talking about her early music and she was like, I can't even listen to that. And I was like, ⁓ that's crazy. Like, I love your early stuff. And she was like, well, that's nice for you or something. I was just like, okay, this has really, this has really gotten to a point where this is getting weird, you know? And.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:35:51)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Vanessa (2:36:12)
Because I do do an observational style or create action in feature articles require you to say like this person today is doing this thing. So she was just sitting like in her sitting room not doing anything. And so I had to ask her a lot of questions about what she had done that day so I could write and like bring people into her world and she didn't like that. And it was just like one of those things where I was like, you know, I feel like nothing I am going to say is going to be the right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:36:35)
Right.

Vanessa (2:36:42)
thing to say at this point, you know? And then you did have to deal also with the fact that she's done a lot of stuff to her face. And so that sort of had to be part of the story. And so that was obviously like a total no-fly zone as well because, you know, Madonna stands for, look, I mean, there's a way in which, like Madonna stands for like being, you know, strong femininity.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:36:45)
Yeah.

Vanessa (2:37:11)
being on the edge, being first, like pushing what the definition of a woman is. Why do you wanna see her doing like major plastic surgery and like wearing as she was the other night, like a leotard and running around with like Sabrina Carpenter, who's like, what 21, you know, like, and so there's like a real like dissonance there. Now that we were discussing how everybody's now trying to do.

to their faces what Madonna did to her face 10 years ago. Like you could say like maybe she was on the leading edge. I just didn't know it, you know? ⁓ But you know, trying to deal with that in a respectful and ginger way is what it is. And so, you know, she didn't like the photos. She didn't like the headline. Well, actually, no, she did like the photos. And then I don't write the headline. So the headline was Madonna at 60. And so she was...

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:37:45)
Right.

Vanessa (2:38:07)
didn't like that headline and you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:38:07)
god.

Vanessa (2:38:14)
Look, there's always, if you're gonna write like a long piece of writing about somebody, there's always gonna be a bit of yourself in it. So part of it was about me looking.

you know, to her and being like, this is somebody I idolized, what do I think of her now? I flew to Las Vegas, she refused to talk to me. So it was like really got to the point where like things really didn't go well, you know? And so I don't know what to say about that. Like generally I feel like I am usually at fault. It's usually my like sort of.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:38:37)
air.

Vanessa (2:38:47)
incorrect framing or something that I've done that is creating this if it really goes badly, but in that case I cannot really take credit for it because I think it was just like...

she has an idea of how she wants to be portrayed as a very serious person. And like, I'm not gonna portray Madonna as a serious person. Like, I don't know what to tell you. Like, this is not like, this isn't, your legacy is not quite like at the point where, you know, you need to be exalted. Like, what's really interesting about you is these last like 10 or 20 years where like since Confessions of the Dance Floor things.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:39:06)
you

Vanessa (2:39:29)
God, I'm pretty wacky. like, why are you, why? Why? I wanna know, you know? What's the goal? What's happening?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:39:31)
Thank

Yeah, no. That's

such a good point. you're so on. That would have been very interesting to read because as a fellow Gen Xer, I also looked up to her and I thought she was on the front lines of so much. Even sometimes I didn't understand until I understood. It took me longer to up. And it's like, ⁓ And I look at people like Sabrina Carpenter now and I'm like.

Vanessa (2:39:55)
Right. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:40:02)
part of what your success is, is because of what Madonna did. Madonna walked so these girls could run. mean, there's no question, but it did go sideways somewhere where I can't figure it out. So why not give us the opportunity to understand, give us the opportunity to connect with you. So we understand, especially if there is some deep meaning behind this, share that so we can be a part of this and

Vanessa (2:40:05)
For sure, absolutely, yeah.

Right.

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:40:28)
We may not catch up maybe in the past we did catch up maybe a year later. We're like, yeah Okay now I understand why she was wearing that or why she was doing that or why she said that but this has gone on long enough where it's like we still don't get it so and and maybe we're maybe we're dummies fine Explain it to us like we're five. I don't care. I'll

Vanessa (2:40:41)
Exactly, yeah. Right. Right, right. So that was what the problem was. I was going

there being like, I genuinely want to understand you. want you to talk to me and help me. And I wasn't saying like, I think your face looks weird. Can you make me understand why your face looks like that at all? I was more just saying like, I'm a huge fan.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:41:05)
Right, right, right.

Vanessa (2:41:07)
I wanna understand you, I wanna know more about this. I've read now everything about you and I wanna understand more about you and where you are. like, you know, she's just not, you know, her comeback was, you'll never understand me, which is a comeback. That's a comeback. Like, it is outdated, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:41:15)
Yeah.

But you what? That's outdated. That's not where

we are anymore. And being taken seriously, just for being taken seriously sake is outdated too. You know, self-deprecation is way more current ⁓ and not being so serious is really what's current. The younger generations have totally changed, flipped everything, where if you're taking yourself too seriously,

you're kind of made fun of at this point. You know, it's more respected now to be more real and self-deprecating than not.

Vanessa (2:41:56)
Yeah.

Definitely, but I mean, look, it's hard to be an aging icon. Like any female aging icon, that is a hard road for sure. It's hard to be a male aging icon also, but the women have it harder for all the beauty standard reasons. But a lot of people, you know, get weird and especially like, you know, people have been trying to...

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:42:12)
Absolutely.

Vanessa (2:42:28)
ghost write a biography for her, people are trying to make a movie about her, people are trying to make a documentary about her, and it's like, you know, maybe she'll try a little bit. I mean, there was recently some photo that came out of her and Julia Garner, who's supposed to be playing her in this movie that was supposed to happen, but then was derailed and blah, blah, blah. And I know other big stars like this who have done the same thing where...

They start working with a ghostwriter, they stay okay to the movie, but then they blow up and they say, you're not worthy to tell my story. Only I can tell my story. But you can't, at some point you can't, you have to turn it over to a younger person who's an expert, you know? Because you just don't have perspective on yourself, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:43:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

that an insecurity thing though?

A vanity insecurity thing?

Vanessa (2:43:21)
I think it's like an

insecurity. Maybe it's like a fear of death. Maybe it's like a, know, ⁓ I waited so long to do this and now it has to be perfect. But it's also just like a celebrity thing, which is like a lot of celebrities, they bring people in, but then they get paranoid, right? Like, ⁓ you're really just after me and you're trying to steal my ring or there's something you want, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:43:43)
I could see them being non-trusty.

Yeah, yeah, I don't know. And then, of course, there's a huge amount of narcissism in there just for fun. So on the flip side, ⁓ do you have a favorite that you interviewed?

Vanessa (2:43:50)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

⁓ I mean, I loved Adam Lambert from American Idol, I have to say, who came out in the story that I wrote about him. So I was like, that was great. That was fun. I really liked Lady Gaga. You know, she did this interview almost entirely like in her Lady Gaga persona, which I thought was sort of hilarious, like in a Devo-esque way.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:44:00)
Mm.

⁓ that's amazing. Yeah.

Vanessa (2:44:21)
You know, just different people like surprise you and you're like, my God, this person was great. Like Donna Karan was really great. Karl Lederfeld was sort of great. Like there's, you know, I appreciate people who are eccentric and just, you know, very much on their own.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:44:37)
Did you actually

get any questions to him?

Vanessa (2:44:39)
I mean, I don't even know

in the end, I even like really just, did I just like observe him? I ended up going to Paris. I think probably asked him like a couple of things. I just remember him saying, you know, cause as we talked about, like I have this whole thing of my parents like kept all this stuff. And he was saying he gave everything away because like the modern way was just to like, you know, just what he didn't really do that, but he was living in a new apartment with like everything's white, everything's new.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:44:48)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (2:45:09)
you know, he was getting older and he was like, I just want to be modern. Like, and that always stuck with me. Like that's a cool thing to do when you're older, just to say like, you know what, let's just put all this stuff in storage and let's try like living super minimal for a minute, you know? ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:45:27)
Yeah, yeah.

I do have to ask though. ⁓ You said you Taylor Swift was her first interview, right? Was with you. So she was very young, right? And then you see where she is now and the tour she just wrapped up last year, whatever. ⁓ Could you foresee that at the time that that's what was ahead?

Vanessa (2:45:35)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Definitely not,

definitely not. mean, so she was 19. I ⁓ mean, thought her song, so I think it was her second album maybe. I thought her songs were great. They were good. You know, they're not my style, but they seem good. ⁓ I could tell that she was very ambitious, you know, for the way that she was doing everything and that ⁓ her parents ⁓ were like,

really smart and really, you know, they were business people. I think they were literal business people, right? Like who I think our dad maybe did in mutual, an investment broker or something. ⁓ So they, you know, that's kind of the most important thing for a lot of these people is like that you have real solid family that isn't gonna try to take pieces of your, you know, career. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:46:27)
Yeah. Yes.

Vanessa (2:46:46)
But I mean, I had no idea that things were gonna end up like this. I do have to say, you know, I thought of her really like the really pretty girl in the back of class who nobody's paying any attention to. And then it's like senior week in high school and everybody's like, that girl's so cool and she's so pretty and like nobody really paid attention to her, you know? She felt like that person. ⁓ And I think that is sort of.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:47:10)
Yeah.

Vanessa (2:47:16)
what she still is in a weird way, like this sort of turning into the cheerleader with Travis Kelce is like not totally her, you know? You wanna talk about somebody who's really into her friends. mean, she's very like, people really get stuck at the age where they get famous, right? Like it's very hard to progress sort of mentally or psychologically past then. I think she has, I'm not saying she's still 19, but I think a lot of her personas, I mean, not persona, her.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:47:26)
Yeah.

Vanessa (2:47:46)
know, music and life is about like experiencing life as a young adult, you know. ⁓

But I went back and listened to the tape recordings a few years ago and she sounds like phenomenal. Like she's actually really answering the questions. She's trying her best. She's so open. She's being, she's really giving interesting and smart answers. And so I think that's one of the things where I'm like, wow, you know, maybe I was too old and jaded when I showed up here to interview her.

to really get like into her mindset. Like I'm not sure I really was able to get into her mindset because she was just too young, you know, for me at that time. I was almost twice as old as her, you know? ⁓ So, but yeah, I mean, I'm super, I'm obviously like, I'm impressed. Like the world is impressed.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:48:48)
I'm

for sure. Now, that's so interesting. And it's interesting what you said about a lot of celebrities can get frozen in that point where they hit it big, right? And they became famous. And that's without even mentioning if there are substances involved or alcohol, know, or toxic being surrounded by toxic leeches, basically of people. I've always thought about it.

Vanessa (2:48:51)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:49:14)
It's as big as the riches are and as big as they get and as easy as life may seem. There's a flip side to that that is very dark. And I do think, as you said, having the right family around you and people around you and business minded people around you, it's got to be a game changer and it's got to be indicative of how really happy you're going to be in this or grounded you're going to stay, I would assume.

Vanessa (2:49:44)
Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's sort of the whole thing. You know, if you look at somebody like Britney Spears, that's like, obviously the flip side of that, you know? But again, like, you know, there's not really that many opportunities to be somebody like Britney Spears who doesn't write her own material anymore. Like, in the economy we're in, it really is like an utter driven, almost old school musician.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:49:53)
Yeah, that's very sad.

Check out Billy Strings. I will say before I forget, there's five of them. One of them is a fiddler. he violin. you probably would appreciate him. He's amazing.

Vanessa (2:50:14)
Economy? What did you say? yes, that's right. I gotta check it out. Yeah.

nice. Yeah.

I will definitely check it out. I wish I was a fiddler. That's

actually what I really wish I had become, was a fiddler. I think that's like the best life there is to have.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:50:34)
Fiddler. This guy's amazing.

Absolutely. Can you imagine it's like for your life, you'd like, I'm a fiddler. That's what I do. I was able to, you know, raise a family and live and pay my bills as a fiddler. That's such a flex. That's such a flex. Okay, so how long did you work with Rolling Stone?

Vanessa (2:50:40)
I'm a fiddler, whatever, I just pick it up, pick up some improv fiddling here and there, you know.

Yeah. Exactly.

Uh, I mean, so basically I, you know, I started, I moved to LA, I lived in LA for 10 years and then I worked for Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, New York Magazine. I would just sort of like work for whoever, if I had time in my schedule, I just worked for them. And then I made a podcast about Ivanka Trump with New York Magazine. Um, I guess just like 2000 and maybe.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:51:07)
Okay.

Vanessa (2:51:20)
17, I mean basically when I wrote a book I I taught you know a little bit I did some speaking So the book was a book about campus rape, but it was supposed to be like sort of a book for parents to understand the different ⁓ Issues and like differing perspectives on like what is consent? What is okay to one person is not really okay to the other person there is really rape happening, but

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:51:27)
What was the book?

Vanessa (2:51:49)
Maybe it's being over reported on the other side. Like what are the administrators doing? Are they being too aggressive, not aggressive enough, blah, blah. I mean, it was, first of all, writing a book is really hard. This was also a really ⁓ hard topic because it was done more in an omniscient style than I normally write in. And I think it was like not necessarily really a book anybody wanted to.

Like it would be an interesting book for people to read now that we've gone through all the Me Too stuff and we've kind of come out the other side and everybody's like got different opinions of it. But you know, some consciousness has been raised that like sexual assault definitely happens, but there's also over-reporting of it. And that's probably the reality, right?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:52:39)
Was that inspired or around the time that whole Stanford event happened?

Vanessa (2:52:44)
I think it was around, yeah, it was around then. It was inspired by a case that happened at Columbia University. ⁓ There's lots of these cases, they are everywhere. So, I mean, I don't regret writing it. I think it was interesting. think it was way harder. It's sort of like any creative project. Sometimes you get into it you're like, this is gonna be way harder than I think.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:52:47)
Yeah.

Okay. There's millions of cases, right? Yeah.

Vanessa (2:53:14)
to respect the people that I'm interviewing and put their perspectives in, but at the same time also show some flip sides is gonna be hard. And this issue, I don't know that people wanna read a book that is with like a 360 degree book. It has historical relevance for sure because it's like the main most serious book that has taken the issue seriously in this like, you know.

mid-2010s time when it was blowing up all over the place and has had a lot of implications for society. So it's a good book. I just think for me, it was a more painful experience than I thought. I ended up breaking my knee in the middle of ⁓ it. My dad got very sick. My dad ended up getting diagnosed with bone cancer ⁓ and then passed away like four months later.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:54:12)
Wow.

Vanessa (2:54:13)
So it was really just intense. I got pregnant with ⁓ my second child, you know. So I feel a little like, you guys tell me if you also agree, but like once one of your parent dies, that's sort of the beginning of the middle age or the next chapter or something.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:54:36)
new chapter. It's your new normal. I mean,

Brian's dad went into the hospital with a stomach ache and died like seven weeks later from colon cancer and my dad died in the car accident. we both understand the whole shock of losing a parent quickly. And it is like your new normal we I was 30 or 31 and I you would have been like 34. So but it is

Vanessa (2:54:42)
Yeah.

Wow, okay. my God. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, so early,

yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:55:05)
It's early,

it's your life is different. Your life's different now. It's like a different existence, right? When you lose a parent. ⁓

Vanessa (2:55:10)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like I just

woke up and I was like, I have another kid and I have one less parent, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:55:17)
Well,

and it sounds like that was a crazy time because your topic was important. And I don't know if there was a 360 view at that point. And I do think it's an important enough topic to have 360 view because you have to represent kind of all sides and it's a crazy dynamic. It shouldn't necessarily be crazy dynamic, but it is. Right. So you're writing this heavy story, your knee breaks. sounds like it would suck. Jeez.

Vanessa (2:55:22)
was crazy.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That really sucks, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:55:46)
And then your dad, that's

must have been a really interesting time. Yeah. So the book's kind of tied to a really tumultuous time in your life. Yeah. So how did you break your knee? ⁓

Vanessa (2:55:50)
Yeah.

Yes, definitely. Yeah. Skiing. Yeah,

I'm actually a decent skier. This was like, ⁓ you know, just ⁓ I was going too fast. It was a nice day. It was dumb. But yeah, I broke it in ⁓ in Montana and they were like, OK, you can get this done here, but you're going to be stuck here for like two weeks. So you just go home.

with this broken knee and get it, you know, cause I got a plate put in and like the whole thing. So yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:56:23)
Yes.

Is,

were you a glacier?

Vanessa (2:56:30)
No, I was a big sky. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:56:31)
Okay, so

did you fly home with your broke with a broken knee? How do you do that race? my gosh

Vanessa (2:56:36)
in like a wheelchair, husband, yeah, with a brace and my husband just took me

and yeah, it was really, it was so bad. It was a tibial plateau fracture. was like really one of the bad fractures, but.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:56:47)
Did they

have to come get you like the people to come up on the mountain and put you on a stretcher and ski you down? It was the whole thing.

Vanessa (2:56:51)
yeah, I was on a stretcher. Yeah, I don't even remember

it. Cause it like, you know, that kind of trauma to to bodily organ, you just like put it, you can't, your body can't process it.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:56:59)
Where did

you ski as a kid or did you learn as a newbie?

Vanessa (2:57:03)
Vermont, I

skied in Vermont with my parents. Yeah, my dad would take me skiing.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:57:08)
Do you ever go to like Vernon Valley or Great Gorge?

Vanessa (2:57:10)
No, I never went there. We would go more like to, you know, like Strat and Killington. Like, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:57:15)
Yeah,

Yeah, but those are nothing compared to Montana mountains. Well, it's older. OK, OK.

Vanessa (2:57:20)
I know. I why I had lived in LA. So I got to Miami. I got done some skin. My husband

is a very good snowboarder. So he had sort of been like, we're doing this. This is part of our life. So but now I do still ski, but I ski like it's got to be like perfect conditions, not going to go very fast, you know, because it's dangerous. It's like a very dangerous sport. I wear a helmet for sure. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:57:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

You guys like it easy? Yeah. You wear a helmet now? Yeah,

it's wild. So that just to go back, when did you meet your husband?

Vanessa (2:57:51)
I met my husband, I think I was maybe 32. I met him in New York and then we moved to LA together, because he was working in LA. ⁓ We were set up by a friend. Yeah. It was like, instant I really like you, but then he was like, I'm moving to LA. So then I didn't see him for a few months. And then it was, you know, then it was pretty, we was pretty, it was pretty on after that. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:57:58)
How did you meet him?

⁓ and was it instant?

Yeah, because we're those we had phones, right? Like, was that the days of texting you guys could text and stuff when he was in LA? Okay. Okay. Like aim and a well instant messenger stuff. yeah. Text wasn't really big until 2000. So well, that would it was thousand eight. Okay. Okay. So how long did you date before you got married?

Vanessa (2:58:20)
Yeah, we had phones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably no pictures, but yeah.

Right.

Yeah, it was like 2003 or maybe that I met him. Yeah.

I think we got engaged after a year and then we got married a year after that.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:58:49)
And then when did you have, how long were you married before you had your daughter?

Vanessa (2:58:54)
Um, well, how long were we married? We might probably were married like five years or something. And then, um, yeah, so we had her, she, had her in 2011 and then my son in 2016.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:59:00)
Okay.

And you were still doing the freelance journalism during all this time?

Vanessa (2:59:15)
Yeah, that's what I was doing.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:59:16)
How did becoming a mother affect the flexibility with that type of career? Or did it affect?

Vanessa (2:59:22)
I mean, it was okay with one kid. I think that a lot of writers feel that way. Like, particularly when kids are little, like nobody tells you like, well having this baby actually is the easy part. Like, what? You know? And I like to be alone with my thoughts. So definitely having like kids, like when the kids couldn't talk, I was like, sweet, like I'm here.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:59:47)
Yeah.

Vanessa (2:59:48)
thinking my thoughts, playing

with my kid. This is sort of awesome, you know, like. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:59:53)
That's change. Now you're doing

a podcast getting interrupted by your daughter. what you're thought. When does that, I think that happens when they all leave the house again.

Vanessa (2:59:58)
Exactly. mean, yeah.

Right,

I know, I haven't been able to think my thoughts for like five years now. So, but I mean, I think it's the travel that really changes. Like you really can't. And then also just when you're in like a highly pressurized story, people will just, or if it's again, famous or important people, like they feel fine calling you at like eight o'clock to have like a 45 minute conversation, you know, or people from LA love to call people from New York when they're on their way home.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:00:07)
No!

Vanessa (3:00:35)
in their cars, like, oh great, let's just do this interview when we're on our way home. And you're like, well, five o'clock for you, 5.30 for you is 8.30 for me, you know? So I would just always just be like, I can talk from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, like just put that out there from the beginning. Like these are the hours, like have lots of availability, but it's gonna be like in this window, you know, but it didn't always work out that way. But then,

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:00:42)
Yeah.

Good.

Vanessa (3:01:03)
So I made this podcast though about Ivanka Trump and then I started to make podcasts. And so for the last six years, I've really only made podcasts, but a lot of my podcasts are scripted. So I'm writing, right? Or editing people.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:01:14)
Okay. Okay.

Was your daughter born in LA?

Vanessa (3:01:20)
My daughter was born in New York, but we were still like going back and forth to LA. But then my husband is also from New York, so we ended up moving back here.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:01:29)
As

New Yorkers, how did you deal with LA? One is real, one is not.

Vanessa (3:01:32)
I mean, I don't know. I was just like, I don't know. mean, I like, yeah, I like things

about it, but yeah. I just, the driving, you're just like, my God, am I gonna really leave this house to get on the freeway for 35 minutes to see these people, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:01:41)
Thank you.

Especially coming from the city where you didn't even have a car A different life so when you're dead, ⁓ did he have symptoms or was it truly just all of sudden? He's in the hospital. has bone cancer

Vanessa (3:01:56)
Yeah, it's really just a different like.

He did, there was something wrong with his leg and he couldn't kind of figure out what it was, but it was a tumor, yeah, in his bones. So yeah, he was not doing that well, but he wasn't doing badly enough. And I was also, you know, pregnant. Like I gave birth.

You know, in June and like he got diagnosed at end of August. It was like, was like breastfeeding in the, in the hospital. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:02:34)
Was this your son, your second child? Okay.

So yeah, so you you have one child you're raising, you have your career, and then you're pregnant and then having your second son and also saying something's wrong with your leg with our parents, well, any of us, right? We'd be like, oh, it hurts, but you can live with that forever if nothing really forces you to go to the doctor and check it. So there's really was no, I'm sure no urgency, right? Well, that was

Vanessa (3:02:41)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:03:01)
generational thing too. bet he was like, my leg hurts, probably hurt for like a year. And then eventually, right, it was got to be too much. So it was still a shock to all of you when he got diagnosed.

Vanessa (3:03:06)
Right, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

⁓ was

a huge shock. Yeah. And especially to him. Yeah. was, mean, I don't know. It's, know, have you guys having had this experience with your parents, you know that what is better? Like is going fast better, is lingering better? You know, I don't know. I mean, my mom, as I was saying, like,

We're going on year five of her having to live with help. So like, it's quite serious. And I don't know that that's better. don't know. This is like, this is a really long goodbye, right? So.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:03:49)
I'm in the I'm in

favor of what your dad went through and my dad, my dad was supposed to pick me up at the airport or her at the airport. And he's like, I've got some stomach issues. I'm going to go to the doctor. He went to the doctor and never came home. I know there's something to be said. I'd love to go fast. But I think you had seven weeks, four months. There's something to be said for that because you do at least get a bit of a transition. You if you want to say anything, you get an opportunity to say it.

Vanessa (3:04:03)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:04:19)
If you want, you can

prepare. can you have something to prepare sometime. My dad died in a car accident. I can't even tell you. I would have given anything to have 24 hours. Right. So but what you're going through with your mom, that's torture, I think. Yeah, that's just torture. So there's a happy medium in there somewhere. And it's not happy. Yeah. But I think

Vanessa (3:04:24)
Right.

Yeah.

For sure. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right, yeah, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:04:48)
Because four months is also a shock. That's just, you know, it's, I don't know. The whole thing's a nightmare. the dementia, was your mom showing signs of dementia at the time of your dad's passing?

Vanessa (3:04:54)
Right.

Well, that is a good question. I don't know. I mean, I thought she was acting pretty weird, but people thought it was grief. if you look at her handwriting, it didn't really, it was still pretty good, you know? Maybe like a year and a half or two years after he died, her handwriting, you can see, starts getting more loose and stranger and stranger. So I think...

You know, the thing with dementia is it's often like brewing 20 years before. So it could have been brewing for a while, but then the shifts started happening. When she lost my dad, she was obviously very, very upset, very lonely. Then COVID happened.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:05:39)
Mm.

Vanessa (3:05:53)
So I don't know medically, I mean, I don't know if scientifically you can really like hasten dementia once it's already like the fire is starting. I don't know if you can make it a worse fire by being isolated, but she certainly was isolated during COVID. ⁓

So I'm not sure, it has, ⁓ you know, I didn't really ask her all the questions I needed to ask her or even set things up with her because when my dad passed away, you know, she settled the estate. I went to a couple of meetings. said, like, tell me where I sign. You know, that was sort of like the extent of it, right? ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:06:33)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

And you had mentioned, it's not like you had this real great communication style between you and your mom, right? So, you know, if it was really good and healthy, then all of a sudden it kind of took a left turn. You'd be able to see that. But because it was kind of maybe strange or awkward. she was so, kept things so close to...

Vanessa (3:06:44)
Right.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:06:59)
so private in some ways and reserved. Your mom was so, it's not like that open communication was natural. Is that what you kind of mean? Yeah. So, well, in stress, do think though, can hasten dementia for sure. Like, especially trauma and stress for sure. And COVID would have been incredibly traumatic for her being isolated so soon after losing. Cause what year did your dad pass?

Vanessa (3:07:00)
Ray.

Yeah.

2017, so yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think this happens a lot, the way that people say, you know, ⁓ my mom never recovered from my dad dying. It's sort of what we're saying, like what I'm saying, but it's like, I'm giving it a name of the actual disease. That's sort of the politer way to say she didn't recover. you know, when you look at the statistics, I mean, it's insane how many older people have like age-related.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:07:27)
Yeah, so she's still in.

Yeah.

Yeah, you are.

Right. ⁓

Vanessa (3:07:54)
to match us, so, you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:07:56)
Yeah. Well,

and how much is it related to biology or to circumstances?

Vanessa (3:08:04)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, they say

a lot of it is not genetic, but it seems like there's probably a predisposition there and the choices that you make in life, you know, but.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:08:14)
Right, right. No,

you mentioned you said something to the effect you haven't talked to your mom about it or haven't had a chance. Is she, are you able to communicate with her now? she, does she have communication?

Vanessa (3:08:26)
She's talking

not as much the last couple of months. She stopped talking a lot, but she was communicating before. I mean, it's more, what I was saying is more, I didn't really have the conversation with her of like, where are all your passwords? What are the things I need to know about your art career? Like, here's all the different things I need to know about you that I wanna know about you and like, blah, blah, blah. I didn't really.

those conversations with her because I wasn't really sure what was happening. People were telling me I was over, you know, being dramatic or overstating the problem and then she had a fall and it's sort of just that like the problems like really just like raced ahead from there. ⁓ And there probably was a window where I could have asked her a lot of stuff and I didn't do it because as you said like the relationship is

strange and I didn't know how to engage with her. And I was like freaked out by all the other things I had to take care of. You when you start having to do somebody's all the person's bills and medical appointments and like buying the groceries and doing everything, it's like, you're sort of so freaked out by all that. You're not like, let's sit down. I really want to know. Like, what was it like when you went on the QE2? You know, you're just like.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:09:37)
What?

Yeah. ⁓

Vanessa (3:09:50)
Ugh, I gotta get home. You know,

because I then still have two kids and I was working full time. So it's like, you know, there's you just I really do think about basically, you know, if you want to call it like the last sort of like eight or nine or 10 years, even because we're coming, you know, into 2027 since my dad died as being like the real adulthood. But I've been running around a little bit like a chicken with my head.

you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:10:21)
trying to find something to grab. I'm sure it's always looking for something to ground or anchor you. Because I mean, your dad dying right as you were becoming a mother of two, you have a infant, your mother of two, which is different than being a mother of one, you have a boy, it's different than a girl. I mean, these are all major transitions for a mother for a woman, right? Then you throw on top of that, you've lost your father who you had a very, you had a lot in common with him, you guys were probably closer to him, I would think than your mom growing up just

Vanessa (3:10:23)
Like whack-a-mole.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Right.

Right, yeah.

Yeah, in some ways,

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:10:52)
in some ways, right?

Vanessa (3:10:52)
⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:10:54)
And so processing that, were you also moving then or were you settled in New York?

Vanessa (3:10:59)
I think I had just settled here, yeah, in New York. Yeah, right. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:11:01)
So you just move. What's like one of the top five most stressful things?

So you think about that time, it's no wonder that when you talk about the book, there are there's like a little bit of a cloud there. And I think it's because this was all, yes, that's a heavy topic. And you pioneered writing that type of book about that topic, the 360 view concept. Pioneering something is a big deal. But then you have all this going on.

Vanessa (3:11:14)
Right.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:11:31)
So that makes sense that... Plus a marriage. Well, and maintaining a marriage, right? It's not easy. They are new parents to two now. And he has to be there for you. know, when a spouse's parents, I always say, careful who you choose because you're going to go through a lot with that person. And one of them is, is that the person that's going to support you through the loss of your parents? Because that's a journey and you need that person.

Vanessa (3:11:35)
Yeah, right, yeah, there's also that, yeah.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:11:58)
And so he needed to be there for you as a new mother and as someone who just lost their father. ⁓ So that makes sense. I hope, because that book that you wrote, think, is timeless. And I think that does serve a purpose, especially the further away we get from that time frame. And as people look back on that time frame and history and everything. So that book, think, is going to be a really phenomenal resource.

Vanessa (3:11:58)
Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:12:26)
to people going forward. So I hope for you, you're given your flowers for that book because you were able to do that in spite of all of this too, or as you were surrounded by all of that time in your life. And then you kind of jumped not only COVID, but then jumping into dealing with your mom's health, which is almost like you said, having a child now.

Vanessa (3:12:34)
thank you. I appreciate that.

Yeah.

Right. It's like you have like a toddler who doesn't live with you, who lives like 45 minutes away. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:12:59)
Yeah. And doesn't want to listen probably half the time.

So what have you learned as the daughter of a mother that has dementia? ⁓ Looking, you've been involved with this now for five years, right? So are there any things you have learned that you could offer advice to someone who's maybe at the beginning of this journey?

Vanessa (3:13:14)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Well, this is why I make this, you know, the So Your Parents Are Old podcast is basically sort of for people who are starting to go through it. ⁓ I don't know, there's so many tips, but I would just say the number one thing is to like just get the passwords, like get the passwords, get like the basics of this person's life sorted out and also try to, you know, you really do have to come to the process with love. Like there's, my mom is,

very docile and very sweet, you know, in her dementia. She's not like one of these people who's super upset. So it's either it's easy for me to say that, right? To say like, you've got to come to people like my mom's screaming at me. Like I'm not coming to this with love. Right. But for me, that like the heart opening that I've had towards her and the like real

sympathy I have for the situation and for trying to make her life as good as it can be as she goes through this. ⁓

you know, having grown up in like sort of the odd way that I described and feeling almost like I was like the roommate of these two people who were like on their own paths and building their own careers. And now it's like, okay, well, this is really family. And I think you do learn, you know, I said it in a more flippant way before of like, well, you know, you don't, I don't hear from my friends as much and she doesn't hear from her friends as much, but you know, that's true. Like when you,

get sick, like family sort of takes care of family and that's what you learn. And so for me, a lot of it was just like, I kept on being like, isn't this somebody else's problem? Like, isn't this, like who's supposed to be dealing with this? And then I was like, it's like me. I'm the only one that there is to deal with this. And so like,

wrapping your head around that, just dealing with the practical stuff. I'm not a person who really loves like inspirational sayings, but I mean, I have heard a couple of like meditation tapes or things that like help me calm down. ⁓ A lot of it is just like dealing with the fact that it is gonna be torture for a number of years and...

I don't know, at some point you have to reckon like with, you know, how long does she want to live? What were her real intentions here? All these parents say like, I don't want to be a burden to you. Just put me in a nursing home. Throw away the key. just, you know, shoot me. Take me outside and shoot me like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. When it really comes down to it, what do people really want? Right. Like I have some information from my mom. Like she did say some things because her mom had gone through this also.

You know, so I have some ideas of what she wants, like, you know, what are you, do you have the like peace of mind to really talk to your parents about that in a serious way? Like, I don't know, not everybody's gonna do that. Like not everybody's gonna be able to do it. So just do like as much as you can. It's just really like a chip away at it kind of thing. You just have to think like.

This is part of my life. I'm gonna have to just chip away at it. I can't find the perfect aid today. I can't find the perfect assisted living. can't, you know, do whatever financial machinations you're gonna do to get your parent on Medicaid. We haven't even talked about the fact that there's so many people of Gen X who are supporting their parents, where the parent has nothing, right? Because it's like, you may have Medicaid, but who's paying your rent? You know, who's putting food on the table?

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:17:19)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (3:17:26)
and

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:17:26)
It's a huge

gap, right? And I'm sure you're navigating that, but that's a huge gap in our society here, our culture.

Vanessa (3:17:31)
No, it's huge. And it's

so you have people who are like all across the spectrum. Some people who are like, oh my God, that was, I thought my mom had money and that's my inheritance. So I've got to protect it, you know, to people all the way on the other end who are like, my parent has nothing and has to move in with me. I mean, taking care of somebody with dementia.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:17:43)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (3:17:56)
day in and day out, that is beyond a full-time job. I people will call it like the 36 hour day, right? Cause it's not, you're not like sitting there on your phone, chilling out. Like it's a full on like physical job. So I don't know. think for me, like, you know, the boomers are aging now and maybe

My parents were a little bit before the boomers, so I've experienced this maybe a little earlier than the people, know, the massive amount of people who are gonna have to take care of their massive generation. So I feel like I'm sort of like five years ahead of where a lot of other people are gonna be at. At the same time, there's also a part of me that's like, when this is over, what do I wanna do with this knowledge?

in talking to other people, in some ways it's a lot like fertility, where people who are having fertility problems talk about IVF all the time and they're really totally absorbed in it, they have to get this child and blah, blah, and then it's over and they never wanna talk about it again, you know? So then there's people who are like, you wanna talk about this now, but let me tell you, like when your mom is gone, you're not gonna be like.

let's just have the dementia con, yes, of course I wanna help people and I wanna help them figure out how to deal with this, but you're gonna be like, gotta close that, gonna close that door, know, like need to move on kind of thing. So.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:19:26)
Right. Yeah. Right.

Well, maybe the podcast, though, ⁓ it's the vehicle for you right now to be the resource for every for in the future. So even if you don't continue, if you if you change the trajectory, you know, at a later date to another type of podcast or something, but that this podcast will still be there for others who are coming up behind you. You're almost documenting this.

Vanessa (3:19:58)
Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:20:00)
for you now and your peers, also, you know, it'll still be in existence so people can still find it when needed.

Vanessa (3:20:01)
Right.

Yeah, I mean, what's good about your podcast also is these are sort of timeless conversations, you know, so you can go back. We'll all look way younger. We'll be like, my God, we look so great on this video like that we did like 10 years ago. But you know, these are the kinds of things that they're like, yeah, they're like message in a bottle. They're things that can stand the test of time.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:20:29)
Your name can too though, because it's, you so your parents are old, you're talking about your experience taking care of your mom and others, right? And interact with other folks. ⁓ But then, as maybe you close that chapter, now it's like, okay, so your parents are old, I'm old, and I'm a parent and can now appeal to another generation of people on different topics. Your name is gonna go on for a while. What did you, what made you? ⁓

Vanessa (3:20:37)
Mm-hmm.

That's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:20:58)
When to start the So Your Parents Are Old podcast? When did you start it?

Vanessa (3:21:03)
I was going through this experience, so I felt like other people probably had similar questions. ⁓ I started in the fall in October. you know, I mean, there's a couple of different kinds of interviews that are on there. So usually I have a guest, right? So like my realtor, I talked to about the issues around selling a parent's home, the fact that like...

All these old people are in all these huge houses and they don't want to sell them, right? Cause they want to pass them down to their kids with the stepped up basis and blah, blah. And like, this is creating a lot of, you know, housing problems in our country, basically, cause people can't buy houses. These guys don't want to leave. And then, you know, everything from like her to like just Lewis Black's parents died at 101 and 104. And he took care of them. He was very funny.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:21:45)
Yep.

Vanessa (3:21:57)
you know, and he was making a lot of money on The Daily Show and everything, so he had all these different, you know, full team taking care of his parents. ⁓ But he was just like, nobody should live this long. Like, this is insane. Like, my mom's like, 101st birthday, and like, what is going on? ⁓ Kathleen Madigan, who's a great comedian, came on and told a hilarious story about her.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:22:10)
Thank

Vanessa (3:22:26)
Dad having like a favorite fireman. You know how the firemen come in and they like pick the old people up off the couch. And she's like, this guy is getting picked up so often that he's a favorite fireman. Like, where's Mark? I like it when Mark picks me up, you know? ⁓ So comedians are great. She's so good. She's really, should watch her special that she had on Amazon. She's a lot of stuff about parents in it. ⁓ But.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:22:30)
Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

She's funny. Yeah, she's good.

just have to watch it. Yeah.

Vanessa (3:22:53)
So yeah, and then, you know, then a friend of mine who's a hospice volunteer, there's like half a million people just volunteering for hospice around this country is so inspirational. ⁓ There have been a lot of daughters of moms with dementia because I think this is something that goes on for so long that they are willing to talk about it. like Lisa Gibbons, I don't remember her if she was on like Entertainment Tonight or Mara Walker who was on.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:23:02)
Wow.

Yep. Yep.

Vanessa (3:23:23)
CNN and now is on the board of the Alzheimer's Association. ⁓ You know, some people, I I interviewed a woman named Michelle Boyanner who had made a documentary ⁓ about her parents getting old, which is great. And she, I think it's called, It's Not a Burden or You're Not a Burden. ⁓ And, you know, while I was talking to her, she was like about to put her dad and like, he was like,

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:23:45)
Thank

Vanessa (3:23:52)
dying, like about to go into a hospice right then and there. So some of the conversations are really emotional. Like people are crying and then some of them are very funny and some of them were practical. you know, then I mean, I'm going to try to do some like, how do you take care of you? You know, we've done a few of those, but it's probably a good idea to. Yeah. And we had a friend of mine on who

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:23:59)
Yeah.

me.

Vanessa (3:24:21)
is going through menopause and her mom died of dementia and she's like wondering why she can't remember the name. You know, it's like her cat was sitting on her console and she realized she was trying to say like console but she couldn't remember the name. Like, you know, she couldn't remember what the name was, which is like a little bit of an esoteric thing to call a piece of furniture. And...

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:24:42)
Right, right.

Vanessa (3:24:48)
you know, her doctor was like, as people say about dementia, it's like, the problem is not like, if you can't remember the name, the problem is more like, you don't know, like you see your cat, you don't know what it's for, or you know what I mean? Like, it's sort of like, it's not a problem if you can't remember where your keys are, it's when you see your keys and you don't know what they're for. Like I remember when my mom, when I started to realize things were really wrong, it's like.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:25:03)
Right, yes.

Vanessa (3:25:15)
we went out to lunch and she had a burrito and she like did not know what this was. Like she didn't know how to eat it. She couldn't understand what it was. And I was like, okay, that's really freaky, you know? ⁓ So yeah, it's like a weekly, you know, weekly interview show, hopefully with less and less video. Cause I am like just tired of video and.

I do a lot of editing, for me, I always just like to do that. That's what's fun for me. So I prefer an audio product, you know? Because it's hard to edit video, because it's weird if you're cutting it all up.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:25:57)
to edit.

Yeah, it's well, it's it's definitely more time consuming. That's for sure. Well, it's interesting because you really have every base covered, even self care. You have you have guests who have had many different experiences and that

Vanessa (3:26:04)
Time consuming, yeah.

Yeah.

This has been such

an affirming conversation. feel, I feel, I feel this has been way better than chat GPT being, being a therapist.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:26:20)
I hope so.

Well,

I have I was just to because even with the Lewis Black story like his story, so his parents, you know, everyone's stories are so diverse, but that you can rep, but they all are very cohesive. And then to have, you know, medical professionals on

Vanessa (3:26:30)
Yeah!

Yeah

Mm-hmm.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:26:55)
to represent that and then the self-care is huge, but even your friend with the menopause like that is an interesting concept because I also assumed I know menopause like how you have the brain frog and fog and you forget words but I did assume that it's sign of dementia was forgetting the word too. I didn't ever think about it's not the word it's the meaning behind the thing. So that's really encouraging.

Vanessa (3:27:18)
Yeah. It's good to hear.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:27:22)
But you know what to do with the

key. Yeah, I know what the key is for. No, I think that's actually a really vital piece of information, especially for women, because as we go through perimenopause and menopause, know, if our levels are off or whatever, don't remember. there's words I seriously am struggling and struggling and I can't come with, but that's just the hormones all wacky. That's not I don't have dementia. Not yet, at least knock on wood. But knowing that your grandmother had it and then your mom.

Vanessa (3:27:27)
Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:27:53)
Are you really diving deep into preventative care?

Vanessa (3:27:57)
I mean, I

want to dive deep into preventative care. I've done the genetic testing and I don't have the genes and I don't know if they had the gene and I don't have the gene. My mom's sister is sharp as a tack and way older than her. But ⁓ I, you know, I have definitely changed my diet and I'm trying to change my stress. And I do a lot of yoga, but I have heard now from several people.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:28:04)
Thank

Vanessa (3:28:26)
that it's like exercise to the point where you're huffing and puffing, right? Or you gotta go sit in a sauna for like an hour because it's really about like the sweating out. I mean, people seem to be saying saunas are way better for us than, you know, any of us understood before and that that can be like, and that's great. I like sauna, so excellent. ⁓ I don't like running that much, but I mean, I...

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:28:45)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa (3:28:54)
I do very hard yoga, so that is for sure exercise, but I think I could do more of it. You know, should I be taking creatine? Are there different things that, you know, can't, okay, all right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:29:09)
You should. You should.

I was just about to there's a ton of, there's a huge ton of research on, especially for women. And I'm not going to pretend to know it at all, but I probably double down on it. And it's easy to take. It doesn't taste at all. You can throw it in your coffee and it have huge, and it's for your brain. Really. A lot of people think of creatine in the muscle building, you know, arena weightlifting.

Vanessa (3:29:14)
There is some research, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:29:38)
stuff but it's for your brain. Also they're finding the gut health and dementia are tied. That's another thing they're really like they because you know they cut call the gut the second brain and so there's so much coming out now I ⁓

Vanessa (3:29:43)
I've heard that too.

Mm-hmm.

or your oral health, yeah, the weightlifting, oral health, yeah. Yeah,

I mean, it's certainly like, have way healthier now than I was five years ago. And hopefully in five years from now, I'll be healthier than I was. But the stress is real. mean, the crazy thing about being a caregiver, and you could say I'm like a secondary caregiver, because I'm not there every day, but I'm certainly the producer of...

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:30:04)
same.

Yeah.

Vanessa (3:30:20)
my mom's entire life. the physical therapist wants to talk to somebody, she's calling me. Like every, you know, everything, every bill is going through me, every like logistical thing is that, you know, the stress of all that, caregiving, actually they have studies that show that caregivers die earlier because of the amount of stress that they're under. So.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:30:43)
Yeah, well, the sandwich generation. Yeah.

Vanessa (3:30:45)
Right, yeah. I mean, it's just that, you know, I had kids late, my mom also had me late, and so everything is sort of like spaced out in this way where really you would think your parents are sort of, you know, in the typical configuration. It's like your parents are passing as your kids are leaving the nest, and that's what gives people like a sort of crisis of identity. But it's certainly on a practical level.

way easier, right? Because I've got a nine-year-old, like and a 14-year-old, I've got a nine-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl. So you can imagine they both require, you know, quite a bit of attention and care and, you know, are living in movies of their lives. And, you know, I'm a tangential figure, but like to, you know, they're the main character energy all the time. So yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:31:33)
weather.

Absolutely,

you're in it. You're it parenting. in it. That's what I was gonna say not to pile on. You're probably in like the toughest ages. You are there. It does get better. It does. Yeah. it starts around nine, like nine, nine to, I think nine to 15 is like, hold on, just hold on. But also be caring for

Vanessa (3:31:40)
Yeah.

Yeah, okay. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:32:05)
an elderly parent, an elderly parent with dementia. I think there are a lot of Gen Xers who can relate to, even if their parent doesn't have dementia, they're still having to be hands-on with that elderly parent and they're still raising kids. Whether they're nine, 10, 11, or whether they're 17, 18, 19, they're still having to be present with their children and now also present and there's that sandwich, you know? And the stress level is off the charts.

Vanessa (3:32:33)
Yeah, I mean, I think the thing with the elderly parent is like, you know, I've had a million and one people say like, you should put your mom in a home. And I'm like, is it gonna be like that different? She lives in like a two bedroom apartment with no stairs, you know, at least she's in a building where she knows everybody. Yes, of course it means I'm not gonna get the same amount of phone calls during the day or whatever, but there's gonna be a whole host of other annoyances by her virtue of her being there. And it's gonna be, it's gonna cost more.

by the way, you know, and I just think there's no way like the only way out of the situation is if you have a sibling who is an effective manager, human, nice human being who lives really close to your parent. And if that is the situation, you send that person flowers today because they're like allowing you to just live like a chill lifestyle. But if there any other way you cut it, you know, your

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:33:22)
you

Yeah.

Vanessa (3:33:31)
As soon as the parent is sort of in crisis with some sort of disease or really can't care for themselves, losing the ADLs, as you say, you're gonna have to pay the piper. You're just in terms of your time.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:33:48)
Yeah, for sure. think moving her to ⁓ assisted living would cause more problems because she'd be more stressed and would be reaching out to you even more. Like now she's at least in her space. Like you would be hearing more and hearing more. phone calls about some light that won't go off or some buzzing noise or some crazy, right? Yeah. I was going to ask you, ⁓ with your children, because we talked about how you were raised and how

Vanessa (3:33:57)
Yeah.

Exactly, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:34:16)
And I think you summed it up amazing. Like you felt like you were kind of a roommate with your parents. What have you done differently raising your children? Have you tried to do the opposite? Like give them an opposite vibe?

Vanessa (3:34:29)
I

did, I did try that. I mean, I first was like, this is cool. Like you guys just do whatever and I'll do whatever. like, you know, who cares about grades and it's all good. And yeah, just like, we're just chilling and you know, I'm not gonna smother you and blah, blah. And you know, you don't have to play violin. And my daughter actually wanted to play violin, which was really crazy. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:34:41)
You want a beer?

you

the irony.

Vanessa (3:34:57)
You know,

but then it gets to as like the rubber hits the road and you're like, ⁓ like we got to study for this history test. Like, are you aware of what an index card is? Like we've got to like start getting a plan and yeah, it's so.

I just don't know, like, it's cool, I live in Brooklyn, blah, blah, but like really, I could be living anywhere. I could live in Boca, I could live in like a hardcore suburb, I could live in the forest. Like everybody who has like adolescent, young teen kids is sort of in the same experience of like you're playing too much Roblox, you don't need to have like one set of day makeup and one set of night makeup, you know, I'm not taking you Sephora. Like it's just like, we're all sort of.

This is the phase, just the way you had the bassinet and you the car seat and you got this phase. It is what it is. Like, I don't know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:35:54)
Yeah, well,

because they all have phones and so they are all seen the same thing and want the same thing because they're all the same thing. Yeah.

Vanessa (3:36:02)
Exactly. They're in a monoculture. They're actually in a monoculture. It's like

we're like splitting off all over the place, but they all know like this TikTok dance and this like, you know, Twitch guy. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:36:14)
And that pair of shoes, you

know, all of that, like it used to be like, New York gets the fashion first and then it spreads across the Midwest or LA and even the up in Portland, we would get something first and it would spread this way. Now it's everything comes out at once and they all know about it right at the same time. There's none of that organic, like catching on to trends. It's the trend happened. Here's an example. Two weeks ago, like Brian Haki sack, like he, you know, he's a Gen X or whatever. So he's a big Haki sack or

Vanessa (3:36:30)
Yeah, exactly.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:36:43)
So he started hacking with our youngest like a couple of weeks ago. It just happens now that it is like such a trend with this age, the teenagers, that you can't order certain hacky sex. They're totally sold out and that happened in the last week. Because it's on TikTok. It's on TikTok, yeah. I bought hacky sex and I bought this, a three pack of these ones. I was like, all right, we'll try these. If these don't work for him, I'll come back and get this other one. I came back, they're all gone.

Vanessa (3:36:57)
That's amazing. Haki Sats.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:37:11)
You cannot buy a hockey sock on it. we've learned it's on TikTok. It went viral. All the frat boys are doing it, all the high schoolers.

Vanessa (3:37:18)
Okay, that is

really 90s are back. If the hacky sacks are back.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:37:21)
Yes,

it is. And thankfully, Brian's actually really good at it. So Dylan will be like, come out front, hack with me and like his friends. So he's he's being like, OK, you know, but it's like the thing. So but that happened on the OG in a matter of like that. Now it's a trend. Now everybody wants it. And it's I'm like, this is crazy. So here's another interesting thing. So I was ⁓ on Facebook last night, a buddy of mine, his wife posted pictures of.

Vanessa (3:37:37)
Amazing.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:37:49)
their lacrosse Friday night team building event and they're up in New Jersey and they had a hack circle. So they have a hat. But what's even crazier and this has been going on for a while. They all have the same hairstyle as our 16 year old down here. Oh, you mean the the kids, not the parents, the kids, same hairstyles and they were on a big hack. I call it the llama. Do the boys in Brooklyn have it where the fluffy hair in the front?

Vanessa (3:38:04)
Ugh.

⁓

yes, my son doesn't have that. But yes, I've seen a lot of that fluffy hair. Yeah, no, I mean, we saw some people from Europe and they were like talking about Mr. Beast. And I was like, what? You know, yes, I mean, he is the hugest for sure. But yeah, they're they're all in this like swirl. And they very much my kids very much feel like if I take away their ability to do that, then, you know, what is what is the other option? Does nothingness?

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:38:19)
Yes, yeah.

Yeah, he's huge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you mean, you mean as far as phone? Yeah.

Vanessa (3:38:46)
You know, bored. I'm so bored. I'm like, you're

bored. Let's spend like two minutes that you haven't been watching like YouTube. I also hate YouTube in terms of the just like the content of the like the morality of a lot of the stuff that's for young kids is like, it's all like Lamborghini, get yours. Like, you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:39:01)
Yeah.

Yeah. Oh,

I'll you, it's it's it's on TikTok. It's on everything. It's we worked hard, especially where we live, to try to keep our kids grounded because it's just so and I'll tell I'll tell our youngest like half of what you see, they've rented that Lamborghini for like the weekend in Miami that men in their 20s rent them to try to get girls and then but the meanwhile they're all there's like five of them sharing a one bedroom apartment in Miami.

Vanessa (3:39:23)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Right,

exactly, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:39:35)
We've talked him about porn and like that's acting that's not real and the first girl you have sex with isn't gonna look like that or want you to do that to her, you know, it's just like all those like keeping reality in the situation because they are digital generation, know, and we don't know what they move past it to they're like at least at least he is he's He like watches fishing videos or something. There's utility there as opposed to some living vicariously through

Vanessa (3:39:36)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:40:02)
through others. as they get older. So wait, I want to go back to the ⁓ the Ivanka Trump, Ivanka or Vanna? Ivanka, Ivanka Trump podcast you did. Was that your first podcast that was just yours?

Vanessa (3:40:09)
Ivanka. Yeah.

Yeah, no, it was my first podcast ever that I did at all.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:40:21)
What made

you want to do do a podcast?

Vanessa (3:40:23)
just, know, New York magazine wanted to, they had had a deal with a place called Luminary, ⁓ which was paying for podcasts. bring up Russell Brand again. In this conversation, he was on, you know, his early podcast was on it. ⁓ They had, you know, Lena Dunham. I wonder if they had Dave Chappelle, maybe for a minute they had Dave Chappelle in there. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:40:34)
you

Vanessa (3:40:48)
You know, serial had come out, S-Town had come out. People were excited about these reported, ⁓ you know, again, observational reported scripted podcasts by journalists. So they asked for ideas and that was my idea. they said, okay, like, let's go ahead and do it. And I went in and, and did that. And then I started a company with a couple of other like mid-career journalists who also.

⁓ We're making that style of podcast. So we were not doing chat at all. And we started a company called Campside ⁓ in March 2020. So like right in the middle of COVID. So it was like one guy who's producer, businessman, and then these two male writers and me. So the four of us, we all had small kids. So it was bananas.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:41:33)
Right when it started.

you

Vanessa (3:41:48)
Yeah,

it was a banana, starting a company in the middle of COVID, you know, and we didn't know that much about podcasting when we'd only just started. But the, you know, the market was really good for that kind of stuff at that time. So, you know, we made, I mean, dozens of them and we made them and our friends made them and different investigative journalists. We have this franchise called Chameleon.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:42:02)
Yeah.

Vanessa (3:42:17)
that has had a bunch of ⁓ good stories in it and ⁓ is now like a weekly show by Josh Dean, who is my partner, who is ⁓ really talented. And they're just like scam stories that you've never heard before, you know? ⁓ So everything was sort of similar to a lot of, we all have a similar-ish style of writing of like,

spending time with people, really trying to get to know them, really trying to observe them. A lot of true crime, a lot of like, this person's actually innocent when you look back at the case, you know. ⁓ A lot of research, a lot of, you know, when we were like assessing stories, it was just like, okay, who's alive? Who can still actually give an interview about this? So it's not just...

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:42:57)
Mm.

like research.

Vanessa (3:43:12)
Okay, we read about it and we're gonna tell you what we think happened. There were real interviews with people who were there. In some cases, it was super tough. Like I made a podcast about a murder, think was it in like 81, I can't remember the exact year, but it was in Milwaukee, a bunch of cops. And these people were just like living really hard. Like all of them were gone. I was like, you guys are not that old.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:43:39)
Yeah.

Vanessa (3:43:39)
You all

were like in your 20s when this happened. How come all of you are dead? you know, so it's really was the interesting thinking also about my parents, like stories really have like a sell-by date on them. Like you have to get there before those people disappear or it's over. In most cases, it's just over. Nobody is coming back to grab that.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:44:01)
Yeah.

Yeah. ⁓

Vanessa (3:44:08)
story because you didn't leave a journal or whatever.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:44:13)
Yeah. So when you say scripted podcast, can you define that for me? Is that where you literally are writing out all the questions you're going to ask? OK.

Vanessa (3:44:22)
No, you're just, well,

yeah, you might write out the questions, but you basically do like an interview that we did, but if I'm processing it afterwards, so like, you guys would now take my interview, but you would write, you know, let's say I killed somebody or something. So it's like, you know, you're interested in finding out about me, but more as a character in this overall script about this murder. So you'd be-

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:44:42)
Thank

Vanessa (3:44:52)
you know, like we drove over to or we didn't drive any place, but like we asked Vanessa if she would talk to us about her life. And so she said she would. So it was Saturday. It was sort of warm in Boca. And we all got on the zoom at three o'clock. Yeah, exactly. And then you'd like use little quotations basically. So more like a document. It is. They call them audio documentaries. Right. So they're

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:45:07)
Okay,

Okay, okay.

Vanessa (3:45:20)
Like a documentary, they're sometimes four or five hours long.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:45:25)
That's so interesting. I didn't even know. I didn't know that's what it was called. I'm sure. Cause you're pulling soundbites, right? You're like, you're basically like picking like a story. you're telling a story and then going back to the initial interview and injecting that response and then maybe doing some more color commentary and then coming back and grabbing another sound bite, that kind of thing.

Vanessa (3:45:26)
They're a lot of work. Yeah. You're pulling soundbites, right?

Yes.

Yeah, and then also getting archival so pulling like, okay, this person gave an interview to whoever some newscaster.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:46:00)
like unsolved mysteries.

No, it's how much work is that? My gosh, that's so much work. Yeah, yeah, because a podcast is a lot of work. People don't realize that a podcast is a lot of work. And there's no ending, right? Like you're you need to keep doing it. It's not like like talking about finishing and crossing out the to do list.

Vanessa (3:46:06)
a lot of work. Yeah, it's like working for 2020 or something, you know?

It was a lot of work. I know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:46:23)
sure you might be done with that guest, you're right onto the next guest. And there's always post-production and there's always recording and there's always promoting. And there's so many other layers you can take it to if you can find the time to devote to those next steps. So I can't imagine doing an interview and then also embedding that into an entire production that you're of almost a documentary concept. So were you doing that and raising two little kids?

Vanessa (3:46:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Yes.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:46:53)
Oh my god. And taking care of your mom.

Vanessa (3:46:53)
Yeah, that was ⁓ Bananas. And Tarek and Gare, my mom. Yeah. And it's in some ways it's easier than just writing on your own because at least there's like there's a team and people are doing different parts of it. And so you're not on your own, which is like writing can be really lonely, you know. But yeah, it just was so crazy to me, the thing that really

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:46:59)
We're out.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Vanessa (3:47:21)
killed me is like the amount of Zooms and like things where it's not like I feel like I need to like have makeup on, but I just got to, you've got to be like your professional presentable self, you know? So even if you're not going into the office, like that collision between like work life and home life, and then I'm at my mom's, I've got my laptop and I'm on a Zoom, and then I'm like driving to get my kids, and then, you know, great thing about.

having this kind of hectic lifestyle with podcasting is for that kind of writing, you have to listen a lot to the interviews to like get a sense of like, okay, this person said this really interesting thing at minute 15 and then 25 and blah, blah. So driving around in a car is excellent for it, right? Cause you're like, oh, I can't wait to drive to my kid's school to pick them up because I get to do this multitasking, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:48:18)
Yeah. Get some work done.

Vanessa (3:48:20)
Yeah,

but you start multitasking, you know, as you know, it's like you're multitasking your life away. Like you start to be like, what did I even do today? All I did was like frantically do 16 things and, you know, to try to get presence through that experience. And it is all about presence is.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:48:39)
And

that's tough. I feel like I multitask my life. Well, yeah. And also GenX, we have the GenX Grime, but we also are trained to do everything frantically because everything for some reason is urgent. Like even doing the dishes or doing the laundry. You got to do it quick. You know, got to walk from the kitchen to the laundry room as fast as you can because you got to get this. So that's been something I have challenged myself in the last year is to do things non-urgently unless they are required, unless it requires urgency.

Vanessa (3:48:55)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:49:08)
to try to help regulate my nervous system, which is not a whack for most of my life. but ⁓ I think we're all just kind of realizing we've been multitasking everything our whole lives, but especially even now it's training ourselves to not continue that dysregulation of everything is not, you know, doesn't require that urgency, you know, but that's hard.

Vanessa (3:49:10)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean,

I think that's what goes back to what we were talking about before about the to do list. Like you have to have the acceptance that the to do list is not going to get that much shorter today. If it doesn't, it's OK. You know, and like, but also like the adulting part of it is just like you have to also just be like, I have to do this, like I have to do these things. So it's up to me how I want to do them. Like either I can frantically run around like a psycho.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:49:44)
Yes.

Vanessa (3:49:59)
and piss everybody in my life off because I'm annoying, because I'm always like too much energy, too much like nervous energy, or I can do them in a more mellow way. But like, ultimately there's no other person. Like there's no parent, there's no like assistant, there's no person who's coming in to like really solve it for you. Nobody's coming to save you, it's just you and it's your reaction.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:50:23)
Mm-mm.

Vanessa (3:50:29)
to having so many things that require adult-like capabilities, know? Yeah, responses.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:50:34)
Yeah. Responses.

And if you burn out because you're burning every candle you have at every end, then there's going to be no one left to do anything if you are the only one. So it's a weird balance of self-care, creating space and giving yourself permission for the self-care so that you can continue to take care of everything. You know, it's really, the whole thing is very weird. I have to ask, how is Ivanka Trump?

Vanessa (3:50:44)
Right. Yeah.

⁓ I didn't interview her. It was

like more of a write around. Yes, that would have I wish I I wish I had she's in Florida. You guys should go go check her out over there. No, I just talked to people who knew her so.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:51:08)
She is in Florida. ⁓ yeah, yeah. Okay,

was it positive?

Vanessa (3:51:16)
It was sort of middle of the road. wasn't, I wouldn't say it was totally positive, but it was more of a like, again, like observational, somewhat humorous, like who is this person kind of thing. I mean, I will say that everybody who grew up with her, I there was like one or two people who really didn't like her, but generally people actually really liked her as a kid. She really tried hard. She was not like,

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:51:26)
Okay.

Vanessa (3:51:44)
the mean girl in school, she was like trying hard to sort of like meet people where they're at, be responsible, be, I mean, you want to talk about somebody who's had a lot of responsibility put on her, right, since she was young. ⁓ So I didn't, you know, I think there's more stuff that came out during that first ⁓ like administration, sort of behind the scenes, what are her and Jai are like really doing than a lot of the stuff that I found of her early life.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:51:55)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, I wasn't sure if you got to interview her or not. So it's just curious. I know, right? Would that be something? Do you have any questions before I ask my last question? No, I mean, I find you fascinating. We could keep going. think we've been at this for four hours.

Vanessa (3:52:15)
You know.

No, would like to interview her. Vanka, if you're listening, I'm still here. Yeah.

I love this, I love

this. You guys, we are so perfectly matched. Also, our nervous systems are well matched. I'm like so happy. No, but this is such a joy to talk to people who are just like, can we like bring it down and be mellow for a second as opposed to like having to like hit our marks in the, and you guys are, yeah, you're very good conversationalists. Now I understand why you're making this work, you know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:52:39)
Yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

I mean, I hope that you felt comfortable and enjoy enjoyed the conversation. Oh, good. We've loved having you on. has been like Brian says we could go easy for hours. There's no question. There's so much more. No. Yeah. was like in with him, though, before I asked my last question, because before I started doing that, he would be like, I had another question. So I always want to make sure, you know, I'm curious what kind of music are you into?

Vanessa (3:53:01)
Totally. Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah

You know, I have to tell you, I feel like the only music I'm into is the music that my daughter listens to because she's like listening to, but I mean, I really like like the music from like, you know, the early to mid 90s. like, blur, like things, you know, the things that are sort of contained within that space. Like I like De La Soul and like Brand Nubian and like.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:53:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Vanessa (3:53:50)
Stuff that is a little bit lighter than like ⁓ more of like a Nirvana or like a, you know, I would prefer like Tri-Call Quest to like Public Enemy, you know, but I do listen. It kills me when it's like the station is called Classic Rock and you're like, ⁓ I mean, sorry, Classic Rap. And you're like, Classic Rap, this is cool.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:54:01)
Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't even

know they had classic rap station. cracked me up. That's so funny. Rap came out when we were kids. Mm-hmm. I mean, we were there. I guess so. Run DMC. You know who I met the other day? Is that Gin Blossoms? Do you remember Gin Blossoms? Or like, I like them. like, you know who's coming back is Sublime.

Vanessa (3:54:15)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I like some.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:54:35)
Like my 16 year old, I really miss the time. I love sublime. Yes, sublime is coming back and so is train. They really like train.

Vanessa (3:54:36)
I have heard some sublime in from my daughter's rim as well. Yeah.

Yeah, but interestingly,

no like Liz Fair, no like Alanis, no, it's weird. That'll happen probably eventually.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:54:47)
No.

Yeah, you're right.

I hope so. Yeah, what does she listen to?

Vanessa (3:54:55)
that's what like sort of what I just said. Like she listens to, you know, I put on, so actually we were listening to Macklemore the other day and she was like, I've never heard that before. And I was like, that's interesting. Cause you're really listening to like the nineties stuff, you know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:55:08)
Yeah, what did you

read? Although he's kind of even isn't he like a little early 2000s. More. Yeah.

Vanessa (3:55:13)
Early 2000s, yeah. But that's, feel like her

thing is more, I mean, she was into more into like the, you know, they wanted to listen to TikTok radio. They still like to listen to TikTok radio. So they're still interested in like the Noah Khan she loves where I'm like, I don't know about this guy. Like, do we really have to listen to this? ⁓ Check him out. He's Noah Khan. Yeah, he's a like a sort of light rock kind of guy.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:55:25)
Yeah.

I don't know who that is. I'll to check Noah Khan.

I'd love

to see bands come back. We haven't had bands in a long time. I would love to see bands come back. Okay, is that it? I think so. My last question is always, where do see yourself in five years?

Vanessa (3:55:43)
Yeah, it's true. Yeah.

my God, I'm just trying to get through today, you guys. ⁓ I don't know. mean, I do. I don't see myself in that different of a place. I'm feeling I'm still going to be dealing with teenagers and my mom and like a teetering writing career. But I mean, I I think that I want to write more.

I've sort of decided that I'm not gonna do as much podcasting. Like I was still gonna make my show, I'm still gonna make, but the scripted podcasting, which is so laborious, I'm gonna try to put that energy into doing like text writing, maybe writing another book or writing a bunch of articles that I'm really excited about. Cause I think that just, again, with the way that I was raised and the number of books I've read, that's something I can really bring to like the world that is not

what everybody else can because people are just not educated in the same way of like reading so much, you know, when, so I feel that maybe that's more of a gift of mine to give. ⁓ And I don't know, I hope I'm like a little calmer. I hope the world is calmer. I hope like this moment in culture sort of passes us by and what we said happens where the AI slop sort of takes.

over and then the things that are human actually are much more resonant and more valuable to people. ⁓ Yeah, I don't know. I'd love to say like I see myself retiring, but I somehow do not see myself retiring.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:57:38)
I think that's too early for all of us. no, I think that's a great outlook. And I think that all makes sense. I love what you said about writing from the perspective of someone who's truly a book lover that has ingested novels and novels and novels in a totally different way than young people do. Our daughter is a big reader, but not in the way that you're talking about. So I do think it's unique. And I think it's something that

Vanessa (3:57:39)
Uh-uh.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:58:08)
young readers would enjoy is that perspective. ⁓ I didn't even ask the title of your book.

Vanessa (3:58:10)
Yeah. Yeah.

It's called Blurred Lines. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's still out there. Yeah, and so I make this podcast so your parents are old. I also have lots of, like if you search for my very complicated name, there's lots of other podcasts that are out there that I've made. Some of them scripted, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:58:17)
Blurred lines. Okay. Can people find that still? Okay. And we'll include it the show notes for sure.

You

Okay.

Well, so your parents are old podcasts. We will include all that information for any listeners, because I know this is going to resonate, especially for a lot of listeners that are in that boat. They're either starting to take care of their elderly parents or they're in the middle of it or the end of it. But I don't think there's a lot of resources of happening in real time for our generation that's going through this. I think we're just now all starting to talk about it. And we didn't even touch on

those of us who are taking care of elderly parents who caused our trauma. Some people are having to take care of parents and really in contact with those parents for the first time maybe in 20 years, 25 years because of trauma that happened. And so there's that too. That's a whole nother aspect of this. And that would be a good episode for you to do.

Vanessa (3:59:23)
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. That would be,

I'm gonna write that down. That is a very good idea. Yes, yeah. Cause it's really true. There are people who are going no contact, but it's like, are you going no contact at the end of the person's life also? You know?

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:59:30)
Mm-hmm is is taking care

Right. Right.

Or have you kept just enough contact and now you're being pulled in to handle end of care? You know, so that I think that would be a really good episode to do for sure. But, you know, your your story, I find it so fascinating, especially from someone who grew up in Oregon. My perspective of people, kids who grew up in the city, you guys were like cooler than everybody and knew more than all of us.

Vanessa (3:59:42)
Right.

Yes, exactly.

I know.

GenX Adulting Podcast (4:00:06)
and we're way more sophisticated. And then to learn that you actually were Carrie Bradshaw for a while. I mean, come on. I do think you need to do something with that. That's a, well, the kids say niche now. We said net, but that's such a niche. And that's another thing. The girls that are in their twenties now, like watch Sex and the City and like they look back on that. yeah, that's something to look into. just, you know, you're, and then,

Vanessa (4:00:08)
Hahaha.

Yeah.

Yeah.

do they? Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (4:00:35)
all the juggling you did with writing a book in the middle, like not in the middle, but alongside, you're losing your father and having a child and moving. mean, you really have gone through it and you're still in it raising these kids and caring for your mom. So, I mean, I think your story is fascinating, but it's really inspiring too. And then to share your experience with your podcast to help others.

I think it's so great. I love to see us using our voices to help each other and then to leave that legacy behind for those coming after us. So thank you for spending so much time with us.

Vanessa (4:01:13)
Yeah, thank you.

Thank you. This has been so, like such a beautiful way to spend an afternoon. It's now getting dark. I'm like, is it about to pour or is it just we've been on the conversation so long it's actually getting dark. But I mean, I really appreciate the time that you guys took with this and I watched some of your videos before, but I didn't realize like how good it would feel.

GenX Adulting Podcast (4:01:28)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (4:01:40)
to come

on here and tell my story. So I really appreciate that you're making like a safe space for all gen Xers that don't need to call it a safe space, but still need to talk a little bit. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (4:01:50)
Yeah. Yeah. We're just hanging out. You know, we

were like the invisible generation for so long, the forgotten generation, whatever, that I think it's about time we all have an opportunity to tell our stories because as diverse as they are, we really have a shared experience and not just through our childhood, but right now midlife, ⁓ we are having a shared experience. And we didn't have social media in childhood to kind of alert each other, hey, you're not the only one, you're not alone.

Vanessa (4:02:08)
Yeah.

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (4:02:20)
I

feel this way too, but we have it now. And so it's another way for us to validate each other. Like you're not crazy and you're not alone. And, ⁓ and here's some information that maybe will help you cause it helped me. So I appreciate you being part of that legacy. Yeah. Thank you. No, was wonderful. And for our listeners again, we'll include in the show notes everywhere you can find Vanessa. So your parents are old podcasts. We're going to link up her book.

Vanessa (4:02:23)
Yeah.

Awesome. Thank you guys so much for having me. Yay.

GenX Adulting Podcast (4:02:49)
And so any questions or comments, please leave them and Vanessa will see them on social media. And as you know, we always love to hear from you. So thank you for listening and we will see you next time. Bye.