We Can Do Hard Things
Jia Tolentino: The 1% of Life that Makes It All Worth It (Best Of)
Sun, 27 Apr 2025
Jia Tolentino joins us to discuss how to finally accept all sides of you: Why your un-productivity matters most; When your shame is good; How to make your real life bigger than your internet life; How to let motherhood energize you instead of drain you; and How to stop scrolling in the middle of the night. Plus, we talk acid trips, the sorority rush that Jia and Amanda shared, why Glennon’s friends track Jia’s words – and whether Glennon’s mug shot will inspire Jia’s next show. About Jia: Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a screenwriter, and the author of the New York Times bestseller Trick Mirror. In 2020, she received a Whiting Award as well as the Jeannette Haien Ballard Prize, and has most recently won a National Magazine Award for three pieces about the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Trick Mirror was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and the PEN Award and was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Public Library, the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, NPR, the Chicago Tribune, GQ, and the Paris Review. Jia lives in Brooklyn. TW: @jiatolentino IG: @jiatortellini To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What stories does Jia Tolentino share about her past?
Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. We have a big day. Huge. And that is because we have the Gia Tolentino here today. Before I read her bio, I need to tell Gia one of my favorite Gia Tolentino stories, which Gia and I have many, many funny stories together, which is interesting since we've never met. And most of our experiences have been extremely one-sided. But I have a group.
Yes.
And there's this one recurring thing that people often say, which is kind of like a what would Jesus do situation, which you'll know from your We both have evangelical pasts. We certainly do. We certainly do. But ours is more like, what did Gia write? Oh, my God. And it's real. It's real. Somebody will say it. What would Gia write? And it kind of works because you can say, like, Giazus.
So it, like, goes, Giazus. Yeah, which I know you're going to really love. But if we have one complaint, it's that we often have to wait a long time for a Giazus take. we're mad now. Okay. So like, we'll have to wait for a New Yorker piece to come out. Or sometimes we get lucky and you're on a podcast, but it takes a while and that's annoying.
And so one time, one of the women in the group said, well, what did Jesus write? And I was thinking for a while and I thought, you guys, what if Jesus is trying to tell us something like, what if, what if we're supposed to think hard and do research?
What if you're your own personal Gia?
What if I, what if I have, I too have a Jesus inside of me who can stay calm and cool and collected and like think hard and keep an open mind and open heart and interview people and then come to a nuanced conclusion and A month later. And one of my favorite group, they thought for a while. And my friend said, fuck that. We don't have time. I'm mad now. What do we tweet?
Oh, I'm so, that's so, I'm so moved by that. And I'm sure we'll talk about child care and child raising, but you know, something happened to my brain in 2020. And I mean, that something was the pandemic and having a baby and all of that. And I was like, I am not calm. My brain is not good. I have nothing to, you know, that thing that I had always relied on my job being and
This kind of writing being this process through the only way through which there's any ever any thought in my brain. It really, you know, my shit got rocked by 2020 and the years afterwards. But I think I'll be back on the on the blogging train. But I got so sick of myself, you know. I know.
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Chapter 2: How does Jia discuss the concept of shame?
Isn't that beauty and truth though too? It's like the opposite of poetry. Yeah, I know. But I think that like that's where...
beauty can also live in the turning off turning off of like the insanity of some of it I also think that you couldn't live by that lake if you didn't have reality tv or the equivalent of it right like I've thought about this a lot writing about anytime I've written about abortion or activism where you know I'm trying to look for these emotional management tool like ways to manage my own feel like stupid little feelings of overwhelm and sadness that we're all trying to
do all the time. And it sometimes feels like you can spend your entire life just figuring out how to emotionally balance yourself. And then I talk to people who are really in the trenches, and I'm reminded there is a toolkit for this that activists have been practicing for decades, like women that are manning the helplines at abortion funds in Texas.
They've been rowing a little canoe across that lake of despair since 2011. And they can't be in it. They can't be... face deep every second of the day in the literally life or death stakes and, you know, the existential and emotional, the intensity of all that. I mean, cause I get overwhelmed even writing about it sometimes and I'm like, how do I manage?
And then I remember that these people, these women, you know, I think they watch plenty of Real Housewives. I think they, I think they, You have to go to like a dry kind of neon lit kind of synthetic place for a little bit sometimes in order to get back on the shores of the lake and really... feel it all. Yes.
This too is humanity. The neon too is humanity. It's not always an escape from it. It's a coping mechanism to get back to the lake. I think that that's right.
And I also think that there's an exceptionalism piece to this that I'm really interested in, which is that like, I'm not like a regular sorority girl. I'm not a regular Real Housewives watcher.
I have to distinguish myself from that by showing that I am a feminist and an activist and a whatever, as opposed to being like, actually, if we don't try to prove our own exceptionalism, then we could just all lean into this idea that Everything is a paradox.
And when you do, when you say that there are feminist sorority girls, you know, like you have to acknowledge your place in this like shameful structure and you have to critique it. But can you not do that better when you're leaning into the paradox and saying, maybe I'm just a person who likes your housewives and maybe there isn't something that you can automatically say about me because I am.
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Chapter 3: What are the challenges of balancing motherhood and career?
And I feel like I try to follow like a spirit of pleasure into as much of my life as I can. And it's like, I maybe thinking about it so much has sucked some of the pleasure out of interacting with that last realm for me.
And I just, I think one thing that brought my interactions with the internet down, and this probably has to do with Jenny's book too, is like, what is giving me like real kind of animal pleasure in the day? And it is more and more not anything having to do with my phone. like work accepted, right?
Talk more about animal pleasure. What is animal pleasure? And what are examples for you?
Well, I think I've, I run on instinct more than many writers do. Like I think I, it was another thing that I realized during the pandemic that I couldn't really write about anything if my life was contained within one room, because I really rely on, you know, being able to like go to a march, go to a situation and feel like, what's happening in my body.
I have no intellect that exists outside of my body. I think so many writers have that cerebral capacity. I don't have it at all. It was an interesting thing to realize. And I think I do have kind of a little thing worrying. It's like, is this thing that I'm doing next going to make me feel more like myself or less? Or is it going to make me feel more present within the world or less?
And I think of the fact of feeling more present as the kind of purest animal pleasure, that they exist exactly where they are with the stuff of their moment and their environment and whoever's around them. And I'm feeling like a cumulative X many years of acid trips just kind of seep out through my mouth right now.
Can you talk to us about that? Talk to us about acid trips. Just say some stuff about it. Well, I've only done shrooms. I've done shrooms many, many times. But it was just always in a fraternity basement. Like, it was never a great experience. I mean, it was better than not being on shrooms. Yeah, yeah. Would you ever experiment? Yeah. And I actually am very seriously considering doing medicinal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's really supposed to be helpful for eating disorders.
Mm-hmm.
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