Nina:

Welcome to Dear Nina, conversations about friendship. I’m your host, Nina Badzin. I’ve been writing about friendship since 2014. I lead creative writing groups in Minneapolis, and I’m in a parasocial friendship with today’s guest, Mark Oppenheimer, who’s going to talk with me today about the value of ritual and games and friendship getting together for games like poker. And in Mark’s case specifically, he’s written about men joining friendly poker games.

I am a big fan of Mahjong. I know people play Canasta and bridge chess, so it doesn’t even have to be a group game. It could be a one-on-one kind of thing. There is something about a game and friendship that is different than other ways we get together with friends. I think it’s worth analyzing , and I’m excited. Mark is here to talk about it with me.

I have been reading Mark’s articles and listening to him on the podcast, Unorthodox from Tablet Magazine for so long. I was certainly not alone in that. Unorthodox has had 7 million downloads and more recently I loved Mark’s podcast, Gatecrashers about the history of Jews in the Ivy League. So yeah, I oddly feel like we’re friends.

That’s what a pair of social friendship is. We’re both of the same Gen X era and could easily quote Beverly Hills 90210 scenes. He has five kids. I have four kids. We have a similar take on Jewish community matters, which I know from following his articles and podcasts so closely, and which he now knows from my lengthy responses to his fantastic newsletter.

Succinctly titled Oppenheimer. Mark is head of open learning at American Jewish University. He received his PhD in religious studies. Mom, listen up cause I know you love this stuff. From Yale Covered religion for the New York Times for six years. Taught at Yale, NYU, Wellesley, and Stanford and is the author of five books.

Most recently, squirrel Hill, the Tree of Life, synagogue, shooting, and the soul of a neighborhood. And listen to this, mark is now writing the definitive biography of Judy Blume. Yes, the one and only Judy Blume. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and a mentioned five children and two dogs. So, hi Mark.

Thanks for being a guest at my show so we could take this Parasocial connection to the next level.

Mark: I didn’t even know the word parasocial, but I like it. And, I hereby promote us to just real friends, not just Parasocial

friends.

Nina: I think we would be friends. you would get a kick outta my husband if you could meet him.

Mark: Well,

my brother lives in St. Paul, so next time I’m out there. You can buy me a coffee at Caribou Coffee.

One of my favorite Midwestern institutions though, my brother says like, whatever, it’s a big chain, but I don’t see it on the East Coast.

So it’s when I go see him in the Twin Cities that I get caribou coffee.

Nina: Oh, we love to have something special in the Midwest that East Coasters don’t have . So before we get onto the friendship part, , how did this come to be that you’re writing Judy Blume’s biography

Mark: , in 1997, in the very early days of email, which becomes relevant in a moment, I wrote a piece about my love of Judy Blume., so, I was 23 years old I mailed it in the mail. To, I think it was 2 25 West 43rd Street, the Old New York Times building to the book review, just New York Times book review.

New York, New York, you know, And a couple weeks later I got a letter back, I think a paper, snail mail letter from. An editor at the Times Book review saying we really like this piece. The 25th anniversary of something was coming up, I feel like one of her books, I forget if it was pegged to tales of a fourth grade, nothing or Super Fudge or something.

Something was coming up, let’s see, it was 1997, so yeah, it was about 25 years after, her early works of the early seventies. Are you there? Got it to me. Margaret came out in 1970 and was followed quickly by some others. So there was a lot of quarter century. , milestones , that were the occasion for them to run my piece.

And they ran my piece on the back page of the book review, the back page essay that they used to have. And she saw it and liked it and sent me a note, and at some point we moved onto email, which is why this is funny. This was in the days when you had to make sure you both had email before you had an email correspondence.

and I met her. She invited me to, visit her and I met her and I met her husband George. And then over the years, I would say we were in touch every five years or so. I mean, it was not a close correspondence, but we definitely stayed abreast of things. as I began to publish books, she was a big supporter.

And then at some point, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, I said to her, I would love to write your biography. And she was maybe 70 years old, 15 years ago and said, you know, I’m not really ready to cooperate with a biography yet, but let’s stay in touch about that. And then, six or eight months ago, she, well, last summer, so a little bit more, maybe 10 months ago now, she, , Reached out to me and said, you know, I’m 84 coming on 85 years old.

I think I’m ready to cooperate with a biographer. I would love for it to be you. So it really all began with this piece I wrote about her in, in 1997 that she liked. , and then my staying in touch. So, you know, someone said to me, wow, you really play the long game. And I said, it wasn’t, a game, it was a friendship that, happily turned into a writing assignment, , which is not the kind of thing you can ever plan for.

Nina: . So that was a great story. Thank you really for sharing it. And , one more Judy Blue moment before we move on to friendship and male friendship, cuz it’s rare that I have a guy on here, so I definitely need your perspective.

Mark: Yeah, we have to talk about you and men because I was looking at your list of annual books that you read and you read about 5% male authors in a good year, 10% and I, I wanna hear more about that. I wanna hear more about that, but we’ll get to that in good time.

Nina: I love that you looked at the list. Okay, , the movie, wonderful adaptation of, are You There? God, it’s me, Margaret. I had one beef with it.

This one piece about Sylvia bringing completely Jewish, illiterate Margaret two services of all places to get her to fall in love with Judaism. I had forgotten about that. I didn’t reread the book before the movie had been so long.

So I’m in the movie, it’s almost like if the story’s completely fresh, like I remember, we must, we must increase our bus. All those kind of things. I’m sitting in there and Sylvia takes her to services and I’m like, why? Sylvia bring her to a Shabbat dinner.

You’re in New York, you don’t know anyone. You can bring her to dinner and have some with that, have teenagers or something. Bring her some challah, some babka, some chicken soup. Why would you bring her ? To services, and I don’t gather that Sylvia, the character of Sylvia ever goes to services. Really? She’s not a regular Shabbos attendee. No way is she. So why would she bring Margaret there?

Mark: I hadn’t thought of that. I think that’s a really good point. I too really liked the movie. I thought it was a terrific adaptation. I’ve had a lot of younger people whom I’m in touch with. In one case a former, college student of mine Eliza’s probably in her late twenties, and she went with her boyfriend to see it and was very moved.

There’s a way in which they know, people who are in their twenties might know the Beatles and they might know yesterday, but they don’t know 1970 And to see the world of 1970. Children they’re not, you know, ed Sullivan children, they are.

Recognizable in terms of clothes and hairstyle and whatever. The cars are bigger and gule more gas, but of course they’re totally different because they don’t have technology. They don’t have iPhones. They walk over to each other’s houses. They are from this really beautiful time and she was very moved by it.

My wife took two of our daughters to see it and they really loved it. I hadn’t thought about that, , particular thing, but of course, you’re right. Nobody who wanted to hook anyone on. Any religion would start with services, which her Catholic friend does in the movie, and her, Protestant friend does and her Jewish grandma does.

Nina: It riled me up to a point, and then I thought, you know what? I don’t have the energy for this. I used to have, I, I spent a lot of years writing Jewish pieces for Cavalla and the Jewish Daily Forward in other places, kind of like trying to present Judaism in its best with his best face forward.

And the reason I ended up in this friendship beat over time is I kind of ran out of. The Jewish stuff, you know, my kids were getting older. I’ve been through every holiday 8,000 times. I’ve been through all the things. I have nothing new to say about it really. And I was kinda like, you know,

Mark: It drags you down a bit after a while and yeah, , This is a kind of analogous story. You’ll see how in a minute , I was talking to someone recently about, you know, krama is so great and people always, kids who come home from Krama always say, why can’t the rest of the year be like camp? Why can’t schul and day school be like Krama?

And of course the answer is cuz anything that you do every day is becomes rote. But somebody said, yeah, I asked the director of Rama whatever in the Rockies or Ramon, Georgia, one of them. Why they can’t export their model to all other Jewish institutions. And he looked at me and said, look, we’ve solved two months of the year.

Somebody else has to solve the other 10. And you do sort of, you feel like that sense of trying to solve Judaism or presented in its best light, is it’s work , and of course what I was trying to do with unorthodox was never present the best thing about it, but try to present. A deeper thing about it than just what you see when you go to services, which, and I like services by the way, but it’s work and it gets tiresome and, at the end of the day, , if you feel like it’s your job, it grinds you down.

And I know what you’re saying about, especially if you’re the kind of journalism you did for Kveller, where you’re talking about how do you get your kid interested in this holiday and you’ve had six takes it’s enough.

Nina:  I actually also am comfortable in services. I don’t go all the time, my husband takes some of the kids every week. I am a unique person in that I grew up reform. You could stick me in any service, though. I’m comfortable. I love all the reform tunes.

Like I love me some Debbie Friedman, the whole thing. But, I, I have no problem sitting on the other side of Majik. We’re, we’re pretty regular habad Nicks over here. It doesn’t bother me. It has its own beauty to it. We’ve been going to Conservative Synagogue for 20 years. I can do that. That’s a little long for my taste, , it’s the longest of all the options. It’s the longest, but I, people are very, like, right. Particular to their own thing. And I will say one strength of my Judaism is I find beauty in all the different parts. And see here I am, I’m on a sales job. I can’t help it.

Mark: no, but I’m the same way. And part of it is I don’t take umbrage in any of it. You know, it’s like you’re saying of it. The Maji said, look, it’s their tradition and you know, , every tradition you name is right for somebody.

Nina: Let’s talk about male friendship, and you wrote a piece for CK on your subs, Oppenheimer called Men Playing Poker. I saw that title and I just like perked up right away. Well, you called it actually Men Playing Poker and Manifesto. That was your title, I believe. Instead of me describing it, will you describe it a little bit?

Mark: I think in fairly quick succession I had. Had a meeting of my own poker game, the i, I and eight other guys, that’s how many are on the email list? We usually get six or seven of us, , and four or five of us are pretty original to the game for, , about 15 years . In quick succession. I was at that. And then my dad invited me to be a substitute in his poker game, which in one form or another, has been going since about 1970 in Springfield, Massachusetts, though we didn’t move to Springfield till 1976 when I was two years old. So he was not an original in that game, but one of the originals, bill, bill Paquette was there.

And um, it was some social workers, some college professors, some public school teachers, like a smattering of. Middle class white dudes from Greater Springfield in 1970, I was just very moved. I was just very moved by how long it had been going on and in this time when we talk so much about the absence of friendship and the, friendship deficit, and I think President Biden has talked about the Surgeon General talks about it.

This is something that has brought these men regularly out of their houses to be with each other, as the Christians would say, to fellowship with each other. For, over 50 years now. And I pointed out to ’em they should have had a party for their 50th anniversary ish. And they said, well, it was during Covid so they couldn’t, but and then my game has been going pretty seamlessly.

Again, we’ve almost never missed a month. And during the real depths of Covid, we did it on Zoom using an app on our phones, and then we would zoom so we could see each other. And we went up to twice a month. , and we probably should have gone every week cuz we really needed it. It was super fun.

And, I was just very moved by it and , I got curious about the history of it. There’s almost no scholarship on the history of men’s low stakes recreational poker games. Not in a casino, not high stakes, not where you’re playing, where any professional would drop by to make money. But really, low stakes, , purely recreational,

Nina: Do you play with some money? Like how much money are we

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The buy-in is $25, once in a while someone will go out, we’ll lose it all by, you know, we start around eight 30 and we finish around 11. So once in a while someone goes bust almost, and then maybe they’ll buy back in, but almost never. So the most you lose is 20 to 25, and once in a while someone will clean up and take 20 bucks from everyone.

I mean, I’ve, I’ve won close to a hundred dollars, but almost never. I would say generally I leave. Between down 15 and up 15, and I think that’s pretty typical.

Nina: you said in there one quote from your piece, you said during the game, I forget my troubles. Do you guys get a chance to talk about anything going on in your life? , is the joy of it that you actually aren’t doing that?

Mark: Yeah, I, that’s interesting. So. It’s both right. I would say mostly we aren’t doing that, so It is not a place where the game slows down so that someone can say, I lost my job though. Certainly, I think people have lost jobs over the course of, certainly my dad’s game and, you know, probably my game too. I’m a freelancer, so it’s always hard to say what it means when you’ve lost your job. But I’ve definitely had work slowdowns that have been highly stressful.

When this game started, I think it was before my daughter was born, so I think, I’m trying to think if any of us had children. Maybe there was a baby or two. And now we have 5, 3, 4, 2, 3. everyone has children . And so we’ve seen a lot of children’s illnesses and, have watched our children suffer in various ways and that’s come up.

but it generally comes up and the game will pause, you know, and the game will linger over it as we try to keep the game moving. But the conversation will shift to that for five or 10 minutes and then it kind of moves back because the person who’s suffering that doesn’t wanna wallow in it wants to get away.

But I would say that it’s a group of people. Who also happened to be good friends and have become closer through the game, though most of the friendships preceded the game or when new people are brought in, they were brought in because they were already close friends with one or two of the people in the game.

, so one of, the people in the game has just lost, his father-in-law, and the Shiva is tonight as we record this you know, I’m going and I imagine a bunch of us will go this is his mother-in-law. But when this member’s, brother died, Unexpectedly. In his fifties or something, , five or six of us from the game made it to that shiva at his house. We’re not mostly Jewish, but like there was a Shiva. People know what a Shiva is. They went, it’s a supportive group for sure.

Nina: . It’s such an important piece of why in-person interaction. Matter still. I mean, I have plenty of online friends. I’ve been very online as the, expression, which was even in succession the other night that people are using, , yes, we can definitely have real connection that fills our cup in some way with online friends. They’re not showing up for the Shiva. They may send a tray, but you’d still need people to show up in your life, and you get that by showing up something like this.

A regular game, people you’re seeing regularly.

Mark: I mean, I don’t know that I believe that one of the things that establishes a real friendship is, Making sacrifices for each other. I think you could have, a totally beautiful friendship in which no one ever felt they were giving up a lot or sacrificing a lot, or, but certainly , one of the things that can help establish a friendship is when you do free, when you go out of your way for each other and showing up for a shiva is no fun for the people showing up You know, unlike going to someone else’s, baby naming, which could be uplifting for the whole, everyone there, right? You know, at Shiva you really do it for someone else, and you do it on a moment’s notice that Shiva comes up pretty quickly. You don’t have weeks to plan and you probably have canceled something else and cleared out something else.

You’re like, but you go because you have to go. You just have to show up. I think that that difficulty of it is meaningful in establishing, in establishing closeness. The other thing I’ll say is that, and this gets a little bit away from I think what, what you were thinking, but, , I think about this in terms of online relationships.

People are just feel freer to be. more indifferent to other people’s feelings. Online and friendships can go south very quickly. Online people can be cruel to each other. Online people are just less careful with each other’s feelings online and if you’ve spent 10 hours with someone in person over either one day or 10 days.

You’ve probably been kind to them all 10 hours or polite or solicitors or decent. And that just is a bedrock of caring that having texted or emailed or Facebooked with someone for 10 hours by no means adds up to. , I just think that’s important. I think we’re actually our better selves in person, so I can’t imagine feeling a truly close friendship with someone.

I hadn’t at least. Spent some time with in person. I do have one fairly good friend whom I only met in person once, but we had a really long, great lunch together and now she and I can hop on the phone and it feels like we’re picking up from that. But I think that one meeting in person was super important also, in part because it took some effort to make it happen.

, she’s from the west coast, she was traveling the East coast and she said, you know, I’m gonna be somewhere near New Haven. Can we get lunch? And I, I said, yes, let’s do it. And we made it happen. And that solidified something.

Nina: Okay. Let’s get back to the game. so I play Mahjong not as regularly as I would like, I imagine it’s a bit like poker in that you do have to kind of focus on the game.

So we will once in a while, maybe the very beginning, like when we’re shuffling or in between each game when we’re shuffling the tiles around, we’ll catch up for a second, but once we are to the part of the game where you’re looking at your hands and stuff, I mean, there’s really no talking.

It’s very hard to focus. It is so refreshing to do something with other women where we’re focused on not having conversation.

Mark: Hmm. Right. Well, and that’s, that’s a gender difference. I feel very comfortable saying in that, you know, there is that thing about how women could get together just around the friendship and men need to have an activity. Now, I’m not like that. I’m perfectly happy to get together with my male friends just to catch up and talk and talk feelings and.

But there definitely are men who can only do intimacy around a sporting. The game has to be on TV or there has to be a poker game or whatever. so it’s interesting you’re saying you like getting together with women to, and not emoting just doing something. I would say that the average poker game may have more emoting than if you’re say, at a sporting event because. But it all depends on the game too.

One thing about poker is if, if gets around to the person who’s turned it is to bet, and he’s talking the game pauses for that. That’s not true of Mahjong. Right? You have to, everyone has to be on top of the game or you can lose out.

Nina: Yeah. You know, it’s not like there’s an, well, there may officially be like a time that you’re supposed to , take your turn but , we don’t do any kind of official time. It’s just sort of understood, , move it along. No one’s waiting for you to stop and check your text for 10 minutes.

Mark: Right. Poker games can pause if there’s a fight going on and you pick right back up and there’s no real loss to the game. However, there are definitely people whose their games, where the culture is we’re here to play and we move the game along Our game has its own rhythm where, you know, there’s a certain amount of pausing to yell or throw Eminem at each other.

We , definitely get into political arguments and we get into all sort like they’re, they’re heated conversations though. More often it’s paused cuz someone said something very funny and people are laughing, like literally falling over, laughing, clutching their bellies and can’t think about their hand.

A lot of people would drop into that game and say, not enough. Money is changing hands. We’re not playing enough cans. If you get to the end of the night, you’ve only played 25 hands. , they want a game where you’ve played 50 hands, it’s 50

chances to win. And so, there are people who would find our game insufficiently serious about the poker , and too social.

Nina: Well, each group like this does have its own vibe. I mean, same with Majong and everything. Like every group has its own kind of unspoken rules. So do you do let people come in like you? I don’t think we’ve had

anyone new in our Maj game in a long time.

Mark: so you need, I would say, five to have a really good poker game. You could do it with four, and you can go up to seven or eight. Once you get above seven, probably the dealer sits out, doesn’t bet on a given hand, just deals, and that actually can make things move more quickly. So it’s a nice number, but you really need five, six, or seven, and not everyone can make it every time.

So we have a stable group of nine. Only once or twice have all nine of us made it. Usually it means we get, let’s say seven, but that means there’s a group of nine. Now, a few people have moved away. I mean, it’s, it’s a, we’re a pretty stable, like boring dad group of people. We have jobs. In New Haven or our wives do, and we’re not going anywhere. And once in a great while, there’ll be someone who will have a guest spot just once, just for fun,

Nina: Is there anything else about male friendship before we move on to my reading list that I wanna hear your, uh,

Mark: I mean,

Nina: but the act male friendship.

Mark: here’s what I would say about gender and friendship. Obviously, I’ve never been a non-male in a friendship, right? So I don’t have big theoretical claims to make about women in friendship or non-binary people in friendship or anything. What I will say is that, , there’s certain benign traditions that work and that should be valued. It would be odd if one of our wives dropped into our game. not because we talk about our wives a lot, only because I think for everyone it’s a night off from. Family. It would be odd if one of our kids dropped in. I mean, I did drop into my dad’s game, but I don’t live at home.

And he’s not parenting me. Right? I’m 48. but you know, I think there’s something to the effect of it being a night off from the domicile. You know, even if it’s you’re hosting and it’s in your basement, that makes it a little bit more of a, vacation from, life and a little bit more of a playful space.

and that’s not true of all recreation. That’s not other people who, you know, my dad in his golf foursome for a very long time. There was a married couple that golfed together and that was terrific. I spend more time with my wife than I think most people do with their spouses because we both have very flexible jobs.

And I work from home and, you know, I don’t wanna travel without her. Some people do travel without their spouses and that’s fine. But I am someone who’s very physically near my wife a lot and we’re in a close marriage. Nevertheless, she doesn’t wanna be at my poker game.

So , you know, I don’t have a grand theory of the male poker game. I actually think it’d be interesting to say. Why aren’t there female poker games? Why are there female mahjong games but not poker? And probably there are some interesting questions to be asked. Is it, you know, do people bet around Mahjong? Is the, are they losing and winning money?

Nina: You’re losing a couple dollars by the end of the night and Mahjong is much slower. Like If we get through four games, that’s great and you could win or lose 25 to 50 cents. There’s little numbers next to each hand. You get a card and there’s hands you can play. Now some people probably multiply those numbers and if it says 25, maybe they do it as $5 or something. Yeah, that is a great question. Like why not? I know some women play canasta. My parents played bridge for, I don’t know, 40 years. That’s how they made friends. My mom’s from Rochester, New York. She went to Northwestern, met my dad who is from Chicago and in business school there. And then they settled in Highland Park where my dad grew up in Chicago, where I grew up. , they were in a bridge room from college, like when they met in college and he was in grad school.

Mark: My dad’s parents, his mother and stepfather, played bridge for decades. My dad played a lot of bridge in college. he tried to teach me once I was not sharp enough to pick up

Nina: Our generation, like just didn’t do the bridge thing. And my mom, by the way, never has seen a maj set in her life wouldn’t know how to play. Bridge was there. That was their time.

Mark: And you know, chess has held its own. I was a big chess player as a kid. Chess has held its own. It’s interesting that the bridge. Hasn’t. maybe something about it being a couples game, maybe

Nina: No, but there’s men’s, there’s men’s bridge games. My dad, he had Parkinson’s for about 20 years. Bridge was one of the last things he could really still do socially. I mean, he was a big tennis player. He was a big runner. Obviously, he couldn’t do any of those things after a while.

But Bridge, he could played. He had a lot of Men’s Bridge games. So that still exists.

Mark: I would say that the, the conversation at our game moves from parenting to politics to classic rock, which I don’t know, are those things gendered? probably the perspective on parenting coming from men.

If only because society treats us differently as parents, even when we do a lot of parenting. But you know, there are different questions that come up as the non-birth giving, non-nursing parent. So probably that feels a little bit different than it would if there were women in the room.

Certainly there are women who know more about classic rock than half the men in the room. I, you know, I don’t know how it would feel different. And none of us is a big gambler either, but we enjoy the gambling aspect of the poker game.

You know, we have never, as a group gone to either of the casinos that are within an hour and a half of our games. It’s never occurred to us, Hey, let’s skip the game tonight and go gamble at the casino, which, I think it’s the first thing that a lot of poker groups do is they, they look for annual opportunities to take it to a real casino.

So we’re not big gamblers, but the gambling seems to be a piece of the fun, and I don’t know if that’s gendered. I really don’t.

Nina: All right. I’m gonna move us to books and then we’ll say goodbye. So, okay, you looked at my reading list. You looked for 2023 or just a couple of the years

Mark: I looked for about five years back and , if you take David Sedaris out of the mix you, well, who doesn’t love David Sedaris, but you have an almost male free reading life as far as I could tell.

Nina: So interesting. Okay. Well, I am just finishing our Eric Thomas’s newest collection. I got an early release and I read his, first one when it came out. So I love him. I do tend to like humor writers. Oh. I had Will Schwalbe on this show

Mark: You Okay? Yep. You did.

Nina: the memoir about friendship.

Mark: friend. Yep. I’m not giving you guff about it. I’m curious if you’ve, I’ve had any number. Of women say over the years to me as a male writer. Oh, I would totally read your book, but I don’t, I don’t read men,

Nina: Oh, I don’t have a rule like that at all.

Mark: and I’ve also known people who have said, and there have been some essays about this who have said, you know, my education was formed around a male cannon and I’ve decided to take, there was some great essay by a very good writer who said, for the next year, I’m only reading women, or something like that. Like it’s, you know, it’s obviously a political statement, what you read and especially if you’re buying contemporary writers, where you put your retail dollars. So I was just curious if there was any intentionality behind it.

Nina: That’s a really fair and good question and yeah, no there’s not. I think a lot of the books I get are books. people send me and probably the people reaching out to me are women just Cause I’m in that. Sort of writer parenting now with friendship being for the past nine years, it tends to be female oriented and a lot of the people in my life are women. You know, I’ve noticed when you were talking that you have several close women friends. I don’t really have any close guy friends that aren’t married to my friends, I mean, we are, I am friends with them, but I would never see them alone and that’s not because there’s like a big rule in my household. It just, That just is what it is

Mark: So I don’t know if you do from college, but the female friends I would see alone are generally grandfathered in You know, I had a lot of female friends in high school and college who my wife doesn’t know and isn’t particularly interested in spending a lot of time with, but I would go see them if I, if they’re passing through town and also former students, um, but people who my wife has no connection to. And I would not typically get together with the female half of couples that we’re friends with by ourselves, but I’m just as interested in what you’re saying about your reading life, which is the books you get sent and the worlds you’re in more female.

Nina: It’s just more female. That’s just how it is.

Mark: I mean, look, a lot of men only read military history and you know, what can you do about them? I mean, I don’t know, like as somebody who teaches creative writing, I can only say that, , 70% of my students at, probably 90% of the best of them have been women. So I’m well aware of the, you know, the problem of, of the way that literary consumption and reading is gendered, which is women do most of the reading. And men, you know, I don’t know what they do play video games into their forties. I’m not sure.

Nina: one other thing about my reading life I’ve noticed myself as a trend over the past couple years is I don’t read nearly as much fiction as I used to. And when I first started out in writing, I was an English teacher at high school in Minnesota when I first lived here. And I was really into literature, I was really into writing. I had a bunch of short stories published in literary magazines, like back in the, you know, before things were online as much. And I was really into fiction then, Just not my natural writing voice at all. Like I was really forced, I think like every story I have published was just really just me imitating short story writers. I like a good imitator. I didn’t know I was doing that. It’s more like in hindsight, I think I’m a much more natural non-fiction writer and, maybe I’m always reading non-fiction just to improve myself. And I tend to enjoy humor. And even though I don’t really write humor, I love reading humor. Like, no, I did not say that.

Mark: you saying women aren’t funny?

Nina: I would never say that.

Mark: I can’t believe you just said that.

Nina: I love a lot of female humor. Most of what I read is non-fiction. I don’t have the patience for as much fiction anymore. I don’t know what’s going on.

Mark: I’ve, heard that as people get older. I remember when I was 30, I had a job where my boss was 50 and he said, I don’t read fiction anymore. I’m too, as my time on earth diminishes, there’s so much I want to know in a more direct way. Not that fiction doesn’t teach you stuff, but he really wanted to mainline history, sociology, contemporary current events. He just needed to be with live real people in his books, not imaginary people.

Nina: television, I, I will watch n I do not watch documentaries and I don’t watch the rail. HT TV only. Only fiction only made up stories , maybe it’s all the good TV

Mark: , nothing , makes me break out in hives more than the word documentary. I mean, there have definitely been good documentaries and I like to think that, you know, with Gate Crashers, which you kindly alluded to, we made an eight part documentary. But the idea of like a documentary film festival is

Nina: Oh, no, thank you.

Mark: please just gimme some Seinfeld references.

Nina: Yes. I’m just working out this theory as we’re talking that I’m not reading fiction because the TV is so good. I mean, the shows I watch are so good. I mean, what could possibly compare and even the shows that get made from novels I’ve read are better. Like I said, Daisy Jones and the six. I did read her tennis one. It’s good.

Mark: is it?

Nina: Yeah, well I get, I liked it better than Daisy Jones because it’s more straightforward. I  didn’t like the Daisy Jones with the documentary

Mark: Oh, I loved that. And then I thought Malibu rising was a bit of a comedown. And then I didn’t read Carrie Soto, but, uh, and I’m a tennis player, , maybe based on your recommendation, I’ll, go to it.

Nina: I’m not gonna say it’s the best book you’ve ever read, but I love tennis and so like I’m a big tennis person too,

Mark: you know, I find it hard to find novels that speak to me, and my bar is very high, but nothing excites me more than finding a novel that really speaks to me. go read, , the Latecomer, which is, about a family with four kids, named Oppenheimer, interestingly and they’re triplets. And then there’s a, a latecomer, a fourth child, and that book is so engrossing. In the way that, you know, I mean, it’s by, it’s not by Meg Waltzer, but her books are super engrossing. , read, marrying The Ketchups by Jennifer Close, which came out last summer from Koff, which is about a, an Irish family that owns a restaurant in Chicago.

As a Chicagoan, you should really go read it. , so good. , I’m, I’m with you there that I think, it’s easier for me to sink into some non-fiction , than to kind of take the time to get into a novel , especially if the novel doesn’t. Pick up for 50 pages or so, I’m more likely to just give up on a novel.

Nina: I’m gonna do an unorthodox kind of segue and to the end and say that the nonfiction book I look forward to reading is your book about Judy Blume. I’m gonna say goodbye to you because I know you have all those children and all that work to do. All right, so our parasocial friendship is official. I will continue to write back to you on CK

Mark: Definitely. , so you live in Minneapolis.

Nina: Yeah,

Mark: Okay. So we’ll hang out next time I’m in St. Paul. That would be really fun.

Nina: you have other fans here, so I’ll get us all

Mark: that would be great.

Nina: Mark, thank you so much for being here.

Mark: the honor is all mine and thank you for having me, Nina.

Nina: As I always say, cuz I believe it very deeply when our friendships are going well, we are happier all around, and if you have been listening to the podcast and liking it, I would love if you would share an episode with a friend. If you would take the extra step to give it five stars, really know less on Apple and leave a review. That is so, so helpful. See you next week.