First Draft Episode #241: Kristen Meinzer and Jolenta Greenberg
MARCH 19, 2020
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
Kristen Meinzer and Jolenta Greenberg, co-hosts of the By the Book podcast and co-authors of How to Be Fine: What We Learned from Living by the Rules of 50 Self-Help Books. They also co-host the We Love You and So Can You podcast.
Sarah Enni: Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Kristen Meinzer and Jolenta Greenberg, co-hosts of the By The Book Podcast and co-authors of How to be Fine: What We Learned from Living by the Rules of 50 Self-Help Books. They also co-host the podcast We Love You and So Can You, which is really awesome and sweet, I love that podcast. And the second season just started so definitely go check that out.
Kristen, Jolenta and I talk about how self-help books are kind of like choose your own adventure stories, what they wish more self-help books and authors would discuss explicitly, and why you shouldn't listen to podcast advice from douche bros who sell supplements. Everything we talk about on today's episode can be found in the shownotes @firstdraftpod.com.
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Okay, now please sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation with Kristen and Jolenta.
Sarah Enni:: Hello ladies, how are you?
Kristen Meinzer: Oh, we're so excited to be here with you.
Jolenta Greenberg: Hi, we're good!
Sarah Enni: Yes, I'm so excited to ask you questions, but I like, in my show, to start with a little bit of background. So I'd like for each of you to tell me where you were born and raised.
Kristen Meinzer: Oh!
Jolenta Greenberg: Well Kristen you have to go first cause you just gave it away with that "Ohh." [Minnesota accent].
Kristen Meinzer: Oh no. I was gonna say, nobody can tell where I'm from just based on how I talk there.
Jolenta Greenberg: Oh no, they can't [imitating a Minnesota accent].
Kristen Meinzer: Oh gosh there, you betcha. I'm a Minnesotan. You know I'm in Minnesota, which you know, big surprise, some folks out there don't know it, but Jolenta's has got some Minnesota roots too, even though she doesn't sound like it mulch.
Jolenta Greenberg: It's true one whole half of my family is from there. When I was a little kid, people would ask if I was from Chicago cause apparently I had a hint of a Midwestern accent. But I, Jolenta not Kristen, grew up in Portland, Oregon. That's where I was raised.
Sarah Enni: Oh, did you really? Oh amazing. And just because we are gonna lead up to talking about your book, I like to ask my guests about how reading and writing was a part of growing up for you in your childhoods.
Kristen Meinzer: Oh gosh. It was a huge part of my life growing up. I loved reading so much. I mean, Jolenta and I sometimes talk about our love for, when we were kids, those records? We each had stacks of 45's that had the little books that go beep and then you turn to the page, and then it continues to read you the story of Cinderella, or whatever the story is.
And I spent hours with those books as a kid. And then I was pegged, at a very young age, as an advanced reader. And later it was revealed... I was put in all these advanced classes, and it was revealed, some time in first grade, that I'd been faking it, and I just memorized everything. And I actually was not an advanced reader [laughs].
Jolenta Greenberg: She was just an advanced memorizer. She's has like a photographic memory.
Kristen Meinzer: But I was just a liar. Like I was not reading. I was memorizing, which most little kids do when they first start to read. I was taking it too far. So I think it was late kindergarten or early first grade it was discovered, and my parents were told, "You actually need to sit down and read with her and not just have her listen to it. She's essentially doing the equivalent of watching TV the way she reads right now."
Jolenta Greenberg: That's so cute.
Sarah Enni: Oh my gosh, that's so funny. How about you Jolenta?
Jolenta Greenberg: How about me? While I was not an advanced or fake advanced reader. I was a regular reader. I guess I've always loved books. My mom used to take me to the library to hang out, probably cause she was so sick of me. But we would hang out at the library all the time and just always reading. And my mom always brags about, you know, "By the time I was five, she had read me all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books." So just growing up on all of those stories, I guess I just never stopped. And then I went to school for theater and I just loved stories forever and reading them.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I love that you both referenced the books that are read aloud and you're in public radio. That just feels like very appropriate.
Jolenta Greenberg: We love our audio!
Kristen Meinzer: I hadn't even thought about that.
Jolenta Greenberg: Really? I think about it all the time. I used to like drag around my mic for a Sony and record everything. And now look, what I do. I just drag my phone around.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah. I used to love recording, just advertisements off the TV on Saturday mornings. That's how much I loved recording stuff too. And then I could sing along with the McDonald's commercial afterward.
Jolenta Greenberg: Yeah. You gotta sing. That's one of my favorites [sings], "My first Sony."
Sarah Enni: I just was able to chat with Gretchen Rubin, who I think you know, and we talked about a bunch of her books, but in Better Than Before (and The Four Tendencies. Kristen previously produced Gretchen’s Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast!), one of her advice things is think about what you did when you were ten, which is kind of what we're talking about, but mine was I had the double cassette and if you got the free cassette from McDonald's, you could put tape over it and then you could record on it. I would host a fake radio show.
Jolenta Greenberg: Oh my gosh. That's the cutest ever.
Sarah Enni: [Laughs] And look at us now. So I want to kind of fast forward and actually just hear the story about how you two met each other.
Kristen Meinzer: Ah Yeah. It was years ago we were working together at a public radio station. It was a hard news show that we were both working on, but I was the culture person on the team and I also hosted a podcast in addition to producing. The podcast I hosted was called Movie Date. So I was podcasting back then, I was doing pop culture stuff. Everybody else on the team was doing things about demilitarized zones. What was happening on Capitol Hill. The house versus the Senate.
Jolenta Greenberg: I was there in an administrative capacity as a part-time assistant. And Kristin was the fun one. She was the only person who could talk to me about a movie that was in the theaters, or perhaps what was on Bravo last night. So we sort of connected over lowbrow entertainment as opposed to hard political news I guess.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah, I like to not think of it as lowbrow. I like to think of it as the people's entertainment.
Jolenta Greenberg: We connected over real entertainment, not news. And so we became friends and I always dabbled in podcasts. I did independent stuff with a friend of mine. And then with my boyfriend who's now my husband. So I'd always dabbled in that. And while I was the administrator at this news show, we would get sent buckets of books because that's what people who write books and their publicists do. They send books to every news show cause hopefully they'll get their author on the air.
And along with a lot of like history of this political movement, and this fancy politician's autobiography, we just got a ton of self-help books. And I was a part-time assistant working a billion jobs, trying to be an actor, comedian, something creative. And I was also hoarding these self-help books being like, "One of these will fix my life."
And then I was like, "Or maybe one of these will fix my life while I record myself and make a podcast out of the process." Because I have a tendency to think of myself as someone who has unfortunately missed joining a cult. I'm primed for it. I feel like I give off an essence of like, "Wash my brain." Like, "I want it." And so I figured if I'm gonna do this, I need sort of a control group person to do it with me to make sure I don't go off the deep end or join a movement I regret later.
So that's where Kristen came in cause she was my friend who liked similar things, but also my friend who was very good at being an adult. Kristen has a good allergist, can give you the number of a lawyer, knows how to purchase property in New York. Like what is that? She's like the adult. So then I roped her into this and eventually we made it.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah. So I feel very fortunate that Jolenta wanted me along for the ride for this, because Jolenta's hilarious and the idea is great. I'm just gonna say it. That's right! I'm saying that our idea is great for a show! It's great. So we talked about it for quite awhile and then eventually I ended up at a company called Panoply, which is the sister company of Slate, which is no longer.
But I was there and I went to the higher-ups and I pitched the idea. And it was initially, when I was pitching it, I was like, "Jolenta is very talented. I could co-host, I don't have to." And they were like, "Oh, you absolutely have to co-host because you clearly think all of this is malarkey."
Jolenta Greenberg: Yeah like, "You're in pain describing this scenario to us. And it's funny."
Kristen Meinzer: So, that led to us eventually becoming a show and now we just are wrapping up our sixth season.
Sarah Enni: And actually before we talk in more specific about By the Book, do you guys mind pitching the concept for the show specifically for us?
Jolenta Greenberg: What do we say?
Kristen Meinzer: I can do it.
Jolenta Greenberg: I was gonna say, this is your bread and butter. I'm the one who's like, "What have we done in the seven years? And you're like, "Here's the log line."
Kristen Meinzer: [Laughing] Yes. I do a lot of that. And I'm like, "Okay, and here's the structure. And it's gonna be broken down this way. It's gonna be bi-weekly, and yeah, do all that stuff."
Jolenta Greenberg: And I'm like, "Uuugh!"
Kristen Meinzer: So I said self-help believer and comedian, and culture critics slash skeptic, choose a different self-help book each week, follow it to the letter while recording themselves at work, at home, and in the world. So you can hear how each self-help book enhances or destroys their lives, their marriages, their friendships, everything. And it's a reality show in podcast form.
So you really do hear the good and the bad, and you also sometimes hear a lot of hilarious stuff, and you also sometimes hear a lot of crying. Sometimes you hear us do wacky things like move traffic with our minds, or regress back to our past lives, or throw out over half the things we own...Marie Kondo (author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing). Waking up at obscenely early hours, living by the self-help hits, living by some of the most talked about ones from the past.
Our current season is all through the lens of history. So we started in the 1930's and chose one book per decade this season. And then we have a historian weighing in also. But prior seasons we've done things like try to live mostly by books that help us become better people. Or, in the first season, most of them were kind of what I would call stunts. We did extreme things in the first season. At one point we each wrote a book in less than two weeks.
Jolenta Greenberg: Any book. Mine's a pamphlet.
Kristen Meinzer: It's a good one though.
Jolenta Greenberg: Yeah, a well thought out pamphlet.
Sarah Enni: We've all read bad pamphlets, they're the worst. I want to ask about, this is where my questioner side - this is like a Gretchen Rubin thing - but my tendencies...
Kristen Meinzer: The Four Tendancies, yes.
Sarah Enni: Yes, I'm a rebel but I lean questioner. But I love knowing how things are made and how it is behind the scenes structured and set up. So I found myself wondering, how do you decide what books to go for? How early in advance are you sketching out what the rules are? Cause you live by them for two weeks, which is long, but also kind of short. So how do you pick something and then set yourselves up to jump into it for that two weeks?
Kristen Meinzer: Well, we start planning the season months and months in advance. And we frequently try to come up with a theme and maybe the listeners know the theme and we announce it. Maybe they don't know it.
Jolenta Greenberg: But it helps guide us.
Kristen Meinzer: Yes, exactly. Maybe by the end they'll realize like, "Oh, a lot of these books were about being a better person. I didn't realize in the beginning." But this season we definitely announced it since we had a historian guest the whole time. So we plan months in advance whether or not we're going to have some sort of theme with it. We decide on the order of the books. Every once in a while, not often, but maybe one book will be swapped out for another cause when we start reading it we'll realize...
Jolenta Greenberg: Like "Oh it's so similar to the one we started this season with."
Kristen Meinzer: Or there's no way to make actionable stuff...
Jolenta Greenberg: There's no actionable stuff. We get halfway through and realize, "Oh, this book requires a four month process that we can't adhere to for our show structure." So we leave some wiggle room. And that's why we plan it so far ahead.
Kristen Meinzer: And once we start production on the season, we're always at least 10 weeks in advance to start. And for the two weeks we live by each book, we really do live by each book for two weeks. We speed read, we read as fast as we can. Which Jolenta and I, I would say neither of us are super fast readers.
Jolenta Greenberg: Yeah, but you're faster than me. But...dang, we're not fast.
Kristen Meinzer: But neither of us, we're not fast, but we do our very best to finish reading the book in like 36 hours and then distill all the rules down. Talk to each other to say, "What I saw was there were actually seven rules." And then Jolenta might say, "Well I actually think these two are identical."
Jolenta Greenberg: "These two are so similar. Why don't we see if we can moosh it together." So we'll touch base sort of at the top of the two weeks to make sure we're on the same page about what the steps would be, what we read in our script as the steps. And then we part ways and try not to reveal too much about what happens in the two weeks other than like our day-to-day. So then it's fresh when we report back, and play sound back, when we record our full episodes.
Sarah Enni: So I love this part of it. It kind of even makes it more like reality TV-ish for like the two of you to kind of surprise each other.
Jolenta Greenberg: Right. And Kristen gets real militant. There'll be times where I'll be like, "But this thing with..." And she'll be like, "Stop! Shut up. Stop. Stop."
Kristen Meinzer: "Let me send you a picture of what Brad and I did last night." And I'm like, "Nope. Nope."
Jolenta Greenberg: And I'll be like, "Oh my god, this page is cracking me up. I don't want to know what page."
Kristen Meinzer: I'm like, "Save it for the mic, save the magic."
Jolenta Greenberg: It's true. You gotta have some actual reality.
Sarah Enni: And so for the listeners, when you guys are hearing the recordings of you guys at home or whatever, then when you're in the studio listening to that, that's the first time.
Kristen Meinzer: Oh absolutely. We have no idea of what the other did, how we handled the steps, how much we laughed or cried at home during the book. We always find out in studio.
Sarah Enni: That is so fun. I was listening to the most recent episode Dancing Around Anger?
Kristen Meinzer: Oh, The Dance of Anger.
Sarah Enni: The Dance of Anger. And there was some great reactions in that episode.
Kristen Meinzer: Oh yeah, that one got real.
Jolenta Greenberg: That one was wild.
Kristen Meinzer: Some people were a little bit mad at my husband in that one. My husband is somebody who is so kind and even tempered and supportive.
Jolenta Greenberg: So easy going.
Kristen Meinzer: And just like almost never gets mad. And got really mad during this book because..
Jolenta Greenberg: Like, about nothing.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah, he was in a grumpy mood for a few minutes and the book essentially asks you to process, and process some more, and process some more. He was like, "I was in a bad mood for five minutes!"
Jolenta Greenberg: "That's the only thing we need to process!"
Kristen Meinzer: "It's been four days and we're still talking about the bad mood I was in for five minutes over the weekend."
Jolenta Greenberg: It's his fault for having bad timing with an issue. And the issue happened to be small and not needed. It didn't need to be rehashed. But if he could've picked a better issue, it would have worked.
Kristen Meinzer: He didn't want to go to Target with me. But maybe he did once we were there and that was the whole point.
Jolenta Greenberg: Everyone wants to go to Target in their heart.
Kristen Meinzer: Yes, once they're there, everyone wants to be at Target.
Sarah Enni: It's true. Yeah. I love that. And I did always think that was so interesting. And you guys work obviously with a producer and a team of people to help make it run smoothly.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah. Shout out to Nora, our super producer.
Jolenta Greenberg: Yeah, Nora's mainly that team.
Kristen Meinzer: And she's recording this right now. Thanks Nora.
Jolenta Greenberg: Thank you.
Sarah Enni: Which I love. I also could not survive without my producer. So they make everything happen. I kind of want to step back and by way of leading into talking about How to be Fine, talk about like the world of self-help books. You get into it in How to be Fine about your perspectives on the highs and lows of those books, generally. But I want to hear first of all, it sounds like you were familiar with the world of self-help a little bit Jolanta, before you guys started doing this. But Kristen had you read very many at all?
Kristen Meinzer: Before Jolenta and I started the show, I'd read fewer than half a dozen self-help books. Definitely fewer than half a dozen. However, I was definitely familiar with the universe. I've always been an Oprah fan. And you can't be an Oprah fan without knowing at least the general landscape of self-help. And Jolenta and I both studied a lot of feminism, history, social movements in college, so self-help and the whole history of American self-identity of reinvention and so on.
Jolenta Greenberg: Bootstraps and the like.
Kristen Meinzer: All that stuff kind of folds into it too. All the different movements of betterment in America from transcendental wisdom all the way to the present. You'll see it over and over again. Horatio Alger myths and so on. So I think that we both, just by being Americans, had a certain amount of that. And then added to that my love of Oprah. Jolenta also loves Oprah.
Jolenta Greenberg: Yeah. And to me self-help books have sort of an After School Special feel. I love taking a look at an issue, or a part of life, in both a very extreme, almost campy way, but also weirdly optimistic. It's like it almost exists in its own universe. Where the world is perfect and everything is pretty extreme and black and white, and only about this one issue. Which to me is just fascinating.
Sarah Enni: It is really fascinating. And I mean like to be transparent, I love self-help books too, kind of. But they're so fascinating and also like deeply problematic.
Jolenta Greenberg: Oh no, they enraged me but I can't stop devouring them.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And there's something, I mean you guys take this to the extreme, but there's something participatory in them. So it's like reading nonfiction, but when the book says you, it means me. Like, "They're talking to me."
Kristen Meinzer: Like Choose Your Own Adventure books back when I was a kid.
Sarah Enni: Oh yes, yes. Addictive. But I want to ask about, and you guys bring this up, but I think this is so interesting. I just want to talk about this as a movement that's really, obviously, really interesting right now. And I think a lot of people are having a meta think about self-help. The stat that really blew my mind when I was reading and researching about you guys, was that four out of five people who buy self-help books identify as women. But four out of five of those books are written by men. That was shocking to me.
Kristen Meinzer: That's from a Goodread study based on thousands and thousands and thousands of books that had been logged in Goodreads. And we're not surprised at all.
Jolenta Greenberg: No, not at all.
Kristen Meinzer: We found definitely over the course of living by self-help books, there are a lot of dudes telling women what to do.
Jolenta Greenberg: Mm-hm. From the dawn of the self-help.
Kristen Meinzer: Yes. And there are lot of women who are our audience who frequently feel bad about themselves because for some reason they can't make themselves millionaires at the end of reading this book. They can't somehow catapult to the top of the corporate structure. They can't make a perfect home or a perfect marriage. And it's like, "Well, did you ever think that maybe the rich white man who wrote this was born on third base and maybe the reason he hit a home run is cause he didn't have to walk very far? And that the people he's writing to aren't in the same boat as him?"
Jolenta Greenberg: Yeah. And context is real and not applicable to everyone, the same one at least.
Sarah Enni: I was really beating myself up cause I couldn't remember earlier what this book was, but a friend of mine just rediscovered it in a used bookstore, this book that she had seen in her house when she was a kid. And she brought it on stage to this reading and went through it. And it was dating advice and it was like, "Don't ever call him. Only stay on the phone if he calls..."
Jolenta Greenberg: The rules.
Sarah Enni: The Rules.
Kristen Meinzer: That's a famous book.
Sarah Enni: Yes! Yes, and like they're like an empire, these two women.
Kristen Meinzer: Even though they got divorced shortly after writing that book.
Sarah Enni: I did not know that! [Gasps!]
Kristen Meinzer: Oh both of them divorced their husbands that they met by following the rules.
Jolenta Greenberg: Well because they met sociopaths following those rules.
Kristen Meinzer: Or because they just tricked people into marrying them. Tricking people into marrying you is not the best way to get married.
Sarah Enni: Yes!
Jolenta Greenberg: What?! Oh no!
Kristen Meinzer: Oh god, don't tell Brad.
Jolenta Greenberg: Oh, my life is a lie.
Sarah Enni: Note to self! It was really a shocking moment. And you guys are so honest and you share lots of moments like this in your book, which I want to get to in a second. But I especially related when I was reading, cause she was standing up and doing this kind of spoken word piece based on these readings from The Rules, which were crazy. And at some point in the book it's like, "Well do you want to get married or not?"
Jolenta Greenberg: No!
Sarah Enni: And I, the next day, went to therapy and was just like, "It was so shocking to have it read out loud." I knew I was subconsciously taking in some of these clear social things, but I was like, "Oh it was just written out. There was no sub-text in that book. It was text." Like, "Women are less important than men and you should be as quiet as possible. And one might deign to be with you."
Jolenta Greenberg: Yeah. And your social value is inherently tied into marriage. Period.
Sarah Enni: Yes. It was crazy.
Jolenta Greenberg: Yeah, it's insane. What's also insane and part of why I love reading self-help books is, it's almost like this philosophical mental gymnastics to justify the social structures we have in place, that we now feel hold us back, to make it seem like it's the natural order. And this is how you work with the natural order. But it's like, "Guys, we made up all these institutions that hold us back and make us feel inadequate, and now we're making up books about how to deal with them as though they are the word of God."
It's so fascinating but also necessary because for women, an underserved population, the biggest most visible one, we still aren't represented well in the medical fields, in any of the sciences, psychiatrics. We are anomalous to the male body, brain, what have you, that is studied first. So we do need help. We do need extra advice and we then turn to these books.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. So I want to dive into How to be Fine, which is the book that you guys wrote after...now, this is the sixth season of By the Book, which is amazing. And the reason I'm bringing up this traumatic live reading of the book that seared my brain as a kid, is because you guys get into [the sound of pages turning] is it eight things that didn't work?
[Both answer with Mm-hmm].
Sarah Enni: The book is broken down into thirteen things that worked, eight things that didn't work, and eight things that we'd like to see in more books. We wish more books would recommend. I want to ask about that structure and then I want to ask about mostly the things that didn't work cause that was a really fascinating chapter. So when in the process, like in seasons, did the idea of a book come about? And how did you get together and think about what the structure was gonna be like?
Kristen Meinzer: I would say, beginning in the first season, people started writing into us saying, "Why don't you two write a self- help book? You clearly have good heads on your shoulders. You talk openly about what works and what doesn't. You actually test drive these things." A lot of people wrote in, initially, in the first season and said, "Wow, it never occurred to me. Do people ever test drive these books before publishing them? And you two are doing it, you're actually doing it, and you're being honest about it. Good and bad. You're being honest about it. You should just write a book."
Or other people would write in and say, "You're the real experts." And Jolenta and I, by the way, do not consider ourselves experts in the slightest. And we try to make it really clear in the book that we're not.
Jolenta Greenberg: I was gonna say, that's why I think it's formatted the way it is. Where we're not saying, "We read all the self-help there is to read, and here are the actual keys to be a 110% whatever superstar." No, we're saying at the point we are in in this social experiment we have decided to put ourselves through slash make a living somehow doing, here's what we have discovered.
Here are things that come up again and again, common themes that tend to always warm a heart. Here are themes we've noticed popping up in different ways that always degrade us. And here are things that we use in our lives, or that books have mentioned in passing, that we find to be so beneficial we wish more people talked about it, were honest about it, or just wrote about it.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, it did read like that. Like you guys saying like, "Listen, now that we've gone through all of this, we can safely assess or just feedback, what was really positive and what was negative." And yet, you guys have had different reactions to the different things that you've done. So I'm interested in sitting down and thinking about how to structure this. How did you boil down thirteen things, eight things, eight things?
Kristen Meinzer: Oh, we just sat down and thought about it.
Jolenta Greenberg: I feel like it happened pretty easily. I think even though we disagree on experiences personally, we can agree on the themes that pop up in general, and if they tend to enhance or be detrimental to one's enjoyment of life.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah and to second what Jolenta is saying things that come up again, and again, and again, when they come up again do we have extremely strong reactions to them? And if so, let's include them in the book. Because there are things that we have very strong reactions to, that we just get so tired of, that we talk about. And some things that are good that we talk about too because the [unintelligible] reaction is very strongly positive sometimes too.
Jolenta Greenberg: Or in my case, often I'll have a super negative reaction to something because it's good for me. And Kristen will be like, "This was great the whole time." And I'll be like, "Fuck none, stupid thing." And then I'll be like, "But it made me happier listening back. Actually no wait, that was really a positive experience."
Sarah Enni: Yes I've had that feeling.
Jolenta Greenberg: So even though I know it's good for me, I may not like it going down.
Sarah Enni: I want to talk about some of the things that didn't work. And I really responded to it, cause in the books that I've read, especially lately, I notice these things. So I was like, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I felt that way too." I mean wake up early was so... actually the wake up early one I really want to hear from you because that was one of the most requested books, is that right?
Kristen Meinzer: Yes. So that book was Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. So many people wrote to us and said, well, the subtitle of the book I believe is The Only Guaranteed Way to Change Your Life Before 9:00 AM.
Jolenta Greenberg: Yeah, something like that.
Kristen Meinzer: So it's using a lot of splashy...
Jolenta Greenberg: Lofty guarantees.
Kristen Meinzer: Guarantees and promises, and lots of number one, and be a level ten person language. Don't be a level zero person. And yeah, so a lot of people thought, "This is the book!"
Jolenta Greenberg: It was the one where people were like, "No, but seriously this one."
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah, we do get that a lot, "No, no! This is the one."
Jolenta Greenberg: This was one of the heavy hitters.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah. And people were quite angry at us afterward for not loving it as much as they thought we would.
Sarah Enni: Which is wild because it's just science that people's rhythms of sleep are different.
Jolenta Greenberg: Exactly. And you need certain hours and it happens at different times. And also my work schedule is really different from his. I do this, and comedy. Comedy happens at night, sometimes late at night, and my whole day has shifted probably two hours later than your average day.
Kristen Meinzer: And I like to think Jolenta's very successful. I'm successful. And we don't wake up at 5:00 AM. There are a lot of very successful people whose hours are the comedian schedule.
Jolenta Greenberg: The overnight schedule.
Kristen Meinzer: There are a lot of different schedules.
Jolenta Greenberg: I feel like doctors who work night shifts are probably successful still. In fact, they're doing a lot of good for the world.
Sarah Enni: One might argue, yeah, they're doing great.
Jolenta Greenberg: One might argue very successful.
Sarah Enni: I'm really interested to hear what other things came out of intense reactions. And the reason I'm harping on the eight things that didn't work, is cause that feels like such a refreshing thing for people who love this genre to read about. So I'm just interested in what were the really strong things and what was maybe cathartic to write about.
Kristen Meinzer: I was gonna say meditation. Meditation is something that people feel extremely strong feelings about and it's something that doesn't make me happy. It really makes me the opposite of happy. It irritates me. It doesn't give me a clearer head. It doesn't give me more of a sense of calm. It does pretty much the opposite of all of those things.
And people write in over and over again, they say, "No. Think of how much happier you would be if you would actually learn how to center yourself." I'm like, "I think I'm already good at that. I don't think I need to sit still and close my eyes and shut up." Which more often than not, by the way, it is a white man and I'm a woman of color, telling me to sit down and shut up and be quiet and, "No, no, no. Just clear your head!" Whatever it is. And it's like, "No, there are so many reasons why it makes me uncomfortable, partly as a woman of color, but partly just being somebody who is not wired that way.
Jolenta Greenberg: It just doesn't work with your body. And I was gonna say that's the general thing. I feel like each one of these things that didn't work explores, they're all so specific but touted so generally by the wellness community, movement, what have you. Like, meditation universally good, fact. Where there are studies that it makes thinking harder for people with ADHD brains, sometimes.
And yes, science says it's super good but also not super good for everyone, and that's fine. But it's just the hard and fast promises about like, "This is good for you. Fact. 100%." It starts to become another thing to worry about and eventually need a self-help book for cause now you're broken cause meditation doesn't make you happier. "I don't know what's wrong with me. Find more books." It's all these things. Or like, "If you can hit this then you'll be happy."
It's like "No. If I get up at 5:00 AM, I got sick." I do think there is something to say about scheduling your day ahead of time, thinking about how you use your time, but not one hard and fast way for every person that also leads to 100% success, you know? And same with the...oh what was...?
Kristen Meinzer: Forgiveness.
Jolenta Greenberg: I was gonna say, having it all.
Kristen Meinzer: Oh that too. Oh my gosh.
Jolenta Greenberg: Or like being able to give the illusion you have it all, even if you know you're like, "You're only picking three things Randi Zuckerberg."
Sarah Enni: That made me really go wild. When I was hearing you guys talking about it, cause I haven't read that book, but I was like, "Of course she's Zuckerberg's sister." And of course she's like ...please explain.
Jolenta Greenberg: Yes. But it's just like we made up having it all. And having it all has deep, deep, roots in feminism or I guess anti-feminism. And the fact that up until recently women weren't allowed to have much outside of their home. And it's just having it all is like, "Work like a young white man with no attachments but also be the best homemaker you can ever be." That's an impossible ask. It's a mean ask. It's not asked of half of our population. It's also a first world problem ask, and what if we dismantled the bullshit that made us worry about this instead of trying to force ourselves to pretend we look like it.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah. Jolenta and I are big opponents of the "all or nothing" mindset. Like, "You gotta have it all!" And another thing that we really dislike is just, "Eyes on the prize, aim for the big picture. It's all about the final..." And it's like, "No." Sometimes it's not about the big picture. Sometimes it's not about crossing the finish line. Sometimes it's not about the huge sense of accomplishment once you've reached this one final point.
Maybe it's about all the little steps you take along the way. Maybe it's about breaking up your tasks into moments, and making those little moments happy, instead of worrying so much about this five-year down the road or ten-year down the road or giant picture, that so many of these books tell us. Along with you're gonna have it all. You have to look at the big picture all the time.
Jolenta Greenberg: And the big picture all looks very similar. It looks like selling supplements, or a brand, traveling.
Kristen Meinzer: You live in a McMansion.
Jolenta Greenberg: Jets. Working on beaches.
Kristen Meinzer: Plus you have to have a beach body!
Jolenta Greenberg: It's such a prescribed "all" as well. You know?
Sarah Enni: Horseback archery was my favorite recurring reference [laughs].
Jolenta Greenberg: Oh my gosh, that was you, wasn't it?
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah.
Jolenta Greenberg: Yeah, I knew it was. You really latched onto that during the first read.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah. That's what I want to do with my life. That's the proof that I'm succeeding. Horseback archery.
Sarah Enni: And the proof of your point is that you did decide to name the book, How to be Fine, which I loved. Was like, "We just all want to be like just fine." Like, "We'll be okay."
Jolenta Greenberg: I just want to make it through my day. Not miserable.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah. But also just the idea of how to be happy seemed so single-minded, and not realistic. Because one of the really outstanding things that hopefully we all get to experience as humans, is we also get to have anticipation and maybe a sense of mourning because we loved someone who died. And the only way you have mourning is cause you love someone very, very deeply. Or, sometimes being scared. Jolanta loves horror movies.
Jolenta Greenberg: I was gonna say, "I'm scared all the time. I'm scared right now. Gonna go home and be scared.
Kristen Meinzer: There are so many feelings beyond happiness and it's such a horrible idea that we're gonna prescribe to anybody. And when I say we, I don't mean me and Jolanta. I mean just the self-help industry in general. Like, "Why are you trying to tell us to have one emotion?" This seems like the worst idea in the whole world to me. I don't want one emotion.
Sarah Enni: Right. And it's poorly defined as well and all that. I mean I think this is why, hearing you guys talk about it, why I responded to Gretchen, the way I did when I first read her. Was that she's very like... I feel like she's moving towards trying to be accepting of how everybody can deal with things. And in her book she's like, "Sometimes you have to do difficult things and then you're happy later when it's done."
I want to talk about the things that worked and then your guys' tips that you distill. And I also want to talk about how you actually physically wrote the book together. Cause co-writing is such an interesting chore, or task, I should say. So the thirteen things that worked, which kickoff off the book, are really, really fun. I really enjoyed reading you guys kind of reflecting on that, can you tell me some of your favorites that stand out?
Kristen Meinzer: I love being nice to people.
Jolenta Greenberg: Oh my gosh, you do. You're obsessed with it.
Kristen Meinzer: I love it so much! I think that might be the first chapter in the book is about how when you're kind to other people, it's like a gift you're giving to yourself because it just gives that boost, you know? And so we lived by a book called Why Good Things Happen to Good People. And the book breaks down a bunch of different ways to just be kinder and to be better in the world. And inevitably every single thing we did just made me so happy.
Giving somebody a compliment makes me happy. Helping somebody shovel their car out of a snow pile makes me happy. Jolenta helping people carry their strollers up and down subway stairs made her so happy. And concentrating on the ways that we can, rather than just be sad about how the world is, but actually try to improve the world, made us happy. It was great. I loved that book.
Jolenta Greenberg: Exactly. Yeah. I was gonna say to piggyback off of what you were saying, all the books we lived by that are about making the world around you a better place made me feel a lot happier, and a lot more productive, than a lot of the more naval-gazey like, "Girl wash your face-esque books." Putting focus outside of yourself.:
Doing self-esteemable actions that in the moment you're like, "Why am I doing this?" Like, "Cause the book told me to?" Or, "Cause it's good for you, or the world!" But then you're like, "Oh right." Like following through on things feels good. Following through on things that you know are good for the world feels good. Whether that's starting to compost or going to a town hall meeting for the first time.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah and I think that one of the big problems with the self-help industry is that it puts all of the onus on the individual. And maybe the reason why a lot of people are feeling unsettled in the world, or sad, or scared is because the world is fucked up. And so looking at your sleep schedule is not enough.
Jolenta Greenberg: Micromanaging your brain, like doesn't help you feel less alone in a crazy world, sometimes. It makes you feel more crazy.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah. So maybe going out there and doing something to actually make the world better, while connecting with other people.
Jolenta Greenberg: Or just looking at a tree. Getting outside is another thing where it sounds so simple but it's so easy to forget where it's like, "Oh right." Reminding yourself where you are physically.
Kristen Meinzer: Just get out of your head, get out of your own way a little bit. And then deal with the world outside of yourself. And yeah, it's definitely been the case that Jolenta and I both feel better when we get out of our heads and go out there and do better things.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I love that. That's a great message for this year especially. We're very supportive of that. I'm interested in, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but I was reading it and I was like, "Oh, this is like an honest book report about some of the mega best-selling self-help books." I just love that you guys, throughout the things that worked and the things that didn't work, are name checking pretty honestly books that really aggravated you or ones that you really support and admired. And I felt like I was like, "Oh great, I can skip a bunch of these and check out some that you guys really loved."
Jolenta Greenberg: Although we will say, we are pro thinking for yourself.
Kristen Meinzer: Just because something worked for me doesn't mean it worked for Jolenta, vice versa. And for our listeners, a lot of people say the books that we've hated the most, made their lives the happiest.
Jolenta Greenberg: Totally. I don't care what connects with you, as long as you get the message you need when you need it, that's beautiful. Whether it's in a greeting card or a book we tore to shreds. Like as long as you're moving forward and less miserable, we're rooting for you.
Kristen Meinzer: Yes!
Sarah Enni: I love that. But it felt cool to have two really honest people come to this and then be able to speak honestly about what they found. You know what I mean? Cause you're not in the machine so you can reflect it back in a way that's refreshing. And then I want to ask about the things that you wish more books would recommend because it's kind of like a sneaky little self-help book in and of itself tucked into the back of How to be Fine. How do you guys feel about my describing it that way?
[Both chuckling]
Jolenta Greenberg: That's so interesting cause I was thinking for me at least, of the sections I worked on, were a lot about asking for help. So it's interesting that you think of it as like advice. Or I guess the advice was like, "Go find an expert." Like, "Talk to a psychiatrist." Like, "Sliding-scales are a thing, find a therapist." I think everyone should be in therapy at least for a little bit. And medication changed my life. It's just stuff I don't see much in books that have made vast improvements in my life. So it's funny that you... These are all things I think you just ask for help for, not tell people to do. Or advise people to do.
Kristen Meinzer: And as Jolenta said earlier, maybe some of these things will come up in passing in self-help books, we just wish they would dive deep into them, at least in the books we read, we don't mean to treat our book as an exhaustive analysis of every self-help book that's ever been written. But of the books we've read, why aren't more books telling us to just go to therapy? Therapy is something where someone's individually paying attention to us and can help us.
Jolenta Greenberg: They understand your individual issues, or maybe your family history, or how you were raised, And how it pertains to you feeling like unproductive at work. You know?
Kristen Meinzer: All of those things. And so, I mean, it's funny that you think of the last section of the book is almost like a self-help book, but we just really wish that some of these things that are to us very obvious, like see a therapist, we just wish more books would talk about that. And it's almost as if certain self-help authors believe, "Oh well if I tell my readers they can see a therapist, they won't buy my books anymore."
Jolenta Greenberg: The industry gets skiddish too where it's like, "We don't want you to get fixed." [Chuckles] Not that there is such a thing as being fixed, but...
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah, much like the diet industry. Like, "Oh... we kind of want to keep you on this hamster wheel forever so we can keep selling you stuff." Right?
Sarah Enni: "If we were positive about bodies, that wouldn't be..."
Jolenta Greenberg: "That would not help me selling this book about you being gross." Hmm.
Sarah Enni: And on my show I am constantly talking about therapy. So I was really happy to see that in there. I name check my therapist all the time.
Kristen Meinzer: Nice.
Jolenta Greenberg: Jealous.
Sarah Enni: The process of writing the book. I'd love to hear it. And I know Kristen's written a book before. Well you both have written the e-books.
Jolenta Greenberg: I have not written a real book before. No worries. Do not worry.
Sarah Enni: So when you decided to do it together, how did you begin that discussion? I'm so interested in how people co-write books.
Kristen Meinzer: We sat down and we thought, "How would we structure the book?" Jolenta and I are both big fans of structure.
Jolenta Greenberg: We love a structure.
Kristen Meinzer: We love a structure. So we thought about the structure that you already mentioned, things that worked, things that didn't, things we wished more books mentioned. We wanted to include listener feedback because a huge part of what makes our podcast successful is we have a wonderful community. 15,000 people on Facebook who log on everyday and talk to each other, tens of thousands more on our other social media channels who all share their own stories, who talk about what's tough in their lives, who give each other advice.
Jolenta Greenberg: Who asks super smart questions.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah. And so we wanted to include them in the book also. So we said, "Okay, we know we want to have these sections. We know we want to have certain letters from listeners, people who pushed back on us."
Jolenta Greenberg: Mm-hm, to balance our opinions.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah. Because we don't want to be the only voices in the room. It's really important to us that people do push back and say, "Hey Jolenta and Kristen have already said that their experience isn't everyone's, but these letters are proving that." Like, "I'm writing and saying that's not my case."
Jolenta Greenberg: And, "Here's my reaction to your experience."
Kristen Meinzer: Yes, and so we tried to include that also. And then after we sat down and thought about the sections we wanted and we each threw things out there like, "Oh, this is something I felt strongly about. Oh Kristen, do you remember how upset you got about that?" And we went back and forth and then we kind of distilled the list and then we split it up and we went our separate ways and we tried to have periodic check ins with each other, tried to make sure that our chapters were in in time, like if we had a deadline next Friday, we ideally wanted to see each other's chapters at least a week before then. Cause our chapters are supposed to be speaking to each other also.
Jolenta Greenberg: I would say the most difficult part was just tracking what book got brought up when. And so the first mention, whoever has that, we have to make sure they hit like the proper title, full author name everything. And then having to mark where that's mentioned. So the next mention, whether it's me or Kristen, we can be like, "As Kristen mentioned earlier in the book when she was talking about blah blah, this theory comes up in this book as well." So just kind of tracking how we introduce the books, when to refer back, how to refer back was wild. That was wild.
Kristen Meinzer: I can not imagine writing a book where you actually are not alternating chapters. How do people do that?
Jolenta Greenberg: Right. I was gonna say, cause basically we wrote like a collection of essays slash book reports depending on what kind of chapter it was. And then made sure they lived in the same universe. They were referencing similar experiences and we would speak to each other's experiences and read each other's and make sure it was all kosher. But I couldn't imagine writing all the words together.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah. I mean, writing the conclusion of the book was really fun together.
Jolenta Greenberg: I would have been dead and I would have deserved it. That's what would have happened.
Kristen Meinzer: But writing the conclusion we wrote together because that was just a conversation. It wasn't like a book report. And when Jolenta and I write conversation together, it's super easy for us to write together. Writing reports is a lot harder.
Jolenta Greenberg: Yeah. It's fun. We love writing in our voices at each other. We're really bad at writing in each other's voices, but we love doing it together.
Sarah Enni: I love that. And you did write a whole book by yourself though. I don't want to let you leave without...
Jolenta Greenberg: Oh no, it's a super entertaining book. I felt like, I mean, granted she is a friend of mine, but I feel like had I not known her, if I picked it up, I would feel like I was reading my girlfriend's advice about how to make a pretty legit podcast.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah. It's called So You Want to Start a Podcast. Thank you, Jolenta. She didn't have to say that, but she's a great cheerleader.
Jolenta Greenberg: It's just the truth.
Kristen Meinzer: But yeah, that book was one that I wanted to write for all the people who have come up to me over the years and said, "I have this great idea for a show. I want to host a podcast." And so I've been working in podcasting for over a decade. I was the director of nonfiction programming for Panoply. I've hosted now five shows. I've been the producer of about twenty shows, including Gretchen Rubin's. You mentioned Gretchen.
And so I just thought, "You know what? I get the same questions over and over again." Every time I guest teach at a class, or speak at a conference, it's always the same questions that come up. And I thought, "Why is nobody just distilling all the answers into one place?" Because it's always the same questions.
And the people who have the loudest voices now are people who are promising passive income, who are trying to sell you expensive recording equipment. Who are a bunch of douche bros who tell you, "No! If you and your friend Dave are funny and just talk about what you think's funny, that's enough. As long as you buy this microphone that's $2,000."
Jolenta Greenberg: "That Michael Jackson used!"
Sarah Enni: "And these vitamins."
Jolenta Greenberg: "And these supplements I also sell."
[All laughing]
Kristen Meinzer: "All you have to do is sign up for my twelve part course." And I just thought, "Those were the loudest voices. Why is nobody just writing a book about how to do this well?"
Jolenta Greenberg: Someone who is like, "Hey, I've been here. This is what works and doesn't."
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah, exactly. And so I try to include a lot of my own failures in the book. I try to make sure that I'm showing the humor of things and not just scolding or instructing. And make people feel empowered so that they can do it. And particularly, I like to think I subtly folded it in, but I did get one complaint from a white man who said, "You do too much to try and elevate the voices of women and people of color in your book. If I wanted that kind of nonsense, I'd sign up for a women's studies class." [Laughs out loud].
Sarah Enni: Wow, what a statement.
Jolenta Greenberg: Oh, my.
Kristen Meinzer: Sorry dude. I'm sorry.
Jolenta Greenberg: It must be really hard for him to feel alienated for the first time. What a shock it must be to him. I feel bad.
Sarah Enni: That's giving me a little bit of life to be honest. I feel a little lifted up.
Kristen Meinzer: I took it as a compliment.
Jolenta Greenberg: I feel so alive all of a sudden.
Sarah Enni: I got your book in the mail, which was so funny. I've been doing this podcast for like five years. So I opened it up and I was like, "Oh, is this publicist sub-tweeting me about like, So You Want to Start a Podcast book. But then I sat down and started reading it and I was like, "Oh crap." I took out my highlighter and I was taking all these notes. I thought it was so great.
Jolenta Greenberg: I learned stuff from it and I work with her in podcasting. I was like, "Oh, that's actually a good point for interviewing, I should do that."
Sarah Enni: So I found it completely helpful. I loved it. So I wanted to make sure we mentioned it on here. I'm gonna let you guys wrap up, but I just wanted to ask about We Love You and So Can You.
Oh yay! [Both at the same time].
Kristen Meinzer: Cause we love, We Love You.
Jolenta Greenberg: And we love you!
Kristen Meinzer: So We Love You and So Can You, we launched last year. And Season Two, by the time this episode comes up, Season Two will have debuted. And on this show, it's a reality makeover show for your heart. We have a different guest on each episode who comes to us with a predicament. Like maybe they are trying to find friends as an adult, or maybe they moved cross country for a spouse and are trying to set up their own life there. Or maybe they're trying to learn how to be creative again when they think they're too old to be creative, and they don't like their day job.
Jolenta Greenberg: Or they're just really messy.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah, we have somebody who's just very, very messy and has a lot of shame around her house, not being able to see the floor in her house. And so in each episode we try to give them a set of what we call self-love steps. And along the way we eavesdrop as they record themselves and they try to follow these steps. And hopefully by the end, they love themselves a little bit more and they feel a little bit better about their predicament.
And we started the show partly because people said to us over the years, "Why don't you share some of what you've learned from By the Book to help others?" And what Jolenta and I realized is, "Well, we can give them some advice, but we want to make it really clear that this isn't about us, it's about our guests." We're not posing ourselves as experts. We want all of our guests to do the same as we've done with self-help books. To question us, to say,
Jolenta Greenberg: Figure out what works, and doesn't.
Kristen Meinzer: "Yeah, I did that thing and it didn't work." Or, "I did that thing and I was really surprised by how much it changed how I look at myself." And so we really want to make sure our guests don't see us as like gods or doctors or anything like that. But that they do the same thing that we do on By the Book.
Jolenta Greenberg: And we just get to do it with someone who has, refreshingly, stories that aren't ours. Like people who are different colors than the two we are. Or have different sexual orientations. And people who are dating, we don't ever get to talk about dating in By the Book. I wish we did...Brad! But we don't.
Kristen Meinzer: Different gender identities, different national origins.
Jolenta Greenberg: Yeah, just someone with a completely different background from me and how that affects her day-to-day life. It's fun to do the two week prescriptive process that we're used to but with new people. And seeing new parts of the world, new parts of lives that we just don't get to see when we spy on each other.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. It felt like the book was leveling up on the self-help aspect and then this is leveling up on the reality TV aspect, which I really appreciated.
Jolenta Greenberg: That's always my plan. Leveling up. Especially around reality programming.
Sarah Enni: Well I love that show too and I love By the Book and the book was really fun to read. I really recommend it to everybody. And thank you guys both for being here.
Kristen Meinzer: Thank you so much for having us.
Jolenta Greenberg: Yeah, it was such a delight.
Sarah Enni: Thank you so much to Kristin and Jolenta. Follow them on Twitter @KristinMeinzer, @JolentaG and @BytheBookpod. And on Instagram @K10Meinzer, @Jolenta_G and @ByTheBookPod. You can follow me absolutely everywhere @SarahEnni (Twitter and Instagram), and the show @FirstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram).
Hayley Hershman produces First Draft and today's episode was produced and sound designed by Callie Wright. The theme music is by Dan Bailey and the logo was designed by Colin Keith. Thanks to production assistant Tasneem Daud and transcriptionist-at-large Julie Anderson.
And, as ever, thanks to you horseback archers for listening.
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