Death, Sex & Money | Isabel Allende on Grief, Ayahuasca, and Dating After 70

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4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Isabel Allende didn’t publish her first book until she was 39, after losing nearly everything in the wake of the Chilean military coup. More than four decades later, she’s become one of the most beloved Spanish-language authors, with over 80 million copies of her books sold worldwide. After political exile, writing books became Allende’s way of making sense of the world. She wrote through divorce, affairs, and moving across continents. But after the devastating loss of her daughter Paula, even writing felt impossible, until her mother urged her to begin again. “My mother knew that the only way for me to walk the tunnel of grief was writing,” she says. In this episode, Anna and Isabel talk about loss, late starts, and new beginnings. Isabel met her most recent husband, Roger, in her late 70s, “an age when most people are knitting for their great-grandchildren.” Allende’s newest novel, “My Name Is Emilia del Valle,” is out now. Death, Sex & Money is now produced by Slate! To support us and our colleagues, please sign up for our membership program, Slate Plus! Members get ad-free podcasts, bonus content on lots of Slate shows, and full access to all the articles on Slate.com. Sign up today at slate.com/dsmplus. And if you’re new to the show, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here. Find us and follow us on Instagram and you can find Anna’s newsletter at annasale.substack.com. Our new email address, where you can reach us with voice memos, pep talks, questions, critiques, is [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	First, a reminder. We are collecting your stories and questions right now about any money dilemmas you are facing.
0:08.2	Whether it's something specific to this moment in the American economy and American politics, or if you're just struggling with a perennial question, like, how much is enough, or should I stay at this job?
0:19.2	We are taking your money questions. Record a voice memo and tell us what you're
0:23.7	going through right now where you could use some help and send it to us at death sex money at slate.com.
0:29.7	We are going to collect some advice for you in an upcoming episode. Now this week, writer Isabel Iyende,
0:54.6	she has had one of those lives that seem to fall into page-turning chapters. There are cliffhangers, dramatic range. It's full of love and lightness and drama and pain. She was born in Chile, was married with two kids before becoming a successful journalist,
0:59.5	and then that career was upended by the military coup in the 1970s.
1:05.9	Her family fled to Venezuela, where she penned her first novel, The House of the Spirits,
1:07.5	when she was in her late 30s.
1:13.4	Four decades and more than two dozen books later, Ay has become one of the world's most widely read authors. She's sold more than 80 million copies of her books, which
1:19.6	have been translated into more than 40 languages. And in between writing those books,
1:25.2	she's taken leaps in her own life, having love affairs,
1:29.0	picking up and moving to the U.S. in the 1980s, and she's had dramatic, painful loss.
1:35.7	Her daughter, Paola, died at age 29, after being in a coma for more than a year.
1:41.4	And I was struck, as you'll hear in this conversation, that alongside those leaps and losses,
1:48.7	Isabelle's own mother was a steady, non-judgmental presence, urging her to follow her heart,
1:55.7	to write, and to hold her head up high, even when she did something imperfectly.
2:01.8	It's something I'm thinking about ahead of Mother's Day,
2:04.4	how being a good protector is not just about helping mold someone so they avoid mistakes,
2:11.0	but to be a soft landing pad when those mistakes inevitably happen.
2:16.7	It was such an honor and a pleasure to get to spend time with Isabella Aende, to hear how her mind works.
2:23.5	She's such a good storyteller.
	...

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