DEEP DIVE: Kelly Corrigan on Letting Big Kids Go

What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood | Parenting Tips From Funny Moms

What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood

Parenting, Kids & Family, Comedy

4.6 • 962 Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What does it mean to parent grown children? How can we embrace those changing relationships? ⁠Kelly Corrigan⁠, host of ⁠"Kelly Corrigan Wonders"⁠, four-time New York Times bestselling author, and the host of PBS’ long-form interview show ⁠Tell Me More⁠, talks with Amy about the process of letting our big kids go. Kelly and Amy discuss: why the thing our older kids might most want to hear from us is, simply, "I know" why mothers and fathers might get different versions of the same stories from their kids Kelly's top advice for younger parents Here's where you can find Kelly: ⁠https://www.kellycorrigan.com/⁠ @kellycorrigan on IG ⁠Listen to Kelly's podcast "Kelly Corrigan Wonders"⁠ We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: ⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/⁠ mom friends, funny moms, parenting advice, parenting experts, parenting tips, mothers, families, parenting skills, parenting strategies, parenting styles, busy moms, self-help for moms, manage kid’s behavior, teenager, toddler, baby, tween, child development, family activities, family fun, parent child relationship, decluttering, kid-friendly, invisible workload, default parent Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody. Welcome to Fresh Take from What Fresh Tell Laughing in the Face of Motherhood.
0:06.4	This is Amy. Today, I am so excited to be talking to Kelly Corrigan. She is a four-time New York Times best-selling author.
0:14.7	She is the host of PBS's long-form interview show, Tell Me More, and the podcast Kelly Corrigan Wonders, which just
0:22.8	crossed 13 million downloads.
0:25.6	O Magazine calls Kelly the voice of a generation, and Huffington Post says Kelly is our
0:31.3	poet laureate of the ordinary.
0:33.4	I am so excited to be talking to Kelly today about some of the lessons she's learned along the way from parenthood. Welcome, Kelly. Thanks. Hey, Amy. How are you? I'm good. I'm excited to be
0:44.8	talking to you and I'm wondering as I was preparing for this interview what it's like because I admire your interview skills so much. And I wonder like, what's it like for an interviewer to be
0:55.2	interviewed? Do you approach this with trepidation? It's relaxing. Okay. I mean, you're doing all the work.
1:02.2	So I'm very empathetic to what's happening in your mind because you're listening and you're connecting
1:07.2	and you're also wondering how much longer on this topic before I should bump to the next question. And maybe I should drop that whole section and just go all the way
1:14.2	to that question I had that I thought I would ask at the very end. And like the multitasking that
1:19.6	happens in the mind of the interviewer is kind of miraculous. It's not unlike I taught for a summer
1:26.0	at Yale at your alma mater, where you knew my husband.
1:29.7	And I thought it was the most exhausting intellectual exercise of my life because I was tracking so many
1:39.0	inputs second by second, like that girl over there in the third row, just pulled her phone out,
1:45.3	and that guy's looking out the window, and this person's raising their hand for the fourth time,
1:49.6	which is probably irritating the whole rest of the class, which is going to make them not
1:52.5	tune in. Should I repeat it using different words? Should I try a new example? Who's with me? How
1:59.5	many people? Should I take a break? Is the room too hot?
2:02.9	Should I open a window? Like, if you're doing it with great conscientiousness, it is the most exhausting
2:11.0	amount of tracking. And that's what I sort of compare interviewing to, which is that you are at once
	...

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