Emily St. John Mandel on Time Travel, Parenting and the Apocalypse

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

News, Government, Society & Culture

4.3 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2022

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel was published in 2014. That book imagined the world after a pandemic had wiped out, well, almost everyone. It’s a gorgeous novel with a particular emotional power: it helps you grieve a life you still have. But then came a real pandemic, not as lethal as the one Mandel imagined, but a shock nonetheless. And “Station Eleven” — already a beloved international best seller — found a second life. Mandel became known as a pandemic prophet. “Station Eleven” became an acclaimed HBO Max series. “Sea of Tranquility” by Mandel is written from within the hothouse of that strange kind of celebrity. The author put a version of herself in there, struggling with fame and parenthood and quarantine and too much travel. But there are also moon colonies, and time travel, and hints that we live in a computer simulation. If “Station Eleven” explores how calamity could change the world, “Sea of Tranquility” wonders what happens if it doesn’t. This conversation begins in the weirdness of the simulation hypothesis, but winds its way to much more fundamental questions of being human right now. There is so much we could lose, so much we already have lost; why is it so hard to live with the gratitude our lives should inspire, or the seriousness the moment demands? Mentioned: “The Power of Patience” by Jennifer L. Roberts This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?” by Nick Bostrom Book recommendations: Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser Ill Will by Dan Chaon Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Mr. Klein, this is the Ezra Clunch Show.
0:24.2	Before we begin today, we're getting ready to record the next Ask Me Anything episode,
0:28.8	so if you have anything at all, you'd like to ask me send it to Ezra Klein Show at
0:33.2	nytimes.com, again, Ezra Klein Show at nytimes.com with AMA in the headline.
0:39.6	But for today, I want to go back to a novel that has meant a lot to me, that I read before
0:44.8	the pandemic, that I reread after the pandemic, and that I'm not alone in coming back to
0:49.9	and coming back to.
0:51.7	And that is Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel.
0:55.5	Station 11 is published in 2014.
0:58.3	It imagines the world after a pandemic has wiped out almost everyone, about 99% of the human
1:03.8	race.
1:05.6	And it has this particular emotional power as a book.
1:09.7	It helps you grieve a life you still have.
1:12.8	It helps you feel how much could be taken away.
1:18.0	But 6 years after Mandel, Public Station 11, a real pandemic hit not thank God as lethal
1:23.7	as a one she imagined, but a pretty profound disruption of human life globally, nevertheless.
1:31.8	And so her book, which was already this beloved international bestseller, it found a second
1:36.4	life.
1:37.5	She became known as the pandemic writer as a kind of pandemic profit.
1:41.2	Station 11 became an HBO Max limited series, one of the year's best shows by wide agreement.
1:48.4	And clearly, like the rest of us, Mandel is still thinking about that book because her
1:52.8	new novel, Sea of Tranquility, is very much a meditation on both the themes of Station
	...

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