Hello and welcome to GabFest Reeds for the month of May in 2025. I am here with an amazing

award-winning New York Times Magazine writer, who is also a dear colleague of mine, Susan

Dominus. Hi, Sue. Hi, Emily. Thank you so much for the kind words and for having me today.

Absolutely. We are here to talk about your

terrific new book, The Family Dynamic. And this is a book about families in which multiple children

achieve extraordinary success. So you're asking a question about what sets these rare families apart?

And then I think teasing out lessons for the rest of us from their circumstances and experiences.

And you start by talking about the Brontes.

And then you move to the stories of several families who are contemporary from our own times. And you're exploring

their experiences and stories and also telling us a lot about the latest science on issues

that often obsess parents, whether they like it or not, the classic debate between the influence

of nature versus nurture, talent and effort. How do you set expectations

without trampling all over your kids? And then this sort of basic question, how much does parental

or even sibling influence matter anyway to people's lives? So I wanted to start with Patrick Bronte,

who is the father of the literary

Bronte sisters. Emily and Charlotte, especially, are known to many of us. So Patrick Bronte is someone

you say who overcame the odds against him and then had very high ambitions for his children.

And then you have this great sentence. You say that

parents like him often unleash an arrow of ambition in their children, but then are surprised to find

they can't control that arrow's direction. So I just wanted to start with that idea in the Bronte

family's life and then to ask sort of why start

here. Like, why is this the kind of opening bit of your book? You know, I think a lot about the book

...