I did feel pretty low. I did feel pretty directionless and, you know, as if this mistake was

really intractable with very long-term repercussions. I was saying, like, I'm going to have to

disappear and just go off the grid. And he said, oh, or you could fake your own death. And I was like,

that is a great idea.

Elizabeth, you are an investigative journalist, author of three books,

playing dead, love lockdown, most recently Everyday Intuition. You've written about such interesting things, like the phenomenon of faking your own death, the idea of

falling in love with someone who's in prison, and most recently the idea of your gut and what it can

tell you and all the science behind it. And something I'm really struck by is you're not just

researching writing about it. You often put yourself as the subject

into whatever you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. How are you going to write about something if you haven't really

experienced it or at least tried to get as close as you can to experiencing it? I completely agree. Objectivity is

overrated. Yeah. Did that include trying to fall in love with someone in prison?

Not explicitly, but I did make some very deep and complex relationships with people in prison.

I'm looking forward to hearing all about it.

But let's start with what I think may be your rock bottom moment.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is it the idea of faking your own death because of crippling student loan debt?

Exactly.

That's precisely right. That's how i got the idea to get into the subject so i uh was having dinner with a friend pretty

recently after having started a graduate program in creative writing very lucrative as all know. And I'd taken out a ton of student

loans to fund that endeavor. I already had quite a significant amount from my undergraduate degree.

I was born in 1983, which I think is like the perfect target bullseye of just like people who

have student loan. That that's like if you get

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