A heads up before we start the show.

This episode talks in depth about suicide.

Please listen with care.

Okay, here's the show.

I understand that I am asking Laura Riley something brutal when I ask her to describe her daughter Sophie. Sophie was our

only child because when you when you get it right you don't necessarily want to do it over again

very people oriented no separation anxiety when she went to preschool you know I think a lot of only children tend to be good around

adults, but she had kind of a preternatural ability with people of all kinds.

Laura is a longtime journalist and food critic, and Sophie traveled with her parents all over the

world. We lived abroad when she was in ninth grade,

and a couple summers before that. And she got the travel bug pretty hard and did a lot of

solo travel. This past summer, she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with a buddy of hers, and she did a month of

yoga-intensive training in Thailand, and then came back. She and her best friend, their

intention was to visit all of the national parks in the U.S. And she is fairly far along on that goal.

A goal that Sophie will never finish because she died by suicide in February.

She was 29.

She had a master's degree in public health, and she wanted to make health care systems better.

She moved very easily in the world. She was kind of a lot nicer than me as a person and maybe a lot more assertive than her dad. So kind of took a lot of our best qualities and far surpassed us and her kind of ability to navigate in the world.

She had a kind of an ability to get people on her side.

I think that was something that was said again and again at her memorial that, you know,

she had a way of kind of, I don't know.

Bringing security guards and Uber drivers and waiters and whatever kind of into her clan.

...