Writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner on Her ‘Long Island Compromise’
Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Lemonada Media
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 28 July 2024
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Taffy Brodesser-Akner (“Fleishman Is in Trouble”) is a staff writer at The New York Times, where she covers everything from The Eras Tour to Tom Hanks.
She joins us today to unpack her new book Long Island Compromise (7:30), its central questions about wealth, trauma, and inheritance (11:58), and the real-life crime that inspired the story (12:52). Then, we dive into the process of writing a novel (15:17), a formative passage from the book (24:31), and Brodesser-Akner's memories of growing up in between Brooklyn and Long Island (29:54).
On the back-half, she describes her work as a journalist (40:14), profiling Nicki Minaj (45:38) and Bradley Cooper (45:54), how those experiences propelled her to write Fleishman Is in Trouble (46:20), her reflections while writing about Taylor Swift (54:05), and the transformational power of storytelling (1:04:07).
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Transcript
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| 0:30.1 | Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. |
| 0:36.0 | If you had to choose seven songs to tell your life story, which would you choose? |
| 0:41.0 | Hey, I'm Sophie Behrman from the San Francisco Standard, and the host of our new podcast, Life and Seven Songs, |
| 0:47.0 | where I sit down with some of the world's most fascinating people, |
| 0:51.0 | as they lay bare the milestones and the music that's helped make them who they are today. |
| 0:57.0 | Listen to Life and Seven Songs wherever you get your podcasts. Pushkin This is talk easy. I'm San Francisco so welcome to the show. |
| 1:30.4 | This is talk easy. I'm Sam for Gose, so |
| 1:33.0 | welcome to the show. Today I'm joined by journalist and author Taffy Brodiser Ackner. |
| 1:52.0 | Taffy Brodiser Ackner. Taffy is a staff writer at the New York Times, where she covers everything from the |
| 1:55.8 | Ara's tour to Tom Hanks. |
| 1:58.2 | For a time, she was known primarily for her celebrity profiles. |
| 2:02.2 | You may have read her viral pieces on Gweneth Paltrow. for her |
| 2:03.0 | viral pieces on Gwyneth Poucher, Jonathan Franzen, |
| 2:06.0 | Bradley Cooper, Billy Bob Thornton. |
| 2:08.0 | No matter how famous or incendiary the subject, |
| 2:12.0 | she always managed to take care of them while also being |
| 2:15.1 | unafraid to unpack their more thorny tendencies. But what really made these |
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