Jennifer Senior On: Grief, Happiness, Friendship Breakups, and Why We Feel Younger Than Our Actual Age

About this episode

<p><em>New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.</em></p> <p><em>---</em></p> <p><br /></p> <p>It's likely uncontroversial to assert that Jennifer Senior is one of our finest living journalists. She's currently a staff writer at <em>The Atlantic</em> and before that she spent many years at the <em>New York Times</em> and <em>New York magazine</em>. Jennifer's written on a vast array of topics, but she has a special knack for writing articles about the human condition that go massively, massively, viral. One such hit was a lengthy and extremely moving piece for <em>The Atlantic</em> that won a Pulitzer Prize. It was about a young man who died on 9/11, and the wildly varying ways in which his loved ones experienced grief. That article, called "<a href= "https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/09/twenty-years-gone-911-bobby-mcilvaine/619490/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind</a>," has now been turned into a book called, <a href= "https://jennifersenior.net/on-grief" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>On Grief: Love, Loss, Memory</em></a>.</p> <p><br /></p> <p>In this interview, we spend a lot of time talking about this truly fascinating yarn, but we also talk about her other articles: one about <a href= "https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/opinion/happiness-depression-suicide-psychology.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">an eminent happiness researcher</a> who died by suicide, another about <a href= "https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/03/why-we-lose-friends-aging-happiness/621305/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">why friendships often break up</a>, and a truly delightful recent piece about <a href= "https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/04/subjective-age-how-old-you-feel-difference/673086/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the puzzling gap between how old we are and how old we think we are</a>. Jennifer has also written a book about parenting, called <a href= "https://jennifersenior.net/all-joy-and-no-fun" rel= "noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>All Joy and No Fun</em></a> which we also reference a few times throughout.</p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>In this episode we talk about:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Jennifer's perspective on the Bobby McIlvaine story </li> <li>Lesser known theories of grieving from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross</li> <li>The work involved in finding meaning in loss</li> <li>Why – from an evolutionary standpoint – we hurt so badly when we lose someone we love</li> <li>Commitment and sacrifice</li> <li>The puzzling gap between how old you are and how old you think you are</li> <li>The power and perils of friendship</li> <li>Why Jennifer has chosen to focus so much of her writing on relationships</li> </ul> <p><br /></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>Full Shownotes:</strong> <a href= "https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jennifer-senior-583" rel="noopener noreferrer" target= "_blank">https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jennifer-senior-583</a></p>