Elizabeth Day on Two Women Chatting

Michelle

So today's guest is living, writing and podcast hosting proof that perfection is vastly overrated. She's the creator of the smash hit podcast, How to Fail, where she's gently coaxed everyone from Hollywood stars to political heavyweights into sharing their failures and the things that didn't quite go to plan. And somehow she's made us all feel better about our own disasters along the way.

She's also a celebrated journalist, bestselling author of novels that make us question everything we thought we knew and she's back with her latest page turner, One of Us. Her sixth novel is a compulsive story of betrayal, old bonds and buried scandals. One British establishment family comes face to face with the consequences of privilege and the true cost of power. So grab a cuppa and maybe a list of your own failures just in case. It's time to chat with the endlessly brilliant and refreshingly honest Elizabeth Day. Welcome!

Elizabeth Day

Michelle, what a lovely introduction! You've got such a soothing voice as well. That was like having hot caramel dripped on me.

Michelle

my gosh, that is going to be my endless clip I will play over and over from this interview. Thank you. Coming from you, that is amazing. And I was just telling you how, you know, I've interviewed lots of people, not as many as you, and I love interviewing. I love finding the stories behind people. It's just such a joy. But for some reason, you're such an icon in the interviewing world. I was really, really nervous. I was like, why did I run out of CBD gummies today?

Elizabeth Day

Thank you so much. What a lovely thing to hear. And I'm very touched by that, but there's nothing to be nervous of. I mean, you are such a seasoned professional in terms of broadcasting that it's completely my privilege to be sitting on the other side of the interview microphone. So thank you. And thank you for your kindness.

Michelle

Actually even you said that interviewing people like James O'Brien can be a little intimidating, can't it? But interviewing, yeah, interviewing an interviewer, they kind of get what you want and you know what they want out of an interview. So I know this is going to be wonderful. And I have been wanting to chat to you for a long time now because it was actually my girls that put you onto your podcast probably, gosh, probably about four years ago.

Elizabeth Day

Yes, I totally get it.

Michelle

And I first heard How To Fail when you were interviewing Greta Thunberg. And I was so taken by your interview technique and your ability to listen rather than talk and to articulate the way that Greta was coming back with her answers. You got me hooked from then.

Elizabeth Day

Well, thank you. Well, first of all, thank you to your girls. Secondly, thank you for taking their advice. And thirdly, thank you for starting with Greta Thunberg, because I love that particular episode. I found her so delightfully unexpected. I already knew that she would be an incredibly eloquent and impassioned activist but I hadn't realised that she has this sense of joy and humour about the world and I really valued getting to know her on that level and so it stayed with me that interview so I'm really glad you started with that episode.

Michelle

I think you brought out the non-seriousness of her, which was an actual joy to listen to, because as you said, she's a very earnest young lady with very impassioned campaigns, but you brought a warmth and a fun side out of her that made me want to listen to her campaigns and her activism even more. So you did her an enormous favor, I think, in highlighting her in such a warm way.

Elizabeth Day

I'm so glad to hear that. Thank you. And also, I think people forget how young she is. I mean, at the time that I was interviewing her, I think she was still only 19. And that's someone who's so devoted their life to this extraordinary and necessary purpose, but she didn't really get enough of a chance to be a teenager. And so I really wanted to allow her the space to bring out that side of her.

Michelle

And I think you did, you really did. And of course you have interviewed the most incredible people. I've noticed more and more you are interviewing a lot of Hollywood personalities. You had a great interview quite recently with Pamela Anderson about her finding her rawness and her truth about herself and sort of peeling back the layers. That was incredible. There must be more people, your series could obviously run and run and run because there's...incredible, fascinating people in the world that haven't made it onto your podcast. But is there somebody, and I know this is kind of a cheesy question, but is there a dream guest that you'd like to have?

Elizabeth Day

Definitely, and it's not a cheesy question at all because it actually sort of brings it back to who the person that I most want to speak to is the person who I think can make us all feel so much better about our own failures. And so it actually asking that question identifies a lot about the podcast. And I, from the very beginning, I've had Michelle Obama and or Barack, listen, I'm not fussy. I think Obama's.

Michelle

Yeah, not fussy, not fussy.

Elizabeth Day

and Oprah Winfrey on that list. Oprah for obvious reasons because she is such an iconic interviewer herself and also someone who has changed the media landscape in my lifetime in such a significant way. And then Michelle Obama, I just think she has this beautiful gift of maintaining her relatability whilst also being an extraordinarily powerful and famous woman. And I

Yeah, I just, I keep trying. I keep trying, Michelle. And I haven't got there yet, but yeah, fingers crossed. And I, you're right that I've been so lucky to interview some amazing people. And Monica Lewinsky was actually on my dream guest list when I first started and I've just had her. So I feel like I'm inching ever closer. Yeah.

Michelle

I think you will.

And she was incredibly honest as well about her very, very public failures, which she has learned from, and also very movingly talked about how she had come to terms with not having children in her life. And you too have been very open. I think you've helped many people who have resigned themselves or come to terms with the fact that they may not have children. And I think one of the things that I heard you say about that was that you, we all think maybe we're going to be parents in our teens and our twenties and we all think it's going to go perfectly well and we're going to get pregnant. And of course, if you're 15, 16, you probably get pregnant like that, but it gets harder. And you have been through the most incredible journey. But what you said really resonated with me was that finally, instead of looking at it as, of course it was going to be joyful, of course it was going to be 100 % amazing. You finally found the courage or the enlightenment, flip that narrative to, well it could have been awful. mean teenagers are smelly and untidy and unruly and you you could have had a terrible relationship. So has that really helped you now to, because you seem a very happy person now.

Elizabeth Day

thank you. Gosh, what a lovely compliment. I'm so glad I seem like that. And I am. And I'm really glad you picked up on that because I was talking about it recently in a different context, in a relationship breakup context. I think we are all capable as humans. We have this extraordinary ability to tell stories. That's what differentiates us from other species. And obviously my profession is a storyteller as well. So I'm very good at telling myself stories. And you're completely right. I would tell myself the most glorious, romantic, illusory story of how wonderful it would be to be a parent and to have this sense of reciprocal love, the likes of which I'd never experienced before, and how my child and I would have this extraordinary bond and the things that we do together. And part of that was also part of the thinking positive aspect of it that you're often encouraged to do, sort of manifesting your future, which I think, although a lot of people talk about it with the best of intentions, can sometimes make us feel that we're failing to imagine ourselves into joy, because sometimes it's incredibly difficult going through a fertility journey and not getting the results that you think you want. And at a certain point, I realised that I was telling myself the best version of the story. And actually there was a world in which the worst version could happen too, in which, God forbid, my child could have been beset with problems. I would have been a much older mother had it worked out for me. There are all sorts of health risks associated with that.

It could have impacted my relationship, my friendships. It would mean definitely that I would have less time to pursue the creative avenues that I currently do with the podcast and with writing books. And the most likely truth is somewhere in the middle of that sort of very optimistic and very pessimistic outlook. And it really, really helped me to sort of recalibrate because instead of continually mourning the thing that I thought I had lost,

I was able to refocus on what I already had and finding joy in that. And the thing that Monica Lewinsky said that really stuck with me about her also having a child-free, not by choice life was that just because you have made the right decision for you does not mean that you are going to live a life without regret.

Michelle

Absolutely.

Elizabeth Day

And it's so profound because it doesn't mean, although I have chosen to be at peace with not having children, it doesn't mean I don't have sadness attached to that. And that sadness will come up again and again for me at different stages in my life. So recently I met an old friend's teenage daughter and that was such a wonderful experience, but it was also triggering for me because I thought, there’s every stage of childhood and growth I will at some point mourn and feel sad that I don't have in my life but that doesn't mean that it's the wrong thing for me and actually I have so much purpose and meaning fulfilment in my life in other ways and also with the children who exist in my life currently so I'm lucky in that respect I have beloved nieces, godchildren, stepchildren

And there are so many different ways to show up as a parenting figure in this world. So it's been a long journey, but it's been a really, really fulfilling one.

Michelle

It's good to hear you sounding like you're in that place that you feel comfortable. Now you mentioned there are the triggering moments that will likely come at different parts of your life. I've often wondered when you do your podcast and you're very vulnerable and people share really, really deep and failures of their lives, do you ever find that triggering and how do you deal with that sort of emotional side? I know I've been in interviews or even gone to play Lewis Capaldi's Survive on the radio for the first time and listened to the lyrics and I find it really hard not to burst into tears. How do you deal with that professionally to keep the focus on the interviewee and not to be engulfed in your own emotional journey?

Elizabeth Day

That's a fantastic and compassionate question. There's quite a long answer to this, so I'll do my best to summarise it. But my background before I was a podcaster was in print journalism. And I'm 46. And so when I started out on newspapers, it was still the tail end of the Fleet Street, boozy lunches, very male dominated environment. And I came of age as a print journalist in a culture that did not encourage us as the journalists to show our emotions. In fact, it encouraged us when we were sent to interview a celebrity not to put ourselves in the piece. So the idea of starting a sentence with a personal pronoun when you were interviewing someone else was really frowned upon. And so,

I got used to the idea that an interview should be entirely about revealing the truth of the other person, which is still what I think an interview should be. But I think I went too far in just not talking about myself, but not bringing any of my own experiences in, because actually, the other great thing about an interview is that it should be a reciprocal conversation, I hope. I hope that's what people feel when they listen to the podcast.

And when I started How to Fail, I was sort of still in that mode of thinking. And if you listen to some of my really early How to Fail interviews, I don't bring myself into the conversation that much. Obviously, I'm asking the questions, but I'm still quite formal and now to my ear a bit stiff. And it was my listeners in those early seasons who said to me, we really like it when you share something of your own experience. And that really made me feel safe. And so I started opening up and I started being more vulnerable. And

The knock-on effect of that was such a profound gift for me because when you do take the risk of being vulnerable, it turns out that the things you feel most sadness over the things that you think is so uniquely personal or in some way shame-filled Turn out to have far more universal resonance than you could ever have imagined And so it was making me feel less alone and it was the antidote to that misplaced shame that I felt about for instance not being able to have a baby or having got divorced in my mid-30s and so then I became kind of addicted to it and and now  I really understand the power of that shared vulnerability and you're right that when my guests

does me the honour of opening up about something of their own that has caused them pain sometimes it will affect me. I mean, actually all the time it affects me, but sometimes it affects me visibly. And if I had still been working for those newspapers in that context of me, sort of 20 odd years ago, I would have stopped myself from showing that emotion. But what I now believe is far more powerful is to show my guests that I feel their emotion, that they are seen and that they are held in that space and that their emotion is respected and valued. And sometimes I do cry. mean, particularly there's one that I'm thinking of. There was an episode with Bonnie Tyler who spoke, was her first ever podcast. And she spoke about experiencing a miscarriage, which is something that I have direct experience of and many of my listeners do also. And she was crying because it was so unspoken about at the time that she suffered that and I was crying because the emotion of it was so recognisable and so raw. And so how I deal with it is I don't deny it. And I think that's good advice for anyone experiencing an uncomfortable emotion. And how I deal with it on a practical level is I've learned that for me to be present and engaged and to create that safe space for my guests, I can't do more than two How to Fail episodes a day. I would never record more than two. And I have regular therapy myself. So I have a wonderful therapist who I see once a fortnight. And that's where I can take anything that's come up for me during that time. Because I still do firmly believe, this is a legacy of my print journalism days, that the interview is not about me. It's about revealing.

Michelle (15:46.889)

Mmm.

Elizabeth Day

the truth of the other person and enabling them to show up as their true selves.

Michelle

That's absolutely true, but what you have done in many ways is provide a trauma platform that people almost get therapy from themselves. As you said, you've got this mutual empathy that draws things out of people, maybe that they didn't even expect to say, even the Hollywood greats who are so honed in, don't say that, don't say that. When it's truthful and it's raw and it's real, I can only imagine that for listeners who may have been through something similar, it does feel like therapy. So like, anybody in the emergency services or, you know, who deal with emotionally diverse, rich conversations, I can see why you would need that outlet, I guess, just to reset and get you back into, into neutral so you can continue.

Elizabeth Day

Yes, exactly. And I thank you for saying that because I think therapists are superheroes. And so to even be mentioned in the same breath as the work that they do is a huge compliment. And I don't want to give the impression that it's all like really heavy listening. So if anyone hasn't listened to How to Fail and they're like, my gosh, that sounds like the ultimate buzzkill. There's also a lot of, yeah. Thank you.

Michelle

It's not, it's uplifting, it's inspirational, it's fun. You share laughs, of course, it's everything.

Elizabeth Day

Yes, but it is really important to me that we can feel empowered to speak the truth because so much of the culture that we live in is about avoiding truthfulness or avoiding discomfort and then that affects each individual because we all feel uniquely alone and isolated in our own pain. And I believe part of my purpose in this lifetime is to connect and to enable others to connect to people and experiences that might not be their own and they might feel so far removed from a Hollywood superstar like Pamela Anderson or Kate Winslet and they might see them on the red carpet and think, well, what would that woman have to worry about? They're so beautiful and talented and shimmering. And actually to hear those people say this was a really tough time for me, this was a time when something went badly wrong and this is what I learnt from it, is I hope it just like breaks down the lie of curated perfection and that I hope it makes us all feel more hope and more possibility. Yeah, human exactly.

Michelle

Human. Yeah. We are all human after all. Now you mentioned there people struggling with all sorts of personalities and demons within themselves, finding themselves. I think this is kind of a perfect segue into One of Us, your new book. So it's your sixth novel. I've read it. It's brilliant. One of the things that I wanted to ask you for, well, if you could give us like a 60 second summary of what it's about, because you'll articulate it far better than me. I've got so many questions on some of the characters. So Elizabeth, do tell us about One of Us.

Elizabeth Day

Thank you.

Elizabeth Day

Do you know what? I think you will articulate it better because I'm terrible at pitching, but here goes. Okay. One of us is about why we keep falling in love with the people who damage us. And I mean that in relationships, but also in terms of politics and the characters that we keep electing to govern us.

And more specifically, it's about one aristocratic family, the Fitzmaurices. Now, if you've read my previous novel, The Party, you might remember Ben Fitzmaurice. This is a companion piece of The Party. You don't have to have read The Party. It's all in one of ours. It's a total standalone.

Ben Fitzmaurice comes from a very privileged family. He's gone to the best schools, the best universities. He's married to the most beautiful wife. He's got the picture perfect children seemingly, and he's well en route to becoming prime minister. That's what we're led to believe. But actually all is not what it seems. And beneath that picture perfect surface is a tale of secrets and lies of familial damage and toxicity.

And one of us is the story of this unraveling. And it's told through the prism of five characters. There is Martin Gilmour, who went to school with Ben Fitzmaurice and has always been somewhat obsessed with him. But he's the quintessential outsider, Martin. And he's slightly untrustworthy because he's never felt that he belongs. But one of us sees him being gathered back into the orbit of the Fitzmaurice family and he's such an observer that he sort of acts as the reader's point of view. So you see a lot from his perspective. Then there's the character of Serena, who is Ben's wife, who is undergoing a change of her own. Literally, she's going through menopause. And it's my first menopausal character written when I am going through it. So there was a lot that went on the page as I was, she gets those hot flushes. And she's also going.

Michelle (21:18.045)

and she gets the hot flushes, she gets everything, doesn't she?

feeling less desired and all of those things.

Elizabeth Day

Exactly, exactly. And she's going through a change herself because she's always been someone who has prioritised the way that she looks over anything else and has been valued for that by other people. she's actually having to dig a lot deeper and discover who she is and what her identity is separate from Ben. Then there's Cosima, who is Ben and Serena's eldest child and far from being picture perfect.

It turns out that she's got a secret that neither of her parents know about, and that's going to be revealed with implosive results. And then the final and arguably most important character is the character of Fliss, who is Ben's troubled sister. And it's about what happens to her. She's always been seen as the black sheep of the family. She, like Martin, has never fully found her way. And what happens to Fliss is at the center of the story of one of us.

Michelle

Well, I think that's a rather marvelous summary actually because that's exactly the way I heard it. Right, well let's go back to one of those characters which I think you managed to encapsulate really well. But how did you do it? Martin Gilmore. How did you get into the headspace of a man struggling with his sexuality?

Elizabeth Day

You!

Elizabeth Day

I don't know. just, I actually don't know. And Martin, in the previous novel in which he appeared, had somewhat sociopathic tendencies. And yet, there's a part of Martin that I really love and relate to and champion. And I think it's the part that we all have, which is that fear of not belonging.

Michelle

Ha ha ha!

Elizabeth Day

in places that we want to belong, the quintessential outsider. And for me, that comes from my own childhood, age four, my family and I moved to Northern Ireland. It was 1982, was the height of the troubles. I, as you can hear, speak with an English accent. I didn't fit in. It was assumed I was military from a military family. I wasn't. My dad, he's retired now, but he was a surgeon. And when I went to secondary school, I never fitted in and I was a bit bullied.

Michelle

The outsider.

Elizabeth Day

But I got a scholarship just as Martin did to a boarding school in England. And from day one at that school, I was accepted because I spoke in the right way. And it was assumed that I was sort of one of them. And the interesting thing about that was that I was still an outsider. But because of the way that I spoke, I got a sort of ringside seat to things that otherwise I wouldn't have experienced. And so that interplay

between being an observer but really longing to be one of them or one of us is what drives Martin. And so I can relate to that drive. And the sexuality part is just an interesting one for me because I think, again, it doesn't have to be about sexuality, but so many of us live with secrets or shame that is misplaced. And I wanted to explore someone who had grown up feeling that his sexuality was something to be disguised and something

to be ashamed of, wrongly. But growing up and then entering now his middle age in a culture that has caught up with itself and where now it is so acceptable to be any sexuality you want. I sort of liked the idea that at the same time as Martin doesn't fully belong to the Fitzmaurice family, isn't fully beloved by Ben even though he'd like to be, he is accepted in broader society.

probably more so than someone like Ben and more so than he realises, yeah. So I found it worryingly easy, but I will tell you, and I don't know whether this is too crude for your lovely listeners, in the party, I wrote a scene where Martin receives oral sex. And I had an early male reader say to me, how on earth do you know?

Michelle

than he realises.

Elizabeth Day

how to describe that. And I was like, again, I've just imagined it. I've imagined it.

Michelle

I love it. Well, you did it very well. You did it very well. So that's Martin. Now you also talk about, the other thing you just mentioned there, what you did when you went to boarding school and you spoke with the right way. I think you referred to it in the book a little bit as code switching that people, know, like Cosima can relate to, I don't want to give things away, but can relate to another. Okay. So she can relate to the activism group that she's a part of.

Elizabeth Day

Yes.

Elizabeth Day

Actually I think you can.

Michelle

and sort of get down and dirty where a Doc Martens and sort of talk a little less poshly. But at the same time, she knows that when she's part of the establishment, she has to code switch into that and be terribly proper and terribly polite actually, have really good manners. So I thought that was very interesting.

Elizabeth Day

Yes. Yes. Thank you. Also, I've just remembered, I forgot to mention another major character in my pitch that we thought was so good. I forgot to mention Richard Take. Richard Take. Richard Take. So he's an entirely new character and he's not related to the Fitzmorises. He is a disgraced Tory politician.

Michelle

Jarvis? Richard, yes, Richard Take.

Elizabeth Day

who has been found doing something he shouldn't have done and he's lost his job on the front benches because of that. And he becomes a catalyst to the story. And I had a lot of fun writing him. I really did. Because that's the other thing that you're so right to mention the code switching, which several characters have to do. Ben Fitzmaurice has to do it too, because he's so posh. But he's got to pretend he's a man of the people. And...

Michelle

relatable. Yeah.

Elizabeth Day

And also the other thing that Richard Take enables me to do is to inject humour into proceedings. So it was really enormously fun writing someone who starts off so lacking in self-awareness that he doesn't realise he's a figure of absurdity and of mockery to many. But throughout the novel, I think he grows and evolves. I hope all of my characters do. And I hope that you end up rooting for them, even though they might act in unlikable ways occasionally. I hope you understand by the end what drives them, what has driven them, and that you can still see something of yourself in every page.

Michelle

I that's very true. And one of the things that you do that I absolutely love is that you seem to write with all your senses. Now, you don't just describe somebody so I can see them and I can hear their voice, but I can smell them. Does that sound really weird? You you talk about Hector with smelling of head and shoulders and grassiness and you walk into the kitchen and it smells of pheasants and overcooked lamb and floral floor cleaner.

Elizabeth Day

No, that sounds amazing!

Elizabeth Day (28:19.789)

you

Michelle

And I think I get such sort of a powerful sense of being part of the scene that it was just really delicious to read.

Elizabeth Day

wow, that's an amazing thing to say. Thank you. I love that and I love that. Yeah, thank you so much. I do aspire to write like that and different writers write differently, obviously but I tend to write with a very strong visual. So I will visualise the scene and then I will seek to describe it in a way that transports the reader but also feels fresh and interesting. So I'm really delighted that you felt transported and that all of your senses were appealed to.

Michelle

They were, they really were. I'd like to go back to your characterisation a little bit more because I did feel like, because we are in the political world for this book and there's a particularly unlikable character, Jarvis. Was he based on anybody or would you like to share? He has some red hair, red face, rather florid, not particularly lovely guy to be around thinks awful lot of himself and money talks.

Elizabeth Day

Yes.

Elizabeth Day

Yes, and I just want to say to my red haired kings and queens, this is not aimed at you at all. I would say his hair is kind of sandy, it's not, his red hair is not a sign of his villainy. But actually, I, you know, I did say characters might act in unlikable ways, but I hope you end up rooting for them. I think Jarvis is pretty irredeemable and is the villain of the piece in so many ways.

He's actually not based on anyone specifically, but he's a composite of men I have known and disliked. And I also, one of my favourite films of all time is Anthony Minghella's adaptation of the Talented Mr. Ripley. And I think Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance in that movie is so exceptional. And so when I say I write visually, I often have pictures of people who I think bear some kind of resemblance. It's not even a physical resemblance, but some kind of sort of soul resemblance or a character that speaks to me. And I will often sort of cut out those images and stick them on a mood board. And so Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Talented Mr. Ripley was probably on my mood board for Jarvis. And interestingly, The Talent in Mr. Ripley movie has been so inspiring to me in so many ways creatively.

Elizabeth Day (31:04.829)

And it was definitely one of the influences that shaped my earlier book, Party. And I had never read the original novel and I deliberately didn't read the original Highsmith novel until I'd written The Party because I didn't want to be influenced in any way. And then I read the Highsmith novel and it's fantastic and creepy and it's different from the film as well. Minghella did some really interesting creative decisions, introduced new characters, brought some to the foreground.

And to me, that's just such an exciting thing to see how one piece of art is taken and evolved and informed by another. And the art at its best should be a dialogue. And I love seeing the dialogue between those two things. And in one of us, there is a deliberate tribute to Patricia Highsmith, who I think is just one of the most astute and, as I say, sinister and creepy observers of human behaviour that we have and I think her writing is so great.

Michelle

Well, that covers one of my other questions who inspires you. I just want to return to you managed to touch upon very, very topical things. feels like you mean I just read just for editing sake. This will be coming out on 25th of September. So I'm not going to say I read it in summer or something. OK, back into it. You managed to incorporate so many very, very topical subjects within this book.

Elizabeth Day

Yes.

Michelle

One of which was the Andrew Tate reference that one of the young boys has been told or he notices or he has been impacted by his peer group that females are too emotional for leadership. Now, back in the summer when Rachel Reeves shed a tear in the House of Commons, I, like you, was utterly shocked at the backlash and the toxicity of one woman.

likely menopausal, likely at the end of her tether to have so much heaped upon her. Do you want to comment on that a little bit?

Elizabeth Day

I'd love to. Yes, I was so taken aback by the response to Rachel Reeves showing emotion in parliament because I had hoped that we had traveled further than that by 2025. And it turns out that we haven't. And I made an Instagram reel at the time. And in that, I just wanted to explore the fact that our structures are still so male coded along very traditional male hierarchical lines that when a woman shows a perfectly valid emotion by crying, that's seen as weakness, not only by media commentators, but by the markets as a whole. The way the markets respond to that is to believe that there's something terribly wrong and there's something very volatile happening and they need to absolutely respond in an equally volatile way, ironically, rather than when a man shows emotion in what might arguably be considered a destabilising way, which is anger, that is so often seen as righteous and it's rewarded as a kind of powerful statement. And that's why we often keep electing angry men, why angry men still lead some of our major FTSE 100 companies. And the point I was making was actually not about whether Rachel Reeves should or shouldn't have cried and what might be going on for her because the poor woman had enough to deal with with the extraordinary sort of media attention. It was more about why we don't question our responses and how embedded that kind of misogyny might be. And I think we all need to ask ourselves that question.

And you're so right to make the point that we, know, if I were advising Rachel Reeves, no one has asked me. But I think, no, shocking. But going back to the beginning of our conversation, I think it's incredibly powerful to own vulnerability because vulnerability is a sign of strength. It means that you are emotionally aware and emotionally evolved you are experiencing a feeling and you are able to name it. And so in a way, know, everyone has a right to a private life, but I think I might've encouraged Rachel Reeves to say, my emotion was because of this, even though it might've felt scary and even though it might wrongly have felt undermining because of the male code destructors that we live within, I actually think that would have been so powerful and so many other people would have been able to relate to that. And I think that our politicians and our political class in general need to be encouraged to do that, show, to have the bravery to show that they are also human, because it will just make them so much more likeable and relatable.

Michelle

It is extraordinary, isn't it, that the establishment is still so strong within those parameters and within the political world that we haven't moved on. And even though we've got a female chancellor, really those feelings and those thoughts and that empathy have not moved with the times because we're so willing to jump on and destroy somebody just for showing a tear.

Elizabeth Day

Yes, and I don't know about you, Michelle, but I have cried at work and I've all, yeah, and I've always felt immediate shame and embarrassment about it. But part of the reason I think I cried is because you get to a point where you feel so frustrated and so unseen and so unheard that, and because crying is not and hasn't been deemed as acceptable for so long, that it's this.

Michelle

Yeah, I think most people have.

Elizabeth Day

it's almost counterintuitive. Like it's like, this is the most dramatic thing I can do to make my point heard because I'm not able to vocalise it for various other reasons. And because it's seen as such a sort of huge thing. Whereas if people were just more open to showing a diverse range of emotions, I actually think fewer people would cry because there would be less need to. Yeah.

Michelle

I think there's too much, there's just too much fear to do that. I think women are, you know, have such a tenuous hold on careers, especially as they get to midlife, that to show any kind of vulnerability or emotion, it's just one more peg on the post of, they're not fit for purpose, time for a career change love, trying to, you know, and I just don't think we have the room yet. We're on the way, we're on the way because we talk about it so much and we're more open and women will not accept this kind of behaviour.

Elizabeth Day

Yes.

You can't control yourself. Yeah.

Michelle

but I still think we're so far away from parity and equality there.

Elizabeth Day

I totally agree and the only way to tackle that is to get more women in leadership positions, particularly more middle-aged women who come with a wealth of expertise and learned wisdom. They're the people I want to work for. They're the people I find most inspiring and they're the people who can change this culture for the better.

Michelle

I think people like you too Elizabeth Day. It has been such a pleasure chatting to you and I could genuinely keep chatting all day but I know that you've probably got things to do. I just have one more question for you. Well I guess two really. No doubt are you working on another novel? Is that already in the works?

Elizabeth Day

thank you.

Elizabeth Day

Ditto.

Elizabeth Day

I, yes, it's already in the works in the sense that I'm thinking about it, but I am definitely writing it. I will be writing another novel next. And I have to say, I'm so incredibly grateful for everything that How to Fail, my podcast has given me, not least a whole new audience for my books. And alongside that, writing fiction is my biggest passion. And it's my purpose and my vocation, if that doesn't sound too grand, and it's the thing that I will always do. So to be able to sink back into it has been such a joy. And I really hope that readers, if you're listening right now, it's a real pleasure to be in your ears talking about something that I feel so passionate about. And I hope that you rush out and buy it and find yourself in those pages.

Michelle

and they should because One of Us is wonderful and it covers so many characters and narratives and it's so topical and it makes you think and it makes you look behind what people are about, know, judgment. It's a really wonderful book. I just ate it all up. It's wonderful and it's available now. It's out. So go out. It's publication day. Well, you know, in your off time, what's on your bedside table? What do you like to read?

Elizabeth Day

Yes, publication day, Michelle. Thank you.

Elizabeth Day

my gosh, I've got two massive stacks of books, much to my husband's OCD displeasure, that are constantly teetering with things to be read. But at the moment, I'm hugely enjoying Alan Hollinghurst's Our Evenings. So that's on my bedside table. As is, I've started keeping a diary regularly for the first time in like three decades.

And it's one of those sort five year diaries where you just do a one line a day. And so that's on my bedside table too. And so I do that every night before I go to sleep. And actually I found it a really therapeutic exercise.

Michelle

potentially a future memoir.

Elizabeth Day

what exactly? I was like you know, I've got to have my retirement plan in place.

Michelle\

good material. Elizabeth, thank you so much. I have really, really enjoyed talking to you and keep going. I'm going to listen to every podcast you ever do. And one day you will get Michelle Obama and hopefully one day I'll get Malala.

Elizabeth Day

thank you. From one Michelle to the other, into God's ears. Thank you so much for having me. I've loved it so much.

How To Fail podcast

One of Us by Elizabeth Day