Taffy Brodesser-Akner was kicked out of multiple schools. This is what she learned

A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: I was introduced to the idea of wealth pretty early on in my childhood. My dad was an estate lawyer and dealt with all these families that would fight over money after someone died. He saw wealth bring out the very worst of people. And by God, he was not gonna let that happen to his family.

So instead of bouncing us on his knee as toddlers and teaching us Wheels on the Bus, my dad sat us down and taught us about the evils of entitlement. How a lot of money could turn perfectly fine, generous people into lazy, selfish jerks.

While I was pondering all this in southeast Idaho, another girl around my age was doing the same thing across the country in New York. Taffy Brodesser-Akner spent a lot of time imagining the lives of the super wealthy on Long Island, where she would visit her dad. Her thoughts set on one family in particular. The father, Jack Teich, was this super successful businessman. In 1974, he was kidnapped at gunpoint on his way home from work, held for a week until his wife paid a ransom for his release.

Brodesser-Akner has been preoccupied with this episode ever since. She wrote the bestselling book Fleishman is in Trouble which was turned into a show starring Claire Danes and Jesse Eisenberg. Her newest novel that centers on a kidnapping and the limits of wealth is called Long Island Compromise. She also writes for The New York Times Magazine and if you haven't read her 2018 profile of Gwyneth Paltrow please go do it. Brodesser-Akner is the queen of the celebrity profile – she goes deep into what really makes someone who they are. So I'm excited to turn the tables and the spotlight on her.

This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.

Question 1: Where would you go to feel safe as a kid?

Taffy Brodesser-Akner: Oh my gosh, when I was a kid, my mother had a brown Volvo station wagon — it was the one that everyone had at the time. Which, ironically, is not a safe place — like, no seatbelt, you're just sort of bobbing around and hoping that your mother, who is smoking cigarettes while she's driving, has her eyes on the road — that was the place. I've always felt safe when I was in motion, which says so much about what a disaster personality I am.

Rachel Martin: What specific motion?

Brodesser-Akner: Like, being in transit — being not there yet. Because once you get there, you have to do something or arrive or be or accomplish. My parents were divorced [and] recently I took my children out to the east end of Long Island and we passed the exit where my father lived and they said, "You did this every weekend?" And I said, "Yeah."

So I don't know if that's because I feel safe because I'm so used to it, or because I think that being in transit, that is actually the only time you can stop. Like, I feel very safe when I'm protected from the demands of others.

Martin: Do you feel that way now? Do you feel that sense of security if you're in transit today?

Brodesser-Akner: You know what? Last night, I was coming home from New Jersey from an event for the book. I was in a car and I saw New York, I saw the city where I live, across the river, and I thought, "I'm so glad I'm not there yet." Because when I got home I'd have to pack for today and figure out what the morning would look like. But right then, I was just in this state of isolation. I wonder if a lot of, sort of, working mothers can relate to this? Being trapped in a state where you can't do anything but exist. It's the closest I think I get to stillness, weirdly.

Question 2: When do you feel most like an outsider?

Brodesser-Akner: I have inferred from the fact that I work at The New York Times, and from what's happened in the last few years, that I am firmly a member of the media establishment. And I still feel like a scrappy upstart. I mean, I'm sitting here in an NPR studio. I do not know what I'm doing here. I do not know what business I have being here. I know that risks sounding like either humble bragging or false modesty, but I'm actually using the opportunity to say, "Look, this could happen to you and you could still feel like you don't belong here."

Martin: Where did that come from?

Brodesser-Akner: I was a terrible student. I was kicked out of, like, six schools. You should see my parents at my book party or at a reading. They are just walking around kind of stunned by the way this turned out. I'm so happy for them that they lived long enough to see me in a place in the world.

Martin: Were you kicked out of school?

Brodesser-Akner: I was kicked out of so many schools. I was kicked out of the best schools and I was kicked out of the worst schools. I just couldn't find my place as a child. And when friends of mine talk about their child who is either a rebel or just can't make school work for them, I think I tell them that story. I think the job of being an adult or a parent is to tell children — because no one told me this — that if you are not successful at school, that does not mean you're not going to be successful as a person, that some people are just going to work better as adults.

Question 3: Have your feelings about God changed over time?

Brodesser-Akner: No. Isn't that crazy? I used to feel fairly disappointed in myself that I could not picture a world without God. And I've tried and I cannot see this world without some sort of design or without some sort of crime and punishment or without the hope that there is something in charge.

Martin: Do you need a crime and punishment God?

Brodesser-Akner: I mean, I've read the Old Testament a few times ... There's a lot of crime and punishment. I went to the Met the other day – I had the urge to see some, like, Christian art, some blood on the canvas. Sometimes I get that way and the Met is great for that. And I saw for the first time this painting of Lot and his children walking away from Sodom and Gomorrah.

Martin: And just in case no one knows the story, Lot was a guy, he's in the Bible, his whole family was in Sodom and Gomorrah. And God said, "This is a bad place. Bad stuff's happening here. And you gotta leave and I'm burning the place down."

Brodesser-Akner: And Abraham says, "We gotta get out of here. Don't turn back and look." And Lot's wife, I think about her all the time, she turns around to look and she turns into a pillar of salt. And I was looking at this painting and I was thinking, "Wow, she just turned around." Which is not to say that Genesis isn't a parable, right? You know, God is different from the things we have decided that God did and said. So my jury is out. I'm always willing to believe anything. I'm willing for new information to come in. I'm willing to be told by a burning bush – every day I hope that a burning bush will tell me what's going on.

But I do think that the punishment for women in childbirth — the punishment for eating from the tree of knowledge — was to be kicked out of the Garden of Eden and all sort of mishegoss when it comes to giving birth.

Martin: Well, right. So do you just discount those parts of the Bible?

Brodesser-Akner: No. But every time I hear a horror story, including my own, I always think it's so unfair that we're still paying for someone else's sin. Because sometimes God and the Bible are very useful tools for a dramatic state of blame: "This is so bad that it's biblical."

Martin: And you like that?

Brodesser-Akner: I don't like it. I just — my brain needs to make sense of things. What is it, "You're either an order muppet or a chaos muppet"? I like things to go from chaos to order.

Martin: And God helps you get there?

Brodesser-Akner: Anything does. Any explanation will do. And when the regular explanations don't work out, you can always go to God [laughs].