Susannah Breslin, DATA BABY: My Life in a Psychological Experiment
[0:04]Welcome to mom's don't have time to be books with Zivi.
[0:07]I'm the host Zivi Owens, I am an author, my latest is blank, pub date march first and
[0:13]novel.
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[0:27]Go to Zivi Owens.com to learn more and follow me on Instagram at Zivi Owens.
[0:33]This is Anna Breslin as the author of Data, Baby, My Life, and A Psychological Experiment.
[0:38]Susanna is a freelance journal and a Forbes.com senior contributor.
[0:42]From 2018 to 19, she was the Lawrence, Grumman, Jr. Postgraduate Fellow at UC Berkeley's
[0:47]investigative reporting program.
[0:49]Her reporting and essays have appeared in the Atlantic, Slate, Harper's Bazaar, The Daily
[0:53]Beast, Salon, Newsweek, The Guardian, and Variety, among other media outlets.
[0:58]She holds a BA in English from UC Berkeley, and an MA from the program for writers at
[1:02]the University of Illinois at Chicago.
[1:04]She lives in Los Angeles, California.
[1:06]Welcome, Susanna.
[1:07]Thank you so much for coming.
[1:08]On mom's, don't have time to read books to discuss your book, Data Baby, My Life, and
[1:13]A Psychological Experiment.
[1:15]Thanks so much for having me, Zivi.
[1:16]It's great to be here.
[1:18]My pleasure.
[1:20]Please tell listeners about your book, about the experiment, about your parents, ending
[1:25]up just the whole thing.
[1:27]So Data Baby is a memoir, and I grew up in Berkeley, and my father was an English professor
[1:33]at UC Berkeley, and the university ran a preschool where the kids who went there were
[1:39]also studied by professors and researchers at the university studying early childhood
[1:45]development.
[1:46]So it just so happened that when I started preschool there, I became one of over 128 kids
[1:52]who were followed for 30 years.
[1:54]And basically the researchers who were studying us were trying to figure out, if you study
[1:58]a child, can you predict who that child will grow up to be?
[2:02]At the time there was this crisis in psychology about whether or not personality traits
[2:07]were real, do people actually have a distinct personality, or they're just responding
[2:13]to the circumstances in which they find themselves?
[2:16]The only way to sort of identify that and find out if personality remained relatively
[2:22]stable over time was by following people from childhood into adulthood, which is exactly
[2:27]what they did, and when did you know that this had happened?
[2:32]So I'm not sure the analogy that I've given before is in my mind it's kind of like being
[2:40]adopted for somebody who always knew they were adopted, they don't remember having like
[2:44]a sit down conversation, it was just kind of always there.
[2:48]I don't remember a time in my life when I wasn't involved in the study, but when I was
[2:52]a preschooler when I was around four years old, I wasn't aware of what was actually going
[2:57]on behind the scenes.
[2:59]So that preschool was designed essentially for studying children.
[3:03]It had mirror twin classrooms and between those classrooms there was an observation gallery
[3:08]where people could essentially hide and watch what we were doing.
[3:12]There was a transparent screen that hit them, but they could also hear what we were saying.
[3:17]And then later we were assessed on campus in Tolman Hall, which was where the psychology
[3:23]department was, and those experiment rooms had one-way mirrors, although to me they just
[3:29]appeared to be mirrors.
[3:31]I think sometime around seven or eight years old I kind of started to figure out these
[3:37]adults are interested in me and there's a little bit something more going on here
[3:42]than I might have thought.
[3:45]And what is your view on whether personality is a stable trait?
[3:49]You know it's been I'm not a scientist, I don't have a PhD, I'm not a psychologist
[3:54]or researcher, and so that was sort of one of the challenges of writing the book.
[3:59]I'm a journalist, I'm a writer, I'm not an expert, but I've had experts studying me.
[4:06]researchers come from the premise that what is in front of them is quantifiable.
[4:12]And I think what I ultimately took away from investigating my past and the story behind
[4:18]the study once I grew up was that there's something about people that be on science,
[4:26]that can't simply be reduced to something that is quantifiable.
[4:31]We were essentially as a cohort, a data set, and I certainly like to think I'm something
[4:37]more than, you know, a bucket of data.
[4:41]I think you're more than a bucket of data.
[4:43]Oh thank you, that's right.
[4:46]I was a psychology major in college and I went through hours and hours of coding children's
[4:52]behavior.
[4:53]I was doing eating and weight research, but it was like the snack of an actual study.
[4:58]They were doing a study on something else, but they had this free moment where they
[5:01]gave the kids snack, and instead of just throwing that footage away, the eating and weight
[5:06]department was like, oh wait, let's study that and see if there are any links to it.
[5:10]I'll just say I spend a lot of time coding for every different behavior, so I am aware
[5:15]of the things and outs of studies and psychological experiments and all of that and to be
[5:22]in one for so long, oh my gosh, that's a lot.
[5:25]It was, you know, when I was an adult, I would tell people I was in the study and people
[5:30]would always be like, oh, that's really strange or that sounds so weird or why did your parents
[5:34]let you do that?
[5:35]When did you find out all those questions?
[5:37]And it was always so normal to me.
[5:40]And I was a journalist for many, many years before I even really strongly considered writing
[5:45]about this.
[5:46]It was so much a part of me, and I think in a lot of ways actually shaped me that it didn't
[5:53]seem unusual to me.
[5:55]But I understand it seems weird to grow up and have people like spying on you and one
[6:00]thing that was weird when I started doing the research into the story was, you know, finding
[6:05]out that I had a number.
[6:06]My number in the study is 758 and that was just jarring.
[6:10]It was kind of like in my this number.
[6:14]I had a very sort of romantic vision of what the study was.
[6:18]It made me feel special.
[6:20]I felt like I was part of something that was bigger than myself.
[6:24]It gave me a sense of meaning in my life.
[6:27]And to sort of reconcile that with being a number and looking at yourself as like part
[6:33]of a mathematical calculation took some mental gymnastics, you could say.
[6:40]Have you watched the reality show Squid Game?
[6:42]So in the reality show, everybody gets a number.
[6:45]That's why I'm bringing it up.
[6:46]See where you all wear the same thing and everyone gets assigned a number and they don't
[6:49]use your names ever.
[6:51]And so it's like, oh, remember that guy 58, you got a limited last week and you see
[6:55]how it makes people feel when they're all, you lose your identity or how do you maintain
[7:00]an identity when you're just another number?
[7:02]Okay, but your book is not just about the experiment.
[7:05]It's not all science.
[7:06]You go into a lot about your personal life and everything and can I read like a small
[7:10]section of it?
[7:11]Is that okay?
[7:12]Of course.
[7:13]Okay, this is from chapter six.
[7:14]You said three weeks later in mid September, I was on a plane heading west as I watched
[7:18]the verdant landscape slipping away far below me through the oval window.
[7:22]It seemed like I could see things more clearly from this bird's eye point of view.
[7:25]Bird, that's it.
[7:26]I was a bird in a gilded cage.
[7:28]I had all the trappings of the good life, a house, a partner, a BMW and a three car garage.
[7:33]And once I had those things, I didn't want to lose them.
[7:35]For decades, I had struggled to take care of myself.
[7:38]It was hard to picture giving up everything.
[7:40]You'll be fine.
[7:41]I could hear some wiser version of myself, of me telling myself.
[7:44]I knew if I left my husband, I could take care of myself.
[7:47]But if the breast cancer came back, that are the devil you know, then the devil you
[7:51]don't, I considered.
[7:53]But what if the devil kills me?
[7:55]So far my husband had only threatened to hit me.
[7:58]But what if he actually did?
[8:00]What then?
[8:01]I can ask.
[8:02]So yeah, I waited a long time to get married.
[8:06]My, you know, I grew up in Berkeley.
[8:08]My mother was a feminist and my father left her when I was 10 and she told me
[8:17]over and over again, don't get married.
[8:21]Men want you to take care of them, but they don't want to take care of you.
[8:26]And I think for her having children was an impediment to her professionally ambitions.
[8:33]She was an English professor.
[8:35]But my father's career as an English professor as well was more successful than hers.
[8:41]And I think she felt like she paid the price of being a mother and a wife.
[8:45]And then he left.
[8:47]And so I always had that voice in the back of my head essentially saying you can't trust
[8:53]men.
[8:54]I, you know, it was in relationships, but I didn't get married until I was 43.
[8:58]So when I was 43, I was on a dating app and I met a man and we fell in love and I got
[9:04]married in Vegas nine days after we went on our first date.
[9:09]So it was very much like a whirlwind romance.
[9:12]And then four days after that, I was diagnosed with breast cancer doing during a routine
[9:17]mammogram.
[9:18]So it was at the time I actually felt like I was being punished for betraying what my mother
[9:26]had told me to do.
[9:29]It seemed very clear cut.
[9:30]So the honeymoon was over immediately and it was challenging to walk through that breast
[9:37]cancer process and figure out how to be a wife and still retain my sense of self at
[9:42]the same time.
[9:43]You know, ultimately the marriage was not what I thought it would be.
[9:48]And I found myself, we married in Illinois, but moved to Florida and found myself in the
[9:55]role of an executive's wife living in a house in a place.
[10:00]and community where all the houses looked very similar.
[10:03]And there was like a fake lake behind our house
[10:05]that would like periodically shoot up
[10:07]this stream of water.
[10:09]And it was so far from where I had started.
[10:12]And Berkeley is amazing.
[10:14]History and this crazy creative place.
[10:18]And I was studied when I was a kid.
[10:20]My parents were English professors.
[10:21]There was this sense of your exceptional in some way.
[10:26]And I felt at that time when I was married
[10:29]that I was simply like a supporting actor
[10:33]in somebody else's life.
[10:35]And so the part of what I wanted to understand,
[10:39]I had survived cancer was like,
[10:41]well, what is my purpose here?
[10:42]Is this who I'm actually supposed to be?
[10:45]And that's part of why I got interested in the study
[10:48]and asking myself, well, who did they think I would be?
[10:52]Do they think I was gonna win a Nobel Prize?
[10:54]Or did they think I was gonna end up
[10:57]and sort of rotting my brain in suburbia?
[11:01]And ultimately that investigation into myself
[11:04]was not compatible with the marriage that I was in.
[11:08]And essentially I sort of exploded my life,
[11:12]ultimately, and got divorced
[11:14]and pursued the story that I tell in the memoir,
[11:18]which ultimately took me back to Berkeley for a year
[11:21]where I was a fellow at the investigative program
[11:24]at the university trying to understand how this study,
[11:27]I think played ultimately a role in shaping the person
[11:30]I became in ways that I didn't fully understand
[11:32]until I started looking into it.
[11:34]So you would recommend waiting more than nine days
[11:38]to get married, or you would not recommend it.
[11:41]Well, I've said before, it's a great story
[11:43]until it isn't, right?
[11:44]I wouldn't recommend it, I wouldn't do it again.
[11:49]But you know, people do it, people have arranged marriages.
[11:53]You know, I haven't lived this super normal life
[11:55]and I do kind of pride myself on throwing myself
[11:58]into things that didn't work out.
[12:01]In the process of writing the book and publishing it
[12:03]is hard for me because I find so much of it embarrassing.
[12:08]Recounting my failures publicly is not like on my list
[12:11]of things that I love doing.
[12:12]And there's a lot of failing and flopping
[12:14]and insecurity and missteps in that story.
[12:19]But I have tried throughout my life to do what I think
[12:22]to be brave.
[12:24]My mother lived with a lot of fear and inhibition
[12:27]and resentment and paralysis.
[12:29]And I always just wanted to be courageous as a journalist
[12:33]or, you know, in the things that I pursued.
[12:37]I don't want to come down too hard
[12:39]on some of the crazy decisions that I've made.
[12:42]And I was totally just joking around.
[12:45]Oh, I know, I know.
[12:46]Like we all make so many, I've made so many bad decisions.
[12:49]I mean, we all, that's part of life, right?
[12:51]We do these things.
[12:52]I can almost understand, not almost.
[12:54]I can understand why you would do it that way, though,
[12:56]because if you're so, if you've been so cautioned
[12:59]against making a mistake or doing something wrong,
[13:02]it's like you have to just, like, blindfold
[13:05]and run through the rain.
[13:06]I mean, like, OK, I'm going to make a mad dash for it.
[13:09]It makes sense in a way.
[13:10]Like, you either have to do it that way
[13:12]or else you'll be in your head about it for so long.
[13:15]And so I get it.
[13:16]I get it.
[13:17]I tend to overthink things or act very impetuously.
[13:22]I'm sort of good at the pollers and not so great
[13:25]at like the balanced approach.
[13:27]Yeah.
[13:28]No, I totally understand.
[13:30]I make a lot of decisions, and I'm like, yes,
[13:31]let's do this right now.
[13:32]And then eventually I'll talk about it.
[13:34]OK, let me think about the ripple of that.
[13:38]How is your health now?
[13:39]Great, totally fine.
[13:40]It's been like 11 years, I think.
[13:44]OK, good.
[13:45]knocking wood for you.
[13:47]Not wanting to put your mistakes on display
[13:51]doesn't necessarily jive well with putting out a memoir at all.
[13:56]It's like part of the territory.
[13:58]Did you think about writing this for yourself
[14:01]and not publishing it or leaving chunks out or anything like that?
[14:06]It's a good question.
[14:07]You know, I said I became a writer
[14:10]because it was the only thing I did well.
[14:13]I love writing.
[14:14]It's been my career.
[14:16]And the idea of writing for something,
[14:20]the idea of writing something for myself
[14:22]actually seems like sort of a waste of time.
[14:25]And I do like to write and share.
[14:28]I think I just didn't realize how vulnerable a position
[14:34]writing a memoir would put me in and how hard that would be
[14:38]for me.
[14:39]One thing I talk about in the book is there's
[14:41]a lot of pressure on me growing up.
[14:44]The study made me feel special,
[14:46]but it also kind of made me feel like I had to perform.
[14:48]My parents thought I was smart and had hopes
[14:52]that I would be as sort of successful as they were.
[14:56]And so I put a lot of pressure on myself
[15:01]and very intolerant of any sort of imperfections
[15:05]that I have, a memoir is a kind of parade of imperfections.
[15:09]And it's about sharing your feelings,
[15:12]which is not something I'm good at at all.
[15:16]Being studied or having the type of mother I had
[15:19]who was intellectual and distant doesn't make you
[15:22]into a person who's good at sharing their feelings.
[15:26]And there is a kind of way in which I
[15:29]tried to respect that in myself in the memoir.
[15:33]And I almost have a journalistic relationship
[15:37]to myself in my story.
[15:40]So I think it's not a sort of typical memoir in that way.
[15:44]I have a complicated relationship to memoirs.
[15:46]I think they can be kind of like just a vomiting of feelings,
[15:50]often written by women, for women.
[15:53]I don't really like the idea personally
[15:56]that women are sort of supposed to be relegated
[16:01]to a literary genre that's all about feelings.
[16:05]And maybe men are the ones who are better
[16:07]suited for telling the stories of the world.
[16:11]And so I sort of struggled with a straight jacket
[16:14]as I experienced of writing a memoir.
[16:17]And how could this be about something
[16:19]more than simply my own interior?
[16:21]Because I have something to say about the world that
[16:23]goes beyond how I'm feeling or my personal journey.
[16:27]There's a line between nonfiction and memoir,
[16:31]like reported stories and science.
[16:36]It nonfiction books with you as a subject.
[16:38]That's a very different book than a memoir
[16:41]or what you think of traditionally as a memoir.
[16:43]Like are there any books that, when you were writing yours,
[16:46]you were like, well, I just wanted to be like this one.
[16:49]You know, I love one of my favorite books
[16:52]is my great Dora's the Lover, where she,
[16:55]I think she published it or wrote it when she was 70.
[16:59]And the opening scene about is her encountering a man
[17:02]when she's older.
[17:03]And he looks at her and says, I like the way
[17:06]you, I'm paraphrasing terribly, but he's basically saying,
[17:09]I like the way your face is better now.
[17:12]He says, it's ravaged.
[17:13]So there's this kind of brutal honesty.
[17:16]She's muddying the, it's based on a true story.
[17:22]But do they sell it as a novel or a memoir?
[17:25]Like I don't even know.
[17:27]A memoir is a story the author tells you about themselves,
[17:31]but is it the whole story?
[17:34]Is it the most true story?
[17:36]And what is the true story?
[17:37]I prefer stories that understand the limitations
[17:42]of what we consider to be true.
[17:45]I love that.
[17:46]So tell me about the process of writing the book.
[17:51]Was it emotional?
[17:52]What was it like on a day to day basis?
[17:53]It was just parable.
[17:55]I mean, I feel like I should lie, right?
[17:58]Like lie?
[17:59]No, but I feel like when I'm supposed to give an answer,
[18:02]I'm like, oh my god, I was like, I really had to go deep.
[18:05]You know, and I really had to like connect with my core.
[18:08]And now I found like when I started telling my story,
[18:12]I just like really came into myself.
[18:13]And then I was done and then it was pushed
[18:16]and then it like came out.
[18:17]I was like, oh my god.
[18:18]Like I am now fully actualized him being.
[18:22]That was not my experience, but it was just
[18:25]agonizing.
[18:26]It never got easy.
[18:28]I had really intense migraines.
[18:30]I think from the stress, one, it went on
[18:34]for a really long period of time.
[18:36]I felt like I didn't have an ending.
[18:38]And the book came out in late last year in 23,
[18:41]but in 2022, in June, my mother died.
[18:45]And I had become strange from her by that point.
[18:47]But she kind of gave me in dying a third act.
[18:52]And we always had like a curious bond.
[18:56]I was born on her birthday, her 30th birthday.
[19:00]And when she died, I think it kind of freed me up
[19:05]to tell my own story as if it was my own.
[19:08]You know, it's the fact that we kind of shared a birthday.
[19:11]It was like my own birthday is not quite my own.
[19:14]My story is not quite my own.
[19:16]And when she kind of psychically got out of my way,
[19:20]I was able to move forward on the book that I,
[19:22]in a way that I hadn't.
[19:24]In addition, I hired a freelance editor
[19:27]who was just amazing, Petternale Van Arzdell is her name,
[19:32]who I started calling her my book, Dula.
[19:36]And in a way, she was like a substitute mom
[19:38]before the baby I was delivering, which was my book.
[19:42]And being able to ask for and get the help
[19:45]that I needed was impactful.
[19:48]And the book would not have ever been finished
[19:51]without that help that I was able to ask for and get,
[19:54]which I think was something that was hard to do.
[19:58]Well, I'm so sorry.
[20:00]You're as weird as I feel like I'm such a complainer of that.
[20:03]No, don't be silly.
[20:05]I mean, it's hard.
[20:06]It's all hard.
[20:08]It's not roses and rainbows.
[20:10]You know, this is complicated terrain to navigate.
[20:13]And it's just so nice to hear the truth, right?
[20:17]That it's not always perfect.
[20:18]It's not always easy.
[20:20]So you might as well tell that.
[20:21]And I'm sorry about your mom and her passing.
[20:24]I'm glad it enabled you to figure out a way through.
[20:26]But sorry that you had to go through that
[20:29]as a means to an end.
[20:30]But I also understand that.
[20:32]Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?
[20:34]But don't just say, not to do it.
[20:37]All right, and I'm more.
[20:38]Ever.
[20:39]Don't have any advice.
[20:40]Turn off this body immediately.
[20:42]You know, another thing that complicated my own creative
[20:46]processes, I've been a freelance journalist for over 20 years.
[20:49]And I'm kind of a lone wolf operator professionally.
[20:54]And I like to sort of live on the fringe.
[20:57]This book was different in that regard
[21:00]and that it had an agent and I sold it on a proposal.
[21:04]And so the creation of the book itself
[21:07]took place in part within the capitalist machinery
[21:11]of book publishing, which I did not feel
[21:14]was particularly compatible with the creative process.
[21:20]And what I would encourage writers to do
[21:25]is to find their voice outside of the economic system
[21:30]if they can, either find other ways to make money.
[21:34]So you can write as you wish, or you can do what I've done,
[21:39]which is sort of bifurcate your writing abilities,
[21:41]which I have, you know, a lot of a set of writing
[21:44]that I do journalistic or copywriting or whatever
[21:47]that I do for money, where I make compromises and collaborate.
[21:51]But then I also have my own work, which is fiction
[21:55]or different types of essays or what I write in my blog,
[21:58]where I'm writing just for myself.
[22:00]And I think writing for the market, writing for the audience,
[22:05]is not writing what you want to write.
[22:11]That's what writing for the market and writing for an audience
[22:14]or writing for somebody you think might read it
[22:17]who lives inside of your head is not, that's not you.
[22:21]Then you're just figuring out what somebody else wants.
[22:24]And women already have enough of that in their lives.
[22:28]Who do my parents want me to be?
[22:30]Who does my spouse want me to be?
[22:31]Who do my friends want me to be?
[22:33]And I think I would like to hear more stories
[22:36]from women that are creative and original and are just
[22:40]born from that woman rather than in service
[22:44]of giving something else to somebody else.
[22:48]But interestingly, you said it might seem like a waste
[22:51]if you just wrote for you at the beginning.
[22:53]I know, I'm incredibly contradictory.
[22:56]So I don't know what the answer is.
[23:00]I mean, I will write for myself, but then I will publish it.
[23:03]I'll publish it online.
[23:06]But I don't want to write for myself and put it away in a drawer.
[23:10]No, I get it.
[23:11]I think creative process should take place
[23:13]outside of the market, ideally.
[23:16]Yes, then you can put it in.
[23:17]Then you put it in.
[23:18]Yes, that's my advice.
[23:21]I got it.
[23:23]OK, well, thank you so much, Susanna.
[23:25]I really appreciate coming on.
[23:26]Congratulations on your book.
[23:28]And for your sake, I'm glad it's done.
[23:32]Thank you so much to be.
[23:33]I really appreciate it.
[23:34]OK.
[23:36]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[23:38]Don't have time to read books.
[23:39]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at ZB Owens,
[23:42]and at Moms.
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[23:51]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[23:53]I like texture sound for the sound editing.
[23:55]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[23:57]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.