Elise Hu

Talk a little bit about the collaboration involved and what other collaborators brought to this song that you wouldn't have brought on your own.

Relational.

Do we hear any of those surprises in this song in particular that you can speak to?

Maybe something that was a mistake that ended up hitting perfectly, or just anything that you didn't go in expecting?

And it's a marker of your growth too as a human being.

Like you're growing up if you can accept that.

This song is about your dad.

Between There and Here, which you shared in your TED Talk, is about your mom.

This album in some way feels like a portrait of family as well as a memoir.

You know, obviously these things are braided together.

So why was it important to you to share so much of your relationships with your parents, with listeners out there?

It seems like so much of what you do is a real project in storytelling, in exploring these narratives.

You made a podcast that turns songs into stories.

Another show of yours looks at love stories.

You did a live show called Cookie Exploder that was actually about your dad.

And you partnered with an ice cream company to make a flavor based on your mom's pie recipe, for listeners who don't know about this.

Now you have this album that also works...

as a memoir, you keep finding ways to take stories that live inside you or stories that live inside your loved ones and open them up so that we can better understand our humanity as well.

What do you feel like is the thread that connects all of your work?

At the beginning of your TED Talk, you said, as a musician, when you put a song out into the world, it can sometimes feel like you're trapped in the backyard of this house that you built.