Rachel Aviv

speaker

401 appearances 3 recordings 3 series first heard Jan 2025 last heard 6 Jul

Rachel Aviv’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Fresh Air · Writer Rachel Aviv explores the complexity of the mother-daughter bond · 6 Jul 2026 podcast

So this idea of the reunion became more and more abstract and sort of fantastical.

And I think I wanted...

To capture that more and to end on that note, because it felt continuous with sort of many of the other hopes or fantasies in the other pieces.

Yeah.

In the beginning of the book, I talk about how I noticed that two pieces I'd written had almost the same scene.

One was about the philosopher Martha Nussbaum.

The other was about the psychologist Elizabeth Loftus.

And somehow I had written paragraphs that were very similar that were both about how

They were either giving birth to a baby or trying to get pregnant, and they refused to step away from their work.

Martha Nussbaum brought philosophy texts to read so she could sort of prove to everyone that she had not changed, that she was sort of still the same hardworking star that she'd always been.

I think what I was struck by was how much I was sort of romanticizing that idea that, like,

you become a mother and you remain like stoically the same.

And I don't know why that was such a value, but it was.

And I remember I had my editor at The New Yorker was like, you're not actually that happy now.

Why are you trying to stay the same?

And I remember thinking that was a really good point, but like it wasn't also it wasn't penetrating me.

Yeah.

There's a really good book called Transformative Experiences by the philosopher L.A.

Paul.

And I remember reading that when I was pregnant.

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