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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hi, come in.
Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Colm Tobin.
Thank you.
Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes?
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Chapter 2: What inspired Colm Tóibín's writing journey?
It's great. But I'm just going, you know, I'm not.
It's got a kind of fashion, like an Anne de Millemeister sort of minimalist look.
Yeah. And this jacket is good. I've been teaching with it all semester. So you go in and eventually you take it off because it's too hot in the room. But the fact that it's red inside, it's very nice because it has a little yellow hook or a little thing you can hang it up. And whoever designed it thought, well, black and red, and then you need a little bit of yellow.
That's good.
Oh, it's got big pockets. You can put books in them and stuff.
Oh, yeah, I love that. I remember Ozzie Clark saying, if you're going to do a pocket, it needs to fit a dozen eggs in. Don't really know why, but I sort of got what he was aiming for. That's pretty good. Proportion and scale is everything. And you're an Irish writer and the author of 11 novels and numerous essays and volumes of short stories.
And as well as the multitude of awards you've received, you've been nominated three times for the Booker Prize. And the film of your book, Brooklyn, won an Oscar. And I was given Brooklyn when it came out and you became and you remain my favorite living writer. Oh, yes. And I've heard many writers say they hate the actual writing, even though they're compelled to write.
And I wondered if you ever hate writing.
Oh, no, it's too strong a word, hate. I get lazy and I prefer to do something else. But you have to settle down to it and do it. And it's always easy to stop. You know, just I'll stop at this page because I write in longhand. I just could stop in this page. But then you can't do that. So you've got to say, I'm going to go on. I mean, just go on writing.
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Chapter 3: How did Tóibín's upbringing influence his work?
And it all seemed to go wrong. And my grandmother was Irish. And it seemed like these misdemeanors around thinking sort of more of yourself were fraught. Why was that?
Well, I suppose that my mother was a widow and there was always that sense of how should a widow dress?
Right.
And there was a very big moment. The big thing that came in in those years was the sheepskin coat. And I think they were much more expensive than ordinary coats. But eventually my mother did have a sheepskin coat. But... The business of hair and how you dyed it. You see, women just didn't want to go gray anymore. There were some women who did, who prided themselves on just being utterly gray.
But then if you were very posh, you did blue. literally blue hair. You don't see it at all now, I think. But then you just, the other women just went into his place and just got black. But black went out because you could see the gray roots. And what came in was a sort of, a sort of auburn or sort of gold. And eventually my mother's hair got slightly gold.
But the beginning, the first dye was a kind of blue.
Like Quentin Crisp.
Yeah. But I mean, women were very coy about it. One aunt denied it completely, said she never dyed her hair.
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Chapter 4: How does Tóibín describe his experience with writing?
She was very lucky. Her hair had stayed that color all her life.
Yeah, my grandmother had pitch black hair. And then I think she had a wig, but I never realized that until my mother told me.
Really?
Yeah.
Your Irish grandmother?
Yes. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What themes does Tóibín explore in his novels?
Me and my sister always wanted to have a black curly hair like her.
Your other grandmother sounds like an item.
Chapter 6: What insights does Tóibín share about the Irish literary scene?
I only met her. Twice, my father's mother, when her husband died, when my grandfather died, who I'd never met, she tried to commit suicide and was rescued and became very, very quiet and passive. And he started to paint her then.
Yeah, there's a wonderful painting where he paints her with her hands like this.
Yeah, yeah.
And I found that very interesting, you know, as to how you think about your mother. And it's very tender, and you see her very vulnerable. I thought that was a really good painting.
Yeah, I love that painting. And she was wearing a paisley top, and I remember him painting the paisleys on. Yeah. Yeah. Hi, I'm Maria Sharapova, host of the Pretty Tough podcast. Each episode, I sit down with high achieving women to discuss the pursuit of excellence without apology. This week, model Sports Illustrated cover girl and entrepreneur Ashley Graham talks about the time she almost quit.
I called my mom and I said, mom, I just, I'm not going to do this anymore. And she told me, no, you are going to stick this out. Your body is going to change someone's life. Every decade, you're going to go through something different. So be really happy with who you are right now because things change. Check out Pretty Tough, new episodes on Wednesdays.
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So the 2026 midterms is shaping up to be an all-out brawl. But the biggest fight may not be between Democrats and Republicans, but over the congressional maps itself. Gerrymandering is not a good thing. We don't like it. And then all of a sudden, we're going out and telling people, vote for this.
So I'm in Ashland, Virginia, a small town just outside of Richmond, which calls itself the center of the universe. And that checks out because it's the center of the political universe, at least when it comes to the 2026 midterms. That's because Ashland sits in Virginia's first congressional district, which is one of only about 35 or so that are actually competitive.
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Chapter 7: How does Tóibín view the relationship between fashion and identity?
It's, you know, the way you twist your body or the way you even look with your face. Nothing. He just hit the ball hard. And that's what I do. I'm not as good as he is. I'm not as strong. He's very, very strong shoulders and back. And I don't have that. But I play tennis and I always have without any style of any sort, completely free of, you know, any obvious...
nothing but brute force and hit the ball back. I don't even place the ball well. And that's a side of me that I keep very hidden where I'm very determined, dull, slow, plodding person.
Is it to do with competitiveness?
Yeah, that's also the case. I mean, I play a lot with Hedy, my partner, and I really do want to win and so does he. And it's fine. I mean, anyone watching it would just think these two guys are insane because also on the way home in the car, I would do a victory speech in Spanish. And I would go on like that in the car. He would just say, please stop.
So good. Oh, God. I think that's fantastic. It's so hard to actually sort of incorporate competitiveness. It's so loaded up with shame, certainly in England. And so I think any celebration of it is fantastic.
Even at my age, winning a tennis match.
That's brilliant. It's great. Shows your life, you know.
Recently, I had a pain in my hip, which I thought was arthritis. And I thought, here it comes. Henry James, when he was dying, said to someone, here it comes, the distinguished thing. It meant death. But when I thought I had arthritis in my hip, I thought, oh my God, I'm gonna have to get new hips. And generally all these old man stuff is coming towards me. But it wasn't that at all.
It was just some nerve. But the physio said that his friend Jim was the trainer of the Columbia men's swimming team. And that if I wanted to go and get lessons with Jim, Jim, he was sure would do them. So at eight o'clock on a Monday morning, Jim,
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