1 episode
The Legacy Years with Esme Benjamin esme.benjamin
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- Education
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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The Legacy Years is a self-improvement podcast designed to help women navigate the era when their career ambitions and biological clock collide. With the help of insightful guests (from best-selling authors to career coaches) sharing vulnerable life experiences, The Legacy Years explores questions like: Is it too late to switch careers? What do I really want to nurture in my life? Should I freeze my eggs? Will my achievements ever satisfy the scale of my ambition? How do I get out of my own way and finish the book/launch the business/start the project?
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Kristin Newman: Sitcom writing, memoir, IVF & egg donation, and embracing "Full Catastrophe Living"
Our first guest on The Legacy Years podcast is the screenwriter and producer Kristin Newman (Only Murders In The Building, How I Met Your Mother, That 70s Show). Kristin is also the author of the popular travel memoir What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding, which chronicles her adventures as a 30-something professional woman, traveling the world and enjoying vacation romances with hot foreign men while all her friends are getting married and having babies. Spoiler alert: Kristin did eventually settle down. After six failed rounds of IVF she and her husband went on to conceive their daughter using a donor egg – an experience she's generous enough to share in this episode.
We cover a lot of ground in this conversation, including:
- Why, as a memoir writer, Kristin thinks it’s better to publish your life story just before you die
- The tactics Kristin used as a young woman to survive working in a Hollywood writers’ room in the pre-Me Too era
- The scientific reason travel is good for the brain and can boost creativity
- Kristin’s compulsion to live a dramatic, story-worthy life
- Motherhood as a hero’s journey
- Why Kristen wants to buy her daughter egg-freezing as a graduation gift
- Kristen’s experience of using an egg donor to conceive her daughter
- The truth about “miracle babies” born to older Hollywood actresses
- Accepting “the full catastrophe” of life, regardless of which path you pick
S1 E1 Related links and references:
Kristin’s book “What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding”
The Retrievals podcast from Serial Productions and the New York Times
HBO Girls episode “One Man's Trash”
Jessie Klein’s book “I’ll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife & Motherhood”
Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
Deborah Copaken Kogan’s book Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War
Connect with Esme on Instagram or LinkedIn. And for more conversations like these, subscribe to The Legacy Years newsletter.
The Legacy Years podcast was edited by audio producer Seren Hughes. You can find more of her work here.
Customer Reviews
Massive thumbs up from the single gal
There are a lot of podcasts out there that discuss this period of life that have made me feel alienated and worst about my life choices. But this podcast is so comforting. It made me feel both validated and hopeful. Also, Esme has a very lovely soothing voice that is a joy to listen to. I will be an avid listener going forward.