Totally Booked: LIVE! In this special episode of the podcast (in-person at the Whitby Hotel with a live audience!), Zibby chats with New York Times bestselling author, podcaster, and PBS host, Kelly Corrigan, about MARIANNE THE MAKER, a delightful picture book about a determined young inventor. Kelly delves into how creative expression activates a "neurochemical bubble bath" in our brains, offering mental health benefits and facilitating deeper human connection. She also reflects on the love and influence of her late father, who always created space for her artistic expression.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Kelly.

Kelly: Thank you. So great to be here. 

Zibby: Oops. Okay. Maryanne The Maker. Tell everyone all about it. 

Kelly: So Claire and I had this burgeoning conviction that there is a great need to return to creative work in a more regular way, in a real, in a real low stakes way, and that we have overscheduled both our children and ourselves at great peril.

And so while it is like a really fun kid's book about this. Girl who is sick of being sent to soccer practice, a sport her dad loved and really just wants to stay home and work on her invention, which is this flying machine that she calls a Moodle boot with her dog, whose name is Patrick Swayze, because she's a kid who loved the eighties inexplicably, the, the.

What's underneath it for us is this belief that we have abandoned this part of our nature and that it's causing problems. So I sort of think of making and creativity as, uh, one solution to two huge problems. One is mental health plummeting, and two is the lack of societal progress. And I think that that maker mindset.

Is the answer is an answer to both problems. So if you look at the research and the data, which I bet you didn't think we were gonna talk about today, let's go there. But if you look at it in a book like, um, your Brain On Art, have you read that? 

Zibby: No, sorry. 

Kelly: Okay, so it, it's two women who wrote, it's Susan Magman, who's a neuroscientist at Hopkins.

Ivy Ross, who runs a design group at Google, and the two of them got together and they pulled together all the research about neuroaesthetics, about what happens to us when we are creating or making, and it sounds pretty good. I mean, it's more dopamine, more serotonin, and lower cortisol. And part of it is, it's like a engaged leisure.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kelly: Versus a sedentary leisure. And so that was this idea that maybe we had decided that, that that creativity and making was a luxury for time rich people who wanted to express themselves rather than this essential part of us that must be catered to in the way that probably when you and I were growing up in our school curriculum, there was orchestra choir, home ec.

Shop class. And there was an understanding that a really deeply satisfying and gratifying kind of activity is both mental and manual, but then it got pulled apart and there were the blue collar people and the white collar people and everything got broken down into these tiny increments such that everyone was, I mean, it's sort of like an assembly line thinking where it's like, just do this screw all day long.

But before people lived like that, they made things all the time. They made gardens full of food that they then turned into these meals that people came and loved and talked about. They made all kinds of machines from start to finish rather than just this tiny sliver of the process. That doesn't give you a sense of the whole, and so I think it is actually reading Ivy and Susan reading a guy named Matthew Crawford who wrote a book called Shop Class a Soul Craft, which I found totally persuasive.

And then reading this book called Rest about the difference between engaged leisure and sedentary leisure. Sort of all three of those books kind of wove together in my mind to make me feel like this was a little bit more than just a really great story about this funny kid that's sort of irresistible, but rather it's a way to get into the middle of the most tender moments that parents and children have like to be in that, to be in a chair, an overstuffed chair with a parent and a child while they're reading a book, and to be able to float a couple ideas in there and see if you can get them thinking about them and talking about them together, that all of a sudden seemed like a very powerful way to participate in what started to feel very important to me.

Zibby: That's amazing. You can add one more book to your list of,.. 

Kelly: Yes,.. 

Zibby: Of evidence and everything. But Martha Becks, beyond Anxiety Uhhuh, she talks about creativity as. Something that happens in one part of your brain that literally shuts off anxiety in the other, you cannot be creating and also be anxious at that moment.

Kelly: Yes. Well, the interesting thing about that is Claire, my daughter who wrote it with me, who is a double major in computer science and drama, she's the only one at University of Virginia at this moment, and perhaps the world. And perhaps the world. And she's graduating in three weeks and she, um, has this therapist that she loves and the therapist said, um, a noticing brain.

Is, uh, has no anxiety. And so the point that she was making, which is also made by Ivy and Susan in your brain on art, is that there you are equally served by creating and also beholding that beholding offers the same set of physiological benefits. It triggers the same internal pharmacy that all of us carry around within us.

It's like a little bolus that we are just dropping all these great neurochemicals into ourselves. It's like a neurochemical bubble bath. And it happens both when you are making a go kart or taking apart an old laptop or painting a painting or making up a skit with your friends. But it also happens when you flip out over these flowers or you walk up and down the West Side highway and start really looking at all those tulips, or you're even listening to a song like Claire and I did this Drive up and down the state of California doing readings for what we call it, a pre-order tour.

So we were talking to kids during the day where we would share the book with them and then we would talk to their parents at night about the really deep need for unstructured unjudged creative time in every day. And while we were driving, a song came on by the span cake. I don't know if you know the band cake.

They're phenomenal. And do you know,.. 

Zibby: Does anyone know the band cake? 

Kelly: Thanks. Right. Okay. If you know, you know,.. 

Zibby: I'm embarrassed. Fine. 

Kelly: So anyway, we were just kind of going bananas about this song. Like it was like, this is so great the way this instrument comes in. But not until the third verse, the bridge is so clever.

Listen to that line. His voice is so interesting. I love the background singer, and really going in detail on how great the song was. And then Claire all of a sudden said, we're beholding. 

Zibby: Mm. 

Kelly: And it was like, yes, we are, and this is good for us. This is energizing. So I think that that tour really clarified my thinking because at the end of every talk with parents and many, many educators and then many maker types, who were drawn to it, we kept hearing the same story coming back at us, which is totally agree. Like I've been quilting with my friends, or I'm in a a four-part harmony men's singing group at night, and it's totally changed my whole being. Like, I, it, it is, not only is it to your great benefit in the moment in and of itself without any additional benefit down the line, but it also is restorative in a way that allows your productivity later.

To flourish. So it's also like a little investment in your future work. So you just can't say a bad thing about making it creativity. Honestly. The more you dig in, the more thrilling it is. 

Zibby: Do you want to write something like this for grownups? I know this is for the grownups who are reading it to their children.

Kelly: Yeah. 

Zibby: But for those who have aged out of that habit. 

Kelly: Yes. Well, it's funny that you say that because I have thought about we, we've done a couple of, because I have this podcast, I have this audience, and so sometimes we have these zooms where 400 people will show up and we'll talk about something and we call them workshop.

And it's like a deep dive into something that I've tried and, you know, half the time the thing I tried didn't work, like tried to make a movie and half the time it did work. Try to write a book or create an event for Children's Hospital Oakland or something that, that I learned a lot from. And then we kind of break it down like we extra, you know, we extract the sort of takeaways from the experience.

Zibby: Wait, how do you get all your listeners to like do all of your brand strategy? 

Kelly: Yeah. 

Zibby: Amazing. Amazing. Is that what it is? 

Kelly: They're so, they're such an active group. I love and everybody's busy making, and we have this newsletter that's very active where they write us back, um, and tell us what they've been working on and how it's changing.

Their lives. Not only their mood, but their also their impact in other areas of their life. And so those workshop events have, I, I do always finish them and think there's probably a book here, but it, I think it's really important to separate that, that so many kind of how, how-to books, which I've never written a how to book.

I mostly just write stories about family life. Um, but so many how to books are missing the point I'm trying to make, which is that it is in and of itself to your benefit. So versus this is how you write a book and get on the bestseller list, or this is how you start a podcast and make it really catch on.

And that's not at all interesting to me. First of all, it feels really like braggy and unappealing. I wouldn't wanna read that. And also, there's just so much luck involved. I mean, you and I both know that like your book catches a little bit of wind from just the right person. It catches the eye of somebody at O Magazine or whatever.

And the next thing you know, you get pulled into a little bit of fun, but it, it could just as easily have missed, you could have just as easily have been one of the many great books that never got noticed. And so I would hate to point people, 

Zibby: I've written some of those. Just say, anyway, keep going. 

Kelly: It's funny when people, at the end of readings, people often say like, I'm trying to write a book and Do you have any advice?

And I, I feel like I'm constantly trying to remind people. That there's just a lot of luck involved because it's really hard to believe when it doesn't work that well. When the book doesn't really catch on, it's really hard to believe that it's not your fault, and it is. And it doesn't mean that the book's not good, but that is often the truth.

I mean, we know that. We know that intellectually, because many great books that are now in the cannon were ignored in the writer's lifetime. So it is often the case that something gets lost and then something gets found. Later and vice versa. I mean, there's plenty of books on the bestseller list that I think are crap.

Zibby: We're not gonna name them though. 

Kelly: We are not. But you all know them. You all know when you're in the bookstore and you're like, wow, New York Times best seller. And then you start reading it, you're like, huh, I could have written this. That's honestly the, the way I started taking myself seriously as somebody who might be able to get published, to be totally honest between us, although I guess it's not really between us 'cause there's like nine cameras pointed at me.

Um. But the time that I was working, so my father and I both had cancer at the same time, and I really loved my dad and he's quite a character. And so I started working on this thing because I thought, I'm gonna write down what it has been to be his kid and I'm gonna give it to him before he dies. And that is motivation enough.

And it was right around the time that self-publishing was a thing, so I knew that I could have it produced into a book like form and I could actually hand it to him and it's the visual of handing him this thing and saying, this is what it feels like to be your kid, was enough to keep me moving. And then there was a book on the New York Times bestseller list right there, right around the top.

And I read the book and I thought, I don't think this is that good. And so if this is like working for people, maybe I can play in this arena. Like maybe I could throw my hat in here. Because this doesn't seem that special to me. This doesn't seem, you know, I have a master's in English literature, so what I was reading was Dickens and Marilyn Robinson and I, I cannot write that and I know it.

And so to me that was a book. And then to read something that's just popular, that's not that totally untouchable level. Then it was like, oh, there's space. There's like all kinds of books. There's, there's just room on that list, you know? And especially on the nonfiction side, it's kind of an interesting list to be on because it's often mostly men and men who have achieved something great in some other area, and it's probably been ghost written for them.

Like when I was on the best seller list, it was like. I think Lee Ia Coka was on the list, and Tony Dungy, who is an NFL coach and an Olympic uh, athlete, was on there. And there's really like one slot typically for a book about a totally normal person having an unusual experience that's actually a well-told story.

And it's like, that's the slot you're aiming for. 'cause there's the, the world doesn't want two of those at a time. They just want one at a time. So it was like Glass Castle, had it for a while, eat, pray, love, had it for a while, middle place. This book I'm describing, had it for a minute and then it moves on to the next person and the next person.

But it's, um, it's a tiny little hole that you're trying to get through and if you ever get through it, it's just dumb luck. 

Zibby: Well, that's very encouraging. Thank you for that. 

Kelly: Yeah, so stop now is really what I would say to you. 

Zibby: People just like slamming down their laptops all over the place. 

Kelly: Yeah. Sorry. I'm sorry.

No, but you should write it for you because back to Maryanne, the Maker, like storytelling is curative unto itself. Like it will leave you better than it found you. 

Zibby: So you probably don't remember this, but when I interviewed you in person I like five, six years ago, something like that, we were talking about something I think related to your dad passing away or something, and I said, oh, you should write about, you should write a book about blah, blah, blah.

And you were like, Ugh, I don't think I could deal with like having to talk about it so much. And I was like, no, no, but you just have to write the book. 

Kelly: Mm-hmm. 

Zibby: You just like write the book. And you were like, no, I just, I can't, I don't wanna deal with that. And I think about that so much and I'm sure you have no idea what I'm talking about because I didn't realize then that like you couldn't just put out a book without having to have the same conversation around it a thousand times.

Kelly: Yes. 

Zibby: And you knew that, and you were like, I can't handle having this conversation a thousand times, so I'm not even going to produce it. 

Kelly: Yeah. It's interesting. A lot of people. Because that first book was about having cancer and then my dad having cancer. Uh, many people come up to me and they have something similarly harrowing that they think might make a good memoir and it might, but what I often say to them is, do you wanna talk about this for five years?

Because if it works, if it connects, you will definitely be talking about it all the way leading up to publication of the hardcover all the way through the hardcover run. Then it will come out in paperback and you'll do a whole nother run. And if you get traction, I mean, I still get through my Speaker's Bureau requests to come and go to Indianapolis to give a speech in front of a thousand people in a hospital system about cancer.

That book came out in 2008, so I love talking about my dad and I love talking about love, which is really what the middle place is about. So it was perfectly fine with me, but when I was thinking about writing. I, I had, I have written, honestly, an entire 242 page book about the last 21 days of my dad's life, and I couldn't imagine touring with it or going on podcast, going on podcasts to talk about it.

It just made me cry every time, and I thought, I just don't, I, I don't wanna sob all over people in every bookstore in America, and I don't wanna stop crying either. I don't wanna get so good at talking about this that I don't even feel it anymore. Like the, sometimes it feels like with grief, like the crying part is all you've got and you just wouldn't wanna not have access to those very tender emotions.

'cause then you're kind of over it and I don't, I don't necessarily wanna be. 

Zibby: Oh, okay.

Kelly: See, it's not a good idea. 

Zibby: You guys, when you get emotional even now and you're thinking about your dad, is there something that triggers it for you that you think about a memory or it's just that you miss him so much? 

Kelly: You know, it's funny, my husband. Who is not, uh, nearly as emotional as I am. I mean, we sometimes joke that he's dead inside.

Zibby: I'm sure he loves that. 

Kelly: Yeah, he doesn't care. 'Cause he is dead inside. 

Zibby: Yeah, he doesn't care. Okay, good. Perfect. 

Kelly: Um, so anyway, but he, but he cried a lot when my dad died. And it was incredibly helpful to me. And he, we were sitting on the deck one time and he was super emotional. His lips were all puffy and, you know, he couldn't talk.

He's like, I can't talk. And I said, what is it? And he said, it's not even sadness, it's just the love. He's like, I just feel so lucky to have been loved by him. I mean, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. So it's, it's a, um, you know, it was an exquisite emotional experience to be in relationship with him, and that's what I miss.

I miss like the thrill of seeing him, and I was just thinking about him because he worked at 57th and eighth Avenue in the Hearst building, the building that has all the crisscrosses, and it was such a fun experience for us, and it totally informed my life choices because he worked from 59 years old to 69 years old from Villanova, Pennsylvania.

Take the train to 30th Street in downtown Philadelphia. Take the train to Penn Station and then get on a Subway and get yourself to 57th and eighth Avenue from 59 to 69. So I'm 57. I'm often like, when do I retire? Because I just don't have the energy that I used to have. You know, this is it for me today.

This is, this is my one 30 minute like burst of energy. And then I'm over for today's in the books and this sky was doing these huge monster days and I would come up and, and come to New York with him. It's how I got to know New York. I had never lived here until recently and so we would, he would leave and go to work and I would run around the city and then we would meet for lunch.

We'd have a glass of wine and a creme brulee and, uh, cappuccino, like, you know, on the expense account, sorry, Hearst. And then he would kind of sweep through the office and say hi to whoever he needed to say hi to, and like meet me at a back door around three 30. And we'd get on the early train home and on the way home I'd be like this; [snoring] and then he'd say, Lovie, what do you think? Should we hop out and play some tennis? And I was like, you could play tennis right now. Like that's incredible. Like where are you getting this energy? And so when Claire, our youngest, Claire graduated, we were out in California and we'd been there for 29 years.

And I said to Edward, my emotionless husband, my dead body that I travel around with, I said. I,.. 

Zibby: He's not here, is he? 

Kelly: Nope. 

Zibby: Okay. 

Kelly: And he'll never watch this, so we can say whatever we want. Um, but I said to him like, I think that we should move to New York. I think it will keep us young in the way that it kept my dad young and he was all in.

And so we sold our house in California and we bought a place in Tribeca. And we, we walk the streets of New York and I see him everywhere. I mean, like, um, St. Patrick's Cathedral. Like, that's like a total home base for us. We used to go to noon mass. Like the quick 20 minute, get your communion and then go to the lunch and drink too much, need too much and then lie about having a customer there.

I mean, it's amazing that you go from church where it's like, do not lie to like, yeah, this is on the company, no connection. Um, but anyway, so new, he's everywhere for me, uh, here in New York. And it's like wonderful to kind of like I just say out loud, Hey Greenie, I see you Greenie. Um, so yeah. And he would love, he would love this book.

So interestingly, to bring it back to Maryanne in the story, her dad has this line like, um, I loved this sport and so will you. And he's got her signed up for soccer and it's so totally not our jam. And he's not really like reading the room. As many parents don't. I mean, many parents are laying their own childhood on top of their kid's childhood until further notice until the child rebels and then at the end, he catches her. She tells a lie to get outta soccer. She goes home. She's working on this enormous invention that she's got in her mind. And then he catches her and he says, Maryanne, are you a faker? And she says, no, I'm a maker. And then she kinda opens the door and you see this like wonderland of creation that she's got going.

And then the end of it is, and on that afternoon, momentous, her dad became her new apprentice. And I feel that with my dad. My dad was a phenomenal athlete. Both just super successful, but also just devoted to sports. Like he wanted to play a game of anything, anytime with anyone. Like there's a million stories at his funeral about him at 75 years old trying to scare up a tennis game with like a 30-year-old.

And you know, he's out there in his diapers and the 30 year old's like, who is this guy? And so, anyway. I, I'm not athletic. I tried, but it didn't work and it just involves so much sweating and showers. I, I find, and that's not really how I like to roll. Yeah, you don't like to shower? You don't like to shower?

Shower, like the books. I don't like to shower. I don't, maybe you can tell.

I like to make things and so like he set me out so instead of like forcing it, he brought ho he used to work for McCall's magazine. So you don't even know what that is. It's like bef the precursor to good housekeeping, which I don't even know if that's still in the news stands. But anyway, there used to be these things called magazines and he brought home, uh, all the old magazines and then a box of the McCall stationary with like the raised McCall.

Like really back in the old days when they would like type up a letter and he gave me the back of the hall closet, so there were two rows of coats, and he moved all the coats to the front row so that I could crawl underneath the coats and set up my office of creative direction. And then he took me into an ad agency as a kid and took me into the Creative Director's office, which is like the most magical eye popping place with like the rows of markers, with all the different kinds of tips and the um, light.

Table and the beautiful see-through paper that's crinkly that you can do the tracing. I mean, it was like, ah, I can't, I never wanna leave this place. And then I kind of tried to set it up in the back of this closet and whatever I was doing, like it was almost impossible to talk about. Like nobody knows how to talk to a kid about their collage, but your brother walks in the door. And he is got like the blackout under his eyes and he's all sweaty and people, the whole room turns and says, did you win? What was the score? Did you score? Like everybody knows how to have that conversation. And there I was like off to the side like gluing and duping and you know, using an exact dough knife.

And really I was building these like dioramas of like women in their lives and they were often vacuuming because that was what people did in McCall's Magazine. Like that's what the photos were, you know, and or smoking and um, or smoking and vacuuming. Um, so anyway, he was so into what I was into, and I think that that's a part of the message of Maryanne, the maker, which is like, know your kid.

A kid never lies or cheats about the thing they love. So if they're trying to get outta something, if it, if you have to drag them to the car every time, maybe you're missing them. Maybe they're trying to tell you something. And I think it's partly our job to have the guts to leave a little unstructured time and let a kid lead.

You know, Claire says it's so tiring always being the receiver of information. She's like, every adult is trying to teach me something. They all have a little lesson that they wanna impart to me, and it's kind of exhausting. And I was like, right. It's like Maryanne, like Maryanne is sick of being taught things.

She wants to be the teacher. At a minimum, she wants to be left alone. But in a perfect world, people would come up behind her and say, what are you doing? Tell me how you're doing it. That's so cool. How are you using that can, but it's almost like a, a tactical limitation. Like I, I do think that it's not that easy to talk about these kind of random, crazy creations that people make, and so they don't, and so it feels that the world is less interested in us than they are in.

Say the athletes not to set up this binary because there are plenty of hyper creative kids who also love to break a sweat. I just wasn't one of 'em. 

Zibby: Kelly, thank you so much. Thank you for coming on. 

Kelly: You're so welcome. 

Zibby: Amazing.