Host Rachel Zucker speaks with Makenna Goodman about her new novel, The Shame (Milkweed, 2020). Makenna speaks about living close to the land and still being ensnared in the world of capital; the slippage between autofiction, fiction, memoir and nonfiction; how she loves artists who play with the real; and what it might mean to write without assuming dominance over reality, Rachel and Makenna discuss their mothers, motherhood as a metaphor or lens, the impossibility of living an ethical life and opting out of being an oppressor within capitalism, the shame of realizing progressive utopianism might be just another form of “private contentment,” Psyche and Eros, the social construction of vigor, the stories we tell about about ourselves, Agnes Varda and her idea that happiness is joy and pain side by side, why Makenna loves reading short novels by women translated into English from other languages and so much more.