We’re excited to introduce you to a show we know you’ll love: Talk Easy. Hosted by Sam Fragoso, Talk Easy is a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, activists, and politicians—where people sound like people.

Writer Jia Tolentino (The New Yorker) became a literary sensation in 2019 upon the release of her best-selling essay collection, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion. She joins us this week to ring in 2025.

We start by discussing the erosion of privacy online, the potentially forthcoming TikTok ban, and how she circumvented self-surveillance technology in her Hidden Pregnancy Experiment for The New Yorker. Then, we unpack how data is monetized online, as depicted in an unsettling scene from Succession, the harmful effects of screen time on children, and her writerly upbringing in Houston.

On the back-half, Jia recounts a formative summer in Venice, her subsequent decade working at The Hairpin and Jezebel, the trad wife phenomenon, how she swings between pessimism and optimism, and why writing still retains the power to liberate.

For more, listen to Talk Easy wherever you get your podcasts or head to: https://lemonada.lnk.to/TalkEasywithSamFragosofd

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.