When the Flames Go Up

After creating the “accidental empire” Scary Mommy, Jill Smokler is ready to go deep with her new project, She’s Got Issues—a site devoted to helping women navigate midlife. And she wasn’t afraid to go deep with us about her apprehensions about eldercare, why her marriage failed (and not just because her ex-husband is gay), and the challenge of adapting her skills and strategies for modern media.

Jill’s youngest child will graduate high school right as her parents turn 80, so she’s thinking a lot about the opportunities and responsibilities that are waiting for her. Her experience as a younger mom may have inspired a logo full of “snakes and lions and blood and daggers,” but in the context of her new business partnership and her all-too-public divorce, that image seems a little tame.

Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! We’re a listener-supported enterprise, so please consider a paid subscription to support our writing and podcasting.

We also talk about skepticism over couples counseling, the singular weirdness of candle salad, and that time she made up an assistant to perform triage on editorial pitches.

Other links

* Follow Jill on Instagram and Threads

* Read Jill’s best-selling book, Confessions of a Scary Mommy

* The Edgarbug craves “Sugar … in water.”

This episode arrives during what feels like a very weird confluence of confluences. Mercury went back into retrograde on April Fool’s Day (the same day when Germany legalized weed). The Great American Eclipse—which every U.S. state will at least partially experience—will occur the day after the moon reaches perigee, its closest orbit distance to Earth.

And next month, billions of double-brood cicadas will rise up like bug zombies and eat Illinois, for the first time since before Illinois became a state.

How’re we supposed to concentrate on mundane things like Schedule C’s when it’s so much more fun to contemplate why all these phenomena might be related? It’s enough to make you read about something Ron DeSantis stands for and not be completely disgusted by it.

Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! We’re a listener-supported enterprise, so please consider a paid subscription to support our writing and podcasting.

We also manage to skate around a bunch of other loosely-related topics, like religion, that emoji Connections puzzle, Match Game, when science fiction is just too unbelievable, and how great it is that a writer named Lisa Stardust anchors the Today Show’s astrology coverage.

Other links:

* The enduring influence of Ames and Ilg

* How Wyna Liu writes Connections

* How Michael Chabon solves Connections

* The rebus puzzles of Classic Concentration

We’ve talked a lot on this podcast about our parents’ impact on our lives, mostly in the context of supervising their eldercare and/or grieving their loss. But this conversation with Amanda Magee is our first to delve into how it feels to stop all contact with your parents, especially when your kids start aging out of the household.

Any fundamental change in an intimate relationship leaves a mark, regardless of how it comes about. And during this turbulent time among the three generations, she relies on several creative pursuits—writing, music, set design, and entrepreneurship among them—to help keep her train on the rails.

Amanda speaks frankly about adjusting to motherhood, building her parental self on her own terms, and how her three daughters, raised in the age of social media, have learned that when someone knocks, it’s OK not to answer the door. And we almost got to the end without mentioning menopause!

Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! Please consider a paid subscription to support our writing and podcasting.

We also talk about maintaining a business with your spouse for 20 years, the perfect simplicity of the Tug Rule, and the children’s book about The Secret Pee that needs to happen.

Other links:

* Follow Amanda on Instagram and TikTok

* The abiding influence of Kate & Allie

* All Of Us Strangers has arrived on Hulu

* Blown away by THX and Maxell tapes

* Why we love Sally O’Malley

* Ride the Black Fly Challenge

* The potential havoc caused by the piriformis muscle

After a week off, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. But the standard conversational deviations into The Price Is Right, Rush lyrics, and why ADHD affects your ankle bones serve a subtle purpose as therapy for Doug, who is living alone—like alone-alone, not the-kids-will-be-back-next-week alone—for the first time since 1987.

Empty nesting can feel different for single people, especially when your family and best friends are all hundreds of miles away. When the nostalgia and excitement collide, the energy of the impact can launch a spate of “grief cleaning,” when you jettison a lot of stuff and rearrange whatever’s left.

Ultimately, a lot of our success as 50-plus-year-olds stems from our ability to handle change, which seems to come at us with more substance and less warning than before. It’s usually easier said than done, especially while you’re sifting through the artifacts of a formerly all-consuming way of life that is well and rightly over.

Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! Please consider a paid subscription to support our writing and podcasting and sorting through layers of sentimental sediment.

We also tackle several important questions of our time: Is there such a thing as a free market? Is 50 a good age to start an undergraduate education? And are the benefits of yoga enough to offset all the farting?

Other links:

* “We better get going if we want to stay ahead of the weather.”

* Congress passed 27 bills in 2023, the fewest in decades.

* Changes aren’t permanent, but change is.

* Another way to blow off some nervous energy? Get on your bike.

Episodes referenced:

As a mother of twins and self-described overthinker, Laurie Smithwick began planning for sending her daughters off to college “on the way home from the gynecologist’s office.” So when the house was suddenly empty again, she was ready.

She was taught to embrace change as an opportunity by her dynamic parents—a mom who’s working on her eighth book and a dad who’s still processing the medical accident that paralyzed his leg. That intermediate downsizing a few years ago was a bitch, but it was worth it.

Like Wendi Aarons told us in Episode 16, Laurie is finding her creative center in her 50s, having transitioned from a graphic design business owner to a full-time artist. And after a couple years of self-schooling, she’s playing bass and singing in Channeling Granny, her band that debuted last night.

Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! Please consider a paid subscription to support our writing and podcasting and appreciation for hot bass licks.

We also talk about the late, lamented Draw Something app, the post-menopausal miracle that restored her oenophilia, and firsthand proof of what Mad Men got wrong about agency creatives.

Other links:

* Follow Laurie on Instagram

* March 4 was National Sons Day

* CODA YouTuber John Urquhardt

* Daniel Tammet, the Brain Man (and the subsequent documentary)

* The Artist’s Way program, with Julia Cameron

* Myst has been updated!

* From Letters of Note: the wisdom of E.B. White

With Washington’s birthday and the Michigan presidential primary freshly concluded, listen in as Magda regales us with her meteoric rise from tenderfooted poll worker to precinct chairperson! Witness the palace intrigue! The moral relativism among desperate foes! The unquenchable resolve of a willful ingenue who stepped on any neck she had to in order to plant her flag in the fetid mud pit of Detroit politics!

(Actually, she just answered an ad and kept showing up.)

A lot of us get involved in politics when we realize we have the time, desire, and fortititude to fight for the change we want to see. But the most important thing to consider before you intiate contact is to assess what you’re prepared to do and where that effort is most needed. There might be a candidate or ballot proposition that needs your support, but in Magda’s case the biggest need was getting people to the polls and helping them understand the ballot once they got there.

Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! Please consider a paid subscription to support our writing and podcasting and saving democracy one new voter at a time.

In this episode, Magda offers up some Inside Baseball about how she was trained and how that training prepared her for an 18-hour day, from set-up to takedown. We discuss how early voting, straight-ticket voting, and absentee voting work. After which you will understand why she’s been destined for this work since she was four years old.

Other links:

* The Michigan primary results were predictable, but the general will be a whole new ballgame.

* Are you involved in local politics? Or do you have a question for Magda about getting involved? Start a thread in our Facebook group.

There are no easy answers when you’re “Deep in The Dagwood” of sandwich parenting. When you’re looking after your wheelchair-bound mom and 90-year-old stepdad, your siblings don’t live locally, you have a full-time job, and you want to model competence for your teenage daughters without perpetuating the thought that holding families together defaults to the women.

Helen Jane Hearn does all of these things, three years after her family moved across the country—and across a broad political and cultural divide—to take over her childhood home in rural Wisconsin.

Adjusting to bigger responsibilities and smaller social circles hasn’t been easy, but those responsibilities gather importance when she remembers they won’t last forever. Plus: her kids love the outdoors, and they’re having valuable conversations that might not have happened back in wine country. Basically, she isn’t afraid to use “FML” to assess her situation—as long as it means “foxy, middle-aged lady.”

Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! Please consider a paid subscription to support our writing and podcasting and gnawing our way out of a Dagwood.

We also talk about the compelling allure of a tiny apartment with no stuff, the cultural significance of Take Your Tractor to School Day, and why duct tape should be Wisconsin’s state flower.

Other links:

* Follow Helen Jane on Instagram and Pinterest

* Why Toledo is in Ohio and not Michigan

* Date Night, with Steve Carell and Tina Fey

* Important information about being a Yooper

Magda and Doug are each at a point where it’s time to make some new real-life, face-to-face friends: Magda because she has moved across the country to live with her husband, and Doug because he is a man.

And really, how hard could it be? All you have to do is live in a place where at least a few like-minded people are, find the places where those like-minded people hang out, be at least a little bit extroverted (or convince yourself you can be, in short bursts), be forthright but not thirsty, have a plan but be flexible, be innovative but follow a lot of well-traveled advice—and set aside the unnerving thought that a lot of people are just straight-up weird.

Don’t believe the pessimists! Friendship after fifty is definitely possible. On top of all the options you can find anywhere online—volunteering, continuing ed, friendship apps, etc.—we talk about some specific, slightly eccentric examples that worked wonderfully. And with less effort than you might think.

Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! Please consider a paid subscription to support our writing and podcasting and keeeping faith in humanity.

We also answer several burning questions: Is being friends after you get divorced always a good thing? Is there such a thing as hopeful cynicism? And do you really have to kiss a lot of people dressed as frogs?

Other links:

* Usher’s “boop-boop” song

* The Whoever vs. Who Cares Super Bowl cake

* Travis Kelce goes berserk on his coach

* Don’t be the “get in the hole!” guy

* Chris Stevens predicted the isolation of technology 30 years ago

* John Laroche moves on from loving fish

* Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H

* Find your people on Bumble for Friends

Former episode mentioned:

A lot of people our age are grieving the abrupt death of one parent and taking on sole caregiving responsibility for the other. Some have endured a bitter custody battle (or two) after a breakup and built a business around their experiences. Some have had children later in life and know the fatigue of chasing after a grade-schooler.

Jessica Ashley came on our podcast to talk about what it’s like to do all that at once.

It’s easy to get angry over relationships that go sour, or misogyny in the family court system, or how “kin keeping” so often defaults to the daughters. But Jessica has learned to filter those thoughts through her Master’s degree in women’s studies, use it when she needs it, and offload it when the needle is in the red. Above all, she feels like a more centered parent, who wants to show her 9-year-old daughter that ”always knowing you can choose yourself feels good and healthy.”

Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! Please consider a paid subscription to support our writing and podcasting and fighting wars on multiple fronts.

We also talk about how not to blame yourself when a relationship you really believed in goes awry, how a psychic helped balance her emotional ledger, and why we should all be lucky enough to end up like the Golden Girls.

Other links:

* Follow Jessica on TikTok

* Jessica’s book: The Blended Family Q&A

* The mysteriously acronymed CSS financial aid form

Other WTFGU episodes referenced:

FAFSA stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid, and given all the problems with rolling out its update, another f-word is conspicuously missing. Determining financial aid is intricately interwoven into the admissions calendar, but yesterday’s news that FAFSA data won’t be available until mid-March—which we learned after we recorded this episode—means a lot of admissions decisions will be made with far less information than usual.

The site’s availability was already pushed back almost three months because of the FAFSA Simplification Act (HAHAHAHAHA!). But now the DoE has to clean up a big accounting boo-boo, which would have reduced the amount of awarded financial aid by 1.8 billion dollars.

Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! Please consider a paid subscription to support our writing and podcasting and wrestling with federal bureaucracy.

Many listeners have contacted us about how to cope with this pervasive mess, so we’re starting a forum about it in our Facebook group. Since it’s so hard to find definitive answers—even from admissions professionals who are just as perplexed as we are—we’re building a repository of shared information to help us all row through these choppy waters. We hope it will be a way to stay current, to relay good and bad experiences, and to commiserate when the next thing goes sideways.