Host you suggest jodi picoult that Justice Kavanaugh should read your newest book a spark of light. Why is that . Bank is probably one of the most balanced looks at abortion rights and womens reproductive rights that i have found. I worked really hard to make it balanced and i think it would allow him to see other peoples points of view with compassion and empathy and protect roe v wade a little longer. Host you say all points of your represented. House so . So in my book government one a man comes in with a gun and starts shooting and he takes the rest hostage. One of them is the daughter of the hostage negotiator. They all believe Different Things and all points of you are accurately represented. Host how do you storyboard a story like that . That is a question there is a twist to this book is that it is told in reverse. You first see the standoff and every chapter goes back one hour in time until the very end you learn what brought all of these people to the clinic at that moment. That was much harder than i anticipated i wrote a 48 page outline because i had to write it chronologically in reverse but also following the story line ten diverse characters. But in this case there was so much going on and it was so complex and i had to map it out. The magic is in the editing i took little post its and marked up the whole book by character the night edited in reverse ten times following each thread and then headed entirely going forward. How much time in jackson mississippi . I waited balance between jackson and alabama to one alabama and the doctor said that he performs abortions because of his religion. He said who will provide for these women if not me so now he goes all over the United States performing abortions and invited me to shadow. Host why do you feel its important to say you have not had an abortion . Its the truth. If i had it would have taught me to speak about it. One of the saddest facts was interviewing 151 women have terminated and less than 25 wanted to be acknowledged to use initials or anonymous in the decades since they still have not told parents or partners or friends or employees. They kept it to themselves and to be completely honest when i was listening to the kavanaugh hearings i was thinking of these women. What they dont tell the story and narrative is put upon them of blame and shame. To me that is the most resonant message to get rid of that stigma that they are living under they have to normalize one out of four women well terminate a pregnancy and putting a face to that is important and the way to take the narrative back. Host you observed actual abortions . I did. We shouldnt talk about it as a euphemism. You may not feel it is a person but interrupting a life process. We should acknowledge what is being done during a termination. He invited me to observe a five weekend a week and 15 week abortion. It was a privilege to be there with women who let me interview them before and after and watch during. The five weekend a week took less than three minutes. The product of conception was no more shocking if you blow your nose. Fifteen week took seven minutes next among the mucous very very tiny and humanlike a small hand. That was shocking to see. That she had three children under the age of four and could barely afford to feed them. She had a fourth she could not so does that make for a very good mother or bad mother . Host you are prochoice. I am. Host how did you find jeanines voice . She is a prolife protester outside the clinic that she has put on a disguise pretending to be a patient to secretly taping the workers to Say Something incriminated. She really does exist every Abortion Provider has had multiple women who are protesters on their table having an abortion or their daughter then they go out the next day to protest. So that voices prolife. So i went in there with misconceptions assuming we must be very zealots or evangelical they were funny and smart and interesting. We had great ever on conversations but disagreed where life begins it hammered home we have more in common than not in common with them. But they come from a place of deep compassion and conviction they dont want to be seen antiwar men are prochoice wants to be cast to use abortion as Birth Control. Thats not true either. So there are misconceptions on both sides. Host its a topical story but in a page turner how do you find that balance . I dont know and ive been doing it for a long time. I like the concept of the novel to educate about social justice because when i wrote the book i read countless institute studies about abortion statistics. Most people dont do that on a daily basis when you pick up a book to be entertained that will whisk you away for a few hours if i do my job right you think hard about a topic otherwise you might not have approached and in that way fiction is so sneaky it gets peoples minds to crack right open. Host one. 2 million abortions happened in the fifties prior to roe v wade. Yes every reason to believe it overturned we will continue to have abortions they just wont be safe and women are endangered its important to recognize 97 percent of the work planned parenthood and other clinics do has nothing to do with abortion thats why its federally funded. It is cancer screenings contraception, std and women and poverty use the clinics to get the healthcare only 3 percent of the business is abortion it is the only part that finds itself federal funding does not cover abortions if you get when you have to pay for it if you defund planned parenthood literally all they can do is abortion care that is not what protesters mean they think they stop abortions but really they dont. Host are Abortion Services profitable . Nobody is in it to make a living but they pay for themselves and cover their cost because there are no federal funds already allocated to that so basically what you wind up doing to get rid of federal funding you get rid of all healthcare. Host we were chatting in the studio talking about your tour in england and some of the questions man wed ask you. I didnt get that many questions from men in america that multiple man wed ask did you talk to the man helping to make these decisions . The answer was no actually. I never spoke specifically to men i was interviewing the woman at the clinic but in the course of my interview i did asked the them. The vast majority did tell their partners they were pregnant or considering an abortion if not it was because of rape or incest or the man already left the scene. Even when man were supportive when they drove the woman to the clinic or went in with her were paid for it the women felt very alone and isolated they you dont understand it stopping to me. Me they shouldnt do this but all books of yours that i have read try to find that character that you identify with i did in all of them i way off . [laughter] it is a really interesting character in many ways the future of america could be in the post roe v wade world a girl who has run out of options to have a judicial waiver so she does have to tell her parents and something happens with the judging cannot be there that day. And when they reschedule this past the legal limit in mississippi. And then to have a medication abortion. In many states where we see personhood statutes one is coming up on the ballot on tuesday in alabama when he trying to facilitate your own abortion you could be charge for murder. I dont see that but all of is a 70 yearold woman. [laughter] she is at the clinic obviously not to get an abortion. And then to point out not just for abortion care. But i love olive and is the heart of the books i will take that as a compliment. If i could be anyone it would be the Abortion Provider doctor ward. Host i want to show the cover i asked some people what they think of the cover what do you think . I think its beautiful. Those womens faces are caught among the colors. And then the pastel colors we would consider more feminine because it is about womens reproductive health. If i was walking past that book in an airport unless i was familiar would not stop to pick it up. I would argue it isnt always a function of the cover. With that huge gender bias and that would never be a checkbook to have a cartoon cover or the disembodied part on it somewhere that is too high brow. We do you know there is intense gender discrimination in publishing because of one group that has actually done the numbers count every year they crunch numbers to see how many female authors are reviewed by traditional outlets and how many women are actually reviewers. And a have expanded. Now they look at people of color and disabilities and non binary authors and they start to see how white and male driven publishing is. Womens fiction category. Also someone called a womens fictiocall the womensfiction ao with what is between the cover then what is between the authors legs. And i offer as an example of that my book small great things which is about racism in america but doesnt have a single case and one best romance novel. [inaudible] it makes me fear for the romance future of poland. After cohost could you were quoted in 2013 saying i dont mind the term chicklette. I dont have integrated, but people assume i do because i happened to have a vagina. Guest i guest im sorry if youre picking up my book for chicklette but by definition its supposed to be something with humor in it. When i write a book about the holocaust that would necessarily be my first choice for a chicklette book. I love fiction and genre fiction. I read widely and i think there is a place for that for all kinds of genre fiction. There was a. Years ago. There was a huge uproar because they took with the women of the novelists page. If you want to have a subcategory, i am all for that. Host was there a process to make sure they get feature as well . Guest nobody consulted me but you make them a subset. Host do you have any idea how many of your readers are women . Guest i was tired of being called a womens fiction author that i tracked it and i can pull you 50 of my mail comes from men and they often write and say im sure im the only man reading your books because youve been conditioned and i always say no, resecure your masculinity. I hear from many men. Women read it and take away Different Things from my novels. I would urge men watching this s program, go to your bookshelf and see, do you read a female author for every male authored you read and i bet you will find you dont end up maybe that is something you should change. Host why all the references to astronomy though a spark of life . Guest i guess the thing that stayed with me is the idea when we see light from a star you are looking into the past and this is a book about time in many ways. It was chronologically backward. Its about what brings people to believe things they believe about controversial topics in ad is that something that we find is our own personal experience, and when the hostage negotiator, he is a single dad and this is what they bond over is a little stars and going to look at stars. For me it felt like the perfect metaphor for this particular book. Host where did the title come from . Guest the title has a great story it was in the original title. My publisher didnt like the original and for about a month host are you going to tell us what it was . Guest moment of conception. It wasnt necessarily about where life begins as much as where bullies begin tha but they felt that was too clinical, so for a month we went back and forth and they tried to give the other titles and i hated them so one day my amazing editor called me and had been on a flight and read somethingrab something at t magazine about a study that had been done by some scientists in the midwest and it was about the moment sperm fertilize an egg under a highpowered microscope you can see a flash of light and its actually the zinc inside of the egg giving away. Whats great about it is that they have ascertained that the bigger the spark, the more healthy the embryo is and you can imagine how thats going to have unbelievable ramifications for people who do in vitro because you only have a certain number of embryos and who knows which one is going to faint, the healthiest ones are the biggest spark of life, but im thinking about that and thinking about my fictional doctor whos modeled after Willie Parker a devout christian and thinks about the universe beginning with light, then there was light, and reading this biological essay about the spark of life that happens at the fertilization moment between a sperm and egg, and i thought i can make this work absolutely. Host are you a big seller with your 25, 26 bestselling books that you can determine what the title of your book is and what the cover looks like . Guest i always get cover input. They show me and ask what do i think of it and i told them if i like it or dont like it. That wasnt the original cover for a spark of light. The original one looked a lot more like small great things. I liked the cover but i didnt want people confusing the two, so our amazing art director came back with that and it caught my eye and i loved it. Host speaking of small great things, that is the next one we are going to talk about. What does that represent . Guest when i look at the cover i think of those colored chips artists use, and if you look at the covers, there are spots where color is missing. Theres something not quite right about the color. Theres definitely an absence. Small great things about racism in america and metaphorically to me, that was such a beautiful illustration of what i was trying to talk about. Host and again, or you kennedy. Guest that book looks at its based off of a reallife incident that happened in flint, michigan. An africanamerican nurse with 25 Years Experience in the labor and delivery ward delivered a babbaby and that the father saie didnt want her or anyone who looked like her to touch his kid and pulled up his sleeve to reveal a swastika tattoo. The incident they put a postit note and the babies file saying no africanamerican person can touch this baby. A bunch of personnel came together and sued, i hope that they got a great payout. But what if she was the only one along with the debut and something went wrong and she wound up being brought up on charges of murder and what if she was defended by a white public defender who like me, like many of my friends would never consider herself to be a racist. What if i could tell the story anin her voice and the voice ofa white supremacist and the voice of the public defender and they begin to unpack her own feelings about race. Toomey, small great things is meant to say over eyes a little lighter. Its easy for white people to point of a white supremacist and is a thats a racist. Its harder for white people to point to themselves than t and y the same thing. And get race is about prejudice and if you are white in america, you hold all the power of. Although it is easier for us to kind of see the headwinds of racism and to know if you are a person of color your life might be a little harder, its difficult for white people to acknowledge the challenge of racism and the fact that there are benefits that come to us because we happen to be born like this. And that is something that is on white people to learn and fix. Ultimately that is why i wrote this book and the audience i was hoping for. Host a quote from kennedy who became jeffersons lawyer in the. Quantico id wanted to live like ruth david, just for an afternoon, but not if it meant i would be in danger. Guest right. One of the things i get asked a lot is people will read the book you say i this rocks my world and i need to do better. I certainly learned when i wrote about it i live my life differently as a result of writing the book. One of the things i talk about is making yourself an easy and putting yourself in a situation where this isnt the predominant color in the room and most people havent had that experience. If they do, it makes them feel a little on edge. And thats okay. That actually means you are learning something if you feel that uneasy. Its part of many things you can do if you want to be actively antiracist. Another good thing to do is to learn the difference between equal and equitable. Equal means the same, equitable means fair. If you have a student in her class and your teacher and she was blind, would you giv but yoe test as everyone else, of course not. You did a test with the same information. Thats what i mean. We need to figure out that in life because of systemic and institutional racism, people are starting at different points. So we have to make sure in whatever line of work we are in that everyone has a fair chance to get to the finish line. Thats what equitable means. Things like that, talking to people around you. The role of the white ally is to talk to people who look like us and to say the aware of the fact that you have privileges that families of color arent going to have. How are you going to take advantage of that privilege if you are a mom and have a second grader can go to your Childs School and say what are you teaching about africanamerican history, just slavery or some inventors and some role models that also happened to be black . Even better if you are a white parent asking that stuff. No matter where you are in your life you can find a way to be actively antiracist. Host was it tough for you, jodi picoult, to give some semblance of sympathy deterred and brick . Guest its hard to find anything likable about White Supremacists and hes the only character i pretend where at the end of writing a section i would have to go downstairs and take a shower because i felt dirty and it was so, it felt too easy for me to be able to slip into his patterns of speech and i hated myself for that. It made me so uncomfortable, but ultimately, i think it is very rare that you find someone as a fillin is 100 evil. I dont think anyone is 100 good and i dont think anyone is 100 evil. I do have thoughts about politics but we wont go into that right now. In my fiction, people are balanced and diverse multishades of gray and i needed sympathy for him and ultimately, he is a dad who lost his baby. Any parent would feel empathy for the. Any parent could understand how hard that is, no matter what you think of his disgusting beliefs, you understand he might be grieving the loss of a child. Ive heard from many people who read the book and said that it was so hard for them to realize that they felt sympathy for him. Theres another scene where he proposes him and its a very romantic comedy moment and people said how dare he have a romance, like as if the people that are reprehensible in their beliefs dont follow above. Of course they do. And that was really critical to me to recognize that as a reader, you are going to feel it has and say maybe i do have something in common but thats also important because he has a change of beliefs by the end of the novel and you should be able to believe that someone who is morally reprehensible can find a way out into the light. Host all y