This chapter explores the challenges of having a shared version of events and the subjective nature of memory. The narrator recounts a specific incident where their parents did not remember a collective phone call about getting a divorce. They reflect on the implications of memory distortion and the difficulties in determining the truth when different individuals have different recollections of the same experience.
This week, journalist and podcaster Jessi Hempel joins us to discuss her recent memoir, “The Family Outing,” which tells the remarkable story of how every member of her immediate family came out: Jessi and her father as gay, her sister as bisexual, her brother as transgender, and her mother as the survivor of a traumatic encounter with a man who may have been a serial killer. It’s a dramatic setup, to be sure, but as the book unfolds, it grows into something else — a powerful and thought-provoking meditation on what it means to live authentically.