Jodi Picoult: Why Every Villain is the Hero of Their Own Story

Sep 14, 2026

Jodi Picoult, the bestselling author of more than 30 novels, explores the moral gray areas behind her fiction. She discusses inhabiting lives far from her own, why every villain sees themselves as justified, and the dangers of protective lies. They also delve into book bans, empathy, erased women’s voices, aging, mortality, and the stories we rewrite about ourselves.

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INSIGHT

Why Trauma Needs Time Before Retelling

Collective trauma needs time to settle before people can revisit it meaningfully through art or conversation.
Jodi Picoult timed Hollow Bones for 9/11’s 25th anniversary because readers would bring their own memories to its story.

ANECDOTE

The Narrator Who Followed Her Into The Shower

Writing opposing viewpoints can require emotionally inhabiting beliefs the author finds repellent.
While writing a skinhead narrator, Jodi Picoult felt physically uncomfortable and showered after finishing each section.

INSIGHT

Why Every Villain Feels Justified

People rarely see themselves as villains because they interpret their motives as justified, even when others experience their actions as harmful.
That self-justifying perspective explains why the same person can appear heroic to themselves and villainous to everyone else.

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Every villain is the hero of their own story. That line opens part two of Jodi Picoult's thirtieth novel, and she'll tell you it's also how most of us get through any given day, or life.

Picoult is the number one New York Times bestselling author of thirty novels, including My Sister's Keeper, Small Great Things, and Wish You Were Here. Her new one, Hollow Bones, arrives right around the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and centers on a woman whose entire career is built on preparing for catastrophe, who gets blindsided anyway. For three decades, Picoult has done her research by climbing all the way inside other people's lives, including people whose beliefs she can barely stand to sit across from, and a good part of this conversation is about how and why she does that, how it impacts her own life, beliefs, and approach to storytelling. We explore:

What thirty years of living inside other people's heads has actually cost her, including the nightly ritual one narrator forced on her before she could face her own family
The moment in an interview when she had to leave the room, splash water on her face, and decide which version of herself was walking back in
One finding from her research on lying that explains why a small untruth gets harder to take back the longer you hold onto it
Why one of her books landed on the most banned book in America list last year, and how she responded
Where the line actually sits between sugarcoating your own life and bending the truth to protect someone you love, and what tends to happen to people who never find it

If you have ever told a gentler version of the truth to protect somebody you love, this conversation will sit with you for a while.

You can find Jodi at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript

Next week, it's just me, and I want to talk about something that's been on my mind: the moments in our lives that end without us ever knowing they were the last ones. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss that or any upcoming episodes!

Midlife Design Lab: I'm opening up an intimate retreat with me and a small, curated group in Boulder, CO (Oct 24-25, 2026), followed by 3 months of virtual group coaching. A few weeks back, I shared something I'd been building for myself, and the response blew me away, so spots are limited and I expect them to fill fast. If this calls to you, apply here.

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