In this Pod, we'll explpre what stays constant in us, what changes, and whether becoming a person means discovering who we are or learning how to live with all the selves we have been.

Most of us carry more than one version of ourselves: who we were, who others think we are, who we hoped to become, who we had to become, and who we are still becoming now.

Together, we'll explore: How much can a person really change? What makes you still you? Can we make peace with who we have been?

We'll use the short readings and films to help us think about the public self and private self, the self we inherit, the selves we perform, the selves we lose, and the selves we slowly learn to welcome home.

Preparation between sessions is designed to take under two hours. 

For this Pod, we will draw our conversation catalysts from the range of sources below, including poems, essays, short stories, memoir excerpts, visual art, and film or television. The final selections may shift slightly in response to the interests, questions, and energy of the group. 

The first session readings will be shared three weeks before the start of the Pod. 

Sources we'll draw from: 

• Jorge Luis Borges, “Borges and I” (short prose) 

• Derek Walcott, “Love After Love” (poem) 

• Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (film) 

• May Sarton, “Now I Become Myself” (poem) 

• Langston Hughes, “Theme for English B” (poem) 

• Zadie Smith, “Speaking in Tongues” (essay) 

• Amy Tan, “Mother Tongue” (essay) 

• Richard Rodriguez, “Aria” from Hunger of Memory (memoir excerpt) 

• Ocean Vuong, “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” (poem)

• Maggie Smith, “Good Bones” (poem) 

• Marie Howe, “What the Living Do” (poem)

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” excerpt (essay excerpt) 

• Three Identical Strangers (documentary) J

• oshua Rothman, “What If You Could Do It All Over?” The New Yorker (magazine article) 

• Joan Didion, “On Self-Respect” (essay)