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.

Across three conversations, we will ask: Are we who we have always been? How much can a person really change? What makes you still you? Can we make peace with who we have been?

We will draw from a range of sources to explore this big life question, including short prose, poems, essays, memoir, film, and documentary. Together, these works will help us think about the public self and private self, the languages and worlds we inherit, the selves we perform, the selves we lose, and the selves we slowly learn to welcome home.

As always, the readings and films are a shared starting point. Prior experience is never required.

For this Pod, we will draw our readings and films from the range of sources below, including poems, essays, short stories, memoir excerpts, visual art, and film or television.

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)

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

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