Intro Rewind: Suleika Jaouad (Extended)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Late Show Pod Show with Stephen Colbert

Episode: Intro Rewind: Suleika Jaouad (Extended)
Date: August 23, 2025

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Overview and Main Theme

This episode centers around the power of creative alchemy—particularly through journaling—to transform life’s most difficult moments into sources of meaning, connection, and even joy. Stephen Colbert converses with bestselling author Suleika Jaouad about her new book, The Book of Alchemy, exploring her philosophy of turning pain and challenge into art. The episode also touches on personal anecdotes of journaling, maintaining creativity as adults, and Jaouad’s unique partnership and performance tour with her husband, musician Jon Batiste.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Stephen and Becca’s Personal Updates (04:28–08:44)

• Travel & Hiking: Stephen discusses upcoming travel to Switzerland for a wedding, sharing plans for hiking with his wife, Evie, and reflecting humorously on previous hiking experiences.
  • “I’ve taken. I’m dipping my toes into our new hiking lifestyle, and we’re gonna go hiking in Switzerland.” (05:35)
• Journaling Habits: Both share their mixed histories with journaling, the difficulties of consistency, and the value of even short, low-pressure writing.
  • “I journaled over Lent this year… I put the lowest possible pressure on myself because I journaled in a…calendar…you couldn’t get in more than like five or six sentences.” (08:31)
• Sentimentality and Books: Stephen speaks on the comfort and nostalgia of keeping certain books—and an old found diary—close by:
  • “It’s not a pile of books. That’s a life raft. I have lashed those books together so in the middle of the night when I wake up, I can grab any one of them and I know what they’re giving me.” (14:03)

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2. The Meaning of Names and Personal Connections (14:54–15:53)

• Mispronunciations & Respect: Stephen reveals he’d been mispronouncing Suleika’s name for 10 years, only learning the correct version right before the interview.
  • “[About her name] And later I apologize to her, and she goes, it’s fine. Both of them are fine.” (15:27)

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3. Interview with Suleika Jaouad (16:19–27:51)

Creative Alchemy & Universality (16:29–19:19)

• The Book of Alchemy: Suleika explains the book’s premise of “creative alchemy”—using creative expression to transmute difficulty into meaning and beauty.
  • “The alchemy I’m writing about in this book is creative alchemy…how we can transmute a difficult passage in life through the vehicle of creative expression into something interesting and meaningful and maybe even beautiful.” — Suleika Jaouad (16:29)
• Accessibility of Creativity: She insists creativity is a natural gift for everyone, not just artists. Childhood creativity gets “injured” over time.
• Early Trauma and ‘Creative Injuries’: Shares a formative eighth-grade experience where a short story inspired by Lolita led not to praise but being sent to the school psychologist:
  • “Everyone received their assignments back. Everyone except me…summoned to meet with…the school psychologist…so humiliated…” (17:39)
  • “That sense of uninhibited freedom, of purity was gone for me. And I think that’s the case for a lot of us.” (19:17)

The Power and Purpose of Journaling (19:27–21:11)

• Journaling as Practice: Suleika advocates journaling because it’s low-pressure, private, and accessible.
  • “Journaling isn’t beautiful writing. It’s not even necessarily grammatical writing. There’s no right or wrong way to do it… to write your way back to yourself.” — Suleika (19:31)
• Journaling as Life-Saving: Chronicles how journaling became a lifeline after her leukemia diagnosis:
  • “Journaling went from being a sort of pastime and hobby to something that really felt like a lifeline…The act of externalizing those emotions on paper was transformative.” (20:12)
  • “It allowed me to be in conversation with myself and in doing that, to be able to be in conversation with the people around me.” (20:37)

Creative Community & Partnership with Jon Batiste (21:31–24:54)

• On Tour, On Stage: Suleika and Jon blended reading and live music on her book tour: “We wanted to enact the idea of creative alchemy…to show an audience what creativity can do in a communal space, how it can connect us…” (22:10)
• Origin Story: Reveals how their friendship from band camp became deeply significant, especially during her hospital stays:
  • “John challenged me at the very beginning to practice what I’m preaching in this book, which is this idea of returning to that uninhibited sense of play and experimentation that we do as kids…” (22:24)
  • Memorable Moment: Jon and bandmates surprised her with a musical visit while she was in the hospital; the music created an impromptu, joyful gathering in the corridors (23:54).
  • “I remember writing in my journal, the saints marched in today, and they played that song, too.” — Suleika (24:48)

Reading from Childhood Journal & Reflections (24:54–26:05)

• Excerpt: At Colbert’s request, Suleika reads a childhood journal entry titled “Goals and Predictions”, revealing humorous and existential youthful ambitions:
  • “Number one, be first bass in a high class orchestra. Number two, travel around writing philosophical and political messages on toilet seats under the name De Sus. Number three, die. And for a split second after, realize what I thought was, isn’t…” (25:16)

Facing Illness with Creativity and Gentleness (26:11–27:51)

• Health Update: Shares that her leukemia has returned, and candidly rejects the cliche of living every day as if it’s your last.
  • “When you learn for the third time that you have cancer, it’s easy to feel like you have a sort of Damocles hanging over you…my doctor…said you have to live every day as if it’s your last. And respectfully, I’ve come to believe that this is terrible advice.” (26:15)
  • “Instead I’ve had to shift to a gentler mindset. And I’m trying to live every day as if it’s my first…to wake up with that sense of pure, uninhibited creative freedom, that sense of wonder and curiosity that a little kid might.” (27:21)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On journaling as survival:
  “The act of externalizing those emotions on paper was transformative… it allowed me to be in conversation with myself and… with the people around me.”
  — Suleika Jaouad [20:12–20:37]

• On childlike creativity and healing:
  “I’m trying to live every day as if it’s my first…to wake up with that sense of pure, uninhibited creative freedom, that sense of wonder and curiosity that a little kid might.”
  — Suleika Jaouad [27:31]

• On creative partnership:
  “John challenged me at the very beginning to practice what I’m preaching in this book…to dust my bass off for the first time in many, many years, which was terrifying for me and so joyous…”
  — Suleika Jaouad [22:24]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Stephen/Becca Catch-Up & Journaling Chat: 04:28–14:53
• Stephen’s Anecdotes about Names, Journaling, and Books: 14:54–15:53
• Interview with Suleika Jaouad:
  • Introduction & Book premise: 16:19–19:19
  • The creative wound (eighth grade story): 17:39–19:19
  • The role of journaling: 19:27–21:11
  • Jon Batiste and the alchemy tour: 21:31–24:54
  • Reading from childhood journal: 24:54–26:05
  • Reflection on cancer and daily living: 26:11–27:51

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Tone & Style

The episode maintains a warm, honest, conversational tone combining Colbert’s signature wit and curiosity with Jaouad’s deep candor and resilience. Both participants echo a sense of humility, vulnerability, and the redemptive power of creativity and community.

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Further Information

• The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad features writings from Jon Batiste, Gloria Steinem, Salman Rushdie, Lena Dunham, and others.
• Listeners are encouraged to check out supplemental content on The Late Show’s YouTube channel.

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For listeners seeking insight on creativity, healing, and sustaining hope through challenges, this episode delivers empathy, practical wisdom, and inspiration.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, everybody. Stephen Colbert here about to read the copy for our sponsor. This is from our friends at Wonderful Pistachios. And I was the wonderful pistachio spokesman for years. Yeah, I have a real close association with nut meat. Okay. You know what they say when they reach for a snack? Don't hold back. And that's exactly the approach with Wonderful Pistachios. The don't hold back snack. These little wonders are so tasty, it feels like getting away with something. But surprise. Each serving has 6 grams of protein and 0 grams of regret. That's right. No guilt. Just glory, glory in our nuts. Whether it's a satisfying crack of in shell pistachios, and that's capitalized in shell, or the smooth, instant gratification of no shells. No judgment. That's just it. Just eat. No judgment. I take issue with one thing. It's instant gratification. It's super tasty smooth.

[B]

It's a hard nut smooth.

[A]

Exactly. I mean, even out of the shell, it's still a nut.

[B]

We can't disparage the nuts. You.

[A]

I'm not disparaging the nut. I'm describing the nut.

[B]

Don't disparage any flavors.

[A]

I'm not. I am celebrating the pistachio right now. I'm on board. I love pistachios.

[B]

I love.

[A]

I love crushed pistachio. Like a pistachio crusted trout. Oh, unbelievable. Instead of a trout amandine, a trout pistachio. Fantastic. Enough butter? Who cares?

[B]

Very good.

[A]

And I love pistachio ice cream.

[B]

Have you had the sea salt and vinegar? Wonderful pistachio. It's delicious. I get them.

[A]

I didn't even know I get them.

[B]

Before the softball games.

[A]

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[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

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[B]

That was a wonderful.

[A]

I wonder what more there is to learn. We just told them so much. We just told them so much about pistachios. But evidently there's a whole other world. There's an unexplored vista.

[B]

They got a bunch of flavors. They got dill pickle, jalapeno lime, as we learned, smoky barbecue. There's a lot of different flavors.

[A]

Wow. And I would not disparage any of them.

[B]

No, no, no.

[A]

Bring it on.

[B]

Nothing bad to say.

[A]

Nut me, nut. Nut me with nut meat.

[B]

We're nut.

[A]

No, we got nothing but nut. Nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty. Talk about, talk about, talk about, talk about, talk about nutty. Good.

[C]

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[D]

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[B]

Hey, everybody. You're listening to the Late Show Pod show with Stephen Colbert. Hi, Stephen.

[A]

I'm doing good. How are you doing, Becca?

[B]

I'm doing great. I'm happy to be here. It's break. We're having a nice time.

[A]

We are on break. What are you doing? You got any plans?

[B]

I'm going to Asbury Park, New Jersey.

[A]

Oh, fantastic.

[B]

For the Memorial Day weekend. Never been there before.

[A]

You gonna see Bruce?

[B]

Oh, is Bruce. Oh, I don't know.

[A]

Welcome to Asbury Park. That album.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[A]

I'm actually going hiking over this.

[B]

Hiking.

[A]

My wife Evie, you may be familiar with her work. Yes, my wife Evie has been kind of warning me, but also informing me that we're gonna be hiking in the future. That as we now we're in our 60s, there's gonna be a lot of hiking.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Cause it's fairly low impact, but strenuous. And she's so much healthier than I am on so many levels. Mentally, spiritually, physically, cardiovascularly, everything. Probably endocrine on every level. She's, like, elite, and I try to keep up with her. And so we're. This is. This is.

[B]

I've.

[A]

I've taken. I'm dipping my toes into our new hiking lifestyle, and we're gonna go hiking in Switzerland.

[B]

Oh, in Switzerland.

[A]

We have a wedding. A friend's friend. A friend's daughter is getting married in the French Alps.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

And so we're gonna. We're gonna go over to Switzerland and do some hiking.

[B]

Okay. Cause I was gonna ask, when people are like, how do we feel about hiking? When going on a trip somewhere, people.

[A]

Say, how do we feel about hiking?

[B]

Yeah. And the question is, what kind of hiking are we talking about? Are we talking about there's a backpack on and you're maybe camping while on the hike, or are we talking about going a beautiful nature walk that involves, you know, some terrain? But it's not.

[A]

We are. I think we're doing a combo platter here. I think. I think we're doing a day of like, hey, let's go out and walk this beautiful valley and maybe get into some heights. Get up in those pine trees over there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Beautiful. But. But then we're. But then at the end of the day, it's like 400 thread count sheets.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. That's the ideal.

[A]

That is exactly ideal.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And, like, I would be a pilgrim in, like, the Middle Ages, like, walking into Santiago de Capostello if I could have those 400 thread count sheets, you know, just like Jesus did.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And. But. And then I think the second hike we're doing is going to be a serious one. It was hiking into Italy.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

And so that's going to be. That's going to be backpacks and stuff like that.

[B]

You have boots you're breaking into.

[A]

I already broke them in. I do. We do some. We've done a few. We did. We hiked Sedona last year.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

Which is a lot of fun.

[B]

Okay. This is gonna be beautiful.

[A]

It's gonna be fantastic. I think it's gonna destroy me, but other than that.

[B]

Yeah, but you're. I mean, it's nice.

[A]

I know.

[B]

It's a good Exercise.

[A]

On our honeymoon we went hiking. We hiked in Waimea Canyon. And I had to stop coming out of Waimea Canyon. And I thought, she is gonna divorce me. She just, she could ask for an annulment right now because I can't even get out of this damn canyon. How am I gonna like pick up grandkids?

[B]

Yeah, man. I mean, walking sometimes. Sometimes there's the end of the road, sometimes on the other road, you gotta sit down. But you do good. You do. Any good hiking snacks? Any good hike snacks?

[A]

I'm a gorp man.

[B]

Gorp. Gorp core.

[A]

Yeah, gorp core.

[B]

Gorp core.

[A]

Is that a musical genre I don't know about?

[B]

Yeah, something like that. Something like that. Gore Tex.

[A]

Yeah, I like, I like a. Give me a good old cliff bar. Yeah, you know, yeah, I'll take a cliff. I'll take trail mix. As long as I'm on trail.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

It's one of the few times I drink water.

[B]

Yeah, you gotta stay hydrated. You gotta stay hydrated when you're doing the big walks. Okay, well, beautiful, beautiful hiking time. And this is a nice podcast to listen to on a hike. This is a friend of the show. Dear friend of the show. First time on the show, but knows you very well. Knows members of the band extremely well. Was just on. She's a lovely. She just put out a book called the Book of Alchemy.

[A]

Oh, Soulaica Joy.

[B]

Yes, sure. Yes. So wonderful. Such a lovely interview. Wanted to put it on the pod.

[A]

Perfect.

[B]

Do you do any journaling? That was something I wanted to ask.

[A]

I journaled over lent this year. I've tried to journal many times. Like when I travel, I sometimes journal.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like when I was a kid. Kid meaning like in my 20s and I'd hiking around Europe. I journaled. I filled a whole journal that summer.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that's the last time I seriously journaled. And I'm 61 now. I was probably 24 or 25 then and I started journaling again over Lent and I really enjoyed it. And I put the. I put the lowest possible pressure on myself because I journaled in a. Someone had given me a beautiful leather bound calendar, old fashioned, like analog calendar. And I went, well, every day has got entries that just go all across both pages, like the butterfly of both pages. And I went, okay, I'll just fill just that, that one day. And you couldn't get in more than like five or six sentences. Oh, that's so fun. I'll just say what was the highlight of the day? What the day mean to me. And then. And then think about Lind and I. I forgot it when we went on our last break. And so there was a whole week missing. And then I went, ah, the hell with it.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

And I stopped. But I got a couple weeks in there.

[B]

Yeah. No, that's really nice.

[A]

I feel the value. I swear, I feel the value of it. I envy people who have. Like David Sedaris. He's been journaling since he was a child every day for his entire life.

[B]

That's great.

[A]

You can look back.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. No, I'm the same way. The discipline of it is, like, if I can get in a groove, that's great. But, yeah. As soon as there's blank pages, I feel like, well, I already blew it. But the more you do, that's like a bullet point.

[A]

Mindy Kaling gave me a journal. Beautiful leather bound journal with, like, gold embossing everything when I got this gig.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it is my journey to the late show, given to Stephen Colbert by Mindy Kaling is what it says on the COVID Very important for her to be part of the story.

[B]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

I started that when we first started. When we first started the show, I journaled.

[B]

Oh, that's nice.

[A]

I journaled for a while.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Cool. Yeah.

[A]

I've gone back to read it. No great pearls of wisdom.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's the danger of journaling. You go back and go like, ooh, what. What was I now in perspective? I can see what that was like. What was I taking from the day? Almost nothing.

[B]

Yeah, totally. Oh, I found an old high school diary over the last break. So hard to read. So hard to read.

[A]

When my mom passed, I took her diary.

[B]

Oh, nice.

[A]

And she diaried late in her life. And it's beautiful. It's mostly about us kids.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

On the street once in New York when we used to live on 86th Street, I was walking to the subway and. And there was a pile of books just on the side of the road. Like, I think they might have been, like, meant for the trash can, but the trash can was full. So somebody just put a pile of books next to the trash can. And they were old books, so I looked through them. There was nothing much that interested me. But the top book was this beautiful green leather book, like a daily diary. And on the front of it, it had this symbol, this golden bird stylized bird on the front, which I realized is the symbol of the Bird's eye Frozen food Corporation. And it was a diary of a man who worked for Bird's Eye frozen food. Like in the early 50s.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When Bird's Eye was new. Like, frozen food was this new technology because you had to have frozen shipping containers and stuff like that. Or like truckers and stuff like that. You had a continuous chain of freezing the entire way. And it's this guy. He was some. I don't know. I couldn't tell if it was in sales or some sort of administration or accountancy or something within the Bird's Eye Corporation. And it's his life in, like, 1952 New York. And I picked it up right before we left the city and moved out to New Jersey. And he had friends in the Journal who lived on our street in New Jersey.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

And I've always wanted to. I've never taken the time to go, okay, I wonder if I could find this family. Do they still live out there? But it's talking about, like, trying to. It's all about trying to convince people. Like, it's his daily diary about just his life and everything, but also, like, the challenges of getting people to buy into the new frozen food world.

[B]

That's so interesting.

[A]

It's something we take for granted.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then one day, one journal entry is like, stop by the Havishams for drinks with Barbara. Great night. Or whatever like that. And then it's all him walking home from his office in Midtown to their Upper east side place. And then the next day, it says, went to the dentist. Seven teeth to be pulled.

[B]

Oh, gosh.

[A]

Lower than a snake. Meaning, like, his emotion. Like, you know what? It's great. And it's just this guy's life. And I've thought, like, I wonder if I could, like, a theater piece out of this. I just have this man's life from 1952.

[B]

Wow. That's really special.

[A]

Yeah. And I still have it. It's still. I think it's actually presently on my bedside table. I always. I don't know why. There's certain things I was just like, I just keep nearby. Like, I keep 100 selected poems by E.E. cummings nearby.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I keep, like, either Franny or Zoe or Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters and Seymour Introduction or Nine stories nearby.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, I keep a copy of the New Testament, Proverbs and Psalms. I keep it nearby. It's just always kind of there. One of my favorite sci fi books from my childhood in case I need to read it to calm myself down. Cause certain books are just Xanax for me. And Evie's always complaining, like, what are you gonna do with that pile of books? I'm like, it's not a pile of books. That's a life raft.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

I have lashed those books together so in the middle of the night when I wake up, I can grab any one of them and I know what they're giving me.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And one of them is this guy's diary.

[B]

Yeah. This would be. I wonder if there's a way that, like, the last 10 seconds of the good night act, you could just, like.

[A]

Read a quick page on this date.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This date. All that'd be funny.

[B]

And then see if anyone calls in with, like, I know who this guy is.

[A]

Do you know who this guy is? And then I read something just like a page, like, it's the last act before I say goodnight. Like, all right, let's go to this guy's diary. And I read something from 70 years ago.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In New York.

[B]

Really? Cool.

[A]

All right, we'll try it.

[B]

We'll try it.

[A]

We'll try it. We'll talk to Tom.

[B]

Great.

[A]

You gotta sell it.

[B]

I will. I'll pitch. I'll be ready.

[A]

All right, great.

[B]

All right. Well, speaking of journaling, this is Suleika Jawad. And this is is the late Joe Padro.

[A]

And by the way, I'm just gonna jump in here. I have known Sulaika for 10 years.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I call her Suleika.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And I, right before she came on the band said, it's Suleika. I said, what? It's Suleika. I said, it's Sulaika. Nope, it's Suleika. And I said, I've been calling her Sulaika for 10 years. And they said because she's married to.

[B]

Jon Batiste, she's famously married to John Batiste.

[A]

Yeah. And they go, that's what John calls her. Wait, what? So John calls her by the wrong name. And so later I apologize to her and she goes, it's fine. Both of them are fine.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I just felt terrible. I'm not only a friend, but I'm a fan.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, all right.

[A]

Just ask your friends what their actual names are.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

By the way, it's Steve Buscemi.

[B]

Mm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I thought it was Buscemi. It's Buscemi.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

All right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Okay. This is the POD Show. Thanks, Steven. Always a pleasure.

[A]

Bye.

[B]

Bye.

[A]

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Late show, folks. My next guest is a best selling author whose writing includes Between Two, Life Interrupted and the Isolation Journals. Her new book is the Book of Alchemy. Please welcome to the Late Show. Sulaika Jawad.

[E]

It'S so good to see you.

[A]

The new book is here. As I said, the Book of Alchemy. Suleika, what kind of alchemy are we talking about here?

[E]

The alchemy I'm writing about in this book is creative alchemy. And it has become a kind of philosophy of life for me, which is how we can transmute a difficult passage in life through the vehicle of creative expression into something interesting and meaningful and maybe even beautiful.

[A]

And is that an invitation to everyone or do you have to be a lifelong artist to do this?

[E]

So I'm of the opinion that creativity is a gift that we all have access to as kids. We have such an organic relationship to our creativity. We play make believe, we tap into our imagination, and that starts to change as we get creative injuries and it gets knocked out of us as adults. And I can remember the moment that that happened for me in the eighth grade. I was a kid who had this kind of uninhibited freedom when it came to creating creative expression. I played the bass, I painted. And my first great love, which was keeping the journal, was where I found a sense of refuge and belonging. And in the eighth grade, my English teacher invited our entire class to write a creative short story over spring break. And I was thrilled about this, given my love of writing. And I spent that entire spring break filling up an entire 40 page yellow legal pad with a whole novella. Now, I didn't have quite the same vault of life experiences to draw upon for inspiration, and I had been reading Nabokov Lolita at the time. And so when I handed in this short story, which ended up being about 40 pages long, I was awaiting praise from my teacher. I was awaiting possibly a literary agent, maybe even widespread publication. But instead, everyone received their assignments back. Everyone except me. And I was summoned to meet with a very different figure, the school psychologist. And, you know, I can laugh about this now, but I was so humiliated. And this beloved English teacher of mine never said a word to me about my short story. And it would take many, many years before I dared show my writing to anyone. And I still journal relentlessly because there are parts of yourself that you just can't shut down. But that sense of uninhibited freedom, of purity was gone for me. And I think that's the case for a lot of us.

[A]

Has your journaling always been for other people or is it completely private?

[E]

So I, you know, this book is about the Value of cultivating a daily creative practice. And the creative practice that, to me, feels the most successful has always been journaling. Because journaling isn't beautiful writing. It's not even necessarily grammatical writing. There's no right or wrong way to do it. You show up as you are, you take a few minutes, or however much time you can spare, to write your way back to yourself. And so for me, journaling has been a touch point. It doesn't require fancy equipment. It doesn't require any technical prowess.

[A]

You say it saved your life.

[E]

It saved my life. How so? When I turned 22, I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia. And even though I had been journaling for my entire life, journaling went from being a sort of pastime and hobby to something that really felt like a lifeline. It was a first massive interruption for me. And I had so much sadness and so much anger, and I felt so deeply isolated, and I didn't know how to carry all of those feelings inside of me. And so the act of externalizing those emotions on paper was transformative. But what surprised me, I think more than anything, is that it allowed me to be in conversation with myself and in doing that, to be able to be in conversation with the people around me. And that, to me, is the power of a creative practice like journaling. It allows us to alchemize what may feel painful into something.

[A]

Well, one of the people around you is our old friend John Batiste, who is your husband. And on your book tour, it wasn't just you. John went out with you on the book tour and played piano while you actually read from your book. And it's not every book tour that also sees a double bass on stage. That's you and John playing on stage. What was the vision for this?

[E]

So John and I met at band camp when I was about 12 years old. And son was 13.

[A]

Yep.

[E]

And from the very beginning, this book is dedicated to him. He is, I think, my first teacher, in a sense, in this notion of creative alchemy. And we wanted to enact the idea of creative alchemy to show an audience what creativity can do in a communal space, how it can connect us to one another, how it can leave you feeling transformed. And John challenged me at the very beginning to practice what I'm preaching in this book, which is this idea of returning to that uninhibited sense of play and experimentation that we do as kids without worrying about if we're a good artist or a bad artist. And to dust my bass off for the first time in many, many years, which was terrifying for me and so joyous. I'm returning home from this tour wanting to take bass lessons. Not for any reason other than that it was so much fun, but it also, in a way, was a reenactment of this sort of creative alchemy that John first embodied for me, along with some of the members of this band when I was 22. Yeah, let's give a shout out to the band. I found myself here in New York City in the hospital where I'd been for many, many weeks. And things were not going well for me, cancer treatment wise. None of the chemotherapy was working and I was going into bone marrow failure. And the day that I received that news was the day that John learned that I was sick and stuck in the hospital and showed up.

[A]

You guys were not a couple at the time.

[E]

We were not a couple. We were just old friends from, you know, band camp. Band camp showed up with the band unannounced at my hospital room door. And as the sound of John's melodica and Joe's tambourine and abandas tuba and Eddie Sachs began to float out into the hallway, patients and doctors and nurses started to filter out of their rooms. And right there in the hospital corridors, everyone began to clap and dance and sing. And they alchemized what was one of the hardest, most frightening days of my life at that point into the most joyous of second lines. And I remember writing in my journal, the saints marched in today, and they played that song, too.

[A]

Well, we gotta get going here, but could you read? Could you read. I'd love if you could read a little bit of your journal from when you were 12 years old. Okay, this is a little bit. This is the journalist who got shut down by the teacher who sent her to the therapist. Yes.

[E]

Okay. So I wrote this entry the summer that I met John. And it is titled Goals and Predictions. And these are my goals and predictions for the rest of my life. So, number one, be first bass in a high class orchestra. Number two, travel around writing philosophical and political messages on toilet seats under the name De Sus. Number three, die. And for a split second after, realize what I thought was, isn't. I think I was just beginning my foray into existentialism that summer. Feeling a lot of big feelings. And the last one, create a base suit by cutting eye and leg holes in my double base case. So.

[A]

So much left to Achie, how are you feeling now? How are you feeling now? How is your leukemia now?

[E]

Has it returned So I learned a year ago that my leukemia was back. And when you learn for the third time that you have cancer, it's easy to feel like you have a sort of Damocles hanging over you. It's easy to feel like you're drowning in an ocean of uncertainty. And when I expressed this to my doctor, he gave me the advice that a lot of people give you when you find yourself in a situation like mine. And he said you have to live every day as if it's your last. And respectfully, I've come to believe that this is terrible advice. It is exhausting to try to make every family dinner as meaningful as possible and to carpe diem the crap out of every moment. And I think that if we were all living every day as if it were our last, our world would be chaos. We'd be cheating on our spouses and emptying our savings account and declaring bankruptcy. And so instead I've had to shift to a gentler mindset. And I'm trying to live every day as if it's my first to.

[B]

Wake.

[E]

Up with that sense of pure, uninhibited creative freedom, that sense of wonder and curiosity that a little kid might. And the way that I do that is through my own tiny acts of creative alchemy.

[A]

Well, the book is the Book of Alchemy. It's your writing. It's John Baptiste is written in here. Gloria Steinem, Salman Rushdie, Lena Dunham, other contributors. It is out and available now. The Book of Alchemy. The Writer so like Ajawad everybody, thank you for listening to the Late Show POD show with Stephen Colbert. Just one more thing. If you want to see more of me, come to The Late Show YouTube channel for more clips and exclusives.

[D]

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[A]

4Th on Paramount plus someone is trying to frame us until our names are cleared.

[B]

More fugitives from Interval like Bonnie and.

[A]

Clyde with better snacks. NCIS Tony and Ziva streaming September 4th on Paramount Plus.