ReThinking: Margaret Atwood on what AI can’t replace

Summary

WorkLife with Adam Grant

Episode: ReThinking: Margaret Atwood on What AI Can’t Replace

Date: December 16, 2025
Host: Adam Grant (TED)
Guest: Margaret Atwood

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Episode Overview

This lively, insightful conversation puts renowned author Margaret Atwood in the hot seat with Adam Grant to discuss artificial intelligence (AI), creativity, the limits of technology, memoir writing, the power of memory (and enemies), and the perennial problem of book bans. With her trademark wit, Atwood draws on decades of experience to argue that while AI can imitate, it still cannot capture the soul or originality that animates human storytelling. The episode is at once a meditation on technology and creativity, a journey through Atwood’s memories, and a testament to the resilience of literature.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. AI and the Limits of Creativity

[02:52–13:16]

• Human Connection vs. Machine Output:
  Atwood explains that readers seek connection with another human consciousness—a quality AI cannot replicate.

  "People want to feel they're connecting with another human mind...there isn't a soul behind what you're reading." (Margaret Atwood, 02:52)

• What AI Does Well:
  Routine, formulaic writing and company reports, not originality.

  "It's probably quite good at company reports, because those don't have souls." (02:52)

• On AI’s “Writing”:
  AI can mix and match genres and mimic styles for short tasks, but stumbles in originality and deeper meaning.

  • Example: AI's attempt to write a dystopian Atwood-esque story fell short by missing key dystopian tropes (no inescapable system, just bad weather).

    "In a dystopia you can't just move out... Dystopias have to be made by people." (Margaret Atwood, 09:57)

• The Role of Practice and Play in Writing:
  Atwood recounts imitating other authors’ styles for learning and fun, which parallels but transcends what AI does.

• Atwood’s Zero Use of AI:
  She emphatically refuses to use AI in her own process, viewing it as lazy—and takes pride in the labor of writing.

  "Are you mad? Why would I do such a thing?" (12:49)
  "I'm of the workaholic generation, not the hippies." (13:01)

2. AI’s Limitations: Hallucinations vs. Errors

[14:02–15:58]

• AI “Hallucinations” are Just Mistakes:
  Atwood rejects the AI community’s term of “hallucination” for machine mistakes.

  "That's because they want to make AI sound human. So humans have hallucinations, machines don't. They just make mistakes." (15:16)

• Writers and the Threat of AI:
  Atwood is more concerned about AI’s potential for “deepfakes and propaganda” than stealing writers’ jobs. She sees less risk for creative writers, but notes routine writing (like copywriting) is vulnerable.

  "I don't think writers are going to use AI much, because why would they be writers if they can write their own writing?" (16:05)

3. On Memoir Writing and Memory

[21:01–22:14]

• Surprise at Writing a Memoir:
  Atwood never saw herself as a memoirist but was convinced when she realized a memoir could be more selective, less systematic than autobiography.

  "A memoir is not the same as an autobiography.... What you remember is usually stupid things you did, stupid and evil things other people did to you... and high points." (21:06)

• Pleasure in Retelling Difficulty:
  It felt good to write about tough times, now turned into “war stories.”

4. Bullying, Enemies, and the Power We Give Others

[22:14–29:38]

• Life Lessons from Being Bullied:
  Atwood recounts being tormented by a childhood group and discovering the moment when the victim can “walk away.”

  "You realize that the power of those people is dependent on your believing that they have that power." (23:26)

• Universal Experience:
  Letters from readers revealed her experience is widespread and often much worse.

• Letting Go and Forgiveness:
  Cites Nelson Mandela’s choice to release resentment:

  "The moment at which you let them off the hook, they're no longer in your head as this vengeful presence." (26:18)

• Heroes and Monsters:
  Heroes need monsters to define themselves; monsters don't need heroes.

  "What would a monster need a hero for? It's the hero's quest to slay the monster... In order to be a hero... you do have to have a monster to slay." (28:34)

5. Book Bans, Taboo, and Childhood Reading

[31:02–36:17]

• Unburnable ‘Handmaid’s Tale’:
  Atwood describes the fun and danger of burning an unburnable edition of her book for a promo, poking fun at censorship.

• Effectiveness of Book Bans:
  Research shows banned books don’t harm students; if anything, they encourage reading and civic engagement.

• Forbidden Books as Gateways:
  Atwood shares her own experience: sometimes, world classics were read because their covers promised “forbidden” content (racy covers on “War and Peace,” etc.).

6. Atwood’s Lightning Round

[39:46–49:36]

• Worst Writing Advice:
  To give up writing for marriage and grad school—ignored.

  "He was an idiot." (40:14)

• Best Writing Advice:
  Writing is like practicing piano—put in the work, do the hours.

• Dream Dinner Guests:
  She chooses for conversation, not reputation: Oscar Wilde, Nancy Mitford; Emily Bronte (declined).

• Most Recent ‘Rethinking’:
  Continually reconsiders the unpredictability of political regimes.

• On Being ‘Delightfully Disagreeable’ and Uncancellable:
  Atwood owns her willingness to defy expectations, admitting:

  "Not at my age... I'm not likely to say any career destroying thing and nobody can fire me." (44:03)

7. Adam as Psychologist; Good and Evil in People

[45:31–46:52]

• On Human Nature:
  Atwood echoes the presence of good and darkness in people, with most living somewhere in the middle.

• Everyday ‘Evils’:
  Playful debate over which way to put toilet paper on the roll and what counts as truly bad behavior.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On AI's Soullessness:

  "There isn't a soul behind what you're reading. But it's probably quite good at company reports, because those don't have souls."
  (Margaret Atwood, 02:52)

• On Why She Won’t Use AI to Write:

  "Are you mad? Why would I do such a thing?"
  (Margaret Atwood, 12:49)

• On Book Bans:

  "Why do we not give awards to the book banners? Because... their net result is positive."
  (Margaret Atwood, 32:29)

• On the Power Dynamic of Bullies:

  "You realize that the power of those people is dependent on your believing that they have that power."
  (Margaret Atwood, 23:26)

• On Letting Go:

  "The moment at which you let them off the hook, they're no longer in your head as this vengeful presence."
  (Margaret Atwood, 26:18)

• On Being Uncancellable:

  "Not at my age... I'm not likely to say any career destroying thing and nobody can fire me."
  (44:03)

• On Good and Evil:

  "The very good, the very bad, and then degrees of goodness and badness leading up to the center where most of us live."
  (Margaret Atwood, 46:22)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:52 – Atwood’s definition of what AI lacks (“the soul”)
• 09:57 – Atwood describes how AI fails at dystopian storytelling
• 12:49 – Atwood’s fierce rejection of using AI in her writing
• 21:06 – Why she finally wrote a memoir, and what memories matter
• 23:26 – Realization about bullies’ power and walking away
• 28:34 – Commentary on heroes needing monsters
• 31:11 – Story of burning an unburnable Handmaid’s Tale
• 39:52 – Atwood’s “worst writing advice” story
• 40:19 – Her own writing advice (put in the hours)
• 44:03 – On being “delightfully disagreeable” and uncancellable
• 46:22 – Discussion on human moral complexity
• 49:08 – "Is your hair really like that or do you get it done?" (funniest audience question)

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Tone & Style

Throughout, Atwood is dry, incisive, playful, and unshakably original. Grant’s tone is warm, curious, gently humorous, and deferential to Atwood’s wit.

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Conclusion

This episode stands out for Margaret Atwood’s sharp, lived wisdom—on why machines can’t capture what makes storytelling magical, why memories matter more than resumes, and why giving up power over your emotions is the ultimate revenge. It’s equal parts intellectual debate, memoir, and comic send-up of literary culture—delivering practical insights for creatives, writers, technologists, and anyone who’s found themselves haunted by enemies, bad advice, or forbidden books.

Highly recommended for those exploring the intersection of creativity, technology, and the unreplaceable quirks of being human.

Transcript

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[Adam Grant (Host)]

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[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

How do you feel about having enemies?

[Margaret Atwood]

I think it's a part of life. And anyway, if you didn't have any, what sort of boring person are you?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Welcome back to Rethinking my podcast with Ted on the science of what makes us Tick. I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Margaret Atwood is the author best known for the Handmaid's Tale.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

She's won a slew of awards for her novels, poetry collections, nonfiction and children's books. And now, for the first time in 86 years, she's written a memoir, the Book of Lives. It's one of her first books published in the era of AI which she.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Has quite a few thoughts about.

[Margaret Atwood]

People want to feel they're connecting with another human mind, and if it is AI, they're not connecting with another human mind. They are connecting with an amalgam of other human minds put together. We know not how, but there isn't a. What we used to call a soul behind what you're reading. But it's probably quite good at company reports, because those don't have souls. I'm just sharing this with you.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

I first got the chance to speak with Margaret a few years ago about procrastination. She likened it to going swimming in a very cold lake and said, if you're going to do it, you got.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

To just run in screaming.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Today we talked about what convinced her.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

To jump into the very cold lake of writing a memoir and about creativity, AI and what to do about your enemies. Margaret, it's lovely to see you again. Are those all your books behind you?

[Margaret Atwood]

They're all my books, but not all the editions of all my books.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Wow. So I have so many things I want to ask you about, but I think maybe the place that I would love to start this conversation is around AI. You, as far as I'm concerned, have been the most interesting voice on AI and creativity. And as I understand it, you've written dozens of books that AI companies have ingested to train their large language models.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yes.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

But you're not worried that AI is going to outright us?

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, it's quite bad so far, but it depends what you're writing. So if you want to write the equivalent of George Orwell's 1984 romantic schlock for mass consumers, it can probably do that because there's a formula and it likes formulas. So right now, you know, it data scrapes and sticks things together, and you can't actually get anything out of it unless something about that has been put into it. So it is what they used to say, garbage in, garbage out. But not everything that it's scraping is garbage. So I think you could probably get some moderately competent things out of it, including a lot of student essays, which has transformed educational methods already. The write it at home essay is gone, but when it comes to original voice quality writing, I think it probably cannot do that because it can't, so far, write original writing. It will never be Shakespeare, although it can probably do a good imitation of Shakespeare now, as we all can.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

I'm reminded of a brilliant Atlantic piece that you wrote where you mentioned that you used to write in the style of different famous authors when you were Younger.

[Margaret Atwood]

Absolutely. It's good training.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Tell me about that.

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, it's just something we did as part of being graduate students in the early 60s. We used to have. Have to identify passages and guess what century they were from. And then if you had really read a lot of books with very small print, you might be able to guess who the author was. So identifying authors by their style and period. And we did another thing later on when I was teaching, in which I assigned them a whole bunch of passages and got them to try to guess whether the writer was male or female. And they were quite bad at that. And it became clear that you can identify a writer's century and roughly their period, even within that century. So late 19th century isn't the same as mid 19th century, but it was hard to guess gender, and you couldn't even do it through the concerns in the book. So you might think that women were writing more about women and men were writing more about men. That's not true. Or not in the 19th century. So I give you Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, you know, by men, et cetera, who used to hide under the kitchen table when their mothers were gossiping with their friends. But women, on the other hand, were not allowed into men's clubs, so they didn't really know what they were talking about in there. But on the other hand, that was probably unprintable in the 19th century. Anyway. Anyway, it's an interesting exercise and we used to do it quite a lot.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

So go back to then, the writing and the voice of different authors. Can you still do it?

[Margaret Atwood]

If you read the introduction to my new memoir, you will see what I came up with. When they said they wanted a memoir in a literary style, and I said, whatever. Would that be like his style? Do we want heroic couplets like Pope? What do we want here? I could read them to you. Oh, got the intro. There it is. So this is the subject of pastiche and writing in the style of other. So they say when the idea of writing a quote's literary memoir first sprang up. From whom? Memory shrugs. But it was someone in publishing. I replied to her or him or them. That would be tedious. You've heard the bad joke about the old east coast fisherman counting fish. One fish, two fish, another fish, another fish, another fish. So my literary memoir would go, I wrote a book, I wrote a second book. I wrote another book, I wrote another book. Dead boring. Who wants to read about someone sitting at a desk messing up blank sheets of paper? Oh, that's not what we meant. They Said we meant a memoir in, you know, a literary style. This was even more baffling. What would that be like 18th century mock heroic couplets? Lo, when Dawn's rosy fingers did the curtains part down, sit I at my desk to labor at mine art or something more in the gothic flamboyant style of, for instance, Poe. A thousand brightly hued images whirled within my dizzied brain and menacing phantoms thronged the shadowy corners of my tapestried chamber. In a frenzy I seized my enchanted quill and ignoring the large blot of ink now taking demonic shape on the dazzling shade of snowy parchment before me, I know it would not do.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

I love this. I could listen to you write in other people's voices all day, but oh, could you? I prefer when you write in your own, I have to say. So I'm curious about how that exercise, when you do it, Margaret, is different from what AI does.

[Margaret Atwood]

Probably not that different, except it seems there's quite a few things it doesn't yet. No. So it could do probably fairly short rip offs of other authors, but it couldn't then go anywhere very original with that, I don't think. We did propose a couple of tests to it earlier on. I'm sure it's better now. But the Walrus magazine in Canada proposed to it that it should write a dystopian short story set in Winnipeg in the style of Margaret Atwood. So what it came up with was something called the Weeping Willows of Winnipeg. But it did not grasp the essential thing about a dystopia, which is, in a dystopia you can't just move out. So it didn't put any wall around Winnipeg where all these unhappy people were. And it didn't also tell us what exactly was making them so unhappy, except that it seemed to rain and snow a lot. But that's not a dystopia. Dystopias have to be made by people. So we didn't have any sort of evil genius, big Brother type of person. We just had some unhappy people in Winnipeg. You know, they just could have moved. So a few essentials were not grasped. And we also asked it to write a poem about our Pelee island bird observatory, where the bird banding does take place in a fairly swampy area. And we asked it to include chiggers and mud. But to write a positive thing about this, we had luxuriant, nourishing mud and we had singing chiggers. So the AI evidently didn't know what a chigger was. They don't Sing. They just make your life hell.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Well, a couple of things. One, it's just. It's fun to see these examples. Two, it's delightful to see you proving what AI can't do.

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, it could possibly later with few twitches. So, for instance, we asked it to give us a picture of our earlier residents for our bird banders, which had snakes in the shower. So we asked it to include some holes in the floor, which there were, and some snakes, which there also were. And it showed us something that looked like the floor had been hit by a bomb, and underneath it were these gigantic, huge boa constrictors. So you have to be very specific with it. You have to say, make the snakes smaller. Make realistic snakes for southern Ontario. And make. By hole in the floor, we don't mean no floor.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Have you been using AI in your writing at all?

[Margaret Atwood]

Are you mad? Why would I do such a thing?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

I assumed it was going to be an emphatic no, but I had to confirm yes.

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, it's confirmed. No, I would never do that.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Why not?

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, it's lazy. I'm of the workaholic generation, not the hippies.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

There's a fellow recovering workaholic. I subscribe wholeheartedly to the I would never write a word with AI philosophy.

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, thank you for reassuring us about that.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

But what I will say is I've found it useful for writing adjacent tasks sometimes. It's a more efficient thesaurus, for example.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yeah. It can tell you various word definitions and refer you to this and that dictionary. And I'm told it's reasonably good at travel schedules, though guess what? Its mapping abilities are not very good. We asked it to tell us the exact location of a supermarket at Christie and Dupont in Toronto, and it said that that store was in the Maple Leaf Gardens, which is the old hockey stadium down by the waterfront. Now, wherever did it get that idea? I don't know, so I wouldn't trust it.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

I wonder if those hallucinations that you're describing, though, are dead ends or if they might be paths to new perspectives.

[Margaret Atwood]

Just a minute. Now, the hallucinations are hallucinations that AI is having, potentially.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Right? So when it gives you wrong information and it's misbelieving things or it's misrepresenting facts, that seems like a version of what a novelist does.

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, first of all, I wouldn't call those hallucinations. I would just call them errors.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Touche.

[Margaret Atwood]

So, to me, a hallucination has got much more to it than just factual inaccuracy. I don't think that's what a novelist does at all. Novelists tell stories with characters and plots. So that's the part so far where I think it's rather falling down. So I think it could have somebody called Bob doing something or other, but it probably wouldn't be able to tell you much about Bob's inner life. And that's what novels do, really, Better than any other art form.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

I'm just thinking about your statement that a hallucination is different from an error. It's striking because the AI community has referred to these kinds of mistakes as hallucinations.

[Margaret Atwood]

That's because they want to make AI sound human. So humans have hallucinations, Machines don't. They just make mistakes.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

What's the difference? Just thinking a hallucination is an emotional experience. Is that the fundamental difference?

[Margaret Atwood]

Yeah. So I was eating breakfast. It's not necessarily a hallucination.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Okay, so what's different for you between a hallucination and an error?

[Margaret Atwood]

What makes you think I have hallucinations? I said I wasn't a hippie, right? Yeah. I think you have hallucinations when you're very ill or else on drugs.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Not something a machine can experience in either case.

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, I wouldn't think so.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Okay, so I'm just thinking about your point of view on AI as a writer.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yeah. I don't think that the most important thing about it. I think the most important thing about it is its ability to create deep fakes for political propaganda purposes. I don't think writers are going to use AI much, because why would they be writers if they can write their own writing? If they can't write their own writing, why are they pretending to be writers?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

I'm curious about what that means for the future of creative careers, in your view. It sounds like you don't think writers should be worried.

[Margaret Atwood]

It depends what kinds of writers we're talking about. If you mean writers of ad copies, I think they should be worried if people are still even writing ad copy and not just making pictures. Ads used to be very verbal, and now it is really billboards a lot without many words on them at all. So those kinds of writers have already been expelled from their ad copy jobs. Or if you're thinking of newspaper writers, people writing stuff up, I think they might be worried. But, you know, I think people are still interested in hearing personal points of view from real people. You could, of course, invent a person who was the purported writer. I think the Nancy Drew books were written that way, but not by AI by ghostwriters. And There have, of course, been a lot of ghostwriters and they are channeling the they hope the voice and the thoughts of the person they're writing the book for. But they're not A.I.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

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[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

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[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

All right, so let us then take this as an invitation to go to your memoir, the Book of Lives. Yes, I was very surprised to see Margaret Atwood writing a memoir.

[Margaret Atwood]

So was I.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

You don't normally write about your own life.

[Margaret Atwood]

I don't.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Why?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Where did this come from?

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, I don't know. You know, they said, why don't you write a memoir? No, no, no, no. I never want to do that. Oh, come on. But then I realized that a memoir is not the same as an autobiography. I wouldn't have to go through all my old travel schedules and say where I'd been when I could put into it what a memoir really should be. Which is what you can remember. Surely that is why it is called a memoir. So what you remember is usually stupid things you did, stupid and evil things other people did to you. Not so much the evil things you did to other people. You tend to forget those and catastrophes, near death experiences and high points.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

So as you reflected on your memories and decided what you wanted to include, what surprised you?

[Margaret Atwood]

What surprised me? I think it was pleasurable to write about a lot of these things, even though they were not enjoyable at the time. So it is a bit like war stories. You almost died, but hey, you didn't. And now it's a story.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

One of the stories that really stands out in the Book of Lives is the. I think. What a trio of nine year old girls who tormented you in school.

[Margaret Atwood]

They did, yes. That got a lot of reaction when I put it into a novel. Cat Eye. Anyway. Struck a chord with that. Yes. Universal experience, it seems.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Very much so. It makes me wonder how did that dynamic play out and how did the tables turn later?

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, in real life or in the novel?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

In real life.

[Margaret Atwood]

Okay. So Alice in Wonderland has been an inspiration to many and I think it's the moment when the Queen of Hearts has been threatening to behead everybody. Ella says you're nothing but a pack of cards. And at this point the cards all flutter through the air and she wakes up. So I think it's the moment when you can say you're nothing but a pack of cards and walk away. If you're in a situation where that is possible, you're not always. But if you are, you realize that the power of those people is dependent on your believing that they have that power.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

For listeners who haven't had a chance to read yet, what was the worst of the torment?

[Margaret Atwood]

I think that's a very personal question. How can I choose amongst the torments?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

You can choose at random if you like.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yeah, I don't know. Remember that I had not known any little girls before this period in my life. I grew up with basically boys. So my older brother was a boy, my dad was a boy and my mother was a tomboy. So I didn't have any models of frilly behavior. I was the most girly person in my family, believe it or not. So I didn't have, you know, I didn't know the. The etiquette of girls much at all. So I also tended to believe what people told me because I hadn't had a lot of role models of lying. So I actually believed what these people were telling me anyway. You can read Cat's eye and have revel in torments if. If you wish. But I have to say that some of the letters that I got from. From readers after publishing this book had much worse torments in them. To the extent that you wondered why these people we're still alive.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Have those letters changed the way that you reflect on having been bullied?

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, they simply underlined the fact that this is a pretty universal experience amongst kids and that it is inaccurate to say that little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice and little boys are made of snaps and snails and puppy dogs tails.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Yeah, I think we can retire that refrain for sure.

[Margaret Atwood]

And it's not anti feminist to say so. It is simply underlining the fact that human beings are human and they come in all shapes and sizes and do all kinds of things. So if you stop believing that they are supernatural and all empowered, then you can either walk away or if they are at that point, the dragon. You can find the weak spot and shoot your hobbity arrow into a. Is it the armpit? I think it's the armpit, the weak spot.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

This reminds me of something I find myself saying often as a psychologist. When someone is Hurt or upset by someone else's behavior. I just want to ask them, why are you giving that person power over your emotions?

[Margaret Atwood]

Oh, yes. Or the popular saying these days are, why are you letting them live rent free in your head? Yeah, I'm sure you've seen that one quite a bit.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Oh, yes. Do you have any lessons learned about how to charge them rent or remove them from your head?

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, you're probably asking the wrong person. Yes, I ought to say something about compassion and forgiveness and things like that. And those can be helpful because the moment at which you let them off the hook, they're no longer in your head as this vengeful presence. And I think it was Nelson Mandela who had decided to just let it go as he was being let out of prison. You know, he could go for revenge, or he could just let that go. So that's one approach. The other one is to get them back, which is very tempting. You know, it's very tempting. I try not to indulge. I try to be a good and virtuous person. I don't always succeed.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

You must have, though, had a triumphant moment of revenge at some point in this saga.

[Margaret Atwood]

Not a single triumphant moment of revenge. I would just say, as a teenager, the realization that the power was no longer residing in this other person, it was residing in me. And I didn't do terribly mean things, but I did marginally mean things. Such as, let's walk home through the cemetery, Adam. Of course, I'm not really alive, and I will show you the mausoleum where I spend all the morning hours. No, no, no. That's too scary. No, come on. I won't hurt you, will I?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Oh, I do not want to ever end up on your bad side, Margaret.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Ever.

[Margaret Atwood]

That's a wise choice, Adam.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

You know, this reminds me of, I think, the first time I laughed out loud as I was starting to read. You quoted Julian Porter, who said, don't piss her off or you will live forever.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yes, he did say that. Yes. I put it in my epigraphs. And he was very pleased to be in the epigraphs.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

I think one of the more evocative lines in the book was, you realize that while heroes need the monster, the monster does not need the hero.

[Margaret Atwood]

Absolutely not.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Talk to me about that.

[Margaret Atwood]

I was not the first person to say that. I think people will remember having heard that before. But what would a monster need a hero for? Because it's the hero's quest to slay the monster. So unless you're very, very masochistic, Dragon. You do not welcome the advent of the dragon slayer. But in order to be a hero, in order to be the monster slayer and everybody saying, hooray for you, you do have to have a monster to slay. Or put another way around, I knew some people who'd been in resistance movements during World War II 2. And one of them who had been in the Polish resistance said, pray that you will never have the opportunity to be a hero, because those opportunities always involve monsters.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Wow.

[Margaret Atwood]

And quite usually the monster slays quite a few Beowulfs before the actual Beowulf gets there.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

That's powerful. So you've made the case that the hero needs the monster. And it makes me wonder, do you have enemies now?

[Margaret Atwood]

Oh, so many. But lots of them are dead, Adam.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Hopefully not by your own doing.

[Margaret Atwood]

Not directly.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

I'm starting to picture just behind you your enemies list.

[Margaret Atwood]

Oh, I don't have a list. No, not as such, particularly. And I think the list she would be interested in more would be the lists in which I feature as an enemy.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Do tell.

[Margaret Atwood]

So when you say, do you have enemies? And I said so many, I was referring to the fact that a lot of people probably think I'm an enemy of theirs in some way, either for taking political stands or taking some other kind of stand or for being short. Why aren't you taller? No, scrap that. That was frivolous. So reasons like that. And if you're associated, for instance, with an organization like Penn International, which is stand up for the rights of people who've been imprisoned or indeed exiled or tortured or killed for what they've written, you're going to have some enemies.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Okay, this is a good segue to book bans. I loved when you had an unburnable copy of the Handmaid's Tale created and then scorched it.

[Margaret Atwood]

I did, and I made everybody in the room very nervous. They were saying, just point it at the book, Margaret. Just the book. And then they said, you can give that flamethrower back to us now.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

It's one of the best videos on the Internet.

[Margaret Atwood]

You think?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

I do. And to set up the question, the best evidence that I've found shows a couple of things. Number one, when books are banned, that completely fails to reduce reader interest in them and sometimes draws attention. And number two, that kids are not nearly as fragile as some parents fear. There was a study that came out about a decade ago looking at teenagers in Texas and just tracking how much exposure they had to frequently banned books. So Huck Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, Brave New World, Kite Runner, Hunger Games, Twilight, Harry Potter, perhaps even a Margaret Atwood selection.

[Margaret Atwood]

What is this perhaps?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Definitely. Definitely on the list. Even if not in this study, it turns out that how much exposure you've had to those books has no bearing on your grades, no bearing on illicit behavior, and actually predicts spending more time reading for fun and higher involvement in volunteering, charity and civic behavior.

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, why are we not surprised? And why do we not give awards to the book banners? Because from what you've told me, their net result is positive.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

It may well be. I don't know if it's causal, but it's at least correlational.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yeah. So the other thing that's correlational is the existence of school libraries. So if there is a school library with a librarian who helps kids find stuff they're interested in, their marks go up. So why would you do away with those unless you wish people to be stupid?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

I love the way you framed that. Now, I should say, in this last study, there were 283 students, and 19 of them showed both high levels of engagement with banned books and also some mental health symptoms. And my interpretation of that is there's a subset, a small subset of students with mental health challenges who seek out this kind of literature. Not that engaging with this literature causes mental health symptoms, but you've produced some of this literature, so I'd love to hear your take.

[Margaret Atwood]

Our literary festival in Toronto was founded by a guy who was told at school, don't you ever, ever read Ulysses by James Joyce? It's an evil, evil, evil book, and your soul will be irrevocably damned. So he rushed out and got one and started reading it, looking for the soul, damning, dirty parts, and really liked it. So he thought, if this is literature, I would like to know more about that. And that's what turned him into a reader. So I'll go from that story to me being absolutely traumatized by reading Peyton Place on top of the garage roof where nobody could see me doing it. And what was the traumatizing part? Varicose veins. I didn't know they're varicose veins. Ick. Yes. So you never know what people are going to find alarming or what is unknown to them. And that's one of the reasons for reading. You discover all sorts of interesting things like varicose veins in these forbidden books. But we had three kinds of books, those we studied in school. A pretty Victorian curriculum, not lots of sex in it, except off the page in the shrubbery where you couldn't really figure out what was going on. Books your parents might have, which were in my case, a wide variety, including science books and history books and historical romances. I liked those. And a lot of detective stories and science fiction. My dad liked science fiction. He used to get a big life out of it. Oh, he was a scientist, so. Ha ha, he would say quite a year. And then the really things you weren't not supposed to read, which you usually got hold of either in the drugstore with absolutely trashy covers on them. But it would be like War and Peace, you know, woman in a negligee, cleavage, 1984 woman in a tight fitting uniform, cleavage. There was a lot of cleavage. And you would end up reading world classics because you thought you were getting some kind of forbidden book. And ones that you read at houses where you were babysitting. Those were the best.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

And you're saying your life was not ruined by any of these memories at all? Although it sounds like you've really. You haven't been able to remove the image of varicose veins from your mind?

[Margaret Atwood]

Absolutely not. No, no. Seared into my brain.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Otherwise, I think you've survived the experience.

[Margaret Atwood]

I seem to have done. Anyway. It gave me a wide range of reading references and was on the whole pretty educational, especially since I was a flashlight under the covers reader and a procrastinator. So instead of doing my homework, I would be reading one of those Dell mysteries that had the keyhole with the eyeball in it.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

I feel like that choice of how you spent your has worked out okay for you.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yeah, but it could have been otherwise, you know, I could have been a mere wastrel and dilettante. I mean a mere only. Shall I say wastrel and dilettante.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Highly doubtful.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

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[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

All right, it's time for a lightning round. What is the worst writing advice you hear?

[Margaret Atwood]

I think the worst writing advice I was given was by somebody who was supposed to be my student advisor in my final year of undergraduate who said why don't you just forget this writing stuff and going to graduate school and find a nice man and marry him? Well, I just thought he was an idiot.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

He was an idiot. What's your favorite writing tip to give?

[Margaret Atwood]

You have to actually do the writing. You have to set the words down, you need to make the hours and you need to actually do is one of those things that you like playing the piano. You don't sit down at the piano and expect to rip off a sonata without ever learning how to play. So it's a learning and it's work.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

If you were Hosting a dream dinner party. Who would you invite, dead or alive?

[Margaret Atwood]

Dead or alive? I would invite the best conversationalists. So people who are known to be people of few words, I would not invite, even though they might be quite interesting if you could ever get them to say anything. So I might invite Emily Bronte, but she wouldn't come.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Why are you prejudging Emily Bronte?

[Margaret Atwood]

I'm not prejudging her. I'm judging her. I've read the descriptions of what she was like. She'd probably say, I'd rather stick pins in my eyes than waste my time in your dining room rather than running across the moors. Yes, I wouldn't invite her, but I might invite. Would I invite Samuel Johnson? He was said to be a great conversationalist, but a very piggy eater. So would you be inviting people for their table manners or their conversation? I'd definitely invite Oscar Wilde. He would be very good as a dinner guest. And Nancy Mitford would be very good. So we could go on dividing people into talkers and silent people and narrow the list down from there.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

That's a great group. I feel like Samuel Johnson would ace the game you introduced me to at the beginning of the conversation around redefining words.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yes, he'd be very good at that. But he might put the other guest off.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Might be a know it all.

[Margaret Atwood]

No, he might be a piggy eater.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

So, Margaret, what is something you've changed your mind about or rethought lately?

[Margaret Atwood]

I'm changing my mind fairly frequently about what the Trump regime is liable to do next. And of course, that is their aim. Either that or somebody has really lost their mind. So are they intending to be deliberately destabilizing, or are they just erratic or they throw it out there, see who salutes? If it's not working, cancel it. What is going on? I don't know.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

A friend of mine photographed Trump for Time magazine and asked him how he deals with all the chaos, and he just said, it seems like there's always a storm surrounding you. And Trump stared him in the eye and said, I am the storm.

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, that was pretty witty.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Yeah.

[Margaret Atwood]

How long ago was that?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

This was a decade ago now.

[Margaret Atwood]

Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. Okay.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Somebody asked me before this conversation, what is Margaret Atwood like? And I was thinking about the first time we spoke, and I said, she's entirely original. I've never met anyone like her, and she's delightfully disagreeable.

[Margaret Atwood]

Oh, well, I'll think about that.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

What I found so charming about the way that you engage with People is you are utterly fearless about saying something that might be unpopular or challenge conventional wisdom or maybe lead people to question their own assumptions. And it seems like you don't worry too much about what other people think of you.

[Margaret Atwood]

Not at my age. It's not that I didn't used to in some circumstances, but let's put it this way, I'm not likely to say any career destroying thing and nobody can fire me.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

You're uncancellable.

[Margaret Atwood]

More or less in the usual sense. I think I might do something that would be really bad. For instance, if I wrote a really terrible book and it somehow got past my editors. That would be bad because people would. People would no longer trust that when they opened the book, they might get an experience they might enjoy. They would think, oh, well, she's passed it.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Well, that goes to something you said a few years ago. And I quote, writers don't retire, they only get worse.

[Margaret Atwood]

I know that was bad of me.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

But you haven't. You haven't gotten worse. How?

[Margaret Atwood]

Not yet, but I will. How have I managed not to get worse? Yes, I think that's probably a question for your department.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

A colleague of mine was asked, why did you become a professor? And he said, having students keeps you young.

[Margaret Atwood]

Some people would say the opposite. Ages you prematurely.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

I suppose it depends on the students and also the kinds of relationships you build with them.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yes.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Margaret, what's a question you have for me as a psychologist?

[Margaret Atwood]

Oh, boy. Psychologist or psychiatrist?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Definitely a psychologist.

[Margaret Atwood]

Okay. Well, I did know a forensic psychiatrist who said to me at one point, if he knew it was walking around on the street out there, he'd never go out. So my question to you is, what do you think of that?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

That's a great question. I think I see where that observation is coming from. But it's also, I think, a biased sample of some of the worst of humanity.

[Margaret Atwood]

That's true. So you could also give a sample of people being helpful.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

I think we know from good evidence that the default human response to tragedy and suffering is kindness and care.

[Margaret Atwood]

That's one of the default responses.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Not the only one.

[Margaret Atwood]

One of it is not the only one. So some people take advantage of chaos and tragedy to go in and nick the silverware and do things that normal civil society would not permit. So there's that side, too, and that's us as human beings. So the very good, the very bad, and then degrees of goodness and badness leading up to the center where most of us live.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

I think that's really well articulated, and I think Humanity certainly is capable of both extremes. Without a doubt, most of us do hover in the center so far.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yeah. Most of us also have different definitions of good and evil. So is it really bad? And this is one of the questions that Ann Landers, the newspaper column got most often. Is it really bad to put the toilet paper on with the sheet coming out the bottom?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

How dare you?

[Margaret Atwood]

How dare you.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Morally wrong.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yeah. The other one is you're dead to me with tea. Milk in first or milk after you've put in the tea? Great arguments about that.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Oh, my version of that is you have to put the cereal in before you pour the milk.

[Margaret Atwood]

Who would do it the other way around?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

My brother in law. He's a barbarian. Couldn't believe it when I watched him put the milk in and then pour cereal on top. What are you doing?

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, at least you'd know how much milk you'd put in. Whereas if the cereal's in first, the milk can sort of get lost amongst all those cereal pieces, which is why.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

My cereal bowl overflows sometimes. Point taken. You've made me rethink that. Okay, Margaret, as we close, you are about to head out on book tour, as I understand.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yes.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

What are you hoping people will ask or not ask?

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, of the many questions that I've been asked over the years, I've probably answered most of them by now. In the very early days, I would go to places where they had never had a writer before, and they would ask very direct questions that had nothing to do with your symbolic meaning. And one of my favorites, why are there so many eggs in your books? I had to think about that. Why are there so many eggs in my books? Why are there so many glass jars in your books? Ooh, you've counted them. But my best one was, is your hair really like that or do you get it done? So that's a pretty non writer's school type of question.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

And the answer is, the answer is.

[Margaret Atwood]

If I got it done, would I do this?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Shades of Abraham Lincoln. If I had another face, would I wear this one?

[Margaret Atwood]

Yeah, exactly. There you go.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

That's very good. Well, Margaret, thank you for taking the time to do this. This has been such a joy. And having grown up in Michigan and been called an honorary Canadian, I would like to call you a national treasure. But I suppose it would be more accurate to call you an international treasure.

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, that's very kind.

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Thank you for sharing your wit and wisdom.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is produced by Ted with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glaser, our editor is Alejandra Salazar, our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson, our technical director is Jacob Winick, and our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Hylash, Ban Chang, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivong and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hans Dale Su and Alison Layton Brown.

[Margaret Atwood]

When were you born? Do you mind my asking?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

I was born in 1981.

[Margaret Atwood]

Oh well, you missed it all, didn't you?

[Adam Grant (Interviewer)]

Oh well, I've heard stories and read books.

[Margaret Atwood]

You can read about it.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

This episode is sponsored by Aha Slides. We've all been in that meeting. The one where attention slowly fades, eyes drift toward phones and your brilliant presentation starts feeling not so brilliant. Research suggests that the average attention span has dropped from two and a half minutes to just 47 seconds. And that's a real problem, because ideas can't create change if no one's listening. That's where Aha Slides comes in. It's an interactive presentation software that helps you hook the room and keep them engaged with live polls, quizzes and word clouds that make your audience part of the show. Whether you're teaching, onboarding or leading a workshop. Aha Slides turns sleepy slides into moments of connection and helps your ideas stick. It's simple, science backed and even free for audiences of up to 50 people. Try it [e-mail] that's ahaslides.com AHA slides the power of Engagement.

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[Adam Grant (Host)]

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