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After losing her sons, Yiyun Li learned to ‘suffer better’
- Interview
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Li’s teenage sons both died by suicide six years apart, Vincent in 2017 at age 16, and James in 2024 at age 19. Her Pulitzer-Prize winning 2025 memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow, chronicled the loss of her sons and her effort to go on. Her new novel is about two piano prodigies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It’s called Music Against the Night. She spoke with Terry Gross about the “abyss” of sadness, finding comfort...
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Michael Lewis's new audio book looks at the early days of Trump's Department of Government
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B2 · Upper-intermediate
Comfortable if you already follow TV news
- 87% of the words are B1 or easier.
- 151 words a minute: a natural pace.
- 133 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.
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This message is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Michael Lewis's new audio book looks at the early days of Trump's Department of Government efficiency as told by the public servants at Targeted. Get blockers on blockers.fm available now.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terea Gross. The words grief or the grieving process are not words writer Eun Lee chooses to describe her own feelings.
To her, those words make it sound that at some point you emerge from grief. She prefers to use the word abyss, which is where she expects to be for the remainder of her life. That doesn't mean she's incapable of laughter or even joy, but she expects to return to
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