What it means to have words—and to lose them. Prologue: Sometimes we don’t want to say what’s going on because putting it into words would make it real. At other times, words don’t seem to capture the weight of what we want to say. Susanna Fogel talks about her friend Margaret Riley, who died earlier this week. (6 minutes) The Speaking Part: The story of a woman from Gaza City who ran out of words. Seventy-two days into the war, Youmna stopped talking. (27 minutes) We first heard Youmna on Al Jazeera’s podcast The Take. Toska: For years there was a word that Val’s mother did not want to use. Val sets out to figure out why. (22 minutes)
Susanna and Margaret were close.
There was a real friendship and a work friendship.
They talk four or five times a week, every week for the last 18 years.
We would start talking about some work piece of business, and then we would digress into a combination of motherly advice from her and gossiping, which would last for 30 to 45 more minutes.
She had a lot of advice, and she didn't mince her words about what I was doing wrong.
She also was very loving and there for me.
Margaret died on Tuesday.
Margaret Riley's her name.
She was somebody who managed screenwriters and directors and actors, too.
She was 58.
Susannah is Susannah Fogel one of her clients.
And she says the remarkable thing about Margaret is how up until the end, she kept hidden how sick she was and that cancer had returned.
It was a secret from nearly everybody.
Even if you pushed and asked, she would not divulge that piece of it.
Like, I had texted her and said, hey, I feel like we just talk about trivial stuff and can we talk about your health?
And she said, I actually love to be distracted from talking about my health.
Let's talk about you.
And she would do that a lot.
Margaret didn't want to get into it.
She wanted to engage with people the way she always had.