Claudia Rankine on the Friendships That Unsettle and Sustain Us

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An all-new season of the Hulu Original Series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

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Four years ago, we were just making TikToks. But it feels like there are no friendships left in mom talk.

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You act like you're better than everyone, you're not.

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I can't trust anyone in this group.

Claudia Rankine (0:20)

She's just dead to me.

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There's so much the public doesn't know.

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Watch the new season of the Hulu Original Series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+, for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

Andy Richter (0:33)

Hi, I'm Andy Richter. I might not have won the Mirror Ball last season.

Alexis Madrigal (0:37)

That was so fun.

Andy Richter (0:39)

But I did win the best gig ever. Hosting the Dancing with the Stars official podcast.

Get ready for all the inside scoop from the cast. All right, well, let's get to work. Behind the scenes secrets and more from every episode.

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That was smoldering.

Andy Richter (0:53)

It's going to be iconic.

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All my dreams are coming true.

Andy Richter (0:56)

Dancing with the Stars official podcast. New episodes every Thursday on Disney Plus and Hulu and wherever you get your podcasts.

SPEAKER_3 (1:03)

This episode is brought to you by Chat GPT.

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Alexis Madrigal (1:35)

Alexis Madrigal here, as you probably know, this is the first day of our membership drive, our pledge drive during this time of the year. We're not going to be doing one good thing, these little things that I read, these little odes to different parts of the Bay Area every single day. However, today we are in fact going to do one. This actually came from my newsletter, which is also called One Good Thing, which you can subscribe to kqed.org/onegoodthing. It's about a tree in my neighborhood.

This tree is monumental. I'm standing at its base, redwood bark seeming to flow down, down until it finally gets to ground, where I can't help but see something elephantine in the way it bulges where it touches earth. I don't have to imagine the roots, the infrastructure of this place has had to accommodate itself to this tree. The sidewalk is covered in a spongy material to prevent the inevitable cracking of concrete by root. Strange to think that concrete, which you've ever hit a slab of it with a sledgehammer, fills adamantine and everlasting, will always yield to the redwood root. The asphalt of the road beyond the sidewalk knows too, it's cracked along a line that suggests the tree below.

This tree has no name that I know of, though stay tuned because I found out the tree's name, it stands on a small side street in Berkeley near the Claremont neighborhood. Lovely area, trees abound including a smattering of other redwoods. But none of the other redwoods are like this one, which feels out of scale for a neighborhood of single family homes. I'm filled with wonder and envy that someone lives with this tree in their front yard. Every day they go about their business in the understory of this remarkable living creature, forgetting their keys and the glory of creation, and telling a kid to hurry if they'll be late under the majestic branches. I don't know much about the tree. It must be old, but how old was it here in 1926? 1776? Before? Could indigenous residents have known this tree when it was a small sapling? No. In the presence of a giant like this, the brain can get scrambled. I know better. The Uplands neighborhood nearby was created in the early 20th century out of ranch land, and it seems unlikely that there were huge numbers of redwoods on or near that ranch. The house that shares the redwoods property was built in 1906, which probably means it was planted around then. Just guessing here. Could it be just 120 years old? I guess that's not so young.

On the outside, maybe it settled into ranch land in the decades before the subdivision. But regardless of the precise history, this redwood, as grand and majestic as it is, is a planting. It's a co-creation of the people who have lived on that street and its own magnificent possibilities.