The Gist · Peach Fish Productions

Are You There God? It’s Me, Mark Oppenheimer

April 2, 2026·47 min·4 clips

Mark Oppenheimer uncovers how Judy Blume's most famous book secretly explores religion, not just puberty.

Thursday opens with a statistical itch. The host hears Jerome Adams on Face the Nation and stops on the word crisis: does it still fit the opioid problem, or did people retire it too quickly? The numbers complicate the answer. Prescriptions fell from 260 million in 2012 to 125 million in 2024, but better prescribing does not neatly settle the larger epidemic-ish argument. Then the episode changes lanes. Mark Oppenheimer comes in through Judy Blume, parenting, children who read, and the household politics of who actually reads aloud. Oppenheimer has four daughters and a son, so the host asks whether Blume was deliberately steered into the family reading stream. Oppenheimer gives the credit to his wife, less as ideology than endurance: she reads more children's literature and can keep going after his voice gives out. Audiobooks become their own little trial. Both men treat reading one's own words alone in a small room as less glamour than stamina test. Molly Ringwald gets a clean nod for the audiobook. Oppenheimer then turns to Blume's promotion and her standing with librarians. His argument is straightforward: she showed up for schools, libraries, and young readers, and those institutions stocked and pushed her books in return. The biography still refuses total access. Blume is proudly pro-choice and open about divorce, cancer, and her husband's cancer, but not so open that the digging stops. That is the tension. The episode treats her neither as shrine nor scandal, but as a public writer whose candor still leaves some rooms closed. Oppenheimer closes as an author, proprietor of Ark, and Judy Blume's biographer.

As heard by us

A brisk Gist episode that moves from opioid-crisis language to Judy Blume's durable place in American reading culture.

The Gist opens with Mike Pesca using Jerome Adams's Face the Nation comments to ask whether the opioid crisis has truly receded, or whether the language around it has simply softened.

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Why you'd press play

You want a literary interview that wanders from opioids to Judy Blume without losing the thread.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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