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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. A little birdie tells me people are starting to hear plans for this year's high school and college reunions, which makes this maybe the perfect time to talk about enemies, your old high school and college rivals. Did you see the guest essay in The Times? This is our hook for this, obviously, titled, Why You, Too, Need a Nemesis. Rachel Feintzeig, the writer, claims proving the people who doubted you are a great motivator, a great driver to get stuff done.

She joins us now. We're going to invite you in, too. Is there a naysayer from your past, an old boyfriend or girlfriend, boss or rival of any kind who dissed you and that wound up spurring you to achieve? Call us with your nemesis story and how it's affected you, maybe benefited you at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Welcome back to the show, Rachel Feintzeig. It's been a while, but we actually did a-- my producer looked it up. I didn't remember it. We actually did a five-minute segment one time about Hostess Twinkies when Hostess went into bankruptcy. Do you remember that?

Rachel Feintzeig: I do remember that. I had been up all night reporting that story and then got to chat with you about it on the radio. It was a pleasure.

Brian Lehrer: Like microplastics and forever chemicals, Twinkies survive to this day, unlike affordable eggs.

Rachel Feintzeig: It's true.

Brian Lehrer: Did you know they stopped making pastina a couple of years ago? I guess that's another show. When you say nemesis, what do you have in mind? Is it different from an enemy?

Rachel Feintzeig: I think it's pretty similar. The whole thing here is that it can just be entirely in your head. It's kind of a made up thing for most of us. Most of us are not Kendrick Lamar and Drake performing at the super bowl telling everyone about all of our strife and mental anguish. A nemesis to me in this context is just this made-up thing in your head that you can picture and use to motivate yourself.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, do you have a nemesis story. If you identify with Kendrick Lamar, who's your Drake, or the other way around? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. I guess particularly from high school or maybe from college or maybe an early employer. I had an early employer who doubted me. I don't think we have time to tell that story. Okay, I'll tell the 15-second version.

I was in college. I already wanted to work in radio. I was working at a summer job for an employment agency where the owner of the agency thrust The New York Times in front of me and said, "Here, read some lines from this." I read some lines. She said, "You sound like a kid from Queens. You're not going to make it on the radio. I don't know that I needed that to spur me on, but there's a little example, folks. 212-433-WNYC. Who is that person in your life and did they spur you on? 212-433-9692. You write about some famously productive people. Taylor Swift, Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan?

Rachel Feintzeig: Yes. Actually, this is where the original idea came from, was watching The Last Dance, the documentary about Michael Jordan. He takes everything so personally. Like someone would look at him the wrong way and it would just cut to this totally serious shot of him being like, "I took that really personally." It's like someone would say hi to him and then someone else wouldn't say hi to him and both things would enrage him equally. Then the next day he'd go out there and just dominate on the court. I thought it was so funny and so inspiring.

Brian Lehrer: in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bex.

Bex: Hi, there. I had a nemesis with a girl in my sorority when I was in college. She planned our social mixers. I was service chair for two years. When I ran for president, she ran for president of our sorority as well. I ended up losing to her, which was devastating. In order to redeem myself, I decided to run for president of Greek Life for our university, and I won. As a result, she had to meet with me on a weekly basis where I would instruct her on how to lead our sorority in a more productive way.

Brian Lehrer: Huh. Did that spur you on to any later success?

Bex: Oh, absolutely, yes. I continued to feel motivated to be a change maker and a consultant for leaders who I felt weren't living up to their responsibilities as leaders.

Brian Lehrer: Bex, thank you very much. Tina in Harlem has a more personal one, I think. Hi, Tina. You're on WNYC. Personal meaning within the family. Hi.

Tina: Hi, Brian. This is so silly. My husband and I were both smokers and I wanted to try to getting hypnotized to quit. My husband really needed to quit. He had a medical issue. Really, he needed to quit, so he said he'd give it a try. We went and it didn't work. We were both really disappointed, but I really fought for, let's try again. We can try again. We're going to really focus and really pretend to believe this whole thing is going to work and it'll work. We went together and afterward we had this huge fight. He says, "That's a stupid idea. It never works. It's not going to work." Just to spite him, I quit smoking.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, that's a good one. Do you have any like that in your article or in your bucket, Rachel?

Rachel Feintzeig: Taylor Swift is notorious for this. She just writes these songs that just go after people, and some of them are based on the tiniest thing. It'll be someone who broke up with her years ago and she'll write a song that becomes a best-selling smash hit. I feel like that's a good way to prove someone wrong.

Brian Lehrer: Kevin and Weehawken, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kevin.

Kevin: Hi, there. Longtime listener, second time caller. My story is that I'm a painter, and I once sent a painting into a competition. I really wanted to get into and they rejected it. I said, "I'm going to show these people. I'm going to show them I can really do a great painting." I did a painting of the Hoboken Terminal Manhattan skyline in the background. I used to drink at a tavern in the terminal, and they agreed to put it in their bar area there. I said, "Wow, this is really great. I'll show these people that I can really do a great painting. What happened, long story short, COVID came, the place closed, but the painting got stolen and I never saw it again. I think there's a moral there in that if you do work from a sense of having a nemesis, it might be bad karma and it might come back and bite you, so be careful.

Brian Lehrer: Kevin, thank you. Oh, there's a twist, Rachel, right? The nemesis spurred him on to success, but then karma, the way he sees it, slapped him down for being ego-driven in that way.

Rachel Feintzeig: It is true. I do feel slightly guilty about putting this idea out there. On the one hand, I think it's really human and a lot of people can tap into it. On another, I [unintelligible 00:07:56], I really am just a nice perky mom in suburban Connecticut. Can't take this too far. Probably being more pure hearted, if you can muster it is probably a better way to go.

Brian Lehrer: Here's somebody not too far from suburban Connecticut. Bob in Ossining, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bob.

Bob: Good day, sir. First time caller and thank you for your show. I've always wanted to be a doctor in my life. When I was in 9th grade, a white physician came to our school. After school we had a session with him and all the other students who wanted to be doctors. After the presentation, I went up to him and was asking him questions about being a doctor and the like. He looked at me and just said, "Oh, don't even worry about it. You're not going to be a doctor." I said, "Why?" "Because you're Black." Went home. My father said, "Don't forget about that. Don't even worry about it." Ended up being a doctor. Actually retired 46 years as of December, but in medical school and in residency and all that. Ever so often when you want to give up, I said, "I wouldn't let him beat me."

Brian Lehrer: You never forgot that.

Bob: No.

Brian Lehrer: Bob, thank you very much. Rachel, does your nemesis need to know you feel aggrieved?

Rachel Feintzeig: No, I think it's better if they don't. Maybe it's a little passive aggressive, but this can just be a totally internal thing. I think sometimes it's more effective that way. I also look back sometimes at some people who were my nemeses and some of them end up becoming, if not friends, then colleagues, or you look back and you think, "I can't believe I was so obsessed with that. I didn't need to be." In hindsight, you can see it was all going to work out, like I was always going to be successful.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a political one. Listener writes, "I think Parks conservancies are my Drake. I want everyone to know they're private nonprofits that make decisions about our public spaces. They've inspired my work with a local mutual aid organization to take back public space." How about one? That also makes me think of Donald Trump in the political sphere, didn't he-- The story goes that he first decided to run for president after Obama made him the butt of some joke at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Rachel Feintzeig: Yes, could have changed the trajectory of history without that grudge. There's just so many grudges in politics these days. Again, that's where I don't know if I'm condoning that. I think rather than an all out war, the idea that it's this silent, emotional thing is what I'm looking at.

Brian Lehrer: Amanda in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Amanda.

Amanda: Hi, Brian. My nemesis is my mom.

Speaker: Oh.

Amanda: When I was growing up, I did a lot of high school theater. I know. When I was growing up, I did so much theater. My mom always wanted me to be a star, but in a very skinny, beautiful ingenue way, singing beautiful songs. One time she told me, "You'll never make it if you keep making those silly faces on stage." At my heart, I'm a comedian and a goofball. She's like, "All these pictures of you are so ugly because you keep making these weird faces."

It drove me in college to just really embrace that I liked being funny on stage. I didn't want to be beautiful. Now I am a comedian here in New York City, and I have been for the past 10 years. I host this show called Facebook Marketplace Live, an improv game show. I do a solo hour called Guilty Pleasure, and it's all stand up and comedy and silly. It's like she really drove me [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: You even got your plug in there, so maybe you'll get more audience.

Amanda: I sure did. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Take that, Amanda's mom.

[laughter]

Amanda: Take that, mom. Thank you for the vote of confidence, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Amanda, thank you very much. We're going to have to leave it there. We thank Rachel Feintzeig, a former Work Life columnist at The Wall Street Journal. You can check out her guest essay in The New York Times called Why You, Too, Need a Nemesis. Rachel, I see that your bio says you're working on a book. As much as I'd like to help, I hope I haven't done anything to make you angry enough to finish it.

Rachel Feintzeig: One can only hope, Brian. I need some motivation over here.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks for coming on. This was fun.

Rachel Feintzeig: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: And that's The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen produces our daily Politics podcast. Juliana Fonda and Milton Ruiz at the audio controls. Stay tuned for Alison.

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