Being Sigmund Freud’s Great-Granddaughter | The New Yorker

The facility of the speaking treatment. The podcaster and clothier Bella Freud, a great-granddaughter of Sigmund—and daughter of Lucian—has had rather a lot to unpack. Plus:Bella Freud.
{Photograph} by Felicity McCabe for The New YorkerRebecca MeadA workers author who has contributed reporting and criticism since 1997.Typically when interviewing a topic, significantly a widely known one who has a brand new challenge to advertise, I’m conscious that I’m listening to a story that particular person has informed many occasions earlier than. My transcripts even sometimes comprise word-for-word recapitulations of traces delivered in different, earlier interviews that I’ve learn in preparation. No shock there: all of us curate variations of ourselves and anecdotes we retail for impact—even these of us who don’t have one thing to publicize.However generally a way more attention-grabbing factor occurs: an interview topic actually engages, in order that their dialog appears to turn out to be a real type of self-reflection. Bella Freud is aware of the distinction. Because the host of “Trend Neurosis,” a mesmerizing podcast that launched a few yr in the past, she is skilled within the asking-questions facet of the equation. She is a curious and charming interviewer, eliciting revealing disclosures from her topics, who’ve ranged from Karl Ove Knausgaard to Courtney Love. In the middle of a number of prolonged conversations with Freud this previous spring, I found that, as an interview topic, she is equally curious and charming—frank, humorous, considerate, and open to the opportunity of discovering one thing that she hadn’t fairly formulated earlier than. (Our dialog ranged from the ethical valence of Birkenstocks to the professionals and cons of age-gap amorous affairs.) Being the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and the daughter of the good artist Lucian Freud—for whom she sat repeatedly as a topic—Freud has a considerable inheritance each on the subject of observing herself, and to being noticed. These of us who write New Yorker profiles aspire, in our manner, each to know and to painting the individuals who comply with converse with us. It’s a privilege and a pleasure when a topic places down her speaking factors, and simply talks.Learn the story »Editor’s PickDaniel Jernigan, a global-health professional, resigned from the C.D.C. in late August.{Photograph} by Dustin Chambers / Bloomberg / GettyInside the Chaos on the C.D.C.Dan Jernigan labored on the C.D.C. for thirty years, beneath 5 Presidents and thru the COVID-19 pandemic. Charles Bethea speaks with Jernigan, who resigned after Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., fired the C.D.C. director, Susan Monarez, concerning the ongoing turmoil inside the company. “The C.D.C.’s model has definitely been tarnished,” he says, and worries that we are actually poorly outfitted to deal with the subsequent main well being menace. Learn the story »Extra Prime StoriesHow Dangerous Is It?The Bureau of Labor Statistics right now issued a revision of its employment numbers for the twelve months between April of 2024 and March of 2025, exhibiting greater than 9 hundred thousand fewer new jobs than initially estimated. This information was launched simply days after the B.L.S.’s estimate for jobs in August got here in under expectations.How unhealthy is the employment image? The revised numbers largely mirror the interval earlier than Donald Trump’s return to the White Home—however they present that the job market was weaker than beforehand thought.