On Point LIVE! With Cheryl Strayed: A 'Wild' Journey To Self-Discovery

Feminist thinker, tough-love advice giver and best-selling author of “Wild” Cheryl Strayed joins us.

Author, hiker, tough-love advice giver Cheryl Strayed built a huge following with her online advice column “ Dear Sugar” and her tale of rebirth on the Pacific Crest Trail in the bestseller “Wild”. That 1100-mile hike became the big film with Reese Witherspoon. “Dear Sugar” has been reborn as a podcast. And Cheryl Strayed is still out there with her “radical empathy” looking to make sense of the world.  Fr herself and maybe for you. This week she joined me before a live audience to talk life, women, strength, survival. It got a little personal. This hour On Point: Cheryl Strayed.
-- Tom Ashbrook

Cheryl Strayed, author, essayist and advice columnist. Author of "Wild," "Torch" and "Tiny Beautiful Things." Co-host, with Steve Almond, of the WBUR podcast "Dear Sugar Radio."

New York Times: Is There A Double Standard for Judging Domestic Themes in Fiction? — "Fifteen years ago, the economists Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse published a paper on the effects of blind auditions on the gender composition of eight major symphony orchestras in the United States. They found that the likelihood of a female musician being selected for the orchestra increased by 30 percent if her gender identity was concealed from the jury. It was the rare academic research that became a mainstream news story, perhaps because its conclusion could be delivered in a succinct and unassailable headline: Gender bias exists, whether we’re conscious of it or not."

The Atlantic: Eat, Pray, Love Like a Badass: Cheryl Strayed, the Oprah Author 2.0 — "Today, the prescription of 'indulge your appetites, find enlightenment' not only seems unrealistic but even a little silly. Strayed's path—hauling her needed possessions on her back down a free trail in Wild, or her gospel of 'nobody is going to give you a thing' in Tiny Beautiful Things—is one in which any reader, regardless of income bracket, can find purchase. Eat, Pray, Love's undertone is that you deserve to be happy; Wild's is that you have to earn it."

Vanity Fair: The Advice Reese Witherspoon Gave Wild Author Cheryl Strayed — "At the age of 26, devastated by her mother’s untimely death from lung cancer and reeling from her divorce, Cheryl Strayed embarked on a solo, three-month, 1,100-mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail. Despite being a novice backpacker, with no radio, no phone, no credit cards, and very little money, Strayed survived. The resulting 2012 memoir, Wild, which traces her physical and emotional battles through the Pacific Northwest, landed her on The New York Times bestseller list, where she has been ever since."

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