Pushing.
I'm khalide Yabron Muhammad.
I'm Ben Austin. We are two best friends, one black, one white.
I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is some of my best friends are.
Oh no, no, no, no, I'm not you know, some of my best friends are. You know. In this show, we wrestle with the challenges and the absurdencies of a deeply divided and unequal country.
Today on the show, we are talking with writer Samantha Irbie. She's an author, comedian, and TV writer. Her essay collections We Are Never Meeting in real life and Wow, No Thank You are New York Times bestsellers, and heratest collection out this year is called Quietly Hostile and believe me when I tell you it is hilarious.
Yeah.
Man, you should be laughing already. I mean, Samantha RBI's writing is so honest. She makes public what most people keep private, and man, she's the kind of funny that both hurts and feels good at the same time. We are so grateful to talk to her about embarrassing moments she's had about mental health and parenting, and her work on the latest season of The Sex in the City Reboot.
Yes, let's do it.
Let's do it. I promise you you're gonna laugh. Okay, all right, all right, Samantha Irbie, welcome to some of my best friends.
Are thank you for having me? What a provocative title for a podcast boom?
Yeah, but you know I came up with it.
I mean, I know the white person came up with it.
Come on, but that's exactly how white people do. They just take credit for shit they didn't actually do.
So, yes, we to revisionist history. So sam I got a question for you though, because I read in your new book that you said you always regret being on podcasts, and we were like, oh shit, like you know, so what do we need to know not to fuck this up? For you?
Well, it's never the host. It's always me. It's always my inability to present myself as a smart and capable person. So you, oh my god, will.
I have to say that? That that feels a little bit like like a breakup line, like it's not you, it's me.
That's true.
Well, we have incredible editors, so you're gonna sound amazing. They make us sound just just one.
They put a couple more wrinkles in my brain that would help.
So you have recently published another book, Quietly Hostile, a book of essays, and man, are you just raw and raunchy and riotous and hilarious?
Yeah? Yeah, cover of the reprint.
How did you become a humorist? I mean, you know, we are really interested, We try our best to be funny. We have moments, but you do it for a living, and you you write incredibly, So like, is there a moment when you were a kid and you you told a joke, like on the playground in grade school and you're like, fuck, and not only did I just insult that person, but I'm hilarious too, Like, tell us, tell us your origin story of becoming a humorous Well, First.
Of all, humorous sounds very fancy for what I do, so thank you for giving me a fancy title. Growing up, I definitely did not think, oh, I'm gonna tell jokes for a living. Like I grew up poor with mean old black people who were like, you have to work, Like you have to take care of yourself, you have to work. So I think, like my defense mechanism as a kid who was like fat and poor and had messed up teeth and like never had the right fashion
or whatever. Was to develop a sense of humor, because if I laugh first, it takes the sting out of when other people do it. And so I think I became like pretty self deprecating early, and that's an easy way to become beloved, which is really my singular goal is to have people like love me. I mean, this is like a first date. I'm expecting you both to love me at.
The end, right now, right now.
But when I mean I started writing my blog in two thousand and eight, I started writing a blog on MySpace, and I knew I was like, you know, you're conversationally funny, You're funny at a bar or whatever. I knew I had that going for me, and I started this blog to convince this dude to have sex with me, to prove that I'm a writer.
It worked, Hey, way to go, oh wait, wait wait, So I have to clarify this.
So it was the quality of.
The writing that convinced the guy to have sex with you, or that what you said in the blog convinced the guy to have said.
Okay, let's be for real. I could poke a hole in a box and get a man to have sex with it. So I don't know that the writing, but it was because he told me like he was into girls who were writers, and I was like, oh, I'm a writer, but I had nothing to show for it. So then I started this little blog and it's like, look, I'm funny, right, And then he agreed.
That may be the nerdiest sex story I've ever heard.
It was so dumb. I mean, in hindsight, like it feels a little like pathetic. But I don't know that I would have started blogging for any other reason than trying to convince people to date me. So thank you to that dude.
It worked. It worked.
You've become an incredible writer, and according to what you write in your latest book, you've had lots of sex.
This is a week.
Yeah, not anymore. I'm done because I'm married to a woman. We don't have to do that. We just talk about what our cats are doing.
So, and Sam, I want to ask you, so, Khalil and I are both Chicago people. We grew up on the South Side of Chicago together, and you're from what we call Chicago Land. You're from Evanston, and I wonder like, is there something Chicago or Chicago landish about your brand of humor.
Well, oh that's a good question. Yes, I am from Evanston. People from Chicago do not allow you to say you're from Chicago if you are from Evanston. So I'm from Evanston. Chicago has a huge what we call live lit community, like a storytelling community. And I think shortly after I started writing my little dumb blog, which was just for my friends, I had no aspirations to do anything with.
It, never monitor in the name of the blog.
Bitch has gotta eat, bit just got to eat. So I started like writing to perform in front of like crowds and bars. There was a show at the Burlington, at the Hideout at the Horseshoe, Like, I'm like all of those shows, and I definitely was writing to get to the like to move those audiences. So I definitely think Chicago shaped like what what I think is funny based on how people respond.
To Ye, I like that. I like that. And Sam, I mean, you write in this book and you say that you are embarrassed all the time. Yeah, and even you know you're embarrassed of yourself. Yeah, And and I wonder what it means then to reveal the most embarrassing things about yourself, Like, what's the power in that? I mean, you have old essays about shitting in public, about finding not not like not in a toilet. Let me let me be clear about the finding public toilet.
That's how I start saying it from that not in a toilet.
You have an essay about the kind of porn you like or don't like. I mean, you are you reveal everything that's inside that you feel uncomfortable about. You you make public, and so what's the power in that of doing that?
I think for me, it's about like connecting with people who feel the same way or who can relate or identify in some way. Like that is where the strength. I don't know that I receive it, but I do enjoy like providing it. So like if you are poop shy and you read one of my books and then the next time you're at a restaurant and you're like, uh, I have to poop, you could say to the table lit I'm going to be back in twenty two minutes.
Order your apps, get cocktails. I will be back. I'm like, if I can free someone else to do that, then it's worth it.
It's worth I'm gonna My wife needs to read this, then she really is, Oh is she poop shy? She's a little poop shy in front of you reason And
what's fun? I read this like Khalil is like not only the least poop shy of any person I've ever met, Like he's not self conscious in any way, Like I've known him since we were children, and he is just like so comfortable in his skin in the sense that like the subjects that you write about, he wouldn't even think to write about them because he's like, oh, these are like what these aren't taboo? You just do them.
Like like he farted in class when we were in high school, when he was giving a speech in front of the class. I would still wake up in sweats thirty years later remembering that moment, and Khalil was like in that moment, was like looked up at the class, was like I just farted.
I didn't know what I didn't know what else to do. I was so I was embarrassed by it. I was like, everybody clearly heard this, so I have to just acknowledge it because I was mortifying. Yeah, so I have a I have a self deprecating story to tell about pooping because.
As I was reading your book. As I was reading.
As I was reading your book, I could not help but think about this moment. So I ran the Schomberg Center for Researching by Culture, a Harlem institution.
Go ahead, Ben, we have a drinking game that each time you mentioned Harvard or the Schomberg we everyone did get the drink.
All right, fine, god, okay, all right, so we got that out of the way.
Okay. So so it's like the first.
Two months on the job and we're having a social on a Friday afternoon in like late July, and so you know, the whole staff is there and it's kind of like, let's get to know our new director. So I go to the bathroom just before this moment.
I come out.
I am in like a sharp suit without the without the coat, but I have on, you know, slacks, a very press shirt and a tie. And I'm milling about meeting people like, hey, what are you doing this weekend? I'm trying to get to know these folks who are looking at me very suspiciously because they're like, we don't really know you. And one woman taps me on the shoulder and she says, you have toilet paper coming out
the back of your pass. So I was like, what could be more embarrassing than literally having toilet paper because you just took a ship before you came meeting.
Not to minimize your horror, yeah, exactly, like I see you, I respect you, and that ain't that ain't nothing? All right?
So so so, Sam, So I.
Have a follow up about one of your series, and just so this whole story about the guy you were dating a couple of fours below you. He has a pee fetish, and the way you tell the story like it ends in this crazy moment. So just just for our listeners, just give the quick version of that story.
I dated this dude who I met in the laundry room. Now I'm not very discerning, is I guess what we're going to get to the bottom of here. But he was so hot, Oh my god, I met him. We started hanging out. He was cool, He was so good in bed, like beyond, which I think is why when he asked if I would be on him, I considered it because I was not doing it as a deal breaker, then I'm gonna do it. But logistically, I mean, you know,
a Rogers Park apartment building. He had a tiny I mean, we all had a tiny bathtub, and that is the best place for or piss play because it goes right down the drain. After I practiced and got good at it. One time he collected it in his mouth and then he spit it back down my throat, which maybe is hot. I don't want to yuck anybody's yum, but I thought I was going to pass away. Not good for you. But if you are got into that, it's not a good surprise.
That is fucking funny.
I was so mad I had to let break up with him. You can't. I can't drink my own piss, my own leg recycled baby birded piss Lilla.
Listen, we are going to take a short break and talk to sam Erbie a bit more about how she lives her life and makes so much fun and enjoy out of it.
We'll be right back.
Welcome back to some of my best friends are We are talking to the author and humorist Samantha Irby, author of her latest book Quietly Hostile. So we know from your book that you got a COVID dog just like tell us about.
A Abe is a nightmare creature from hell. We Kirsten, my wife, didn't want a dog. I mean I didn't really. I'm a cat person, Like officially, I didn't really want a job either. But it was like the height of COVID and we're in this tiny house. It's me, her and her two kids, and I think, just for the diversion of it, she started looking at dogs on the
spca's website. She found a dog, a little tiny Chihuahua who was a million years old, named Granny, and it was like, she hates walking, she only likes cuddling and eating. And I was like, oh, that's me as a dog. Let's get her. And somebody adopted her before we could. And the dog that they had left was Abe, who is a At the time, he was a six month old Chihuahua mix. He's I mean, he is really the worst. He hates me. I mean he tolerates me, but he
only loves the white people in the house. He's a little bit racist, even though he's a POC as well. I'm like, come on, Chihuahua yet with the brown yeah, with the brown team. This dog is anti black. He even though I'm very nice to him, but he just he's too dumb to train like he does a lot of stuff that I'm like, Man, look at that dumb dog, but I hate him, but we'll have him forever because he weighs eleven pounds and tiny dogs live like twenty years.
So I'm hoping that we can grow fond of each other.
And Sam, I want to I want to talk more about COVID because yeah, I mean, so we're talking about COVID dogs, but your book is really a COVID book. Yeah, it's about it's about you know, these stories that you
tell or are living through the pandemic. And I don't think you I think you maybe say this in the book, but I know I've heard you in an interview say that you were diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, and I mean, there, I'm not minimizing this in any way, but there are ways that I mean, I know that during COVID I became obsessive about all kinds of things, like you know,
we're going crazy locked up in the house. Is I saw a psychiatrist for the first time ever in my life during COVID, and so yeah, I just want to hear more about about that moment for you, and you know, I mean even maybe for you Khalil.
So the the pandemic, I was like, oh, this is great. I hate going outside, I hate interacting with people. It's my time to shine. And one of the things that happened like, I don't think I left the house for the first year and I'm not exaggerating, and it's hard to it's hard to know what you're like when you don't have other people to bounce it off of, right, when you don't see how what you're doing in relationship
to other people. And as soon as we were like out in the worlds a little more, I noticed that my anxiety, my like nervousness, was ratcheted up. I was super and I still am hyper vigilant. I was always just waiting for someone to hit me or attack me or yell at me for doing something wrong, even though I wasn't doing anything. And I think being in you know, being sort of closed off for for like two years, woke up the OCD beef, yeah, and I was like,
I don't feel like I understand myself. I'm scared of things that are not scary. What am I doing? And so I got a psychiatrist and I, you know, everybody self diagnosis a little bit I did not expect OCD, Like she was asking about all these random things that I didn't think were anything, and she was like, you have so many OCD patterns and behaviors. I'm sure you're
really struggling. And I was like, I am. And so now I'm on three hundred and fifty milligrams of zoloft every day and I am not fixed, but the sort of noise in my head has been quieted a little. I feel like a little more normal.
I had a psychiatry psychiatrist experience that didn't really work out, and meaning.
Like I'm not I'm not surprised, No, I am.
I'm the opposite of Khalil, like I don't like talking about myself. I'm like uncomfortable about it. And just what you said, Sam of like your psychiatrist being like, oh here's what I'm seeing. My psychiatrist would never do that, and she would say, oh, that must that must have been really tough. And so then I'd say like, hey, this is kind of weird. Can you tell me what, like, like what patterns you're seeing or like what you're making
of this? And she she could. I dreaded these appointments because I was like this is just gonna be like a drag.
Yeah. I know. Some people with psychiatrists have the opposite problem, where they want the therapy and the doctor is just like, no, I'm a brain doctor. I don't care about your feelings. Here are some pills. I'm like, no, I'm gonna say a bunch of stuff and then at the end you unravel it and tell me what's want, Tell.
Me something, Give me something here. Damn I imagine your I don't. I don't even know how this sounds bad. Like you're probably really good in psychiatry, like oh, like like your book itself is like the writing experience is like getting healthy.
Yeah, it's like, look at the ramblings of this crazy person. I, unfortunately for both me and my providers, cannot like not do a comedy bit the whole time.
Like I.
Started an essay for this book and I didn't finish it. So we'll see if it ever sees the light of day called a Tight sixty, which is basically about my hour long comedy route for my various mental health.
That's hilarious.
Love that.
Yeah, so so speaking so speaking of COVID and maybe if you'll indulge my crassness here being a little crazy in that moment. So let's talk about teenagers because I live because you have some really helpful tips about how people should live with teenagers. So share with us your how to guide to living with and raising teenagers.
I think, well, I think the most important thing. First of all, I have to be honest and say I'm doing zero raising. I just sort of live adjacent to the children. I tried to keep them from making enormous mistake that I that I see coming.
Uh, and I clarify are your wife's children, right?
I mean, first of all, I live with that fear of like, not to get all racial about it, but if I ever get into a scrap with these kids, right quick wond and blue eyed, if these almosts are like, you know, the police immediately, So I don't get into it with them because I hate the idea of jail. I would never survive. But I think my biggest secret is just to act like the coolest person in the
world who doesn't care about anything. Because if you act like you're interested, they they take that power and.
They'll hate you for it.
Yeah, they're like, oh, you want to know something about my life, Well, here's a tiny little piece that sounds like it might be something good. But I'm not going to tell you the rest.
That's more words than I get. So Sam, in your essay, you have bits of advice like, do not try to engage your bond with them, Yeah, never, never earnestly ask for their opinions on anything you like or enjoy. Do not give them any books they're going to shoot on them. Do not expect thanks, yep, don't talk to their friends. And the one like positive you had is do get tattoos.
Yeah. I have a lot of tattoos. They think they're cool, the friends think they're cool. All my tattoos are so dumb, so that's that's good. But yeah, I all of the things, like all of the things you that would be your impulse with a kid, like be sweet to them and like ask them about school or ask them about their shirt or whatever. They just don't care and they're never gonna give you what you want, especially if they can
like sense that you really want it. So my strategy is just to act like they're you know, vaguely interesting strangers who I occasionally run into in the kitchen, and it works. I have great relationships with them.
Yeah, yeah, I'll say I'll say that the difference when you've raised them and they're teenagers, you're just like, damn, like I took your ass to that bullshit soccer game back when you were seven, and you're not gonna answer me right now, like or like you know, like like it's all still there, like for real, yes, Like that's how you're gonna everything.
So personally, you guys, keep the part of you that wants to just walk around the house pointing out the price of everything you've paid for in order to get the kids to like shut up in respect.
So my kids, my kids sometimes listening to this show, but even a lot of times they don't. But there were many times when they would turn their back and I would give them the double middle finger and it was great. I would feel a lot better after it, just like you know, they wouldn't know, and that was like I recommend that to people.
That's smart.
Yeah, And I will just admit I have thrown my youngest daughter's cell phone against the wall at least once. I'm not I'm not proud of it, but it needed to happen.
See that, and I would be which is why it's good that I'm not because I wouldn't be able to turn that off. I would just be like, oh, you don't want to do your homework, Well here go you're Jordan's I'm setting them on fire in the front, you know what I mean, Like I wouldn't be able to stop.
Yeah. Well, Sam, we are going to take one more break and we are excited to come back and talk to you about Sex and the City. We'll be right back.
Welcome back to some of my best friends. Are We are talking to Sam as In Samantha Irbi and you. Sam are one of the writers on the reboot of Sex in the City, one of the most popular HBO series but also one of the whitest shows white women and their sex lives in the history the history of serialized television. And so you are part of a reboot and just like that that I think now is in its second season. We want to talk about like your role as a writer in the writer's room. We want
to hear like how the characters came together. I'll admit my wife and I watched the original. We also watched the reboot.
And I hope your wife wasn't one of the many people emailing death threats to me. It's okay if she.
Did, but people were people were emailing you death threats. Yeah about I.
Mean I was like about the like stiletto heel show, like are you kidding me? The Funky spunk show, Get out of here? Okay. So when when The Room started, Michael Patrick King, who is the showrunner and executive producer, had already created the characters like the the new pocs.
So I just want to clarify for people who are listening who don't know the show, like me, like, all there are three There used to be four white women, and then three came back for the reboot. And in the reboot, yes, they all got a best friend who happened to be a person of color.
Yes. I just want to say, though, yeah, please in the emotional support Black Lady of it All, It's like.
The version of this story.
Is there's no other way really to introduce, Like, what is the better way to introduce these new characters into the show. You have to in order to expand your friend group. It's not like we all meet one person and we're like, she's in. It's like, no, I'm at this girl, she's cool. I'm bringing her to drinks and y'all will love her and then they're exchanging numbers over
drinks and then we're all friends. So I think that is more the vibe, that's the fun we're going for, rather than like, you know, everyone's emotional mule or whatever.
I mean, that's fair, But there is this there is this way in which it felt as a viewer like, oh, this is this post George Floyd moment when this very white woman show now has to acknowledge that there are no women of color, and now they have them. And so that's the beauty of writers, like you can actually make these things work.
Yes, yes, So Michael sort of had, like, you know, an outline of who these women were, and then we we get to get in there and fill in like little details. Let me say, I'm okay a detail I added for Naya. I wanted Naya to be the kind of person who had only seen one dick in her life because she married her like college sweetheart, because that is a thing that I think, like, as a culture, we haven't really explored much, the like I married my best friend at twenty two and now I'm forty two.
We're divorced, and I don't know how to date, So we got into that, like that's a detail, Like we added those kinds of things to the characters to make them feel more like real people. And you'll get to see in the second season like more of their sex lives, which is I know there was not enough sex and season one for a lot of people, but you're getting.
It all right. Well, Sam, First of all, congratulations on writing this show and being part of it. I mean people talk shit about all kinds of things, but you know, creating things and telling stories, and especially for people who do try to do it for a living like you and me, it's like, let's celebrate it all. Don't get to tell you have you have like a full time job as a professor.
But Sam, I still tell stories the stud you're the straight.
Yeah. Can I say something that I don't know is maybe controversial.
But I think we hope.
So I think there are a lot It was so funny to me, the like backlash against Miranda, specifically her sort of like learning about racism of it all. I feel like it mirrored the journeys of a lot of liberal, middle aged white women, right. I mean, black people are not reading almost said Ero Mex Candy but you know, like I'm not reading that anti racist book because I'm black, right, I'm example, I don't have to read it.
And you don't have a Black Lives Matter sign.
We have nothing. We don't have a day flag either.
But it's like, you know, it was so weird to me that these women who were walking around with like Robin DiAngelo's book and this and that and wearing pink pussy hats, and like I watched the documentary about these white women who paid to go to a dinner where they could be told that they were racist, which I think is crazy, But like, are we pretending that that didn't happen over the past two years, that there weren't tons of like upper middle class white women like trying
to meet somebody named Shaneida so they could be friends, so they could like prove that they cared. It was so weird to me that people were like that's unrealistic when we just watched it happen. Yeah, yeah, and like, hats off to them. I think it's so brave to try to learn a new thing or do a new thing in your life, particularly when you're over forty years old. I don't do anything new, but yeah, I was like,
this is the exact type of person. We're kind of poking fun a little, kind of celebrating her a little. But a lot of y'all were running around wearing safety pins remember that shit. It's like, come on, she is.
You No, I think you're you're calling it out. So this podcast has explored in so many different ways the ways that white people, but also straight people, all sorts of people trivialize like the realities of structural racism or other forms of oppression and bigotry. So we have a question for you. So, do you have some of my best friends are story that someone said to you along the way that they're not X Y or Z because they are friends with X Y or Z.
Honestly, I don't know that I have one. Like I grew up in a progressive place, and all my like white friends are progressive people, and my white wife is progressive and her white children. You know, the kind of people who would already have black friends, you know what I mean, like just sort of forward thinking.
Kind of like kind of like Ben, I get it, I get it, like that, like friends who might who also might actually be you know, kind of black, depending on the moment.
Ben has a black wife because he talks.
There you go, ding ding ding ding.
Yes, I've been waiting for this moment for two years.
Yes, your life is black.
Right, The answer is yes, But you said something else that's kind of fuddy. So they're they're on Twitter. During our first season, one of our our listeners tweeted at us. It said, how is it that the white guy who seems to have very little credentials, who sounds like a black guy gets to have a show when the black guy is a Harvard professor, super super educated, and like she was basically saying, it's another double America.
Sweetie and Sam, Sam, we both have to drink now. He just said Harvard whoa Hey Sam, So I have a I have a last question for you, and it's about It's really about your work. I mean, you're you're very right, very specifically about your own identity, and your work is beloved by all. It's really universal in a lot of ways. And why do you think your writing resonates with so many different kinds of people?
Oh? Man, I have not thought this answer out, so prepare for it to be embarrassing. I think maybe because I write about universally irritating things I don't like. I don't have a lot of takes that are particularly hot, right, like not about anything that matters, right, like no one cares about like the soup at Red Lobster, you know, or like whatever would bother me enough to write about it. I think it's just like I am honest but always working for a laugh. I mean, I'm always like just
trying to get you to chuckle. And I think people appreciate that. And like I'm not preachy or you know, I'm not an intellectual, so they don't have to have a dictionary handy. I think it just like goes down easy, and it's I write into such a conversational way that I think people enjoy, like sort of having that silent back and forth with me.
Yeah, my theory on it too. In addition to all the things you said, you know, you write about not feeling good in your body, You write about these private things like everyone except for Khalil obviously feels bad in their bodies sometimes or wants to like hide things, and yours might sometimes be more extreme, but it like it taps into what we're all we're all feeling.
Yeah, yeah, And like I think I think when I was a kid, I was going through so many terrible things. I had such a horrible childhood, and you feel so alone. And I think one of my goals is has always been to just be like, listen, if you're going through this kind of stuff, so am I so don't feel alone. And maybe you can't laugh about it, but I can. I'll make it funny, and I'll like do that for
both of us. So truly, I just am trying, like we're all swimming in the same see a vomit, and I'm just trying to like look over and be like, hey, this sucks, and have somebody else be like, yeah, it does the way you said that.
The title to your next book dedicated to you too.
Well, Sam, we we have had so much fun. We've gotten to know you in ways that we never thought possible, but both by reading your book and also talking to you here.
Welcome and I'm sorry.
Some of my best friends are. I just want to say, I think it's your honesty and your authenticity that is so infectious. Thanks so much for being on our show.
So nice. You guys are the best, the most fun I've ever had recording.
A pot All right, Yes, we get a croud.
Of clocking Bens Nubie and Queen this.
Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, you're wonderful, Sam, thank you, thanks, thanks.
So much, thank you for having me.
Wow. Man, Yeah I am. I am thinking about comedy by.
The way, after I go to the bathroom.
But anyway, Oh, so you're trying to be like you're like the new Samantha Irbie. I love it. I love it. You got it, you got it. The essay collection comes out soon. Yeah, that's what I want to say. It just like comedy is therapy. I just wanted to say, like in her life, she talked about how it how it sort of protected her and healed her, and just how good I feel right now. Uh, you know in Dorphin's kicking in it works. H I fucking love Samantha Irby. Thank you too.
And you know what, I just have one callback to our final episode last season, The Good, the Bad, the Funny, And our biggest critique on that show, which was about Dave Chappelle, was that he didn't know the value of self deprecating humor. And so there's a moment in this conversation when Sam is like, look, you know, talking about myself not only helped me protect myself, but it also made me really fucking funny, and that is the genius of comedy. She was awesome.
Yeah, all right, Love you man, Love you too.
Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me Khalil, Jabron Muhammad and my best friend Ben Austen.
It's produced by Lucy Sullivan. Our associate producer is Rachel Yang. It's edited by Sarah Nix with help from Keyshel Williams. Our engineer is Amanda ka Wang, and our managing producer is Constanza Guyardo.
At Pushkin thanks to Leitol Molatt, Julia Barton, Heather Fain, Carly Migliori, John schnarz Retta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg.
Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the brilliant Avery R. Young, from his album Tubman. You definitely want to check out his music at his website Averyaryong dot com.
You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at Pushkin pods, and you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you.
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