0:04

Gaze reading where the greats drop by trendy authors. Tell us all the who, what, and why. Anyone can listen. Comes we're spoiler free Reading from politic stars to book club picks where the curious minds can get their picks. So you say you're not gay. Well that's okay. There's something for everyone. Gays rating. Hello and welcome to GA's Reading. I'm your host, Jason Lipman, and this is the start of season five. I cannot believe it. It's been two full years of GA's reading. This is the start of year three. It's gone by in a flash and also feels like I've been doing it forever in a day. I should have come up with like stats or something to tell you about the amount of authors that have been on the show. Um, but you just need to go back and scroll through and find some of your favorites. Because there have been so, so, so many. If this is your first episode of Gay's Reading, welcome, I'm very happy to have you here. Welcome back to those of you who have listened before, and in case you didn't know, you don't just have to listen. You can also watch all of these episodes over on YouTube at least. Certainly from. The last year or so, um, to celebrate the beginning of season five, it would mean so much if you liked and subscribed wherever you get your podcasts. And, uh, especially if you leave a five star review, it certainly helps a lot to get other people to find gaze reading, and the support means so much. And I'm super grateful to all of you for your continued support. So, whew, y'all. On today's episode, it is Stacey Abrams. The Stacey Abrams. I cannot believe it. It's, she's incredible. And she's here to talk about her new book Coded Justice, which came out earlier this summer. And the guest gay reader for the day is Dan Pelosi, AKA Grossy Pelosi on Instagram. Dan has a new cookbook called Let's Party, which is out now. Both of their bios can be found in the show notes. A couple other books that come out today. Uh, one is Buckeye by Patrick Ryan, and that was just announced as this month's read with Jenna Pick. And another book that comes out today is To the Moon and Back by Eliana Ramage. And that was just announced as the Reese's Book Club pick for this month. Both of them, both Patrick and Eliana will be, uh, guests on gay's reading in the coming weeks. They're both incredible. The books are so good and I cannot wait for you to hear those conversations in the coming weeks. Make sure to follow us on Instagram. We are at Gay's Reading. There's fun content and giveaways. There's a great giveaway right now. And speaking of fun content, there's also a gaze reading. Substack, and merch I'm currently wearing, which you can't really see, but maybe sort of if you're watching on YouTube, uh, a gay reader sweatshirt.'cause of course I am your gay reader. If, uh, you are not a gay reader, I am your gay reader for you. Uh, and there is also. The Gays Reading Book Club through Allstora. There's still time to join the club for the September book That is The Sunflower Boys by Sam Wachman. If you're curious to learn more about that book, there's a conversation that just came out a few weeks ago that I have with Sam. The link to all of the things can be found in the show notes in the Link tree on Instagram, and i'm so grateful to be back. I am happy to be in your ears again or on your computer screen or big screen in your living room, which I know is sometimes how my sister watches this podcast. and it is a joy and a privilege to be here with all of you and to talk books and get excited about all the things. And there are so many great guests coming up that I can't wait to share with you. And I, uh, yeah, I'm excited for you to be on this journey. Uh, with me together. We're all in this together. Don't start singing. I'm really sorry. Alright, y'all, it was an honor, a privilege, a joy for me to welcome Stacey Abrams and Dan Pelosi.

Jason Blitman: 4:16

Things good so far? Good day.

Stacey Abrams: 4:18

So far so good. Just finished taping this week's episode of Assembly Required my podcast and

Jason Blitman: 4:24

I think the full official title is Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams.

Stacey Abrams: 4:27

is accurate and crooked Media Would greatly appreciate the fact that you did the official full

Jason Blitman: 4:32

Yes. Hello. Thank you. I pay attention, I do my research. Stacey Abrams, welcome to Gay's Reading. I'm so excited to have you.

Stacey Abrams: 4:40

I am delighted to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

Jason Blitman: 4:43

Here of course to talk about your book Coded Justice the third in a series that rumor has it slash I'm pretty sure you officially said on someone else's podcast that there will be more.

Stacey Abrams: 4:57

There will be we have now inked a deal, and so Avery has two more outings guaranteed.

Jason Blitman: 5:02

does that stress you out?

Stacey Abrams: 5:03

Not yet. You know, the closer we get to the, the date the book is due I like to say they either want a book or their money back so they get a book.

Jason Blitman: 5:11

Yes. Amen. Oh my God, that's right. That's so true. I'll give you whatever you want if that means I don't have to give you your money

Stacey Abrams: 5:17

exactly.

Jason Blitman: 5:18

So fun. Okay, for the people, what is your elevator pitch for Code of Justice?

Stacey Abrams: 5:23

Coded Justice is a legal thriller about what happens when good intentions for AI go wrong.

Jason Blitman: 5:32

Yes, succinct. Brilliant. Good intentions. I love that this is specifically what you brought up first. Good intentions comes up so much in the book, but it also comes up a lot in how you talk about your life, the way you live. Your goal is to do. Good in the world and I've written an adaptation of Pinocchio. I've lived in the world of doing good existentially in my head, and I have never really landed on what it means to, to do good, to be good. What does that even mean to you?

Stacey Abrams: 6:06

So I adhere to a sort of stoic philosophy of goodness, which is what are your intentions? How do you think about what you're trying to achieve? Goodness isn't guaranteed. So you may have good intentions. That doesn't mean good will come of what you do. But you start by wanting what's right for people. You want their success, you want their thriving. For me it's, I want people to have choices. I want them to have free will. And so much of my work is governed by how can I ensure that the people I seek to serve? Get to make their own choices and get to have opportunity. But the stoicism part is the grounding part and part of the existential crisis that you're describing, which is you can't guarantee that what you do will yield what you intend. And that's why intention is a part of the conversation. I can't guarantee outcome, but I can guarantee intent, and that's the place where I have the most control and the most responsibility.

Jason Blitman: 7:04

And I think the. Intention of the technology in the book really is about health equity,

Stacey Abrams: 7:15

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 7:16

which people, which I would argue is a good thing.

Stacey Abrams: 7:19

Yes.

Jason Blitman: 7:20

I almost said people should would argue it's a good thing, but I guess that's not true. I would argue it is a good thing. How, how did you go about creating this technology in your brain, in your world?

Stacey Abrams: 7:32

So if we're gonna be on the elevator for a little bit longer

Jason Blitman: 7:35

I guess that's your right we're back to the, we're right. We're still in the elevator.

Stacey Abrams: 7:38

so Avery is a lawyer who has been involved in some. Political shenanigans not of her own making, and she thinks she's in this now safe space of corporate law. She is given a chance to work with a client who is a former retired major who's a veteran. He wants to build a healthcare company that can serve veterans. And for me, that was an important conversation because I wanted to talk about three things. One, healthcare, as you pointed out, healthcare equity. We have a right to healthcare. That is something I believe to the core of my being. And if there's a population that proves it, it would be our veterans. They're the most sympathetic population, or at least they should be, and yet they have perennially been denied. The best healthcare, sometimes even any healthcare. And a lot of that has to do with the complexity of delivering healthcare to a population that is so intentionally diverse. And so the conversation is how do you use a technology like AI to deliver a fundamental need like healthcare to a population of deservedness veterans? And the. Pitch is unfortunately that even with the best intentions, the technology trying to do good may not always yield the best outcome. And so when the story opens, one of our intrepid heroes meets his end. And the question is, who done it or what done it?

Jason Blitman: 9:03

And what, so was it a matter of, this is your opportunity to in a perfect world, in a well-intended world, this is your manifestation of what technology could be used for.

Stacey Abrams: 9:16

Exactly. So in, in your question, what, how did I create it? I spent a lot of time, I did a lot of research into AI at large, and then did deep rabbit hole dives into the different ways that healthcare is looking at leveraging ai. Looking and learning way too much about Com, compounding pharmaceuticals, looking at the issues of diagnostics, understanding how do you track a person's history, because we also know that your history impacts your healthcare, not just. What you did, but the surrounding environment, your epigenetics. And so I did a lot of research, but the way I constructed the idea was what would idealized healthcare look like for this population? Not 20 years in the future, but five years in the future, three years in the future. And so I tried to make it. As accessible as possible to anyone who's used Alexa or been in a doctor's office recently and watched them not writing things down because someone else is recording it. Exactly. I went on websites and I looked at different doctor's offices that were using or claim to use this technology, and then I constructed what's the best possible version of this, and then what are the gaps and what's the flaw? And what could go horribly wrong?

Jason Blitman: 10:27

Yeah. Yeah. It was horrible. I had nightmares and I don't recommend anybody read the book, so

Stacey Abrams: 10:33

stop. Stop. Okay. So for the person who's

Jason Blitman: 10:37

I'm obviously teasing. I'm teasing. I'm teasing. Of course.

Stacey Abrams: 10:41

But that's exactly, so part of the reason I wanted to write the book and the first two, Avery Keen outings, the first one had a clear antagonist. The second book had a bit of an anti-hero. The third story I wanted to write, I really wanted to explore when people want to do what's right, but they have competing interest and sometimes even their highest ideals run afoul of just human experience. Like we've gotta live with who we've been and we've gotta understand that to be what we wanna become. And so I didn't want there to be this clear right and wrong. And particularly with technology. Technology is a tool. It is. It can be used to build and it can be used to destroy. And we sometimes believe that technology is inherently going to be good unless it's used by some bad person. But we've seen too often that technology has no value. System. Technology is imbued with the values of its creator, and that's the other problem. When the creators decide they don't have to ob observe any values or if the values they're observing are in a bit of conflict, what happens to us?

Jason Blitman: 11:56

Yeah. And to be fair, I, I. Obviously was kidding when I said no one should read the book. But what I am grateful for is that it, it underlined and confirmed the fact that my husband and I don't use Alexa or Siri or any of those things in our life. And I was like, oh. And at this moment, after reading this book, I'm grateful that that is the case, though. The flip side, of course is, this is not a spoiler, but there is a moment in the book where AI can observe. People's behavior and watching someone's posture technology said, Hey, if you stand differently, your back will stop hurting. And then sure enough, that was true. And I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, Uhhuh, I want that. I need that.

Stacey Abrams: 12:41

But that, and that was part of the fun of writing is that we, we tend to think about these things as either so fantastical or futuristic as not to be real, but in our daily lives. I, I point out there are millions of Americans who, if if I said to you, Jason. I want you to give me your biometric data, and I'm the government. Just hand it over to me to use as I want. Your instinctive reaction is what? Exactly. Okay. The average person if someone from the FBI walks up and says, give me your biometric data, you're gonna be like, show me your warrant. E. Except we give it to TSA so we don't have to take our shoes off at the airport

Jason Blitman: 13:19

Also, for listeners I gestured handed my phone over to Stacey because Sure. That's all of our information and our data is there anyway but,

Stacey Abrams: 13:28

and so we've become so used to how technology, how ai, and I wanna be really specific, how AI exists in our world. It's not just Alexa and Siri and chat, GPT AI is also gathering every hotel check-in that you do when you give them that six digit or nine digit number that goes into a database about you when you are logging in and you don't feel like remembering the 15th password that you had to update. That site that you're going to is tracking. And when we dismiss how easily technology either makes our lives easier, we are missing how it could possibly make our lives harder. And so I don't want us to be scared. I want us to be aware.

Jason Blitman: 14:11

Yes, a hundred percent. I saw a funny meme on Instagram the other day. Saying, I went something like I went to Oreo's website and clicked accept all cookies and now I'm waiting for my cookies to arrive. And I was like, of they, of course the word is cookies'cause it sounds delicious. I'll take the cookies. Oh my God. So stupid. But it makes me think of Little Shop of Horrors now that I'm thinking about it.

Stacey Abrams: 14:37

Okay. You gotta unpack that for your listeners. I know exactly where you're going with it, but go ahead.

Jason Blitman: 14:41

Just the concept for anyone who's unfamiliar with Little Shop before is, there's a guy who works at a plant store. He finds this really interesting looking plant that, and then it grows and starts to eat people and it takes over the world, right? That's

Stacey Abrams: 14:54

But he does find love in the

Jason Blitman: 14:55

he does find love and there's some joy and it's like gory and wonderful and terrible all at the same time. And great songs.

Stacey Abrams: 15:02

Exactly. And and the villain gets in trouble.

Jason Blitman: 15:05

Yes. The bad guy. Yeah. Yeah.

Stacey Abrams: 15:06

But the plant itself, the plant is doing what the plant was designed to do. And if you were to ask, is the plant evil? No, the plant is. Perfectly opera is operating perfectly given its design. My issue is who's designing the technology? What is their intention and what are our guardrails? And so I wanted the book to be a place where people, one, could learn the language because we are hearing all of this AI language thrown about.

Jason Blitman: 15:30

Sure.

Stacey Abrams: 15:31

When GR decided to become a Nazi, like they, they had grok, apologized. No grok didn't become a Nazi. The programmers and the code path and the LLM that it learned from had all of this data that fed to it, this legitimate belief that it's okay to be racist and antisemitic and instead of gr apologizing, it should have been the programmers and the developers saying, this is what we did, but we've. Imbued these technologies with a sense of sentience or humanity, where we should actually be looking at the real humans asking, what were you doing? Why did you do it? And tell us how you're gonna make sure it doesn't happen again. And part of what I want people to take from coded justice is that the technology can be for good. Part of the story is that you've got this doctor who is trying to serve her patients, and she understands this information. In fact, one of, one of the benefits was that the technology figured out that somebody was adopted, didn't really follow the protocols for revealing an information,

Jason Blitman: 16:34

right. But helpful,

Stacey Abrams: 16:36

yeah. But it's helpful. And the, and Rafe Diaz who created the technology, he did it because. When he was, in theater, when we have veterans, when we have military personnel who are in different parts of the world, it would be useful to know what happened to them there and for that information to travel with them. It's good to have access. The issue isn't, should we or shouldn't we? It's how should. Or what should we, but not if, because it's, we're too late for if,

Jason Blitman: 17:06

yeah. No, it's

Stacey Abrams: 17:06

the plant's here,

Jason Blitman: 17:07

right the plant has grown, the plant has eaten some people already. Now what are we gonna do about it? Yeah. And there's thinking about, oh, AI's listening, or my phone is listening. I said something at lunch with a friend and now I'm seeing ads for it on Instagram and on one hand that can be helpful because if you're talking about needing to buy sweatpants and that just, it's a nice reminder, oh yeah I need to buy sweatpants. And that is helpful. It's just, anyway, I was, two days ago, I was with a friend in a car that could self-drive, and it was the very first time I, it wasn't one of the ones. That it like literally drove itself like they have in LA right now. But he was in the driver's seat. But the car was doing all the driving and I had never done that before. I was like, the fact that I'm about to talk to Stacey about this book in two days just felt so important. I was like, wait, this technology AI is literally moving me around the world right now. And it was so bizarre.

Stacey Abrams: 18:50

Part of what I want folks to read the book to think about, so in that self-driving car, which you know, as you pointed out, different than an autonomous vehicle, your friend could decide to take the control back and so there is, there's a guardrail. Yes. We love the convenience. We love the fact that a lot of folks don't know how to parallel park and we don't get the minutes back in our day or the hours it takes them to figure out how to line up and move the car. Yes, it is a convenience for humanity that there are self-driving cars, but at the same time. What are the value systems that the car was trained on? Is it that it should get to the place it's trying to go fastest? Or, as we know, for some autonomous vehicles and early iterations, it couldn't see dark skinned people. It couldn't see black, literally, and so the likelihood for accidents in certain communities was gonna go up. One of the things that worries me, and the reason I think the book is so timely is that, Trump just issued an executive order saying that you can't use DEI to train. Ai. That means you, it would be illegitimate to train an autonomous vehicle to make certain it doesn't, have the wrong value system. That speed doesn't trump safety or that race can't be a predicate that you ignore because you're trying to get the car out there. And I look at Joy Bini. She's an author that I used for my book. She did a book called a masking ai as a student. She built a technology that she couldn't use, and it's one of the ways she started to uncover that AI has fantastical possibilities. But there are real world consequences if we don't pay attention, which is not to say get outta the car with your friend. It's just to make sure, not only are you in the car, but your friend knows how to, take the wheel back if Jesus doesn't come to do it for him. So

Jason Blitman: 20:35

Oh, that's what Jesus take the

Stacey Abrams: 20:36

there you go.

Jason Blitman: 20:37

Okay. Something, a concept that comes up in the book is the idea of getting technology to write. What does that mean to you?

Stacey Abrams: 20:45

so there are not just Overcorrections, but there's a sense of perfection that we can sometimes ex expect That can ignore. Part of the beauty of humanity is the flaw and one of the challenges with a technology that is trained. To be perfect is that we aren't, humans are deeply flawed, and we

Jason Blitman: 21:13

you talking about?

Stacey Abrams: 21:15

not you, you of course, are perfect.

Jason Blitman: 21:17

I know we are deeply flawed. Yes.

Stacey Abrams: 21:20

flawed, and so if we're going to build technology that serves us, we don't necessarily wanna build in all of our flaws, but we need to understand them. And those goes, that goes back to the question of guardrails. What do we put around us? What do we put around our technologies? What do we put around our leaders so that they aren't blinded to the possibility that too good can be as bad as not good? And part of the challenge when you're dealing with technology is that it's not sentient. It can't think, it doesn't actually have a moral compass. And we know that sometimes an extreme version of morality brings us all the way around to amoral. And that's just as dangerous and just as harmful, so we've gotta be thinking about it.

Jason Blitman: 22:04

Yeah, you talk, you say it's not sentient, but you in the book acknowledge that while it might not be sentient it, it can be clever.

Stacey Abrams: 22:12

Yes,

Jason Blitman: 22:13

We can, but something that is valuable to us as humans is that we can negotiate with clever. Do you have advice for that?

Stacey Abrams: 22:21

Here's how I think about it. Look it's it's like dealing with a really smart teenager. Or a freshman in college. Okay. Remember freshman year of college when, or if you've met a freshman from college, they come back with perfect knowledge. They now know everything. They are the first people in human history to learn, and your instinct is to be like. No, you don't know everything. But there is the joy of knowing. They want that knowledge, that hunger they have. There is the pride that they actually learn something.'cause you were very concerned that was gonna happen. But then there's also the responsibility, and that's the negotiation. It's the responsibility of trying not to thwart knowledge and thwart learning, but to help govern it and help guide it. And I think that's the place where we are weak right now. The United States has no real rules. Other nations have figured this out. The reason we have the cookies. The only reason we have that is because Europe said we won't let you use anything over here unless you help us understand what you're gonna do with it. And so we have the weaker version of it. We've got a responsibility if we're going to lead an ai, then we also have to lead with responsibility and that. That notion that clever is enough, that negotiation is enough, you gotta negotiate before the fact. As Avery discovers, negotiating on the fly may not always work out the way you want it

Jason Blitman: 23:48

And speaking of, again, something else that really stuck with me from the book is that the, it is not uncommon that one of the first questions we ask is how and where. Really the right answer in quotation marks is why.

Stacey Abrams: 24:04

Exactly, so I've borrowed this, I learned it from a professor who said, she, she said there are three questions like, what's the problem? Why is it a problem? And how do we solve it? And most people do. What's the problem? How do I solve it? And the example she used way back, she said, look, you drive by a car and you see someone stranded on the side of the highway and you're a good person. So you stop. And someone said, and they're like, oh my God, my car isn't working and I need to get to, get to the hospital and, but I need, I need to drive. And so you jump back in your car and you race to the closest gas station, you fill up a, a can you come back? And they're like, yeah, my engine's missing. You solved a problem. It just wasn't that problem

Jason Blitman: 24:47

wrong problem, right?

Stacey Abrams: 24:49

and your instinct was good. Your intentions were good. Your actions were noble. It just didn't work. And so often because we don't ask why? Why isn't your car working? Why do you need this? We go from what to how, and if we miss the why. We're missing the humanity of it. And that's the thing. Most of us are why people, but we just don't talk about it. We talk about the what and the how, but most of our therapists, they learn about the why. That's their

Jason Blitman: 25:16

Why do you think we don't talk about it?

Stacey Abrams: 25:19

Because why is hard and why is complex? What is easy? Because what is complaining? What is, this is the thing that is irking me. How is. Again, it's not easy, but how makes us feel smart? It makes us feel useful. It makes us feel engaged. I'm gonna solve the problem. Why is complicated? Why requires investigation and discussion and analysis and being wrong?

Jason Blitman: 25:45

And I wonder, just thinking about my sister who has a newly three-year-old. Is why, is asking why trauma from childhood where we would ask why over and over again and kept getting shut down. And so we all have this like deep seated trauma of, we're not allowed to ask why.

Stacey Abrams: 26:01

And that's exactly it. And it's this trauma of asking why. But the reason we are taught not to ask why is because people are afraid of getting it wrong.

Jason Blitman: 26:09

Or maybe afraid of answers.

Stacey Abrams: 26:11

Yeah, I mean, if you're the adult being asked, why is the sky blue and you don't remember eighth grade science? You don't wanna look stupid to a three-year-old. So you either say, don't ask me, or you make up an answer. And then the child's convinced that God is in the sky with the crayon, which is cute until they write that down in an essay. Part of our responsibility is to be comfortable not just with why, but with the fact that it's gonna take us time to answer it. It's okay to get it wrong. I've. I believe very strongly in practicing being wrong. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. You can work on inflection, you can work on sentence order, but we've gotta practice it. And especially if we want our technology to work, because one of the things we talk about in Code of Justice is hallucinations. The technology isn't really good at being wrong. The technology AI hallucinates, it makes up information and as we saw with Robert Kennedy, he put out a whole report that AI generated and AI generated its own sources. So it has fake sources to make. Its fake reports Sound real.

Jason Blitman: 27:18

Right.

Stacey Abrams: 27:18

Because if we could have done that in eighth grade, we would have, but the whole point is if our technology will hallucinate in order to avoid being wrong, what will else will it do to avoid giving us the wrong answer or not being sufficient to its programming?

Jason Blitman: 27:35

And what's also scary about it is, you use something like chat, GPT and. Six times in a row it knows what it's doing. It does a good job and it's been successful. And then the seventh time it's wrong. But you have, it has trained you to believe it, to be right. Just the other day my husband plugged something into it and asked it a question about some website that he was looking at, and he sent me the same link and he was like, oh, I figured it out. Chachi BT told me this. And I was like no, it, that's wrong.'cause I'm looking at it with my human eyes and my human brain and I know. What this, what I'm seeing and what we're talking about. And so that was another one of those moments of just it being startling,

Stacey Abrams: 28:15

But that's the perfect example of why it's so important. The technology gave him six good answers, so got him starting the right direction. Humanity says, but we gotta double check. So the Ja, the Jason of it, the Jason of it says. I can't exempt myself from participation in my own future and in my own solutions. And there is an ease. There's a convenience, like we are too often willing to exchange convenience for humanity. It's easy to have this thing, it hurts if we have to do it this way, so we will. We will privilege, convenience. And what AI does is it lets us privilege, convenience to a really high degree. There was a recent article that came from Apple or the report, and it basically analyzed the reasoning ability of ai and it turns out not really good at reasoning. It's good at pattern recognition. It can take information as your husband discovered, and it repeats the information enough that it creates a pattern. Even if the pattern get, they get it wrong. It's like plaid plaid, zigzag. But you've been, once you've seen everything jumbled together, it makes sense. When AI was given reasoning pu puzzles when reasoning models, which are different than language models, but when this version of AI was told to solve complex problems, it basic. Spun itself in circles, it couldn't do the complexity because it doesn't necessarily have the ability yet to reason it has the ability to create potential solution sets. But when you give them pretty, not simple, but medium complexity puzzles. They're not great at it. And that's again, the space where I wanted code justice to enter that. Sometimes what we think is reasoning is just pattern matching. It's not that we know something and we figured it out. It's just it looks like something we recognize and so we're gonna go with it. And that doesn't work out well in relationships. It doesn't work out well in technology. You shouldn't pick the thing you keep picking just'cause it's the thing you're used to picking.

Jason Blitman: 30:18

But we're trained. It's actually funny, the example that I just gave of my husband and I is a version of code of justice, right? Avery comes into be the human eyes in the situation.

Stacey Abrams: 30:31

You're the hero

Jason Blitman: 30:32

You said it, not me. That's gonna be the soundbite for this episode. Jason, you're the hero.

Stacey Abrams: 30:38

and do it duly noted. Absolutely.

Jason Blitman: 30:40

Abrams said everyone, it's fine. Okay. When you were talking about the freshmen who comes home from college and as though they've just learned everything for the, they've learned everything for the first time, but it's they're amazing and they know everything. This was me with reading about six years ago. I started reading and I would talk to people about it as though it was brand new.

Stacey Abrams: 31:01

Huh?

Jason Blitman: 31:01

Have you heard about this thing? Reading. I love reading books are amazing. Did you know that? They're amazing. That is not the case for you. You have been a reader your whole life. You talk a lot about your parents and your sister really getting, being the springboard for you in terms of reading. You have also said many times different books that you love. But in this moment, if you can be a trailer for the Phantom Toll booth, I have never read it. So if you can

Stacey Abrams: 31:27

yes.

Jason Blitman: 31:28

what is a Stacey Abrams movie trailer?

Stacey Abrams: 31:30

Oh my

Jason Blitman: 31:31

why should I read it? Tell me more.

Stacey Abrams: 31:33

Okay, so if you can't see my face, it's episodic because this is one of my favorite books. So Norton Jester is the author and the Phantom Toll booth is the story of Milo. He's a little boy who's bored. He's sent to his room and he opens his closet door and out comes this dog named Talk. Talk is a clo a watchdog. Meaning he actually has a clock in him. And that's the beginning of the fun. He's got a twin brother named Tick, who's back in the other world, and Milo has to go with Talk to save basically the world of words and the world of math. And there's a huge battle raging. And Milo has to be there to help resolve the conflict. And it is one of the most fun, thoughtful, I don't even call it thoughtful, it's just the most fun book. But I read this book. I was like nine and I remember it. To this day, it is one of my most favorite books, and it does not matter how old you are. You want to get into the Phantom Toll booth?

Jason Blitman: 32:33

I love that and I love a story like that. So I am, you have me already. And it's short enough that I can slot it in into all the other crazy reading I need to do. But yeah, it alluded me. I, like I said, I'm a late in life reader, so some of these classics I just completely missed, including the Phantom Tobo. But you have said so much about it that I. Needed to hear from the horse's mouth why I needed to read it. And I am very excited about it now. Wait, so you said had you, have you read it since childhood?

Stacey Abrams: 32:59

I've read it again probably about 10 years ago, but I was gonna say this and I learned this from my mom who's a college, when she was a college librarian, she did children's books. Some of the most fantastic literature was written for kids, and we sometimes eshoo reading children's books because it feels beneath us. Good writing is good writing. The question is what audience were they trying to reach? But a good reader can find something and so I just wanna celebrate you being willing to read broadly. You may be catching up, but you are getting ahead, so celebrate it and celebrate reading. I love. I read children's books. I read young adult novels. I read. I read words. I love good words, and I don't care who they were intended for. If I can find something in it and it can make me happy and make me enjoy my time there, I'm all in.

Jason Blitman: 33:51

I love that. Okay. How do you go about choosing books to read at this point in your life? For fun

Stacey Abrams: 33:57

so my siblings, I have five brothers and sisters. We actually recommend books to each other. You can tell. Andrea the oldest, like she's the best recommender, but she, because she has the most, she's, she reads broadly and she reads voraciously. Each of my siblings has a very specific book type they like, so you just have to know what you're getting into. Like one, is really weird, science fiction. Another one likes somebody's gonna die, so you know that there's gonna be a body count. Like it one is really into romance romantic. Another one really likes science fantasy, but not science fiction. And so it's great because I can help, I can aggregate from them. So I, I look to

Jason Blitman: 34:36

what's your, what would they say is your type?

Stacey Abrams: 34:40

I really, I do action. So here's the challenge. I read two books at a time. So I read a fiction and a nonfiction, and I cycle through each of them. So I read the waterfront, yI think they're just usually tired of me'cause I'm having them read my books. For

Jason Blitman: 34:55

But you did say action for the, that was the first word that came to your

Stacey Abrams: 34:59

Oh yeah. So action, adventure, science fiction. I really like a good, like emotional fiction. Not the, I'm not being disparaging, but I'm not a. I write romance, but that's not the thing I read the most, but I want there to be some emotional heft to the story when I get to the end.

Jason Blitman: 35:17

Yeah, I feel you. Okay. But the back circling back to how you choose your book, so everyone has their thing and then you filter out, okay, what am I in the mood for right now?

Stacey Abrams: 35:26

Yep. And so I read the back of the book to see what it sounds like. I read the first. Chapter because as a writer I know that sometimes you don't figure out what you're doing until you get to the end of that chapter. But at the end of that first chapter, if I have not, if I don't have a reason to come back, you might be sitting on my to be red pile for the next three to seven business years. And then, but I might mention it, if someone says, get to chapter three, then I'll go back and then I do read reviews. I wanna know, not because they're gonna tell me what to read or not read. But I wanna know what someone thought they were gonna get from a book. And if the topic or the if it's interesting enough, I'll give it a chance. But I find that sometimes reviews, and this is not just because I've been reviewed, critic, cultural critics are important, but you've gotta know what you like. And sometimes what somebody else doesn't like is a reason for you to pick it up.

Jason Blitman: 36:22

A hundred percent. My background is in theater and we took a theater criticism class in college and the the question we were told to ask is what were they trying to do and how well did they do it?

Stacey Abrams: 36:33

Exactly.

Jason Blitman: 36:34

So the key really is understanding what they were trying to do in the first place. And not all critics can do that.

Stacey Abrams: 36:41

No, sometimes I'm like, did you read the back of the book? Did you know what it was supposed to be? Because you are absolutely right. It's none of those things because. That's not what it said.

Jason Blitman: 36:51

no, you said that reading should bring you joy, even if it doesn't always bring you happiness. I think that is a very wise thing to just remember as we are embarking on our reading journeys for everybody. What journey do I wanna take this on, right this second? You call yourself stacey Abrams Professional troublemaker.

Stacey Abrams: 37:13

Yes.

Jason Blitman: 37:14

I relate to this so deeply. Because this comes from not wanting to be a jack of all trades, but master of none. Can I don't want this to turn into a therapy session, but I, this is, I, my background is in theater. I wasn't a reader. I'm now a reader. I host a book podcast. I do I feel like I'm a jack of all trades. How do you have time to write books? How do you have time to save democracy? How do you have time to binge watch, fun television? How are you a professional troublemaker?

Stacey Abrams: 37:45

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna push back on one thing that you, I've heard you say before, and I'm gonna no. So I did theater in co in high school and a little bit in college. You read plays right? you were a reader. You may not have read novels, but there is in you, there's always been this reader in you and the reason I anchor it there is that we've gotta let ourselves be more than the labels tell us we are.

Jason Blitman: 38:09

Yes,

Stacey Abrams: 38:11

that is you. You may now have made reading fiction and nonfiction and reading books the center. But you came to it having always had the curiosity of wanting to know, and that's why theater was so important to you because you could see it acted out, but you had to read the words to get there.

Jason Blitman: 38:28

I do boil it down to loving stories, loving storytelling. A hundred percent. Yes. So I'm a late in life novel fiction and nonfiction consumer. It just takes a lot more words, but

Stacey Abrams: 38:41

It does, and

Jason Blitman: 38:42

totally right.

Stacey Abrams: 38:43

but the reason, so you started with therapy. So this is why I'm doing

Jason Blitman: 38:45

Thank you.

Stacey Abrams: 38:47

for the folks listening who think I'm not a writer, but I journal, or I'm not an activist, but I volunteer. I call myself a professional troublemaker because I contain all of the things, and I've been very comfortable since I was young. Being okay with being able to do all of these different things. I can't do them all at once. I can't do them all at the same level, but I've never let myself believe that I can't, that I'm not entitled to do as many of them as I can fit into a day. And so part of why I push back or not push back, the reason I brought you in is that we, professional troublemakers are the ones who decide that we are going to do all of the things we think need to be done, irrespective of whether we're invited to do it or not. And sometimes when we are told to go away. I've been told to go away by really good people really bad people by those who are horribly indifferent, and my responsibility is to figure out what takes priority. So the way I talk about it, there are things that are urgent and important. So Eisenhower actually said it first, but I borrow it from him. So there are things that are, president Eisenhower said there are things that are important and urgent things that are important, but not urgent. Things that are urgent, but not important, and things that are neither urgent nor important. Important and urgent is where we spend most of our time. That's the place where a lot of the work that people know about that I do, that's a lot of that work. And those are the things that have to be done and they have to be done now or someone will be hurt. There are things that are important, which are things I wanna do, and I can't do it right at this moment, but I can think about it, I can contemplate it, I can engage in it, I can read about it. There are things that are urgent but not important. And usually it's'cause I forgot to do something or someone else forgot to do something. It's not important at all, but it's either gonna annoy me or annoy them and they're gonna annoy me. If I don't help them. So there's that list. I spend the least amount of time I can there, but then there are things that are not important and not urgent, and that's where fun and rejuvenation and the ability to go back into the other three comes from. And I am very comfortable planting my flag there and sitting myself on the couch there because that's the place where if you're gonna be a professional troublemaker, if you don't get renewed for the fight, you can't do any of the other stuff. And so I just organize my day so I can be in all four quadrants and deliver.

Jason Blitman: 41:11

I love that. I Do you ever, but what if you want something urgent to be fun,

Stacey Abrams: 41:17

Yeah, urgent.

Jason Blitman: 41:19

does that

Stacey Abrams: 41:20

yes, it can be urgent, but not important. That's my point.

Jason Blitman: 41:23

Oh, sure.

Stacey Abrams: 41:23

Yeah. Urgent but not important. Now, usually urgent, but not important happens because someone else makes it urgent. If

Jason Blitman: 41:32

Oh, that's fair.

Stacey Abrams: 41:32

Yeah, because usually it's this, it's, and it's usually someone who's calls themselves your boss or who gives you a paycheck and they're like, this has to get done. Or worse, it's the middle manager who's telling you that it's urgent but

Jason Blitman: 41:41

most likely them. Okay. This is perhaps very controversial and I don't, I'm putting you on the spot. I'm so sorry. You are quoted when chosen between these two things Hamilton over wicked re reluctantly, but assuredly, tell me more. What, why, what would've tipped you over into Wicked Camp? What,

Stacey Abrams: 42:08

Oh no. I chose Hamilton.

Jason Blitman: 42:09

I know you, what you said, Hamilton, over Wicked. What would've tipped you? What

Stacey Abrams: 42:13

Oh,

Jason Blitman: 42:14

You were reluctant to plant the firmly say Hamilton.

Stacey Abrams: 42:19

I was contemplating, I love

Jason Blitman: 42:20

I know you were I want to know more. Tell me what is, what was this thought process? How did we get there?

Stacey Abrams: 42:24

theater matters, you and I both know theater matters

Jason Blitman: 42:27

I know this is important to

Stacey Abrams: 42:28

it's the first act and the third act that everyone is good at. It's the second act that you're like, why? And why did it drag? Who wrote the songs? Who was napping? What happened there? And so I had to think like I Wicked is one of the most coherent retellings of a story that I've seen. And the way they were able to stage it is fantastic. The music is amazing and the longitudinal storytelling is fan is great. But here's the thing with Hamilton.

Jason Blitman: 43:01

Yeah. Tell me. Oh.

Stacey Abrams: 43:02

there's not a Hamilton song that misses, there is not a narrative thread that could have been pulled. That doesn't get pulled. And when you're talking about so many characters and trying to knit together so many years of history, if I compare the two stories, what Hamilton does is just, it's different than Wicked. And if I have to give priority, it's gonna be Hamilton because that's for me both. So it's triumph, tragedy, joy, depression, but it's also aspirational and a reminder of what we're capable of.

Jason Blitman: 43:40

Yes. Love. Well Said. Okay. You've said multiple times now theater is important to you and you've done it in the past. What was, were you a performer?

Stacey Abrams: 43:50

Yeah. So my,

Jason Blitman: 43:51

Were you in high school? Tell me more. Who did you play? What was your favorite role? What did the critics say?

Stacey Abrams: 43:57

So we, we moved to Georgia when I was a junior in high school, and we went to a magnet school, and my younger sister, Leslie wanted to audition for, and she sings. I can sing, but I'm a, I've got a, I've got like a club voice. Like as long as there's smoke

Jason Blitman: 44:14

oh,

Stacey Abrams: 44:14

low lights,

Jason Blitman: 44:15

and everyone's a little bit tipsy, right? Yeah.

Stacey Abrams: 44:19

She's like a real singer, so she wanted to audition, but she was shy. And wanted me to go with her. And so I was like I can act a little bit. So she auditioned to sing and I auditioned to act, but I ended up doing mo more of the background. So I did lighting design for theaters and I was a scab, did not realize it because I did not grow up in a place with a lot of labor unions. But the theater, we had a theater at the high school and people would rent out the theater and I would design the lights. And then later on when I started learning about unions, I'm like. Huh. I could have charged a lot more for what they had me doing. But we did the very first we did the boyfriend so I'm always a back, so we did live musicals, so I was a background player, but we did do dolls, which was the play I start in. And then when I got to college my last full year as a theater maven. I was the co-lead with Saul Williams in the death of the Last Black man in the whole entire world by Suzanne, Lori Parks. And for people who don't know who Saul Williams is, you should know he's amazing. But if you saw the movie Sinners, Saul plays the father of the guitar player.

Jason Blitman: 45:24

That is bonkers, and Susan Lori Parks is incredible. I, one of my first jobs in New York City was working as an assistant at the public theater where she was a playwright in residence and would pass each other all the time. And one day when she like acknowledged me and called me by my name, I was like, wait, you know who I am? What's going on? This is amazing. But the, who knew this was your previous life.

Stacey Abrams: 45:50

that was it. I decided that I appreciated and love the theater, but it was not the calling I had and I was going to leave it for those who. No, and not leave it for, I was going to appreciate it from afar and celebrate those who wanted to do it every day.

Jason Blitman: 46:05

Yes. I love that so much. And you are right. You are an avid supporter, which is art needs, the support. Where does your love of dad jokes come from?

Stacey Abrams: 46:16

I don't, I'm just deeply corny. I really am. It, I enjoy being amused and I think I. It just tickles me like, what do you call, what'd the fish say? Who ran into the wall? Oh, damn.

Jason Blitman: 46:36

I'm so mad. I like, I have such a love for Dad jokes. I so wanted to come up with the answer quickly. I would've not gotten there. That is amazing.

Stacey Abrams: 46:44

there you go.

Jason Blitman: 46:46

Oh my God.

Stacey Abrams: 46:48

I really do. I love, I see. I don't call them dad jokes. I call them corny jokes because they, you give them dads are good at it, but. There's a whole universe of terrible joke telling out there, or just mildly amusing jokes that become hilarious when they are told with verb and enthusiasm, which is what annoys my siblings so much about me. I will call so excited and will lead them down the path and by the end they want me dead. And that is when I know I've done my job as a storyteller.

Jason Blitman: 47:15

Yes, exactly. I know. It's like mini storytelling. A good, a solid joke. Oh, that's so funny. Okay, back to Code of Justice'cause that is what we're here to talk

Stacey Abrams: 47:24

Absolutely.

Jason Blitman: 47:25

You said it is one of the most fun books you've ever gotten to write. Why is that?

Stacey Abrams: 47:30

It was the first book where all four of the gang, so Avery, Jared Ling, and Noah are together and they're working together intentionally. They've always helped her, but this time they're actually all pulled in. They have roles to play and it was really fun writing them as full characters and having them. Reveal more of who they are, having them fight with each other and having each character have an interaction with another character they don't normally engage with. And so just writing teams, writing families, that's fun for me. And then having to think about ai, I went down, I did research, I did, courses online to really make sure I understood it because I want people to feel. More comfortable with their questions and it's hard to believe that you have the right to question something you don't understand. I want Code of Justice to be this place where you can come in and you can find yourself. I also had fun messing with Avery's relationships and teasing. It was just, it was fun just watching her navigate. And yes, I know I wrote her and that she's a creation of my own mind, but like the best characters feel like they are separate because sometimes she was making decisions. I'm like, Avery, why are you doing that? And I had to figure out why. And so yeah, it was just a lot of fun to meet her at this stage and who she is.

Jason Blitman: 48:53

Did you ever have the opposite where you felt empowered by her?

Stacey Abrams: 48:57

Yes. I've, I feel like I can talk about AI now because she did the research

Jason Blitman: 49:02

And it's so interesting too. Sorry, go ahead.

Stacey Abrams: 49:04

No, please.

Jason Blitman: 49:05

I was just gonna say it's, people see you as this figure, who I will say is saving democracy and. To hear oh, and she just wrote a thriller. It's okay not only was it a thriller, it's like book number 35 of the books that she's written and it's multiple thrillers in but it is inherently political. Does it feel political writing a book like a thriller like this?

Stacey Abrams: 49:31

It is. But there's a difference between political and partisan, and I think people presume one requires the other. Our lives are political. I tell young people when I talk to them like, oh, I'm not into politics. I'm like, politics is into you and it is a stalker.

Jason Blitman: 49:45

Yeah.

Stacey Abrams: 49:46

So we, politics simply means that there are things and forces controlling the way you live your life. My job as a storyteller, as an activist, as a politician, as a business owner, is to help tell the best story and help you tell your best story. And thrillers are a great way to do that. The very first Avery Keen novel was about the fact that the Supreme Court, there's some flaws in it that people are starting to realize, and maybe we've given Homeland Security way too much power. So I talked about that. Rogue Justice, it's about the electric grid, which very few people understand is not actually a grid. It's a bunch of hope, like tied together with the transmission lines. And I want people to understand that. And then you've got rogue, you've got coded justice. AI is really cool and it is great that I don't have to type in. Every time that I can go and stand in front of a door and give it just a little bit of information, it can now tell me all of these things until I realize if I can get that information about me, someone else can't. And so it, it's all political and my mission with everything I write, with everything I do. And this goes back to your very first question. Or second one, I want people to believe they have choice. I want them to believe they have the right to information, the right to decision making. They have the right to choose. And that's not, again, not a partisan decision. It's the nature of free will. And if we tell stories right? Plays, if we do this right, people feel emboldened. And when people are emboldened, they tend to actually do better by folks because they don't think they have to fight over scraps. They think they can build, cathedrals.

Jason Blitman: 51:26

Yeah, the other day I was at a restaurant and was just like nice to the host and they were fully booked and yet. An hour and a half later after bopping around the city, they got us a table and sent over free dessert. And I, there was nothing that I did that was above and beyond. I was simply just trying to be a nice person and I was like, what does this say about the state of the rest of the people that are engaging with the people that work here that like me, just like being status quo, kind felt above and beyond to them. And I was like, this is feels scary to me.

Stacey Abrams: 52:04

It's scary, but it's also wonderful because. In that moment, you didn't do something because you thought you were going to get something from it. You did it because you saw the humanity in another, and instinctively you knew. You knew to celebrate it. And in turn that led that person to doing something for you. Not because they had to, but because they felt empowered and emboldened to do it. Good stories remind us of who we are and challenge us to be better. And that's why it's important to have villains and anti-heroes and heroes who are a little flawed, but also to have AI that tries to help you and I won't give

Jason Blitman: 52:45

Yeah.

Stacey Abrams: 52:46

But it, that's the whole point that we are better people when we remember that we are good people.

Jason Blitman: 52:53

Yeah. I wanna. Total non sequitur, but just shout out the fact that there's a, my heart will go on reference in the book and that is important and everyone needs to know that. And if for nothing else, that's the reason to read the book. But what were you gonna say?

Stacey Abrams: 53:10

Oh, no, I, it was one of my, it was, again, it was one of the most fun lines to get to write.

Jason Blitman: 53:14

But okay. That similar to what I asked about the Phantom Soul Booth. Before I let you go, Stacey Abrams, I have never seen Star Trek in any way, shape, or form. Where do I begin?

Stacey Abrams: 53:25

Okay. Having spent this time with you.

Jason Blitman: 53:28

yeah. Yes.

Stacey Abrams: 53:30

There would be many who would tell you to start with the original Star Trek, because it's a little campy and it's a little fun. It's overly dramatic. I'm actually not gonna suggest that purist would tell, or the secondary purist will tell you to start with next generation, because that's the reintroduction. But if you're not already a sci-fi fan it could get you, but it may not. I'm gonna actually suggest you start with strange new worlds. Now my favorite of the Treks is actually Voyager because it's the best captain. I love Captain Janeway and she has to uphold the values of the Federation while being completely cut off from the Federation. But the reason I think you'd like strange New worlds, it's a Star Trek for people who didn't follow all of the other star treks. It gives you just enough to bring you in. It lets you see the development. Of what the Trek world is, but you didn't have to be present at the creation. And it's a lot of fun. You don't have to memorize, you don't have to know what Tachyon field is, but you can get in there and it's currently on right now, it's gonna be a contained five season, so you don't have to commit the rest of your life to it. But strange, in the world's season one, I think you'd like it.

Jason Blitman: 54:43

Written down. Amazing. Thank you. I deeply appreciate

Stacey Abrams: 54:46

There you go. And every question requires a 15 second answer. I apologize. I take this stuff really seriously.

Jason Blitman: 54:51

I appreciate it. Listen, I this is, again, so unrelated, but I wanna manifest you on Celebrity Big Brother

Stacey Abrams: 55:00

oh. I, so I watched Big Brother when it came to the us, my older sister and I, she was living with me at the time and or we lived together at the time and it was like appointment tv. We watched a lot. I've, I will say that I've fallen off, but I very impressed that, or I'm taking myself very seriously now that you suggest I should be on there.

Jason Blitman: 55:22

I for a lot of reasons, like in reading the book I did think, oh, Stacey Abrams needs to be on Big Brother slash She's probably loves the sort of mind. Human games like this. And then of course, I learned that you like competition reality shows. So this is like a perfect marriage. So we're manifesting Stacey Abrams on Celebrity Big Brother. Everyone go get your copy of Coded Justice by Stacey Abrams. Thank you for being here. This is the season five premiere of gay's reading. I couldn't have asked for a better guest. Thank you so much for being here.

Stacey Abrams: 55:55

This has been amazing and delightful, and I just appreciate you. Thank you.

Jason Blitman: 56:00

I appreciate you too. Thanks so much. Dan Grossi, Pelosi. Dan Gross. Pelosi. Pelosi.'Cause I think all of gross Pelosi would be in the quotation marks.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 56:14

that. Is first time anyone's ever gotten it right? Thank you.

Jason Blitman: 56:18

Welcome to Gay's Reading.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 56:19

Thank you.

Jason Blitman: 56:20

Thank you for being my guest gay reader today and to talk about your book. Let's Party.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 56:26

Oh, she's got a hard copy

Jason Blitman: 56:28

do.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 56:30

I have right here.

Jason Blitman: 56:32

This is like such a weird thing to say. The pages are like, they're very like silky. They're really nice pages.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 56:41

I'm so glad you said that I, production of a book is really important to me and I'm really proud of this. I'm proud of this one

Jason Blitman: 56:47

this is your as we call it in the book world, sophomore book.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 56:51

my sophomore book. Absolutely.

Jason Blitman: 56:53

At the beginning you say every day can be a celebration, so I'm wondering what are you, what are we celebrating today?

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 56:59

Today, what am I celebrating today? This week has been a celebration of like first Tomatoes from our garden. And so Gus and I, my boyfriend, go out in the morning every morning with our, in our robes with our like coffee. And I like water, the garden, and he like weeds. And we like, we check and see and we've been getting some of our tomatoes are blushing, so it's really exciting. And by blushing I mean they're turning like red or orange so you can pick them instead of green when they're not ready. And so it's been a good week for celebrating First Tomatoes.

Jason Blitman: 57:30

They're not saying to you, oh, I'm naked, blushing. Not that

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 57:34

No, it's not. It's a consensual blush. It's for, it's about progress. It's about hope, it's about the future. They're saying, I'm ready for you to cook with me. And I do have a whole recipe, a whole menu in this book that's focused on tomatoes.

Jason Blitman: 57:49

I, Dan, my heart is also a tomato. I was so excited.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 57:57

She read. She read the book.

Jason Blitman: 57:59

Listen, I don't mess around on Kay's reading. Even the cookbooks I make sure to read.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 58:06

I was so honored to be as part of Gay's reading a cookbook to be on. I wasn't sure what the limits were, but then in your question, prep, it was like you could read anything.

Jason Blitman: 58:14

You can't read anything. Since

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 58:16

can.

Jason Blitman: 58:17

since you're bringing it up, Dan, what are you reading?

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 58:20

So I am not like I am. Very much in love with and dating a reader, like a proper reader. Like he reads, he's reading five books at once. He's also reading a magazine. He's also like reading something about the book he's reading and then he is so I, but I am so not that person. I've never been a reader. It is so hard for me to read a full book. I have to be like sequestered and it's like horrible. But I read a lot. I consume a lot of media. Yeah. And I read a lot, but it's like very short. But what's really funny is when I read this, it was like, what are you reading? And I was like, I'm constantly reading the Dr. Braun's soap bottle in the shower. But that is like the thing that I've been reading the longest. That's my Bible. Like I consulted often, but that's like LO Ellie. But it's true. Like I'm like this fucking bottle. And then do you wanna do you want, do you wanna pause and.

Jason Blitman: 59:16

I'm, I have so many things to say.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 59:19

Oh, okay, great. You,

Jason Blitman: 59:20

I am, I need to talk to Gus and find out what five things he is reading. I'm so curious. That's a separate thing.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 59:27

he should be a guest on your podcast.'cause he's also he's a comedian. He's but that's a

Jason Blitman: 59:31

that's a separate thing.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 59:32

Yeah. But.

Jason Blitman: 59:33

I re reading the Dr. Bronner's bottle. I have two things to say about this. One, it from afar gives religious, but then you actually read it and you're like, wait, this isn't religious.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 59:49

You're like power to the

Jason Blitman: 59:50

Yes, exactly. Thing two, it takes me immediately to my childhood when we didn't have phones. And so you're like sitting at the table eating cereal in the morning

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:00:03

yeah.

Jason Blitman: 1:00:04

you're reading the cereal box, or you're like sitting on the toilet, like looking around the bathroom being like, what can I consume?

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:00:14

This is wild because I have been truly going down the road of what did people do? Do you watch the Gilded Age?

Jason Blitman: 1:00:21

No.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:00:22

All right. First mistake. But there, there is, there's carrot. Like you're watching a show that's set in like the 18 hundreds and you're just, there's so many scenes where everyone's just sitting in a room and there's nothing to do. And there's one scene where, like this season, one of the like younger girls is like protesting her wedding and she sits in her room for two weeks, won't leave it. And I'm like, what? The two weeks in your room? If that's my dream now. I'm like, put me in my room for two weeks. Like I'm in

Jason Blitman: 1:00:53

with nothing to do.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:00:54

Like I'll watch every show. Like I'll watch the comeback 45 times, let's go. But what did Gladys Russell do for two weeks in her room in 18, like 92. She read like the same book over. It's like crazy. But there you go. She was a reader. She's Gladys Russell from the Gilded Age as a reader. And then I have a third thing that I when, like my close asked me what I'm reading so my like porn is not necessarily video, it's erotic fiction.

Jason Blitman: 1:01:23

Yes. This is

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:01:25

I read, yeah, so I read do you know Nifty, the website? It's Nifty nifty.org, and it's an erotic fiction website. It's mostly gay and lesbian and that world. And there's just like deep categories and much like the period dramas of like film and television. I need I love like a storyline. Like I will be like 50 chapters deep into some like erotic fiction on Nifty, and I like know the characters, like that's what gets me

Jason Blitman: 1:01:56

that's but also that is. Reading. You're

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:01:59

Oh, it's, oh,

Jason Blitman: 1:02:00

characters. I'm obsessed with this.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:02:03

No, it's the best reading. It's like those are my like novels. It's like serves two purposes, but it's also like you really get in there with these people and you like know what they're, you like know why they're fucking, or why they're not fucking, or like what they're

Jason Blitman: 1:02:17

What they're into, what

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:02:18

And by the way, erotic fiction is so much more than just sex. It's like the buildup. It's the it's really cool. I mean it's very much like the gals who read the, like paperbacks with Fabio on the cover. I'm that girl. I love it.

Jason Blitman: 1:02:31

Are, does, how does, I'm curious how nifty works. Do you know who wrote them

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:02:35

Yeah. Yeah. And I have like favorite authors

Jason Blitman: 1:02:39

That's what I was gonna say. You must know who's who you vibe with

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:02:42

And you could like deeply search to such a level of specificity, like this is not for you, but there's like a celebrity like, and not in a creepy way, maybe that I don't

Jason Blitman: 1:02:52

But in like a fan fiction,

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:02:54

It's like fan fiction. It's it's all fantasy and it's all there's also very much it's very like before every story, it's like this story contains like these topics. If this isn't for you move on. It's very it's not like disgusting, smart. It's like very adult and I like love it.

Jason Blitman: 1:03:08

I am obsessed with this answer. This has never come up before

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:03:12

Really

Jason Blitman: 1:03:13

hundreds of people that I've talked to, and I love it. People, there's, I think shame is part of it.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:03:19

No, no shame

Jason Blitman: 1:03:21

Yeah. No, I love that.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:03:23

because it's I'm sorry. What's better than like getting off?

Jason Blitman: 1:03:27

Amen.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:03:28

Pick your poison, not poison. Pick your medicine.

Jason Blitman: 1:03:30

Pick your journey. Pick your,

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:03:32

pick your fight song. What's your fight song?

Jason Blitman: 1:03:36

what's your fight song? That's a great question.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:03:39

a good question. It's a really fucking good question. I got really high for four days straight in Ville. Do you know Ville? Northern California? It's like a gay town in the Redwoods with my friends.

Jason Blitman: 1:03:49

literally just told me they were on vacation this past week in Kernville.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:03:52

It's the best. When I lived in San Francisco, Gardenville was my Palm Springs, so we would go up there all the time. And I've a bunch of friends who on cabins there and five years ago, pre pandemic, we were so stoned and we just kept asking each other what our fight song was like on a loop. And it was like the funniest thing. And then we would play, fight song, which is like the worst, best song in the whole world. I've announced both of my books to a soundtrack of Fight song because it's just like the song that I'm like, this is hell, but it makes me cry it's

Jason Blitman: 1:04:20

This is also, so not only do I read the book, Dan, but I consume content.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:04:28

Oh

Jason Blitman: 1:04:28

I know that you've been talking about this for literally years. This is not a new thing. You said this on gay ass podcast in 2023. This is.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:04:38

It's

Jason Blitman: 1:04:39

rooted feeling for you and I'm, I love it.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:04:42

It's huge. It's like I have a list of six songs that I play and all my stories, and they're like the soundtrack to Gross, and that's like the number one.

Jason Blitman: 1:04:50

So that is a great segue into asking some of these guest, if these brand new guest gay reader questions that you are the first person that I'm asking. If the chapter of your life that you're in right now had a title, what would it be?

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:05:03

Don't get your pantry in a bunch, which I love

Jason Blitman: 1:05:08

Yes,

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:05:08

because I, my pantry is like very much in a bunch right now. I am so busy. I'm so busy. I'm I'm the luckiest. Person in the whole world. I'm living my dream, I'm working my absolute ass off. I get to write cookbooks. I'm writing for New York Times cooking. I'm doing all these incredible. Projects with brands. I am like doing merch collab. I have so much fun stuff that's going on and it means that sort of everything just feels like insane. And I am always trying to make it better. I'm always reorganizing my spices. I'm always like figuring out new containers to put things in. I'm always checking the expiration date on things like I am. When I run out of special K, red berries, watch out, like I'm crying, so it's very much like food centered, but I think that pantries are a metaphor for every, like they, I'm a pantry girl. I grew up with pantries, like my family had pantries. Then of course the sort of like the pun of don't get your panties in a punch is just so

Jason Blitman: 1:06:19

Yeah. No, that's a good

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:06:20

Or twice or whatever so don't get your pantry and a bunch Is my

Jason Blitman: 1:06:25

chapter.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:06:26

that this chapter or the title or, yeah, this chapter in my memoir.

Jason Blitman: 1:06:30

Yeah. And what would your memoir be called?

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:06:33

So I have long referred to myself as a meatball making meatballs because I'm like a teddy bear, gay, like beefy boy proudly. So then I was like, I don't know if it would be called a meatball making meatballs, but then I was like, oh, what if it's called like in a very, like sassy but sincere way, like putting the me in meatball could be cute.

Jason Blitman: 1:06:57

obsessed. How many times could I say I'm obsessed on one episode? This is, it's been too many

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:07:03

I think I've, I'm happy that you're happy

Jason Blitman: 1:07:05

putting the me and Meatball. I love that so much, and I would read it.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:07:12

I think it's really good. I think I'm gonna start, I'm gonna start writing it. There's many, there's there's very strong gross iconography. There's like the teddy bear, which I'm like wearing my teddy bear shirt that I'm the teddy bear's holding up thing in meatballs. And then there's the meatball. So it's and then there's like the tomato,

Jason Blitman: 1:07:29

Okay. I'm gonna take your brand and put it on your memoir title because your last two books are let's books. So your memoir should be, let's put the Me and

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:07:42

let's put the Me and I know, but in the same I just, while I am on a Let's Journey, I don't know if it's going to make it all the way to

Jason Blitman: 1:07:50

Fair. You don't need to be fully committed to the lets,

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:07:54

I do already know, like the, and we'll talk about this'cause in the next question, this ties in. So let's just, we'll, yeah. But yeah, I do think, lets, is sticking around for a while? Should I be blessed enough to write more books? I have a lot of Lets things I wanna, let's a lot,

Jason Blitman: 1:08:10

I want a Lets a lot. That's another great memoir title.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:08:13

I wanna let, and then the final book will be, let's wrap it up.

Jason Blitman: 1:08:17

Let's get outta here. So you were not a big reader, but is there a book that has had a big impact on you in some way?

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:08:25

So books one through 13 of Einer Garten's Cookbook Catalog. Are the books like Those are the books. I have some books, like some books that I've read that I've like learning from Las Vegas was like huge for me in college because I went to design school like. There's some real the architecture of happiness is like a beautiful book, but nah, it's really like the in ina Gardens the bare cookbook is incredible. I would say. Barea parties literally inspired let's party, right? Yeah. So I am like, there was, I was like, in this New York Times pandemic, like career pivot article, and I said I want to be known as like the bear fucking Tessa, like BEAR. And so I like reclaimed the bear. And I'm not doing like I'm a drag, she's like an icon. So I would say bear has a party, let's party. And then, but Barefoot at Home is just my favorite. It's so good. It's so good. It has so many good recipes as the peanut butter and jelly bars. It has the coconut it's just like such a good book. But then she has so many other, she's like cooking for Jeffrey, like she's going to Paris. It's just like such. It inspired me to it inspired me to in my brand. And so those are the books. Also, the thing I love about Ana's books is and by the way, every gay man is obsessed with Ina Garten. So I'm not unique obviously, and I don't need to be, but my first book was like all my family recipes, how I grew up Italian American. So like I was raised to be like an Italian American comfort food like king, right? But as far as American comfort food that was ina she taught me how to like really understand American comfort food. And that's my brand is like Italian American comfort food. Groceries in the middle, and yeah, I just really give her credit for that. And of course, the TV and just in general, but her TV show. But yeah, those are my books,

Jason Blitman: 1:10:18

those are great books and important books and books that I think a lot more people own than a random, novel. I think that's, those are staples.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:10:29

yeah. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 1:10:30

I wanna talk more about you. So in my gross research, I never heard where Gross Pelosi came from. I surmised, but

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:10:42

it?

Jason Blitman: 1:10:43

no, I know you started the brand during COVID. I heard a lot of lore, but I never heard gross itself and where it came from.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:10:53

So when I was in college, which was like 2000, 2000 to 2005 I went abroad and all my friends, when I was, I would call back to like my friends. I'd be like, call us at this time. We're all gonna be in like a room together, like partying. So I like called back once and they were all so drunk and it was right, like when never been kissed was like a thing with Josie Grossie. Drew Barrymore's character. So they all were like wasted and chanting like Gross Pelosi. Gross Pelosi to me and like the most loving, we miss you way possible, but also like ragging on me. And so that was really funny to me. I was like, oh my God, gross Pelosi's so funny. I love it. It became like my nickname. But this was also a time where we had to start branding ourselves through. First it was Friend Stir, which I don't know how old you are, but Friendster, you may remember her. So it'd be like Friend stir.com/like grossy pelosi, right? And then I would be like, face myspace.com/grossy pelosi facebook.com/gross. And then it was like, and then Instagram came out and I was still giving gross Pel, so I just made it. That and then, it became this kind of like funny thing, but until the pandemic, I only had three or 4,000 followers Instagram, so it was like funny with my friends and whatever. But then I just kept it because I think. As I through the pandemic became this like person or this like resource in food, like the thing that surprises me most daily is how much anxiety cooking gives people and how serious they consider it, right? And I'm like, oh girl. Like food is just meant to be like fun and silly and burn shit, and taste it If it tastes bad, like that's good to know. Fuck it up. Who cares? Laugh at yourself. Spill something on the floor like that's cooking to me. It's like the scene in family Stone where Sarah Jessica Parker is making Estrada, and then the three of them like split all over the place and fall on the ground. And then they start laughing. That's gross Pelosi. We're laughing, we're cooking, we're crying. It's not a perfect science. You should be funny and so I was like, oh my God, the word gross with a food, it's not it's like just makes you think and hopefully allows you to take your bra off a

Jason Blitman: 1:13:06

It allows it, it provides an opportunity to not take it too seriously.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:13:11

yeah, like not at all, like just have fun, like I write recipes, there's a hundred in this book I've written, a ton. And no one, like people read them and then they don't follow'em. So I can't take my job that seriously. I'm just trying to get you in your kitchen.

Jason Blitman: 1:13:25

That's really fun. I was not much of a cook or much of a reader for that matter until a few years ago, but it was because of Blue Apron that really got me into cooking. Like

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:13:36

I love that.

Jason Blitman: 1:13:37

I was it taught me how to do it, and then suddenly I was much more confident to make mistakes and have fun and play around and

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:13:44

Yeah. And I think I think, I dunno, that's just the joy of it for me. So I kept gross Pelosi and then it just became this kind of brand. It's confusing sometimes, but yeah,

Jason Blitman: 1:13:55

I don't think so. It's, that's why it's Dan Gross. Pelosi. Pelosi.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:14:01

yeah. Dan Gross Pelosi. People. It's so funny. It's just funny, when you have a larger or like a, I don't have a huge audience, but I have enough people for me and it's great, but they call me all kinds of things. It just doesn't.

Jason Blitman: 1:14:13

as long as I don't call you late for dinner.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:14:16

uh, Thank you. That's my grand, my grandfather. My grandfather taught me that early

Jason Blitman: 1:14:21

Uhhuh s speaking of the book, something that I find so special about this book, about cookbooks in general is the. The homage that you get to pay to people that you love. So in this book you have Gus, you have his mom, you have your dad. What is that like getting to feature these loved ones in a book like this?

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:14:41

It's the best. It's this is what we dream of. Like I am a mama's boy. I am a family boy. Gus is a mama's boy. Like we just like love. We are two people. When we met, it was very clear that we like, really like our families and that really important to us. And that's just always been part of this. Like I am the first person to tell you that, like I'm not a professional cook. I don't know everything. And I learned so much of what I know from so many other people, including my family. So I think it's really important to not, we're not in the kitchen by ourselves, even if we are right. People early on told me that the way I write my recipes makes them feel like I'm in the kitchen next to them. And to me, I was like, oh my gosh, wasn't my intent, but it completely makes sense that would be the way that I would naturally write a recipe because this is how I learned how to cook, right?

Jason Blitman: 1:15:34

You didn't learn how to write a recipe.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:15:36

yeah, I learned how

Jason Blitman: 1:15:37

wrote a recipe based on how you learned how to cook.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:15:40

Yeah. And so it was really like, I was like, that's it. Like it is about the people who've taught me all the things I know, which allow me to stand next to you, however that in your kitchen and be there with you and help you cook. And so that's just it, like it's the best thing ever

Jason Blitman: 1:15:55

speaking of loved ones and family, I don't, this is so funny I don't want to say there's a spoiler'cause it's a cookbook, so there's nothing to quote unquote spoil, but what I will say is. Seeing the pictures of BIM

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:16:11

Yeah,

Jason Blitman: 1:16:11

got me emotional, and I don't wanna say more than that. I'll let people get the book and,

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:16:17

Yeah. He was in the first book and I dedicated the first book to him, and

Jason Blitman: 1:16:20

but it was it was the recipe and then the photos right after that really got me.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:16:25

Yeah, I'm actually going to see him on Saturday and I'm gonna make the recipe for him and bring it to him. I've made it for him before, but, and he came to my house for the photo shoot and he's just so funny, refuses makeup, like he's a hundred and 104 refuses makeup. I put that cardigan on him. My friend Eddie, and I like Eddie styled all the looks and we had some options and it was like, it's like a pink cardigan and he's this is a woman's sweater. I was like, just keep it on. And then 15 minutes later, he is I'm never taking this sweater off. He was just like, so cute. And then he is like eating the pie. And then suddenly he, everyone's oh shit. He just picked it up. Takes it up with his hands and is just like shoving in his mouth. He's just the best. And so that energy and everyone, people follow me for me, but they really follow me for like my mom, MPY, Gus's mom, gus it's just, it's a family affair.

Jason Blitman: 1:17:19

Yeah. Where did your love of dips come from?

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:17:23

Dips. Okay.

Jason Blitman: 1:17:25

you like that segue?

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:17:27

Yeah. Yeah. No, there's a whole, there's a whole chapter. I was just actually I'm gonna make some of those this week, so I was just look reading through them again. My dips of the pool chapter is really inspired by my very strong like vacation house mom. Energy summer's on fire island summer's in P town, winter's doing puzzles and cabins a dip. It's a great way to feed people in the middle of the day when you're we know we're gonna have a big dinner or we had a big breakfast and as a mom or a vacation house mom, they're just great to have in the fridge cause you can just pull'em out and dip. And then what I also love about dips is, you can use them for other things. So all the dip recipes in my book tell you many other things you could do. Like you could use them on meat or fish, or you can use it for breakfast or you can put it on ice cream or you can, make it a little bit thinner and it's a great salad dressing. So I just think that it's like, they're like secret weapons, but the energy of the chapter is afternoon by the pool ledge of the pool. There's just like a spread of dips. You're in and out

Jason Blitman: 1:18:31

And a bean dip is perfect for a pool day because

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:18:37

because the best place to fart is in a pool.

Jason Blitman: 1:18:40

yes, we all know that.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:18:43

We all know that. Like that, that made it in, right? It did. Obviously. Yeah, because my editor, I was like, oh, my editor's gonna edit this out. But she actually thought it was really funny because I love farting in a pool. It's like the best.

Jason Blitman: 1:18:54

It is. There are so many pros.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:18:56

Yeah. So many

Jason Blitman: 1:18:58

It is.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:18:58

Yeah. Yeah, it's just great. I'm glad you caught that. It's really important. So I call that dip beanie bikini Dip

Jason Blitman: 1:19:05

Yes, you do. I see I read, I do my research. I am prepared. I didn't know where Grossie came from, but I knew

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:19:11

that, that's in my, that was in my, that's in my first book and it's also on my website, but it doesn't really matter'cause it's better from my mouth. Also, I will tell you one thing that I hear about my, I heard about my first book, which made me very happy, is that not only is it a good cookbook, but it's a good read book. Like people really like to just read it. And so I had people tell me that they read it from cover to cover. At least the head notes and all the writing. I don't know if they read the shit though, like ingredients and all that but yeah, like

Jason Blitman: 1:19:38

enough.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:19:39

I really think of it as like I'm not just like writing the head notes to be like, celery is yummy. Like I somehow, I'm like, celery is was with me since birth and like my,

Jason Blitman: 1:19:48

celery is yummy and I wanna try that Mai with the celery.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:19:53

Oh yeah, that's good. The drinks are really interesting. We went wild. The phone, the Nana's Negroni is like, has the tea. It's just all good. It's also good.

Jason Blitman: 1:20:02

That I am. It's a fun, the, I'm glad we're circling back to tomatoes because I would say, in flipping through the book, the one thing I'm like, I want to make this yesterday, is the icy thing

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:20:13

Oh, the tomato granita, I have to tell you. There's five recipes in the book that I'm like, they fucking slap. That one is unreal.

Jason Blitman: 1:20:25

I love tomatoes. It sounds so good. It looks so easy to make

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:20:30

It's so easy to make. You have to kinda scrape it every few hours, but it's so easy. And also like this book comes out, like literally, it might as well be called like tomato day, like September 2nd. Like tomatoes are just like bursting. So I'm gonna be like everyone make all the tomato. The Tomato Girl. Summer chapter?

Jason Blitman: 1:20:47

and this episode is coming out on September 2nd. So

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:20:50

it's coming out on Pub

Jason Blitman: 1:20:52

on pub day, everyone get its party. Go buy to tomato, right? Go to the store, get the book, go to the grocery store, get your tomatoes and then make all the tomato things.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:21:04

All the tomato recipes and everything else. Make that tomato garita. Make the, oh the sunshine pasta. No cook. It's so good. You could make it with sun golds. You can make it with cherry grape. It's delicious. It just, oh, the tomato pie. Oh my gosh. Yeah. This one's such a fun book to write because it's I love, people always ask me like, how do you make a menu? Like they're like, I wanna make this one thing, but what should I serve with it? And I'm like, oh, this is my favorite thing in the world talk about. And I also love, like people are like. People always throw like grocery parties. So they'll make a bunch of recipes from like my books or whatever. So I'm hoping that then people will use these menus to throw those parties, which is great. So it's not just like you have to make everything, but you can invite other people. Like I'm like, Hey, come to my party, make this recipe.

Jason Blitman: 1:21:50

Brilliant.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:21:51

people like that. Like you can dummy mommy, be a domestic, pop

Jason Blitman: 1:21:56

A dummy mommy. And the dom is domestic. Yes,

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:22:01

I'm a, when I say Dom top, it stands for domestic.

Jason Blitman: 1:22:04

it's domestic. Yes. Just like our friend Eric Williams, his dad texted him yesterday to say that he made your sauce.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:22:13

no, I, and he sent me that photo and I was

Jason Blitman: 1:22:15

How cute is that?

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:22:16

made my sauce. The cutest thing in the whole world. It's just too much. Like people just making my recipes, like I just get choked up. It's so fucking sweet.

Jason Blitman: 1:22:24

When I make the tomato stuff, I will send you pictures. To send us off. I will. I wanna thank you for being my guest gay reader today.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:22:32

Yeah. Thank you for having me. This is so fun.

Jason Blitman: 1:22:34

I can you give a what's the right word? A reading, a line reading of how you tell your guest it's time to go home

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:22:46

Oh, sure. When you're ready for the party to be over nicely. Tell everyone to leave. My go-to announcement is, this has been so fun, but it's approaching my bedtime. Most people will be relieved and ready to make their exit. The party never ends. Crowd will keep going somewhere else. They have, they don't have to go home. They just can't stay here as they say.

Jason Blitman: 1:23:10

Perfect. Dan. This has been so fun, but it's approaching my bedtime.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:23:19

same. I'm so, I'm so relieved you said that.

Jason Blitman: 1:23:25

Perfect. Thank you so much for being here.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi: 1:23:28

Thank you. You're the best.

1:23:29

Thank you Stacey. Thank you, Dan. Thanks to all of you. As always, if you like what you're hearing, please share us with your friends. Follow us on social media, like and subscribe. But give us a five star review and I will see you next week. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much. Bye.