RE-RELEASE! Lena Dunham, NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens and you're listening to the award-winning podcast.
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[1:01]which is a gift that keeps on giving.
[1:03]Hey everybody, I recently did an Instagram live with Lena Dunham,
[1:07]who probably needs no introduction.
[1:09]But she was the creator writer and star of the HBO television series Girls from 2012 to 2017,
[1:17]for which she received several Emmy nominations and two Golden Globe Awards.
[1:21]She also directed several episodes of Girls and became the first woman to win the
[1:26]director's Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing of Comedy Series.
[1:31]Prior to Girls, Lena also wrote director and starred in the semi-autobiographical
[1:35]independent film called Tiny Furniture for which she won an independent spirit award
[1:40]for Best First Screenplay.
[1:42]Now most recently, Lena has written a book throughout the coronavirus pandemic called
[1:47]verified strangers.
[1:48]It's a serialized book in which she released a chapter or to a day and even led readers
[1:54]who read it on vogue.com.
[1:56]Choose what would happen to the main characters, which is really awesome,
[1:59]especially coming from the number one New York Times bestselling author of Not That Kind of Girl.
[2:05]So it was a huge thrill to interview Lena and talk to her about books and everything else.
[2:10]I hope you enjoy our conversation with the time of the video, right?
[2:13]Yay, we're guys, baby!
[2:15]Oh my god, I'm so scared.
[2:16]I was like, my technological and abilities are going to ruin this.
[2:19]I'm so happy to see you!
[2:21]Oh, you too!
[2:22]Oh my gosh, it's a great book queen and book fairy.
[2:25]And you've been such a big part of my isolation listening to your voice.
[2:28]So it just means the world to be here with you.
[2:31]Oh my gosh, you're so nice.
[2:33]Thank you.
[2:33]And I take you to say what you do lifting writers up, especially female writers,
[2:38]in such a like, it's already heard enough for anybody to get their writing heard or seen in the
[2:43]way that you like host and welcome talents.
[2:47]Not to mention what an amazing writer you are, you are yourself.
[2:50]I read your piece about your hysterectomy and related deeply.
[2:53]I just feel really lucky to be on this live with you and I even brushed my hair.
[2:57]Well, if you brushed your hair, then I know it's going to be fun.
[3:00]Thank you for saying that.
[3:03]Thank you for saying that.
[3:04]That was really, really nice of you to say.
[3:06]So just like, thank you.
[3:08]And I'm so glad that you've been listening to my podcast through the pandemic.
[3:10]But that's amazing.
[3:12]And I have been reading verified strangers or I had read until it ended.
[3:17]Oh my gosh, I cannot believe you've actually been writing that real time.
[3:22]Is that really true?
[3:23]It's like too good.
[3:25]That's so nice of you to say.
[3:26]And I reread it and there are definitely some incredible clunker sentences in there.
[3:31]So thank you for saying so.
[3:33]But I have to say like my first reaction when I heard we were going to be stuck inside.
[3:38]And obviously we all thought it was going to be a shorter period of time at first.
[3:42]We're all like, oh, this will be a little experiment.
[3:46]Obviously it's been much more complicated and tragic than that.
[3:49]But I just thought about the idea of serialized storytelling.
[3:52]I had just recently been reading about Charles Dickens and the fact that
[3:56]through the color outbreak of I believe 1854, he was writing a serialized novel.
[4:01]And it's a form so many.
[4:02]I mean, he did it.
[4:04]That's how middle March was written.
[4:05]Stephen King's written that way.
[4:07]So it just seemed like an amazing thing to try and kind of an Olympic exercise to put yourself
[4:12]through as a writer.
[4:14]And it gave me so like I will never say a snarky word about a blogger, a journalist.
[4:20]They could say whatever they wanted out me for the rest of time.
[4:24]The amount of content those people are slamming out.
[4:26]I will never, I will never snap back.
[4:31]So but how did you do it?
[4:32]Did you just decide like how did you even come up with the plot in the structure?
[4:35]Because there was so much and the idea that the audience could weigh in.
[4:39]I mean, that was brilliant.
[4:40]Well, thank you.
[4:41]I just wanted to do something honestly.
[4:43]I missed the connect when I had a TV show.
[4:46]And hopefully I'll have one someday again.
[4:49]The connection that I had with my audience every week,
[4:51]even though we weren't necessarily responding to them, every season, of course,
[4:56]their thoughts about the characters and ideas leaked into my work.
[5:00]And I missed that connection to an audience and that connection through character.
[5:05]And I feel like so much so in this day, we're connected to personalities, whether it's
[5:10]influencers.
[5:10]I mean, I feel like I know you.
[5:12]I do know your husband, but who I've obsessed with.
[5:14]But like we feel like we know real people, but I sort of missed that sensation of feeling like
[5:21]you know a character.
[5:22]And so from that, I tried to think about someone who was relatable to me, but I also really wanted to
[5:28]give myself the challenge of writing someone who wasn't me.
[5:30]So Ali sort of came to me.
[5:33]She's way cooler and cuter and also sometimes messier than I am.
[5:38]Because I spend more time in my house.
[5:40]And I also just wanted to play with the concept of a romance novel and what I love about.
[5:45]You know, I used to really like have this sort of, I remember like a stupid snotty attitude
[5:50]about thinking of romance as like, chicklet or unserious.
[5:54]And then I realized like I had actually been colonized by the very ideas that the world wants
[5:59]to impose on women.
[6:01]And I actually think like what I love about romance is it allows for fantasy and it also allows
[6:06]for self-reflection.
[6:08]And so the idea of a character who is having all of these various types and styles of lovers
[6:13]thrown at her and the way it confused her inner world, that was really exciting to me.
[6:20]Who do I?
[6:21]I couldn't decide who I wanted her to end up with.
[6:23]I couldn't, I wanted to understand like why the guy laughed like I just, I don't know.
[6:28]I left so many and even when they, people voted constantly in a way that I didn't think they
[6:35]would go.
[6:35]So there I learned to stop preparing chapters because I absolutely never knew what was going to happen.
[6:42]And so I was totally, what I loved was how consistently the audience just
[6:47]supremely surprised me.
[6:49]And I also was actually thinking a lot about far from the Madden crowd, the Thomas Hardy book
[6:54]and the way that even though it's this really dense, I mean, I think he's like a deeply feminist
[6:59]writer and even though it's this really dense piece of literature at its core, it's really about
[7:03]a woman choosing between three lovers and what the choice she makes says about her.
[7:08]And so I loved using that classic format, but letting other people weigh in.
[7:12]And you were amazing.
[7:13]Like, I don't know how you do it.
[7:15]You read the first two chapters and we're like, oh, by the way, here are a few little,
[7:18]like linguistic things that you're under.
[7:20]Mr. And I was like, you have a billion kids, a podcast.
[7:24]You're writing your own book.
[7:25]And you just managed to make my novel better and copy edited it.
[7:28]No, stop it.
[7:30]You really did stop.
[7:32]I just, I read so much right now.
[7:34]It's like, I didn't realize when I started this whole project, I've always loved to read,
[7:38]but I didn't realize it was a muscle that you could develop so much.
[7:41]Like I thought it was a fixed skill.
[7:43]Like I read at this pace full stop, but not true at all.
[7:46]Like I've been getting better and better.
[7:48]What I've wanted to ask you, I took a speed reading class in college and it was the best thing
[7:51]I ever did.
[7:52]But what I wanted to ask you is, you know, you started this because books are your passion.
[7:57]But once it became something that you did for a job, do your relationship to reading changed?
[8:03]Do you still, do you have your work reading and your pleasure reading?
[8:06]Do you have, do you separate it?
[8:08]Or is it all about just bringing to your listeners what excites you?
[8:13]It's all about bringing what excites me.
[8:14]I don't read anything I don't want to read.
[8:16]I mean, it's like what, I don't know.
[8:19]I don't want to recommend things if I'm not excited about them too.
[8:21]And I mean, obviously, I can't love every single book.
[8:24]And I'm sure you feel the same way, but there's something about it that really speaks to me.
[8:30]Maybe something really cool about the author.
[8:32]Maybe it's a unique structure or maybe there's just always something interesting I feel like.
[8:36]So no, it's not, I don't do this as work.
[8:39]This is like totally fun for me.
[8:41]So I mean, that's amazing.
[8:44]And like making your pleasure, your work is amazing.
[8:47]And I also love that you're instilling your, like the fact that you like moms can read to moms,
[8:52]don't have time to read.
[8:54]You're instilling in your kids that actually like reading is self care and reading is a way to
[9:00]like disappear.
[9:01]And I mean, I don't know if your kids are rebelling or they're becoming book lovers too,
[9:05]but it's amazing.
[9:06]Oh, thank you.
[9:08]Yeah, they run this spectrum, but authors are just so accessible to them and the way that I always
[9:12]wish they had been for me.
[9:13]Right.
[9:13]I feel like when we were growing up, I'm much older than you are, but when I was going up,
[9:16]it was impossible really to, you know, I would write letters to others who I thought were amazing,
[9:21]but there wasn't really back and forth.
[9:23]And now with Instagram, like I still feel like the candies are like,
[9:26]I can't go in and see like all these amazing authors where they're having breakfast and roll.
[9:32]Oh, my God, I remember writing a fan letter.
[9:34]The first one I wrote was to Nikki Giovanni, the poet and like looking up in the book where
[9:38]her publisher was.
[9:39]Yeah, that's what we did.
[9:40]I wrote them to Judy Blum.
[9:43]I mean, I was really like, I was like, I will get into contact with these people.
[9:48]And did you ever get a form letter back and it broke your heart?
[9:52]Well, I did get, I started actually one relationship with an author where we became
[9:56]pen pals. Her name was Zibi O'Neill and she lived in Michigan. And then
[10:00]There are a couple of years.
[10:00]Your name is you.
[10:01]She had the same name as me.
[10:02]And I was like, oh my god, there's a bit of a concern.
[10:04]And like, freaked out about it.
[10:06]And she ended up coming to New York
[10:07]and taking me for tea at the Plaza.
[10:09]And I was in fifth grade.
[10:10]It was like the highlight of the stories
[10:12]I've ever heard.
[10:13]She had the Plaza's also, as you know,
[10:15]being a fellow New York girl.
[10:17]I loved, I read an article where you described
[10:19]going to school with like your little bag
[10:23]and your loafers and your, and I could so see.
[10:26]Like it made me think of,
[10:27]do you know the Madeline Lengel book Camilla?
[10:29]Yeah, it's about like just a kind of girl
[10:32]finding herself uptown New York City
[10:35]and takes place Camilla was in an era before you.
[10:38]But I was like, oh, that's so glamorous.
[10:39]Especially because since I lived downtown,
[10:42]I always really idolized.
[10:43]I thought uptown girls were like really sophisticated
[10:46]and new more.
[10:48]And because you were near museums and glamour.
[10:51]And then of course like I've heard now my friends
[10:54]who went to school uptown, be like,
[10:55]I thought you guys were so cool.
[10:56]And that's what I was about to say.
[10:59]I was about to say like,
[11:00]I thought the downtown girls were the coolest thing ever.
[11:02]And I would, I mean, I just,
[11:04]I mean, the boots and the clothes.
[11:06]And it was like a whole nother world.
[11:08]I just never the boots girl.
[11:10]I was always the girl following the boots girl around,
[11:12]which is probably why I'm a writer and not something else.
[11:18]And I'm curious like now that you're writing
[11:20]and I'm so excited to read your book.
[11:23]Did you always think of yourself as a writer?
[11:26]Or did it be?
[11:27]I am supposed to be interviewing you.
[11:29]You're not trying to do your same dialogue.
[11:34]You're not even curious.
[11:35]Did I always want to be a writer?
[11:37]Did you think of yourself as a writer?
[11:39]Did it take kind of,
[11:41]or did you think of yourself as a reader
[11:43]and being a writer came next?
[11:45]I always wanted to be a writer.
[11:47]Like my grandfather published this little book
[11:49]I wrote in third grade.
[11:50]And I have just been from the minute I could hold a pencil.
[11:52]I was writing nonstop and journals and all the rest.
[11:55]But to consider yourself a writer.
[11:57]I mean, you can consider yourself a writer.
[11:59]You have like a number one of your times bestseller
[12:01]and all the rest of your obviously writing genius.
[12:03]But I feel like I can't really call myself a writer.
[12:08]And actually I talk to you.
[12:10]I interview a lot of authors who say the same thing.
[12:12]And I'm like, right, but you actually have
[12:14]three books on the bookshelves.
[12:15]But you know what?
[12:17]I tend to think.
[12:18]I mean, I used to think it was a female thing
[12:20]that I read that Saul Bello had such a bad sense
[12:22]of imposter syndrome.
[12:23]He couldn't even get things done.
[12:26]I mean, I just think there's something about
[12:28]because it's such an impossible dream
[12:31]to have people read and relate to your work.
[12:34]It can be really hard to say the words, I'm a writer.
[12:37]Like I know that it's definitely taken me time and effort
[12:41]to be able to really say that's my job.
[12:43]And it's interesting when people ask me,
[12:46]what do you do even though I do different things?
[12:48]I direct an act.
[12:49]I always say writer because I feel like writing
[12:53]is like the generative force behind all of it.
[12:56]Like it's the thing that it makes the rest of it run.
[13:00]And like, I've never felt luckier than to have an
[13:05]imagination than in this time.
[13:07]And I feel like books and imagination are the things
[13:10]that are definitely getting me besides my loved ones
[13:14]or getting me through this quarantine period.
[13:16]And so it's like, feels like an especially poignant time
[13:19]to think about and recommend books.
[13:21]And what is writing do for you?
[13:23]Like, what do you love about it?
[13:25]Have you always loved it?
[13:26]Like, is it a way to make sense of the world
[13:28]or is it more an escape or I don't know?
[13:31]What did I always love it?
[13:33]I've always loved it.
[13:34]I always joked that I wanted to be a fashion designer
[13:36]to a fourth grade and then I had a career change.
[13:38]But I think for me, the thing about writing is like,
[13:42]and I think a lot of writers feel this way,
[13:44]I always always felt like I was observing the world.
[13:46]Like, I wasn't a full, fling gauge.
[13:49]Like, there was some part of me,
[13:50]even if I was in the middle of a party talking and laughing,
[13:53]that was in the corner watching and trying to understand.
[13:57]And that's a part of me that's a writer.
[13:58]And that's a part of me that's always there.
[14:01]But also when I'm writing is weirdly
[14:03]when I feel most present.
[14:04]Like, when I'm working on a new memoir right now,
[14:07]and it's almost like I can feel more present
[14:10]in my memories writing them than I did when I was in them.
[14:15]And that to me is like, it can be painful,
[14:18]but it's also the great gift.
[14:20]And the fact that writing always allows you,
[14:23]no matter where you are to create,
[14:25]like when I make a movie I collaborate with thousands
[14:28]of people or a TV show throughout the process,
[14:31]you know your husband works in film.
[14:33]If I'm doing kind of a project that requires
[14:35]like online engagement, but you can write
[14:38]and literally suddenly live in a totally different space
[14:43]just by picking up a pencil.
[14:44]And I think I figured that out.
[14:46]Like, I wrote like a novel and fourth grade.
[14:49]Everyone has one of these.
[14:50]I recently found it was like about a boy
[14:52]who lived in the ruins in India
[14:54]because I'd heard once there were some ruins in India.
[14:57]I did not do good research.
[14:59]And like has to save his friend from a snake bite.
[15:02]But I remember like I was in fourth grade
[15:04]and thought people didn't like me.
[15:05]And for that period of time,
[15:07]I was in the ruins with this kid who was lonely
[15:11]and said, but much more successfully adventurous than I was.
[15:15]And it gave me that sense of connection and purpose
[15:20]and writings done that for me ever since.
[15:22]And I think it seems like this is how it is for you.
[15:24]It's also a way to frame your experience
[15:27]and understand what you've been through.
[15:29]And also try to like reach a hand out to other people
[15:32]and ask, do you know what this feels like to?
[15:34]Because for me, being read and having someone understand
[15:38]or exchanging a book with someone that we both love,
[15:42]reading someone else, that's the way that I know
[15:44]how to feel understood.
[15:46]Absolutely.
[15:47]Yes.
[15:47]I think there's nothing better than sort of opening up
[15:49]how you feel and then just being like,
[15:51]does anybody, am I alone in this or does anybody else
[15:53]be alone this way?
[15:54]Even like on Instagram and so often I'm like,
[15:56]am I the only one having a total panic attack
[15:57]about like crazy hornets coming to like in New York City
[16:00]or something?
[16:01]Can I really take another thing?
[16:02]Like why does this make me want to cry?
[16:04]And then everybody else is like, no, I get it too.
[16:06]And the beautiful part of the internet
[16:09]is that it's brought some of that connection.
[16:11]But like, you know, when I was a kid
[16:12]and I read, are you there out?
[16:13]It's me, Margaret, I was like, I didn't know
[16:15]other people had these thoughts.
[16:16]Right.
[16:17]And that's the same way I felt in high school
[16:19]when I read the bell jar.
[16:20]And that's the same way I felt when I got older
[16:22]and I, you know, started engaging with, you know,
[16:25]same way I read, like I just reread, eat the document
[16:27]by Danis, be out of like all these writers
[16:30]so I went like, oh my God, not to mention poets
[16:32]where I went like, oh my God, your brain is occupying
[16:35]this same kind of level.
[16:38]It's a place for us all to meet.
[16:39]And I think that's like for me,
[16:41]what's so joyful about it.
[16:44]That's a great way to say it.
[16:45]It's completely true.
[16:46]Yeah.
[16:47]People, it's like the only way people can really
[16:51]like let their guard down and share what's going on.
[16:54]I feel like, you know, both my parents are artists,
[16:57]my mom's photographer, my father's a painter.
[16:59]And I know that for them, those mediums do the same thing
[17:03]for them.
[17:04]And I love to paint and I love to watercolor.
[17:05]But like, there's a totality for me.
[17:07]Everyone just loves their form of expression.
[17:09]There's a totality for me to the form of writing.
[17:13]And, you know, I just find books comforting.
[17:15]Like, if you look around, you know, my room,
[17:18]there's just like piles of books and crap everywhere.
[17:22]Just because it's like, I almost need to organize them.
[17:24]Like, okay, my dramatic friends are over here
[17:27]and my funny friends are over here.
[17:29]And that's something that I can just like remember
[17:32]childhood for a moment.
[17:33]So I have everything from like the biography
[17:36]of Ellen Montgomery to, you know, a book
[17:39]about like, you know, neuropsychology
[17:43]to one of my best friends, Bill Plague,
[17:46]has a book coming out from the end of the day.
[17:47]That's gorgeous.
[17:48]And I just keep it by my bed
[17:49]because it reminds me of him.
[17:51]Like, they're living all around me.
[17:54]I'm interviewing him.
[17:55]I'm excited.
[17:56]You are?
[17:57]Yeah, I am.
[17:58]Like, truly my best friend in the world.
[17:59]No way.
[18:00]That book is so, have you read it yet?
[18:04]No, I started it.
[18:05]And I read his first book, but not his second book.
[18:09]Have you ever had a family's incredible?
[18:10]And then obviously, portrait of the addict.
[18:13]and he's been like a huge force in my writing life.
[18:16]Really?
[18:16]I didn't know that.
[18:17]My first reader a lot of the time.
[18:19]And so what I love is I haven't seen him in six months now,
[18:23]but his book is by my bed.
[18:25]And I literally like clutch it to myself.
[18:27]Oh, absolutely.
[18:28]That makes me feel good.
[18:29]What are you literally reading right the second?
[18:33]I am reading Wally Lambs.
[18:35]I know this much is true again,
[18:37]because I'm interviewing him next week,
[18:39]which I'm really excited about.
[18:41]Because that's a good get.
[18:43]Yeah, I'm excited.
[18:44]I keep going off with these amazing things.
[18:46]I'm like over the moon these days,
[18:48]but his book is going to be this Sunday, the 10th.
[18:52]Probably the day this is coming out at night.
[18:54]His book is being made into an HBO limited series.
[18:56]So I'm going to watch it.
[18:57]And then I'm going to interview him next week.
[18:59]He really is a big one for me,
[19:01]because my grandmother was like my best friend.
[19:04]She was from Connecticut, the part of the world
[19:06]that Wally Lam writes about.
[19:07]And she was obsessed with him.
[19:09]So to me, I remember sitting and taking her Wally Lam
[19:13]when she felt like reading, she's come undone
[19:15]and being like in third grade and being like,
[19:16]I don't think this is appropriate for me,
[19:18]but I'm going to read it anyway.
[19:20]Like his books were such, had such a hit,
[19:23]like such importance in her house.
[19:25]And they meant so much to her,
[19:27]because I think she felt very seen by him
[19:29]because he understood the psychology of the region.
[19:31]She came from.
[19:32]And so Wally Lambs, a big one to me,
[19:35]because to me, he was like the start adult books.
[19:37]Like I remember a few of the writers
[19:40]who just like started off from me to the idea
[19:42]of adult reading and how sneaky and proud I felt.
[19:45]And he's a big one.
[19:45]So that's an amazing one to reread.
[19:48]My introduction to adult books was Judith Krantz,
[19:51]because my mom would just put these like romance books
[19:53]by my bedside, because I would fly through all the kids' books.
[19:56]And then yeah, I'm like, I can't believe someone's stuff.
[19:59]I was reading.
[20:00]Oh, I still think about some of the stuff like I just remembered because I rewatched this movie in like Susanna more has a new novel out and my parents knew her and so somehow I got my hands on in the cut which was like a sexual thriller.
[20:12]Close your ears for a second I think involves having sex a woman having sex with a dog and but like definitely involves discussion of it and like I recently rewatched that in the cut the movie and I thought I cannot believe.
[20:27]I think God fourth grade me literally just didn't know what any of it meant. And so I would sort of be like that was confusing because they know there was enough pain you endo that I didn't know about like the full on SNM that was occurring and but I do love that my parents sort of went as like my parents had to like my parents were strict about what I could spend on and they were strict about what I could watch on TV.
[20:51]But when it came to the bookstore especially like the strand literally nothing was off limits like if I came up and I was like I want to read this history of modern news they were like okay because they just couldn't see what could be bad about a book and if I had questions and so that's like.
[21:08]For a better or worse kind of what raised me and I went through I was just remembering did you forget through the phase where you read one last wish books like the ones about all the girls with terminal illnesses who go to camp to like have a last wish.
[21:20]No, but I wish I had.
[21:23]They were like teenage romances that took place between like a kid who had leukemia and a kid who needed a heart transplant and they were like these tragic kind of teenage Nicholas sparks doomed romances and they were my obsession like for whatever reason all I wanted to read about was kids with.
[21:43]grave illnesses following in love at camp and it was like I would dream about them at school I mean I and now I look back and I'm like that is the craziest genre especially because it was met for kids but there's something for everyone.
[21:59]No, I was all into a sweet valley high and like I'm like in a different generation here but my the books I wanted to read were like perfect blonde high school prom queen and like somewhere random.
[22:10]I think the life that I was not ever going to live.
[22:13]I love that too and I also had every single book in the babysitter's club series my favorite which I still reference a lot was a one called boy crazy Stacy which was about when like Stacy had too many crushes and it turned into a problem.
[22:26]I also remember thinking kids are so weird like I thought Stacy was cool because she had diabetes and I was like Stacy special because she is diabetes now is an adult chronically a woman I understand that nobody wants diabetes but it was almost like thinking braces or hallmark or cool I was like Stacy's mature and hot and she is diabetes I want to be just like her.
[22:48]So maybe you had maybe you had some sort of like premonition or that something was off or you were trying to work through some sort of medical seriously.
[22:56]I was like god I feel like a real Stacy and then I recently mentioned it to my friend and she was like oh I was a Claudia because she were funky earrings and love junk food like the things we remember are amazing.
[23:08]Are you how is your how are you feeling okay I'm feeling really good thank you I'm home in Los Angeles which has been amazing.
[23:15]surrounded by my pets and my books I swear this sounds crazy but I was living in a rental house in London and very lucky to be there for work.
[23:24]And you know I brought a pretty substantial stack of books for travel 20 or 30 but was reading a lot of my Kindle which I do adore because it's a magical window into all books ever.
[23:35]But I swear that when I get back into my house and my books are on the shelf the stabilizing effect and the first thing I do is like walk around the house and just shuffle them into nonsense piles like.
[23:47]Only I understand right now why this like why the books that are in a stack over here I'm just going to it's like so random like only I understand why.
[23:59]why a book called no happy endings is next to the land of man is next to this is next to like the new so Susan or lean book.
[24:08]Except it's just about a feeling and that's like where I know they I know they must be together I feel like I gave you some of those books tonight that's yes you did.
[24:19]Oh, my God, some of the mercy books one second I'm just I'm just finishing up an Instagram live.
[24:27]I just got a knock I think it was my dog being naughty.
[24:32]Oh my gosh you funny.
[24:34]And I have my tote for me which I once I can leave my home again will be full of groceries.
[24:40]Oh my gosh I missed the grocery store that's like the hardest thing it's like not having access to normal food and whatever.
[24:46]You know, I know what was made you know where it's very last but we're but it's I just want to say thank you because you really influence me to do.
[24:54]To kind of bring writing and serialize writing into my quarantine and when I got your bag of books and started listening to a podcast at a really, really like perfect time where I wasn't feeling so long I needed it.
[25:08]And I felt such a lifeline to you so just to get to talk to you so fun and I can't I can't wait until I'm interviewing you without your book.
[25:16]Oh, you might have to wait a while.
[25:18]Well, thank you, thank you for saying such nice things.
[25:20]Thank you for talking books I can talk books in you forever.
[25:23]Me too.
[25:24]And tell us what I love him because I love positive and joyful personal life and should have us on reality show.
[25:30]It's true.
[25:31]He absolutely should.
[25:32]Yes.
[25:33]That's to be.
[25:34]Thank you so much.
[25:35]Thank you, Rina.
[25:36]Thanks for coming on.
[25:37]Bye.
[25:38]Bye.
[25:39]You've been listening to moms don't have time to read books with Zippy Owens.
[25:42]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter at zippyowens.com to get more updates about episodes like these and also lots of live events.
[25:50]Thanks again to urban sitter for partnering with us today and offering a 25% discount on urban sitter memberships with promo code summer 25.
[25:59]If anybody who needs a sitter or a nanny or anybody to help you, if you can actually get out of your house, go to urban sitter.
[26:06]This will be your go-to and life saver.
[26:09]You can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time to read books.
[26:13]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[26:17]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.
[26:21]Thanks for listening.
[26:22]You could always email me at zippyatzippyowens.com.