AUDITION by Katie Kitamura & and the Documentary BANNED TOGETHER
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This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill. And I'm Rebecca Shinsky. Two-part episode for you today. Up first, Rebecca and I are going to talk about Audition, the third novel by Katie Kitamura, which came out today. We're recording on Tuesday, April 8th, but this episode released on the 9th.

And in the B block, Rebecca, you've got something cooked up. What's in the B block? Yeah, I got to speak with Alison Rice and Tom Wiggin, who are two of the producers of the new documentary Banned Together, which is about the larger surge of book banning that we've seen since 2021, 2022. They spent time specifically in Beaufort, South Carolina, which has been a real center for

of book banning attempts and controversy following three student activists, but also in exploring how this is impacting really the whole nation. They talk to student activists, they talk to politicians at every level. They speak with some of the local people who have been in the Charleston area, which is near Beaufort, where their communities have been for centuries, who have been impacted in other ways by attempts to either limit or perpetuate

prevent access to education at all. It's a really holistic, in some ways difficult, and in some ways very hopeful watch. And it hits streaming on Apple TV Plus and Amazon Prime this Thursday, the 10th. So I got to speak with them. I got to watch the documentary in anticipation of the streaming release and hope you all will enjoy hearing straight from creators of a piece of work like that, but also be able to take it with you and watch that documentary with friends and family.

Just released now, so it's in the first edition feed as I speak, my interview with Katie Kitamura. So if this conversation inspires you to want to find out more, you can go check it out over there as well. Up later in the week, my conversation with John Hickey, the author of Big Chief, also hitting the first edition feed. All right, let's do a sponsor break and we're getting into it, Rebecca. I tipped my hand when I said I really like this book. You did.

We can do some summary and what's about, but give the people what they want. Rebecca, what did you think of Audition by Katie Kitamura? Katie Kitamura is a good drug, and I want it right in my veins. It's so good, right? Okay. So it's not very long, I guess. So let's give the people the P. 200-ish pages? Yeah, and it reads as like it's 40 pages long. That was my experience of it at least. It grabs you by the throat. And I've been trying to figure out what genre to call this. Yeah.

Well, so are they. I mean, we could talk about the packaging, the kitty commercial we've seen. Like, what is this packaging? This black with, I don't even know, sort of Hello Kitty covers, but with like shattered, like this is trying to figure it out too. It is. This is not like domestic suspense. It's not what I would call it because usually that has some sort of like violence or an affair or like some drama is really at stake. But the stakes here are like...

humans being human questions of like intimacy and relationships and, and of reality of what is real, what are relationships? What is a family is kind of one of the central questions that,

Of this book. And so the suspense, like the sitting on the edge of your seatness of reading Katie Kitamura, at least especially in this book, is not about like who done it or how they done it or what anybody done, but about like how we understand ourselves. Not much happens. Like this is things happen.

happen, but also not much happens. It's people thinking about their lives and having some really critical, a couple of really critical interactions. Look, we're flailing because there's not a lot like this. I think that's one thing to say. There's not, there's not a lot of comps here that you can do with Kid Ikemura. Like I think I said on the show, I said to you offline, it reminds me a little bit of like a mid-century European novel of some degree. We have this nameless narrator, um,

We're in big cities. These are upper class people. They're artists and writers who have money and sort of don't need to care, but they sort of do care. It's kind of interesting. And then there's other things too. So it has elements of what's going to happen, especially once you hit the halfway point, there's a hard break in the middle that we're going to talk around and through the best we can, because I think it's worth it.

I think knowing that there's something is bad, but the only thing worse than that is knowing more about what happens in the middle. And Katie and I get into that in our interview. If you want to hear more about that, we can talk about it.

I'll say it didn't, it did not spoil it for me knowing that something was coming in the middle. Because you mentioned that when we talked about the book on a previous show. But I think any more than that, you lead people in a direction which I think is part of what you don't want to do. Correct. But like, I totally agree. Like the suspense is really in, it's not, there's not a gun on screen. Right. Somebody's not about to die. The suspense is just like, what is happening? Mm-hmm.

here, how do these people understand themselves? And do I understand what they are understanding? Katie Kitamura is not afraid to let us feel like a little bit groundless. I think you said when you were reading it that if you're a person who needs like a clear closed ending to a book, this is not for you. There is a lot of groundless feeling in this. For me, I found it very pleasant because it's masterful. Like you're in good hands. I trust her.

But I have changed my mind about what I think is happening in this book approximately 25 times since I finished reading it yesterday. And I think that's part of the pleasure. Like there's, I don't know that I will ever come to

a solid conclusion about what actually happens here. And I honestly don't think I want to. And that's not the... I don't want to speak for Kitamura, but that's not the point. There isn't a right reading of it. That's not what the point is. And she talks explicitly about her own reading experience. Like,

the book becomes the public's. You know, she's talked about that intimacies and separation too. Like she certainly wrote it, but she is not in the, she's not interested in trying to control the narrative of the narrative of what people should think or what it's about. Well, maybe what's about like framing what she's interested in, but like being definitive about what happens in one read versus another read is not something she cares about, interested in or wants to police in any kind of way. Yeah.

So in the what it's about opens with our nameless narrator who we come to understand is like a solidly middle-aged woman. Now, how old would you say solidly middle-aged is Rebecca? Well, I think she reads as like 50s-ish.

Okay. I could believe that. Given like some of the other context around her career. I use the usefully euphemistic mid-career actress. Okay, sure. Midlife, mid-career. Walks into a cafe, sits down at a table with a much younger man, very charming. And as they are having their meal...

She's noticing that like other people in the restaurant are looking at them and she knows that that's probably because they think, oh, she's an older woman who has hired this young man or maybe they have some sort of romantic liaison. But she knows that that's not what's happening between them. And she's conscious of all of this and she's observing this young man really closely. We know that he's asked her here for some reason and she's not sure she should have said yes.

to this lunch. And as all of this tension is happening and you're like, oh my God, what's happening between these two people? She looks up and her husband walks into the restaurant. He's in a part of town he's never in.

He walks with a waiter. He said he was going to be somewhere else that day. He said he was going to be somewhere else. So she's surprised on multiple levels to see him in this place. The waiter walks him toward a table and then he does that thing that we do when like you maybe can't find your keys and like is padding his pockets and kind of looks confused and then turns around and leaves the restaurant. And she thinks he hasn't seen her, but she's got to go home that night and figure out, did my husband see me at lunch with this much younger man?

Was it a mistake that I haven't told him who this person is? And at this point, we don't know who this person is to her. And what was he doing there? And why didn't he tell me that he was going to have lunch and be in this part of town? I'm holding a kind of secret. She doesn't think she's holding any malicious secret, but she's holding a secret. And so she's having this like, I'm holding a secret that's not really that bad.

What kind of secret is he? Yeah, dare I trade my medium-tier secret for the possibility that there's something bigger going on with him in that day. And I think that initiates a series of, again, it's called Audition. She is an actress. Acting is in this. Performance is explicitly and implicitly maybe the central thing

of this book is what other people do, how you read them, misreadings that you're acting. You know, we do certain things, we perform certain things, knowing that other people know we're performing and somewhere in there is the real thing, but it's so mixed up with it, it's hard to know, right? Even on audition, is an audition, are you acting? Well, what you're acting is to get the gig. Like even that's kind of a fraught scene. Right, yeah, and listen,

She talks early in the book about how she's been aware, like all women have, about the demands of courtesy and public performance and meeting other people's expectations. She's aware that this young man she's having lunch with is also very attuned to this. He knows what people want from him and he's good at delivering it in a social situation. There's performance of gender. There's performance of...

relationships. I guess she's very concerned with the performances, but also the roles that we are cast in and the roles that we seek. And how ready they really are for us to inhabit and how well we know what's expected of us most of the time that we can then perform them. I used to teach an essay by Luigi Parandello about masks and how you have masks that you put on in different social circumstances. And his fear was, and this always blew my students' mind is,

The thinking, you know, the conventional wisdom is that there, you put on a mask, but that covers up your real face. What if, pause it, it's just a bunch of masks?

right that there isn't something quote unquote real or authentic that's being covered up it is the sequences of mass that come on and off that comprises our identity i think that's not a bad way of understanding some of the things kidamara is thinking through here right am i am i actually thinking and feeling this way am i perform like how are our if our master interacting how can we ever have a real connection because we can't ever get out of this mediation of expectation and role play

Yeah, there's a point where she says, what was a family if not a shared delusion, a mutual construction? And I think it's exactly that. Like, she's watching herself interact with these people that she lives her life with, and she knows what's expected of her and how to deliver it. And she can see that they are either, that they're doing the math of what's expected of them, and are they going to deliver it? And if they don't, if they buck that expectation in some way, what will the cost be? Will it be...

worth the cost? How might this... If our relationship, if our family is a mutual construction, how might I be destroying it or changing the shape of it if I don't go along with what the script is? Right. And

how do I even know I don't want to go along with the script? Because sometimes even not going along with the script is also scripted, right? Like the joke I make to my friends and people we've grown up with is, isn't it funny how every generation rebels in the same way? You know, you listen to music you think your parents don't like and you drink beers in parking lots. And like, isn't it so interesting how even our avenues of rebellion are cliche? Yeah.

Yeah, that you kind of know when you turn 14, you're supposed to stomp up the stairs and slam your bedroom door and be moody. Yeah, and then they just sort of, it's been happening at least since like the 1920s. And again, that's just one example of how people fall into roles. And even seeing like something like Portlandia, right, which is lampooning, even alternative lifestyles become cliches because the ruts get well worn into. And so there is an element of,

self-invention seems so hard. Like it doesn't seem, it almost seems impossible to get out of these roles you play. And then they take on lives of their own. That's another thing that's, I think, metaphorized and maybe even literalized to some degree is that roles that take on a different kind of life and existence. That's,

can be unmanageable. It feels like you can't get out of it. Yeah, and she's really concerned with intimacy and intimacies, and she uses both of those words a lot. And not for nothing, a title of an earlier book. Right, which is interesting that this book could be called Intimacy or Intimacies, but she has...

titled a different book that already. And this book is called audition and that she's really concerned here with what we reveal about ourselves and what we see of others and how that makes us feel close to them. And whether that closeness is real or this mutually constructed, uh,

for some reason. This character spends a lot of time noting, like at one point she's talking about something that she and her husband had shared. And I remember I noted the line where we had revealed ourselves more than we intended. We had exchanged the blueprint of our most private desires in a way that was near iridescent.

There's another point where she talks about this young man that she knows and says that I knew the details of the fantasy he had created. He had shared its private architecture with me and that disclosure was a form of intimacy. And all of this like

What do we show and what do we not show? And how does that connect us to each other? But also, how do we understand ourselves through, like, are the things that we reveal more real or less real than the things that we keep close? Yeah, I mean, the three titles speak to each other. You know, Intimacies, Audition, and Separation are all...

There's some polygon happening. I'm not sure how many nodes there are in this particular thing, but they are looking at each other askance or directly in interesting ways. The first thing I asked her about was pastries, Rebecca, in the interview. Yeah, the ritual. Because there's a ritual of pastries that begins because she feels guilty, this nameless character, about something that's happened. And it becomes a thing that she gets the pastries and puts together breakfast every day, and he quite likes it.

And at one point, they both kind of reveal that they had a misunderstanding about what that ritual was even about. Yeah. And who doesn't know that? Like, where you get a moment in your relationship with someone, and it can be at various levels of familiarity and time, where they do... Someone does something or you do something that elicits the response of, like, I feel like I don't even know you. Right? I thought...

I thought we had a different understanding or acceptance or covenant about what this thing was. And by not being who I thought you were, you have somehow betrayed me, right? Do I even, I don't even know you like that.

Like, well, whose fault is that? And that's an interesting question. Yeah, that it feels like a breach to her that she's been enacting this ritual every day thinking that it shores up their relationship in some way. And he moved on from it like some time ago and never said to her like, hey, you don't have to go get those. Right.

Every morning, right. And she never said, this is a pain. Can we stop doing this? I still love you, but can we not with the croissants already? Right. Like, I loved that she raises this question and just sort of like drops it into the pond of the book of like, there is a fine line between a ritual and like a rut or a ritual that you hold sacred and a thing that everybody resents doing day after day or year after year. And when that flips, like if you miss when it flips, all kinds of things happen.

can, you know, can go sideways or can just start to not feel like they fit anymore. And like, right, if you miss that your partner doesn't like this morning ritual of getting pastries anymore, what else are you misunderstanding about the contract of that relationship? Like, where is the ground? This episode is sponsored by Nobody's Fool by Harlan Coben. Stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook read by beloved narrator Vikas Atom.

Sammy Kearse, a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, wakes up one morning covered in blood. There's a knife in his hand. Beside him, the body of his girlfriend, Anna, dead. He doesn't know what happened. His screams drown out his thoughts, and then he runs.

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Again, stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook edition of Nobody's Fool by Harlan Coben, narrated by Vikas Adam, who is one of the audiobook industry's most sought-after artists, having recorded over 500 audiobooks in all kinds of genres. Thanks again to our sponsors at Hachette Audio.

Today's episode is brought to you by Avon Books, publisher of Spring Fling by Annie England Noblin. Spring is in the air and Miley has everything she could ever want. Her tackle shop is thriving and employs a third of Clay Creek and she lives with her beloved granny little sister. But then there's Ben. Now, after moving to Chicago, Ben never thought he would return to Clay Creek.

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Today's episode is brought to you by Heirs and Spares by JL Spore. It's the messy year of 1569. Elizabeth I sits on the English throne, the Reformation inflames the continent, and whispers of war abound. Jenny Spore's Heirs and Spares is one part history, two parts palace plotting, and a whole lot of spicy romantic intrigue. Yes. So in Troyden, just north of France, the people in Lady Andalur's Duchy need her help to survive when

When the sadistic king dies, his younger brother William returns from exile to find his beloved country on the brink of civil war. He's in desperate need of a bride and heirs, but Anna she won't come quietly, Miss Thing. The future of Troiden lies in the hands of two people who never wanted power or dreamed that from duty they might find love and peace.

So break out the spiced wine, girl, and sink into this rousing read. It's available now on Amazon or your retailer of choice. Again, that is Heirs and Spares by J.L. Spohr. Make sure to check it out. And thanks again to River Grove Books for sponsoring this episode. And these roles and rituals have, it's not, nor do I think it's a wholesale dismissal of these because I think that the book and Kitamaran, and I think I agree with this,

recognizes that these things do things for us. To be completely like an open wound at all times and reinvent the world every morning is also too much to ask. You know, to improvise every night on stage, I guess to bring it back to a performative, that's too much to improv every night. But if you're playing the same lines every night, how do you quote unquote keep it fresh?

But then how are you keeping it fresh? And you're not just keeping it fresh for keeping it fresh as sake. Like that's such a weird idea, but I find that very compelling. Yeah. And like these people have been in a relationship for a long time. So through kind of multiple iterations of each other and multiple iterations of their relationship. And I think that, I mean, it's true in my experience that a

thing that happens is like we use the language molting in my house. Like I have molted. There is a new version. And sometimes, you know, that you have molted and the other person is still like looking at or responding to a past version. Your sloughed off skin suit that you left on the ground. Yeah. And there's this disconnect because like, is it your job to have announced

that you have molted, should this other person have observed that now we're in a new place. I mean, ultimately, it's probably both of you, but that's going on here with everybody, I think, in this book is that change has happened in their desire, in their understanding of what they're doing with each other. And they are standing on their stage with each other and everybody is saying lines, but are they speaking from the same script? Are they still in the same play? Yes. Yes.

And who is this performance for, ultimately? But it's like, I think that is interesting to think about, too. And another thing that struck me when you were talking about the observations that this character makes, it's one of the hardest things in art to do is to represent...

someone who is really good at something because then you have to be good at that thing like we talked about if I don't want to name the book but you people remember if you're writing a book about stand-up comedians you should probably be funny or try to leave and if that doesn't work you can really make it fall flat but this character this nameless character is so observant and so attuned to the point of being subject to the

The gaze of others. And I know that's a loaded term, but like she is so interested in or unable not to be processing and paying attention to how she might be being perceived at every moment. And this is sort of an actor's job and lament. But I think this is also part of all of our lives. I think so many of us.

There's moments where Kitamura is narrating this woman just walking down the street, and she's sort of going through the possible interpretations that people she's just sort of going by might think of her. And who hasn't had that experience? Yeah. And why do we do that for people we're never going to see again? Like, this constant...

subroutine or maybe it's even a primary routine of constantly assessing, assessing, assessing, not just what other people are doing, but the interplay of what you are doing and how they're perceiving you and the interpretations of these micro movements that feel indicative because they are, but they're also not like it's, it's a, it's,

The whole thing reminds me of how exhausting it is to be alive. I guess that's where I only came out. Part of this came out for you. It was like, oh, God, we do this all the time. Yeah, I think that makes the title even more interesting. Like, who is auditioning and what are they auditioning for? And if this character is auditioning for these different roles in her life, for these different relationships, but also for just the role of being her out in the world. Right, right. Like, it's...

It is. I think at one point she says that she's aware that she spends too much money on clothes and she likes beautiful things. And she has a little moment about kind of feeling silly that she does that. But then we get to see her walking down the street clocking, that everybody is clocking her and wondering how they're interpreting these beautiful things or the watch that she's wearing or the certain handbag. And it's interesting to encounter that from a character who is...

is not presented as superficial or shallow in any way. Like, we get to inhabit... Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah. You know, like, we're in a deep place of revelation and consciousness with this character, but she is also still very concerned with...

Is she presenting herself in the way that she wants to be perceived? And really the reality that like how much control you have over that is extremely limited. Right. Yeah. And I think that's one of the situations where the stakes, they're so hard to control that anything you can do that feels like you might be able to control it, you overinvest in, right? Well, clothes is one thing you can buy. You can solve with money. So it makes sense that you would try to solve that with money. Now, does that help you 6%?

Maybe only 6%, but that's a 6% you can control. You don't have access to however people are interpreting that. So like, well, you might as well over-index on the things that feel like actually matter, even though who knows how much it does matter. And that 6% feels better than 0%. 0%, right. Yeah. You're going to over-invest in the part of it you feel like you can control, even if it kind of doesn't matter on balance. But the other stuff is so hard. Yeah, and the idea of the audition is so fascinating too, because it is implicitly theatrical, which means that

You're auditioning for what, with what, right? You have your audition piece, your monologue, right? This idea, though, if we're walking around the world sort of always auditioning for other people, it's an initial evaluative mode. But it also suggests you're doing something other than giving you the white hot molten core of your being, right? It is itself a...

practiced, studied, even unconsciously constructed performance meant to elicit a result that your true self could not elicit by yourself, which I've always been fascinated by this sort of problem. It's fascinating. And I think that's an interesting way to get into that flip occurs in the book. Yes.

And without revealing it other than... What if the conditions were meaningfully changed, I think is... Yeah, right. Yes. What if the relationships in the first half of the book are different than how those people relate to each other in the second half of the book or the second section? Yeah.

Then what are we? How do your performances change? How do you understand yourself when like you thought you were playing one role or maybe like you've been inhabiting a completely different role the whole time? And what are we to do with that? Like it is just the most pleasant kind of mindfuck. Like it just really is. Yeah, because one of the ideas is if the conditions material or change change,

And you then, as a result, materially change. That really brings into the... It problematizes the idea of like a stable you. Yeah. And it's...

Like, well, we talk about not being able to A-B test the universe, but I think Katie Kitamura is kind of playing with that idea here. And the characters aren't even necessarily aware that that's what's happening, but we get to see a couple different versions of these people's lives and no resolution or conclusion about

whether one of them is the real story, which one is the real story. Are these just two possibilities and there's an infinite universe of other ones? Are they related? How are they related? You know, I think there's...

For those of you who read this, there's going to be a temptation to select from available reasons. You could write terribly boring book club questions about this. I would encourage people to entertain all of them and not choose. As many as you can think of, entertain them all. Let's talk for a little bit about the pros, because I think that's also a feature that we haven't really hit as hard. Is what...

brilliant restraint on the whole. There's not a wasted word, and I know that's cliche to some degree, but there is a cleanness, a sparseness, and a richness simultaneously that I think approaches the highest level of what you can do with this kind of writing. Yeah.

I mean, I don't know what else to, I don't know how else to put it. You just know that you're in good hands from the very first page. Like that the big questions about this book are unanswered and I think delightfully unanswerable. But you're in good hands. You know where Kate, like I am where Katie Keita Murrell wants me to be. Yes.

Yeah, that's right. It's like the old, the movie, The Game with Michael Douglas, right? Like you find yourself on the target on the mat and you didn't even know that this whole thing was to get you at the bottom of that building. There are some books where you're like, I don't know what's happening and that's a problem. And this is not that. This is, I don't know what's happening and I'm like, my brain is tingly and everything is firing. It's so enjoyably fun.

Restrained is the right word. It's tight and taut, and that gives you space to wonder all kinds of things because she's not filling in a whole... She's not really filling in any of the details. And it's so controlled and so masterful that even you notice little deviations, right? Like I asked her about this scene you probably clocked where...

this actress, the main character has a conversation with the director about some other actor's performance who she thought was washed up. And he gives a late career performance that is so raw, authentic. It's like, brings tears to her eyes, gets him cast. Oh, and she's in the movie, the subsequent movie with this guy. But he's a mess, right? And he's like, he can't do anything. And what she learns is that

his confusion and rawness was not acting. Right. He didn't remember his lines. He was distraught in these moments because he almost like some sort of Alzheimer's like, I don't know, dementia thing happening. And it calls it like, okay, so was that a performance or not? Right. Right. That wasn't important to the plot, but it was important to this philosophical, I guess, I don't know, ontological questions really that it's asking. It's like, okay,

If you do one thing and it's interpreted a different way, which one is the real thing? Your intention or the thing that was interpreted? And she, I don't think this is a, this is not a treatise on how to interpret and how to be in the world. No. This is not a, here's,

The world is false and we're all a bunch of phony. This is not Holden Caulfield. It's not, I don't think this book is declarative in any sense. No, it's a, yep, this kind of, this is weird, right? This is a little uncomfortable. Yeah, like how weird to be a person. Let me just make it a little weird.

Remember how weird it is that we all know that we're not actually saying and feeling the thing at all times. This happens always already and there's no way around it. Okay, bye. Yeah. And that the world that she makes, it does, as you were saying, it feels so full from these tiny details that she observed so carefully, like the ritual around the pastries where you're like, okay, I feel like I know everything I need to know about this couple based on the one story about how that ritual came to be and that they are still doing it like 10 years later.

Yeah, and subsequently, I think it's in the second half of the book where, is his name Tomas? It's been a while since I read it, Rebecca. Yeah, Tomas. The husband.

things occur and he has an occasion to bring, again, they live in a nice New York apartment, but it's still New York real estate where every square foot is precious. And he brings like a giant desk into their apartment. And I was like, oh, my first thought, oh no, you don't bring a giant desk into a New York apartment without consulting your cohabitants. That's like bringing a third into the bedroom. Like you can't just show up that day. You've got to have some conversations. Yeah, yeah, we got to go pick it out. We have to figure this out.

And like, she is so good. And she herself has to be so attuned to the ways we are attuned. Like, that's the meta stuff that blows me away. It's like, okay, she is conversant in this language of which she is suspicious, but also subject to. Right.

Right. And it's just inescapable as a human, like, that she can recognize when his shoulders are slumped a different way than usual, that, like, something is not right and he's keeping a secret from me. Or something is going on, he's wearing a different coat than he would normally wear. And it's, like, these are all things. Like, this is part of intimacy that we become and familiarity with other people and the ways that that is beautiful but also can make you feel kind of crazy. Right.

Yeah. And, you know, like the thing you said about molding is really interesting because, you know, we talk to our kids about, we can tell if something is going on, like, you

we say we're the greatest living experts in you. Like that's just, we, and have been, and we've been there for every step of the way. And at some point that won't be the case anymore. But for now, like we can tell if something's going on, good or ill, we know your moods. We know the slightest micro expressions, or you walk slightly with a different cadence, or even hearing you come down the stairs is full. We're all giving off so much information all the time. And I,

both to perceive and be perceived that much as,

Is a load to bear. It just is a load. And that we, you know, we live in our own brains and our own experiences. So we understand that something has shifted before maybe we're capable of communicating it externally. Or our bodies are communicating in a way, yeah. We expect things to stay consistent with the people that we're with. Like this is just, this is how they were yesterday. So that's how they're going to be tomorrow. And those disruptions happen when someone knows that they have, that they've changed, that they've molted and you haven't,

caught up to it yet. And there's a real like, wait, now we got a, oh, a new version. Like it made me think of Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give. And Ada Calhoun says something like, like if you have a long marriage, you're going to be married to like five or six or seven versions of this person. And if you don't like the current version, you like hang on and you hope that you like the next one. Like the weather. Yeah, we get through February and March is around the corner. That you like the next one better or that you understand the next one better. But like that's an easy way

thing to say. Like that you will be, you will know multiple versions of people or long friendships or whatever, your own family members. We can understand the concept, but the lived reality of how those shifts occur and how, um,

Groundless is the word I keep coming back to, like how you feel like there's no ground under your feet anymore when you realize that the thing that you've been operating, like those assumptions that worked for so long and you've been operating under those are no longer the shared reality of your relationship. Right. I mean, it's a real Sophie's choice to think I've got two, I'm not even sure I have a choice, but there are two ways of understanding what you want or what could be. One is that you and the people you're around never change.

Or you don't. Or you do change. Right. Both of those are terrifying. There's not a good answer. No. There's not a good answer. And then maybe the worst option is that both are always happening. Yes, yeah. And you never know which one is going on again. I feel like that's the one that Keita Murrow would sign off on. They're both always happening. There is no, like, there actually is no ground. Right. The book is pretty Buddhist in its sensibility. Like, your identity is a prison. Right. Yeah.

Even pastries are your enemies. You can't even go out for a cup of coffee. Right. But this expectation that there be a shared, consistent ground is a prison in some ways. But it's a necessary lie to tell ourselves in a lot of other ways. Yeah. And it's like I've said about the dream of liberal education, is if you know the thing, that maybe you can have some mastery of it. And I do think there is a

There is a place you can get to where maybe you could allow yourself and others some grace, right? To say, okay, maybe you can step back. Can you step out of

you know, maybe you can step out of the off the stage for a minute, you can go behind the scenes. You know, where is that? Where's the real in a theater is always an interesting question to me, because the people are like, is it the green room? Is it out on the sidewalk? Is it you know, in the makeup chair? Is it on stage? There's some really good stuff about theater here too, for those like that about, and she says in the interview, like one of the things she likes about theater is how embarrassing it is. Like, it's just like, it's a chance where

You performing is the expectation. Yeah. And that's embarrassing. But that's also what makes it great at the same time. Yeah, I feel this way about my chorus. I was going to, I wondered, I was going to say, speaking of embarrassing things, tell me about how your chorus figures into this. Right, like, we're just a bunch of people getting up on a stage and deciding that, like, we're going to sing some songs and you're going to look at us and we're going to dance around while you do it. And it is, it's just fundamentally ridiculous. Like, it's one of those weirdos

beautiful, ridiculous human things that just is, I think, Ketamer is exactly right. There just are some elements of this that are embarrassing, but like, so is being a person. Right. Yeah. And the other, the choice of never being embarrassed is to be so...

Other and self-policing at all times, right? Like the tyranny of cool is real, right? I mean, that's a real thing that you learn a little bit more as you roll. And that there's like a little liberation in forgetting for a minute that you're auditioning for some role or that you're playing some role or you're being cast and perceived in some things. And the moments where those characters, where her characters find that, I think are also...

Really interesting. Man, if I could get a new Katie Kitamura book once a year. Well, I think we should at least stop here. I mean, we've got a quarter of our year under our belt, and I'm not sure we've had a wonderful reading year so far. Again, January, February, and March is not where you're going to put most of your roulette ships for gathering. But I will say this.

If there's a novel I get more out of than this one this year, I will be shocked. You know, also Redemption for the letter A at the beginning of the alphabetical order for the New York Times Best Books of the Year list after I suffered from all fours being at the top last year. Yeah, that's really interesting. I'll be fascinated to see. Yeah, I don't know. So for readers, this is Litfic.

You know, it's borders on experimental art writing. Borders on that. Not quite as much as Death Takes Me. Or not nearly as much as Death Takes Me. Not nearly, but I'm just trying to triangulate a little bit. Yeah, it's like the maybe lower, it's the lower end of the spectrum and Hong Kong is the middle of what we've read this year and then Death Takes Me. Oh, yeah. So this is... Because there's some experimental stuff and we do not know. Yeah. No, it is. I think it is less...

It's less arty than We Do Not Part, but I almost think that belies its sophistication. I think it would be tempting to read Audition as being quote-unquote simpler than We Do Not Part, but I do not believe that that is true. I don't think it's a difficult read.

read, but it's not breezy. This is not a breezy 200 pages. You will read it quickly, probably. As a book club selection, it could be amazing for a certain kind of book club and terrible for other kinds of book clubs. Yeah. If you're going to have a book club who wants to land on, okay, so there's the A part of the book and the B part of the book, and which one, this is not the book for your book club. And how welcome is a

book that doesn't tell us what to think. Right. Right. You know, it's certainly about what it's about, but it really confounds a tidy read or a tidy moralizing or philosophizing. Okay. Well, yeah, my favorite book of the year so far, and it's not particularly close at this stage. All right. Stick around for the B block. Thanks, everybody. Rick, we'll talk to you soon.

Today's episode is brought to you by Sourcebooks, publishers of I'll Never Call Him Dad Again by Caroline Darion. Now, this book comes with a bit of a trigger warning. In November 2020, Caroline Darion received an unthinkable call. Her father was in custody. Investigators had uncovered the unimaginable.

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I'll Never Call Him Dad Again is an international bestseller and recounts the story of Dominique Pellico and his drugging and abuse of his wife over the course of seven years. But it isn't just another true crime story. It is a call to action. So let's support survivors everywhere. Make sure to pick up I'll Never Call Him Dad Again by Carolyn Darion. And thanks again to Sourcebooks for sponsoring this episode.

Today's episode is brought to you by Flatiron Books, publisher of Girl Falling by Hayley Scribner. And if you like women with messy friendships, explorations of grief, and a nice little twisty twist at the end, this is for you. Torn between her girlfriend Magdu and her best friend Daphne, Finn is looking forward to a day of rock climbing and bonding for the three women on the soaring cliffs near their Australian town.

but nothing goes as she planned. And in a horrific accident, Magdo falls to her death. Rocked by grief, Finn tries to pinpoint where it all went wrong. Did Magdo die because of Finn's friendship with overbearing Daphne who has never wanted Finn to change or leave her? Hmm, questions. So then the police suspect the foul play and Finn begins to search for the shocking truth about her relationships and what has been in front of her all along.

So did Magdo accidentally fall to her death or was there some encouragement, let's say? Who knows? You have to pick up Girl Falling by Haley Scrivener to find out. Thanks again to Flatiron Books, publisher of Girl Falling, for sponsoring this episode.

All right, welcome back listeners. As promised, I am joined by Allison Rice and Tom Wiggins from the Band Together documentary. You've heard about it on the show a little bit already, but thrilled to get to talk with them and bring you more information. Allison and Tom, thanks so much for joining me.

Thank you so much for having us. I just want to give a quick shout out to the rest of our small but mighty team. Of course. Jennifer Wiggin is also a producer on this. She and I are the owners of Atomic Focus Entertainment. And Tom is a director, producer, along with Kate Way, the other filmmaker. Wonderful. Thanks so much.

So I had a chance to watch the documentary last week. And as somebody who has been following this closely for the last four or five years, I found it still really impactful. I learned a lot and seeing the up close personal stories of the people that have been impacted, both the students, but also the librarians and educators involved.

It was really powerful, very moving. And this is, I think, a great moment for y'all to be rolling out with this. I'm curious about how the project came about because the current Surgeon Book Bands kicked off in 2021 and you're at Beaufort County, South Carolina school board meetings in 2022 already getting footage. So I don't know which one of you wants to take that, but when and how did you decide to tell this story? Tom should take that because he and Jen are down in South Carolina. Yeah, well...

The way this happened for us, Jen and I are married. And so and she owns, along with Allison, Atomic Focus Entertainment. But we work together on projects, obviously. And we saw a headline in the local newspaper recently.

which I know that Book Riot is very bullish on as a real method for staying current with the issues, you know, that are impacting people. We saw this, we saw a headline about teams fighting back against book bans and it was in Beaufort, which is about an hour and change from us. And it was just one of those sort of

of odd moments where Jen and I both looked at each other and said, this is a movie. We've got to do this. And we'd never done a feature before, but we felt very strongly that it was a feature. Turns out Kate Way was down...

She and her partner would go down to Beaufort every winter and had heard about this in late 2022. She's an independent filmmaker, and she thought, maybe I'll do a short on this story. So we found out about her early involvement. We asked her if she'd like to be involved with us to make a larger movie. She agreed, and so then we all collaborated to make this the movie that you see now.

And the film follows primarily three student activists from different schools in Beaufort who met through a student organization, an organization promoting diversity and literacy. How did y'all get connected to them? Was it always the plan to follow these three young people or did this emerge as you were going through the process?

Well, they were in the article that Jen and Tom saw and that Kate had heard about. So that was always part of the plan from the beginning was to follow these students.

And when they approached Kate and said, we think this is a bigger film, Jen called me and said, as soon as you're done with your book launch activities, we've got a project. So because they were down in South Carolina and could handle the local story better than I could. And we also had to watch funds. You know, we were raising funds because it was an unfolding story as we went.

So I focused more of my early energy on the national story because we knew that to make it relevant to everyone,

It makes it personal watching the young women that we follow in their local story. That's the emotional anchor to the film. But it's, you know, weaving in that national, the bigger picture nationally to make everyone who watches the film understand how widespread this is and how it's affecting them as well, whether they know it or not at this point.

Let's stay with that for a minute and zoom out to that national story. Y'all spend some time in the film also in Brevard County, Florida, talking to local politicians and really getting into what Moms for Liberty was able to do in the political apparatus in Florida. I was telling Jeff, my co-host here on the show that

watching those folks talk about like how connected Moms for Liberty is and what they were able to get done because of those connections makes me feel like I should put my tinfoil hat on. Like it kind of sounds like a conspiracy because this one actually is a conspiracy, but seeing all the pieces laid out that way was really powerful to me. So Alison, if you would talk a little bit more about that national piece.

Yeah, so it was really lucky. You know, in terms of Moms for Liberty, stumbling across Olivia Little's reporting, she's the investigative researcher with Media Matters for America. And she had been researching Moms for Liberty since early 2021. So she had an extensive body of information about them.

So we went down to Florida since that was the sort of the ground floor of the rise of Moms for Liberty. And there's an interesting thing I'll talk about later about book looks as well. So we went down there to interview people.

No one from the national organization would meet with us. They ignored, you know, our attempts to interview them. We were going down and we had gotten permission from a local chapter chair in Florida to film a social event they were having at a gun range. And the national office said,

That's just a choice. Okay.

So that was canceled at the very last minute. So the rest of Florida, Tom had connected with another chapter chair of Moms for Liberty, and that's the one that you saw in the film. And they allowed her to speak in the film because she's the one that trains Moms for Liberty members in how to handle the media. So she had a lot of, I'll let Tom talk a little bit more about that interview with her.

Yeah, Jennifer Pippen was, she thought she was very cool and polished and in some ways she was. I mean, she didn't wear a tinfoil hat, so that was good. But when you really listen to what she says, it's all like you're in a sort of in a fun house, you're looking at a fun house mirror.

First glance. OK. And then it's like there's this distortion that comes in because it's not it's what she's saying doesn't it makes sense to some people. But for most of us, it makes no sense. And so, you know, that was a that was a very revealing interview. The tough part of the movie, I'll just do a quick aside with this.

is that, you know, we felt strongly we had to keep a documentary to 90 minutes. And so there's so much we had to leave out. And some of the really outlandish stuff she said

didn't really help our pushing our narrative along. And so we kept it out. So in some ways, she sounds more reasonable than she really was. You know, I'd love to someday put together a blooper reel or something of all these other things that we have. But so we interviewed her, but she is virtually the only person from any of the opposition or pro book banning people who would speak to us. And you see that in the film.

Declined our requests, declined our requests, ignored our requests. It's all through the film. They don't want to be they don't want to put themselves on camera and so that we can have an everlasting record of of of their position.

What was it like? Oh, go ahead, Allison. Sorry. There's also a false narrative that they are constantly pushing. And they're saying they don't co-parent with the government and they're just trying to protect the children. And people who aren't keeping up with all of the news and the developments tend to take it at face value and believe what they're saying. But what they do is

They will go behind closed doors and come up with their plan, come out, have the false narrative that they're pushing. And then as soon as anyone starts catching on to what they're really doing and what they're really pushing and what's really behind this, they immediately withdraw, close everything up.

Pull up stakes, reorder what they're doing, and then come back out with a different approach. And what's interesting, and I wanted to mention BookLooks, was because Olivia Little's research shows that BookLooks was originally the Moms for Liberty Library Committee. That is how it started.

got started. It has the same rating systems. It's everything. It was a Moms for Liberty origination, booklook.info. And then they did booklooks.org, and that was started by a Moms for Liberty member. And Moms for Liberty has tried to distance themselves from book looks for a long time, making it seem like, oh, it's just this independent thing, and it's just, everyone's just trying to protect the children. And

I don't know what may... I'd like to think that our film being out there for a number of months now had something to do with this, but who knows? But...

At the end of March, Book Looks pulled up stakes and said, we feel like we've done our job and God is calling us to other things. We're going to no longer proceed with Book Looks and we're taking down every book review on the site. So it is gone. So if it was really about protecting the kids, you'd think that they would leave those up. But it was not. Right.

I'm really glad that you brought that up. That's one thing that my colleague Kelly Jensen has covered extensively as well. And for listeners who are maybe just tuning in to what Book Looks is, as you were saying, Allison, it was a rating site that Moms for Liberty spun up based on a scale that they invented.

based on the very usefully vague language and a lot of these book banning laws to rate the content of books that they were attempting to have removed from schools. And then they pass this off to parents who are, it seems to me, trying to do the right thing. But you have footage of parents sitting in some of these evaluation meetings going like, how can this book be in my kid's library? It has a 3.5 out of 4 on the book looks scale. And the higher you go on the scale, the worse

It is. So it seems like they were relatively successful in, at least for a while, convincing...

a meaningful number of folks that this was a real thing that was based on something other than just a group of people's ideas sitting in a room together trying to pass it off. Given the patterns, go ahead, Tom. Well, just an interesting aside, since we are, you know, this is the Book Riot podcast and you guys are so bullish on literacy and reading and, you know, the collateral damage, right?

of book looks is not just the rating system, but it basically encourages people to not read the book. I mean, it gives you a resource that says you don't need to read the book. Now, if a parent, if a kid came home with an assignment to read

David Copperfield and said, no, I got this. I got the cliff notes. Most parents would say, no, that's not right. You got to read the book. But they're not doing that. And this has created a whole approach to literature, to anything, to anything that requires some investigation by looking at the holistically.

to ignore that and just take the excerpt that makes sense to you. And so there's a lot of collateral damage there by what they're doing. And that's one of the astonishing things in your film as well, that it starts off with 97 books being taken out of school libraries in Beaufort. And over the course of the film, as the districts are developing the evaluation process and getting parents involved in feedback and figuring it out, the majority of those books go back onto shelves. Like,

This whole thing doesn't stand up to any scrutiny at all. But Allison, a few minutes ago, you mentioned that y'all really worked hard to highlight how this is impacting people nationwide, even if they're not seeing book bans in their local districts, at least yet. I'd like it if you could talk a little bit more about that, too. Well, the cold open of the film, the way we start out was we looked for headlines all around the country.

So it starts off with a very quick moving cold open with just headline after headline so that people right off the bat can get a sense of this is happening everywhere. There are States where libraries are becoming adult only because they refuse to take out the books that somebody had an objection to based on BIPOC or LGBTQ plus themes. Um,

And there was even someone in Virginia who tried to sue, I think it was Barnes & Noble, for reading books. I mean, first they started by talking about, we're just protecting kids in school to make it age appropriate, but that's not what they were doing. They were banning things throughout schools, and then they went to public libraries, and then they tried to hit bookstores and libraries.

It's happening in every state. And one of the things that's also happening is the widespread movement

horrible harassment of teachers and librarians. It's criminal what's happening to them. These people who have dedicated their lives to devoting themselves to teaching our children, to helping them learn, helping them learn how to use critical thinking skills. And there's been a systematic

targeting of teachers and educators, calling them horrible names like child abusers, pedophiles, groomers. We have someone in the film who was called that, who actually was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. So having them call her that, it's just...

I don't even have words for how disgusting I think this is. And it's happening everywhere. And teachers and librarians are at times leaving their professions because they're being doxed online. Their family, their kids' names and ages and where they live, it's being put online. People are being threatened with violence online.

And we are losing people who have dedicated themselves to a profession that's already underpaid and undervalued in this country. And now the ones who really care deeply are starting to leave. And Jonathan Friedman from PEN America talks about that in the film. So it's happening everywhere. Well, the other thing that's also happening from a corporate level.

is that Penguin Random House has to commit millions of dollars to fight lawsuits. So even though they consciously aren't going to tell any authors or going to turn down authors who have wonderful works based on content,

the back of their mind and I'm sure they've got a couple of lawyers saying you know what if you publish this book and it gets put in schools you're going to be inviting more lawsuits so maybe you want to rethink that so you know authors who have a tough enough time getting published

now have this against them as well. And it does have a negative trickle down effect on the entire industry and on what we eventually get to read. Yeah, that's a really important point, because I think you're exactly right that a publisher is not likely to turn to an author and say, we're not going to pick up your book because we're concerned about the book banning potential.

And the big publishers have been pretty active and united about fighting these bans. But it's impossible to think that there's no chilling effect at all. Or even on what authors feel like they can write if they want to have a shot at

at getting published or stepping out there. It's really stunning in the film how clearly the students understand that this is not for their own protection and that the rights that are being violated here are not just their rights of speech, but their rights about what information

they have access to. One of the moves that y'all make in the film that I thought was really interesting was going to the Penn Center to talk to the members of the Gullah Geechee community near Charleston, who had the first school for emancipated slaves.

And talking to historians there who say to you pretty clearly, very clearly, that marginalized communities know what this is about and it's not about the books. How did that interview and that component of the film come about? Well, actually, Kate Way, when she was doing this for her short, had gone to the Penn Center. Right.

and had done that interview with Marie. And then we wanted to get into it a little deeper. In Charleston, we knew about Queen Quet and the Gullah Geechee Nation to a degree. But Allison, I believe you reached out to her and set that interview up. We just thought it was important. The whole idea, the irony is what got us. You know, as Karen Garris, the librarian says, in your backyard, there's...

This history could be silenced by this kind of approach to education we thought was so

ironic that we needed to find out where what they thought, you know, what folks in that community thought that has been there as long as white folks have been there. Actually, indigenous people have been there for thousands of years before. And so we needed to get that reaction. And just a quick little

Making of the sausage aside, you know, again, time, what can we include? What can't we include? We got some early feedback that that was a, as you say, a move that was sort of, you know, a left turn a little bit. And we debated whether it, again, it moved the narrative forward in an organic way that made sense.

But then we got feedback. And to Allison's credit, she always said, we got to keep it. We got to keep it. We got to keep it. And then the feedback we started getting from white people was that this is one of the most fascinating parts of the movie because this is something I really didn't even know. People in South Carolina didn't know about it. So we were very gratified that it showed, you know, it filled out the story and put in an element that

kind of made us, it allowed us to walk the walk, not just talk the talk about including marginalized voices that don't get heard often. I'm so glad that you left it in. Oh, go ahead, Allison. Yeah, it's also an example of what happens when

There's academic censorship and real history isn't taught. You don't even learn about your area, what's happening in your area. So that was a really crucial thing because that is what is happening right now. And two of the interviews, and we were not able to include it for time, talked about the Daughters of the Confederacy after the Civil War, that Moms for Liberty and groups like that are using the Daughters of the Confederacy playbook.

So, you know, I knew about them peripherally, but I had to look up and I was like, well, what exactly was their playbook? And they also engaged in doing academic censorship and they banned books that put the South in a negative light. And so that is exactly what they're doing right now. They don't want real history taught in this country about how there has been

racial abuse, discrimination that goes on to this day. They don't want that even mentioned, which is why they have started labeling anything that deals with race as CRT, critical race theory, which is not taught in K through 12 schools. It's a college level course that has been around since the 70s. But they know that if they can find one little word or one little phrase and demonize it and then apply it to anything that they're trying to eradicate from schools or books, they're

It's very successful. Yeah, I live in Virginia, and that's what won the Republican governor his seat here in 2021 was the CRT argument, especially coming out of COVID and that carryover of parents' anger. And that's a through line that you follow in the film as well, how Moms for Liberty makes that pivot from sort of being against COVID policies and wanting freedom about their own parenting choices, but also freedom to impose on everyone else's.

and that they pivoted then into CRT and these educational issues.

The stuff with the Gullah Geechee folks and those layers of it in and around Charleston where the local schools aren't educating students about the rich history of the place that they live, but also the members of the Gullah Geechee community who once did not have access to education and then gained access to education. They have seen this playbook before and understand what a government stands to gain from its citizens being ignorant. And that's one of the things that

that one of the folks you interview talks about. I imagine that that's kind of the message of the whole movie, right? That like this is a movement to remove important information and context from American history and culture

If you have a nutshell summary for someone who's trying to get their friend to watch this documentary with them or we're going to have our neighbors over and talk about it, how do you suggest that folks start to talk about that? This is a big deal because it is an organized, orchestrated movement to try to keep us less educated and that's for a reason.

I think one thing that I would say is that history is repeating itself with this. As Allison mentioned, this is an old playbook. You know, I was reading an article that Book Riot wrote about this topic in 2021. And you guys labeled it. This is an old playbook of censoring information that expands people's viewpoints and may be

be divergent to some of the things and values that you're trying to impose on others. But so this is an old playbook. But what I always like to say, there's a hopeful antidote. And that is the voices of young people who are ready to start to lead. And

and need to lead. And we show how that happens. And we show how older folks start looking to them to create a new playbook for this kind of thing.

It's really powerful to see that happen. And I did have a real like, the kids are going to be all right. Feeling at the end of this and real hope for the future. Having spent a couple of years observing this movement in the rooms where it happens, what are your biggest concerns about the moment that we're in right now? And what do you see as our biggest opportunities?

I think that one thing that has been very clear in this whole book banning movement, it's about how to control people by creating fear within them. That is the technique that Moms for Liberty and other so-called parental rights groups use. They make people and they get parents to do the work themselves.

that they need them to do to push ahead their political agenda, which the parents may not even realize that's what they're doing. So they are creating fear by going, your kids are in danger. And anyone who's a parent is like, what? My kids are in danger. So it creates fear and people get reactive. And that is the moment that we're in. Everything that is happening right now out there is about creating fear.

fear in people because that makes people easily controllable, easily led. And I think a lot of this, our politics now are everything...

It's about identity politics, right? It's about identity. It's about the fear of the other. That's nothing new again, but it's really been weaponized by one side of this. And of course, the fear that Jodi Picoult highlights in her comments about kids feeling different from their parents. We have a generation that is becoming colorblind.

that doesn't care what your gender identity is. That's not crucial to them anymore. And as an older generation sees that drift away and sees that the power of identity politics is slipping through their fingers, they're trying to hold on to it as much as they can. And I think that's the moment we're in. And I think that's why, you know,

I'm just hopeful because of young people and where we're heading. But the danger is real. I mean, this is the last gasp of the old order, you know, and they're going to fight as hard as they can. And if they got to burn down some institutions to preserve, ironically, to preserve what they think they've got.

It's going to be hairy for a little while. There are certainly precursors to this destruction of the Department of Education that we see the groundwork being laid for in your film. And I was watching the documentary that same week that all of that was happening and just thinking, wow, you can see the pieces laid out over the last several years of where this is going. Yeah, we were gratified that our storytelling was so prescient.

but we're not happy about it. I mean, I wish we weren't. I wish all of that had been debunked. But unfortunately, most of what was in that film, everybody could see coming down the road. I think

I think that you're right that we're in a last gasp moment. And we're also in a moment where a lot of folks are just really tuning in to this happening, that it's become widespread enough, that there have been enough headlines. It's not just like small niche publications talking about this, but it comes up in political campaigns where it's a great time for a film like this to be coming out for education and greater awareness of our population. Yeah. And I also think that if you're sitting at home and you're

you're not really sure whether you want to become a member of a 10,000 person protest on the mall or something. This is watching our movies one small step you can take. You know, watch the movie, get informed about this because these issues do connect. They spider web to all these other things that we talked about here and other things. And this is one way you can get educated, maybe you can get a little activated by and start here

And then you'll be connected to people and ideas that can help you get activated even more. And I wanted to say one last thing also. Another word that they have demonized is the term woke. But what woke is, is being awakened to something. So I would like people to keep that in mind about waking up to what's actually happening. And all of those...

characteristics that they throw into that, oh, the woke, you know, things like love, kindness, respect, compassion, empathy.

I have been telling people to lean into those things. Like that is something you can do whether you're at a protest or whether you're going to a school board meeting. You can shine your light where you are by leaning into being kind and being loving and being compassionate toward others. Lean into that every day as hard as you can.

It's a beautiful note to end on and certainly poignant for this moment. Thank you both, Alison Rice and Tom Wiggin, producers and Tom's the director of the new documentary, Banned Together. You can find it at, is it bandtogether.com?

BandTogetherDoc, D-O-C. BandTogetherDoc.com. We'll have links to that in the show notes and the documentary will be streaming April 10th on Apple TV Plus and Amazon. Website there also has terrific resources for other ways you can get involved, other ways that you can educate yourself. So if you see it and you get activated, and I certainly believe that you will, you'll have a lot of places to go for whatever your next steps may be. Allison and Tom, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having us.

Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this excerpt from the audiobook edition of Nobody's Fool by Harlan Coben, narrated by Vikas Adam. Thank you to our sponsors at Hachette Audio. I stand behind the tree and snap photos of license plates with a long lens camera. The lot is full, so I go and order from the most expensive car. I can't believe there's a Bentley parked by this toilet and move on down the list.

I don't know how long I have before my subject, a wealthy man named Peyton Booth, comes out. Five minutes, maybe ten. But here's why I take the photos. I send them to my shadow partner at the DMV. Said partner will then look up all the license plates and get the corresponding emails. She'll email the pics and threaten exposure if they don't transfer money into this untraceable Cash App account. Only $500. No reason to be greedy.

If they don't respond, and 90% don't, it goes nowhere. But we make enough to make it worthwhile. Yeah, times are tough. I'm positioned across the park and dressed like what we used to call a vagrant or hobo or homeless. I forget the proper euphemism they use nowadays, so I ask Debbie. Unhoused? Debbie tells me. Really? Unsheltered, too. They both suck. Which do you prefer? Goddess or...

Debbie the goddess says she's 23, but she looks younger. She spends a lot of her days standing in front of various, uh, gentlemen's clubs. Talk about a euphemism. With tears in her eyes and yells, Daddy, why? At every guy that walks in or out. She started doing it for kicks. She loves the way some guys turn white and freeze. But now a few of the regulars say hi and maybe throw her a 20. I do it as an exercise in capitalism and ethics. She tells me. How's that?

The capitalism part is obvious. Debbie has good teeth. That's rarely the case out here. Her hair is washed. She's sleeveless and her arms are clean. You make money, I say. Then, and the ethics, her lower lip quivers. Sometimes a guy hears me and runs off. Like I knocked some sense into him. Like I reminded him who he should be. And maybe, just maybe, if some girl had yelled that at my daddy...

If some girl like me did something, anything, to stop my daddy from going into a place like that. Her voice fades away. She looks down and blinks her eyes and keeps the lip quivering. I study her face for a second and then I say, Boo friggin' who? The blinking and quivering stop as if her face is a shaken Etch-a-Sketch. What? You think I'm buying the daddy issues cliche? I shake my head. I expect better from you.

Debbie laughs and punches my arm. Damn, Kearse. You must have been an awesome cop. I shrug. I was. I don't know how Debbie ended up on the streets. I don't ask and she doesn't volunteer, and that seems to suit us both. I check my watch. Showtime? Debbie asks. Has to be. You remember the code? I do. If she yells, Daddy, why? That means wrong guy. If she yells, but Daddy, I'm carrying your child.

That means my man Peyton just exited. Debbie came up with a code. I'm giving her $50 for the job, but if I land what White Shoe needs, I'll up that to $100. Debbie heads down the path to a spot where she can see the club door. I can't see it from my perch. Debbie saw Peyton Booth's pic on my phone, so she knows what he looks like. You probably guessed this, but Peyton is getting divorced. My job here is simple. Catch him cheating.

This is what I've been reduced to since getting chucked off the force for messing up big time. Worse, even though I'm working for a high-end, whitest-of-white-shoe Manhattan law firm, I am not getting paid. This is a barter arrangement. I'm being sued by the family of a high school kid named P.J. Dawson. According to the lawsuit, I perilously pursued P.J. onto the rooftop of a three-story building.

Because of my negligence, young PJ slipped and fell off the roof, plummeting those three stories and sustaining critical injuries. The White Shoe Law Firm, actual name is Witt Shaw, but everyone calls them White Shoe, is representing me in exchange for my working jobs like this off the books. America is grand.