The Catastrophe Hour Book Club, Week One - The Broken-In World
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Hi, and welcome to this special edition of the podcast. What you're about to hear is an excerpt from an essay in my new book, The Catastrophe Hour, which was published in April.

I am running a book club this summer where we read an essay each week and talk about it on Zoom. Since there are 14 essays in the book, the club will run for 14 consecutive weeks every Wednesday from 3 to 4 p.m. Eastern Time, starting on June 11th and ending on September 10th. The way it's going to work is each week I will release a short audio excerpt of the essay that we're discussing the following week.

It's not the whole essay, so you should still buy the book, but it should give you a taste. The book club is available to paying Substack subscribers who are subscribed at the annual level, which is a better bargain anyway. If you cannot make the meeting, you will have access to a recording, but only if you're a member of the book club.

If you are not yet a paying subscriber at the annual level, you can upgrade your subscription and we will make sure that you get a link to the Zoom meeting. If you discover this book club at any point during its run, you can still join. This is a book of essays that are arranged in the order in which they were written between 2016 and 2024. You will not be lost if you join in the middle, though it's nice to read from the beginning.

I will say that there is not yet an audio book available for this title. So these audio excerpts are as much listening as you're going to get right now. You can buy the book wherever books are sold. You can become a paying subscriber or upgrade your subscription by going to theunspeakablepodcast.com or megandumb.substack.com. Those go to the same place. Now, please enjoy this week's excerpt from the Catastrophe Hour.

Essay number one, The Broken-In World, September 2016. At the age of 45, I found myself in the surprisingly unsurprising situation of filing for divorce.

To be accurate, I was the respondent in this filing, a decision based solely upon the fact that my husband was remaining in our home state of California while I was taking one of our two giant dogs and driving to New York City in order to, quote, restart my life. A somewhat ironic notion since many years earlier, I'd attempted to restart my life by making the same move in the opposite direction. But what is the human condition if not a perpetually indecisive toggle switch?

Even though it made more sense for my husband to file for divorce against me rather than the other way around, there was no wronged party here. There was no measurable infidelity or betrayal, just your standard irreconcilable differences. A phrase I've come to believe is legal jargon for can no longer ride in the car together due to frequency of arguments about the driver's braking skills, texting proclivities, and degree of willingness to make left turns into busy intersections.

If I was forced to get really specific about our particular brand of irreconcilable differences, I'd have to say they were both as petty as my refusing to sing along when my husband played Neil Young songs on the guitar and as monumental as facing up to the fact that I am infinitely happier and less insane when I live alone or possibly with a roommate who travels frequently than I am when I live even with the person I love and care about the most.

And so there you have it, divorced, or at least well on the way to it.

As any divorced person knows, which I guess is to say, as about half of all adults know or will eventually know, much of the battle is in going public with it. Sure, your close friends won't be surprised. They've been hearing you whine for years now. It's the people in the outer rings who will be shocked. The workplace colleagues and the casual acquaintances and the housekeeper. Though, who are we kidding? The housekeeper knew before anyone. Those who belong...

That was a preview of an excerpt from an essay from my new book, The Catastrophe Hour. That is the essay we'll be discussing in the next meeting of our book club, which runs for 14 consecutive Wednesdays, beginning on June 11th on Zoom from 3 to 4 p.m. Eastern time. If you are hearing this, it means you are not yet a paying subscriber to this podcast. To join the book club, you will need to become one and you'll need to make sure you subscribe at the annual level.

You can join and upgrade your subscription at theunspeakablepodcast.com or megandown.substack.com. Those go to the same place. And you can buy The Catastrophe Hour and all of my other books wherever books are sold. I would love to see you in the book club. Thanks for listening.