2019 in Voicemails

looks like we made it.jpg

12/27/19 - We're truly long distance as we close out the year. Aminatou and Ann leave each other voicemails. Who? Weekly shares the top three Whos who became Thems in 2019, and Emma Straub of Books Are Magic shares some of her favorite novels, memoirs, and collections of poetry this year.

Transcript below.

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Spotify.

CREDITS

Producer: Gina Delvac

Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman

Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn

Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.

Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey

Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed

Merch Director: Caroline Knowles

Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci

Design Assistant: Brijae Morris

Ad sales: Midroll

Recent Episodes
Farewell

We say goodbye, in the final episode of Call Your Girlfriend. In typical fashion, we're going out talking about how friends have been helping us get through the pandemic, the never-ending furor over Joe Rogan, and what podcasts we're loving. If you're looking to subscribe to something new, check out Do You Know Mordechai, Sweet Bobby, and Like a Virgin. Plus, what we're going to do next, and some of your voicemails.

I'm the Bad Guy Sometimes

We're not dead yet! Aminatou talks with legendary podcast, poet and essayist Nichole Perkins about navigating relationships as a Black woman, desire, boundaries, longing, and much more as we chat about her new book, Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be.

See You on the Nostalgia Tour

Is there anything you miss from before the internet? Reading, focus, getting lost, filing cabinets, are just a few of the things New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul discusses with us. Her new book is 100 Things We've Lost to the Internet.

Big Announcement

A different kind of newsy episode with Aminatou, Ann and Gina.

Money, Grief, Kids

We talk with one of our favorite writers, The New Yorker's Ariel Levy, about dynastic wealth, how we experience grief, and big surprises in life, including the joys of getting older and having children. Her podcast that chronicles maternity wear icon Liz Lange, of the New York Steinbergs is The Just Enough Family.

So You Want to Change the World

Can’t be that hard, right? We pass the mic to Nereya Otieno, one of Ann’s 2021 writing fellows, who sits down with two women who have started initiatives to improve the lives of a select few in hopes that it can spark a radical shift.

Tastemakers

We talk with Mayukh Sen about seven immigrant women who remade American cuisine and his new book, Taste Makers. Plus, racism in the worlds of food writing and publishing and who gets to break out.

Making Older Friends

Women over 50 are too often erased, including on this very podcast. Grace Bonney has been collecting inspiration and advice from women of more advanced experience in her new book, Collective Wisdom. She's gathered interviews and intergenerational conversations with over 100 trailblazing women, who describe the ups, downs, and lessons learned while forging their unique paths.

Grief Companionship

Grief can come in so many forms and impact us in unexpected ways. Illustrator and designer Ngaio Parr knows all too well, having lost four family members in four years. Retreating from family and friends? Strange physical symptoms? Suddenly seeing things everywhere that echo a lost loved one? All these normal forms of grieving can be confusing in a world that's all too ready to have you move on. To help, Ngaio has designed and illustrated The Grief Companion, a deck of cards with beautiful abstract watercolor images with prompts, insights and actions, for the moments when you can only do a little bit at a time. Plus, we discuss how to be there for friends who are grieving.

Bandsplain

Yasi Salek's podcast Bandsplain has us listening to music like teens again, with obsessive curiosity about whole albums and the quirks and life stories that draw us into the artists we come to love, or learn more about canonical artists we never understood.

The Silent but Deadly Fart of Racism

George McCalman is an artist, a writer, an illustrator, and a designer. This man does it ALL. He spent many years as a magazine creative director, shaping the look and feel of publications such as Mother Jones, Readymade, Afar. Then he opened up his own studio, McCalman Co, where he collaborates on branding, design, and editorial projects.

Change is Always Coming

How fixed are we in our ways of being and doing things? We're always confronting change, but how much can we choose it? These are some of the big ideas through small moments Jade Chang tackles in her Audible Original, You've Already Changed Your Life: A Recipe for a Revelation. Jade is a friend of the podcast, deep thinker, and author of the excellent novel, The Wangs vs. The World.

SCOTUS vs. Abortion (sponsored by Rewire News Group)

In a special episode brought to you by Rewire News Group, we go deep on the conservative push to regulate and ban abortion in Texas and Mississippi with Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo of the Boom! Lawyered podcast.

Disability, Fragility, Vulnerability

Emily Ladau and Kelly Dawson return to dispel dull narratives around disability and go beyond the 101. How coping with fragility creates resilience. How friendships deepen with the knowing and trust that disabled people share. What allyship looks like to them as physically disabled women. The hypocrisies of non-disabled people's reactions to COVID, and, in its wake, how we can all look more closely at what it means to live a full life.

Believing Anita Hill

Dr. Anita Hill made history in 1991 when she testified to the Senate Judiciary committee about the sexual harassment perpetrated against her by Clarence Thomas. After the all-white, all-male committee led by then-Senator Joe Biden heard Dr. Hill's testimony, Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the US Supreme Court.

In the 30 years since, Anita Hill has spent her career as a law professor hearing from survivors of gender-based violence, ranging from harassment (which she expected) to assault. In her new book, Believing, she connects the dots between the systems that empower abuse and minimize vulnerable people, and the culture that keeps us as bystanders. From that history, she tackles the policy solutions we'll need to reform the system from the inside and the social courage we'll need to muster to transform it.

Where Should I Send My Kid to School?

A simple question with loaded answers.

On today's episode, we unravel a few of those knots with Courtney Martin and Dr. Dena Simmons, whose interracial friendship has weathered distance, accountability, academic rigor, heartbreak, and mutual support. They met over a decade ago when Courtney profiled Dena for her book about young activists, Do It Anyway. At the time, Dena was a classroom teacher. Since then she has earned her PhD and is writing her own book about breaking up with whiteness, the forthcoming White Rules for Black People.

Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation

Don't today's conspiracy theories make UFOs and JFK conspiracy theories seem quaint, almost sweet? Dr. Stacy Wood breaks down how independent communities of belief have accelerated online. It's not only the fault of social media, but as we reorganize how we search and find information, Facebook, YouTube, Google, and others are all part of how we have become so entrenched in our beliefs.

Finding Your Voice

Comedy and art criticism don't exactly sound like parallel career paths. But after bouncing from a freelance hustle to a fancy art world job to improv classes, Christina Catherine Martinez realized she wanted to do both. We talk about how she navigates making a life and a career as an intellectual and a comedian, how alike those performances are on social media, and how power and money infect everything.

Sex Work is Work

As OnlyFans flips and flops on the sex workers that built its platform, we revisit our interview with Lorelei Lee on the history of sex work legislation. Lorelei is a writer and performer who discusses how sex work is neither purely exploitative nor purely empowering. Instead, like all work, it's complicated.

Sustainable Style

Miranda Bennett has long been one of our favorite designers. We discuss how she got started making and selling clothes, how she balances running a sustainable business with keeping the lights on, and tips for shopping sustainably (even though we know there is no ethical consumption under capitalism).

Summer of Friendship: Forever35

Our summer of friendship continues with Kate Spencer and Doree Shafrir, hosts of the podcast Forever35. While we love their conversations about serums and budget-friendly makeup tips, we come and stay for their deep friendship, which started on the internet and was partly cemented at a CYG live show.

Bad Behavior

From Matt Damon to Andrew Cuomo to gender testing at the Olympics, we do a quick survey of men in the news behaving badly.

Boundaries

We talk about finding and maintaining boundaries, why the world makes it easier for some people than others, how boundaries help us be in community with others, and how grateful we are for boundary possibility models like Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka.

Summer of Friendship: Foxy Browns

More from our Summer of Friendship series, where a few of our favorite podcasters tell us how they met, times their friendship has been stretched, and how they grow together. This week, dear pals Camilla Blackett and Priyanka Mattoo of the Foxy Browns podcast.

Summer of Friendship: Two Old Bitches

As we continue our Summer of Friendship series, a few of our favorite podcasters tell us how they met, times their friendship has been stretched, and how they grow together. This week, Idelisse Malavé and Joanne Sandler aka Two Old Bitches!

Summer of Friendship: Claire and Erica

As part of our Summer of Friendship series, a few of our favorite podcasters tell us how they met, times their friendship has been stretched, and how their off-air an on-air friendship is different. This week, iconic bestie entrepreneurs Claire Mazur and Erica Cerulo of A Thing or Two.

Hot Vax Summer of Friendship

Aminatou and Ann's book Big Friendship is available in paperback July 6, so to celebrate we're doing our second Summer of Friendship series. We catch up and kick off chatting through our recent forays back into the world, which friends we're seeing, how we work through the emotional distance with close friends and acquaintances, and how we're approaching boundaries and travel while it seems possible.

Bi Bi Bi 2.0

Jordan and Gina round out Pride with a followup to our Bi Bi Bi episode from 2018. We hear from Divinity (@officiallydivinity) who identifies as bisexual, gray ace, and aromantic and how those labels coalesce for her. Divinity has amazing things to share about friendship. love, sex, connection, and becoming your brightest, fullest self. love you.

Lockdown Lesbian Love Story

Queer women aren't exclusively looking for longterm monogamous love - but some are! As part of our Pride series, a lockdown lesbian love story featuring musician Abby Diamond and actor and director Rachel Cora Wood.

Detransition, Baby

We talk with Torrey Peters about her breakout novel, Detransition, Baby, full of queer characters finding and defining family, and why she dedicated it to divorced cis women. Plus, a bunch of great reading recommendations for books by trans authors.

TRANSCRIPT: 2019 IN VOICEMAILS

[Ads]

(1:02)

Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.

Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.

Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.

Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman. On this week's agenda we've got a long-distance wrap-up to a very long year in which we talk to some of our favs about their highlights from 2019.

[Theme Song]

(1:45)

Ann: Okay, so you know that end of the year, like the last, hmm, month for sure but definitely the last two weeks when all you want to do is check in with your loved ones, and especially if they're far away get a read on how they're feeling about their year and how they're feeling going into the new one? Also it's that time of year when we just want to connect with the people we love regardless of where we live. That's what we really, really tried hard to do this week and the reality was we could not even find the time to get on the phone and do the podcast in a way that felt meaningful which I'm sure you recognize this feeling from your friendships. It's 100 percent how we feel. That's what this week's episode is: the series of voicemails that kind of stand in when you can't get on the phone for a real conversation so here we are. We each left each other a voicemail with a year-end message and we also asked for messages from our friends, people who we wish we could connect with directly.

Aminatou: Hi Ann! I am leaving you this message because we just have not been able to connect lately because we're both traveling so much and it's the end of the year and you know how it is. It's just the two-body problem. We cannot be in the same space. But I've been thinking about you a lot and I've been thinking about this year a lot and this decade a lot, even though you know that I don't believe in New Year's because it's such a productivity kind of scam. I'm just trying to reflect on some highlights for us because we have known each other exactly a decade now. I'm really glad you were a big part of my decade and that our friendship was and just of all the things that I've learned about myself through knowing you. And I'm not going to get sappy because I'm going to tell you them in person but to the podcast listeners it's been like, you know, it's been a very good decade for us.

(3:45)

You know, it's funny. This is the first year that I remember exactly what I was doing on the first of the year. I just have such a clear, vivid memory of it and a clear, vivid memory of making a choice that I was going to try to have a significant year even though at the time I didn't know what it meant and I didn't mean it like in a care more about my career or work on XYZ. I was trying to do the thing that our pal Saeed Jones calls determinations, like he and his mom that he's written so much about have -- their tradition was to have New Year's determinations and I remember what my determinations were at the beginning of the year. And I am happy to say I feel like I had a determined year and so much of that for me has just been about being healthier. It's the first year probably in this decade that I felt more like myself in my head and my body, no thanks cancer, but we're still here doing our best.

And I've just been reflecting a lot on the things that have meant a lot to me and so obviously there was like music and books and, you know, all of the like kind of cultural markers of what are the things that have meant the most to you? But I think that when I think for me about the last year I have just remembered a lot of really -- a lot of emotional high notes and so many of them involve really big laughs and good people and so many of them were sad also. But I've just been reflecting a lot on my people and what this past year has given us and what the past year has taken away. And I hope that as you kind of like review your year and you review your decade that that's also front-of-mind for you.

All that said I am super excited about the next ten years for us. I'm excited about the next year. Let's do it one day at a time. I wish for good lulz, good music, good people, good times. Like everything cliché. But guess what? It's okay to want nice things. I want nice things and I want sometimes and I'm not ashamed to say it, I miss you a lot. Can't wait to hear what you've been thinking about.

(6:00)

Ann: Hi Amina and hi everyone listening in. I'm really sorry we didn't get to do this together because I feel like you and I had a serious 2019 in terms of things we did together. I mean I know everyone who's listening to this knows that we wrote a book together this year but it's really interesting to sit and reflect on it as this truly months-long process where we were not just close friends but we were the deepest kind of intellectual collaborators, like literally in each other's private documents, changing each other's words, having to talk about things that were really difficult again and again and again.

I'm struck by the fact that for me this was the year that I finally was like oh, I did it, I wrote a book, which is something that has appeared on every goals list going into the new year since probably I was literate. And it was just so special to be able to cross that off and accomplish that with you no matter what people think of this book. I just feel profoundly lucky that something that has been so important to me to do in my life I got to do side-by-side with someone who I care about so much and who is so smart and whose ideas I love so much. I just feel really very privileged that I got to have that experience with you.

And I also feel energized. Like I feel ready to talk about this book with the world and I feel ready to write a next book maybe on my own which is true training wheels vibes. And I know everyone listening to this has not written a book with their friend but I think that it is a rare and special thing when you get to have a watershed life moment, something you've really known you've wanted to do for a long time, and get to do it side-by-side with someone you love. You just have that memory in a different way because you've experienced it together.

(7:50)

Anyway, so that is really just like the dominant experience of my 2019. It affected how I read things. Everything I read was amazing this year. [Laughs] But two reading experiences stand out: re-reading Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents which are really books about resilience and about being someone who is actively marginalized and out of power and really having this well of confidence in yourself that you can return to again and again, even when you have your doubts about the exact path forward or the exact how. The why and like the sureness of yourself and your values and goals, that is what that character really represents to me. And so diving into that world that Octavia Butler created was so powerful for me this year. I loved that.

And I think it was important that it came at this stage of this presidency for me when I'm feeling a little bit of despair about the positive impact of showing up in the streets and the practical results of calling my members of Congress who based on the city I live in are already in pretty much agreement with me. And I think I really don't want to lose that sense of urgency that I felt after Trump was elected about staying engaged and pushing through the fact that it just feels like a relentless mudslide of shit, and continuing to understand that even if all of these little actions that I undertake don't have a result it's still worthwhile to keep trying. So anyway, so those books helped me do that.

The other thing that I really loved this year and couldn't stop thinking about was the Last Bohemians podcast which is interviews with predominantly older women who are living in the UK, women who were like radicals and artists and considered quite avant garde when they were younger, reflecting on their youth and kind of the ways the culture has and hasn't caught up to where they've always been. 

(9:55)

And I love the show for a number of reasons. I've listened to it multiple times truly. I love the way that you can get this sort of 30,000 foot view on the many kinds of lives that a woman can have. I think that that's often been a privilege only afforded to men in the past where we can sort of say wow, look how ahead of their day they were way back then and let's consider the whole impact of everything they've been present for to change and to witness. That's what the show really did for me and it made me realize how hungry I am for just more. More insights, more wisdom, more stories from women who are in their 60s through their 90s. So I'm going to seek out more of that next year. I really love The Last Bohemians and I want to recommend it.

The other thing that sticks with me from this year, and it's funny, it's a little bit self-indulgent, but it has to do with the power of words again. Nick Quah who is a writer who writes about podcasts for Vulture, in a round-up this year, described Call Your Girlfriend as an audio zine. And I can't stop thinking about how appropriate that feels and how funny it is that we have never embraced that terminology ourselves because when a stranger asks me about our podcasts I say something like it's a feminist chat show or I say like it's a chat show but we also do lots of great interviews. It's kind of hard to find the language for this mix of professionalism and DIYness that we've got going on and that we've cultivated all these years. When I saw that term zine I was just like yes, it is exactly what we're doing. That is what our independent little podcast project is all about. So I want to thank Nick and I want to say that has helped me put some words to this project that we are making together.

[Ads]

(14:38)

Ann: Let me just say I'm really excited to go into a new calendar year with you. I know not everyone is Gregorian calendar oriented but as someone who is incorporated -- so I live on the fiscal year, the corporate fiscal year, and who has a birthday in early January -- the year really restarts for me with the new calendar year. So for my purposes I love this as a time for reflection and I just want to send so much love and gratitude to all of you for sustaining me through 2019 and working with me and being collaborators. On that note we also asked some of our favorite people to share their highlights from this year. They left us some voicemails as is the style of this episode and we hope you enjoy them.

Bobby: Welcome to a short little Call Your Girlfriend segment of Who Weekly, the podcast where you learn everything you need to know about the celebrities you don't. I'm Bobby Finger.

Lindsey: I'm Lindsey Webber and in case you have never heard of us before, well, we have a podcast and you should go listen to it. If you like this actually. Listen to this first and see what you think. But we are I would say friends of the pod, right?

Bobby: The only reason we have a pod is because Amina supported us. Truly. Truly.

Lindsey: Yeah, and said make a pod. Do a pod. What's the big deal? Do a pod.

Bobby: Because of Amina's confidence in us. So today we're going to help Call Your Girlfriend close out 2019 by talking about three celebrities who have grad-who-ated, a term that we invented -- it's a terrible term -- it means they've gone from who to them over the past year.

Lindsey: Mm-hmm.

Bobby: The way we're going to talk about this, it's very scientific.

Lindsey: It's not.

(16:00)

Bobby: We have a call-in show on Fridays, so we get a lot of calls. We have a number, 619-WHO-THEM, and people call in and they ask about celebrities who they don't know a lot about. And we've been doing this for almost four years.

Lindsey: Oh boy.

Bobby: So -- isn't that crazy?

Lindsey: Oh boy.

Bobby: So over the years we've seen people go from who to them. I think notably in our tenure Cardi B is a big one.

Lindsey: A big one.

Bobby: But three people have gone from who to them this year and we've noticed it because we used to get a lot of calls about them and now we don't. Let's just start with number one, who to them, Lizzo.

Lindsey: I would say we were getting calls about her very earlier this year: who is she? Where'd she come from? And the answer was she's been around for a long time, she's been making music for a long time, but she might break through this year. That's the real question right?

Bobby: Yeah, and then she did. And the most interesting thing about Lizzo's career this year, her 2019, which has been written about to death is she mostly became famous based on stuff that's old which is sort of a fascinating way in in the realm of pop music.

Lindsey: Well we usually say about people hey, you missed their best stuff or hey, I've known about them for so long. Remember the old stuff? And whatever. But for this case because of the nature of streaming music I think when she came out she said oh, you know, here I am and her songs started catching on. It didn't matter how old they were. It didn't matter that these songs had come out four years ago because we were hearing them now.

Bobby: Yeah.

Lindsey: They were being featured in TikToks. They were being featured on Twitter and all this stuff and people were enjoying them. And some of the crazy people like us were like wait, but these are old songs. But who the hell cares?

Bobby: Who cares?

Lindsey: Right.

Bobby: My favorite thing that artists do sometimes is when they do the thing that they -- well Lizzo did it a lot but they put the old songs that are hitting on the current streaming albums so they're part of the new albums and they can say that this album is getting streams just because they put the old stuff on it suddenly, you know what I mean?

(17:50)

Lindsey: Right, right. But that's tough. That's . . .

Bobby: She sort of changed the game. I love it.

Lindsey: She did change the game. But it also just showed when we were talking about this maybe last year that singles are more important than albums. This just continues to be the case. And not only are singles more important than albums or just songs released randomly, uh, singles that are older are now more important than albums. Old songs. Songs from nowhere. Who knows? Songs on TikTok. Songs that get reused for different parts of culture. I guess what was interesting to me is I'm very curious about Lizzo in terms of she's reaching her peak fame right now. 2019, great year for her. But I wonder how it feels for her kind of having her most popular work be stuff that she made so long ago. That would be frustrating for me.

Bobby: I think it would be initially frustrating because it's like I've been doing this for so long and you're just now discovering me.

Lindsey: Right.

Bobby: But it's got to be pretty gratifying because it would almost be more annoying to release a new catalog of music then have your old stuff be completely ignored, you know?

Lindsey: Yes, yes. Yes.

Bobby: Where it's like god, I did all this stuff that I'm really proud of and you don't even listen to it?

Lindsey: Exactly.

Bobby: It's great that people ended up in the back catalog. That almost shows more of a fandom than exclusively the new stuff being famous you know?

Lindsey: Right. But I guess . . .

Bobby: It shows like the initiative, the drive.

Lindsey: The question with Lizzo and why it was so easy for her to jump from who to them is her personality was so magnetic and so huge and so, you know, catchy that that was what shown the most maybe. More than the music. More than the music? I mean the music is great too but that music is so her, you know? No one else can perform that music.

Bobby: No one sounds like her. No one sounds like her.

Lindsey: Like did you see Harry Styles do a cover of Juicy or Juice?

Bobby: Juice.

Lindsey: Did you see that?

Bobby: No, I didn't see that. That's amazing.

Lindsey: It was fine but no one else can perform that song the way she does.

Bobby: And also she was a meme. She was that bye bitch meme before she got huge which is really fun.

Lindsey: We love that meme.

Bobby: She just has an understanding of how to operate on Twitter, sometimes to her detriment but overall to her benefit, that you can see other celebrities copy too which is another true hallmark of themdom. People are copying what they're doing -- what you are doing -- because they see it work for you.

(20:04)

Lindsey: You're trying to make . . .

Bobby: Yes.

Lindsey: Okay, who's next on our list?

Bobby: Do we -- which Billie do we start with? Billy Porter or Billie Eilish?

Lindsey: There are two Billies, which is so funny about these two Billies is they're very different. Very different Billie.

Bobby: Opposite. Early career Billie, late career Billie, both good who to them stories.

Lindsey: You have a Billie who's still a teenager. You have a Billy who had worked his whole career and is now in his 40s I want to say before he kind of crossed over and got noticed for more than just . . .

Bobby: Lindsey?

Lindsey: What?

Bobby: He's 50.

Lindsey: Oh my god, wow. He looks good. He looks good for 50.

Bobby: He's 50.

Lindsey: I'll take that compliment.

Bobby: So Billy Porter I think has been a Broadway them for a really, really long time. I mean he earned a Tony over five years ago for Kinky Boots. He originated that role.

Lindsey: That's huge.

Bobby: And Kinky Boots which now just gets farmed out to any celebrity -- minor celebrity. It's the waitress effect, the Kinky Boots effect, the Chicago effect. Cabaret effect. Whatever. He originated that role. He also sang iconically the montage song, the sad montage song, in First Wives Club. That's his song.

Lindsey: Right, but no one . . . that's his song but that's not -- no one cared.

Bobby: Yeah, so he's like old-school Broadway. He's a theatre actor. Over the past few years he's gotten famous on television, most recently in Pose, then he won an Emmy for it. He's the first openly-gay black man to be nominated and win an Emmy leading acting category at the Prime Time Emmys -- that's me reading Wikipedia obviously -- but another thing that helped him become a them is his red carpet style. So just the mere fact that he's on the red carpet means that eyes are going to be on him because unlike most men who are so fucking lazy when it comes to red carpets, they just wear black tuxes, Billy Porter is on the red carpet taking style risks, doing what you are there for.

(21:48)

Lindsey: I mean you had like Shawn Mendes and Michael B. Jordan in like a harness or whatever. That was touching on this thing. We want to see these flamboyant looks. We want to see actual fashion and he was confident enough and didn't give a shit. He's 50; he doesn't care. He worked this hard to get to this point.

I also just think that again the time is right for him. We are open arms -- as a culture open arms ready to embrace him, and there are projects that work for him like Pose and all of these Ryan B. Murphy projects that are perfect for Billy Porter. I think everything just came together right place, right time. I do.

Bobby: Yeah. And I think finally television -- specifically television, more and more movies but like television sort of on the forefront of this . . .

Lindsey: Yes.

Bobby: They're making more roles for middle-aged women. Oh wow, they have roles for middle-aged gay, black men in a way that probably weren't possible in the '90s. Billy Porter was closeted publicly for a long time because he was told it would ruin his career and now he's openly gay and he's starring in a show about trans people on television and he won an Emmy for it. So . . .

Lindsey: Right. So this has a lot to do with the greater trends of television, the television boom, that we have more space for TV, that we have all these streaming channels. There's money being poured into making TV shows that would've never been made really in the past.

Bobby: Yeah.

Lindsey: So there's so much here that pulls you from who to them.

Bobby: Yeah. Once again I just have to reiterate it's so annoying the way men can be lazy on the red carpet. It's just like that is part of the job description.

Lindsey: It's true.

Bobby: And they think putting on a harness or wearing a blue tux instead of a black one is somehow work. No. All of the women are stressing about this to within an inch of their life and it's like the men should be too. This is part of your job. This is part of your job.

Lindsey: It's true. It's true. Do better. Do better.

Bobby: Go to work. Do better. Be best. Be best.

Lindsey: We give so much attention and love and we clap, clap, clap for the littlest amount of effort in terms of men dressing up.

Bobby: It's so stupid and it's like Billy Porter's doing so much more. Last Billy.

Lindsey: Last Billy, final Billy. Billie Eilish on the other side of the spectrum.

Bobby: Spelled differently. Billie with an I-E.

Lindsey: Billie Eilish. Billie with I-E, Eilish. She is a now 18 -- I think she just turned 18.

Bobby: Oh happy birthday Billie Eilish. Billie Eilish we used to get a lot of calls.

Lindsey: So many calls.

(24:05)

Bobby: Because she just seemed like, I don't know, initially specially to adults when Billie Eilish kind of came on the scene.

Lindsey: Flash in the pan.

Bobby: A few years ago, she seemed just like a young teen singer who really wasn't going to go anywhere but some kids liked. Like oh, kids like her? Whatever. Teen girls like her.

Lindsey: Talk about somebody with a singular vision, I think that's what separated her as it turned out. Not only had they made all this music -- her and her brother made all this music in their bedroom and all that. I mean it's not the first time that somebody has made music in their bedroom but her kind of capturing of what young people wanted to hear, the direction in which pop music was moving, right? Making something new that was also somehow within the framework. I don't even know how to explain how well she did in terms of this kind of thing.

Bobby: Yeah.

Lindsey: Then also you're talking about Billy Porter having this iconic style and really going for it. She has a very young person style. How do I say -- you know what I mean?

Bobby: She has a young -- she has a very dramatic style. Like it's a young I don't want to do what everyone else is doing style.

Lindsey: Yes.

Bobby: But it's also still very, very cool and it's the sort of thing people are copying. Teens want to dress like her.

Lindsey: Counter-culture that hadn't been really explored before by a young woman I think.

Bobby: Yeah.

Lindsey: The kind of baggy clothes that she wears but really high fashion, really bright colors, really everything. A really smart young person. I think we're obsessed with smart young people. Obsessed.

Bobby: Obsessed. And I think the thing -- for a while people called in like she makes the weirdest music. And the thing is it is really unique and it is very Billie Eilish but it's also pop, you know? That's the thing about the music.

Lindsey: Totally.

Bobby: It makes perfect sense on the radio. It's not as jarring as I think she is billed to be sometimes. I think she's sort of -- it's easy for people to say Billie Eilish, she's so out there. But it's just because it's a few degrees away from the stuff that's everywhere like your Ariana Grandes or your Selena Gomezes. It is still pop music though.

Lindsey: No, it sure is.

Bobby: And that's I think what makes it so great because it fits on pop radio just as well as everything else but it is unique and it sounds like her and we're going to have more music that sounds like her in the future because Bad Guy has been everywhere. It's so influential.

Lindsey: We're Who Weekly. That is our Who to Them report for 2019. It's been a wild year for whos. If you want to hear more about whos -- these are the celebrities who are not thems, the ones you've never heard of, the ones whose faces you see in the checkout aisle when you're trying to get your groceries and they're all over the magazines and you're like who are these people? If you're wondering who these people are check out our podcast. That's Who Weekly.

Bobby: Yeah. Happy New Year everyone. Thanks Call Your Girlfriend. Bye.

Lindsey: Happy New Year. Bye.

Emma: Hi Call Your Girlfriend listeners. This is Emma Straub, novelist, and owner of Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn and I am here to tell you all about some of my very favorite books of the year because I think that you would like them too.

So the first one is a memoir called Good Talk by a writer named Mira Jacob. And it's a graphic memoir which means that Mira is one of those doubly-talented people, so she wrote all the words and drew all the pictures, and it's really a series of conversations between Mira and her son, between Mira and her parents, between Mira and her husband, between Mira and her friends. And it's about what it feels like to be a parent, to be in an interracial marriage, to be a human in the age of Trump. It's really fabulous and I think you would love it.

(28:00)

Another book that I think you would all really enjoy is Fleabag the Scriptures by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. It looks like a bible and it's all of the scripts for Fleabag. You've already watched all the episodes and you've already fallen in love with the hot priest and now you can actually just buy the book and read it and see what a genius Phoebe Waller-Bridge is in your very own house without even turning on the television.

I have some poems to recommend also because even if you read poems every day you could probably stand to read more poems. [Laughs] There are three collections of poems in particular that I want to recommend. The first is a book called Odes to Lithium by a writer named Shira Erlichman who was a bookseller here at Books are Magic but she is a permanent genius out in the world and the book is all about lithium. It's about mental health. It's about being human and her brain and her brain is worthy of your time for sure so you should pick that up.

Another book of poems that I think you should read is called Hybrida by a poet named Tina Chang and it's a book of poems about what it feels like to be a parent in 2019 but more specifically the non-black parent of a black child in 2019 and the poems are beautiful and full of hope and fear and it's a very moving book and I think that you would love it.

(29:55)

And then the last book of poems that I'm going to recommend is called An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo who is now our poet laureate of the United States. Thank god that is something Donald Trump can't take away from us that we have a poet laureate. So Joy Harjo, I recommend that you look up photos of her because you will see her holding a saxophone which is amazing and you will also see her sitting on Oprah's couch out on Oprah's lawn which is also amazing. And then after you do all that you should just read her poems. This book, it's a new book that's really about her tribal history and the land and it's incredibly moving and I think you'd love it.

Okay, so moving on to some fiction that I love this year, so Mary HK Choi is just one of the greatest. I believe she's a friend of the pod as they say. Maybe they don't say that. [Laughs] She's a girlfriend. She's one of our girlfriends here at Books are Magic and one of Call Your Girlfriend's girlfriends as well. But Permanent Record I just gobbled up. If you haven't read it yet it's in this sort of in-between zone that is called new adult I believe which means it's sort of straddling the YA/adult fiction line because it's about young people who are not children but they're sort of in the college zone and these two characters, the boy works overnight at a bodega in New York City and the girl, the main girl character, is a pop star sort of like Ariana Grande. And it's about their relationship and their relationships with their families, their relationships with their friends, and sort of fame, Instagram, all that good, juicy stuff. But really it's just about human beings and Mary's a beautiful writer and I loved every page.

(32:00)

Speaking of beautiful writers where I loved every page, okay, so Jia Tolentino. You already love Jia Tolentino. You've probably already bought six copies of Trick Mirror, her collection of essays, but maybe you haven't. Maybe you haven't. In which case what are you doing? You need Jia. So if you don't read her essays in The New Yorker you really should start. Jia is going to guide us all out of idiocy one essay at a time whether she's talking about growing up and going to the church, whether she's talking about drugs, whether she's talking about the Internet, whether she's talking about all of those things in one essay Jia Tolentino will save us all. So buy Trick Mirror.

Another book that will save you possibly is In the Dreamhouse, a memoir by Carmen Maria Machado, is about the sort of domestic abuse that isn't written about a lot which is in two ways -- number one, it's a queer relationship. It's about Carmen and her girlfriend and it's about sort of abuse that comes, you know, without leaving fingerprints. And it's inventive and astonishing like everything Carmen writes but I also think that this one really is going to help a lot of people recognize red flags in their own relationships or in their friends' relationships and really could be a lifeline for a lot of people.

(33:35)

What else? So here's another graphic book. So Rainbow Rowell is one of my favs, maybe one of your favs too, and you may know her as the author of Fan Girl and Carry On and all these things. But this year Rainbow also wrote a graphic novel called Pumpkinheads [Laughs] which is a totally sweet teen romance that takes place literally in a pumpkin patch. It's two teenagers who work together in the pumpkin patch and I just -- I can't say enough things about it. I was having a bad day and then I read the whole thing cover-to-cover and I felt so much better so let that be a balm to you as well.

Another . . . so this is another memoir. So The Yellow House by Sarah Broom, this one just won the National Book Award for non-fiction. It's a memoir but it's messier than that, like it's more like a poem. You get to know all of these members of Sarah Broom's family, generations of interesting, complicated people in New Orleans where her family is from, and it really just follows this family home and -- yeah, and it won the National Book Award and you're going to love it.

Oh, I have one book by a man. [Laughs] So there are two men who I'm allowing on this list and the first one is Saeed Jones whose memoir How We Fight For Our Lives just wrecked me. I cried and cried and cried. It's the story of Saeed coming of age as a young black gay man in the south and so there's him sort of having his first sexual encounters and things like that but it's really about his relationship with his mother. As the mother to two small kids I just -- that is the part of this book that really just broke me. It is so beautiful and I have been putting it in everyone's hands and now I'm putting it in yours.

(35:50)

And then the last book that I'm going to recommend, also by a man, is Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson. This is a book that really surprised me and I think it surprised a lot of people because most books if they're going to hit the New York Times bestseller list they come out and hit the list right away because they've racked up all the preorders or whatever but that is not what happened with this book. This book is like a real . . . I mean it's hard to call something a sleeper when he was on Fresh Air. [Laughs] But it really was word-of-mouth that sold this book.

It's about a woman who gets called by her old high school friend to come and be the nanny to her friend's stepchildren in Tennessee and the only catch is that these children spontaneously combust. They burst into flame when they're agitated or angry or upset. The children are not harmed but things around them can burn. And it's one of the best books about parenting that I have ever read and I read a lot of books about parenting. [Laughs]

But yeah, I mean I guess the way I read it is it's really about being a damaged person and loving other people who you see are damaged in similar ways and how that's possible, you know? And how -- what we can all do to help and what we have to offer even when we think we aren't offering enough.

So those are just some of my choices. I could go on for one million years. Thank you for having me. I love you Call Your Girlfriend. I love you Call Your Girlfriend listeners. Come see me at Books are Magic. Okay, bye.

Ann: See you on the Internet next year.

Aminatou: See you in 2020. You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf. Our associate producer is Jordan Baley and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.
2019-1, booksCall Your GirlfriendWho? Weekly, books, books are magic