The Bechdel Cast - An Extremely Anniversary Tour Details and Jamie’s New Book Minisode!

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

On this minisode, Jamie and Cailtin promote some exciting upcoming things -- the release of Jamie's new book, The Tower, and the Bechdel Cast Ten Year Anniversary Tour! More details below!  The Tower is a forbidden love story between an architect and the building of her dreams, told with humor and empathy. There's also a violent scene at a Fogo de Chau. (For listeners attending our live shows: pre-order and come to the merch table for some free swag!) Pre-order at: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250480422/thetower/https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-tower-jamie-loftus/d9da0612ae01cf74?ean=9781250480422&affiliate=3214 The Bechdel Cast "Ten Year Whoops, We Didn't Dismantle the Patriarchy Anniversary Tour" is a series of live shows that Caitlin and Jamie will be performing around the U.S. over the next year, celebrating ten years of hosting the podcast, starting with shows in October in the Northeast (New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, State College, Pittsburgh, Boston), with more shows in more places to come! See you soon! Links for buying tour tickets at linktr.ee/bechdelcast See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. I am talking to a felon right now with face tattoos, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. That was a caller from my podcast, Therapy Gecko, where I speak.

with anonymous callers about their problems, relationships, and anything else in the depths of their mind. It all happens on my show, Therapy Gecko. So if you're trying to get out of your own head and into someone else's, this is the podcast for you. Listen to Therapy Gecko on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So like by Asia Redmond or so, at least 70% have a phone. I'm Dr. Joy, and this is Therapy for Black Girls. We spend our surviving middle school run getting into what's happening inside your kids' brain, the group chats, and their friendships, and what you can do about it. Your child is not doing this on purpose.

That's the kind of perspective we've been pulling from the psychologists and psychiatrists who studied this for a living. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. On Big Lives, we take a single cultural icon. People like Jane Fonda, George Michael, Little Richard. And we pull apart the story behind the image. discovering forgotten interviews that change exactly how we see these giants of our culture.

We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. I'm Emmanuel Jochi. I'm Kai Wright. And this is Big Lives. Listen to Big Lives on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author, Patriamathers, and her husband Michael mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died. suicide. Dear honeies, this is goodbye. By the time you get to Schletter both Petra and I will be dead, next stop, Wonderland. Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind?

Listen to Death of an Artist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the pecto cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The Patriarchs. He's effing vast, start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Hello, Bechdelcast listeners. Hello, here we are doing a bit of a minisode this week. Don't turn it off. Leave it on.

Keep it on. Keep it on. Because this isn't strictly an ad. We're going to do a quick chat. The reason we're taking this week soft off is because we're getting ready for our upcoming tour, which we'll be talking about in a little bit. And there's just a lot going on in the expanded Bechtlecast universe. And yeah, so we're going to chat about it.

First off, we're going to talk about Jamie's forthcoming a novel. Yay. Tell us about it, Jamie. Yeah, I'm very excited for it. And I don't, I mean, I don't think I've really talked about it very much on the pod. But I've been working on this novel for almost four years now. think actually technically four years in terms of like idea to completion it'll be almost five by the time it comes out but yeah it just went on pre-sale i think maybe by the time you hear this um the cover

will have also come out but um it's called the tower it's been a story i've had on my mind for really really really long time and it is about a woman who is an architect who um falls in love with and starts a relationship with a blueprint that she designs to get into college and then spends the book takes place when she's in her mid-30s. So she basically spends the better part of 20 years trying to get this building into existence while, you know, kind of maintaining the fact that you know, not letting anyone know that she is in love with a blueprint and just generally has relationships with objects. So she's married to another architect. There's a bunch of stuff going on there. Yeah. So it just sort of follows that relationship and her kind of difficult path as she

navigates that. So yeah, and we haven't even really talked about it very much. I've been pretty quiet about it. Yeah. I know you're writing a novel. I think you first mentioned. mentioned it to me maybe two years ago or so, maybe a year ago. I don't know. It was some time, and it's been 84 years. It was some time in the recent slash distant past. Who can say? And then I didn't really hear anything about it since from you. So I was like, oh, I wonder if, I wonder if Jamie's still working on that. Because famously, I start a writing project and then work on it for approximately three days and then quit it. That's my M.O. when it comes to writing. So, yeah, I wasn't really sure. And then you were like, by the way, it's getting published.

And I was like, wowie, wow. Yeah, I was like working on it kind of in chunks over the years, like when I had time or just energy depending to get it done. But yeah, I feel very lucky that it's with the same publisher and editor as my previous book. Raw dog ever heard of it. I, you know, I'm so thrilled that people have, and I would love if people stop asking me questions about hot dogs in my day-to-day life. But that is not, you know, whatever. I truly only have myself to blame.

But I really loved writing that book. I loved getting to tour it and getting to, you know, just hear what people thought about it and it was cool because it was kind of this very very long road to get to write fiction which i don't think you know would have been quite as possible if i hadn't written raw dog first whatever that's more like technical stuff but yeah the the story itself i i know that there's been i think a fair amount like written and and talked about it over the years but it's an objective sexual relationship which i think we i mean we will talk about it has been featured in pop culture has been featured in

movies and television over the years I think with varying results sure we were we're gonna eventually talk about Lars and the real girl which is like about a Ryan Gosselin character having a relationship with a doll there's another like more obscure French movie

that's closer to the kind of thing that I'm talking about called Jumbo and it stars the brunette from Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the painter, not the Lady on Fire. Okay, got it, got it, I got it. As a woman who is in love with a carnival ride, I think it's a really, I would recommend it. But, yeah, it's been talked about kind of sporadically through the years, but I think the thing that, like, really stuck with me about it was that I learned about it in college.

Like, I remember seeing, like, a documentary about it in, like, 2011 about a woman named Eric. Eiffel who had married the Eiffel Tower. Have you ever heard about this? That sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't really know anything about it. I think like a lot of stories I tend to hyper-fix-it-on, it's like a little obscure, but also goes viral every six months for like years. It's the same thing to me as like every six months without fail. People realize that Kathy Guyswhite, who drew the Kathy Comics is hot. People redisgued. this. People rediscover that Keanu Reeves is nice every six months. Yeah. Like into fucking forever, for whatever reason. I don't know why, but like I think that this story is kind of similar

where, you know, I've rewatched the documentary many times. I haven't seen it in about a year, but it's a, I believe a British documentary about objectum sexuals that is both very insightful and I feel like very judgmental. Yeah. where, you know, while I myself have not objective sexual, I think that just like any non-hetero kind of relationship, there is an intense judgment made toward, yes, huge stigma. I mean, I think that Erica Eiffel, who has a very fascinating life story, I've never spoken to her personally, but I think has been pretty heavily kind of through the years made a joke of. in pop culture.

And I think a lot of the media around objectom sexuals sort of seek to make it a punchline or like it's a character detail that's made to make someone seem a scale of quirky to unwell, I guess. I remember there being an episode slash maybe a handful of episodes on 30 Rock where a James Franco character, Boo, but he played someone who was in love with a body pillow. and that was that whole thing was framed as a like what a ridiculous person he is right and it's like James Franco is a ridiculous person but not for that reason yeah I think that there is like and again I don't again this is like not a community I am an active part of and it's not a community I've done like

deep deep deep research into the way I normally would if I was doing nonfiction but I feel like yeah it's very often made to seem to be a punch of it. line, including, you know, some media that I have enjoyed that it's like made to be clear, like, this relationship is not real. This relationship is symptomatic of something else going on in this person's life. And so in the tower, you know, I'm not trying to, or I don't tell you like, if the relationship, like, you can make what you will of the relationship. Our protagonist is very real to her. And so it's real to me. So it, I don't know.

I like, I'm already kind of in my head about like, how do you talk about it? Because I barely talked about it. Like, even like you're like one of my closest friends in the world. I've barely spoken to you about it. Yeah. Wow, keeping your secrets, Jamie. It's kind of true. I mean, up until a year ago, until I was like shopping it around really only Grant had read

the whole thing. But yeah. I mean, I think to me it is very much a love story. and it is yeah it's just like it's a relationship that I feel it feels real to me at this point and so I hope that readers enjoy it I hope that readers have I don't know like relating to the Bechtel cast we've spent an actual decade at this point thinking about how women are portrayed in media and how they are judged how they're not judged all this different stuff and also feeling aware of like Mary Sue stuff and you know it's been very

challenging and like enlightening to work on a character who you really like want to present as a like this is who this person is and you can judge her however you want but I'm not going to judge her and that's hard because like our job is judging stuff famously yes yeah But also in a way that I think it's like cool because it's like a time capsule, like how two people interpret it this character in this moment with their like respective experiences. So anyways, I don't mean to go on too long about it. But yeah, I'm really excited about it. I'm still in this. I'm still like tweaking the last parts of it.

But it goes on sale now. You can get it right now. You can and you should. You can and you should. I've made this plea before. I aspire to make it again. But, yeah, I mean, if you've, like, I'm sure that, like, all of our listeners follow writers. If it's very helpful if you pre-order it.

Yeah. And so if you are like, maybe I'll read it, just order it, forget about it. And then something will happen in June. And something will come. A mysterious package will come. I love doing that. I love pre-rooting something, like, a year and a day. advance and then getting a mysterious package. It's, it's thrilling. You're like, what is, what could this

be? So, thrill your future self by pre-ordering it. Yeah, I don't know. I think if you've, if, if you've enjoyed anything I've ever done, this, this is weirdly of a part in the way to all that. Like, it's, it's, it's, it's not, you're not going to be like, wait, she's a Republican. Like, it's, I'm very excited about it. I really hope you enjoy it. And, yeah, I mean, I'll be annoying about it throughout the year as, as this comes up. But, but yeah, that's more information than I've shared about the Tower anywhere else to this point. Well, thank you for sharing with me and our listeners. I'm excited to spoil the book for you specifically.

And also give you kind of, because, yeah, I started reading it in 2022 and now it's 2026. and I feel like you as someone who knows me very well may be able to discern certain certain things inside the book that our listeners may not. And that's a mystery for the rest of you. Wow. Unless Grant's listening to this thing, he might pick it up. And he should be.

He should be listening to all of our episodes. He should. And he should. And anytime this is like kind of true, with all love to my husband to be, Yeah, sometimes I hear if he's like listening to a podcast in his three male voices in the kitchen, I'm like, what the fuck? I'm like earbuds at best. Earbuds at best, not in this house.

Are we listening to three men who claim to have different opinions but ultimately don't? So again, you can go to the link in the description to pre-order the tower. It officially comes out in June 27. And at that link specifically, I would recommend you go to bookshop.org, which many of you probably already know is a website that will directly order my book from your closest independent bookstore and support a local business, maybe even introduce you to a local business, and all of the other links that also technically exist. But that's where I would recommend that you go. And yeah, I don't know. I'm very excited for you to meet this character.

she is a mess she's a very complicated woman but we love to see it we love to see it I love to see her stomp it around on these pages and I will also be yapping my ass off oh actually this is actually perfect if you have already pre-ordered the tower and you happen to be attending our upcoming tour do not forget to come to the merch table because I have some exclusive free buttons and other stuff related to the tower to give to people who have pre-ordered it. So if you have your pre-order receipt, come to the merch table and there'll be some goodies for you. And speaking of the tour, so interesting. An incredible merch available at the tour. Yeah, there are shows coming up. And not only

are we selling merch at them, we're also doing a show before. A whole show. Yeah. I mean, if you insist, we'll do a whole show. I guess. I guess we'll do it. So as you may already know, we are, we have entered our 10 year anniversary of hosting this show. Can you believe it? It's been 24 years. I can't believe we haven't said that yet. It doesn't really make sense, but I like it. I love it. So yes, we are celebrating by doing a big anniversary tour. We are doing it region by region. And we're starting with the northeast of the U.S. that is coming up in October. Tickets are on sale now. We are kicking off the tour in New York City. Ever heard of it? We are returning to the Bell House where we have done shows before, but not for many, many years. So we're very excited to return. And tickets are already going fast for that. So if you're in the New York area, get yours now for crying out loud. Seriously. That's on October 12th. Then we are scooting down to Baltimore. We have a show at Creative Alliance on October 15th. Very excited to be doing our first ever Baltimore show. And I've never been there at all. So I'm excited to go there for the first time.

My cousins will be there. I love my Baltimore area cousins. We will be then going to Philadelphia at Philomoka on October 17th. We love Philly and that's a venue I've never been to and I've always really, really, really wanted to go to. Much less per format. I can't wait. Then we are doing a homecoming of sorts for you, Caitlin, in State College at Manny's. That's right. On October 18th the next day.

Yes. Yeah, we've got a stretch in Pennsylvania, three days, three shows. It's a big state. It's a big state. It really is. People underestimate how big Pennsylvania is. That's true. But, yeah, after Philadelphia, we are going to state college. That is not where I'm from originally, but that is where my family lives now.

And that's where you got one of two degrees that you never talk about. Thank you for bringing that up for me so that I didn't have to. I mean, that's after 10 years, you get the hang of it. And we're going to one of my favorite cities on the entire planet. No disrespect to every other city, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. at one of my favorite comedy clubs on the planet, Bottle Rocket on October 19th. So excited.

The Pennsylvania trifecta. Indeed. And this is our first time doing a Bechtelcast show in Pittsburgh. So I'm very excited about that. Cannot wait. They have a hot dog cart for crying out loud. Come on. Gasp.

It's amazing. And then we are closing out this leg of the tour with a show in Boston at Brattle Theater on October 21st. So it's a homecoming for both of us. So if you've ever wanted to meet my mom, you aggressively can do so and she would love it. Yeah, that's again on October 21st at the Brattle Theater in beautiful Cambridge, Massachusetts. There are more dates coming up. If you're like, wait a minute, I don't live in any of those cities.

I don't live near those cities. I live in a different place. Well, guess what? We are coming to other regions of the U.S. And maybe Canada. We're trying to figure that out. We're working on it. So throughout the next year, we will be visiting different regions of the country that we hail from.

As well as places we have never been. We're going to be doing a southern leg of the tour, including cities we've never been to before. We're going to be returning to the Midwest. And we can officially tease that we'll be returning to the northwest. Yes, in January. So we have not officially announced that yet and tickets are not on sale yet. But keep your eyes, peeled, mark your calendars in mid-January. And if you've seen us in the Pacific Northwest before, keep an eye on your email list. There'll be stuff for you soon. And I guess just a little bit of insight into how our touring situation works, because I feel like podcasting in the 10 years we've been doing it has changed so much. It is like, at least even as a listener of podcasts, it's like hard to understand how stuff operates, who's doing what. I think that sometimes

podcasts have a vested interest in looking perhaps more low-fi than they actually are. So I think it's worth mentioning that, you know, even though, you know, we've been on IHeart for many years and our beloved Sophie has been our producer for many years, the Bechtelcast has remained a very low-fi operation. So if you haven't been to our shows before, because I've been surprised before to go to live shows. And this isn't a judgment. But like, you know, you go and it's like, you're like, oh, this is like, this is a business. They have a whole team. We're, we're simply not that savvy and we kind of don't want that at all. We're real heads, which is why we're not actually famous. And so all of these shows that, that we hope you'll attend, we plan them ourselves,

we book them ourselves. Often, Caitlin will even handle the ticketing. And we're bringing the merch on our own. I'm designing the merch. Caitlin manages a lot of the orders. When you buy merch at the show, you're ordering from literally the two of us. Often, sometimes a matron will bravely assist, and we're very grateful for that. But for the most part, you know, like I think something I'm very proud of through the years of the Bechtlecast is it's like, even when the show itself is grown, it's like, it kind of really just does at the end of the day. We're punk rock. We, we, used to have an editor and now it's Caitlin again. And now it's me. It was me for many years. And then for a couple years we outsourced it to someone else and now it's me again. So we really, we truly do

most of the labor that is required to make a podcast ourselves. Yeah. I don't think anyone else has ever done our promotional materials. Definitely no one else has ever planned our touring. And we take pride in that. We're like, I don't know. I'm very proud to be a part of a, you know, kind of just like a lofi operation we wanted to feel like you're hanging out with friends. Yeah. And if you're on the fence about getting a ticket, well, there's people who have met at Bechtelkaa shows who are now married. Yeah. So think about that. If that's something you want, if that's something you want, you could maybe meet, I mean, certainly a very, a very hot audience, but also sometimes hot and looking to commit. Looking to smash. Or yeah, or even looking to fuck. I mean,

we're not going to judge. Whatever you do it about Zocas. Whatever you want to do. Yeah, friends, lovers, permanent lovers. Now we've been around for long enough that we can attest that all of the above and more. Yes. And so this is going to be like a big celebration and basically a variety show about both like the last 10 years of movies and, you know, representation they're in, but also just like the last 10 years of the show. So if you're a fan of the show, new or old, baby or 100, come to the show.

It'll be a blast. and we're very excited to hang in to celebrate with you. Absolutely. You can grab tickets for all of the shows that currently have tickets on sale for on our Link Tree, Link Tree slash Bechtelcast. The link for that's also in the description of this episode. Matrons get access to a promo code that gets you a discount on tickets. So if you would like a discount on tickets, if you are already a matron,

make sure to find that post about the promo code for the discount. If you're not a matron, all you have to do is shell out $5 to us. $5 a month on the Patreon. As always, the matrion brings you two new episodes a month on a theme of our choosing, meaning us and also you, as well as a backlog of over 200 episodes at this point. That price has never changed. that money goes directly back into the show is the best way to support the show, as you know.

And we also have tried our best on these tour dates to keep prices to tickets affordable during a recession. So if you're able to swing it, we would love to see you. And also, if you're a matron, come to the merch table because we have some free swag for you too. So in a world where you're a matron and the tower pre-orderer, the sky's the limit for you. You're getting you're getting two buttons. Incredible. Hope you bring a big tote bag for these two buttons you're going to get.

Our listeners come prepared. So yeah, all of the links for everything. Pre-ordering Jamie's books, tickets for these upcoming shows, they always live on our link tree. So scoot over there and check that out. We would love to see you at these shows. I'm so excited about the show that we're building. We're like, I mean, we've had fun shows in the past, but like we've really thought this one out in a way that like I'm excited. It's my favorite kind of show where it's like, it's going to be super fun. It's going to be different in every city.

And like we're going to, I think, surprise each other with what we've like put together. I can't wait. Oh, I can't wait. Yeah, is there anything else we need to? Anything else you want to plug? Anything else you want to say? Not at the moment, no. Yeah, I think, you know, if you haven't checked out the tower or you haven't heard about it, I will be continuing to bug you about it. But yeah, I highly encourage you to check it out.

And I'm so excited to be able to share it with you and I hope you enjoy it. And I'm so excited for you. Thank you listeners for tuning in. We hope to see you at live shows soon. And we'll be back next week with a regularly scheduled episode. Bye. Bye. The Bechtelcast is a production of IHeart Media, hosted and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. And me, Caitlin Durante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtenen.

And edited by Caitlin Durante. Ever heard of them? That's me. And our logo and merch and all of our artwork, in fact, are designed by Jamie Loftus. Ever heard of her? Oh my God. And our theme song, by the way, was composed by Mike Kaplan. With vocals by Catherine Voskrasinski. Iconic. And a special thanks to the one and only Aristotle Acevedo.

For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree slash Bechtelcast. I am talking to a felon right now with face tattoos, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. That was a caller from my podcast, Therapy Gecko, where I speak with anonymous callers. about their problems, relationships, and anything else in the depths of their mind. It all happens on my show, Therapy Gecko. So if you're trying to get out of your own head and into someone else's, this is the podcast for you.

Listen to Therapy Gecko on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Big Lives, we take a single cultural icon. People like Jane Fonda, George Michael, Little Richard. And we pull apart the story behind the image, discovering forgotten interviews that changed exactly how we see these giants of our culture. We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. I'm Emmanuel Jochi.

I'm Kai Wright. And this is Big Lives. Listen to Big Lives on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So by age 11 or so, at least 70% have a phone. I'm Dr. Joy, and this is therapy for Black Girls. We spend our surviving middle school run, Getting into what's happening inside your kid's brain, the group chats and their friendships and what you can do about it. Your child is not doing this on purpose.

That's the kind of perspective we've been pulling from the psychologists and psychiatrists who studied this for a living. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Self-care September is your reminder to slow down, check in with yourself, get off your phone, and maybe ask, why am I like this? I'm Jemisbeg, host of the Psychology of Your 20s podcast, and this month we're helping you make sense of the person that you are becoming, from setting boundaries and navigating friendships to understanding anxiety, confidence, relationships, and attachment. Sometimes our biggest decisions, without us even realizing it, aren't driven by what we truly want, but by what will prevent us from feeling lonely or being alone. Listen to the Psychology of Your 20s on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author Patra Mathers and her husband Michael mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died by suicide. Dear honies, this is goodbye.

By the time you get this letter, both Petra and I will be dead. Next stop, Wonderland. Why did they do it? and what did it do to the people they left behind? Listen to Death of an Artist on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.