The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - South Beach Sessions - Erin Ryan & Alyssa Mastromonaco

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

Erin Ryan is no stranger to the comments section. She went from a miserable job at Merrill Lynch (and escaping to a Chicago animal shelter to walk dogs), to anonymously writing $100 Sunday shifts at Jezebel. From there, she made her way to managing editor at The Daily Beast and eventually the writers’ room of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”. If you’re wondering how the hell all that happened, she’s still trying to figure it out too. Later, former “Hysteria” co-host Alyssa Mastromonaco joins to reveal the “alchemy” behind their eight-year partnership, how their show was forged in the chaos of the Trump era, and what they’re hoping for—and genuinely afraid of—for the midterms this November. Listen, watch, and subscribe to the “Hysteria” podcast from Crooked Media with new episodes every Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to Draft Kings Network. We can poke fun at each other because we know each other so well now that I can almost predict. I could predict something that Alyssa would say. Something that Alyssa is very uncomfortable with is like sex. And I'm a prude. I love a joke that is so sexual and gross that it makes people uncomfortable. And sometimes when I'm scripting, we have a series called, can I say the F word? We have a series called This Fucking Guy.

and sometimes I give Alyssa deliberately the grossest jokes. Like, if there's something about like felching, I'll have Alyssa read it. If there's something about dry humping, I'll have Alyssa read it. And I know it brings her such joy that I give it 110%. Hello and welcome to South Beach Sessions. I'm very happy to have Aaron Ryan with us today. She's a comedy writer. It's always Sunday in Philadelphia.

She's a journalist as well. Managing editor at Jezebel used to do the, Daily Beast and what she does now with hysteria is exceptional. She makes politics very easy to consume. And I'm having her here, at least in part, to help me because I tend to in these dark times be obnoxious and strident. And I need to find the funny. I need to find the funny, right? Because I get mad and a bunch of stuff gets lost in my tone and you do this all better than I do when you attack the darkness with some humors. So thank you for being with us. Oh, thanks for having me. What advice do you have for me?

How can I do something a little bit better in this realm? Starting simple. Here's what I have concluded after years of writing as a columnist where I did get to make my little jokes and goof around and then working in like scripted television, which was also about writing jokes and goofing around. And now my podcast, which I have to have a take, you know, like I have to have a way to lead somebody through a tough story and have them feel like they're really. with me, but we're still like, we're respecting the seriousness of the story, but we're not getting

bogged down by it. And honestly, sometimes you just have to nope out. And noping out is when you get into and you're like, nope, nope, can't do this. Can't do this right now. Because the closer I am to like my actual anger, the less funny I am. I have to like let the anger come kind of like a cloud and just stand back and look at it rather than like living in the cloud. If that makes any sense. I know that sounds kind of like what a therapist might say, but that's kind of how I try to approach this. Well, to avoid it is what you're saying. I would say, I just, you don't have to be on all the time. You do not need to monitor the situation. You know, things are going to be happening regardless of whether or not you're paying attention. And if paying attention is decreasing your

quality of life, then take a step back and take a deep breath and then come back to it and learn what you need to know in order to function as a part of a democracy when you have the bandwidth. Well, so this is something interesting because I have largely checked out on social media and it has been really good for my mental health, but I fall behind in the places where you're competing on content. You must feel some of this because even though your podcast is every Thursday, you're not doing necessarily every day. My guess is you're always thinking about how to make some of these things better. Oh, yeah. I mean, I've got two little kids. One is four and one is two.

so they kind of take up a lot of my time right now. I don't really have time to waste and just doomscroll because I have to like chase these little humans around all the time. But I tell my older daughter that being a writer is kind of like committing to a life of always having homework. Just homework every single, the feeling of having a paper do the next day. That is the job of a writer. And being a podcaster is adjacent to that, especially when it comes to the news.

Because, you know, my husband will say things to me like, you, you. are very stressed out, you need to take a break, or like you haven't been getting enough sleep or you're not taking care of yourself, you need to take a break. And it's like, but it's still going to be there. The news is still going to be there. I still am going to have to know about, you know, the latest thing at the Strait of Horm moves so that I can talk about it if it comes up on my show. And it's not going to go away. I just take a day where I'm not working and then there's more work the next day. So that is like a little bit tough to deal with. There are certain things, though, that I just kind of have to draw a line where I'm like, I can't really get too deep into the story. Why do you keep writing on Substack? You tackle a lot of family stuff. What is it that keeps you doing some of that? Because I think I wouldn't do it if I didn't think it was helping people. I don't mean to self-aggrandize.

Like I don't think of myself as like a self-help person. But when I say helping, I mean making their day better, providing useful information, providing analysis, providing a distillation of what's going on. And so, you know, some of the stuff I wrote about, I became a mom when I was, you know, an older mom. And the process of carrying a child, giving birth, and raising a little kid, I think for a generation before us, there wasn't that much honest communication about it. Like the whole mommy blogger era kind of initiated in this era where people were being a little bit more honest about how hard it is and, like, willing to express the fact that, you know, being a mom can be an important job, but it also can be very frustrating. and it also can be very alienating. And there's different ways that you can feel left behind and like passed over by society. And there's a lot of things that just kind of suck about it.

I love it. Love my kids. But there are things that suck about being a parent. And so I thought when I started my substack that maybe helping people through that discovery process by sharing my experiences would be a way for them to feel like less alone, feel a little bit more like they have a friend who's like, look, here's the, here's the scoop, here's a secret. But I also like, don't know what else to do. I don't know what I would do if I wasn't writing. Before I was working as a writer, I worked at Merrill Lynch. I worked at like the financial company and it was during the financial crisis. How unhappy were you doing that job? I was miserable. But this was like before Obamacare. So we didn't just, we had to have a job if we wanted to have insurance, you know,

if you were in your 20s. And so I, you know, I took this job because I needed a job. And I was so miserable and so unhappy that I honestly feel like I would, there's nothing else I could do but write and talk, communicate. You know what I'm saying. I couldn't be an accountant. I couldn't be a financial advisor. I couldn't. How long did you last? I was there from 2007 until I asked for them to lay me off in 2011. So like it wasn't, it wasn't nothing. But, you know, it was, I ended up getting them to pay me severance and I used that money to move to New York and follow my dreams. So it all. Well, how did all that come to be, though? At the website, Jezebel, there used to be a really lively commenting community. And so people, you know, in the comments

after every article. Used to be right before the internet became poisoned by all sorts of acids. It's so bad now. I feel like when I talk about. to younger people at my job, like that I'm an old lady in a rocking chair that's like, I know when the internet used to be fun, when like Twitter used to be hilarious and everybody had a good time. Those communities were so great. The kinds that you're talking about were clever people got to, people who hid in the anonymity because funny in front of people is hard and takes, you know, some risks.

People competing to be clever in a community where they like each other. It seems like a foreign thing on the internet. Yeah, it could be, I mean, it could be a little bit of a hornets nest sometimes. Like, people would get, people get chippy in there. But I was somebody who commented a lot and my job that I hated, you know, I had to, like, do a lot of sitting around and waiting for, like, transactions to get cleared and, like, for phone calls to come in so that I could, like, service clients accounts and stuff. And so I just would, like, comment between the job that I hated. And the editor-in-chief reached out to me at one point was, like, are you a writer? Do you want to write weekends for us? And I was like, I'm not a writer. And I don't want to

write under my real name because I didn't want to lose my job. I didn't want to, I don't know. I also was like, I was raised Catholic and I have a lot of guilt around saying things that are maybe edgier that I thought would like upset my parents. And some of the opinions that I have are pretty like brash and confrontational opinions. And I didn't want like my dad to have somebody in our small hometown come up to him and be like, you know, that daughter of yours, she's got a mouth on her. You know, I didn't, I don't want it to like embarrass people. So I started writing, uh, pseudo-anonymously under my commenter name. And I did that for a year. I worked Sundays. I would get paid $100 to work a Sunday shift by myself. And I had to post like 14 things during the,

it was, it was very, very poor. I might as well have not gotten paid for how much I got, how hard I worked. But I really loved it. I would wake up every Sunday at like, 6, 630 and just start working. And after about a year of that, I was like, okay, I want to do this full time. You'd never considered the idea of that before that, of being a professional writer? No, I think I kind of didn't think I had it in me. I didn't think I was good enough. I didn't think I was like funny enough or interesting enough. And I just didn't have the confidence that I could carry myself through a life as a writer. Like I didn't think I could, I was worried about like, how would I, how would I pay my rent? Like it just all reasonable concerns. Yeah. And also like I didn't

have, I didn't really have, I like, I'm close with my family, but my parents weren't in a position to like help me out. And a lot of people that I knew from like my undergrad and just being out in the world and getting to know people who worked in the arts, a lot of them had parents who kind of helped support them while they were establishing themselves. And so it was, really like sink or swim. It's like if I'm going to do this, I have to earn a living doing this. And there's no. But you hadn't considered it before then? I hadn't allowed myself to, it was like too, it felt like too big of a dream. And I know that sounds really silly now, but I really felt like, oh, there's no way I could don't, I don't even want to, I don't even want. It's like imagining

living in a Frank Lloyd Wright house. It's like I'm not, I'm not going to be able to buy a Frank Lloyd Wright house that's in the Hollywood Hills or whatever. But it's crazy. to think of someone going from the comment section to it's always sunny in Philadelphia. Yeah, yeah, that was, that was its own crazy story, too. But I think it, it's, it's always sunny thing happened through Twitter. The creator of the show DM'd me and was like, you're really funny. I see you're a journalist, but have you ever written for TV? And I was like, nope. And I came up with an idea for a show and I pitched it to him. And he was like, I think you should pitch this to FX. And he sat in with me as I pitched it to FX. And then,

And that's kind of how we formed a sort of like mentor relationship. And the show ended up dying in development. I mean, they bought it, but then it didn't go anywhere like most shows. And but he and I worked well together. And he was like, you should just come out and write for Sunny. And I was like, great. But the thing about being in the comments section, being on Twitter, it was sort of like me putting myself out there. Like people could read my words.

And there was like a big like log of things that I'd said and jokes that I'd made. on Twitter, you could just scroll through, see all my articles that were at The Daily Beast. So I think it was like I just was good at putting myself out there. And I lucked out that my sense of humor and my style of writing was in demand at the time that it was in demand. So it was like luck opportunity, putting myself out there. And then once I got opportunities to be like, okay, yep, I'll do it. I'm going to move across the country from New York to L.A. and unhappiness. Unhappiness had to be in the mix because I can't imagine a creative spending four years in that job.

Yeah, I would do things outside of work that helped me maintain my sanity. I used to volunteer at an animal shelter in Chicago called Paus. It's really great. They do a ton of really great work. And I volunteered with dogs like twice a week. So I would just get done with this job. I hated, get on the train, put on an apron and like walk dogs around and clean up dog poop and like play with puppies. and it was the best thing.

It was the thing I looked forward to all week. So it was like, even though I wasn't happy in my work life, I didn't let that be my whole life, if that makes sense. It makes sense, but it's hard for it not to become someone's whole life when you're spending at least 40 hours, 40 of your waking hours. If half of your life is trudging to some sort of misery that's soulless, it's going to be hard to come by happiness, period, I would think. Totally.

I mean, it's like, I think back on. and I hesitated for so long to actually like try to be a writer. And I really think it's because I didn't believe that I deserved to have the life that I wanted. I thought that I was just going to have whatever was like handed to me. And then when I finally started getting some, you know, getting my byline in and getting some positive attention, I was like, oh, maybe this is the right thing. Well, what's happening there? Why would you think you're not deserving of happiness? I don't know.

I don't know. I think that that's a thing that a lot of young women struggle with. like, am I really as good as I was hoping to be, you know? And I, and I was kind of, you know, the first years that I graduated from college, I lived in Chicago and I love Chicago. I would 100% move back there if I ever got the chance. But I just kind of was like lost. Like a lot of people in the early 20s when you get out of college, you don't really know who you are. You've been told for the last four years that you're supposed to figure it all out. Sprinkling a little Catholic guilt there too. That's the good stuff. Oh, yeah. And I went to

Catholic Disneyland for school, aka Notre Dame. And it was like everybody, there's so many kids there that were so on top of their lives. And it just was like so many people I graduated with were like they had a job lined up by March of senior year. They had this lined up. They had figured this out. They knew how to. It's like they knew how to do everything. And I kind of didn't want to go into finance or go work for Deloitte or do all the things that so many of my classmates were doing.

So I kind of felt like lost and that I didn't have very many role models that I knew. personally in my my own life. And you're coming from a small place in Wisconsin. What is your upbringing like? How would you explain it to a stranger? Okay, so my hometown is called Frederick, Wisconsin. It is in between two towns called Luck and Siren, and all three of them have about a thousand people in them.

I grew up, I was born there in the hospital there. My dad grew up in Frederick. My brother and my sister grew up in Frederick. I went to the school in Frederick. And, yeah, I'm one of three. oldest. My mom was a teacher. My dad was a social worker. Lived in the country when my parents got sick of us. They'd be like, go play outside. Please just like leave us alone. So spent a lot of time like running around in the woods. My dad was a pretty big hunter. So I spent a lot of time doing

like outside things or like not shooting guns. My dad really wanted me to take hunter's safety, but I didn't want to kill things, which I respect hunting. I'm totally like I will eat the heck out of some venison, but I just don't, that's just not my nature. I can't do it. So I was around a lot of outdoorsy stuff, hunting, fishing. My mom made me join 4-H. I was kind of a joiner in high school and I got good grades. And then as soon as I could, I got the hell out of there. Delivered by Little Caesars, the official pizza sponsor of the NFL. Right now, score two baves just for you with Detroit style slices and sticks. It's the biggest duo since Monday nights and football.

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Like there's a woman who used to be the co-head writer of SNL. she and I have become friends and we connected over the fact that we both were in the comment section, anonymously commenting right next to each other at the same time. And there's a couple people who have come up and gotten like their first clips from writing from Jezebel and have gone on to have pretty decent careers. The managing editor thing happened because I got hired on as a staff writer and I did that for long enough and an editor position opened up and I was like, I want to do that. With what kind of journalism training? None.

None. I read a lot of the news. That's the thing. I read a lot of news. My mother... I mean, you can read the news, but managing editor is your judgment is the discerning on what it is that's being made. Oh, yeah. I think that back then, it was very much in... Digital media was kind of the Wild West. Like, people were getting kind of thrown into positions where suddenly they were making like news judgments who, and they didn't really... They didn't really have the experience to do it. I worked under a couple of women at Jezebel who are, like, very talented journalists, like, Arin Carmon, who now was at New York Magazine. And Jessica Gross was there when I was first, like, coming up. And so I spent a lot of time just, like, watching what more experienced writers did and seeing, like, Anna North is a writer who was also there when I was there.

And Anna kind of showed me like, okay, so this is what I'm doing on this story. Like, she would kind of just, like, run me through just the proper procedure. I observed how the editors moved and what kind of their expectations and standards were. We also had an attorney who was like a First Amendment attorney who was around a lot. And she would do these like presentations on, you know, what not to post and what to post. And, you know, it ultimately, Gawker Media, which was the parent company of Jezebel, got sued out of existence. So there were some, there was some difficulties with actually meeting those standards. it was just I guess I learned on the ground I watched people who I thought were doing a good job I read a ton I read a ton and I read a ton of like media criticism so I kind of picked up on what what if somebody did something wrong and there was like a CJR article about what was wrong with it then I would read that and be like oh okay well then I don't want to do that so it was very much like I know I hate the whole do your own research thing but it was kind of a watch people who are good at it and do what they're doing oh but if you come from the

misery of Merrill Lynch and then the feeling of illumination somewhere, I'm kind of meant to do this or this is what I want to do. Then you become greedy about learning, right? Yeah, totally. And it was, I worked so hard for so little money that I, um, I look back on it and it's only something I could have done when I was willing. I was really willing to like put it all on the line. So not thinking about money much at all. You couldn't, right? I just needed to survive. I just needed enough to survive. And then beyond that, I didn't care because I wasn't dying inside. You know, I felt like I was more fulfilled and things were a little bit more exciting. But it ended up, you know, at Jezebel, it was really a huge volume of writing, a huge volume of like helping people

source things and teaching people how to like what would be a good piece for us to tackle, what would be a funny angle. And yeah, I worked with a lot of women I admired and we all, I learned a lot for most of them. Was anyone telling you or did you? Did you have any sort of antenna up for how hard writing funny is and that it's the hardest kind of writing? Or did you know this? No. No. And I just, writing articles, writing columns that are funny is not hard.

I don't think if you have a sort of brain that automatically tries to self-soothe by finding something absurd about every situation. And that's just kind of the way my brain works. If something bad happens, I'll have like this bifurcated reaction where. on one hand I'm angry and on the other hand I kind of step back and I'm thinking what's funny about this what's funny about how angry I am is it how angry I am that's funny is it what the other person did that's funny what's funny and I try to tease that out so that I'm not this is why I'm asking you for advice but you told me just say no no no no but I mean at first you have to kind of separate yourself from the news right when you can't handle it anymore but eventually you get to a point where you realize

is that like the only way to get through this in a way that's tolerable is for me to try to like pluck myself out of my anger and observe it like from the outside and figure out what's funny about the situation. The thing that is really hard and I think very few people have actually mastered is writing scripts that are funny because you have to have a story and it has to fit jokes inside of the story and the script has to be within a specific format. Like the entertainment industry is sort of becoming a little bit more loosey-goosey. There's more formats that are acceptable for people to write in, but it's still really hard to, like, write a three-act screenplay that is funny, that makes sense, that has good jokes, that has, like, straightforward character

development that is something that's easy for audiences to follow that would be exciting for an actor to play. It's really hard. It's really hard. And the difference between writing columns, writing essays, writing the scripts that I read myself and things that are for other people is that when you're writing in the entertainment industry as part of like a big production, there are a lot of layers between what you put on the page and what people see. And rightfully so, it's collaborative. You know, the actors want to have a say in how the lines are read and maybe they want to change some words and maybe the headwriter wants to change something and maybe the producer doesn't like something or there's a different, or, you know, maybe something isn't working out.

There's all these reasons that you could put out this script that in your brain is this precious, precious little baby that you labored so hard to bring into the world. And then a bunch of it gets changed. I know that sounds very spoiled because most people... I don't think it sounds spoiled. You write something. It's intimate and it's personal and it's yours. And you don't have any experience with a whole layer of editing. You don't have any journalism experience.

And people just are hacking it with their own, you know, their own sensibilities, which aren't your sensibilities. It's personal. Yeah. I mean, have you ever had a column come back to you that was so edited that it hurt your feelings? Well, I'm ashamed to say, legitimately ashamed to say that the last 25 years of my writing haven't had very much editing because I am, I mean, it's sports writing. It's not quite, it's not quite collaborative, but it's something that if it meets my standard, it's painstaking. It's painful. But if it meets my standard, it's largely going to be good enough to not have a huge amount of. of holes in it in the small realm where I am. But it's not, these aren't community projects.

I'm talking about column writing for a newspaper. I was a sports columnist for many years. Yeah. But it is like, it feels a little bit, I don't know, you work and you put your thoughts into something and then it comes back and it's changed and that's just the nature of the beast. And that's kind of why I, you know, I wrote for TV for a few years. I worked for a few different projects and I had a great time and I learned a lot and I met

some amazing people. But I think now imagining going back to working in a writer's room is kind of, I don't know. I'm really accustomed to writing a specific kind of way and I know what it's like to have to work collaboratively. And I just don't want to. And I just don't want to do that anymore. I mean, it was super fun to be in a writer's room. Oh, but there's great growth, freedom and confidence in having graduated to that. Yeah.

Yeah. It was like a really cool experience and, you know, being in a writer's room and like sitting across. from Charlie Day, who is just one of the naturally funniest people I think I've ever met or come across in my entire life. Everybody just, and I also think that sometimes writers' rooms get a reputation of being a little bit toxic, because there definitely are toxic places that people have worked, and they kind of are showbiz legends, people kind of whisper and gossip and warn each other about those things. But I didn't have a bad time. And I just don't think it was the right fit for the type of writing that I have trained myself to do, which is to work very independently to

write specifically in my own voice and lean into it. Because when you're writing for TV, you're writing in someone else's voice. You're writing in several other people's voices. And yeah, so I think the type of writing I'm doing now is a lot more like I am more in control of what people see versus me just handing it off and things get changed. I can't imagine how intimidating it would have been to write, to walk into it. that writer's room, as green as you were? I, yes, I was so scared. I got that job. I was a senior editor at The Daily Beast. So, you know, I put in my time at Jezebel. I approved myself. I got another job. I got a third job at the Daily Beast. So I'm like a senior editor there.

We'd just gotten out of our pitch meeting that morning. It was like January. I had just ordered a seasonal depression lamp from Amazon. And Rob called me and was like, do you want to come out and take up I've got one more writing spot at sunny do you want to come out and I was like okay and I got home from work that day and my seasonal depression lamp was in his Amazon package by my door um but yeah it was it I felt so intimidated but luckily and I'm not just like blowing smoke up these people's asses but everybody there was just really nice so it was I was so worried that people wouldn't think I was funny or people would not think I was worth listening to. And it was a surprise, but it was a pleasant surprise.

What was the first day like? So the first day was, it was 2018, and so the Me Too movement was kind of really in full swing. Like every single day that felt like there was a story of somebody famous who had been poorly behaved and was getting in trouble for it. And covering like gender and politics and like sex in society was kind of my beautiful. beat at the Daily Beast. And so I think part of the reason they brought me in was because I brought in a sort of like dimension of experience when it came to actually taking in a lot of these stories and analyzing these stories and speaking with people involved in the stories. So it was the middle of me too. And they gave us a speech before that was like, so guys, we get a little rough in here

sometimes. I mean, because it's a, you're pitching jokes. And it's a show about awful people doing awful things to each other. And it's written in a way. that kind of takes glee in doing harm to these awful people. But they were like, yeah, you know, if anything goes too far or you feel uncomfortable, you can always come and talk to one of us. We don't want to put constraints on what people are talking about and what people can say, but we also want everyone to be comfortable here. So doors open. And it was from there, we just kind of went around and talked about things that we thought were funny or interesting and then wrote down ideas on like, I don't know if you've ever been in a room like that. But basically they just, they had like a bunch

of note cards. And every time an idea struck someone as something that could be fodder for a show, they would write down the idea and put it on like a big whiteboard. So there was just a bunch of random things where it was like, one of them I think was like Frank is doing a scam. Frank is scamming immigration and customs enforcement or something. And sometimes it would be as simple as like waterfall. You know, something that they, a set that they thought would be interesting, all that stuff. And then from there they kind of winnowed it down to like topics they wanted us to write episodes about. And then they broke us into smaller rooms. And we just started breaking episodes down and it was off and running.

It's like a machine. Our show is friends with Mike Scher and Bill Lawrence. They talk about writers' rooms. Mike Scher tries to have a friendlier one. Bill Lawrence doesn't mind a competitive one every once in a while. This one was what? This one, because when it's competitive, it can also be very good, but it can be very hard. all the writers, if it's less of a community and more of people trying to be, get past each other.

Mm-hmm. Well, I kind of parachuted in. I didn't really have that much background or history with any of the people in there. So if there was some competitiveness happening that kind of predated me being there, I was not aware of it. There definitely is some people want to land jokes, but I think it felt like a very generous place where everybody just wanted it to be the funniest it possibly could be. And if that was somebody else's joke or somebody else's run or whatever, then that's fine. Everybody was pretty nice about that. What is the most fun that you've had in a job and what's the most fulfilling? And are they the same or are they different? Fun versus fulfilling? That's a good question. I think the most fun I ever had at a job. The most fun I ever had a job was probably when I was like in high school working at a nursing home.

That is not the answer I was expecting. No, I was, because I worked with a bunch of people from my high school and we were all friends. And so it was fun to just be done and put on a hairnet and be working in the kitchen. And I don't know, doing experiments with thickening powder to see how thick. It just, whatever. It was just like kids horsing around and feeling independent and not being at their own house. So that was a lot of fun. Fulfilling, I found my work.

I think at Crooked Media, it feels very fulfilling. But the Daily Beast back in 2016, 2017, 2018, was, doing really important work. And I kind of look back and I'm just really humbled by how many incredible people were working there. We had just an amazing group of people. Like Ben Collins was there. When I was there, he's the CEO of the Onion now. Taylor Lorenz was there. We just had this, Spencer Ackerman was there. Just incredible reporters all working in the same place. And it was like we were building the plane as we were flying it. We're still, a lot of us are still in touch too. Jackie Cousinich was there. She's, I think, in charge of the political bureau.

at Boston Globe now. It just was an amazing group of people and it felt like every day somebody was coming to the pitch meeting with like something cool that they were working on and it was like so cool to be a part of that. Speaking of collaboration, we have your co-hosts, Alyssa Mastro Monaco with us. Alyssa? A Obama White House official and I want to hear some of this story. Thank you for joining us, Alyssa, can you tell us how it is that you two came to be together and develop the chemistry that you have? Oh, I mean, we just got so lucky, didn't we? I mean, like, I think that for Aaron and I,

there's like a, I'm a little bit big sisterish, you know, I'm like just old enough to have possibly babysat her when we were growing up. And so, you know, I think that we are also so different, but like not competitive and just always have wanted the best for each other. And so I think that like it's been that way since day one. I always tell Aaron my favorite memory, first memory of the two of us was when Donald Trump had, Aaron was still living in New York and Donald Trump had just inferred on social media that Kirsten Jillibrand was giving him blowjobs that she would come into his office and on her knees. to Donald Trump. And we were lucky enough to get Senator Gillibrand on the mic, you know, like two hours later.

And ever since then, we were like, I don't know, we just always wanted to make the show great. And it was always together, never at anybody else's expense. Yeah. I always felt like you were somebody that I just could trust immediately. Yeah. And it felt like we had, we just had an immediate trust. Like I knew that Alyssa was never going to screw me over or say something crappy behind. behind my back. But you know what I mean? That's not that common. No, it's not always the case

for people. Like I have, I have worked with people in the past who I really like, but I do not trust. And I think you can probably say the same thing, which is like liking someone and trusting someone are different things. And I think Alyssa and I were both like, oh, I got you. We got this. Yeah. Always. I wonder though, which of those two is more important because you would think trust might be, but TV and pairing executives get this one wrong all the time when putting people together, they like each other. If they just like each other's company, that is a place where people can find chemistry, even if they're very different. Like, I don't know which one, which one would you say is more important there, Alyssa? I mean, I think that, well, I guess,

you know, for me, our friend and colleague, Dan Pfeiffer, would always say of me, which is what What is so interesting that I always dislike someone before I like someone, right? And that they have to prove to me sort of like why they get to belong in my life. And like I think Aaron just like from the jump, we both worked hard. You're like when you're getting ready for a show, we didn't know what a pot. I didn't know what a podcast was in the beginning. Like, and I think the two of us also just have such work ethic. We never wanted to let the other person down.

Right. So you always bring like 110%. And then I think that for eight years we got to depend on each other. to bring 110% and that was both like personally, professionally, socially. So I think we're just awesome, very lucky. I think that that is a kind of alchemy that people who make a lot more money than I do get paid to figure out. And I don't think that they get it right all the time. I think that people who like each other but don't trust each other can make really interesting TV.

Now, if it would be an interesting or fun place to work, maybe not so much. But there are shows that in the, you know, that you hear about the experience of working there is terrible. But the actual product of the show is really good. So I think we lucked out in that we were comfortable working with each other and we liked each other. Both of those things landed. I think there's no way for you to trust someone and not like them, though. I don't know if that's a, I don't know if that's a thing. Yeah, you got to like them a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. How was it, were you able or are you able from the very beginning to make fun of the fact that it's total bullshit that she majored in French and minored in Japanese? Like, were you able to start there? No, I've never made fun of her college majors before, but I have made fun of what a pothet she is. Look, honestly, I think being a pothead is what makes me likable. I think if I had never discovered pot, I would have far fewer friends.

It's like, it's an, it takes the edge off of me, right? And so. Yeah. We can poke fun at each other because we know each other so well now that I can almost predict. I could predict something that Alyssa would say. Something that Alyssa is very uncomfortable with is like sex. And I, I'm a prude. I love a joke that is so sexual and gross that it makes people uncomfortable.

And sometimes when I'm scripting, we have a series called, can I say the F word? We have a series called This Fucking Guy. And sometimes I give Alyssa deliberately the. grossest jokes. Like, if there's something about like felching, I'll have Alyssa read it. If there's something about dry humping, I'll have Alyssa read it. And she'll... And I know it brings her such joy that I give it 110%. It's so funny to me. It's like, it is, it's like making an older sister who's a little bit like reserved read bad words. And it's so, it just, it endlessly amuses me. I mean, the starting point foundationally, though, being Trump blowjobs, like that's where you guys

started. Yeah, we started. Well, our first show was, we made an entire show and then we found out right after we got done recording that Justice Anthony Kennedy was retiring from the Supreme Court. And that was what predated Brett Kavanaugh's appointment. And so like it just felt like every single week there was another like punch in the face toward women specifically. It felt very, very much like we needed to help each other through because that first Trump term was a real shock. It was shocking to people who were covering it in the media. I remember I was working with this other journalist, Olivia Nutsi. She was supposed to write the reaction piece if Trump won on the night of November, what, 3rd, 2016?

Yeah. She was supposed to write the if Trump wins piece. and I was supposed to write the if Hillary wins piece so that they could publish one of the, and what Olivia had written down by like 4 p.m. that afternoon was against all the odds. And that's it. But like that was a shock to even people who were covering it. It was just, so I think that we were just kind of like white knuckling Thelman-Louising like through this really scary, strange time. And it wasn't like, I don't want to say scary, like a snowflakey. I mean, it was just kind of like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, the rules are all different now.

Everything is changing. Things are happening that are very strange. Why are they happening? What's happening? What's going on? How does this affect me? And I think it was just so alien and so odd that people that were in political media during that first Trump term are like a little trauma bonded.

And again, not because they couldn't handle it. But it's just that any time there's that much change that happens all at once and it's unexpected, everyone kind of has to reel. Human nature is to just not be great at accepting that much change all at once. You were more shocked the first time than the second time? Oh, the second time they, the second time I was, I have a coworker who is, well, one of my coworkers is a black woman. On the morning of the 2024 election, I was like, how are you feeling about today? And she was like, I don't know.

Then I was like, oh, no. I feel like everyone I knew who was not white, who was a friend in the run up to 2016, were like, he's going to win. And so when that happened, I thought, uh-oh, maybe this isn't going to go very well. And I just stayed in the office all the night that night. And I had to do the fast-breaking Trump won news. It was really, really miserable. Alyssa, which one was more shocking?

The first one, because I couldn't believe having worked in the government for almost my whole life at that point, whether it was in the House or the Senate or in the White House, it seemed incomprehensive. I mean, Hillary Clinton was the most accomplished person to ever run for president. And it was only, what, a month, two months, Aaron, before Election Day that the, the pussy tape came out. That was like, it was like three weeks before, four weeks before election day, because it was months before. And it's, it's, you can't, you can't believe it. And I, I knew how bad it was, you know, when Hillary gave her concession speech and President Obama came out and was like, we're all rooting for him. Because you actually had to at that point.

You're like, if you're rooting for America, you have to hope that he doesn't suck as much as he does. And then the first real thing he did was the Muslim ban. And I think for me, the dichotomy was so it broke my brain because here, that's what he was doing. But meanwhile, one of my deputies from Obama land many years was like in a car driving to Newark Airport because she spoke the kind of farcey that people needed to be able to translate, you know, for the people who were being kicked off of planes. And so I think that like out of the gate, he made it so scary that like this time, yeah, could we believe, I don't think it was that shocking that he won. I think there was so much tumult in the months leading up to election day that it seemed. totally possible. You know, I think just in looking back, we probably would have been better off if he had

just served two consecutive terms. It feels like they got a real fucking refuel in and came back. Bionic. Yeah. Yeah. It's not great. So I say the first was worse. The first was pretty shocking.

Also, we were familiar with the fact that there are a lot of people who are just pissed off at the establishment and that maybe think that a vote for. for Donald Trump was a way to say like, fuck you to the establishment. And it kind of was, but it was more like also saying fuck you to yourself. Because the things that he said he was going to do for the people that he said he was going to do them for, he didn't follow up. And I think a lot of people, at this point, it feels like the cult of it has really calcified. It feels like it's really calcified. And he's lost everybody he's going to lose. And those who remain, that's just kind of how they're always going to feel. And I don't want to do one of those hillbilly safari things where I'm like, oh, I understand the Trump voter, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like the area where I grew up voted for Obama twice and then voted for Trump twice. So it has gone, it has swung very, very red. And when I go home, there's Trump signs just freelancing, like homemade Trump signs everywhere. And I just think that people feel left behind by the establishment. And they didn't really care about fixing anything.

They just cared about making people mad. And the sort of shock that Alyssa and I are describing at the first Trump administration, I think, was exactly the sort of thing they would want to happen. They don't really care about, I feel like there are some people who don't really care about fixing anything as long as the right people are getting hurt. Alyssa, when- Yeah, that's a great way to put it. If you didn't know what podcasts were really about when you started this, what did you expect it to be? I mean, mostly we were just going to shoot the shit. Like, I didn't think anyone would really ever care. You know what I mean? Like, it was hard, though I will say when I was at Vice Media, I was like, we should start a podcast.

And they were like, stop. But I just, I think that I thought we would have a small but mighty audience who would be interested in what we had to say and that maybe we brought, you know, some comfort to people during a tumultuous time. I did not think that we would have sort of an epic eight year run and that I'd have like equipment. I mean, Dan, when we started, I podcasted in my closet with an iPhone. because the acoustics were good. You know, and then after that, I was like, God, now I'd have to put a little makeup on so I don't look like death because there's video now.

We're pivoting to video again. But no, that's how we started. It was, you know, base, bare bones. Yeah. I feel like every longstanding podcast has a story of recording from a closet, though. I think that's definitely, you're in a hotel. Look at her. She's graduated to her bedroom now, like all the way from the closet into the bedroom.

Much better lighting, though. So you were the C.O. Advice Media, correct? I was, yes. And so you were recommending podcasts then even without an understanding in podcasts. And you couldn't possibly have imagined this as being some form of your future, correct? Eight years of this? No, I mean, people were talking about it. It seemed like a mode of communication.

And I am not, as Aaron was like, I am very, I am very Doss. I am a very analog person. And so I was just stoked that I knew what the word podcast was. And I was like, we should try it. And, you know, then a couple of years, like one year later, we had our own. Why do you think your show connects the way that it does? I think that Aaron and I have never faked it. I think that we say what we really think while being sympathy, like, you know, of course,

trying to be mindful of the moments that we're in, right? You know, sometimes we're really, really angry, like after the election. but you do have to think to yourself sometimes, like, are we helping people by being this angry? You know, sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes people want to see us that angry. Sometimes people look at us and they want us to give them hope or they want us to help them.

Or sometimes they just want to be entertained. And I think that Aaron and I have always had really good spidey senses. Like even if the news has been really heavy for a couple of weeks, we'd be like, fuck, we just need to do a lighter episode. Like people need to laugh a little bit. People need to remember that it's okay to have fun. And I think that the two of us together always, I think our spidey senses were always quite on. And people appreciated us for caring about them enough to think that hard about what they would need and want every week.

Yeah. I think there's something that I think people don't like about journalists and journalism. And I can say that having worked, you know, inside of it. I think that this idea of journalistic objectivity registers, for better or for worse, it registers in the present day as a little fake to people. Because it's like you listen to somebody delivering the news. It's like, I know you have an opinion. And why don't I know your opinion? And what are you trying to do? What are you trying to angle? And I'm not saying that that's good because I think that journalism should have like an objectivity and straight news stories to just tell me what happened, you know?

but there's something I think audiences appreciate chat podcasts or podcasts where it's news and opinion intermingled because it's it registers as more authentic. We are communicating what happened and then we are authentically sharing what we have to say about it. We're not trying to hide anything. I also think that Alyssa and I both have, I think we're both very protective of our audience. Like I don't think we're not trying Very much We're not trying to like make anybody feel stupid Who doesn't deserve it

We're not trying to We're not trying to talk down to anybody We're not trying to prove like how smart we are We're just trying to like lead with curiosity Take people along as we figure it out And be honest about the fact that we're figuring things out And sometimes be okay saying like We don't know how we feel about this

Yeah You know because a lot of people don't And I think when we admit we don't know I don't know is not allowed That's not allowed. I don't know is unacceptable. I know. It's perfect.

I don't know it can be perfect. You look at what the community is around this thing. The intimacy of it. It's a very intimate medium. You're sort of friends inside of people's heads. Do you have a lot of things that feel that kind of fulfilling to you in terms of community? What has gathered around your podcast? Oh, no. I think that what's gathered around the podcast is exceptional and we've been very, very lucky for it. There's nothing else in my life that sort of would compare to it ever.

Yeah. Probably ever. It's a very, I think the only thing that compares is like early days, Jezebel comment sections when they would have like meetups and stuff. But when we went to, we did CrookedCon last year. CrookedCon is this big event that Crooked Media is having in Washington, D.C. The weekend after the election this year, tickets still available. I am knocking on what. It's going to be really fun or it's going to be really terrible. But either way it'll be cathartic. It won't be terrible. There's no way it's going to be terrible. I think you guys might be surprised by the amount of impact that you have and the journeys that people would take to be with you. I've had those fears before.

Yeah. And we sold out a New York theater in 29 seconds. 29 seconds? Yeah. Wow. But you guys will do the same thing. Way to raise the ball. Yeah.

No, you guys will do the same. You guys will do the same thing. though. People will make migrations. I don't, you may not totally know you have met some of these people, many of these people, you communicate with some of them online, but you may not totally know just how much of a link you've made to these people and how much you mean to them because you're dragging them through lonely jobs at Merrill Lynch or you're just helping them through dark times or if there's a loneliness epidemic where people feel disconnected in general, there's something that you're providing for them weekly, that it's a really unusual form of connection

through entertainment. Yeah. I mean, that's really flattering and really nice of you to say. At CrookedCon last year, Alyssa and I were encountering a lot of people who were there, and they were all amazing. A-plus, amazing. Not one unpleasant person in the bunch. People like showing up for panels that we were doing and stuff. And it was really fun and really cool. And something I wanted to bring up, though, is I was just thinking about our listenership is something like 75% women,

but we do have male listeners and we also have, our male listeners are really cool. They're awesome. Like the grandpa? Remember the grandpa who wrote us? Yeah, I remember the grandpa who wrote us who learned to talk to his granddaughters by listening to our podcast.

Yeah. So, yeah. It doesn't get better than that. Yeah. It's really, it just, it feels meaningful because it's making people's days better. And that's all it really needs to be in order to be meaningful. And we're not making people's days better by lying to them or trying to scam them or make them believe something that we don't think is possible. We are trying to make their days better by bringing some entertainment and levity to something that's a little dark. Thank you, Alyssa.

We appreciate your time here. We appreciate the relationship that the two of you have. we appreciate that you continue to be an older sister to her and that you have trust in the media. Thank you so much, you guys. Bye. Bye. See you soon. So why is it that if that experience was so good at CrookedCon last year? Oh, I'm worried about the election. I'm not worried about the people. I'm worried. I am just, if the election goes poorly or it doesn't go as well as people are hoping, and there's a lot of moving parts. So I don't want to get overmeremon.

my skis and get too excited. I think there's a lot of people who are, what's that Alan Greenspan phrase, irrationally exuberant about what hasn't happened yet. I don't want to have to try to put on a nice face. Oh yeah, we don't need to wear these anymore. I don't want to have to try to put on a nice happy face when I am feeling like, oh shit. Like, oh shit. What are we going to do now? Because this is, I mean, I know that the last several elections have felt like this, but this election is like you're pulling the emergency break and will the car stop before it skids over the edge of the cliff and it might not but if we don't even pull the break it's definitely going to there's something funny and symbolic given the way that people feel about the media and the fact that Trump was

able to win at least in part taking a hatchet with the very cruel tool of fake media that you guys go with the name of both crooked and con the two of them together as how it is I've been alarmed by the way and disappointed as someone who dedicated his life professionally to journalism to learn how much people distrust journalists, at least in part because of some of the stuff that you were talking about where objectivity is an illusion and now we're at a point that people don't even want objectivity. They want somebody who has a viewpoint and that they can trust to be authentic. Yeah, it's really distressing. And I've noticed that there have been a few outlets that have tried to combat that in ways that feel proactive.

Like at the beginning or at the end of a ProPublica story that I read the other day, they had a list of how they were like, this is how we did the story. We interviewed this many people. We got records relating to this. We were able to get the records because of this. And so then it was, oh, there's a process here. And I think a lot of people, unless you've seen spotlight a bunch of times, you don't really know how tedious the actual process of journalism can be.

and I think sometimes people just consume the news as entertainment and not understanding that it's like a process of a lot of work that went into what they're reading. What's the future of it? You know what? I would probably make a lot more money if I knew the answer to that question. To me it feels like we're doing kind of to journalism what streaming did to entertainment,

which, and by that I mean, when streaming started, it was kind of exciting. It was like, oh, you know, I can do, Netflix and this and just kind of put together a little group of things for me to watch that are better at meeting my needs than cable. And now with cable and streaming services bundling up, it just feels like they reinvented a crappier version of cable that depends on my internet connection, not crapping out. So I think that with journalism, what's happening now is a fragmentation, a fracturing of all of these legacy houses. At 60 minutes, we saw a bunch of people depart

that had been there for a really long time, but now they're launching their own media company. And we're seeing that with Washington Post reporters that got let go, that, you know, kind of axed in Bezos's new newsroom, who have gone on to be successful independent journalists. The danger of that is I don't think a lot of people in the general public have the time or the resources to devote to figuring out who of these independent journalists is trustworthy and who's somebody who's just kind of doing a slapdash job. of it. And I know that that sounds rich coming from somebody who ended up working at a blog with no journalism experience and had to learn on the ground. But what I have learned requires a lot of effort to keep up and to follow. I'm worried that people, I'm worried that

as independent journalists kind of like spring up and take the place of these legacy outlets, eventually they'll all come back together and be like a new version of the legacy outfits just under a new banner and under new branding. And what we'll have at the end, hopefully, is not a crappy version of something that already existed as what we're seeing with the bundling of streaming services is to recreate cable. We can find that so much, right? Everyone's playing with AI now and we know it's going to destroy everybody streaming. You mentioned journalism. There's so many examples of that where we are allegedly technologically or otherwise advancing and it doesn't seem like it's actually going to be in advance. Right. It's like who is this helping? who wanted this, who is this benefiting.

And it feels like the AI backlash is pretty strong, though, especially in creative fields. It's really frowned on for people to rely on AI to write. Now, I can say I've used it to research. Sometimes it's good as a signpost to point me in a direction, but I always have to click through, check the source, make sure that it's right. And so it's just like having an assistant who's not very good at their job. But at least it's an assistant. It's somebody who can sometimes do some things for me.

But I would never, ever trust it to do anything that I needed to be good. I would never ever trust it to proofread or get or fact check or anything like that. I would only trust it to like give me some sources, point me in a direction, help me find the original video. That's helpful. When you talk about writing to help people on Substack about motherhood, about pregnancy, is there any one thing that you feel like you've written there that has been the most impactful tethering you to this principle of wanting to write for the help of others? Yeah.

You know, this is going to sound like a huge bummer. I'm an animal person. I love animals. I had a cat named Eleanor, who I got in 2007. On a weekend, I was super depressed at work. I just went and got a cat because that's what you do. And I had her until last December. She was 21 years old.

She was an adult when I already adopted her. She was at least 20 when she died. And when she died, you know, it was the first time I'd ever had to put a pet down. And I, you know, growing up in the country, our animals would just like run away or like get hit by cars or something. But I never had to put a pet down before. And so I just wrote about the experience of losing a companion that had been with me through all. all of these seasons of my life from the time I was like, she'd seen all my, both my kids being born, she'd see me get married. And I went from like being 23 to being like 42. And she was

with me the whole time. And so I wrote about that, the experience of losing her and what it means to have something with you in your life for that long and then saying goodbye, even if it's right. It just, it just brings you to this painful place. I don't know. Are you an animal person? I am and my wife's an animal person and my story of putting my dog down is both amazing, funny, and heartbreaking. But so the last 18 months of this animal's life, he's in a diaper. I can't leave the house without him getting stuck somewhere because his hips are bad and stuff. But he's not in any pain, right? So I can't choose to put him down, but clearly, like I can't even live my life normally.

I have to put all sorts of rubber matting on the house. just, I still, this is, this is so long ago, it's more than a decade ago, I still sometimes wake up hearing the sound of him stuck in a corner because he's walked up and gone somewhere. Oh my gosh. And so the night that he dies, he's spasming at, you know, after midnight, I'm shirtless. I'm running to the car with him spasming and I'm telling him that it's okay to go. I don't even know where I'm going to go to an emergency vet, but I've got nothing I can do. and I drive a convertible and it's a Tuesday night and I've got the dog here and I'm telling him he can go and he goes. Like he stopped spasming and I'm sobbing at a red light.

I'm sobbing. Oh my gosh. And somebody pulls up next to me and can't see the dog because the dog is here and sees me sobbing and shirtless on a Tuesday night and it's like, Dan Lebitard? Oh, my God. red-eyed and shame-filled. But yes, to answer your question, I love animals. And so that is, and when I tell that story, it connects with people who love animals. I think it means a lot to share that experience because it's very powerful to be there when an animal dies and knowing that they felt safe with you.

And that it's really powerful. And so when I wrote that, I got a ton of messages from people that were like, I read it and it really helped me feel better about losing my kids. cat and that was that's like exactly what I'm going for and it's a it's a sad piece it's not that funny um I would say the other the one that is like the not sad version that people like is I just sometimes everybody loves a good listicle if I just have some bon motts that I want to throw out there and they all fit under the same category so I made a listicle about of things that I didn't know before I had my first kid that I learned the hard way and I'm just going to tell people this these are the lessons I learned. Take them or leave them, but here are the lessons. And they were things like,

don't tell people the name you have picked out unless you want them to have an opinion about the name. Don't assume that the baby's going to come early because it's never early. The more you want them to come early, the less likely they're going to come early. And also, if it comes early, that means that you get less sleep earlier. Like, why don't you just want to let it? Your caring is way easier to be pregnant than it is to, like, have a baby and be, like, postpartum. So it was just kind of a like that and every once in a while that I don't know who's posting it or reposting, but every once in a while I'll get a bunch of comments on it, even though I put it out years ago. I'm going to do something that people like here where I'm going to speed you up with some

rapid-fire questions. You look so scared. What happened? You looked frightened. I'm just going to ask you some questions that are meant to jostle your memories some, all right? What is your earliest memory? earliest memory is I think probably being out in the woods cutting wood with my dad and him trying to jump over me because we were playing leapfrog and hitting my head and I got really scared and my dad got really scared. I think that's my earliest memory. Posters, any posters on your wall growing up? Growing up I had a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

Yeah, I had a copy of the Declaration of Independence and a few posters from World War II era that were like aimed at women. So like American government propaganda, I thought it was funny. And then my door of my room, I'm a classic millennial. And I don't know why we all do this. But if you talk to somebody who was born between like 1981 and 1990, they probably. did this, especially if they're a girl. I used to rip out ads and pictures from magazines that I liked and I made a giant collage over my bedroom door. So there's like a picture of radiohead next to an advertisement for like mud jeans or something like that. So yeah, just that was, yeah,

but the main thing was like the declaration and the like we can do it, Rosie the Riveter style posters. I have to get to some of these others, but I also have to follow up on why is the declaration of independence on your wall? Because my family. went on vacation there and I was in a really crappy mood. I was just being a real poop. I was 14 and just a complete asshole. So I picked it out like as a circuit. My mom was like, you have to get a souvenir. So I picked it out and she framed it and put it on my wall. I think she was escalating. She's like, okay, you want this? You can put it on your wall. What is a song that you will sing in the car if it comes on and by accident?

If you're not, you haven't picked it, but you're just surprised by it. Oh, Purple Rain. Purple Rain. I was a singer in college, and I love how at the end you get to go into falsetto. It's a real good vocal warm-up. Is there a song that you'd be embarrassed to tell people that you know all of the lyrics to? Ludacris, What's Your Fantasy? I was a high school athlete, and I remember that song was on the radio,

and I remember it being after basketball practice, me and the other girls would all be rapping, what's your fan? It was so inappropriate. We're like between 14 and 18, too young to be listening to that song. But that was back when hip hop was very, very, very explicit. And we just knew all the words and kind of would like, it was a way for us to like show off to each other and act really tough.

So, yeah. Person that you're awed by. Person that I'm odd by. Well, Alyssa Master Monaco. I'm definitely awed by Alyssa Master Monaco. I think the person that I'm most, you know, can I say this? Is this Caitlin Olson, who the actress, she's on high potential, and she's also like an original cast member of it's always sunny.

She's been on the show forever. She's so much nicer than she has to be, considering how talented she is. I think she's awesome. A thing that you're toughest on yourself about. The thing that I'm toughest on myself about everything. I'm very hard on myself. I think sometimes the reason that I'm able to make really mean jokes is because I've already thought of the meanest possible thing about myself. I think sounding dumb or feeling as though in a conversation I didn't hold my own or I disappointed somebody or I didn't turn in a good performance at work.

Those things tend to really bum me out. Last thing that you cried about. Last thing that I cried. Well, it was my older daughter's first day of tea. the other day, which is like transitional kindergarten for people who aren't California-based. And, yeah, dropping her off at school, she was just very brave, and so I cried about that. Do you want to know how you die? Do I want to know how I die?

Yes, so I can avoid it until I'm ready to go. Weirdest food combination that you put together. I love tomato jam and like a goat cheese, but that's not that weird. I love a cheese plate. I love just making, instead of eating, you know, the girl dinner thing or whatever, I love making a cheese plate and just eating it myself. And that's just an odd thing to have for a meal. You looked really scared at the beginning of that and you really came to embrace it. Like, you really, you really went all in.

Well, I just, I don't want to embarrass myself, you know? I don't want to let your audience down. A thing that you do that most annoys your husband. Oh, be a bitch. Be a huge bitch. Like, I can be really short. If I'm trying to get something done and something gets in my way of getting it done, I can be very short and, like, snappy. And I'm really unpleasant to argue with.

I am very, very mean in arguments. And it's something I'm working on. But it's when I act like a huge bitch, I think he doesn't like it. This was delightful. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Hysteria is the podcast. It's every Thursday. How much longer are you guys going to be doing this?

Well, until I die. So just let me know about that method of death thing, and I will make sure to avoid it until the podcast is done. But yeah, I'm going to do it until at least 2028. The Declaration of Independence was not expecting that answer. Thank you. Thank you.