Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, okay, Hello, can you hear me?
Speaker 1: Hello?
Speaker 3: Yes, Khalila, Hi, Hello, Jonathan, Hello.
Speaker 1: Stevie Hello. Hi.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: That's some real, like citizen cane lighting in that studio. Yeah,
Speaker 2: very expressionistic shadows.
Speaker 3: I'm not big on overhead lights.
Speaker 1: So how are we? It's been a while, it's been
Speaker 1: a year, it's been over a year, So what's new,
Speaker 1: what's happening?
Speaker 3: Well, we were all laid off.
Speaker 1: Ye, yes, your point being.
Speaker 3: You said what I was just answering about what we've
Speaker 3: been up to.
Speaker 1: I guess I get a little differensive about it.
Speaker 3: No, we had like kind of a crazy year of
Speaker 3: trying to find a new home for the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of meetings.
Speaker 3: Some good meetings, some bad meetings. I could not believe
Speaker 3: how long it took, I will say.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 4: And everyone told me.
Speaker 5: I was talking to other people, you know, who have
Speaker 5: taken their shows to new places or how their shows canceled,
Speaker 5: and everyone told me like, it's going to take longer
Speaker 5: than you think.
Speaker 3: And I was like, but I already think kind of
Speaker 3: a long time, so I'm going to be getting ahead
Speaker 3: of this.
Speaker 4: And so it took a long time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so whatever, And get up to with all your
Speaker 3: unstructured time.
Speaker 2: Well, for me, I realized that I had been kind
Speaker 2: of on the carousel of deadlines and production for almost
Speaker 2: twenty years. So, you know, stopping affected me in a
Speaker 2: way that I didn't anticipate.
Speaker 1: But I did kind of.
Speaker 2: Go through a period of feeling very etsy and took
Speaker 2: me a while to get used to, like not doing
Speaker 2: anything in a way like except for you know, taking
Speaker 2: my son to school, picking them up and going on
Speaker 2: runs and trying to teach myself, not very successfully, how
Speaker 2: to play the piano.
Speaker 3: Can you play any basic songs?
Speaker 2: Not even I mean it's very it's very jazzy, you know,
Speaker 2: it's very like avant garde.
Speaker 1: The way that I play the piano.
Speaker 3: I play random notes.
Speaker 1: Kind of.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so that that those are the those are
Speaker 2: the major things. What have what have you guys been
Speaker 2: up to? Stevie? I know that you've probably been up
Speaker 2: to all kinds of You're a very productive person.
Speaker 3: What about me? What kind of person? Am? I?
Speaker 4: Uh, this isn't about you.
Speaker 3: Fine, I'll hold my question.
Speaker 2: And I don't know. I could see you didn't. I
Speaker 2: don't know, maybe you joined a cult or something. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure, I would be easily sucked into a cult,
Speaker 2: you think, so, Yeah, it's a fear of mine.
Speaker 1: What would be the thing that would that would suck
Speaker 1: you in?
Speaker 3: I think if they just caught me on a bad
Speaker 3: day where I was feeling really isolated and they were
Speaker 3: like come on, and I didn't want to disappoint them,
Speaker 3: I'd be like okay, and I'd be like these people
Speaker 3: are so nice.
Speaker 1: And you'd be like, I always have plans. Now my
Speaker 1: calendar is so full with events.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because you know, cults are really using Google Calendar
Speaker 5: every day.
Speaker 3: It is just blocked off within it, just as cults.
Speaker 5: But to answer your question, Jonathan, I also did a
Speaker 5: whole bunch of nothing this year.
Speaker 4: Really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not just saying that to make me feel better.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, I keep calling it my year off
Speaker 5: and everyone's like off of work, and I'm like.
Speaker 4: Off of everything. Yeah here, yeah, exactly. Let's see.
Speaker 5: I traveled a lot, I visited friends, I read like
Speaker 5: multiple books.
Speaker 4: I get like multiple books.
Speaker 3: Like like three books maybe. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And as and as you guys know, I do a
Speaker 5: lot of jewelry making and blacksmithing.
Speaker 2: Like you make horseshoes. I'm so that's not nothing. So
Speaker 2: you were you were working and you were making jewelry
Speaker 2: and things.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was being creative, I guess, but very unstructured.
Speaker 4: Yeah what about you, Kaylee? What did What did you do?
Speaker 3: I also traveled some the other thing I did which
Speaker 3: was very fun. I'm a big fan of the Brooklyn
Speaker 3: Public Library and they did something in this last year
Speaker 3: called Browse the Branches where you got a little booklet
Speaker 3: like a little passport, and you tried to go to
Speaker 3: every Brooklyn Public Library branch and they would give you
Speaker 3: a little sticker at each one, and if you got
Speaker 3: all the stickers, you got a tote bag, which I did.
Speaker 1: How many branches are there?
Speaker 3: Sixty two?
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: It was a little embarrassing always to walk up to
Speaker 3: them and be like, hey, can I have the sticker?
Speaker 3: But I did it. So that was probably my biggest
Speaker 3: accomplishment of the year.
Speaker 4: Well, should we talk about what we've got coming up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we've got a new season later this year,
Speaker 3: but before then, we have some other little treats.
Speaker 5: Just to tie our listeners over and to say hello
Speaker 5: again after all this time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're going to revisit some favorite episodes and
Speaker 3: have some little updates at the end of what's happened since,
Speaker 3: but before that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So one thing that we did this year was
Speaker 2: that we would occasionally check in and we would let
Speaker 2: each other know what we were up to in the
Speaker 2: form of audio stories.
Speaker 3: You know, we weren't making heavyweight. We're trying to entertain
Speaker 3: each other and keep those gears from rusting that a
Speaker 3: machinery works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think gears can get rusty if they're not
Speaker 2: oiled with the juices of creativity.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I didn't want that.
Speaker 5: But then what happened was, you know, we kind of
Speaker 5: made them just as like a silly thing, and then
Speaker 5: we played them for each other and we were like, oh,
Speaker 5: these are kind of great, and we thought that they
Speaker 5: could be fun in this time while we're making the
Speaker 5: new season, to share with our audience for fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so should we say what our stories are about.
Speaker 5: I made a story about something I found myself doing
Speaker 5: a lot of in this time off, which was solving
Speaker 5: long standing customer service issues.
Speaker 3: That's one of your passions.
Speaker 4: It is I would also call it a passion, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Really, I spent some time trying to do things that
Speaker 3: freaked me out, but that I felt that I needed
Speaker 3: to try at some point in my life. So I
Speaker 3: wrote a little essay about one of the things that
Speaker 3: I tried. Jonathan, what's yours?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I made a story about one of the
Speaker 2: things that I did during our year off was I
Speaker 2: stopped drinking, which is something that I'd been doing on
Speaker 2: a daily basis for at least the past, you know,
Speaker 2: a couple of decades. I mean, to be clear, I
Speaker 2: should say it wasn't like I hit rock bottom or anything.
Speaker 2: I didn't bottom out, but.
Speaker 3: You stopped bottom sing.
Speaker 1: Up, I bottomed, I bottomed up.
Speaker 2: Is that an expression bottoming up as in like tilting
Speaker 2: the bottom of the yes?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: Because that is true. I did.
Speaker 2: Yes, I also feel like I did this. You know,
Speaker 2: when it was announced that the show was coming back,
Speaker 2: I did this interview with the New York Times, and
Speaker 2: you know, they asked me what I've been up to
Speaker 2: in the past year, and I was like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: I quit drinking. So I feel like if I start
Speaker 2: drinking again, it'll be like I've lied to the New
Speaker 2: York Times.
Speaker 3: They're going to have to do a.
Speaker 5: Correction in the italic pant at the bottom. That's like,
Speaker 5: mister Goldstein.
Speaker 3: Started drinking again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't need that, Okay.
Speaker 3: So we're gonna release these three little stories and then
Speaker 3: we'll have these old favorites with updates for you over
Speaker 3: the summer. I'm going to take a little break and
Speaker 3: we'll be back with a new season.
Speaker 4: Jonathan, do you want to play us out?
Speaker 2: You know, conveniently, I've been sitting behind the piano this
Speaker 2: whole time.
Speaker 3: The in