1
00:00:01,480 --> 00:00:07,680
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.

2
00:00:11,440 --> 00:00:14,120
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's

3
00:00:14,280 --> 00:00:18,840
Speaker 2: Chuck and it's just us. Jerry's on vacation actually as usual,

4
00:00:19,280 --> 00:00:20,480
Speaker 2: and this is stuff.

5
00:00:20,239 --> 00:00:25,680
Speaker 1: You should not. Have you read any Judy Bloom books.

6
00:00:26,239 --> 00:00:27,960
Speaker 2: Yes, I've read a bunch of them. I was going

7
00:00:27,960 --> 00:00:29,800
Speaker 2: down the list checking off the ones I've read.

8
00:00:29,880 --> 00:00:32,440
Speaker 1: Oh, interesting, me too. I had a feeling you hadn't

9
00:00:32,479 --> 00:00:32,800
Speaker 1: for some.

10
00:00:32,800 --> 00:00:35,599
Speaker 2: Reason, because I'm soulless and robotic.

11
00:00:37,720 --> 00:00:41,320
Speaker 1: Meet Mark. Yeah, I bet you. We've read a lot

12
00:00:41,320 --> 00:00:42,680
Speaker 1: of the same one. So let's go over that.

13
00:00:42,920 --> 00:00:45,560
Speaker 2: I bet too. All right, now, okay, you ready, Yeah,

14
00:00:45,800 --> 00:00:47,000
Speaker 2: we'll say them all at the same time.

15
00:00:47,840 --> 00:00:49,959
Speaker 1: Now you say yours, and I'll say whether that's one

16
00:00:49,960 --> 00:00:50,320
Speaker 1: of mine?

17
00:00:50,760 --> 00:00:51,080
Speaker 2: All right?

18
00:00:51,600 --> 00:00:53,680
Speaker 1: Freckle Juice did not read that one?

19
00:00:53,960 --> 00:00:56,360
Speaker 2: I did? It was a good one. I'm going to

20
00:00:56,400 --> 00:00:58,080
Speaker 2: say that about all of them. Tales of a fourth

21
00:00:58,080 --> 00:00:58,680
Speaker 2: grade nothing.

22
00:00:58,840 --> 00:00:59,440
Speaker 1: I did read that.

23
00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:02,760
Speaker 2: I did two, but I didn't remember what that was about,

24
00:01:02,800 --> 00:01:06,520
Speaker 2: and I didn't go look it up. Okay, otherwise known

25
00:01:06,560 --> 00:01:07,760
Speaker 2: as Sheila the Great.

26
00:01:07,720 --> 00:01:08,520
Speaker 1: I read that.

27
00:01:08,520 --> 00:01:11,679
Speaker 2: That was a good one, blubbers the one aside from

28
00:01:11,720 --> 00:01:14,000
Speaker 2: are you there? God? It's me, Margaret that I remember

29
00:01:14,080 --> 00:01:14,559
Speaker 2: the most.

30
00:01:14,920 --> 00:01:17,679
Speaker 1: Yeah, I read both of those, and then I think

31
00:01:17,720 --> 00:01:20,560
Speaker 1: that was it for me, all right. I think I

32
00:01:20,600 --> 00:01:23,840
Speaker 1: read all the I read. Then again, maybe I won't, Okay,

33
00:01:24,160 --> 00:01:27,960
Speaker 1: And I also read Superfudge.

34
00:01:28,520 --> 00:01:30,560
Speaker 2: Oh I did too. I'm sorry I did too. I

35
00:01:30,600 --> 00:01:31,520
Speaker 2: read Superfudge.

36
00:01:31,880 --> 00:01:34,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think I read six or seven of these.

37
00:01:34,600 --> 00:01:36,640
Speaker 2: And I had a question mark next to then again,

38
00:01:36,680 --> 00:01:38,800
Speaker 2: maybe I won't. I may have read that one, or

39
00:01:38,840 --> 00:01:40,360
Speaker 2: I just may have been aware of it.

40
00:01:40,640 --> 00:01:42,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then the one what is it? Tiger Eyes?

41
00:01:43,560 --> 00:01:45,759
Speaker 1: Sounded familiar, but I'm not sure if I read those,

42
00:01:46,080 --> 00:01:47,960
Speaker 1: but I think it, like, you know. One reason I

43
00:01:47,960 --> 00:01:50,000
Speaker 1: wanted to ask because I think Judy Bloom and her

44
00:01:50,040 --> 00:01:54,080
Speaker 1: books get associated with young girls. Sure, and I was like,

45
00:01:54,560 --> 00:01:56,760
Speaker 1: was I an outlier because I read six or seven

46
00:01:56,840 --> 00:01:59,520
Speaker 1: Judy Bloom books and like loved them all? Or you know,

47
00:01:59,640 --> 00:02:01,200
Speaker 1: maybe both out liars.

48
00:02:01,480 --> 00:02:04,760
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I don't remember being particularly odd

49
00:02:04,840 --> 00:02:07,480
Speaker 2: or weird, at least in my elementary school, so the

50
00:02:07,520 --> 00:02:10,400
Speaker 2: fact that you did too, I would guess it was

51
00:02:10,440 --> 00:02:13,359
Speaker 2: probably fairly normal. I also read a lot of Ramona

52
00:02:13,440 --> 00:02:15,359
Speaker 2: Quimby books. Did you read any of those? Now?

53
00:02:15,400 --> 00:02:16,160
Speaker 1: I never read those.

54
00:02:16,760 --> 00:02:20,800
Speaker 2: I knew that the day I became at an adolescent,

55
00:02:20,880 --> 00:02:22,920
Speaker 2: I guess, uh huh, because that was halfway through a

56
00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:26,000
Speaker 2: Ramona Quimby book, You're Seven, and I realized I didn't

57
00:02:26,040 --> 00:02:30,200
Speaker 2: give a good damn what was about to come next

58
00:02:30,240 --> 00:02:31,960
Speaker 2: in Ramona Quimby's life. All of a.

59
00:02:31,960 --> 00:02:35,680
Speaker 1: Sudden, Oh no, that was it for me and Ramona.

60
00:02:35,720 --> 00:02:38,040
Speaker 2: I always have fond memories of her. Those were great

61
00:02:38,200 --> 00:02:38,840
Speaker 2: fun books.

62
00:02:39,120 --> 00:02:40,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think it's cool that we both read

63
00:02:40,880 --> 00:02:45,639
Speaker 1: this stuff that our parents were. My suspicion is that

64
00:02:45,639 --> 00:02:47,280
Speaker 1: it was the same in my house, is that they

65
00:02:47,360 --> 00:02:50,440
Speaker 1: weren't paying attention enough, probably to say, hey, should you

66
00:02:50,480 --> 00:02:53,000
Speaker 1: be reading this book about, you know, a young girl

67
00:02:53,080 --> 00:02:57,120
Speaker 1: going through menstruation and discovering her sexual awakening?

68
00:02:57,560 --> 00:03:00,720
Speaker 2: Right exactly? My parents paid enough attention. I remember my

69
00:03:00,840 --> 00:03:04,840
Speaker 2: dad like some tense conversations I barely overheard. The only

70
00:03:04,880 --> 00:03:06,919
Speaker 2: word I could make out was fruity.

71
00:03:07,800 --> 00:03:09,440
Speaker 1: Oh man, goodness me.

72
00:03:09,960 --> 00:03:11,120
Speaker 2: He was a real jerk. Grow now.

73
00:03:11,800 --> 00:03:15,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, here we are, though, well adjusted and kicking

74
00:03:15,760 --> 00:03:16,280
Speaker 1: button life.

75
00:03:16,400 --> 00:03:18,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's great. Is I can't wait to

76
00:03:18,680 --> 00:03:20,679
Speaker 2: get the one or two emails really like that was

77
00:03:20,720 --> 00:03:22,120
Speaker 2: really mean of your dad to call.

78
00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:25,160
Speaker 1: You fruity, right, yeah, get some support.

79
00:03:25,360 --> 00:03:29,200
Speaker 2: Right, he didn't. Really everybody, is what I'm trying to say. Okay,

80
00:03:29,560 --> 00:03:31,480
Speaker 2: I think you make a great point though, Chuck, Like

81
00:03:31,800 --> 00:03:35,520
Speaker 2: I think it's whether it's normal or not. I feel

82
00:03:35,520 --> 00:03:37,560
Speaker 2: like it was great that we read those books. They

83
00:03:37,600 --> 00:03:41,160
Speaker 2: were great books to start with, totally, but also like,

84
00:03:41,240 --> 00:03:43,839
Speaker 2: it's just so rare for an adult to have that

85
00:03:44,280 --> 00:03:47,480
Speaker 2: level of insight into what it's like to be a

86
00:03:47,600 --> 00:03:52,320
Speaker 2: kid growing into well an adolescent again, right, that's just

87
00:03:53,080 --> 00:03:55,560
Speaker 2: people have memories of that. I have memories of it,

88
00:03:55,600 --> 00:03:58,800
Speaker 2: but the vibe, the feeling and being able to convey

89
00:03:58,840 --> 00:04:00,680
Speaker 2: it again, that is long gone.

90
00:04:00,960 --> 00:04:02,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally agree.

91
00:04:02,960 --> 00:04:04,960
Speaker 2: So she was good at what she did and she

92
00:04:05,040 --> 00:04:11,480
Speaker 2: was a trailblazing pioneer of the first kind.

93
00:04:11,840 --> 00:04:15,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. And when you say was Judy Bloom amazingly

94
00:04:15,800 --> 00:04:18,360
Speaker 1: is still with us in her late eighties, living down

95
00:04:18,400 --> 00:04:23,040
Speaker 1: in Key West, but I think she's basically given up writing.

96
00:04:23,080 --> 00:04:25,560
Speaker 1: She hasn't put out a book in a while. She

97
00:04:25,640 --> 00:04:28,440
Speaker 1: does run a bookstore down in Key West, which I

98
00:04:28,440 --> 00:04:29,680
Speaker 1: would love to go to sometime.

99
00:04:30,080 --> 00:04:32,200
Speaker 2: I wish I had known the one time I went

100
00:04:32,240 --> 00:04:34,159
Speaker 2: to Key West, because I definitely would have popped in

101
00:04:34,200 --> 00:04:34,680
Speaker 2: to see her.

102
00:04:34,839 --> 00:04:37,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, so today we salute Judy Bloom. And I guess

103
00:04:37,600 --> 00:04:41,400
Speaker 1: let's go back to her childhood. Sure, because she was

104
00:04:41,440 --> 00:04:45,920
Speaker 1: born Judith Marcia Sussman on February second, nineteen thirty eight

105
00:04:46,080 --> 00:04:49,839
Speaker 1: in Elizabeth, New Jersey, just outside of New York, and

106
00:04:50,040 --> 00:04:53,839
Speaker 1: grew up in a pretty just normal, middle class Jewish family.

107
00:04:54,400 --> 00:04:56,560
Speaker 1: Her dad was a dentist, her mom was a homemaker,

108
00:04:57,160 --> 00:05:01,960
Speaker 1: and she you know, seemed to have a I was

109
00:05:01,960 --> 00:05:04,240
Speaker 1: about to say, a happy life. But she was a

110
00:05:04,279 --> 00:05:07,360
Speaker 1: fraught kid about some stuff. But not because she had

111
00:05:07,440 --> 00:05:09,520
Speaker 1: like some awful life. It was a pretty normal life,

112
00:05:09,600 --> 00:05:10,800
Speaker 1: but a lot of angst.

113
00:05:10,800 --> 00:05:16,240
Speaker 2: It seems like, yeah, I'm fairly well earned. I feel like, yeah,

114
00:05:16,240 --> 00:05:19,480
Speaker 2: for sure, but not because her family dynamic was screwed up.

115
00:05:19,520 --> 00:05:22,640
Speaker 2: It was like her father was her confidant. Yeah, her

116
00:05:23,520 --> 00:05:27,360
Speaker 2: entire childhood sounds like a really good father. I didn't

117
00:05:27,360 --> 00:05:30,560
Speaker 2: get the impression that her mom was anything terrible, but

118
00:05:31,480 --> 00:05:33,640
Speaker 2: I think her father played a more prominent role.

119
00:05:33,800 --> 00:05:35,599
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think such a But what her.

120
00:05:35,480 --> 00:05:39,120
Speaker 2: Mom gave her was the gift of loving to read,

121
00:05:39,400 --> 00:05:42,240
Speaker 2: which is man, there are a few gifts you can

122
00:05:42,320 --> 00:05:43,520
Speaker 2: give a kid better than.

123
00:05:43,400 --> 00:05:45,560
Speaker 1: That, you know, yeah, no kidding. And I know you

124
00:05:45,600 --> 00:05:47,560
Speaker 1: and I have talked about this privately, but you know,

125
00:05:47,600 --> 00:05:51,600
Speaker 1: when Ruby was diagnosed with dyslexia, we were both as

126
00:05:51,600 --> 00:05:54,479
Speaker 1: avid readers, just you know, sort of afraid that meant

127
00:05:54,480 --> 00:05:57,520
Speaker 1: she wouldn't have that joy. And she's gotten over it

128
00:05:57,560 --> 00:05:59,359
Speaker 1: to the point where she's an avid reader and it

129
00:05:59,400 --> 00:06:02,039
Speaker 1: just makes it so happy. And you always wonder what

130
00:06:02,080 --> 00:06:03,640
Speaker 1: your kid's going to be like. And when I was

131
00:06:03,680 --> 00:06:08,040
Speaker 1: reading about young Judy Bloom making up stories like life

132
00:06:08,080 --> 00:06:11,159
Speaker 1: stories and backstories for her dolls and playthings and creating

133
00:06:11,279 --> 00:06:15,359
Speaker 1: characters and scenarios, like Ruby does a lot of that stuff,

134
00:06:15,880 --> 00:06:18,760
Speaker 1: and I'm always wondering if, like you know, she'd writes

135
00:06:18,839 --> 00:06:21,200
Speaker 1: stories and stuff like is that her path? And like

136
00:06:21,279 --> 00:06:24,800
Speaker 1: who knows, But you know, just like Judy Bloom, they

137
00:06:24,800 --> 00:06:29,240
Speaker 1: both had these active or have these active kind of

138
00:06:29,440 --> 00:06:32,440
Speaker 1: make believe lives, which I think is super cool and

139
00:06:32,560 --> 00:06:33,320
Speaker 1: healthy and awesome.

140
00:06:34,279 --> 00:06:36,200
Speaker 2: Yeah. The thing that stuck out to me was that

141
00:06:36,320 --> 00:06:39,120
Speaker 2: she would take piano lessons and then whilst she was

142
00:06:39,200 --> 00:06:43,000
Speaker 2: practicing the piano herself, she in her head she was

143
00:06:43,040 --> 00:06:47,280
Speaker 2: teaching imaginary students like characters. I love that she was

144
00:06:47,320 --> 00:06:50,239
Speaker 2: giving them piano lessons yeah, and you know that's pretty

145
00:06:50,240 --> 00:06:52,599
Speaker 2: cool in and of itself. She actually kept a journal

146
00:06:52,640 --> 00:06:56,479
Speaker 2: a notebook to chart their progress the imaginary student. She

147
00:06:56,600 --> 00:07:00,000
Speaker 2: was teaching progress in her notebook, like that's how we're

148
00:07:00,120 --> 00:07:04,159
Speaker 2: find her imagination was as far as character development goes

149
00:07:04,320 --> 00:07:05,000
Speaker 2: as a kid.

150
00:07:05,360 --> 00:07:08,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's super cool. And that reminded me and again

151
00:07:09,080 --> 00:07:11,720
Speaker 1: not to just keep bringing Ruby into it. But I

152
00:07:11,720 --> 00:07:13,960
Speaker 1: know you're a fan, so you don't mind. Yeah. But

153
00:07:14,280 --> 00:07:16,160
Speaker 1: when I took her to her first Hawks game when

154
00:07:16,200 --> 00:07:20,960
Speaker 1: she was like eight or nine, maybe she sat there

155
00:07:21,120 --> 00:07:22,720
Speaker 1: and I don't think I've told this before, but she

156
00:07:23,240 --> 00:07:24,880
Speaker 1: I looked and she brought her a little notebook like

157
00:07:24,920 --> 00:07:26,680
Speaker 1: she always does, just in case she gets bored, and

158
00:07:26,720 --> 00:07:28,800
Speaker 1: she was keeping notes. And finally was like, what are

159
00:07:28,840 --> 00:07:32,040
Speaker 1: you noting? And she had noted all the players and

160
00:07:32,120 --> 00:07:34,560
Speaker 1: all of their shoes and what brand and what color

161
00:07:34,640 --> 00:07:37,000
Speaker 1: shoes they had, and what number they were and everything.

162
00:07:37,640 --> 00:07:40,800
Speaker 1: And I just thought, what an interesting thing to do that.

163
00:07:41,080 --> 00:07:44,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I was never into that kind of

164
00:07:44,080 --> 00:07:47,480
Speaker 2: thing now, so I yeah, I feel like I'm definitely

165
00:07:47,520 --> 00:07:48,880
Speaker 2: looking at it from the outside in.

166
00:07:49,200 --> 00:07:51,200
Speaker 1: Yeah. I just you know, when you're a parent, you're

167
00:07:51,200 --> 00:07:54,080
Speaker 1: always like, what does that mean? And like maybe one

168
00:07:54,120 --> 00:07:55,800
Speaker 1: day I'll look back and go like, oh it all

169
00:07:55,800 --> 00:07:58,120
Speaker 1: makes sense now or whatever. Sure, maybe she'll be an

170
00:07:58,160 --> 00:08:04,640
Speaker 1: inventory or something. Yeah, what's it called when you manage.

171
00:08:06,320 --> 00:08:06,920
Speaker 2: Logistics?

172
00:08:06,960 --> 00:08:07,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, logistics.

173
00:08:08,840 --> 00:08:11,800
Speaker 2: She'll be in charge of logistics of moving basketball players

174
00:08:11,840 --> 00:08:16,280
Speaker 2: around the country. Great, Yeah that's cool. That's a great story.

175
00:08:16,320 --> 00:08:19,600
Speaker 2: And yeah, I can't quite get it either. I mean,

176
00:08:19,720 --> 00:08:20,840
Speaker 2: is it like a calming thing?

177
00:08:21,760 --> 00:08:23,679
Speaker 1: I don't know, I have no idea.

178
00:08:23,720 --> 00:08:26,840
Speaker 2: Well, let me know when you figure it out.

179
00:08:26,680 --> 00:08:27,600
Speaker 1: Like twenty years probably.

180
00:08:28,280 --> 00:08:33,880
Speaker 2: So even though Judy Bloom was like she came up

181
00:08:33,920 --> 00:08:38,240
Speaker 2: with characters and had a very rich internal life as

182
00:08:38,280 --> 00:08:42,000
Speaker 2: a kid, she apparently never particularly aspired to be a writer.

183
00:08:42,120 --> 00:08:46,720
Speaker 2: She ended up wanting to find essentially like a creative

184
00:08:46,720 --> 00:08:49,760
Speaker 2: outlet later on, as we'll see. But as a kid

185
00:08:49,760 --> 00:08:51,520
Speaker 2: that wasn't she wouldn't like, that's what I'm going to

186
00:08:51,559 --> 00:08:55,480
Speaker 2: be as a writer. And so that comes later in

187
00:08:55,600 --> 00:09:00,960
Speaker 2: between then and now. But the opposite, so now would

188
00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:04,000
Speaker 2: be while she was a child, then would be as

189
00:09:04,160 --> 00:09:08,160
Speaker 2: she's grown up a little more. Oh man, you said

190
00:09:08,200 --> 00:09:10,280
Speaker 2: that she had a kind of a fraught childhood, and

191
00:09:10,320 --> 00:09:13,120
Speaker 2: as a result of that, she definitely suffered from anxiety

192
00:09:13,160 --> 00:09:16,520
Speaker 2: as a kid. And this is like nineteen fifties anxiety,

193
00:09:16,600 --> 00:09:18,680
Speaker 2: so like the real deal kind where you saw like

194
00:09:18,679 --> 00:09:20,400
Speaker 2: a psychoanalyst sometimes.

195
00:09:20,720 --> 00:09:23,079
Speaker 1: Yeah, certainly starting out in the forties when you're a

196
00:09:23,080 --> 00:09:26,000
Speaker 1: little kid, especially a Jewish American kid, and World War

197
00:09:26,000 --> 00:09:29,520
Speaker 1: II is going around, there was a big preoccupation in

198
00:09:30,240 --> 00:09:32,920
Speaker 1: her family and you know, every probably Jewish American kid's

199
00:09:32,960 --> 00:09:36,680
Speaker 1: life about what was going on overseas, afraid that could

200
00:09:36,679 --> 00:09:38,640
Speaker 1: happen to them and their family, that kind of thing.

201
00:09:39,480 --> 00:09:41,840
Speaker 1: And then really, this is so sad. She was always

202
00:09:41,880 --> 00:09:44,720
Speaker 1: just worried about her father dying because a couple of

203
00:09:44,720 --> 00:09:47,640
Speaker 1: her uncles died when they were younger, in their early

204
00:09:47,679 --> 00:09:51,000
Speaker 1: forties of heart attacks I guess heart failure. Yeah, and

205
00:09:51,040 --> 00:09:54,840
Speaker 1: she was just always worried about her dad, and you

206
00:09:54,880 --> 00:09:57,600
Speaker 1: know doing kid stuff like you know, making a deal

207
00:09:57,640 --> 00:10:00,360
Speaker 1: with God, like hey, if I ace this test, it'll

208
00:10:00,400 --> 00:10:03,120
Speaker 1: help my dad live. And just it's just so sort

209
00:10:03,160 --> 00:10:04,520
Speaker 1: of heartbreaking to hear that stuff.

210
00:10:05,200 --> 00:10:07,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if that sounds a little familiar, then you

211
00:10:07,520 --> 00:10:11,600
Speaker 2: probably have read are you there, God, it's me Margaret. Yeah.

212
00:10:11,640 --> 00:10:13,920
Speaker 2: So yeah, that was a big deal. Like that kind

213
00:10:13,960 --> 00:10:17,280
Speaker 2: of guided her outlook, and that's a lot to worry

214
00:10:17,280 --> 00:10:21,040
Speaker 2: about as a little kid, right, totally. H So another

215
00:10:21,080 --> 00:10:22,800
Speaker 2: thing that happened. Remember I said her dad was like

216
00:10:22,840 --> 00:10:26,840
Speaker 2: one of her biggest, most prominent figures in her entire

217
00:10:26,920 --> 00:10:30,160
Speaker 2: life as a kid. There were two years where she

218
00:10:30,400 --> 00:10:33,720
Speaker 2: and her mom and brother moved to Miami Beach because

219
00:10:33,760 --> 00:10:37,960
Speaker 2: her brother had suffered some sort of chronic illness I believe,

220
00:10:38,000 --> 00:10:40,400
Speaker 2: and they were like, go to Miami apparently the one

221
00:10:40,480 --> 00:10:42,640
Speaker 2: hundred and ten percent humidity will be good.

222
00:10:43,120 --> 00:10:44,080
Speaker 1: Yeah.

223
00:10:44,120 --> 00:10:46,880
Speaker 2: And her father stayed back in Elizabeth, New Jersey because

224
00:10:46,960 --> 00:10:51,560
Speaker 2: he was a dentist, so he had to stay dentisting. Yeah,

225
00:10:52,040 --> 00:10:56,199
Speaker 2: and that separation apparently was so significant that she developed

226
00:10:56,679 --> 00:11:01,240
Speaker 2: an obsessive compulsive disorder. Only would she, like you said,

227
00:11:01,320 --> 00:11:04,280
Speaker 2: kind of make deals with God. She would, you know,

228
00:11:05,040 --> 00:11:07,640
Speaker 2: maybe turn a door knob handle X number of times,

229
00:11:07,640 --> 00:11:09,360
Speaker 2: and as long as she remembered to do that, her

230
00:11:09,400 --> 00:11:12,280
Speaker 2: father would stay alive. Like that kind of stuff. Again,

231
00:11:12,360 --> 00:11:16,000
Speaker 2: we're talking about a kid who's less than ten years old.

232
00:11:16,280 --> 00:11:19,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a lot to take on. It just made

233
00:11:19,360 --> 00:11:22,560
Speaker 1: me real sad to hear that. But she also had

234
00:11:22,600 --> 00:11:25,040
Speaker 1: a few and you know, as we'll see, she wrote

235
00:11:25,080 --> 00:11:28,200
Speaker 1: a lot about stuff that she knew either places where

236
00:11:28,240 --> 00:11:30,679
Speaker 1: she lived, or about things that were you know, like

237
00:11:30,720 --> 00:11:32,199
Speaker 1: you said, and are you there, God it to me

238
00:11:32,320 --> 00:11:35,640
Speaker 1: Margaret kind of writing about that. She also wrote later

239
00:11:35,640 --> 00:11:39,880
Speaker 1: in life about a family who experienced these three plane

240
00:11:39,880 --> 00:11:42,680
Speaker 1: crashes sort of near their house that affected their household,

241
00:11:42,679 --> 00:11:44,280
Speaker 1: and that really happened to her, right.

242
00:11:45,120 --> 00:11:47,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, over the course of fifty eight days,

243
00:11:47,520 --> 00:11:51,679
Speaker 2: less than two months, there were three separate plane crashes

244
00:11:52,600 --> 00:11:55,920
Speaker 2: from the Newark Airport, which apparently was like right there

245
00:11:56,360 --> 00:12:00,959
Speaker 2: that the runways were pointed essentially at Elizabeth. Yeah, and

246
00:12:01,800 --> 00:12:06,800
Speaker 2: a hundred people died from those three crashes, eleven of

247
00:12:06,840 --> 00:12:10,079
Speaker 2: which were like neighbors, friends and neighbors, like townfolk from

248
00:12:10,080 --> 00:12:12,600
Speaker 2: Elizabeth who had been on the ground in the wrong

249
00:12:12,640 --> 00:12:13,760
Speaker 2: place at the wrong time.

250
00:12:14,040 --> 00:12:18,800
Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's obviously gonna you know, color young kids, psyche,

251
00:12:18,880 --> 00:12:19,839
Speaker 1: you know for sure.

252
00:12:19,960 --> 00:12:23,240
Speaker 2: I mean, what are the odds of something like that happening.

253
00:12:23,320 --> 00:12:25,520
Speaker 2: I guess it was bad enough that they closed the

254
00:12:25,559 --> 00:12:28,760
Speaker 2: Newark Airport for a year and rebuilt the runway so

255
00:12:28,800 --> 00:12:31,280
Speaker 2: that they weren't pointed at Elizabeth anymore.

256
00:12:31,760 --> 00:12:33,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's terrible.

257
00:12:33,520 --> 00:12:38,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, So all those things together certainly like shaped her childhood,

258
00:12:38,920 --> 00:12:40,240
Speaker 2: her pre adolescence.

259
00:12:40,800 --> 00:12:41,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think so.

260
00:12:41,880 --> 00:12:44,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then she like kind of grew up, like

261
00:12:44,240 --> 00:12:49,040
Speaker 2: her life was pretty normal nineteen fifties early nineteen sixties

262
00:12:49,080 --> 00:12:52,280
Speaker 2: type life, although she was a little more on the

263
00:12:52,320 --> 00:12:54,520
Speaker 2: alternative side. It looks like it sounds like she was

264
00:12:54,520 --> 00:12:55,440
Speaker 2: a bit of a beatnik.

265
00:12:56,120 --> 00:12:59,000
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think she gravitated towards that, like when she graduated,

266
00:12:59,040 --> 00:13:01,040
Speaker 1: and she graduated, you know, high school, at the top

267
00:13:01,080 --> 00:13:03,440
Speaker 1: of her class, and then went to NYU, and then

268
00:13:03,480 --> 00:13:05,360
Speaker 1: there in the fifties at NYU, it sounds like she

269
00:13:05,440 --> 00:13:09,360
Speaker 1: was definitely kind of slanted toward that bohemian culture and

270
00:13:09,440 --> 00:13:10,600
Speaker 1: drawn to the beatnik types.

271
00:13:10,840 --> 00:13:13,560
Speaker 2: Yes, she was hanging with Llewell and Davis.

272
00:13:15,200 --> 00:13:17,880
Speaker 1: Should we take a break, Yeah, all right, we'll take

273
00:13:17,880 --> 00:13:20,000
Speaker 1: an earlier break. It seems like a good college seems

274
00:13:20,040 --> 00:13:22,679
Speaker 1: like a good breaking point to me. Oh, I agree,

275
00:13:22,920 --> 00:13:24,040
Speaker 1: all right, we'll be right back.

276
00:13:42,480 --> 00:13:45,440
Speaker 2: So we're back, Chuck and Judy Bloom is stuck in

277
00:13:45,520 --> 00:13:47,760
Speaker 2: college because we took an ad break, and we're going

278
00:13:47,800 --> 00:13:52,800
Speaker 2: to dislodge her. She's a junior. It's nineteen fifty nine.

279
00:13:52,400 --> 00:13:56,679
Speaker 2: She meets a guy named John Bloom. She was twenty

280
00:13:56,720 --> 00:14:00,000
Speaker 2: one at the time. He would have been twenty seven. Yeah,

281
00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:02,840
Speaker 2: he was already like well out of school, established himself

282
00:14:02,880 --> 00:14:06,360
Speaker 2: as a lawyer, and he said, hey, tootz, how about

283
00:14:06,400 --> 00:14:10,520
Speaker 2: we get married. And she liked that idea, so they

284
00:14:10,559 --> 00:14:13,959
Speaker 2: got engaged and they got married that year. Sadly, very

285
00:14:14,040 --> 00:14:16,640
Speaker 2: very sadly. I'm sure this hit her quite hard. Her

286
00:14:16,679 --> 00:14:18,880
Speaker 2: father wasn't there to walk her down the aisle because

287
00:14:18,960 --> 00:14:21,680
Speaker 2: like a month before the wedding he died from a

288
00:14:21,720 --> 00:14:25,240
Speaker 2: heart attack. He wasn't early forties, but he was early

289
00:14:25,320 --> 00:14:28,080
Speaker 2: mid fifties, which is still very very young.

290
00:14:28,520 --> 00:14:31,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean to see your fear realize like that,

291
00:14:31,480 --> 00:14:33,800
Speaker 1: like the one thing that she was worried about, specifically

292
00:14:33,800 --> 00:14:38,280
Speaker 1: the heart attack too, must have been devastating. So she

293
00:14:38,360 --> 00:14:42,480
Speaker 1: gets married. In nineteen sixty one, she grad graduated from

294
00:14:42,600 --> 00:14:46,240
Speaker 1: NYU with a degree in early childhood education, and the

295
00:14:46,320 --> 00:14:48,720
Speaker 1: plan was to sort of you know, you know, you

296
00:14:48,760 --> 00:14:51,320
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier she didn't want to be a writer necessarily,

297
00:14:51,360 --> 00:14:53,400
Speaker 1: and you know, one of the big reasons, because it

298
00:14:53,560 --> 00:14:56,480
Speaker 1: is in the nineteen forties and early nineteen fifties when

299
00:14:56,480 --> 00:14:58,960
Speaker 1: she was a kid, that just wasn't an avenue that

300
00:14:59,000 --> 00:15:02,200
Speaker 1: was as open to young women. It's a big reason

301
00:15:02,200 --> 00:15:06,200
Speaker 1: that se Hinton kept the initials se Hinton when she

302
00:15:06,240 --> 00:15:08,520
Speaker 1: wrote The Outsiders and all those books.

303
00:15:08,600 --> 00:15:11,120
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't know se Hinton was a woman.

304
00:15:12,560 --> 00:15:13,240
Speaker 1: Are you serious?

305
00:15:13,440 --> 00:15:14,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's serious.

306
00:15:14,720 --> 00:15:17,720
Speaker 1: Yeah. I thought c Hinton was a teenage girl when

307
00:15:17,760 --> 00:15:19,040
Speaker 1: she wrote The Outsiders.

308
00:15:19,640 --> 00:15:23,520
Speaker 2: I had no idea. Wow, yeah, yeah, I thought that

309
00:15:23,680 --> 00:15:25,200
Speaker 2: was Steve and Edie Hinton.

310
00:15:26,560 --> 00:15:28,120
Speaker 1: That's why she did it. I mean it worked. I

311
00:15:28,120 --> 00:15:29,680
Speaker 1: guess she's like, I got to be able to fool

312
00:15:29,720 --> 00:15:30,280
Speaker 1: Josh Clark.

313
00:15:30,680 --> 00:15:32,920
Speaker 2: No, but I mean like, I had no idea. This

314
00:15:33,080 --> 00:15:35,280
Speaker 2: is literally the first time I'm hearing that. It's not

315
00:15:35,360 --> 00:15:37,680
Speaker 2: even like, oh that vaguely rings a bell. I have

316
00:15:38,040 --> 00:15:39,680
Speaker 2: never heard that in my entire life.

317
00:15:40,040 --> 00:15:42,320
Speaker 1: Well, there you have it. She was a teenage girl

318
00:15:42,320 --> 00:15:43,760
Speaker 1: in high school when she wrote The Outsiders.

319
00:15:43,800 --> 00:15:44,600
Speaker 2: That's really cool.

320
00:15:44,920 --> 00:15:47,120
Speaker 1: But again, that's why she kept the name se Hinton

321
00:15:47,160 --> 00:15:50,720
Speaker 1: because just publishing wasn't so open to young women writing books.

322
00:15:50,720 --> 00:15:54,720
Speaker 1: So that's why Judy Bloom didn't. And when she was

323
00:15:54,960 --> 00:15:57,480
Speaker 1: graduating college, she was just sort of on that track.

324
00:15:57,520 --> 00:15:58,960
Speaker 1: She was like, I'm going to get my degree, I'm

325
00:15:58,960 --> 00:16:01,480
Speaker 1: going to get married, which I already did before I graduated.

326
00:16:01,760 --> 00:16:04,480
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have kids and be a homemaker, and within

327
00:16:05,120 --> 00:16:07,320
Speaker 1: a couple of years of graduating, she had a daughter

328
00:16:07,400 --> 00:16:09,760
Speaker 1: named Randy Lee and then a son named Lawrence Andrew

329
00:16:10,320 --> 00:16:12,680
Speaker 1: and was you know, very happily it seems, back in

330
00:16:12,720 --> 00:16:16,640
Speaker 1: the New Jersey suburbs. Yep, while her husband was attorneying.

331
00:16:17,720 --> 00:16:21,920
Speaker 2: Yes, so I had said though that she was. She

332
00:16:22,040 --> 00:16:24,360
Speaker 2: started writing because she was like, I need to do

333
00:16:24,400 --> 00:16:27,400
Speaker 2: something else besides just like raise kids and sit at

334
00:16:27,400 --> 00:16:31,320
Speaker 2: home and dust. That just was not enough to fulfill

335
00:16:31,440 --> 00:16:34,320
Speaker 2: her as a person. So once both of her kids

336
00:16:34,360 --> 00:16:38,720
Speaker 2: were in preschool, she was like, I'll write some books

337
00:16:38,720 --> 00:16:40,680
Speaker 2: for my kids, or at least my kids friends if

338
00:16:40,720 --> 00:16:44,280
Speaker 2: the kids don't like it, she started creating picture books.

339
00:16:44,480 --> 00:16:47,160
Speaker 2: Essentially the first one she came up was, or at

340
00:16:47,240 --> 00:16:50,040
Speaker 2: least the first one. Her first published book was a

341
00:16:50,120 --> 00:16:52,400
Speaker 2: children's picture book called The One in the Middle is

342
00:16:52,440 --> 00:16:57,080
Speaker 2: the Green Kangaroo, which is a great, great children's book name.

343
00:16:58,240 --> 00:17:00,680
Speaker 2: But that didn't come like easy. That wasn't like a

344
00:17:01,160 --> 00:17:04,640
Speaker 2: you know, first try. And she she got her big break.

345
00:17:05,440 --> 00:17:08,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's I think she went a couple

346
00:17:08,160 --> 00:17:10,240
Speaker 1: of years, like two two and a half years, getting

347
00:17:10,760 --> 00:17:14,560
Speaker 1: you know, rejection letter after rejection letter. I think they

348
00:17:14,600 --> 00:17:16,280
Speaker 1: dug who helped us with this one.

349
00:17:16,840 --> 00:17:17,199
Speaker 2: Julia.

350
00:17:17,720 --> 00:17:19,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, Julia found that she was getting like six no

351
00:17:20,040 --> 00:17:24,160
Speaker 1: letters per week before she became like an overnight success.

352
00:17:24,240 --> 00:17:26,520
Speaker 1: You know, that's how the media like tends to view

353
00:17:26,520 --> 00:17:30,600
Speaker 1: those things. But it seems like the big turning point

354
00:17:30,640 --> 00:17:34,080
Speaker 1: was when she took a continuing ed class at NYU

355
00:17:34,200 --> 00:17:37,399
Speaker 1: in the late sixties, like a writing class for like

356
00:17:37,480 --> 00:17:41,480
Speaker 1: tween writing and teen writing. And she told NPR a

357
00:17:41,560 --> 00:17:44,400
Speaker 1: few years ago that it was like such a monumental

358
00:17:44,400 --> 00:17:46,960
Speaker 1: thing for her to like to know that she was

359
00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:50,080
Speaker 1: going to leave every Monday, leave her family, go to

360
00:17:50,119 --> 00:17:53,679
Speaker 1: the bus to New York City, and like her husband

361
00:17:53,720 --> 00:17:55,240
Speaker 1: was going to feed the kids, and she wasn't going

362
00:17:55,280 --> 00:17:57,920
Speaker 1: to be home until later that night. And just knowing

363
00:17:57,920 --> 00:17:59,919
Speaker 1: she had that creative outlet really freed her up men,

364
00:18:00,280 --> 00:18:03,439
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, and led to that children's book, and

365
00:18:03,480 --> 00:18:06,560
Speaker 1: then eventually led to the publishing of her first novel,

366
00:18:07,080 --> 00:18:07,760
Speaker 1: Iggy's House.

367
00:18:08,600 --> 00:18:12,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a children's book, I guess maybe young

368
00:18:12,280 --> 00:18:17,439
Speaker 2: adult book about It's from the viewpoint of a little

369
00:18:17,440 --> 00:18:20,760
Speaker 2: white girl named Winnie who lives in a neighborhood where

370
00:18:20,760 --> 00:18:23,680
Speaker 2: her best friend has just moved and a black family

371
00:18:23,920 --> 00:18:26,840
Speaker 2: moves into the neighborhood, and it's all about the racial

372
00:18:26,880 --> 00:18:32,240
Speaker 2: tensions that developed White Flight. But it's rather than Judy

373
00:18:32,280 --> 00:18:36,080
Speaker 2: Bloom trying to make it from the viewpoint of the

374
00:18:36,960 --> 00:18:39,240
Speaker 2: little girl from the black family that just moved in.

375
00:18:39,560 --> 00:18:42,520
Speaker 2: I think she very wisely did it from the viewpoint

376
00:18:42,600 --> 00:18:45,080
Speaker 2: of this, you know, little white girl who's looking at

377
00:18:45,080 --> 00:18:49,240
Speaker 2: it from the outside and was kind of innocently trying

378
00:18:49,280 --> 00:18:52,120
Speaker 2: to figure out what the problem was, what was going on.

379
00:18:52,240 --> 00:18:55,199
Speaker 2: And this is nineteen seventy when it was published, and

380
00:18:55,240 --> 00:18:59,879
Speaker 2: this is not the kind of book that children were

381
00:19:00,320 --> 00:19:03,200
Speaker 2: finding in the library at the time by any means.

382
00:19:03,520 --> 00:19:06,639
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So that's her first one published in

383
00:19:06,680 --> 00:19:09,400
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, as far as the novel goes, and then

384
00:19:09,640 --> 00:19:12,520
Speaker 1: right out of the gate, her follow up book, again

385
00:19:12,560 --> 00:19:14,960
Speaker 1: also in nineteen seventy, was are you there, God, It's

386
00:19:15,000 --> 00:19:18,040
Speaker 1: me and Margaret Wow. So, I mean, can you just

387
00:19:18,080 --> 00:19:21,400
Speaker 1: imagine starting your career out with a stone cold classic

388
00:19:21,520 --> 00:19:25,199
Speaker 1: like that. It was eventually made into a movie that

389
00:19:25,280 --> 00:19:28,840
Speaker 1: was actually pretty good. I know, she Yeah, it wasn't bad.

390
00:19:29,560 --> 00:19:31,600
Speaker 1: You know, it's hard when you have such a beloved

391
00:19:31,600 --> 00:19:34,280
Speaker 1: book from your childhood, and I think that's why she

392
00:19:34,320 --> 00:19:38,360
Speaker 1: waited so long. You know, overtures for years and years

393
00:19:38,359 --> 00:19:40,399
Speaker 1: and years to like decades to try and get it

394
00:19:40,400 --> 00:19:42,359
Speaker 1: made into a film, and she always said no. And

395
00:19:42,440 --> 00:19:44,280
Speaker 1: I think she finally found you know, that it was

396
00:19:44,320 --> 00:19:46,639
Speaker 1: time and it turned out pretty good. I'm waiting, you know,

397
00:19:46,680 --> 00:19:48,080
Speaker 1: Ruby saw it, and I'm waiting for her to want

398
00:19:48,119 --> 00:19:50,719
Speaker 1: to read these books. Yeah, we got them all, like,

399
00:19:50,800 --> 00:19:52,880
Speaker 1: you know, ready at the gate, waiting for it.

400
00:19:53,200 --> 00:19:54,440
Speaker 2: I in the bookshelf.

401
00:19:54,720 --> 00:19:56,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they're ready.

402
00:19:57,480 --> 00:19:59,160
Speaker 2: I didn't see it. I saw. I had a seven

403
00:19:59,200 --> 00:20:02,520
Speaker 2: point three on IMDb, which is definitely respectable, in ninety

404
00:20:02,560 --> 00:20:05,520
Speaker 2: nine percent on Rotten Tomatoes. So you're not the only

405
00:20:05,560 --> 00:20:09,440
Speaker 2: one who thought it was pretty good. So this book

406
00:20:09,440 --> 00:20:11,240
Speaker 2: that comes out, let's talk about Are you there, God,

407
00:20:11,280 --> 00:20:15,000
Speaker 2: it's me Margaret for a second. Okay. The reason we

408
00:20:15,200 --> 00:20:17,719
Speaker 2: referred to Judy Bloom as the Trailblazer is because she

409
00:20:17,920 --> 00:20:21,040
Speaker 2: was she was one of the first people writing this

410
00:20:21,160 --> 00:20:26,080
Speaker 2: kind of book for this age group as the hitting her.

411
00:20:27,640 --> 00:20:32,040
Speaker 2: Her book, The Outsiders takes place among high schoolers, same

412
00:20:32,119 --> 00:20:40,600
Speaker 2: with like The Chocolate War by Yeah Yeah, Robert love Them, Yeah,

413
00:20:40,720 --> 00:20:45,120
Speaker 2: Robert Ludlan's Chocolate War. And then also there's another one

414
00:20:45,160 --> 00:20:48,080
Speaker 2: called The cat ate My Gym Suit by Paula Danzinger.

415
00:20:48,480 --> 00:20:51,080
Speaker 2: That was fairly all of them had to do with

416
00:20:51,200 --> 00:20:54,919
Speaker 2: ninth graders or up right. Yeah, she's writing about like

417
00:20:55,040 --> 00:20:59,080
Speaker 2: eleven year olds. It's going through the beginnings of what

418
00:20:59,400 --> 00:21:02,720
Speaker 2: high school are now dealing with, right, And the only

419
00:21:02,760 --> 00:21:05,080
Speaker 2: person who beat her was as he hitting. From what

420
00:21:05,119 --> 00:21:06,840
Speaker 2: I could tell, I think The Outsiders came out in

421
00:21:06,880 --> 00:21:09,480
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven. Are you the Gut? Are you there? Gut?

422
00:21:09,520 --> 00:21:11,960
Speaker 2: It's me Margaret came out in nineteen seventy, and again

423
00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:15,720
Speaker 2: it was just totally different from other books for kids

424
00:21:15,760 --> 00:21:16,240
Speaker 2: at the time.

425
00:21:16,880 --> 00:21:19,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, in kids books are still

426
00:21:19,280 --> 00:21:20,800
Speaker 1: like this in a lot of ways, although there's a

427
00:21:20,880 --> 00:21:24,119
Speaker 1: lot more variety now, thankfully, But back then it was

428
00:21:24,200 --> 00:21:27,240
Speaker 1: kind of like, you present a big problem, maybe there's

429
00:21:27,240 --> 00:21:29,800
Speaker 1: a moral issue or something, and there's some big grand

430
00:21:29,880 --> 00:21:35,040
Speaker 1: solution that teaches a big grand lesson. And she was like,

431
00:21:35,160 --> 00:21:37,359
Speaker 1: you know what, it's not that easy and it's not

432
00:21:37,400 --> 00:21:42,159
Speaker 1: that clean to grow up and black and white, So like,

433
00:21:42,720 --> 00:21:44,959
Speaker 1: I'm going to write books about how messy it is

434
00:21:45,119 --> 00:21:48,840
Speaker 1: and how maybe it's just a struggle sometimes, and you know,

435
00:21:48,880 --> 00:21:51,640
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of realism in her books of

436
00:21:51,720 --> 00:21:53,760
Speaker 1: like what it was really like to be an adolescent.

437
00:21:54,480 --> 00:22:00,760
Speaker 1: And you know, critics liked them right away, the buying

438
00:22:00,760 --> 00:22:04,040
Speaker 1: public love them. I think it was an are you there? God?

439
00:22:04,119 --> 00:22:06,240
Speaker 1: Was a New York Times bestseller in a New York

440
00:22:06,280 --> 00:22:10,320
Speaker 1: Times Book Review Outstanding Book of nineteen seventy and just

441
00:22:10,400 --> 00:22:12,080
Speaker 1: kind of launched her right out of the gate, you know,

442
00:22:12,840 --> 00:22:13,240
Speaker 1: for sure?

443
00:22:14,480 --> 00:22:16,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw. It also really took off when it

444
00:22:17,000 --> 00:22:19,639
Speaker 2: came out in a trade paperback version in nineteen seventy

445
00:22:19,640 --> 00:22:23,000
Speaker 2: two at a price that, like younger kids, her audience

446
00:22:23,040 --> 00:22:25,119
Speaker 2: could afford. Oh yeah, they didn't have to ask their

447
00:22:25,160 --> 00:22:30,400
Speaker 2: parents to buy it for them anymore. Right, So, one

448
00:22:30,400 --> 00:22:35,040
Speaker 2: of the things that Judy Bloom is credited with is

449
00:22:35,160 --> 00:22:41,280
Speaker 2: essentially approaching adolescents, approaching well, not just menstruation, chuk but monarchy.

450
00:22:41,520 --> 00:22:45,439
Speaker 2: Remember that. Yeah, monarchy used to be like a guest character,

451
00:22:45,560 --> 00:22:48,199
Speaker 2: a recurring guest character on early stuff you should know,

452
00:22:48,280 --> 00:22:49,080
Speaker 2: weirdly enough.

453
00:22:49,440 --> 00:22:52,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just a good trivia word.

454
00:22:52,119 --> 00:22:55,760
Speaker 2: For sure. But she approached it as like it's a

455
00:22:55,800 --> 00:22:58,399
Speaker 2: good thing. This is exciting, Like her characters are like,

456
00:22:58,480 --> 00:23:01,720
Speaker 2: hurry up, I want to hurry up. And one passage

457
00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:07,320
Speaker 2: that's very, very famous is when Margaret and her friends,

458
00:23:07,359 --> 00:23:11,000
Speaker 2: who all collectively make up the Preteen Sensations. It's their

459
00:23:11,040 --> 00:23:13,200
Speaker 2: little secret club where they get together and talk about

460
00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:15,720
Speaker 2: this stuff. One of them has the idea they want

461
00:23:15,720 --> 00:23:19,280
Speaker 2: to basically grow breasts, I guess is the best way

462
00:23:19,320 --> 00:23:22,520
Speaker 2: to put it. And so one of them suggests they

463
00:23:22,600 --> 00:23:26,199
Speaker 2: like move their elbows like back and forth alongside of

464
00:23:26,240 --> 00:23:30,320
Speaker 2: their like they're basically pumping. And while you do that,

465
00:23:30,359 --> 00:23:33,000
Speaker 2: you have to say, I must, I must, I must

466
00:23:33,040 --> 00:23:33,960
Speaker 2: increase my bust.

467
00:23:34,320 --> 00:23:34,800
Speaker 1: Classic.

468
00:23:35,359 --> 00:23:37,440
Speaker 2: I didn't know that came from that. I always associate

469
00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:39,680
Speaker 2: that with the Lords of Acid. Remember that song.

470
00:23:40,119 --> 00:23:41,920
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I had.

471
00:23:41,760 --> 00:23:45,960
Speaker 2: No idea that Jade for You from Lords of Acid

472
00:23:46,160 --> 00:23:49,800
Speaker 2: was a Judy Bloom fan and was sighting are you there?

473
00:23:49,800 --> 00:23:50,240
Speaker 2: Got It's me?

474
00:23:50,320 --> 00:23:53,159
Speaker 1: Margaret pretty cool and s he Hinton was a teenage

475
00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:54,240
Speaker 1: girl when she wrote The Outsider.

476
00:23:54,320 --> 00:23:56,320
Speaker 2: I'm just finding out all sorts of big stuff.

477
00:23:57,320 --> 00:23:59,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean, monumental book right out

478
00:23:59,440 --> 00:24:02,720
Speaker 1: of the gate. She is. At the same time this

479
00:24:02,760 --> 00:24:06,919
Speaker 1: is going on, you know, a kind of playing this

480
00:24:06,960 --> 00:24:11,760
Speaker 1: housewife role, but again realizing, like you know, I don't

481
00:24:11,760 --> 00:24:13,240
Speaker 1: know if that was the life for me. I got

482
00:24:13,280 --> 00:24:15,480
Speaker 1: married when I was young. I never had sort of

483
00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:19,159
Speaker 1: the freedom and adventure that I longed for in her life.

484
00:24:19,840 --> 00:24:22,080
Speaker 1: And she said, you know, there was a quote where

485
00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:24,920
Speaker 1: she said, for sixteen years writing save me and my marriage,

486
00:24:25,800 --> 00:24:27,879
Speaker 1: but by the mid seventies the rules it changed. So

487
00:24:28,520 --> 00:24:32,040
Speaker 1: by nineteen seventy five she's like, you know, I think

488
00:24:32,040 --> 00:24:34,639
Speaker 1: I want a divorce, and she did that. She divorced

489
00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:37,520
Speaker 1: her first husband, moved to New York, and then a

490
00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:41,800
Speaker 1: year later married a physicist named Thomas Kitchens. They were

491
00:24:41,840 --> 00:24:43,679
Speaker 1: only married for about four years, but they had a

492
00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:47,560
Speaker 1: pretty adventurous life. They lived in London and in New Mexico.

493
00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:54,640
Speaker 2: Right, I think at Los Alamosh Okay. So also by

494
00:24:54,720 --> 00:24:57,200
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five, when she decided to get divorced from

495
00:24:57,200 --> 00:25:01,280
Speaker 2: her first husband, the lawyer, she had put out ten

496
00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:04,920
Speaker 2: books between nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy five.

497
00:25:05,359 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 1: Pretty amazing.

498
00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:09,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically almost all the ones that you and I

499
00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:11,760
Speaker 2: read came out in that first like ten year spurt.

500
00:25:12,320 --> 00:25:17,080
Speaker 2: Like she just wrote classic best selling kids books just

501
00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:20,000
Speaker 2: right out of the gate. It's just really cool how

502
00:25:20,080 --> 00:25:22,480
Speaker 2: much she was able to do, how much she was

503
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:25,080
Speaker 2: able to just connect with little kids. I still don't

504
00:25:25,080 --> 00:25:27,760
Speaker 2: get it, like I do not understand how an adult

505
00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:29,800
Speaker 2: can do that. I'm just in awe of it.

506
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:33,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I know her nineteen seventy five book

507
00:25:33,320 --> 00:25:36,760
Speaker 1: Forever is not one that I read. But that's a

508
00:25:37,200 --> 00:25:39,960
Speaker 1: very big book for Emily, and I know, a very

509
00:25:40,000 --> 00:25:43,440
Speaker 1: big book for a lot of like probably girls of

510
00:25:43,480 --> 00:25:46,000
Speaker 1: all generations, but gen X's Girls in particular, because that

511
00:25:46,119 --> 00:25:48,520
Speaker 1: was the one where she had kind of been building

512
00:25:48,560 --> 00:25:53,399
Speaker 1: up to, you know, you know, talking about prepubescent stuff

513
00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:56,680
Speaker 1: and adolescents and puberty and then finally and Forever, it's

514
00:25:56,760 --> 00:25:59,040
Speaker 1: like finally a character that wants to try and have

515
00:25:59,080 --> 00:26:01,760
Speaker 1: sex for the first time, and Emily is just like, oh, man,

516
00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:03,679
Speaker 1: like to read that book as a kid, it was

517
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:04,920
Speaker 1: like a really big deal.

518
00:26:05,600 --> 00:26:09,479
Speaker 2: Yes, And the book itself, I've seen it described as

519
00:26:09,600 --> 00:26:13,800
Speaker 2: essentially a self help manual for having safe sex because

520
00:26:13,840 --> 00:26:17,800
Speaker 2: she follows the main character Catherine throughout like this process

521
00:26:17,800 --> 00:26:20,320
Speaker 2: where she meets the dude, she falls in love, she

522
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:22,760
Speaker 2: decides to have sex, and then before she has sex,

523
00:26:22,760 --> 00:26:27,359
Speaker 2: she goes to like planned parenthood to get condoms. Yeah,

524
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:33,000
Speaker 2: Like she basically learns anatomy and reproductive stuff, like all

525
00:26:33,040 --> 00:26:37,120
Speaker 2: sorts of different things that are laid out like this

526
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:40,240
Speaker 2: is what's happening to Catherine. But reader, I'm really talking

527
00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:42,520
Speaker 2: to you, and I'm making it as plain as possible.

528
00:26:42,720 --> 00:26:45,040
Speaker 2: If you're gonna have sex, do this stuff, because this

529
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 2: is how you have safe sex. And of course, as

530
00:26:48,080 --> 00:26:51,120
Speaker 2: we'll see, like that just made it an absolute target

531
00:26:51,200 --> 00:26:56,120
Speaker 2: for book challenges, where you formally request a book be

532
00:26:56,119 --> 00:26:58,040
Speaker 2: being under removed from a library.

533
00:26:58,720 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we can go into talk about that

534
00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:03,720
Speaker 1: if you want. I mean, as much as people love

535
00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:06,320
Speaker 1: Judy Bloom, there was another set of people that hated

536
00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:11,840
Speaker 1: an author, a grown woman writing about the realistic challenges

537
00:27:11,920 --> 00:27:14,800
Speaker 1: of like being a kid and being a tween or

538
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:17,199
Speaker 1: a teen and going through puberty and all that stuff.

539
00:27:17,280 --> 00:27:20,000
Speaker 1: So she was a target right out of the gate

540
00:27:20,119 --> 00:27:23,560
Speaker 1: for book banning, like you said, and is on a

541
00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:26,040
Speaker 1: lot of lists. As you know, some of the most

542
00:27:26,080 --> 00:27:28,560
Speaker 1: banned books of all time have been Judy Bloom books,

543
00:27:28,560 --> 00:27:31,360
Speaker 1: which is like a to me, a feather in your

544
00:27:31,359 --> 00:27:33,280
Speaker 1: cap as an author, because that means you're probably telling

545
00:27:33,320 --> 00:27:34,200
Speaker 1: the truth about something.

546
00:27:34,320 --> 00:27:36,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, but as we'll see, that drove her crazy, like

547
00:27:36,880 --> 00:27:39,240
Speaker 2: she is not one for censorship, you know.

548
00:27:40,000 --> 00:27:40,800
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure.

549
00:27:41,080 --> 00:27:46,160
Speaker 2: So the key I saw to understanding why everybody wants

550
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:49,320
Speaker 2: to ban Judy Bloom books. Is that Judy Bloom was

551
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:53,879
Speaker 2: the epitome of second wave feminism. Like all the stuff

552
00:27:53,880 --> 00:27:56,960
Speaker 2: that Betty Fridhan talked about, the feminine mystique is embodied

553
00:27:57,000 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 2: in the writing of Judy Bloom, and Judy Bloom is

554
00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:03,560
Speaker 2: talking directly to the next generation of kids, essentially saying

555
00:28:03,840 --> 00:28:05,640
Speaker 2: this is the way to be, this is a good

556
00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 2: this is a good way to become a good person

557
00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:12,639
Speaker 2: and love yourself and treat other people kindly. And the

558
00:28:13,040 --> 00:28:17,440
Speaker 2: arch rival to second wave feminism in the seventies and eighties,

559
00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:22,399
Speaker 2: and I just think still today is conservativism. They don't

560
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:26,879
Speaker 2: want kids shaped like that. So when they see people,

561
00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:29,560
Speaker 2: when they see books like that should He Bloom books

562
00:28:29,560 --> 00:28:31,719
Speaker 2: in their library, they don't want their kids anywhere near it,

563
00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:35,880
Speaker 2: so they request the book be removed. That's why those

564
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:38,720
Speaker 2: those books get challenged all the time, is because they're

565
00:28:38,760 --> 00:28:44,520
Speaker 2: a challenge themselves to conservative ideology, which largely revolves around

566
00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 2: the idea that if you don't teach kids stuff, they're

567
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:50,040
Speaker 2: not going to do it. They're not going to think

568
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:51,760
Speaker 2: of it themselves, and they're not going to do it.

569
00:28:52,320 --> 00:28:54,880
Speaker 2: And yeah, it seems preposterous to me too, and it

570
00:28:54,880 --> 00:28:58,040
Speaker 2: gets proven wrong time and time and time again. But

571
00:28:58,200 --> 00:29:01,800
Speaker 2: that's just how that's just the conservative outlook. That's just

572
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:05,200
Speaker 2: they don't feel comfortable trying a different way in that respect.

573
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:08,200
Speaker 2: And you know, I mean that's a lot of people's viewpoint,

574
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:12,120
Speaker 2: it's not necessarily mine. But I think, you know, it

575
00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:15,120
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that's inherently wrong. I just I just don't

576
00:29:15,160 --> 00:29:17,320
Speaker 2: like the idea of banning books, even though I get

577
00:29:18,360 --> 00:29:20,280
Speaker 2: to an extent where they're coming from. They're trying to

578
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 2: protect their children, not take off Judy Bloom or the liberals.

579
00:29:24,600 --> 00:29:26,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think a lot of what that frame

580
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:30,239
Speaker 1: of mind comes from is I want to be the

581
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 1: decider of my kid learning what they learn when they

582
00:29:33,240 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 1: learn it. As far as sexuality goes, right, I want

583
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:37,360
Speaker 1: to be in charge of that. I don't want it

584
00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:39,280
Speaker 1: to come from some book from some lady that they

585
00:29:39,280 --> 00:29:41,480
Speaker 1: happen to check out at the library.

586
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:42,920
Speaker 2: Because they had a good like cover illustration.

587
00:29:43,600 --> 00:29:46,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, I get that to a certain degree.

588
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:51,360
Speaker 1: But like ts, you know, for Judy, as far as

589
00:29:51,360 --> 00:29:53,560
Speaker 1: she goes, she didn't think she was being very controversial.

590
00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:56,120
Speaker 1: She thought I'm just writing in a very frank way

591
00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:59,840
Speaker 1: about how kids really are, Like I was writing the truth, right, Chuck,

592
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:03,040
Speaker 1: All right, Well, one day, say she didn't like the

593
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:07,160
Speaker 1: sterilized adolescents that she saw portrayed in like other kids

594
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:10,440
Speaker 1: books and you know, books that ignored the angst of

595
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:13,200
Speaker 1: what was going on in kids' lives. So she thought,

596
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:15,600
Speaker 1: and I think she was very much correct in my opinion,

597
00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:18,280
Speaker 1: and I'm sure yours that she was doing a service

598
00:30:18,360 --> 00:30:22,840
Speaker 1: by like kind of portraying the realism of childhood and teendom. Yeah.

599
00:30:23,400 --> 00:30:26,040
Speaker 2: Better to learn this stuff from an adult who knows

600
00:30:26,040 --> 00:30:28,720
Speaker 2: what they're talking about, who's been through this and knows

601
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:31,720
Speaker 2: how to describe the process of having safe sex than

602
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:34,920
Speaker 2: from Tina who has an older brother that mentioned to

603
00:30:35,080 --> 00:30:37,160
Speaker 2: her like, you know one time.

604
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:38,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

605
00:30:39,040 --> 00:30:43,360
Speaker 2: So, yes, she has been I think she's not just

606
00:30:43,440 --> 00:30:46,680
Speaker 2: been one of the most banned authors of the eighties

607
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:50,120
Speaker 2: and the nineties, but also the twenty first century. I

608
00:30:50,120 --> 00:30:53,880
Speaker 2: think even in twenty twenty five, twenty twenty four to

609
00:30:53,920 --> 00:30:58,040
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five school year, she was her novel Forever

610
00:30:58,800 --> 00:31:01,840
Speaker 2: was on the list of most banned books. The one

611
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 2: that had it was basically a safe sex self help Yeah,

612
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:09,440
Speaker 2: so yeah, you can kind of understand that. But it's

613
00:31:09,520 --> 00:31:12,160
Speaker 2: not just that. There's been other ones too, Like Tiger

614
00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:19,200
Speaker 2: Eyes is about a girl whose father is killed during

615
00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:21,880
Speaker 2: a robbery of the seven to eleven that he works at,

616
00:31:22,080 --> 00:31:24,920
Speaker 2: and her coming to terms with that and suffering from

617
00:31:24,960 --> 00:31:27,760
Speaker 2: grief and depression, and one of her friends is an

618
00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:31,680
Speaker 2: underage binge drinker. I mean, that book gets banned a

619
00:31:31,720 --> 00:31:32,160
Speaker 2: lot too.

620
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:35,000
Speaker 1: Yeah. Man, I just think it's so cool that she

621
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:38,600
Speaker 1: was brave enough to like write these stories, you know.

622
00:31:38,720 --> 00:31:41,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I mean like she was very brave,

623
00:31:41,240 --> 00:31:43,920
Speaker 2: especially after it became clear and I think it did

624
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:47,040
Speaker 2: fairly early on that there was a large segment of

625
00:31:47,080 --> 00:31:51,920
Speaker 2: America that viewed her books as controversial, And so yeah,

626
00:31:52,000 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 2: every time she sat down and wrote one of these,

627
00:31:54,200 --> 00:31:57,040
Speaker 2: it was a greater and greater act of bravery.

628
00:31:57,680 --> 00:32:02,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a bigger and bigger middle finger. Should we

629
00:32:02,480 --> 00:32:03,360
Speaker 1: take our second break?

630
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:03,880
Speaker 2: Yeah?

631
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:06,000
Speaker 1: All right, we'll be right back, everybody with more on

632
00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:27,280
Speaker 1: Judy Bloom. All right. So I did mention, and you know,

633
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:29,600
Speaker 1: this isn't the most revealing thing in the world. A

634
00:32:29,600 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: lot of authors write about what they know, but Judy

635
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:35,200
Speaker 1: Bloom definitely did that. When she was living in Maine,

636
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:36,960
Speaker 1: she wrote a story said in Maine. When she lived

637
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:40,120
Speaker 1: in New Mexico, she wrote, I think I said movie.

638
00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:43,160
Speaker 1: She wrote a book. You know, I'm talking about books here.

639
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:45,440
Speaker 1: She wrote a book. Did I say movie?

640
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:46,160
Speaker 2: I don't think so.

641
00:32:46,840 --> 00:32:48,000
Speaker 1: Okay, I thought it said movie.

642
00:32:48,040 --> 00:32:50,000
Speaker 2: If you did, I'm sorry I missed Anyway.

643
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:52,520
Speaker 1: A lot of times she wrote books like set where

644
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 1: she was living, or about sort of veiled, thinly veiled

645
00:32:55,920 --> 00:33:01,120
Speaker 1: sort of things that happened in her own childhood. Super unusual.

646
00:33:01,200 --> 00:33:02,800
Speaker 1: But she also did the same thing. You know, she

647
00:33:02,840 --> 00:33:04,840
Speaker 1: wrote adult books too. We're talking about her kid's books.

648
00:33:04,840 --> 00:33:07,520
Speaker 1: She wrote four novels for adults. They were all bestsellers

649
00:33:07,520 --> 00:33:10,960
Speaker 1: as well, and they were all sort of about her

650
00:33:11,160 --> 00:33:15,000
Speaker 1: life experiences, starting with Wifey in nineteen seventy eight, about

651
00:33:15,040 --> 00:33:17,960
Speaker 1: a woman who was in a sort of traditional marriage

652
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:19,000
Speaker 1: he wanted to break out of that.

653
00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:25,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty autobiographical. There's also Smart Women, which was about

654
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:30,560
Speaker 2: women navigating dating and relationships after like post divorce.

655
00:33:30,960 --> 00:33:31,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go.

656
00:33:31,760 --> 00:33:34,400
Speaker 2: That was eighty three. There's also one that came out

657
00:33:34,440 --> 00:33:37,880
Speaker 2: in ninety eight called Summer Sisters. It's about a female friendship.

658
00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:38,959
Speaker 2: That sounds pretty sweet.

659
00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:40,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, Summer's in the season.

660
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:44,680
Speaker 2: And then in the Unlikely Event from twenty fifteen. That

661
00:33:44,720 --> 00:33:46,400
Speaker 2: was the one you mentioned that she wrote about a

662
00:33:46,440 --> 00:33:49,560
Speaker 2: family going through those actual plane crashes that she went through.

663
00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:53,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And you know I said that critics,

664
00:33:53,560 --> 00:33:55,640
Speaker 1: they certainly didn't love everything. I know, are you there,

665
00:33:55,680 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 1: Goud It's me Margaret. And a lot of her best

666
00:33:57,440 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 1: sellers got some good marks with critics, but a lot

667
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 1: of critics kind of dunked on her for being a

668
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:07,400
Speaker 1: simplistic writer. And there was one critic who compared her

669
00:34:07,440 --> 00:34:10,640
Speaker 1: writing to a shopping list. And I always just thought

670
00:34:10,680 --> 00:34:15,080
Speaker 1: her work was just very readable for her audience. If

671
00:34:15,120 --> 00:34:18,480
Speaker 1: that's simplistic, then I guess it works in my opinion,

672
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 1: you know, yeah.

673
00:34:20,160 --> 00:34:23,359
Speaker 2: I mean we're talking about eleven year old readers who

674
00:34:23,360 --> 00:34:26,279
Speaker 2: may have only been reading for the last handful of years, you.

675
00:34:26,239 --> 00:34:27,240
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, totally.

676
00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:32,080
Speaker 2: Yeah. But the difference is she didn't write down to them, right,

677
00:34:32,760 --> 00:34:35,160
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think I think there were just people

678
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:38,359
Speaker 2: who didn't like what she was writing, and we're taking

679
00:34:38,400 --> 00:34:41,279
Speaker 2: potshots wherever they felt they could get.

680
00:34:41,360 --> 00:34:43,360
Speaker 1: This made me kind of want to reread one of

681
00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:45,600
Speaker 1: her books and just see how it grabbed me as

682
00:34:45,600 --> 00:34:46,040
Speaker 1: an adult.

683
00:34:46,080 --> 00:34:48,719
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, I ran across a couple of people

684
00:34:48,760 --> 00:34:51,080
Speaker 2: who were talking about some of these books and they're like, yeah,

685
00:34:51,080 --> 00:34:52,920
Speaker 2: I spent three hours reading this and it was.

686
00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:54,960
Speaker 1: Well worth right, and it just plays through it.

687
00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:58,160
Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel the same way that I'd like to

688
00:34:58,200 --> 00:35:02,080
Speaker 2: read some more, just at least one or two and

689
00:35:02,120 --> 00:35:06,200
Speaker 2: then the entire catalog of Sweet Valley High.

690
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:09,319
Speaker 1: Emily read those two man, she reads a lot and

691
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:10,239
Speaker 1: read a lot as a kid.

692
00:35:10,360 --> 00:35:12,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, well they were huge when we were younger.

693
00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:15,920
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the other one for Emily was the Nancy

694
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:19,000
Speaker 1: Drew books. She still has her collection from like her mom,

695
00:35:19,040 --> 00:35:20,480
Speaker 1: from when she was a kid, and she read all

696
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:20,799
Speaker 1: of those.

697
00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:21,600
Speaker 2: That's really cool.

698
00:35:22,080 --> 00:35:22,239
Speaker 1: Yeah.

699
00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:25,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, my sisters read those. And The Hardy Boys a

700
00:35:25,480 --> 00:35:25,920
Speaker 2: little bit.

701
00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:26,920
Speaker 1: Yeah.

702
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:32,120
Speaker 2: I was a fan of Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators.

703
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:34,840
Speaker 1: Two. Why does it sound so familiar?

704
00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:38,520
Speaker 2: It was like Alfred Hitchcock's nephew and every once in

705
00:35:38,520 --> 00:35:40,480
Speaker 2: a while they could call on Alfred Hitchcock.

706
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:42,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they read some of.

707
00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:45,080
Speaker 2: Them, investigate some It was very Hardy Boys esque.

708
00:35:45,520 --> 00:35:45,759
Speaker 1: Yeah.

709
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:47,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like them for some reason.

710
00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:49,680
Speaker 1: What a time, What.

711
00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 2: A time to be alive.

712
00:35:52,320 --> 00:35:55,440
Speaker 1: So because of all of the book banning and stuff

713
00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:58,000
Speaker 1: that went on, it's probably no surprise that she became

714
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:03,200
Speaker 1: very much a a kind of central person in the

715
00:36:03,440 --> 00:36:08,000
Speaker 1: anti book banning movement. Yeah, she has worked a lot

716
00:36:08,080 --> 00:36:11,759
Speaker 1: over the years with the National Coalition Against Censorship. She

717
00:36:11,920 --> 00:36:15,239
Speaker 1: had a couple of projects in the eighties trying to

718
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:17,239
Speaker 1: get like parents and kids talking more, and one was

719
00:36:17,280 --> 00:36:20,399
Speaker 1: called the Kids Fun Capitol Kids in nineteen eighty one. Yeah,

720
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:23,640
Speaker 1: very cool, And that's to develop programs that encourage communication

721
00:36:23,719 --> 00:36:27,720
Speaker 1: between parents and teens, the foster parent child discussions through books.

722
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:31,200
Speaker 1: And then she had a book she I don't think

723
00:36:31,200 --> 00:36:33,319
Speaker 1: we mentioned. One of the things that she got a

724
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:37,760
Speaker 1: lot through her career was letters from kids who often

725
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:39,719
Speaker 1: told her things that like they would never tell their

726
00:36:39,719 --> 00:36:43,040
Speaker 1: parents and were just very open and expressive. So she

727
00:36:44,160 --> 00:36:46,880
Speaker 1: hopefully had permission, but she eventually put those out in

728
00:36:46,920 --> 00:36:50,080
Speaker 1: a book called Letters to Judy Colon What your kids

729
00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 1: wish they could tell you, And this was in nineteen

730
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:53,160
Speaker 1: eighty six.

731
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:55,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought that was a pretty cool thing to do.

732
00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:56,040
Speaker 1: Yeah.

733
00:36:56,120 --> 00:37:01,200
Speaker 2: Same, So yeah, I'd like she's the real deal. She's

734
00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:04,640
Speaker 2: not just in it for the dough, although I'm quite

735
00:37:04,640 --> 00:37:07,239
Speaker 2: sure she's made quite a bit of dough, because I

736
00:37:07,280 --> 00:37:10,600
Speaker 2: think she's sold like ninety million copies of her books

737
00:37:10,640 --> 00:37:13,880
Speaker 2: over the years. Ooh, man, forty different languages.

738
00:37:14,400 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 1: That's amazing.

739
00:37:16,760 --> 00:37:19,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, so she has made quite a bit of money,

740
00:37:19,400 --> 00:37:23,560
Speaker 2: but she's also legit in the fact that she's she

741
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:26,759
Speaker 2: really genuinely wants to figure out how to bridge the

742
00:37:26,800 --> 00:37:30,520
Speaker 2: gap between parents and their kids to help both groups.

743
00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:37,160
Speaker 2: She also you said that she was like really against censorship.

744
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:39,360
Speaker 2: One of the things that she took a stand against

745
00:37:39,440 --> 00:37:42,560
Speaker 2: was back in twenty twenty three was a cancel culture.

746
00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:49,360
Speaker 2: Basically any kind of intellectual censorship or anything that was

747
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:54,319
Speaker 2: against any intellectual freedom. She was against. And she was

748
00:37:54,360 --> 00:37:56,880
Speaker 2: talking about this in an interview with The Times of

749
00:37:56,920 --> 00:38:01,000
Speaker 2: London in April of that year. Apparently they asked her

750
00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:03,759
Speaker 2: about JK Rowling, who, at the time and I think

751
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:08,680
Speaker 2: still basically every day was controversial because she made some

752
00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:17,640
Speaker 2: like repeated double down comments about that we're just transphobic essentially. Yeah,

753
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:21,840
Speaker 2: and out of that context, in a different context, they

754
00:38:21,880 --> 00:38:25,799
Speaker 2: I asked Judy Bloom about that about JK Rowling, and

755
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:28,480
Speaker 2: she said that I love her. I am behind her

756
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:32,279
Speaker 2: one hundred percent. As I watched from afar and the

757
00:38:32,320 --> 00:38:35,160
Speaker 2: way that it was printed in the Times of London article,

758
00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:38,120
Speaker 2: it made it sound like she was like, yeah, I'm

759
00:38:38,239 --> 00:38:42,160
Speaker 2: backing up this person's transphobic comments. I'm behind her one

760
00:38:42,239 --> 00:38:45,000
Speaker 2: hundred percent. So she had to take the social media

761
00:38:45,040 --> 00:38:47,759
Speaker 2: to be like that was out of context.

762
00:38:48,680 --> 00:38:50,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, in fact, I think we should read her quote

763
00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:54,239
Speaker 1: even she said I wholly support the trans community. My point,

764
00:38:54,280 --> 00:38:56,160
Speaker 1: which was taken out of context, is that I can

765
00:38:56,200 --> 00:38:59,040
Speaker 1: empathize with the writer or any person who has been

766
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 1: harassed online, stand with the trans community, and vehemently disagree

767
00:39:03,040 --> 00:39:06,440
Speaker 1: with anyone who does not fully support equality and acceptance

768
00:39:06,600 --> 00:39:11,520
Speaker 1: of LGTBQ plus people. Anything to the contrary is total

769
00:39:11,719 --> 00:39:15,279
Speaker 1: b sh And I love that she took such a

770
00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:20,840
Speaker 1: hard stance of like, hey, hey, hey, don't misunderstand my words,

771
00:39:20,880 --> 00:39:23,520
Speaker 1: like I'm Judy effing Bloom exactly.

772
00:39:23,719 --> 00:39:28,120
Speaker 2: That was pretty much what's between the lines there for sure. Yeah,

773
00:39:28,200 --> 00:39:31,319
Speaker 2: so let's see, you said that she lives in Key West.

774
00:39:31,400 --> 00:39:33,200
Speaker 2: Now you can go to books and books at the

775
00:39:33,200 --> 00:39:35,920
Speaker 2: studios of Key West and say hi, maybe buy something,

776
00:39:36,640 --> 00:39:39,240
Speaker 2: and then she's I mean, she's just basically been really

777
00:39:39,280 --> 00:39:41,920
Speaker 2: back in the spotlight in the last few years, even

778
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:45,200
Speaker 2: though she's from what I understand, still on hiatus since

779
00:39:45,239 --> 00:39:50,560
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen from writing or at least publishing. But starting

780
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:52,960
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three, there were not just that movie

781
00:39:53,360 --> 00:39:55,279
Speaker 2: for Are You There Got It to Me? Margaret, which,

782
00:39:55,360 --> 00:39:57,960
Speaker 2: like you said, people have been waiting decades for. There's

783
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:00,800
Speaker 2: a documentary that came out that year, Bloom Forever.

784
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:02,280
Speaker 1: It's great and yeah.

785
00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:05,719
Speaker 2: And then in twenty twenty four there was a biography,

786
00:40:05,800 --> 00:40:10,799
Speaker 2: The Genius of Judy, by rachelle Bergstein, that was kind

787
00:40:10,840 --> 00:40:16,400
Speaker 2: of like a scholarly exploration of how Bloom's work impacted kids.

788
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 2: And then there was another one. It was a authorized

789
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:24,960
Speaker 2: and then unauthorized autobiography called Judy Bloom Colon a Life

790
00:40:25,719 --> 00:40:30,160
Speaker 2: that her friend Mark Oppenheimer published in March twenty twenty six,

791
00:40:30,520 --> 00:40:33,920
Speaker 2: and that she publicly removed her support from cut off

792
00:40:33,960 --> 00:40:37,040
Speaker 2: contact with Oppenheimer. Yea, and then didn't explain to the

793
00:40:37,080 --> 00:40:38,839
Speaker 2: public or Oppenheimer why.

794
00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:41,200
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know why.

795
00:40:41,440 --> 00:40:43,840
Speaker 2: No, no one knows why she didn't tell me. Poured

796
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:47,120
Speaker 2: over those books and have been like or that book

797
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:49,839
Speaker 2: and have been like, maybe this is it? Is this it?

798
00:40:49,920 --> 00:40:52,640
Speaker 2: I don't know. Mark Oppenheimer's like, I have no idea.

799
00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:55,879
Speaker 2: She didn't explain it to me. There wasn't anything controversial

800
00:40:55,960 --> 00:40:57,960
Speaker 2: she like, but she read the first draft and that

801
00:40:58,040 --> 00:40:58,239
Speaker 2: was it.

802
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:01,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, who knows, you know, I know what you mentioned.

803
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:04,319
Speaker 1: She had those two divorces, but you'll be glad to

804
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:08,120
Speaker 1: know that she found long lasting true love. Sometimes it

805
00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:09,960
Speaker 1: takes a couple of times to get it right. But

806
00:41:10,040 --> 00:41:13,640
Speaker 1: she met a guy named George Cooper in nineteen seventy

807
00:41:13,760 --> 00:41:16,839
Speaker 1: nine and they moved in together after their very first

808
00:41:16,920 --> 00:41:20,480
Speaker 1: date and got married eight years later in nineteen eighty seven.

809
00:41:20,560 --> 00:41:22,960
Speaker 1: And that is who helps her run that bookstore down

810
00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:25,040
Speaker 1: in Key Wes. So they're still together after all these years.

811
00:41:25,280 --> 00:41:29,120
Speaker 2: That is super cute. Yeah, he's like a civil rights

812
00:41:29,400 --> 00:41:30,360
Speaker 2: law professor.

813
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:32,600
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, that sounds about right.

814
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:35,719
Speaker 2: What else you got?

815
00:41:36,160 --> 00:41:37,880
Speaker 1: I got nothing else I don't either.

816
00:41:38,160 --> 00:41:41,240
Speaker 2: Hats off to Judy Bloom. Even if you don't agree

817
00:41:41,239 --> 00:41:44,440
Speaker 2: with her writing and what she writes about to kids,

818
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:47,319
Speaker 2: you still got to admire bravery, courage.

819
00:41:47,520 --> 00:41:47,880
Speaker 1: Agreed.

820
00:41:49,120 --> 00:41:51,120
Speaker 2: And if you want to know more about Judy Bloom,

821
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:53,440
Speaker 2: doesn't really matter what aide you are, go read some

822
00:41:53,480 --> 00:41:56,920
Speaker 2: of her books. While you're doing that, And you know what,

823
00:41:56,960 --> 00:41:58,640
Speaker 2: you could do a lot worse than checking it out

824
00:41:58,680 --> 00:42:02,240
Speaker 2: at your local library to support its existence there true

825
00:42:02,600 --> 00:42:06,120
Speaker 2: and or could do both. Buy one from your local

826
00:42:06,239 --> 00:42:07,480
Speaker 2: independent bookseller.

827
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:12,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe from Judy Bloom herself, sure you're in Key West.

828
00:42:13,239 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 2: Or if you find a dude selling books out of

829
00:42:16,120 --> 00:42:18,719
Speaker 2: the trunk of his car that is as independent a

830
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:20,439
Speaker 2: bookseller as you can find.

831
00:42:20,680 --> 00:42:23,760
Speaker 1: I wonder if you bought one from Judy Bloom herself

832
00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:25,520
Speaker 1: in her own bookstore and you're like, oh my god,

833
00:42:25,640 --> 00:42:27,719
Speaker 1: will you please sign this, She's like, I don't sign

834
00:42:27,760 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 1: books on Judy writing Bloom.

835
00:42:29,160 --> 00:42:29,719
Speaker 2: Please leave.

836
00:42:29,800 --> 00:42:31,360
Speaker 1: Here's your receipt middle finger.

837
00:42:32,920 --> 00:42:35,680
Speaker 2: Let's see. Chuck just made himself laugh, which is wonderful.

838
00:42:35,960 --> 00:42:37,600
Speaker 2: That means it's time for listener mail.

839
00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:43,520
Speaker 1: That means he's awake. Bonjour, Josh and Chuck. My husband

840
00:42:43,520 --> 00:42:44,880
Speaker 1: and I finally had a chance to see you live

841
00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:47,759
Speaker 1: for the first time at Massey Hall in Toronto this June,

842
00:42:48,160 --> 00:42:49,719
Speaker 1: which in real time was just a couple of nights

843
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:53,640
Speaker 1: ago for us, and it was the greatest show on Earth.

844
00:42:54,000 --> 00:42:55,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got a standing ovation.

845
00:42:56,120 --> 00:42:59,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really something. We are from a small

846
00:42:59,160 --> 00:43:02,400
Speaker 1: community about two hours and a half north of Toronto,

847
00:43:02,480 --> 00:43:05,000
Speaker 1: and we're definitely not city people, but we figured it's

848
00:43:05,040 --> 00:43:07,080
Speaker 1: worth it for Josh and Chuck. My husband's been a

849
00:43:07,160 --> 00:43:09,640
Speaker 1: huge fan and loyal listener for many years. I'll admit

850
00:43:09,680 --> 00:43:11,680
Speaker 1: that I had personally listen because it gave me something

851
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:13,640
Speaker 1: to talk about with a guy who had eventually become

852
00:43:13,640 --> 00:43:16,440
Speaker 1: my husband. But it didn't take long before I genuinely

853
00:43:16,440 --> 00:43:18,839
Speaker 1: fell in love with the show myself, and because of that,

854
00:43:18,880 --> 00:43:21,320
Speaker 1: I've always associated both of you with the very beginning

855
00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:24,640
Speaker 1: of our relationship. Nice your show at Massey Hall far

856
00:43:24,640 --> 00:43:27,160
Speaker 1: exceeded our expectations. I just wanted to thank you for

857
00:43:27,200 --> 00:43:30,360
Speaker 1: giving us such a wonderful evening. Atmosphere was warm, relaxed,

858
00:43:30,440 --> 00:43:33,120
Speaker 1: genuinely fun. My husband was smiling from ear to ear

859
00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:36,120
Speaker 1: the entire time, and despite the anxiety that events like

860
00:43:36,160 --> 00:43:39,279
Speaker 1: this can sometimes bring, he was comfortable and able to

861
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:42,920
Speaker 1: simply enjoy himself, and that alone meant more to me

862
00:43:42,960 --> 00:43:44,960
Speaker 1: than I can express. So thank you both for doing

863
00:43:44,960 --> 00:43:47,239
Speaker 1: what you do despite all the craziness in the world

864
00:43:47,280 --> 00:43:48,719
Speaker 1: right now. It brought me so much joy to see

865
00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:51,160
Speaker 1: a room full of people come together simply to laugh

866
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:53,480
Speaker 1: and learn and enjoy a couple of hours together. I

867
00:43:53,480 --> 00:43:55,960
Speaker 1: think your Canadian listeners note just how kind and genuine

868
00:43:55,960 --> 00:43:58,319
Speaker 1: you both are, and we truly appreciate that you made

869
00:43:58,320 --> 00:44:00,000
Speaker 1: the trip to spend some time with us here in care.

870
00:44:00,640 --> 00:44:03,000
Speaker 1: We'd be lucky to have you back anytime, because you're

871
00:44:03,040 --> 00:44:06,640
Speaker 1: always welcome here. Thanks for such a memorable experience, warmly,

872
00:44:07,160 --> 00:44:08,440
Speaker 1: Kelsey and Andrew. Sweet.

873
00:44:08,800 --> 00:44:11,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a world class email.

874
00:44:11,239 --> 00:44:13,280
Speaker 1: Huh maybe best ever.

875
00:44:13,560 --> 00:44:16,880
Speaker 2: That's the kind of email that removes borders and just

876
00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:22,040
Speaker 2: turns us into one great, big North American continent. You know. Agreed, Well,

877
00:44:22,080 --> 00:44:24,080
Speaker 2: thanks a lot, Kelsey and Andrew. Thanks for coming to

878
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:26,480
Speaker 2: see us, and thank you Kelsey for such a great email.

879
00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:28,919
Speaker 2: And if you want to try to top that, let's

880
00:44:28,960 --> 00:44:31,600
Speaker 2: see what you got. You can wrap it up, spank

881
00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:33,760
Speaker 2: it on the bottom, and send it off to stuff

882
00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:39,960
Speaker 2: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

883
00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:43,000
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For

884
00:44:43,080 --> 00:44:47,279
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

885
00:44:47,360 --> 00:44:49,200
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.