Speaker 1: Hello again, honorary residents of Shaker Heights Circle nine seven.
Speaker 1: This is Little Fires Everywhere, the official podcast, and I
Speaker 1: am your co host, Jamie Loftus. So if you're listening
Speaker 1: to this right after watching episode for we have a
Speaker 1: lot to talk about, and today I'm excited to give
Speaker 1: you a little taste of what Shaker Heights, Ohio is
Speaker 1: really like. In this episode, we're gonna be speaking with
Speaker 1: the author of Little Fires Everywhere, the novel celest Ng
Speaker 1: and we're also going to be speaking with real life
Speaker 1: Shaker Heights residents today, both city planners and current students
Speaker 1: with the Student Council on race relations. Really good stuff.
Speaker 1: But before we get there, I wanted to give you
Speaker 1: a brief history lesson. I know, bear with me. This
Speaker 1: is a brief history of Shaker Heights, Ohio. Because Shaker Heights,
Speaker 1: as you already know from watching the show, is not
Speaker 1: your average community. So Shaker Heights reached city status in
Speaker 1: one and like the nineties iteration we see in Little
Speaker 1: Fires Everywhere, it is known for its extremely specific building
Speaker 1: codes and zoning laws, carefully planning and regulating the length
Speaker 1: of grass, the color of houses, how far any given
Speaker 1: house should be from the nearest elementary school, and ensuring
Speaker 1: that the city is neighborhood watched and sidewalked carefully, amongst
Speaker 1: other things. Shaker Heights is not the only place of
Speaker 1: its kind. There are over a hundred planned cities and
Speaker 1: communities currently active in the US, but Shaker is by
Speaker 1: far the most famous of them, in part because of
Speaker 1: its reputation for adopting progressive policies that would later become
Speaker 1: standard across the country. Because over the years, Shaker Heights
Speaker 1: has made a variety of efforts to encourage integration in
Speaker 1: their community, two varying levels of success. Fast forward a
Speaker 1: couple more years. In nineteen seventy nine, things were finally
Speaker 1: starting to look up, with the Housing Office promising to
Speaker 1: show white home buyers homes in predominantly black neighborhoods and
Speaker 1: vice versa. This initiative led to something called the Fund
Speaker 1: for the Future of Shaker Heights in six, a home
Speaker 1: buyers loan program that provided black home buyers with loans
Speaker 1: to encourage them to move into neighborhoods that were at
Speaker 1: least white, and white homeowners loans to move into neighborhoods
Speaker 1: that were at least fifty black, and while well intentioned
Speaker 1: one of the themes in the show, this program was
Speaker 1: not able to overcome the inherent white supremacy of the
Speaker 1: real estate market itself, and not many black home buyers
Speaker 1: were able to afford homes in the majority white areas,
Speaker 1: and so by the nineteen nineties, white home buyers were
Speaker 1: receiving of the loans distributed And you know who else
Speaker 1: was in Shaker Heights in author Celeste Ing. Celeste was
Speaker 1: a student at Shaker High at the time that her
Speaker 1: novel takes place. The world that Mia and Pearl Warren
Speaker 1: drive into in their station wagon in the pilot episode,
Speaker 1: It's a world driven by for better or worse, the
Speaker 1: quote unquote good intentions of Elena Richardson and her fellow
Speaker 1: Shaker Rights. I got the chance to catch up with
Speaker 1: Celeste to get some insight into her history with Shaker
Speaker 1: Heights and what about that experience growing up gave way
Speaker 1: to the book and series we now know and love. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, your Celeste, Hey, Celeste, uh So, just
Speaker 1: to get sorted, would you mind telling me a little
Speaker 1: bit about your personal history in Shaker Heights. Sure, I
Speaker 1: grew up in Shaker Heights. I moved there a little
Speaker 1: bit before I turned ten, and then I lived there
Speaker 1: until I went away to college, until I was about eighteen,
Speaker 1: and it was a really formative place for me, and
Speaker 1: I learned a lot ring up there, and it did
Speaker 1: shape me into the person that I am, for for
Speaker 1: better and for worse. Largely, I think for better. Um.
Speaker 1: It is a community that really puts its ideals right
Speaker 1: up front. That's shown, I think, not only in the
Speaker 1: history of the town, which was built as a sort
Speaker 1: of idealized town. Every road was planned out so that
Speaker 1: you know, the traffic wouldn't dart through the neighborhood, it
Speaker 1: would keep the area quiet, no children would have to
Speaker 1: cross a major street. Um. And it was also a
Speaker 1: place that, at least starting from the nineteen fifties, was
Speaker 1: really heavily invested in the idea of desegregation and of
Speaker 1: being racially diverse, at least in terms of black and white.
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen fifties there was a bomb at
Speaker 1: the house of a prominent black lawyer who lived in
Speaker 1: Shaker Heights, and this was at the height of white flight. UM.
Speaker 1: It was a problem that was happening all of the country,
Speaker 1: and Shaker Heights had this moment where they had to
Speaker 1: decide what are we going to do about this? Are
Speaker 1: we going to give in and let the different areas
Speaker 1: of town become more segregated, or are we going to
Speaker 1: actively try and combat that? And they chose to actively
Speaker 1: try and do something about it, and that's really been
Speaker 1: one of the guiding principles for the community since then.
Speaker 1: So when you were writing little fires everywhere, what was
Speaker 1: on your mind about the Shaker you grew up in.
Speaker 1: It is a place that is trying in ways that
Speaker 1: many other places aren't. And the question always is, Okay,
Speaker 1: are you trying enough? What's what's going wrong? Is it
Speaker 1: just human nature? And I think that's one of the
Speaker 1: questions that the community has been wrestling with for at
Speaker 1: least the thirty years that I've been connected with it.
Speaker 1: It is that sort of open question of intentions versus
Speaker 1: what actually comes out. I mean, they haven't solved racism, no,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, neither has anyone else. And
Speaker 1: that's because these problems are really huge and really complicated,
Speaker 1: and we're just trying to sort of wrestle with them
Speaker 1: as best we can. Okay, So what are the sort
Speaker 1: of questions that you were grappling with in regards to
Speaker 1: shake her throughout the writing of this book. I mean,
Speaker 1: how much can you kind of adhere to that idealism?
Speaker 1: I think it's easy for us to see Elena's idealism,
Speaker 1: even Elena's dogmatism we might call it, and that she
Speaker 1: has an idea of how your life is supposed to work, right,
Speaker 1: she has an idea of what you're supposed to be doing.
Speaker 1: These are the good choices that you're supposed to be making,
Speaker 1: assuming that you have them. Right. Um, it's easy for
Speaker 1: us to see that, I think because as a culture
Speaker 1: we're really biased towards the idea of the free spirit.
Speaker 1: We'd like to think of ourselves as being all, you know,
Speaker 1: free spirits and rebels, and that's that's kind of that's
Speaker 1: part of the foundation of our identity, right were you
Speaker 1: you're here, so you can do whatever you want. But
Speaker 1: the truth is that Mia also has her own kind
Speaker 1: of idealism. It is almost sort of fanaticism that she
Speaker 1: thinks this is how an artist lives. You give up
Speaker 1: all these things for your art, to the point that
Speaker 1: you may be uproot your daughter in the service of
Speaker 1: your art. That she really sacrifices a lot, and I
Speaker 1: think she starts to see also the limits of those things,
Speaker 1: where she comes to shake her heights. There's that really
Speaker 1: really wrenching moment um in the early episodes where Pearl
Speaker 1: says to her, I want more than one wall. You know,
Speaker 1: she's she's saying, I want to be able to stay here.
Speaker 1: I want more than just the little kind of tidbits
Speaker 1: that I've been allowed to have up until now. And
Speaker 1: you see that Mia is running up against the limits
Speaker 1: of how she's been living her life too. There's there's
Speaker 1: definitely not anyone in this story who comes out as
Speaker 1: sort of the hands clean, faultless person in the story.
Speaker 1: It is very much like and into the Woods moment
Speaker 1: of there's you know, everyone's pointing their fingers and saying
Speaker 1: it's your fault, and the truth is that it's kind
Speaker 1: of everybody's fault. And that question of good intentions too,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, we're we're trying so hard to
Speaker 1: be our best selves, and yet we're also human beings,
Speaker 1: and of course the problem is that we always think
Speaker 1: that you know, your good intentions are are enough and
Speaker 1: should shield you, and do shield many people from the
Speaker 1: actual consequences of your actions, and this is really a
Speaker 1: story about a lot of your actions coming home and
Speaker 1: those consequences coming back to you. Thank you again to
Speaker 1: Celesting for the perspective and for the book that we
Speaker 1: are all very obsessed with. So in Celest we have
Speaker 1: a perfect end to the Shaker Heights of the nineties.
Speaker 1: But I was curious about what Schaker is like now.
Speaker 1: Has there been any easing to the many social issues
Speaker 1: we see at play in the series, And are the
Speaker 1: problems that Pearl Warren faces at Shaker High, specifically with
Speaker 1: getting into honors classes as a black student still relevant
Speaker 1: at the school today. And to answer these questions, I
Speaker 1: was lucky to get in touch with Tierra Sargent, one
Speaker 1: of the supervisors and graduate of the school's Student Group
Speaker 1: on Race Relations or SCORE, which is a group at
Speaker 1: Shaker that aims to have current students educate others in
Speaker 1: the community about systemic oppression and to foster healthier race
Speaker 1: relations in Shaker. Joining us on this call as well
Speaker 1: are two current Shaker High students and members of SCORE,
Speaker 1: students Jared Christopher and carly Lehman. Let's take a listen. Hi,
Speaker 1: my name is Tear sergeant and I am the Score advisor. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Carly in Score. I'm a core leader. I'm Jared,
Speaker 1: I'm also a core leader. Amazing. So I am curious,
Speaker 1: I mean because so much of the story follows the
Speaker 1: trials and tribulations of high school students and Shaker, but
Speaker 1: almost twenty five years ago. So just from your own
Speaker 1: personal experience having grown up there, what is that experience
Speaker 1: like growing in a very planned community. What are the
Speaker 1: advantages and then what are the drawbacks if if any?
Speaker 1: Tierra Um I up in the Moorland and gus Igent.
Speaker 1: So we used to have our own elementary school because
Speaker 1: I think it was planned for everybody to be able
Speaker 1: to walk to their own schools our neighborhood. We are
Speaker 1: bused to the Mercer neighborhood and so essentially Moreland is
Speaker 1: all African American and Mercer is all white, and so
Speaker 1: we were bused there to start integrating UM Mercer Elementary School.
Speaker 1: So I think I definitely do like the planning community.
Speaker 1: Like Carly said, I think it is a nice privilege
Speaker 1: that we don't recognize. But then you could see like
Speaker 1: how the plan didn't work and like how Mercer students
Speaker 1: are some Mercer students are bused to another neighborhood. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask about that because there is a
Speaker 1: storyline in Little Fires Everywhere, the series involving a black
Speaker 1: student who's transferred into Shaker from another school and experiences
Speaker 1: a lot of resistance from the guidance council system in
Speaker 1: getting into the advanced classes she deserves to be in
Speaker 1: because of her race. Is that something you've seen reflected
Speaker 1: in the current Shaker Heights system. Yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: guidance counselor issue we're talking and that is like that
Speaker 1: was the shocking detail that it's still true. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times black families have to still fight
Speaker 1: for their children to have advanced classes. So about a
Speaker 1: month ago, we had an open discussion about how we
Speaker 1: say at Shaker that we have open enrollment, but do
Speaker 1: we truly have open enrollment of black families are still
Speaker 1: constantly fighting for their kids to be in advanced classes.
Speaker 1: I've experienced this, I know, Jared, your mom mentioned that
Speaker 1: you've experienced that. But then also Carly's brother Sam always
Speaker 1: makes this point about like privilege, um, and how yes,
Speaker 1: we want equity in the district, but sometimes white parents
Speaker 1: have to understand that they have privileged to and they
Speaker 1: might say that they want equity, but they really don't
Speaker 1: want equity because it might seem that their child is
Speaker 1: um getting a resource taken away. So it's really bring
Speaker 1: getting awareness to these types. Uh we could say mentalities
Speaker 1: um that are happening with the guy whose counselor thing.
Speaker 1: Not only do I notice that like people of other
Speaker 1: races are discouraged from taking upper level classes, but I
Speaker 1: also noticed that some classes will have mostly white students
Speaker 1: and some classes who have mostly black students despite being
Speaker 1: the same level. And that came to in like another
Speaker 1: way of separating us, even though just another reason why
Speaker 1: we should be more together because we all have the
Speaker 1: same type of ability. The gods counselor system just should
Speaker 1: be more aware that when separating the classes. Currently, if
Speaker 1: you were able to get through to the powers that
Speaker 1: be in Shaker and make some changes, what kind of
Speaker 1: changes do you want to see made in your community?
Speaker 1: I think a big thing with the education gaps, It's
Speaker 1: just like with teachers are a classes all the teachers
Speaker 1: are white, basically like finding right more diversity than that.
Speaker 1: So we're hiring a chief Diversity Officer which when I
Speaker 1: was in high school, I was like, I wish you
Speaker 1: had a chief Diversity officer and administration. So it's really
Speaker 1: cool to see that we are going to have someone
Speaker 1: who is solely focused on these issues and not like
Speaker 1: other administrators who just have to like tackle this this
Speaker 1: issue while doing the rest of their job, Like this
Speaker 1: is going to be someone's first priority. So I am
Speaker 1: appreciative of that, um but I think also that we
Speaker 1: need to address the wealth gap. And obviously the wealth
Speaker 1: gap correlates directly with race. So if you don't have
Speaker 1: the resources to have a tutor, you might not have
Speaker 1: the ability to have the resources that some of your
Speaker 1: white counterparts have because they have a tutor. Or if
Speaker 1: you don't have the resources to buy expensible across equipment,
Speaker 1: like my brother plays across and he's one of the
Speaker 1: only African Americans on lacrosse, so really tackling the wealth gap.
Speaker 1: So just really far feel and shaker to understand what
Speaker 1: he is and truly wanting to have equity for everyone. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you so much to all three of you for
Speaker 1: taking the time to talk with us. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thanks for having us. Thank you so as
Speaker 1: you can hear, Shaker is a very complicated place, and
Speaker 1: I was still trying to wrap my head around the
Speaker 1: ins and outs of what a planned community really is
Speaker 1: and what it represents. So I put on my big
Speaker 1: girl Elena pants minus all the problematic parts, and I
Speaker 1: decided to ask the women who are currently leading the
Speaker 1: charge planning and Shaker today. This is a conversation I
Speaker 1: had recently with Joyce Rayberman, the director of Shaker Heights
Speaker 1: City Planning, and Julie Boys, the Shaker Heights Communications Director,
Speaker 1: the week before Little Fires Everywhere first aired. So let's
Speaker 1: take a listen. Hello, ladies. So before we get started,
Speaker 1: just so everyone can tell who's speaking, let's to introduce ourselves. Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Julie McGovern Boise, and I am the director of
Speaker 1: Communications and Marketing for the City of Shaker Heights. And
Speaker 1: I'm Joyce Braverman, and I am the Planning director for
Speaker 1: the City of Shaker Heights and I've been with the
Speaker 1: city for thirty years. I've only been with the city
Speaker 1: for ten years, but I was born raised here. So wow, okay,
Speaker 1: So for many people um watching Little Fires Everywhere is
Speaker 1: going to be their introduction to Shaker Heights. Just for
Speaker 1: us newcomers. Um, if you had to describe what is
Speaker 1: Shaker Heights, we are a planned community. We were planned
Speaker 1: by the vance swer Engine brothers in the early nineteen
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve who bought up most of the land of
Speaker 1: Shaker Heights early in their career, so they developed this
Speaker 1: beautiful community. They wanted to control how the built form looks,
Speaker 1: so that was very important to them. And they had
Speaker 1: a publication called the Van swer Engine Design Standards, and
Speaker 1: these talked about building your house and three styles, and
Speaker 1: this appears in the book Tutor French and Colonial. And
Speaker 1: they also had standards for paint colors and which colors
Speaker 1: to paint the trim of your house and the body
Speaker 1: of the house. They also called for the homes to
Speaker 1: be designed by a competent architect. And what they meant
Speaker 1: by this was an architect that was known. It was
Speaker 1: an era in the early nineteen hundreds were some of
Speaker 1: the finest architects were at the height of their careers
Speaker 1: in the Cleveland area. And also to regulate good taste.
Speaker 1: They were very concerned about someone who might not have
Speaker 1: good taste. So that's kind of the history of Shaker Heights.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting. I am very interested in the planning aspect,
Speaker 1: especially because it's just a concept that is kind of
Speaker 1: foreign to me. So when the Sawer engine brothers said
Speaker 1: good taste, what did they mean by that? So they
Speaker 1: were very concerned with what the roofs looked like, and
Speaker 1: what the windows looked like, and where the garage, where
Speaker 1: the garages were. So the garages were not and are
Speaker 1: still not allowed to have doors facing the street. So
Speaker 1: if it was an attached garage, met you came up
Speaker 1: your driveway, didn't you turn into the garage with the
Speaker 1: door facing the rear or a detached garage would have
Speaker 1: a door facing sideways. So again you came in your
Speaker 1: driveway instead of going right into your garage, you made
Speaker 1: a right turn or a left turn. Why would they
Speaker 1: are garage doors? And I sare I'm trying I'm trying
Speaker 1: to figure out doors. I mean, in the book, the
Speaker 1: idea of it being a planned community is sort of
Speaker 1: like planned to perfection or it's planned for perfection. And
Speaker 1: when I was reading the book, it made me realize, like, wow,
Speaker 1: that could feel like a really confining thing for some people.
Speaker 1: It gave me this new perspective on it because I
Speaker 1: think that there were a lot of characters in the
Speaker 1: book that did feel confined by that that that created
Speaker 1: a certain amount of pressure. I think that for when
Speaker 1: you grow up here, the idea of this being a
Speaker 1: planned community, it feels that we were doing things in
Speaker 1: a very intentional way. Our planning was to try to
Speaker 1: be an expression of our values in many UM situations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel that it's planned. You appreciate all the little details,
Speaker 1: but you don't feel like, you know, some utopian society, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're not in a simulation, right, No, you're not.
Speaker 1: And really, what it gets to is that it's created
Speaker 1: a physical environment that's a really nice place to live. UM.
Speaker 1: Starting to talk a little bit more about little fires everywhere.
Speaker 1: Have you both read the book? Yes? Yes, And what
Speaker 1: were your initial reactions to it? Well, you know, my
Speaker 1: initial reaction at first, I was a little taken it
Speaker 1: back because like it personifies Shaker, So since it's a
Speaker 1: work of literature, it kind of makes us more than
Speaker 1: what we are prepared for this. I went back and
Speaker 1: read parts of the book and on second reading, it
Speaker 1: wasn't so shocking to me because it really is a
Speaker 1: fair portrayal of our community. It's very accurate, wrote about
Speaker 1: the details of the city. Shaker actually has a life
Speaker 1: and a personality, so it feels like a character in
Speaker 1: the book. Yeah, I would agree, and you know, it
Speaker 1: was really fun to read it. The accuracy was really amazing.
Speaker 1: But I also have to say that having gone to
Speaker 1: the high school, the scenes in the high school were
Speaker 1: so incredibly accurate. I felt like I was back in
Speaker 1: high school. I mean, she talked specifically about our backyard
Speaker 1: pick up for garbage, which people from not around the
Speaker 1: east side of Cleveland thinks it's the most bizarre process
Speaker 1: that they ever heard of. It's actually fantastic. It's fantastic,
Speaker 1: but it's part of the value of the community, um,
Speaker 1: not to have garbage on the front lawn, to keep
Speaker 1: your community beautiful. And then were there characters in the
Speaker 1: story that you felt particularly connected to. I was captivated
Speaker 1: by the you know, the high school kids in the
Speaker 1: book because I thought the experience was really genuine. Um.
Speaker 1: I did feel like um Elena was, you know, all
Speaker 1: is the caricature of people here. It was sort of
Speaker 1: an extreme version of people here and her you know,
Speaker 1: her drive for perfection, and you know, like I said
Speaker 1: before that sort of connection between everything being planned and
Speaker 1: you know, perfect and controlling for the messiness. I didn't
Speaker 1: really connect with that, um, but I did think the
Speaker 1: kids and their experience here seemed real and the interactions
Speaker 1: between them, Um. I think it reflected our diverse community
Speaker 1: and that we do have a lot of single parent
Speaker 1: households and Shaker um and part of it is because
Speaker 1: of our housing stock is actually rental stock, be it
Speaker 1: two family homes like the one they lived on Winslow
Speaker 1: or apartment buildings or condos. So even though Shaker Heights
Speaker 1: seems like, you know, the picture of perfection and single
Speaker 1: family home ownership, we are actually you know, have a
Speaker 1: good percentage of rental property in our city, and people
Speaker 1: who are single or single parents or lower income are
Speaker 1: in a lot of those rental properties. So I felt
Speaker 1: that was very real portrayal of the type of people
Speaker 1: that lived here, right, And that is of course where
Speaker 1: we find Mia and Pearl living in the show, in
Speaker 1: the rental property owned by Elena's family on Winslow Road.
Speaker 1: She talked about the book the Winslow Wrote Historic District
Speaker 1: and had every two family home was designed to look
Speaker 1: like a single family home, and that designation. That effort
Speaker 1: was recognized in the nineties by the designation of the
Speaker 1: street as a historic district, to show that smaller homes
Speaker 1: had value and were held to the same Shaker standards
Speaker 1: as larger homes. You know, that's sort of shown as
Speaker 1: one of the ways that you know, Shaker was trying
Speaker 1: to be so perfect, like to pretend I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't have two family houses or rental housing.
Speaker 1: But the truth of the matter is that they were
Speaker 1: designed that way so that you know, everybody felt like
Speaker 1: they were, you know, living in this really high quality
Speaker 1: housing and as Joyce said, you know, built to the
Speaker 1: same standard, and it was it was done for those reasons.
Speaker 1: It wasn't done to create some sort of facade of perfection.
Speaker 1: So you know that that idea of perfection is used
Speaker 1: in the book, I think really effectively because it sets
Speaker 1: up some interesting tension between characters. But again, I think,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned before, you know, I think in some
Speaker 1: ways for us that idea of you know, planning these
Speaker 1: things out were to achieve some intentional goals, you know
Speaker 1: about about the community. So yeah, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: just thought that when she was talking about Winslow in
Speaker 1: the book, it was kind of interesting because the way
Speaker 1: it was portrayed there, I think wasn't exactly what the
Speaker 1: intention was. That's one of the parts of the book
Speaker 1: and the show that I found so fascinating, as you
Speaker 1: can both understand why and the intention behind designing something
Speaker 1: a certain way wasn't intended to be any sort of
Speaker 1: value judgment on anyone. But then you're like, well, I
Speaker 1: can understand why it may be interpreted in that way
Speaker 1: depending on you know where you're coming at the situation.
Speaker 1: And I guess just for listeners who are coming to
Speaker 1: this only having the context of Shaker being portrayed in
Speaker 1: what is different about Shaker in that maybe wasn't as
Speaker 1: true or there were things to work on back in Well,
Speaker 1: you know, we are constantly evolving and growing um and
Speaker 1: I think we have dug in even more deeply on
Speaker 1: exploring diversity and inclusion and being even more proactive in
Speaker 1: terms of initiatives that were undertaking, were bolder and more
Speaker 1: open about how much we value this and doing the
Speaker 1: hard work. You know. I think actually the book did
Speaker 1: a good job of portraying that idea that you could
Speaker 1: kind of check the box on diversity. It was easy
Speaker 1: to say that you wanted to have friends of a
Speaker 1: different race or invite them into your house, and then
Speaker 1: you kind of check the box and said, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm good with this. But I think now, and since then,
Speaker 1: and certainly now, we are very very intentional about creating
Speaker 1: a diverse and inclusive community. And the city has just
Speaker 1: enacted some of the most progressive and wide ranging l
Speaker 1: g B t Q protections. We are really proud of that.
Speaker 1: M But all of these things are really overt expressions
Speaker 1: of our values, and I'm not sure we were as
Speaker 1: overt and intentional at that time. I think that Celestue
Speaker 1: book opens up a lot of difficult conversations. She is
Speaker 1: a product of a school system where we did value that,
Speaker 1: so I'm not surprised that her book touches on some
Speaker 1: really important themes um But you know, we're not We're
Speaker 1: not afraid of the hard work. We're not afraid of
Speaker 1: the difficult conversation, and you know, it can be messy
Speaker 1: and difficult. But I think the good news is that
Speaker 1: we're willing to do this hard work now. So so
Speaker 1: come here and visit, and we'll take people on a
Speaker 1: little fires everywhere tour gonna do a Little Fires Everywhere
Speaker 1: walking tour. It'll be like an Airbnb immersion option, Like okay,
Speaker 1: this is where Elena and Mia got into an argument
Speaker 1: right here. So that's Shaker Heights, Ohio and all. It's
Speaker 1: wonderful and messy glory. I hope that today's episode gave
Speaker 1: you a little more insight into the world that the
Speaker 1: Little Fires Everywhere team brought to life so beautifully and
Speaker 1: keeps you all fired up for what I can tell you,
Speaker 1: spoiler Free is a very juicy episode airing on Hulu
Speaker 1: next week. You can follow Little Fires Everywhere, well everywhere
Speaker 1: at Little Fires Hulu and we'll see you, hear you. However,
Speaker 1: you say that about a podcast next week. M