Lauren Marino, BOOKISH BROADS: Women Who Wrote Themselves Into History
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
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[1:03]Lauren Marino is the author of bookish broads, women who wrote themselves into history.
[1:08]She is also the author of What Would Dolly Do and Jackie and Cassini.
[1:13]She's the former founding editor and editorial director of Gotham Books, where she published
[1:16]multiple best sellers and award-winning books.
[1:19]She's currently editorial director at Heshet.
[1:22]As a writer, she has collaborated with celebrities, doctors, psychologists, and other
[1:25]luminaries on their books.
[1:27]She lives in New York City with her children and two cats.
[1:30]Welcome, Lauren.
[1:31]Thank you so much for coming.
[1:32]Don't have time to read books to discuss bookish broads, women who wrote themselves into
[1:36]history.
[1:37]Thank you.
[1:38]Thanks for having me.
[1:39]It's nice to talk to you again.
[1:40]You too.
[1:41]As I was just saying, I was introduced and learned a lot more about women who I thought
[1:46]I knew a lot about, but obviously did not tell, I mean, I was particularly interested
[1:51]in Mary Shelley's story who had like eight million bad things happen to her, which I
[1:56]know is before she wrote Frankenstein, but you really cover so many amazing women in
[2:02]the book and even things like how romantic novels started and, you know, Joan Diddy and
[2:08]an Octavia Butler who just opened a bookstore and I also, and anyway, it was just so interesting
[2:14]to hear, especially when there was so much against women before.
[2:17]But anyway, why don't I let you talk?
[2:19]Yes.
[2:20]Well, I mean, you say the rest.
[2:24]Well, you know, I love that, you know, you started this podcast, Mom Don't Have Time
[2:29]to Read Books.
[2:31]Well, moms don't have time to write books either, and yet both of us have done it.
[2:36]And for me, being a bookworm my whole life, being in the book business, being an avid
[2:42]reader, always being a writer and keeping journals, I read an article about where the ALA,
[2:49]the American Library Association had done this study where they gathered information
[2:54]from libraries all over the world about the books that were the most circulated and they
[2:59]sent out a list of the top 100 books and only 12 of them were by women.
[3:05]And that didn't make any sense to me because I know in the book business that 80% of
[3:09]books are purchased by women.
[3:11]I know that women are bigger readers and yet, you know, I sort of went down this rabbit
[3:16]hole of Googling top 100 books and greatestbooks.org and it was the same 12 female writers
[3:26]that showed up in the top 100 books over and over again.
[3:30]And I said, why, you know, is this an algorithm problem?
[3:34]Like why, you know, why aren't all the female writers that I've been reading my whole
[3:39]life showing up here, you know, it's Jane Austen.
[3:43]It's J.K. Rowling.
[3:44]It's the Bronte sisters and, you know, and Pride, it's like the same books, the same
[3:49]authors.
[3:50]So I started doing research and I had a blast doing this and I started out with a list
[3:57]of the writers that I wanted to research and it was mostly the women like my favorite writers.
[4:04]And as I started doing research, I realized I started learning about more and more writers
[4:11]and I learned about, you know, like the first novel was written by Lady Merisaki in
[4:18]10th century Japan, you know, if you say, if you were a lit major like I was, they
[4:23]say, oh, it was, you know, Samuel Johnson or Richardson wrote, you know, wrote the
[4:28]first novel.
[4:29]No, it was actually written by a woman.
[4:31]So I just, I saw how these female writers stood on each other's shoulders and how every
[4:39]writer took the work of the female writers before her.
[4:44]And you know, so I learned, I got to study and go down the rabbit hole of rereading some
[4:50]of my favorite books and learning the stories behind these women.
[4:54]But I also learned about a lot of other female writers.
[4:58]So I had a great time.
[4:59]I could have, I could have written a book that was a thousand pages.
[5:03]I could write 10 more books because I didn't even get to cover most of the women I wanted
[5:08]to and this book was never meant to be encyclopedic.
[5:11]It really like as I was going through the writing process and the research, it ended
[5:16]up becoming sort of a history of the female experience.
[5:22]And you know, even today, I think it's changing, but the female experience has always
[5:27]been diminished.
[5:29]And even, and even books by women writers have been diminished.
[5:33]And you know, you remember the whole era of chick licks, it's like, well, if you write
[5:37]a domestic novel, if you write about your experience as a woman or you write something
[5:43]about being a mother or having children or, you know, it's chick or romance, it's chick
[5:48]lit.
[5:49]So, you know, that just that title alone is saying the female experience is not valued.
[5:54]So, you know, I just love like I wanted to honor these women, the incredible contributions
[6:00]that they made to literature.
[6:02]I wanted to bring other readers to them.
[6:06]So I have suggested reading after each of the essays, but I also wanted to inspire other
[6:14]aspiring female writers because the obstacles that these women faced were so tremendous
[6:20]that for me to say, oh, well, I'm a single working mother with two kids.
[6:24]I don't have time to write.
[6:26]Well, Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf weren't even educated.
[6:31]Jane Austen went to school for a month.
[6:34]Her sisters and her mother did all of the housework and the gardening so that she could
[6:38]write her books.
[6:40]So if you didn't have either a supportive father with money who was going to educate you
[6:46]or if you didn't have a governess, if you didn't have access to books, how would you ever
[6:51]learn how to become a writer?
[6:54]And you know, there's a story in here of the writer who joined the, you know, you're
[6:58]going to join a convent in order to get an education or you had to, you know, you looked
[7:03]at your mother who had 24 children, 24 children in a row, you know, women were pregnant
[7:09]or taking care of children their whole lives.
[7:13]You were married off in puberty, probably to a man much older than you that you didn't
[7:18]know.
[7:19]How are you going to write books?
[7:20]So I don't know.
[7:21]I just love how they found ways around all of these obstacles.
[7:26]We're so passionate about expressing themselves and expressing their experiences that
[7:31]they found a way.
[7:33]And some of these books have been a little lost to history.
[7:36]Some of them, you know, I mean, obviously I found out enough about them to do the research
[7:41]for this book and I was able to find things like Afrobenz work and read some of it.
[7:48]But you know, she was a great playwright and when she died, they destroyed her reputation
[7:54]to kind of eliminate her from the canon.
[7:57]So you know, I just wanted to honor them and also show other women that no matter what
[8:03]you think you're dealing with, your experience is valuable.
[8:07]And there are ways to get your, you know, to get your story out there.
[8:12]And you know, your obstacles maybe aren't as bad as some of the ones that other women
[8:17]had to deal with in history.
[8:18]So it's meant to be inspirational as well as educational.
[8:23]It could be called like, and you thought it was hard.
[8:26]No, it's great too because it gives us a look at, I mean, when you pick up a book,
[8:35]you don't necessarily immerse yourself and win what was going on at the time.
[8:41]And it's so important to keep that context, right?
[8:44]Because a book, you know, you don't, aside from the copyright date, it's not always hitting
[8:49]you over the head when it was written, what was going on.
[8:52]And the environment is, I mean, just totally changes your thinking.
[8:56]It's the same thing with art, right?
[8:57]When you go to a museum and even what you were saying about like building and what came
[9:00]before.
[9:01]It's the same thing, right?
[9:02]It's all like, we're all constantly kind of in dialogue to the point where like everybody
[9:07]on this podcast is like a response to something, maybe one of these, you know, it all, it's
[9:11]like all related.
[9:12]Yes.
[9:13]Yes.
[9:14]So, you know, I mean, this is meant to be a fun book and to bring people, I mean, you
[9:20]know, I wanted to get to tell the stories behind the storytellers.
[9:24]That was really my mission because I mean, you know, love being a book lover.
[9:29]You always want to know like, what made that person write that?
[9:32]Where did that come from?
[9:33]What inspired them?
[9:35]And, you know, you read Carson McCullers and it's so dark, you know, the Southern Gothic.
[9:41]And then you hear, you know, you read her story and, you know, the dramatic fever and
[9:46]she was this brilliant prodigy pianist.
[9:49]And then because of her illness, she wasn't able to do any of that.
[9:54]And so she became a writer instead.
[9:57]And you know, you just sort of see like she was in pain her whole life.
[10:00]died young, you see what was going on in her mind
[10:04]in order to create those books.
[10:07]And Jane Austen, I mean, I've just a favorite,
[10:10]like to satirize the importance of marriage for women
[10:14]because it was really the only option.
[10:17]And those books are, they're so beloved,
[10:20]but they are also satirizing what was going on at the time.
[10:24]And it was all of these women's,
[10:27]they wanted their voices to be heard
[10:29]in societies that didn't really want to hear them.
[10:32]Even, you know, Zora and Neil Hurston, you know, her work,
[10:36]I mean, she's so incredible.
[10:38]She was this, you know, anthropologist.
[10:40]She was down in Haiti doing all this research.
[10:43]She, her in Langston Hughes did this whole ride
[10:45]through the deep south, you know,
[10:47]when it was very dangerous for two people,
[10:49]you know, two black people to be driving around
[10:52]like that she kept a gun taped to her leg.
[10:55]But she was writing about like, you know,
[10:58]in their eyes were watching God,
[11:00]she was writing in this Southern black vernacular.
[11:04]And she was deeply criticized for doing that.
[11:09]And so again, the male critics kind of shut her down
[11:13]and she died, she was making, you know,
[11:16]she died with $50, cleaning hotel rooms,
[11:21]totally unknown.
[11:22]She had an unmarked grave.
[11:23]And it wasn't until the 70s when Alice Walker
[11:26]had discovered her and brought her to the world
[11:31]and really honored her.
[11:32]And now my daughter in high school is reading
[11:34]their eyes are watching God.
[11:36]So it's interesting how like writers get lost
[11:39]and then they become refound.
[11:41]And like Octavia Butler, you know,
[11:44]she was a prophet, you know, she was dyslexic.
[11:48]Her mother was a housekeeper.
[11:50]She really struggled to get herself educated.
[11:53]And she wrote some of the most incredible science fiction
[11:57]and she made all of these predictions in her science fiction.
[12:02]And, you know, she did what she won a MacArthur award.
[12:04]She was valued, but her books didn't really sell
[12:06]in her own lifetime.
[12:09]And now you see parable of the sewer,
[12:12]hit the New York Times bestseller list
[12:14]and they're reissuing all of her backlist.
[12:16]And she's finally, readers are finally finding her
[12:19]and her genius.
[12:21]And she did a lot of that kind of end of the world
[12:24]dystopian science fiction
[12:26]and predicted a lot of like all these zombie movies
[12:29]and the end of us in a way that all came from
[12:34]the work that she was doing.
[12:35]So I just, you know, I just want people to value
[12:39]what these women have contributed to our culture.
[12:42]Amazing.
[12:43]We need like a contemporary book of spruds.
[12:46]It would be interesting.
[12:47]Yes.
[12:48]Like your picks for who's gonna,
[12:50]who people will remember in the next slide.
[12:53]Right.
[12:54]And why it is.
[12:55]It's hard.
[12:56]I mean, you know, as a writer,
[12:57]you work with the publisher.
[12:58]I mean, this book is, you know, it's illustrated.
[13:01]I tried to have like fun illustrations
[13:04]to make it appealing to young people who are so visual.
[13:09]But, you know, and just to sort of show,
[13:12]you know, like even Zikhala Sa here
[13:14]who has also been kind of lost to history.
[13:17]But she was taken out of her home as a Lakota Sioux
[13:24]and put, you know, put in strips of all of her language,
[13:29]her culture.
[13:31]She became this incredible violinist.
[13:32]But she was the first female to write stories in English
[13:38]about being a Lakota Sioux,
[13:39]about her Native American tradition
[13:42]and told those folk stories and the stories that up
[13:45]until then had only been oral histories.
[13:48]Anyway, I'm sort of, I'm digressing,
[13:50]but yes, who would be the,
[13:51]who would be the writers of today?
[13:54]And I, you know, I would love to do a book like that,
[13:56]but I, you know, I don't know that I can predict it.
[13:59]And I don't know that I can predict it.
[14:00]And I love that in the publishing world,
[14:03]we're finding and honoring now all of these contemporary
[14:06]voices that have not really been published before.
[14:10]And, you know, we're seeing people from all different cultures
[14:14]and backgrounds and all over the world telling their stories.
[14:18]And, you know, in storytelling comes empathy
[14:21]and comes understanding and cultural understanding.
[14:24]So I think that the contemporary writers
[14:26]are gonna be from all different types of backgrounds.
[14:29]Certainly Zadie Smith would be in there.
[14:31]I mean, I wanted to put Zadie Smith in this book,
[14:33]but there's only so much time and space.
[14:37]And, you know, like I said,
[14:38]this wasn't meant to be encyclopedic,
[14:40]it sort of followed organically,
[14:42]like the structure of the book and the writers I chose,
[14:45]they sort of showed up on their own in a way,
[14:48]in my research.
[14:49]So Lauren, talk about your whole experience
[14:54]in the literary world and how you even got into that
[14:57]to start that led us to hear.
[15:00]Well, I, you know, I moved to New York after school
[15:03]and I wanted to get into book publishing,
[15:06]but I had, I did not know a soul in New York.
[15:09]I always say I fell off,
[15:10]and it was like I had just fallen off the turn up truck.
[15:13]Where are you from?
[15:14]Well, I grew up in Cincinnati and New Jersey
[15:18]and I went to school in Providence,
[15:20]and I just, I was like, what do I do?
[15:24]How do I become a book editor?
[15:25]This is my calling, I sort of knew it,
[15:27]but even at school, like nobody had ever done it before.
[15:31]So I, back then, this is, you know, this is how old I am.
[15:35]You had to take a typing test, right?
[15:37]Because the entry level positions are,
[15:39]you basically an editorial assistant,
[15:41]that title is, you know, it's a lot of grunt work.
[15:45]So I was a really good typist because I had written my thesis
[15:49]and I, you know, back, did a retype it every time
[15:51]you made a change.
[15:53]So I was a very quick typist.
[15:54]I got the highest score in the typing test
[15:56]and I got worked with the literary age in Kathy Robbins
[16:00]who handled a lot of incredible journalists
[16:03]and I had studied the romantic poets.
[16:06]So I was like this geeky, you know,
[16:08]writing a thesis on Lord Byron's 500 page poem, Don Jun,
[16:13]and like really like in the library every weekend.
[16:16]So I learned by working for Kathy all about nonfiction
[16:20]and I fell in love with the nonfiction world
[16:23]and with investigative journalism.
[16:25]And I made a decision early on that I was going to pursue
[16:30]nonfiction as my profession for my professional life
[16:35]and that I was going to keep fiction as my love,
[16:38]my great love.
[16:40]So when I go on vacation,
[16:41]I travel with a suitcase full of books
[16:44]and I try to read a book a day
[16:46]and I cram in in 10 days.
[16:48]I will cram in like all of the books
[16:50]that I didn't get to read during the rest of the year.
[16:53]But what I love about being a nonfiction editor
[16:56]is that it's like being in school for life, right?
[17:00]And it's, I mean, like writing this book,
[17:03]it was like getting my PhD in in in female literature.
[17:07]But I'm always reading book proposals.
[17:10]I get so many book proposals
[17:11]and because they're nonfiction,
[17:13]they're cutting edge, they're great thinkers,
[17:16]great minds, people either writing about their own experiences
[17:19]whether it's publishing memoirs and entering worlds
[17:23]that I would never otherwise know about
[17:26]or working with these people on the cutting edge
[17:29]of research and psychology or neuroscience.
[17:32]So I'm constantly learning, I'm constantly stimulated.
[17:37]And, you know, the book world is very competitive.
[17:39]So I don't get to sign up all of the books that I want to
[17:42]but I do get to read all of these proposals.
[17:45]And so that's really fun for me.
[17:47]It's that you never ever get bored,
[17:49]never get bored in this work.
[17:51]And I know you're publishing,
[17:52]I mean, your first books are just coming out now
[17:56]and you have a lot of great female writers
[17:59]and I think you're doing a lot of fiction, right?
[18:02]I'm doing fiction and memoir.
[18:03]But yes, thank you for saying that.
[18:05]Yeah, no, proposals are fun,
[18:07]but we don't do nonfiction like you.
[18:09]But I feel like I learned a lot through people's stories
[18:12]as you were saying.
[18:12]Oh, sure.
[18:13]Those are those.
[18:14]So what are some of the books that you've worked on
[18:16]that you're really proud of or that changed you in some way
[18:21]or just, and I don't know,
[18:22]projects that you feel a lot of pride about or I don't know.
[18:27]Yeah, well, there's such diversity in the books that I published
[18:31]and that's sort of the fun.
[18:32]If I have too many memoirs that I just start doing in neuroscience
[18:35]or, you know, so that I'm not like stuck in the same world,
[18:39]but I published a book in the fall called hysterical
[18:43]by Elizabeth Sist.
[18:45]And she, it's about voice and women's voices
[18:50]and how she lost her voice and got very, very sick as a result.
[18:54]And so she kind of went through, did all this research
[18:58]and tried to find out why am I getting all of these physical
[19:01]elements?
[19:02]Why is my, you know, my back, she has back pain
[19:05]and she lost her voice and she had these horrible headaches
[19:08]and she couldn't get out of bed.
[19:09]And so she sort of explored how as a writer,
[19:13]as a female writer, she had felt shut down
[19:17]and she, she felt like her voice wasn't being valued
[19:23]in her relationships with men at work.
[19:26]And it wasn't until she found her voice
[19:29]and started to express herself that her health got her health back.
[19:33]So she looks at really how like the medical industry,
[19:37]it's sort of a medical mystery, but through this lens
[19:42]of when women shut down their voices,
[19:44]they get physically, you know, they get physical symptoms
[19:48]from that and the important of self expression
[19:51]and how women's voices have been, you know, shut down.
[19:55]I mean, in a way, it's sort of like what happened
[19:56]with bookish bras.
[19:57]It's sort of the same story, but it's the modern version.
[20:00]And you know, there's a great she talks about the little mermaid and you know, I have a daughter. We watch the little mermaid over and of everyone loves the little mermaid.
[20:10]But if you really think about it, it's the story of a girl who loses her voice gives up her voice in order to get the prince.
[20:20]She grows legs and gets rid of the voice so that she will appeal to him and no one ever really looks at that part of the story.
[20:30]You don't want to be aerial. You don't want to give up your voice for a boy. So, you know, so she looks at pop culture.
[20:37]Someone should write Ariel's memoir. Oh my gosh. Yes. That's a good idea. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
[20:44]And then Ursula, of course, you know, then you have the old hat. You know, there's these stereotypes and literature and how women are portrayed at a pop culture. And it's just, I don't know. I just want to bust those up.
[20:57]That's what I'm really proud of. I have a book called In the weeds that I published that I really love. I mean, it's such a, it's just, it's a heartbreaking story.
[21:09]But Tom, the author was Anthony Bourdain's director and producer for 10 years.
[21:18]He lost his boss, his mentor and won his best friend. And so it's his story of trying to figure out what happened, but it's really behind the scenes of what it was like working with Tony and making that, making that show.
[21:32]It's like behind the scenes of television and traveling all over the world and seeing all these different cultures.
[21:38]So that's a book that that's because done very well and continues to do well. And I just feel like, you know, he brings Tony alive in this very human way, but he's also taking you into all of these cultures.
[21:52]So I, you know, I always love books about entering different worlds and different cultures and books that examine pop culture and culture and and try to say, well, why do we, why do we see things this way and how can we look at things differently.
[22:06]That's, I always like to have different perspectives. So those are the kind of books that I really enjoy.
[22:12]That's awesome. I interviewed Lori will ever about her book world travel.
[22:17]And then actually today I saw that she has a new book coming out. It's more of a memoir, but it also talks about her. You'll probably like it to find the scenes of why similar and, and you know, except her own, I guess addiction and I don't know.
[22:30]It sounded good. But yeah, Lori will have around the mind Anthony Bourdain type of day.
[22:35]Yes.
[22:36]Amazing. Well, now that you've done bookish broads, is there will there be a continuation or do you want it? What do you, I mean, you're obviously a huge, you have a huge intellect and you just love to learn. Right.
[22:49]So what are you interested in diving into next?
[22:52]Well, you know, I've written three books and all of them are about strong women. And they're, they could not. I mean, there, there's such different women. Right. Like I wrote a book about Jackie Kennedy and how she used fashion as diplomacy in the White House.
[23:07]And she took what she had and really became powerful using, you know, what women had at that moment at that time.
[23:15]Then I did a book about Dolly Parton, like completely opposite end of the spectrum.
[23:20]What would Dolly do? I wrote when I was going through a divorce and I was really having a rough time in my life. And I was like, I need some inspiration and she just, I don't know. She kind of came to me and was like, you know, get yourself together.
[23:36]I was just learning about her and her optimism and how she gives back and how she's this huge literacy advocate. You know, people have a certain idea of who Dolly Parton is. I think that's changing now.
[23:51]She sort of look at the hair and the boobs and, you know, and, and she as a songwriter. She's written 5,000 songs. Some of the great American song, but she's this wildly successful business woman.
[24:04]She was a trailblazer in country music and the music world.
[24:08]People don't see that they see the persona. So she's really a lot. She's smart. She's strong. She's a writer.
[24:15]So writing and she stays optimistic through all sorts of, you know, trials and tribulations and she supports other people.
[24:23]And so I wrote about her from that perspective like inspiration. And then of course the book is broads. So I, you know, right now because of my job, my career.
[24:33]It's impossible for me to write maybe when the children go off to college.
[24:38]Right now is not the moment, but I know like an idea will when the time is right will come to me, but I always find strong women that I admire.
[24:48]And they sort of come to me at the, you know, I'll read an article or I'll have an experience of some kind or even sometimes a dream and then I'll be like, Oh, let me research this.
[24:59]And it's usually something that stimulates me that I go research and I'm like, wow, there's a lot more to this story than I realized.
[25:08]And then the book sort of comes from there.
[25:12]I don't know.
[25:13]Wait, how old are your kids in?
[25:16]She is a sophomore. She's 15 and he is 17.
[25:20]So he's going off to college in the fall and preparing for that. I know. I'm like, Oh, I can't, you know, like, it's like a year of empty nest syndrome before the empty nest even exists.
[25:31]So it'll just be the two of us and then she'll go off. So then maybe, you know, we'll see.
[25:36]And then I'll have, I'll have to write another book.
[25:39]Keep myself company.
[25:41]And I know my, I have twins who are 15 and they're at boarding school and my daughter texts me like night and day all day long.
[25:48]It's like, I feel like she more so than if she was in my house.
[25:52]So maybe you'll get closer. You never know.
[25:55]I know when I go, when I travel, my son will text me and be like, could you order me Murray's bagels.
[26:00]So I'm like in California or New Orleans or South Carolina somewhere and I'll be like ordering Murray's bagels.
[26:08]So, you know, you're once a mother, always a mother.
[26:12]You know, I'm like, what hockey Jersey? Like, can you, can you just do this?
[26:16]Can you order it anyway?
[26:18]Right.
[26:19]You know, I'm also publishing tough titties by Laura Belgrade and I think.
[26:23]Oh, yeah, I just met her. Yes.
[26:25]So her book, I, you know, I'm very excited about her book.
[26:29]Yes.
[26:30]I mean, now in June and, you know, she calls it her or her husband calls it the loser sex in the city.
[26:37]But again, it's a strong woman who kind of took this winding path to become her authentic self and to become successful.
[26:48]But that didn't really happen until she turned 50.
[26:51]And so I love, you know, I love that at any age, you can evolve.
[26:56]You continue to grow and you can become, you know, a writer, you know, in your 50s in your 60s.
[27:04]Like, I like, I think there, I still have many more books in me.
[27:07]It's just like, as a woman, you can't do everything all at once.
[27:12]You can do everything one thing at a time or two or three things at a time as you, as you know very well.
[27:18]Thanks.
[27:19]Excellent advice.
[27:23]Well, Lauren, thank you.
[27:24]It was so nice talking to you.
[27:25]Thank you.
[27:26]Learning more about these bookish brides and your journey to getting them on the page.
[27:31]And I just adore the illustrations too.
[27:33]And your illustrator is Alexandra Kilburn.
[27:35]Anyway, amazing bookish brides.
[27:38]So awesome.
[27:39]And thanks for the preview of coming titles and reason titles and all of that too.
[27:44]I'd like to talk to you.
[27:45]Thank you so much.
[27:46]You too.
[27:47]Bye bye.
[27:48]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[27:52]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at ZB Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[27:57]Also sign up for my newsletter at ZB Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[28:04]Thank you so much to Steve and Ryan, for the sound editing.
[28:08]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.