Stephanie Wittels Wachs, LAST DAY: How to Stop Losing Our Loved Ones to the Opioid Crisis
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked.
[0:02]I'm Zibi Owens.
[0:04]I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show
[0:07]and learned endless amounts about storytelling,
[0:10]reinvention and life itself
[0:11]because when you talk about books,
[0:13]you're really talking about life.
[0:15]So get ready to hear from today's best authors,
[0:18]the best-selling and the not yet discovered.
[0:20]Come find your next great read
[0:22]and that the story behind it, enjoy.
[0:27]I loved interviewing Stephanie Whittles-Walks
[0:30]who wrote last day,
[0:32]how to stop losing our loved ones to the opioid crisis.
[0:35]She is incredibly funny,
[0:37]even though this is an incredibly dark topic.
[0:40]And I felt like we had so much in common
[0:42]and already have a meeting on the books
[0:43]to talk about more fun things we can do together.
[0:46]But in the meantime, here is more about Stephanie
[0:49]who is just so impressive and amazing.
[0:52]Stephanie Whittles-Walks is co-founder and CEO
[0:55]of Lemonada Media,
[0:56]an award-winning podcast network
[0:58]with a mission to make life suck less.
[1:00]In 2024, the Hollywood Reporter named her
[1:03]among the most powerful people in podcasting.
[1:06]Whittles-Walks co-created and hosts last day,
[1:10]Lemonada's flagship show
[1:11]that has won third-coast, webby and Gracie awards.
[1:14]It's first season focused on the opioid crisis,
[1:17]which took the life of her brother,
[1:19]writer, producer, comedian, Harris Whittles
[1:21]from Parks and Recreation and Master of None.
[1:24]After losing her brother,
[1:25]she authored the best-selling book,
[1:27]Everything is Horrible and Wonderful,
[1:29]a tragic comic memoir of genius, heroine, love and loss,
[1:33]which Kirkus anointed a beautiful debut upon its release.
[1:37]Thanks in part to her wit and forthrightness,
[1:39]Whittles-Walks has been featured in major publications,
[1:42]including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times
[1:44]and Time Magazine, and appeared as a guest
[1:47]on a plethora of podcasts from Comedy Bang Bang
[1:50]to Everything Happens.
[1:52]Public radio programs like NPR's Morning Edition
[1:54]and TV shows, such as Late Night with Seth Meyers.
[1:58]She has been a well-known voice actor for decades
[2:00]and co-founded the nonprofit arts organization,
[2:03]Rec Room Arts in 2016.
[2:06]Today, Whittles-Walks is the creative north star
[2:08]for dozens of award-winning podcasts
[2:10]under the Lemonada Network,
[2:12]including Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfuss,
[2:14]which was named Apple's Best Podcast of the Year in 2023.
[2:18]Whittles-Walks just released her second book in 2023.
[2:22]Enjoy our conversation.
[2:24]Welcome, Steve.
[2:25]Thank you so much for coming on TotallyBect
[2:27]to talk about your latest book,
[2:29]about your late brother Harris, opioid addiction,
[2:33]and so much more at last day.
[2:35]Thank you so much for coming on.
[2:37]Thank you for having me.
[2:38]I'm so thrilled to be here.
[2:40]Why don't you start by telling listeners a little bit more
[2:43]about this book and maybe also about your last book
[2:46]and how this one differs for those who have read that
[2:48]and are excited for the new one?
[2:50]Absolutely.
[2:51]So the story starts with 2015,
[2:55]my family suffered a horrific loss
[2:58]that so many families unfortunately have experience with,
[3:03]which is that we lost my dear beloved brother Harris
[3:06]to an overdose.
[3:08]Harris was a comedy writer, a comedian.
[3:11]He was Parks and Rec, co-EP.
[3:14]He played the Animal Control Guy on the show.
[3:17]He coined the term humble brag.
[3:19]I mean, he was this dynamic, this wonder person.
[3:24]I mean, he was like a magical specimen of a human being
[3:29]and brilliant, brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
[3:33]And my best friend, like I have one, have,
[3:37]I still say I have one sibling and that was Harris.
[3:41]And when he lost him, it was just a truly crippling
[3:46]experience.
[3:48]And he was dealing with addiction and the background
[3:50]for some time.
[3:51]As a family, we had no idea what to do or how to help.
[3:56]We are a very close knit family.
[3:58]And so it was shocking.
[4:00]It was shocking in them to not have the answers also felt
[4:03]shocking, right?
[4:04]Like any other sort of condition, your family struggling with,
[4:08]you, there's some sort of a manual, right?
[4:10]There's some sort of a book.
[4:12]Here's how you do it.
[4:14]Here is the way to be cured.
[4:16]Here is the way to intervene.
[4:19]With this, we didn't feel that.
[4:20]And so when he died, I was totally annihilated,
[4:24]absolutely shattered and destroyed.
[4:26]I had a baby at the time and she was 13 months old
[4:30]and I would sit in the car with her all the time while
[4:33]she napped.
[4:34]And I started writing on my notes app, all of my feelings,
[4:40]which were dark and heavy.
[4:42]And I mean, I didn't think I was gonna be able to go on.
[4:46]If you've ever experienced grief,
[4:47]you know what this feels like, you're shattered.
[4:49]And every normal element of your life is suddenly thrown
[4:54]into chaos essentially.
[4:56]Anyway, this notes app, this note I was writing became
[5:00]incredibly unwieldy and long.
[5:03]And my husband at some point was like,
[5:04]why don't you put a net?
[5:05]Why don't you make this an essay?
[5:07]And then people will know how you feel, right?
[5:09]It's like you also don't have the energy to explain to people
[5:12]that what you're going through.
[5:14]So I felt like, okay, this will be efficient.
[5:17]I can do it in one fell swoop.
[5:19]I put the essay out on medium and it went viral.
[5:22]And I had a literary agent who reached out to me
[5:25]and said, do you want to make this a book?
[5:28]I was like, I can't put on pants right now or brush my teeth.
[5:32]So no, I'm, but I'm gonna keep writing.
[5:37]And she's like, great, I'll keep reading.
[5:38]And at the end of the year, if you have something,
[5:40]I can help you try to sell it.
[5:42]So that book became my memoir.
[5:44]Everything is horrible and wonderful.
[5:46]A tragic comic memoir of genius heroin, love and loss,
[5:49]quite a long title, I love long titles.
[5:52]And honestly, I wrote the book in nine months.
[5:55]It was, it was my feelings.
[5:58]There was no fact checking to be done.
[6:01]It was a purge.
[6:04]And we published that book in 2018.
[6:07]And anyway, this gal, when I toured it, heard me on a podcast
[6:13]and she had lost her brother the same way three months earlier
[6:16]and reached out to me and was like,
[6:18]do you want to make a podcast about the opioid crisis?
[6:21]And that podcast was called Last Day.
[6:24]We ended up making it together.
[6:26]We ended up actually creating an entire media company
[6:29]together called Lemonada.
[6:31]I was our chief creative officer and she was our CEO.
[6:34]Now Lemonada is home to Julia Louis-Dreyfuss's podcast.
[6:38]Why is there been me and lots of other amazing shows?
[6:41]Our brand statement is make life suck less.
[6:43]And so it's become a lot more than just heroin and overdose
[6:47]and opioids, but that for show really was like,
[6:50]how do we, what could we have done differently?
[6:52]How could we have saved our brothers?
[6:54]Is there anything we could have done?
[6:55]Maybe we'll create the manual that doesn't exist.
[6:58]And we did.
[7:00]And that is this new book Last Day.
[7:03]So this is how to stop losing our loved ones to the opioid crisis
[7:07]whereas the last book was a,
[7:10]my camera's like doing this crooked things, it'd be an experience.
[7:12]I'm kind of loving it.
[7:13]I love these angles.
[7:14]It's like, I'm like, it's very empty.
[7:16]Yeah, I love it.
[7:17]This is how grief feels like this.
[7:20]Very crooked.
[7:20]So it's appropriate.
[7:22]It works, it works.
[7:23]But anyway, you know, where is the first book was feelings?
[7:26]This book is fact.
[7:28]It is obviously like I'm a creative girly.
[7:32]So like I'm going to editorialize and make jokes
[7:35]and make it entertaining wherever I can.
[7:38]But ultimately there's 1,500 in notes in this book.
[7:42]I had a New Yorker fact checker on this one.
[7:44]Like it is very well researched.
[7:47]I talked to hundreds of people, experts, addiction doctors,
[7:51]harm reductionists, people in recovery, people who are drug users.
[7:55]I mean, just a complete bird's eye view.
[7:58]And the book, you know, it starts part one is like what
[8:02]the individual should do and really reclassifying
[8:04]addiction as a disease and not a failure of willpower,
[8:09]which is how we tend to understand it.
[8:11]In part two, I really talk about sort of how we deal with this
[8:14]in communities and in our homes and how compassion and radical
[8:20]acceptance is really the way to do it.
[8:22]And I've become a harm reduction zealot from this experience.
[8:26]I've learned so much from all these brilliant people.
[8:29]And I would have done things completely differently if I had
[8:32]the chance to do it again today.
[8:34]And then finally in the third piece, it becomes quite broad
[8:38]and academic.
[8:38]And we get into sort of global policy and then drug policy
[8:42]writ large and sort of like systemically what we can do.
[8:45]So it's kind of a beast.
[8:48]I never thought I would write a book like this,
[8:50]but I genuinely have a lot of information to share and wisdom
[8:54]to impart that I've gathered.
[8:56]You know, not my own wisdom, but everyone else's wisdom.
[8:59]And anyway, that's what the book is.
[9:01]So well, it's amazing.
[9:04]No, long answer is great.
[9:05]I mean, you know, I'll just kick it back here.
[9:07]No, first of all, I don't mean to joke, but obviously I'm so
[9:11]sorry for the devastating loss for you and your family.
[9:14]And I just love the way you are keeping Harris's memory alive.
[9:18]And I love that you included the eulogies, not just you,
[9:22]but your business partner's eulogy too, just Stefano.
[9:25]I mean, just having those there after we've gone through
[9:30]all the information that we need to arm ourselves was so moving.
[9:36]Even after I like I felt like I already knew him from what you
[9:38]had written, but then we get to the end.
[9:41]And it's just like the gut punch that stays with you.
[9:43]So thank you.
[9:44]So glad that you said that because I debated.
[9:46]I was like, should I do this?
[9:48]But I felt like they're humans,
[9:51]they're individuals.
[9:52]Like these are relationships ultimately.
[9:55]And anyway, I'm so glad that you noticed that because I felt
[10:00]Well, he's strongly about doing that.
[10:01]Yeah, I am so glad you did that
[10:04]because, look, whenever any massive systemic thing
[10:10]is happening, people don't respond to the numbers.
[10:13]Like you can say, and you include the numbers, right?
[10:15]Which is important and the rising numbers
[10:17]and the number of deaths every year
[10:19]and it's tragic and terrible.
[10:21]But sometimes it's the most specific details
[10:24]that register the most.
[10:25]It's a text from Harris.
[10:27]It's about the TV show he's watching.
[10:29]All these little things.
[10:30]And it's like, oh my gosh, look at this family.
[10:33]Now I need to pay more attention.
[10:35]So I feel like you you towed that line really well
[10:38]by giving us information, but really,
[10:40]giving us the emotion and humanizing, immunizing.
[10:44]Because it is, ultimately this is a human condition
[10:47]and it's affecting people we love.
[10:49]It's affecting so many people.
[10:51]And I don't know, I agree with you.
[10:53]It's like the data we get so desensitized to it
[10:56]whereas stories, obviously, like your book lover,
[11:01]stories me too, stories are the thing
[11:03]that's going to pull people's heart strings
[11:07]and make them want to engage in this in a way
[11:10]that's not like, oh, this is happening over there.
[11:12]It's like, no, this is happening here.
[11:14]Totally.
[11:16]I have to say I recently watched Beautiful Boy
[11:19]like probably six months ago or so
[11:21]and have not stopped thinking about it, I know.
[11:24]It was amazing.
[11:25]And then you had a chance to interview David Chef about Nick.
[11:29]After I watched it, I went on a deep dive
[11:32]and read everything ever written about both of them
[11:34]Instagram pages, like I was so taken by their story.
[11:38]And I was so happy that you then shared more
[11:41]in your book about them, the continuation.
[11:43]Totally, totally.
[11:45]I mean, he's done so much work.
[11:47]It's, you know, you end up falling into these things.
[11:50]It's like, did I think or David Chef think
[11:53]that opioids or addiction would be our thing, right?
[11:58]But you end up sort of going where life touches you.
[12:02]And David's such a good example of somebody
[12:05]who has taken something very personal
[12:07]and explored it in a way that is going to help
[12:10]and have helped so many people.
[12:13]Can I just read this little section that you wrote?
[12:15]You said, when I asked, this is when you were talking,
[12:19]I think to Sam Snodgrass about it.
[12:21]When you said, when I asked him if there were risk factors
[12:24]that make someone prone to developing an opioid addiction,
[12:26]he quickly replied, oh, maybe it was your brother?
[12:29]No, it was Sam.
[12:30]It was Sam, right?
[12:31]Okay, good.
[12:32]Okay, sorry.
[12:33]Okay, delete that.
[12:33]He quickly replied being human.
[12:35]Jess and I wondered how this could have happened
[12:37]to our brothers, but the answer was quite simple
[12:40]because they were human and disease.
[12:42]This is an unfortunate part of living in a human body.
[12:45]Our brothers died from this disease,
[12:47]but other people with the same diagnosis
[12:49]can have better outcomes.
[12:50]And that starts with embracing the disease framework.
[12:54]So important.
[12:55]So important to put it in the right category
[12:58]and treat it the way it deserves to be treated
[13:01]without shame, without judgment, all of it.
[13:05]I mean, that's the thing, right?
[13:07]If you say to somebody, my brother has cancer,
[13:11]that is something we understand.
[13:13]That is something we say, wow,
[13:15]that this family is struggling with something.
[13:17]We need to support them.
[13:19]And David talks about this too, right?
[13:21]And the treatment for this is going to be expansive.
[13:24]It's going to span years, you know,
[13:27]for addiction, for some reason we think,
[13:30]oh, throw them and rehab 30 days
[13:32]and it'll be cured.
[13:33]It doesn't work like that.
[13:35]So I find the disease framework helpful for,
[13:38]for I think families to understand, you know,
[13:41]this is something that's gonna be a long road, obviously,
[13:45]but treatment does exist.
[13:47]And we have to treat it within a medical framework.
[13:50]And I just think it's so critically important
[13:53]because it changes the story from,
[13:55]this is a person who's doing selfish things
[13:57]and hurting me and hurting our family and hurting themselves
[14:00]to this is a person who has a disease
[14:02]and I need to support them in that way.
[14:04]Wow.
[14:05]I have to say, I felt like you were beating yourself up
[14:08]about the advice you gave Harris when he,
[14:12]I guess one of the treatment centers offered
[14:14]a drug that would make the detox more palatable
[14:19]or more effective for their own.
[14:21]Yes.
[14:22]And you were like, no, no, don't do that.
[14:23]That's replacing one drug with another.
[14:25]And I just could feel in your words.
[14:26]You were like wanting to go back
[14:28]and change what you said.
[14:30]Is that how you feel about it?
[14:31]Oh, I mean, yeah, absolutely.
[14:34]I do.
[14:35]I feel, I mean, yes, of course.
[14:37]And I understand like Sam said this to me too, right?
[14:41]You know what you know
[14:42]and you did the best you could at the time
[14:45]with the tools that you had and the information that you had.
[14:49]And I know that logically because it'd be like,
[14:52]I get that, you know, but like in my heart,
[14:54]I'm like, oh, I wish that I knew more
[14:57]because knowledge is power.
[15:00]And I could have said, oh, this is great.
[15:03]There's this treatment called medication for opioid use
[15:06]disorder and this is an amazing thing.
[15:08]It's like, if you were a diabetic, it's like insulin.
[15:11]Like, yeah, let's get you on this stuff.
[15:13]Go, go, go.
[15:14]I'm here to support you.
[15:15]But instead my reaction was, you know,
[15:18]from a shame place, which again, it's like what I knew.
[15:21]But sure, yeah, I mean, listen, I'm a Jewish girl.
[15:23]I beat myself up.
[15:24]What do you expect?
[15:27]By the way, love that you mentioned
[15:30]that you, as a Jewish girl, your favorite thing
[15:33]was Christmas morning.
[15:34]Like, that was amazing.
[15:35]Yeah.
[15:36]What are your favorite?
[15:37]You're both beloved traditions.
[15:38]Literally.
[15:39]Still to this day, we love it.
[15:40]We love Christmas.
[15:41]Yeah.
[15:42]I live on candy cane lane now, literally.
[15:45]I love it.
[15:46]I, oh my gosh.
[15:49]And we, it's like if you want to talk about shame,
[15:51]if you're not, if you do not decorate your home
[15:55]for candy cane lane, you are ashamed.
[15:58]So anyway, yes, it's hilarious.
[16:00]I find it to be funny as well.
[16:02]Oh my God, it's like your whole block is sponsored or something.
[16:04]Yeah, it's like sponsored by Home Depot Christmas lights
[16:08]are so annoying.
[16:08]Oh my gosh.
[16:10]So in addition to the strand of the book,
[16:13]which is Phil, as you said, with information,
[16:15]and it doesn't just arm the families who are going through this,
[16:19]but also the rest of us, because how can you be living
[16:22]in the world today and not be aware of the opioid crisis, right?
[16:25]So it is actually a primer for everyone to understand
[16:29]what is happening and why it has been so prevalent
[16:32]and what it does to the brain.
[16:33]And I found all that fascinating in a way
[16:36]that had not been sort of delivered effectively before.
[16:38]So that was great.
[16:40]But then you talk about also you
[16:43]and how the different threads got you
[16:46]to starting this company, which is insane.
[16:48]So it starts with terrible things for asking,
[16:51]which I have to admit, I spent a lot of time
[16:53]trying to dig up that episode and could not get it.
[16:56]And now I was on some random steward site.
[16:58]I don't even know where I was.
[16:59]And I was like, what am I downloading?
[17:00]This is not good.
[17:01]You tried it all behind a paywall, Zippy.
[17:04]Oh, is that what it was?
[17:06]Yeah.
[17:07]But everyone should subscribe.
[17:09]It's nice that-
[17:10]Thanks for asking, but yes, nor is a dear friend.
[17:13]And yeah, you can't find the episode in the on iTunes
[17:17]or Apple or whatever.
[17:19]Yeah.
[17:20]Well, anyway.
[17:20]Norah was on my podcast, I think twice.
[17:23]She's amazing.
[17:23]She's the best.
[17:24]Amazing.
[17:25]But anyway, you went on the podcast with your mom
[17:28]and talked about everything that had happened
[17:31]when it was still really fresh and that
[17:34]and you found your partner and you decided to do a deep dive
[17:39]sort of limited podcast about it.
[17:41]And next thing you know, somehow you've started liminata.
[17:44]What, could you just like give us-
[17:45]Yeah.
[17:46]What happened in between?
[17:47]Totally.
[17:48]I think I can.
[17:49]I'm going to try.
[17:50]I think I'm going to give it a shot.
[17:51]It's one of those things that it doesn't actually make sense.
[17:54]You know what I mean?
[17:55]But here's the thing.
[17:57]I think that whenever there's some sort of new endeavor
[18:00]that you're going to do, that you, you know,
[18:03]it doesn't make any sense, right?
[18:04]Like I'm going to throw $40,000 into a bank account
[18:08]with a woman I do not know who lives across the country.
[18:11]I've met her one time in real life.
[18:13]The only thing we share is that we're like grieving sisters
[18:18]and we're very type A, right?
[18:20]Like we share, we share that, you know?
[18:23]And we both seem like insane in that sort of way of like,
[18:26]we're going to work.
[18:27]Our ass is off for this thing, you know what I mean?
[18:29]But we didn't know each other.
[18:30]I lived in Texas.
[18:31]She lived in Minneapolis.
[18:33]It didn't make sense.
[18:34]But when you've experienced the worst thing
[18:37]that's ever happened to you, you know, care about failure
[18:41]in the same way, right?
[18:42]Like what's the worst thing that happens?
[18:44]It doesn't work.
[18:45]Like, I don't care about that.
[18:47]That is truly nothing compared to what we've been through.
[18:51]So that sort of fear kind of goes away.
[18:54]That's the silver lining of horrific grief
[18:57]is that all the stuff that you used to worry about
[19:00]goes out the window.
[19:02]And I found this sort of anxiety or overthinking
[19:07]or stuff that I sort of used to suffer from sort of
[19:09]was like, annihilated in the aftermath of this loss.
[19:14]And so I just didn't really care about failure
[19:16]in the same way.
[19:17]And so we were like pitching the show out.
[19:21]People kept saying it's too niche or strong concept,
[19:26]such a strong concept, such a great story, too niche.
[19:29]And we were like, have you done your research?
[19:32]Because there's so many people struggling with addiction.
[19:35]It's not something you wanna talk about it in a dinner party
[19:37]because there's lots of stigma and shame around it.
[19:39]But it's certainly not niche.
[19:41]There's so many things that people are struggling with
[19:44]silently that when they lay their heads down
[19:47]on the pillow at night, they're like ruminating over.
[19:50]And we thought, wouldn't it be great to create content
[19:54]and community around all that stuff?
[19:56]Like the real stuff?
[19:58]And so...
[20:00]We started making last day and this was in, let me orient us to time. This was,
[20:05]I think we formed our LLC in March of 2019 and then the show launched in September of 2019.
[20:13]And we decided let's launch this show and then let's launch two other shows in the fall
[20:18]and let's try to do this little mini network, right? If we're going to do it, let's just do it.
[20:23]And we had this idea of like a network that makes the hard things easier. And then we worked
[20:29]with this brand consultant. They were like, make life suck less. We're like, ooh, yeah, that's
[20:33]better. Sounds, you know, sounds, sounds sexier. And then guess what happened in March of 2020, COVID.
[20:41]And so then the world got like really hard and lemonade became even more relevant. And
[20:47]you know, we just kind of did it. I don't know. That's actually not true. We didn't just kind of
[20:53]do it. We worked really hard every single day of our lives and didn't sleep and stressed and pulled
[20:59]our hair out and screamed and hollard and cried and laughed and all of that. But yeah, it's
[21:03]a, it's been an amazing journey. And somebody was asking me like about my career trajectory the
[21:09]other day. And I'm like, I feel like my career has just been a series of like things that have
[21:14]fallen apart and then made room for things to sort of come together, right? Like it's like,
[21:20]you know, Harris passing away connected me to Jess and, you know, we made this thing together.
[21:29]Anyway, so yeah, lemonade is my podcast company. And I'm the CEO of it now. And I do that too.
[21:36]That's my day job. Yeah, because there's not enough going on. But that's amazing. There's not,
[21:41]I mean, I think I would be able to get a camera that didn't like constantly go crooked. But anyway,
[21:46]I love it. This has never happened before. And I'm totally, I'm totally into it. I
[21:50]French braided my daughter's hair today. And which I feel like I need extra props for that.
[21:55]gradually. Thank you. Thank you. And then she was like, mom, it's totally off-center,
[21:59]which admittedly it kind of just, yes, it looked nice. And then I was like, if you take this out,
[22:04]I swear to God. Today is my air. Yeah, it's my off-center day. This is started with the
[22:11]braid and now it's us. I think this is actually a smart camera. So now I'm just doing jazz hands
[22:16]and I think it moves with you. But I don't want it to be smart. I want it to be a little dumber.
[22:21]I want it to come. My camera is so dumb. Yeah, exactly. I need to, yeah, exactly. It's too smart.
[22:27]It's so funny. Like hearing about your podcast experience, I started this podcast in 2018.
[22:33]And I attempted to start a podcast network with, I had at one point like eight shows. And I was like,
[22:38]let's just give it a shot. And like you, I'm always like, what's the worst that can happen?
[22:43]I'm in a fail helping other people. Like, okay, I'm cool. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like failure
[22:48]you're so instructive. Like, yeah, if I fail, I'll do the next thing, you know? I mean,
[22:53]you don't also redefine failure. However, we want. Absolutely. We just retired that I didn't do.
[22:59]We can do whatever we want. Honestly, we can. Yeah. Yeah. Who cares? Might as well. I love it.
[23:04]You must feel so good about the shows that you're picking though. How do you pick your shows?
[23:09]Oh, gosh. I mean, I have the best people on my team. I'm a team player. I'm a theater girl.
[23:15]That's how I started. I, my background is in theater. I thought I was going to be a professional
[23:20]theater director. That was like what I studied. And then it's not, it's not too late.
[23:27]It's not. It's not. You're right. You're right. I could. I could still do it. My daughter does
[23:30]all this community theater. And she's always like, mom, come do a show with me. And I'm like,
[23:34]I don't have time right now. But, but maybe, maybe down the line. You could adapt a podcast for the
[23:41]stage and direct it. Just say, it would be fun. When this book thing ends, maybe that'll be the
[23:48]next hobby that I that I dive into. But yeah, I, I love collaboration. That's like my native language.
[23:56]I never think that I can do it by myself. I can't do it by myself. I need, I need team around me.
[24:02]And so, you know, we, we are very thoughtful about the shows we bring on to our network. It's not
[24:09]like one of the, we always say like, we're a mini I heart. Right. We do all the same things. We do
[24:14]all the ad sales and distribution, monetization and marketing and audience growth and production
[24:19]and development. But it's not a volume play here. Right. Like, if you, if we offer you
[24:24]spot at lemonade because we want to really nurture you in the show. And so, when you have a
[24:31]mission that's as clear as ours, make life suck less. It's very clear what belongs and what doesn't.
[24:36]And, you know, we tend to skew women centered. And we do lots of content in, you know,
[24:42]lifestyle and health and wellness. And we've done a few true crime, but it's where the woman
[24:48]doesn't die. It's more about criminalized survival. We do lots of partnership work with like
[24:53]Robert Wood Johnson and the Commonwealth Fund. We talk about caregiving and being sort of squeezed
[24:58]in the sandwich generation and childcare. And, you know, so we, we talk about things like that.
[25:03]But then, of course, we do, you know, a whole slate of shows that are wildly entertaining with
[25:09]like great comedians, you know, Sarah Silverman show and Julie, let me drive this a show. And, you know,
[25:14]so it's, yeah, I think my favorite part of the job is the development piece and working with
[25:19]our development team and finding new voices is really important to us. And we're in a real like
[25:26]moment of content generation. And it's exciting. It feels like a time where people are really
[25:32]scared to make new things because everyone's going, what works? Like, can you, can you make a
[25:37]hit, you know, like this studio? We need a hit. If you, if you watch that, I do. I do. I do.
[25:42]I do enjoy that. We're going to, we're going to link quote that to each other. They're like,
[25:45]we need a hit. But I think, I think that makes it an exciting time to make things. And,
[25:52]and again, like, two are sort of through line in this talk about like failure, not mattering.
[25:57]Like, you do something. It doesn't work. You scrap it and you'll try something else.
[26:02]Yeah. Other, I've interviewed a bunch of the people who you have shows with, like,
[26:06]Kate Fuller and good friend, Laurie Gottlieb, like, it's just like going down the list. I was like,
[26:10]yeah, yep, yep, I love it. And they're like so real. Like, that's the common thread is like,
[26:17]it's like gets the plot. Right. It's just like why bother in less pretense. No, like, no pretense,
[26:25]no ego. No. It really like the such humility and humanity and humor, all the H, all the H,
[26:32]UM, UM words. That's the, that's what you have to do to come to lemonade. You have to have humor,
[26:38]humanity and humility. It's like, oh, did you just come up with that? I did. I just came up with
[26:45]oh my gosh, write it down. I'm going to write it down. I'm literally ready to humor, humanity,
[26:51]and humility. There we go. That is, that is actually true. That is a true story. Thank you.
[26:57]You can just pay me as your brand consultant. I mean, clearly, it's okay. It's been amazing.
[27:02]Free brand consulting session. And you're publishing books now. Yes. Yes. We have a,
[27:10]an imprint now lemonade books. So we're with gallery books and, uh, which is an imprint of Simon
[27:17]and Chuster. And last day is the first of our books, but we hope to have many more. And, you know,
[27:23]when we decided we were going to make lemonade, we thought, you know, our goal was to make life
[27:27]suck less and podcasts were a way to do that. But that's just one medium, right? Like, you can scale
[27:33]that into so many different things. And we obviously have big aspirations of all that we can do.
[27:39]I mean, events and experiences and really bringing people together is like sort of the next horizon
[27:46]that I'm excited to explore being a theater girly. Um, how can we take this on the road?
[27:52]How we take the show on the road and get together because it's so fun to be together. Totally agree.
[27:57]Now we do, um, we should talk after this. We do retreats and events all the time. I would love that.
[28:02]We do like book retreats every quarter. And I love that. Yeah. I want to do more of that. And we're
[28:07]also a fully remote company, which like made a ton of sense like in the early days, but I think
[28:13]more and more as we've gotten past this COVID moment, people want to be together. So anyway,
[28:19]amazing. Well, thank you so much. I think you're coming to the bookstore this week or next week.
[28:24]Yes, I'm coming on August 20th, August 20th. Oh, yeah, it's gonna be in town. Oh, well,
[28:30]bummer. But, um, thank you for having me. I'm so excited. I'm thrilled, I'm excited.
[28:35]Um, thank you for, yes. Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi. Formerly,
[28:40]moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[28:45]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Go and buy the books.