2025 Update: Leif + A Conversation with Anna Konkle

Speaker 1 Pushkin.

Speaker 2 Hello. Hello.

Speaker 3 It seems like the spider has become the

Speaker 4 thing that catches the spy- the fly.

Speaker 3 You're welcoming me into the studio.

Speaker 5 Am I the fly?

Speaker 6 No, I guess you're the fly.

Speaker 7 I'm the spider.

Speaker 8 Feels pretty good.

Speaker 3 So, um, so what, uh,

Speaker 12 yeah, as hopefully our listeners know by now if they're paying attention.

Speaker 2 Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker 4 I was sensing a little attitude to you.

Speaker 14 Don't antagonize the listeners.

Speaker 3 And that's rule number one in broadcasting.

Speaker 7 As our dear audience should know, we have been encouring some episodes this summer.

Speaker 19 And usually at the end, we'll have a little update with the guest about what's happened since.

Speaker 11 Yes.

Speaker 21 This is going to be a little bit different.

Speaker 17 I got to interview someone I was really, really excited to talk to.

Speaker 7 She makes one of my favorite shows.

Speaker 12 It's called Pen 15.

Speaker 10 Yeah, we talk about it. We talk about it like, yeah, frequently.

Speaker 3 We do. Yeah.
When it was running, we really talked about it a lot. I have to say, it's probably one of my favorite shows too.

Speaker 13 For those who don't know the show, it is made by Anna Conkel and Maya Erskine, who are two real life best friends, and they play versions of themselves at 13.

Speaker 26 So it's about their middle school experience.

Speaker 17 They are playing themselves as adults, and then they are surrounded by literal children, people who are actually 13, playing their classmates.

Speaker 3 The first episode, that concept felt like a big hurdle maybe to kind of like get into the story.

Speaker 3 But I was like over it and into it like five minutes in.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You stop thinking about the fact they're they're adults.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's like a magic trick that they pull. And it's beautiful and so funny.

Speaker 5 It's really great.

Speaker 17 I really think anyone who hasn't watched it, I would highly, highly recommend it.

Speaker 19 And I was very excited to talk to Anna.

Speaker 19 And yeah, we thought it could be a cool conversation to put with this episode because both of us are revisiting that same age.

Speaker 27 In her case, very literally recreating scenes from her childhood.

Speaker 3 Yeah. So you guys end up talking about the episode and her show.

Speaker 30 And about just our respective middle school experiences.

Speaker 3 So let's get to listening, shall we?

Speaker 20 Let's Let's get to listening.

Speaker 32 I'm Kalila Holt, and this is Heavyweight.

Speaker 34 Today's episode, Lafe.

Speaker 17 Right after the break.

Speaker 35 This is an iHeart podcast.

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Speaker 27 I'm walking to work one morning when I spot Leif heading towards me.

Speaker 29 From the ages of 12 to 14, Leif was my crush, the object of my junior high obsession.

Speaker 44 I still Google him occasionally, but he's completely absent from the internet.

Speaker 21 I have no idea what became of him.

Speaker 29 It's like he just disappeared.

Speaker 42 So when I see him on the street, I feel my heart speed up.

Speaker 19 I wonder if I should say hi.

Speaker 46 I wonder, if I say hi, in what tone I should go, Laif?

Speaker 10 Laif?

Speaker 10 Oh, Laif.

Speaker 29 But then, as I draw closer, I realize that the man I thought was Leif is not Laif at all, and in fact, is not even a man.

Speaker 21 He's a teenager.

Speaker 19 This makes sense, given that I've not seen Leif since I was 14 years old.

Speaker 10 Still, having your heart speed up at the sight of a teenager is a sure way to feel like a creep.

Speaker 43 And just like that, to quote Carrie Bradshaw, Laif is back on my mind.

Speaker 32 All these years later, and I remember the exact type of pen Laif wrote with.

Speaker 26 I remember his birthday.

Speaker 54 I remember how he kept his wallet on a long chain, the first time I'd ever seen such a thing done, and wore a quicksilver sweatshirt with holes worn through the sleeves that he'd stick his thumbs through.

Speaker 55 He was pale with blue eyes, short and slight.

Speaker 56 I remember him being kind of like waifish, almost, like kind of almost like ethereal.

Speaker 19 Crushes do not exist in a vacuum.

Speaker 54 They require gleeful gossip with your friends.

Speaker 30 And so I call Lucia, who's been my best friend since elementary school, to talk about our old classmate, Laif.

Speaker 56 He had this like light blonde hair that he dyed and was long, not with a long, like down to your butt hair long, like a bob length, but like shaggy.

Speaker 50 For men.

Speaker 57 Shaggy. There we go.

Speaker 12 Immense bob.

Speaker 27 Once, while away on a school-sponsored trip, we phoned Laif from our hotel room.

Speaker 23 Me, Lucia, and our other friend, friend, Emily.

Speaker 47 The three of us huddled together on the scratchy Marriott comforter, stifling our giddiness as we dialed.

Speaker 57 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 22 I don't remember if we actually talked. The thing I remember is that we called him.

Speaker 57 Did we talk to his parents?

Speaker 50 We talked to his mom.

Speaker 19 Our friend Emily asked if she could speak with Laif.

Speaker 43 It's Emily, she said.

Speaker 23 Emily, said Laif's mom.

Speaker 62 Go upstairs and talk to him.

Speaker 59 Then she hung up on us. Turned out he had a sister named Emily.

Speaker 11 So weird.

Speaker 6 Lucia's stepmom was a photographer, and she once mentioned that if Leif and I ever started dating, she wanted to take our portrait.

Speaker 24 I don't think she knew I had a crush on him.

Speaker 30 Laf was just so short, and I was so tall, that I think she found the idea of us as a couple funny.

Speaker 54 I was already six feet tall by the end of eighth grade.

Speaker 34 I got pressured into playing basketball, but I was so meek that I usually just stood there while some terrifying girl shoved by me with the ball.

Speaker 64 I don't like to look at pictures of myself from that time.

Speaker 32 Standing next to other kids my age, I looked like the teacher or like someone's off-putting sister home from college.

Speaker 42 None of my pants fit correctly, and my socks were always pulled up too high.

Speaker 52 I used to listen to the song Eleanor Rigby in Panic.

Speaker 53 In my interpretation, it was a song about how no one wanted to date poor old Eleanor Rigby, just like no one wanted to date me.

Speaker 45 When I was 13, one day I was sitting by the gym after school with my friend Desiree when she told me, I picture you getting a boyfriend in college.

Speaker 44 She laid out this whole hypothetical where me and my future boyfriend reached for the same book at the library.

Speaker 65 At the time, I was offended.

Speaker 43 College?

Speaker 19 Other girls at my school, Desiree included, already had boyfriends.

Speaker 11 The middle school version of a boyfriend where you were afraid to touch each other and broke up after a week, but still, I had to wait till college?

Speaker 47 But as it turned out, I did not get a boyfriend before college, nor in college, nor even for several years after college.

Speaker 42 And so, I concluded, the problem was not my circumstances. The problem was me.
I was not datable.

Speaker 38 After meeting me for the first time, people might say, oh, she was funny, but they'd never say, is she single?

Speaker 28 I was simply not a person that anyone could think of romantically.

Speaker 12 At college parties, boys would grab my friends and start dancing with them, and I would stay for a while, dancing alongside them like I was part of the good time, but eventually I'd walk away.

Speaker 53 It was weird for me to keep standing there, smiling blankly at the wall while they were making out.

Speaker 38 By now, I'm in my 30s.

Speaker 46 and I actually do have a boyfriend.

Speaker 33 Sam and I have been together for four years.

Speaker 21 We live together.

Speaker 19 We've taken trips, know each other's moms, list each other on emergency contact forms.

Speaker 61 And yet, still, I can't shake this feeling that I'm behind, that there's something wrong with me, that I started too late, and now I can never catch up.

Speaker 51 Sometimes Sam tells me stories about the girls he used to hook up with, or about his high school girlfriend.

Speaker 52 or the girlfriend he lived with before he lived with me.

Speaker 19 I know that he's not trying to get back together with any of these people.

Speaker 32 I know he's as invested in our relationship as I am.

Speaker 33 Still, when he tells these stories, I feel so inadequate that I want to cry.

Speaker 69 A couple times I have cried, and he's been confused, and suddenly we're in an argument because I don't know how to explain why I'm crying.

Speaker 19 I want charming stories like that.

Speaker 32 Want to rhapsodize about my past of young love and mutual discovery.

Speaker 64 Instead, my past is a wall I smiled at, and the only stories I have about people I've hooked up with are vaguely unsettling to repeat.

Speaker 26 I liked Laif at a time before all that, back when it still felt like romance might happen for me, like any interaction could be the start of a love story for the ages.

Speaker 19 One time, I brought Whole Foods sushi for lunch and felt self-conscious because I'd seen the breakfast club, in which Molly Ringwald is mocked for bringing sushi for lunch.

Speaker 19 But Laif walked by my table and said, is that sushi? And I said, yes, and he said, I love sushi. And I said, would you like a piece? And he said, really? And I said, yes.

Speaker 62 And suddenly I was proud to have a lunch of whole food sushi.

Speaker 18 Laif talked constantly about a band called Billy Talent, a semi-yelly alt-rock group with lyrics about misery.

Speaker 32 I started listening to them because I knew Laif liked them.

Speaker 28 and from there became an obsessive fan myself. Once I ran into Laif at a Billy Talent concert.

Speaker 28 I pretended not to see him because I didn't want him to think that I'd followed him there, but he came over and said hi to me.

Speaker 19 There were little moments where it almost seemed like he could be flirting with me.

Speaker 42 We followed each other on the blogging site Zanga, and for a while there was some sort of glitch where Laf was unable to comment on my page.

Speaker 34 When the glitch was fixed, He was so excited that he left me 100 comments in a row.

Speaker 43 Comment 42 said, On the 42nd day of Christmas, I gave to Kaylee 100 comments, lots of typing, and a pear tree.

Speaker 49 I still have a journal from that time.

Speaker 34 In it, I'd write Leif all these vague letters.

Speaker 19 It is humiliating to read these letters now, to the point where I refuse to quote them here.

Speaker 26 Suffice it to say that I constantly referred to him as dearest.

Speaker 49 Surrounding the letters are my thoughts about myself.

Speaker 52 Mostly, how I wished I were a different person entirely, someone charismatic and sought after.

Speaker 55 Sometimes I'd have this huge swell of self-hatred that I didn't know what to do with.

Speaker 26 Once I tried to cut myself, but the kitchen knife I chose was not very sharp, and so it was harder than I thought it would be, and I gave up.

Speaker 45 When I find someone who wants to date me, I thought, this feeling will go away.

Speaker 18 I hoped that Leif might be that someone.

Speaker 32 I'd concoct long fantasies about how we'd get together, and sometimes I'd realize what a good mood I was in, and then I'd realize the good mood was because of something I'd made up, something that hadn't really happened at all.

Speaker 46 In the winter of eighth grade, I finally decided.

Speaker 53 Enough with the secret pining.

Speaker 67 It was time to let Leif know how I felt.

Speaker 65 And so, I took action.

Speaker 32 And by took action, I mean that I delegated action to other people.

Speaker 19 There was a stairway right next to our classroom that was just a single flight, enclosed by doors on each side.

Speaker 11 It was in this room of stairs that my friends, Lucia and Emily, cornered Laif and told him that I liked him, while I ran home and hid.

Speaker 19 Afterwards, I asked them what he said.

Speaker 34 They told me he said, okay.

Speaker 24 That night, in a fit of panic and despair, I got online.

Speaker 19 I logged on to Zanga and I wrote a veiled angsty post about what a huge mistake I'd made.

Speaker 17 Laif saw the post, as I knew he would, and he IM'd my friend Karina about it.

Speaker 42 And here is where something amazing happened.

Speaker 66 Because in this conversation with Karina, Laif said he would date me.

Speaker 30 He said he thought I was cool.

Speaker 70 He was going to ask me out on Valentine's Day.

Speaker 26 Seeing couples perform how much they liked each other made me feel inferior, so I hated Valentine's Day with a showy passion.

Speaker 49 Each February 14th, I'd wear all black as a sign of protest.

Speaker 63 Laif's thought was that this romantic gesture might help me to reclaim the holiday.

Speaker 49 I know all this because at the time, Karina promptly copy and pasted the IMs with Laif into an email for me.

Speaker 32 I couldn't believe what I was reading. I was so happy.

Speaker 18 Finally, I thought, finally, the thing that only happens to other people, it's now happening to me.

Speaker 15 On Valentine's Day, I got up and my mom drove me to school.

Speaker 44 People were giving out candy and paper hearts.

Speaker 49 I tried to look nonchalant.

Speaker 45 I went to science class.

Speaker 52 I went to lunch, to recess, to math, to basketball.

Speaker 24 And then school was over and I went home.

Speaker 49 Laf did not say a single word to me all day.

Speaker 58 I have no idea what happened or why he changed his mind.

Speaker 56 Huh. Did you ever talk to him about it?

Speaker 49 I rehash all this on the phone with Lucia.

Speaker 33 Never did we speak directly about it.

Speaker 10 Like, we spoke

Speaker 69 through you and Emily, through Karina on IM, and like through my veiled Zanga posts.

Speaker 56 Interesting.

Speaker 55 And having been my best friend for all these years, Lucia Intuit's what I'm building up to.

Speaker 56 So you

Speaker 56 want to try to find him or?

Speaker 22 Yeah, but I'm afraid I tried drafting a letter and I was like, do I just sound interesting?

Speaker 71 Anyway, so do you think this is completely insane to do?

Speaker 56 No, I mean, I'm sure you wrote. You're a very good writer and a thoughtful person.
So I'm sure the way you approached it was good.

Speaker 51 Since Googling LAF had always failed me, I turned to a public records database that I get through work.

Speaker 28 I was hoping to discover a possible mailing address for Laif,

Speaker 11 and I did.

Speaker 49 Looks like maybe he lives in Arizona, and I saw he had like a from 2020

Speaker 20 court thing from defacing a political sign.

Speaker 56 Well, I guess you don't know which direction that I'm

Speaker 56 saying it's a good direction.

Speaker 27 I want to talk to Leif directly, the way I never did back then.

Speaker 19 I want to know what he really thought of me and why he never asked me out on Valentine's Day.

Speaker 32 All these years, I've believed this story about how people don't see me romantically.

Speaker 28 But if I can change the beginning of that story, if I can see myself differently at 13, it could reframe everything that came after.

Speaker 69 I name-dropped you in the letters.

Speaker 56 Name-dropped me because I'm so well-known.

Speaker 46 Well, I was like, we used to live together, but now we both live with our boyfriend, so that he wouldn't think I was like trying to date him now.

Speaker 69 Hi, Laife. I wrote in my letter.

Speaker 32 I don't know if you remember me, but we went to Near North together.

Speaker 69 I had a huge crush on you, and I was hoping you'd be up to talk to me about what you remember from that time.

Speaker 52 I hang up the phone with Lucia, and I walk to the mailbox.

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Speaker 80 Starts off as a very standard cruising story. Yeah, one that I receive.
In the bathroom, someone follows you in. God, you look familiar.

Speaker 80 And then I'm going to call up one of my girls and be like, is this your dad? Can you please confirm?

Speaker 27 Is this your dad?

Speaker 80 Please confirm. I have never, ever, ever run into a friend's parent on any dating app at any party.

Speaker 80 Good thing you and your friends don't go cruising together, right? They might have had a very different experience. Dad? Wishing you and

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Speaker 82 You're like, dad?

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Speaker 71 I send off my letter, but then several weeks go by and nothing.

Speaker 29 Did Laif get the letter and decide to ignore me?

Speaker 19 Or do I just have the wrong address?

Speaker 6 Usually when reporting a story, I'd try calling at this point, and I did find a phone number for Laif.

Speaker 24 However, the idea of dialing it makes me want to lie down in the middle of the street and simply pass away.

Speaker 27 And so, just just like I did at 13, I recruit someone else as an envoy.

Speaker 3 And who is that someone else?

Speaker 10 You. Oh, yeah, it's you.

Speaker 3 Okay, so I'm sort of like that whole quorum of girls, all in one adult man.

Speaker 12 This is regular host of this program, Jonathan Goldstein.

Speaker 29 I want him to call Laif on my behalf to see if Laif got the letter and would be open to speaking with me.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, I don't think that'll be awkward at all. Let me get my pattern down here.

Speaker 3 Hi, there was this girl. Her name was Kalila Holt.

Speaker 21 You should say Kaylee first.

Speaker 16 I think he would know me by Kaylee.

Speaker 3 Hi, I'm Kaylee Holt's boss.

Speaker 71 Like, when you say it like that, it is really weird.

Speaker 4 That is weird.

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 Hi, you don't know me, but I was enlisted by an old school chum of yours.

Speaker 11 Ew, don't say school.

Speaker 3 An old flame. Ew.

Speaker 15 A paramour.

Speaker 16 My confidence is decreasing with every passing second.

Speaker 3 I won't embarrass you in front of your crush.

Speaker 11 Are you joking?

Speaker 3 Choking on this bon bon.

Speaker 6 As my boss asphyxiates on a piece of candy, I weigh the pros and cons of just making the call myself.

Speaker 19 But in the end, I make the same choice I did back then.

Speaker 28 Better to send an incompetent in my stead while I hide at home.

Speaker 55 I obsess all day Thursday. I obsess all day Friday.

Speaker 12 Jonathan doesn't offer me a single update.

Speaker 34 I can't even tell if he's made the call yet.

Speaker 19 Then the weekend begins, and I still have no idea what he's done.

Speaker 37 Okay.

Speaker 18 But whatever you did do, it worked because Friday night, I checked my email and I had an email from Leif saying that he would talk to me.

Speaker 61 Wow.

Speaker 3 Okay. Well, let me just say

Speaker 3 I

Speaker 3 am almost 100% certain that I had nothing to do with that.

Speaker 32 Well, really, because it happened that day.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it is suggestive.

Speaker 60 Jonathan tells me that he had indeed tried calling Laif's number.

Speaker 3 Okay, here's the call. You ready?

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 9 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 3 Hello. Is Laif there?

Speaker 56 Yes.

Speaker 4 Could I speak to him?

Speaker 83 Yes, this is her.

Speaker 4 This is Laif?

Speaker 11 Yes.

Speaker 3 Um,

Speaker 3 Leif, I just want to make sure I have the right person.

Speaker 11 What is your middle name?

Speaker 84 Chicken Doodles.

Speaker 3 No, no, that isn't that isn't the Laif that I'm looking for.

Speaker 56 I'm on the toilet right now.

Speaker 3 Um, okay, is there anybody else in the the house?

Speaker 53 In his email, Leif proposed that we talk in nine days, which is kind of a weirdly long time.

Speaker 48 I can't help but worry that he'll bail last minute, that this will be just like Valentine's Day all over again.

Speaker 53 So in the meantime, Hoping she might remember some clue about what happened back then, I text my old friend Karina, the one who brokered this whole Valentine's plan with Laif on IM.

Speaker 85 When you texted me that it was you, I was like, oh my gosh, like, did something happen?

Speaker 57 Is she calling me to say that Miss Bergen died?

Speaker 53 Miss Bergen, being our longtime principal.

Speaker 85 Which she did, by the way, if you didn't know.

Speaker 57 I didn't hear that. Yeah.

Speaker 85 May she rest in peace.

Speaker 53 I'd felt deranged texting Karina that I wanted to to speak with her about Leif, a random kid from her eighth grade class. But Karina responded, I legitimately thought about you and Laif last week.

Speaker 34 So just like we used to in junior high,

Speaker 24 the two of us chat on the phone about a boy.

Speaker 18 And then he IM'd you.

Speaker 86 Shut up.

Speaker 87 Did I send you the conversation?

Speaker 57 Yes. So then I.

Speaker 7 And.

Speaker 27 Buried in an old AOL account, I find that email from Karina with the whole conversation between her and Laif laid out.

Speaker 87 I would like absolutely love to see it.

Speaker 34 Let me send it to you.

Speaker 19 Laif's screen name was Chaotic Detortion,

Speaker 63 which I think is just chaotic distortion spelled wrong.

Speaker 56 Okay, let me repeat this.

Speaker 87 Okay, at 10.17 p.m. Nice.

Speaker 65 And as Karina reads, here for you, dear listener, is a dramatic recreation of that I am exchange with two young actors playing the roles of Karina and Laife.

Speaker 88 Hey.

Speaker 41 Hey, Leif.

Speaker 89 What's up?

Speaker 90 Kaylee's talking about what I think she is, right?

Speaker 11 On Zenga?

Speaker 76 Hold on, let me see.

Speaker 88 Um.

Speaker 90 Kaylee likes me, right?

Speaker 41 Did Lucia and Emily tell you something?

Speaker 90 Yeah, after school the other day.

Speaker 22 Yeah, she does.

Speaker 24 Well, if she comes on, will you tell her something?

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 90 If she comes on, tell her that I'll go out with her. But my health is always screwing with my life, so I'm probably not going to be able to be 100% boyfriend material.

Speaker 34 Laif had some sort of illness the whole time I knew him, but I never knew how sick he was, or what he was even sick with.

Speaker 53 He sometimes had to leave school early.

Speaker 26 He was on crutches for a while, and there were days when he just looked frail.

Speaker 34 But at 13, we didn't think to ask any questions.

Speaker 52 Back then, Karina just thought it was sweet he was considering his health and his role as my future boyfriend.

Speaker 22 Aw, but do you like her?

Speaker 75 This is kind of awkward.

Speaker 46 Yeah.

Speaker 18 All these years later, and that yeah, makes my heart start pounding.

Speaker 65 I was wrong, I think.

Speaker 32 See, I was wrong.

Speaker 18 He liked me.

Speaker 34 He said he liked me.

Speaker 70 But then it goes on.

Speaker 41 OMG.

Speaker 75 Don't tell her.

Speaker 34 I'm not crazy about her.

Speaker 90 But hey, if she likes me, I don't hate her or anything.

Speaker 90 And Kaylee's cool.

Speaker 22 Yeah, she is.

Speaker 22 So you want me to tell her that you'll go out with her?

Speaker 41 Why don't you just talk to her on Monday?

Speaker 90 Do you think I should?

Speaker 41 Yeah, because I mean, I don't think she would believe me. And it would be nicer if you told her.
Are you getting her something on V-Day?

Speaker 11 I guess.

Speaker 90 When is Valentine's Day?

Speaker 91 Next, next Tuesday.

Speaker 91 OMG, you should tell her on V-Day, because she hates V-Day.

Speaker 91 Whoa, yeah, I will.

Speaker 70 I always thought it was Leif who came up with the Valentine's Day plan, but it was actually Karina.

Speaker 49 It wasn't a romantic gesture at all.

Speaker 59 It was the gesture of a thoughtful friend.

Speaker 87 But I don't remember anything after that. I didn't even remember that he didn't end up

Speaker 87 saying anything. Like, he didn't end up saying anything to you at all.

Speaker 63 No, we never talked about it.

Speaker 87 No, Kaylee, he did.

Speaker 87 I'm pretty sure

Speaker 87 he

Speaker 87 mentioned his health again.

Speaker 87 Maybe I like followed up and he was like, honestly, my health just like really isn't the best.

Speaker 34 So did Laif not ask me out simply because because he was too ill?

Speaker 46 Was his not asking actually a romantic gesture?

Speaker 48 Something worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy?

Speaker 23 Or did he just not like me?

Speaker 64 I'd asked Laif to talk on Zoom, and I pray I won't break out or have a bad hair day because, you know, I want to look good.

Speaker 64 The morning of, I put on an eyeshadow that someone once told me was flattering and wear a t-shirt for my favorite band because I figure it's cool to like music.

Speaker 23 Then I head to the studio and test the microphone.

Speaker 61 Hello, hello.

Speaker 26 All right, that's working.

Speaker 46 I feel

Speaker 37 ill.

Speaker 46 I feel physically ill.

Speaker 61 Oh my god.

Speaker 64 Phew. Okay, I can do this.
Here we go.

Speaker 51 On the Zoom camera, you can't even see my t-shirt or flattering eyeshadow, so that was a lot of wasted effort.

Speaker 19 I see that Leif is in the waiting room. I press the admit button, and he appears on screen.

Speaker 61 Hi!

Speaker 4 Hey!

Speaker 19 In spite of his deeper voice and tattoos, Leif seems the same.

Speaker 23 Like, there's no discrepancy between the person I imagined all these years and the one I'm actually looking at.

Speaker 69 Um, how are you?

Speaker 81 I'm great. I'm doing great.
How are you doing?

Speaker 7 I'm doing, you know.

Speaker 33 Unfortunately, faced with the person I imagined all these years, I suddenly can't remember how to have a conversation.

Speaker 25 It's like I've lost 20 years of social skills.

Speaker 7 Um,

Speaker 8 what, what, what's your life?

Speaker 81 My life. Well,

Speaker 79 I

Speaker 81 yeah, I don't know. I just do

Speaker 81 life things, you know, eat food, go to the grocery store. I've got a dog, you know.

Speaker 10 Sure.

Speaker 11 What's your dog like?

Speaker 30 What's your dog's name?

Speaker 81 Ronin.

Speaker 17 Good.

Speaker 43 Given that I'm incapable of asking any question more specific than what is your life or who is your dog?

Speaker 10 Leif takes the lead.

Speaker 81 I've been doing like a lot of activist-y stuff in Tucson and that consumes more of my time than I probably should let it.

Speaker 29 In fact, the nine-day delay Leif asked for was because of his activism.

Speaker 30 A few weeks earlier, he was at a protest with the Stop Cop City movement.

Speaker 51 when he was tased and slammed against the ground by a police officer.

Speaker 27 He's been recovering from a concussion.

Speaker 58 At this point, we're 40 minutes into the conversation, and I've somehow managed to avoid asking Leif any questions about eighth grade at all.

Speaker 19 Even though he knows we're here to talk about how much I liked him, bringing up that time still makes me nervous.

Speaker 33 What

Speaker 17 do you remember about me?

Speaker 81 Yeah, I...

Speaker 81 I remember you being very tall and maybe a little awkward, but maybe that's just because of the crush or whatever.

Speaker 66 No, I was awkward.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 81 Like, I know that you told me at some point that you had a crush on me.

Speaker 81 I have like a vague memory of like, there was like that stairwell, Lucia's telling me, or something like that, like in the stairwell. Yeah.

Speaker 23 I ramble through my memories of what happened after that stairwell moment.

Speaker 11 And finally,

Speaker 43 up to the question that I really came here to ask.

Speaker 93 You were going to ask me out on Valentine's Day, but then that never happened.

Speaker 46 And I don't know why.

Speaker 2 Oof.

Speaker 81 I'm sorry. Yeah.

Speaker 81 I don't remember. Like, the Zanga post sounds vaguely familiar.

Speaker 93 Can I send you? Because I, in fact, have these IMs between you and Karina.

Speaker 88 No way.

Speaker 13 Can I email them to you?

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 81 See what cringy-ass things I have to say.

Speaker 42 Leif mostly reads through the IMs in silence.

Speaker 20 but at one point, he makes a face and again goes, oof.

Speaker 29 When he's done, he laughs self-consciously.

Speaker 81 All right.

Speaker 2 Well, that was, that was, that was fun.

Speaker 44 Do you, you have no memory of this?

Speaker 81 I don't know. Vaguely, I guess.
Like, it's obviously...

Speaker 81 Obviously, it happened.

Speaker 46 I mean, yeah, it'd be weird if I typed all this up.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 81 Yeah, it'd be pretty weird.

Speaker 11 What part were you oofing at?

Speaker 81 Oh, just, I mean,

Speaker 81 don't tell her. I'm not crazy about her, but hey, you know, she likes you.

Speaker 81 It was just like that.

Speaker 46 Yikes.

Speaker 81 I don't really know what happened. Obviously, we didn't date.

Speaker 9 I don't think

Speaker 15 we totally forgot about that.

Speaker 55 I mean, that would kind of be worse if we did date and you know it just was gone from your memory.

Speaker 81 Yeah, that'd be real shitty. Yeah.

Speaker 18 I mean, like, seemed like you did not like me.

Speaker 81 I

Speaker 81 do remember you being, like, very funny, but

Speaker 81 yeah. I do agree, though.
I think I, like, wasn't, like, into you, into you.

Speaker 34 To use the eighth grade parlance.

Speaker 54 But then, Leigh phrase is a key thing I've been wondering about.

Speaker 55 The explanation that he gave to Karina at the time, his mysterious health issues.

Speaker 81 I was like

Speaker 81 very, very, very sick. I was like in the process essentially of getting diagnosed with Crohn's disease.

Speaker 7 Crohn's is an autoimmune disease.

Speaker 53 Leif's intestine was attacking itself, making it hard for him to do basic things like walk or eat.

Speaker 32 In the years I knew him, though, Leif didn't know he had Crohn's.

Speaker 6 He didn't know what was wrong with him.

Speaker 51 He was just getting worse and worse.

Speaker 19 It took over two years of waiting rooms and misdiagnoses before he finally got to a doctor who helped him.

Speaker 49 At that point, he was so sick that the doctor pulled his mom aside to say that she thought Leif might die.

Speaker 51 They immediately admitted him to the hospital, where he stayed for three months.

Speaker 93 I'm not a monster, so of course I'd never say that I'm happy someone was so ill they almost died.

Speaker 65 But hearing all this, I can't help but feel kind of relieved.

Speaker 52 Because if Laif was that sick the whole time I knew him, then it wasn't about me not being good enough.

Speaker 53 There probably just wasn't any space in his brain for dating and crushes at all.

Speaker 8 So I put this to Laif.

Speaker 81 I for sure had crushes.

Speaker 51 Well, there goes that theory.

Speaker 17 Can I ask you how to crush?

Speaker 81 Yeah, yeah. I know I had a crush on Sorka for a while.

Speaker 90 I was going to ask you that, actually.

Speaker 8 That's what I always suspected.

Speaker 81 You got me figured out.

Speaker 38 Serca had shown up at our school one year from Ireland, and all the guys instantly loved her.

Speaker 46 Somehow in that one year, she dated three or four people.

Speaker 42 I, as someone who'd never dated anyone, found this profoundly unfair.

Speaker 11 Like, what about the rest of us?

Speaker 32 In my moments of insecurity, I always used to think, there's no way Leif likes me, because I'm pretty sure he likes Serka.

Speaker 6 So while on the one hand, it's validating to hear that my Reed was right.

Speaker 32 On the other hand, it's devastating to hear that my Reid was right.

Speaker 58 I move on to my next theory.

Speaker 21 Do you think that any of it was height-related?

Speaker 10 Uh,

Speaker 81 I don't think so.

Speaker 81 I don't think so.

Speaker 51 So, what was my problem?

Speaker 30 I asked Leif if I had some defect that prevented him from seeing me romantically.

Speaker 44 And although he really thinks about it,

Speaker 66 he can't come up with an answer.

Speaker 81 I'm just trying to think if, like, there has ever been anyone where I'm like, I'd love to date this person, but they've got this defect, you know?

Speaker 66 Who he falls for, Lafe says, has always felt beyond words, especially in the eighth grade.

Speaker 22 Well, how do you feel about talking?

Speaker 93 Am I freaking you out?

Speaker 81 No, not at all.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 81 It's fun to catch up and like hear what you remember.

Speaker 93 It's really nice to talk to you.

Speaker 10 Yeah, you too, Kaylee.

Speaker 30 Talk to you soon.

Speaker 93 All right, talk to you soon.

Speaker 23 I'd felt good while I was talking to Laif.

Speaker 49 He was cool and nice, as he'd always been.

Speaker 33 And yet, as soon as we hang up, I suddenly feel really sad.

Speaker 47 I sit there for a while, alone in the studio, and then, as I always have in times of stress,

Speaker 10 I call my mom.

Speaker 6 I fill her in on the conversation, and how the only logical conclusion seems to be that, yes, I was right.

Speaker 67 I am, in fact, undatable.

Speaker 94 Who wouldn't want to date you? You're awesome.

Speaker 27 Thanks.

Speaker 94 And I mean, I know I'm your mother, but that is also true.

Speaker 6 I feel like that's true in terms of like people wanting to like be my friend, but I don't feel like that's true for like dating.

Speaker 94 You feel it not just from when you were younger, but you feel it even now.

Speaker 10 Yeah,

Speaker 94 that makes me feel kind of sad.

Speaker 17 I'm sorry.

Speaker 94 Don't be sorry.

Speaker 94 It makes me feel kind of sad, and it makes me feel mad at people

Speaker 94 that don't see you.

Speaker 95 I don't, yeah, I think I'm having a hard time characterizing it because I do feel like weirdly emotional, but also like he was nice and the conversation was good, you know, so I don't want it to seem like I thought he was like being an asshole or anything, like he wasn't.

Speaker 33 I don't hear that from you at all.

Speaker 84 I don't hear anything about any judgment about him.

Speaker 57 Yeah.

Speaker 84 It's you trying to piece it together for you.

Speaker 96 Yeah.

Speaker 84 Yeah.

Speaker 94 Give give yourself a little space.

Speaker 63 I give myself several weeks of space.

Speaker 53 And then, as I keep trying to piece it together, I decide there's one more person I want to speak with.

Speaker 63 Very excited to talk to you.

Speaker 93 So thanks for being up to do this weird thing.

Speaker 83 Yeah, no, it is weird. And I definitely feel weird about it.

Speaker 43 This is Serka, the Irish girl that Leif and the rest of the entire

Speaker 51 class was into

Speaker 62 because in case it's not weird enough to reach out to my crush after nearly 20 years why not also reach out to my crush's crush i always suspected he had a crush on you and he said yes did you know that

Speaker 62 um

Speaker 62 like

Speaker 83 jesus like he would like he would like burn cds for me and stuff

Speaker 57 dudos

Speaker 83 i feel like he also gave me a sticker that said George W. Bush is a punk-ass chump.

Speaker 45 So like, yeah,

Speaker 83 I had an awareness.

Speaker 19 I want to talk to Circa because I think of her as the anti-me.

Speaker 70 Like, here's how Circa's Valentine's Day went in junior high.

Speaker 19 She walked up to her boyfriend at the time, holding a Hershey's kiss and said, do you want this or do you want a real one?

Speaker 60 I want her to tell me how she achieved such romantic success, what she had that I didn't have.

Speaker 42 I had laid all this out in my initial message to her.

Speaker 83 So I said this to my husband and he was kind of like, well, it's obvious, isn't it? Like you were just new and different. And I think that's exactly it.

Speaker 83 Like you guys had all been together from the age of two. Do you know?

Speaker 83 So I literally was just new and different. I honestly think it was that simple.

Speaker 22 I think that's part of it, but I feel like there was something about your personality too.

Speaker 33 Like I feel like there was some like charisma or like confidence or I don't know.

Speaker 83 I feel like well i think that that has got to be fake until you make it though doesn't it because looking back and looking at the challenge that was laid at my doorstep i probably just lent in to some kind of confident persona serica only attended near north for a single year and it wasn't an easy transition Because of her mom's job, she was uprooted at 12 years old and plopped down in a foreign country.

Speaker 23 Her dad, all her old friends, stayed back in Ireland.

Speaker 59 She remembers the day she came to visit our school for the first time.

Speaker 83 And I remember crying and I remember saying, I don't want to go there.

Speaker 56 My memory isn't of feeling invincible or anything, like quite the opposite, like

Speaker 56 overwhelmed and shut down, you know.

Speaker 42 It's that sense of panic, Sirka thinks, that made her act so confident when she started school with us. It was her way of managing.
managing.

Speaker 27 Still, in the year I knew her, she often felt insecure, and dating didn't make that feeling go away.

Speaker 5 Any way you cut it, boyfriend, no boyfriend.

Speaker 33 Junior high is hard.

Speaker 44 Serica tells me she's been married for about a year and a half now.

Speaker 53 How did you guys meet?

Speaker 83 We met on Tinder.

Speaker 34 I'd asked Laif the same question about how he met his partner.

Speaker 81 Actually, through Tinder, we are a Tinder success story.

Speaker 58 I met my boyfriend through Tinder too.

Speaker 11 Nice.

Speaker 71 Serica, Laif, me.

Speaker 53 Even though I always felt like they had some power I lacked, almost two decades later, we all ended up in the same place.

Speaker 6 Living with people, we met on Tinder.

Speaker 64 Back when I'd talked with my friend Karina, Karina, I'd asked her what her impression had been to me when we knew each other in junior high.

Speaker 56 Oh my gosh, Kaylee, I adored you.

Speaker 86 I remember you being very intelligent.

Speaker 96 You were very funny.

Speaker 86 I know you, like, you were out, you were tall.

Speaker 86 Just, you know, at that age, I feel like you always look at everyone else and like don't form your confidence or like embrace every bit of yourself until later in life.

Speaker 86 And I remember being like, she has so many things going for her.

Speaker 96 Like, I

Speaker 86 hope that she

Speaker 86 becomes more confident.

Speaker 30 My past self was tall and awkward.

Speaker 6 And the boy I liked didn't like me.

Speaker 49 And all these years later, I'm still tall and still awkward.

Speaker 27 And I still often feel left behind by romance.

Speaker 6 But then again, The junior high me would never have had the courage to have these conversations at all.

Speaker 6 So maybe I did become more confident.

Speaker 32 And some people do want to date me.

Speaker 47 I'd want to date me.

Speaker 32 These days, I don't think too much about Valentine's Day.

Speaker 27 It turns out that I don't like being one of those performative couples any more than I liked watching those performative couples.

Speaker 69 This year, on February 14th, My boyfriend made dinner.

Speaker 32 I did the dishes.

Speaker 34 Happy Tuesday, he said. Happy Tuesday, Tuesday, I said.

Speaker 19 Then we watched TV.

Speaker 70 It was nice.

Speaker 70 Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home

Speaker 70 Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damaged deposit

Speaker 70 Take this moment to decide

Speaker 70 if we meant it, if we tried

Speaker 10 Hello. Hello.

Speaker 25 So, as promised, my conversation with Anna Konkel, co-creator of Penn 15.

Speaker 16 We talked about how emotional and viscerally bizarre it is to return to that middle school space again as an adult.

Speaker 91 I mean, it was so humiliating.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 77 Like, like the first season, especially, nobody knew what it was.

Speaker 74 The crew didn't know what it was.

Speaker 91 So people signed up to come on set.

Speaker 99 And a lot of them haven't even read the script.

Speaker 31 And they're like, what the fuck did I sign up for?

Speaker 74 Like day one, Maya's in her bowl cup masturbating.

Speaker 31 Like, okay, wait, we're really going to try to play 13.

Speaker 101 Like, this is so embarrassing.

Speaker 76 And then being surrounded by the real kids and stepping on stage and be like, we're you.

Speaker 9 We don't really think we are.

Speaker 68 We're, we're 30.

Speaker 100 The The night before it came out, I just got on in like the fetal position on the floor and was like, this is so embarrassing.

Speaker 9 What did you do? Like, what did you do?

Speaker 91 And you know what?

Speaker 77 The truth is, is it felt embarrassing for years after, actually.

Speaker 76 Like, people would come up to me and say, like, I love it.

Speaker 82 And I'd be like, what are you doing today?

Speaker 31 Like,

Speaker 9 yeah.

Speaker 91 I couldn't hear it. It just, I felt so naked.

Speaker 101 How, how was it for you making this versus when people started listening to it? Or have you had any waves of this?

Speaker 16 Writing it and putting it together and like playing it for people here was actually like positive.

Speaker 25 Like I felt like, oh, I'm really expressing what I felt and it's connecting with people.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 6 And then I feel like once it was out in the world, it was a bit more of a mixed bag than I was expecting.

Speaker 91 You mean how people felt?

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Like there were people who really connected with it.

Speaker 97 But there were a lot of people who hated it.

Speaker 31 Really?

Speaker 31 I loved it.

Speaker 98 I mean, but obviously obviously I'm going to love it, I guess.

Speaker 14 I mean, that is something I was curious about. I feel like there were people who just don't understand why middle school would be important or why you would want to think about it or go back to it.

Speaker 97 Like, have you run into that at all?

Speaker 10 Are there people who just don't think about it?

Speaker 100 There's something about it that makes people really uneasy.

Speaker 91 From the pitches of us first talking about it,

Speaker 77 so many men in particular actually like had to get up from a table or would be like, I'm getting nauseous.

Speaker 15 sorry hold on maybe it's like physiological disassociation yeah that a lot of people can do

Speaker 75 what was it like like working with the kids like do you feel like you had to translate to them or did they kind of get it most of the kids when they're actually 13 aren't at an age that they're going oh yeah i get what that would be they're like, I didn't do that yesterday.

Speaker 9 Right. That's true.
You know,

Speaker 91 so in it.

Speaker 104 And even like seeing the social dynamics play out on set, that was very meta.

Speaker 82 There would, I won't say who, but it would be like, oh, hey, he's the most popular and she's the most popular.

Speaker 101 Like all the guys are texting her or whatever.

Speaker 77 And, and we always found the right kids.

Speaker 98 I thought the kids in your podcast were great.

Speaker 6 Thanks. That was my dad runs a

Speaker 6 community theater in Iowa and he helped me cast those kids.

Speaker 59 So that was very sweet.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 37 Did you do community theater growing up?

Speaker 14 Yeah, I was never very good, but because my dad like ran these like kids' summer camps and stuff, I did always go.

Speaker 31 That's a lot of pressure for your dad to run it.

Speaker 99 And then

Speaker 99 like auditioning for your dad.

Speaker 29 Yeah, I think I wanted to be more of a like a star because I wanted to be like close to my dad, you know.

Speaker 98 I relate to that too.

Speaker 100 I remember going on like some work trip with him and I remember like going to a pub

Speaker 98 and they're being karaoke and a girl went up and sang Nowhere Man by the Beatles.

Speaker 41 And he was like, wow, she's incredible.

Speaker 101 He almost like cried and he was clapping in a really intense way.

Speaker 74 Yeah.

Speaker 104 I don't remember what song I sang next, but I sang a song.

Speaker 100 And I remember like finishing and like waiting for the same eyes and the same clap and being like, I'm right here, dad. Yeah.

Speaker 101 And being like, no, that was good.

Speaker 9 It was a little beautiful, pitchy.

Speaker 77 I had been estranged from my dad.

Speaker 100 I mean, this is another actually crazy layer to the whole show.

Speaker 31 It's like, I hadn't seen my dad in five years, but I'm like acting with the TV version of my dad.

Speaker 74 And the one that I missed.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 105 And

Speaker 74 about a year before we started writing the last season, my dad and I had sort of been like communicating more and trying to fix things.

Speaker 75 And, and then he called me and found out he had cancer.

Speaker 47 Oh, man.

Speaker 102 And

Speaker 100 filming started.

Speaker 68 Whoa.

Speaker 31 So I was like trying to like manage nurses and all these other things and be there as much as I possibly could flying back and forth and filming the show.

Speaker 89 But there were these scenes that were like

Speaker 103 overlapping with these huge moments where like my dad went to hospice and i had to go back to la and film the scene where curtis

Speaker 74 moves out of the house and gets an apartment and he has like a midlife crisis and gets this sebrain convertible yeah and we're in the convertible like the camera's right on us as we're driving at night with the top down and the air the cold air blasting, which is like what my dad and I always did.

Speaker 103 And he had had that same sebring, and we're having the talk about him moving out.

Speaker 98 Just as my dad's gone into hospice, like moving out of the world, right?

Speaker 9 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 89 And I just lost it.

Speaker 105 Talk about feeling like a kid as an adult.

Speaker 31 There was something about the extremeness of what we were trying to do.

Speaker 98 Like, oh, we're building sets that look like our real houses.

Speaker 74 We're building.

Speaker 76 It was like stepping into a memory.

Speaker 14 Were there particular scenes that weren't particularly intense to shoot?

Speaker 104 Definitely the first day of filming at

Speaker 98 my house, Anna Cohn's, you know, house, I had given so many specifics about, it was nicer than my real house probably.

Speaker 103 And, but, you know, my parents in real life divorced they told me in seventh grade or eighth grade and

Speaker 105 i i've just had such a hard time accepting their divorce and walking in and seeing the house with like both of their things yeah

Speaker 98 ops being like together like the loon blanket that i described my dad having or the kind of lounger you know that he had that went to his apartment and what my mom got to keep and it was like it was all intermingled and then on the bookshelves are all of these like half funny, half devastating pictures of me between two loving parents and they're my, you know, set parents.

Speaker 100 So it was like silly, but I just wanted to cry.

Speaker 101 I was like going back to when, to the good times, you know, and it was a better version of the good times than what I had really, we didn't have a lot of pictures, the three of us.

Speaker 44 I mean, like after doing.

Speaker 16 the show and like being in those moments again do you see anything in that time differently like did it change your perspective at all

Speaker 91 I think it's interesting how people at that age have such different relationships with their own sexuality.

Speaker 68 Like that part in your podcast and the episode where the sort of popular girl goes up to the guy and gives him a Hershey kiss and says, like, what does she say?

Speaker 14 She said, do you want this or do you want a real one?

Speaker 91 That's like the, I was like, I like, I, I was like, well, I don't have that DNA.

Speaker 31 Yeah.

Speaker 75 Like I don't understand.

Speaker 100 And then she sort of went on to say, I think I created this persona.

Speaker 75 Right.

Speaker 98 But how much is that persona?

Speaker 76 And how much is that just a different physical comfort?

Speaker 75 I was always like such a goody two-shoes in that way and like kind of known as a prude.

Speaker 98 And I was just not physically

Speaker 40 interested in.

Speaker 101 guys like that.

Speaker 105 And

Speaker 104 if somehow they were like sensing, sensing, because my friends were more comfortable with that.

Speaker 14 Yeah, no, it's a good point.

Speaker 29 I think similarly, I was not the most comfortable with it either.

Speaker 14 Like, I would have these infatuations with people, but to me, it just meant like we're going to have this mental connection where we understand each other.

Speaker 29 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 31 Like it was romantic.

Speaker 102 Yeah.

Speaker 37 I remember when we first conceived of Penn and our agents or something being like, you need to add like character descriptions.

Speaker 103 And we just knew how we play them, but we hadn't been putting words to it.

Speaker 100 And that was one distinction that I finally was like, she's romantic.

Speaker 72 Do you remember what else you said in your character description?

Speaker 97 I'm like, I would find it so hard to have to like sum myself up in a character way.

Speaker 10 Right?

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 99 Yeah. Um,

Speaker 82 I think, like, tall, bad posture.

Speaker 77 I think that I would have had the like hand over my stomach that I always did.

Speaker 99 Um,

Speaker 31 loyal to a fault friend probably like

Speaker 77 gets her identity from how much she admires Maya, and the fact that Maya admires her back gives Anna confidence.

Speaker 14 I mean, that's another thing I feel like you guys captured so well was just like the energy that having a friendship like that gives you, where you're like feeding on each other and amping each other up.

Speaker 98 Yeah, that was the saddest part I think about it ending was like that innocence of friendship

Speaker 103 as actors and adult best friends of going like right now.

Speaker 77 We get to live in this world where playing 13 is like, you are just glued at the hip. And as you get older, you know, so many of us will lean on

Speaker 75 their romantic

Speaker 105 back to, you know, life

Speaker 75 back to your romantic partner.

Speaker 14 I feel like that's part of what's sad sometimes about being single as an adult is that everyone does lean so much on their partner.

Speaker 47 And you're like, wait, where am I?

Speaker 14 Now I'm not anybody's number one because their number one is the person that they're worth.

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 27 Like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 101 I think it's something I've really struggled with, to be honest, and adulting, yeah, is that expectation.

Speaker 99 Same, you know, I'm lucky that Maya and I think are a little bit aware of it, and we will go to the doctors with each other.

Speaker 101 Like, you know, there's things like,

Speaker 92 but I think

Speaker 77 it's not the norm.

Speaker 29 Thanks so much to Anna and to everyone who helped put this episode together.

Speaker 26 And for all my fellow Pen15 fans out there, you can listen to my full conversation with Anna if you subscribe to Pushkin Plus.

Speaker 26 I was very excited to get all this insight into making the show and I don't want to hoard that insight from other Pen15 heads, so go to pushkin.fm slash plus to sign up.

Speaker 12 We'll be back next week with our final encore of the summer. And then the new season of heavyweight begins, September 18th.

Speaker 35 This is an iHeart podcast.