If You Give a Mouse a Pronoun

Speaker 1 Love it or leave it is brought to you by bombas. I got a lot of copy here, John.
I'm skipping it. Okay.
I'm skipping it. Let me tell you why.
What's on these feet right now?

Speaker 1 Bombas. I know that.

Speaker 1 Every goddamn day.

Speaker 1 Every goddamn day. But I switch completely to bombas.
All right. I switch completely.

Speaker 1 Look, I always had a couple of bombas in the drawer, but when Trump became president, I said, you know what? Something's got to give. And I want my feet to be just a little bit more comfortable.

Speaker 1 So I went on the internet. I went on Elon's internet and I bought a ton of bombas.
I bought a whole bunch that are all the same so that I don't have any decisions in the morning.

Speaker 1 They're different, different color stripes. These are the gray stripes.
Yeah, I know. I see that.
I can see.

Speaker 1 I got every stripe so that I have a different color stripe to match whatever clothes I'm wearing. So my stripes from my bombas are always coordinated with my outfit every day.

Speaker 1 Sometimes that's just for me because they're in my pants and you don't know that. But sometimes it's for my gym shorts because they're great when I go to the gym.

Speaker 1 They're great when I go to the office. They've got dress socks.
I'm a complete bombas boy. I'm a bombas boy.

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Let me see if I should have covered anything else here.

Speaker 1 They got dress socks. I got those.
They're fantastic. Any other cushioned arch hugging pairs? That's what I've got on right now.
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 You know, it goes great with new spring socks, fresh white t-shirts, waterproof slides. I also have the slides.

Speaker 1 I also, those slides I've been wearing, bombas. Wow.

Speaker 1 Head on over to bombas.com love it and use code love it for 20% off your first purchase. That's b-o-m-b-as-com slash love it.
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Speaker 1 What's up, Los Angeles?

Speaker 1 Welcome to Love It or Leave It Live from Dynasty Typewriter. Good news, Adrian Brody.

Speaker 1 With Trump's joint address to Congress behind us, your Oscar's acceptance is now the second worst speech of the week.

Speaker 1 Putting the brutal and brutalist, that guy.

Speaker 1 I've been here before. Don't play the music.
I have a point to make. Says nothing forever.
That was unbelievable. That was unbelievable.

Speaker 1 Like the gall, the actor hubris, to be winning an Oscar in front of one of the biggest television audiences in the world. The music starts playing, and you say, How dare you?

Speaker 1 I haven't yet said that love is important.

Speaker 1 We've got a great show for you tonight. Natalie Morales is here to comb through her catalog.

Speaker 1 Writer and author of the new novel, Woodworking Emily St. James, is here to talk about my greatest fear, teenage girls.

Speaker 1 Then we all debate the worst of two evils, cannibalism and high school. But first, let's get into it.
What a week.

Speaker 1 On Tuesday, Donald Trump delivered a speech to Congress filled with lies and grievances in what sounded more like a MAGA rally speech than a presidential address.

Speaker 1 It's Trump's special talent that he can make a speech both completely insane and deeply boring. It's one of those combinations that should be impossible, like being Jewish and digesting dairy.

Speaker 1 As promised, some Democratic congresswomen wore pink in protest. Powerful stuff.

Speaker 1 I see they borrowed a page from Sun Tzu's classic text, The Art of Putting on Fun Little Outfits.

Speaker 1 Congresswoman Teresa Legier Fernandez, head of the Democratic Women's Caucus, told Time magazine that pink is a color of power and protest.

Speaker 1 It's time to rev up the opposition and come at Trump loud and clear. But wearing a color is not a protest.
It's a statement. It's not a protest.
You're allowed to wear pink.

Speaker 1 You're coordinating your outfits, but the outfits aren't loud and clear. No, they're maybe loud, but they're not necessarily clear.
It's like watching Megan Markle make popcorn.

Speaker 1 I know you think this is something, but until you explain it, it's nothing.

Speaker 1 Trump began his address with a declaration.

Speaker 2 And to my fellow citizens, America is back.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're back. Measles is back.

Speaker 1 People needing their own chickens is back. Flying being an adventure is back.

Speaker 1 The speech was briefly interrupted when Democratic Texas Congressman congressman al green caused a disruption and house speaker mike johnson had him kicked out

Speaker 3 mr green take your seat take your seat sir

Speaker 3 take your seat

Speaker 3 finding that members continue to engage in willful and concerted disruption of proper decorum the chair now directs the sergeant-at-arms to restore order

Speaker 1 It was a bit excessive when Lauren Boebert rolled out the congressional guillotine, but

Speaker 1 rules are rules. Green's shouts weren't exactly audible to TV viewers, but he explained his protest to reporters after getting the boot.

Speaker 4 The president said he had a mandate,

Speaker 4 and I was making it clear to the president that he has no mandate to cut Medicaid.

Speaker 1 Go off, King. Just go off a little louder next time, Amy.

Speaker 1 I don't know if that's as effective as

Speaker 1 wearing a color.

Speaker 1 I mean, with fascism on the rise, we're going to have to wear

Speaker 1 a pretty bright color.

Speaker 1 The president then bragged about being re-elected in spite of his criminal prosecutions.

Speaker 2 And we've ended weaponized government where, as an example, a sitting president is allowed to viciously prosecute his political opponent like me.

Speaker 1 How did that work out? Not too good.

Speaker 1 Not too good. Honestly, got our asses.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's pretty cool. How did that work out? Fucking terribly.

Speaker 1 We got absolutely bodied. You're right.
Got us. Fully fucking got us.
Damn it.

Speaker 1 The president's speech leaned heavily into culture war issues, going after trans people pretty hard, as summed up in this applause line. Our country will be woke no longer.

Speaker 1 Stock markets tanking. There's going to be a black market for maple syrup.
You need a small business loan to make a Denver omelette, biggest job losses since the onset of the pandemic.

Speaker 1 But on the bright side, five trans athletes are going to have to stick to intramurals.

Speaker 1 When Trump did eventually touch briefly on inflation, it wasn't to offer his plan to bring down soaring prices, but to blame Joe Biden.

Speaker 2 Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control.

Speaker 2 The egg price is out of control.

Speaker 1 You know what, Trump? Okay,

Speaker 1 fine. You can still blame Joe Biden.
You can't be expected to have solved every problem. You still get to seem young and engaged by virtue of comparison.

Speaker 1 But TikTok, bitch, you promised pizza day every Friday, and it's already been six Fridays, no pizza.

Speaker 1 Pretty soon, America's going to forget who Joe Biden was because Joe Biden already forgot who Joe Biden was.

Speaker 1 Aw, he destroyed the country.

Speaker 1 Looking back, I regret not realizing how much much he was fucking us sooner. That's my great regret of 2024.
Obviously, we gotten a little bit of a hot stew for pointing it out, but

Speaker 1 even still, sort of speaking to the obvious, long after it became obvious,

Speaker 1 all these people that are going to run for president in 2028, not one of them had the

Speaker 1 stones to challenge Joe Biden. And it's like, well, isn't the person that's right to be president the kind of person who understood the need to step up and fight really hard?

Speaker 1 Or are you going to wait your turn? Is Donald Trump waiting for his turn? Is this the kind of politics, the moment in history where people seem to wait for their turn?

Speaker 1 No, just our sign, just our sweet, sweet Democrats always looking for a line to stand in

Speaker 1 while Republicans run over the barricades.

Speaker 1 The Democratic Party, as a group of people, are in zone four, looking as Republican and Zone 6 just walk right in front of them, right onto the plane, over and over again.

Speaker 1 We're just a party of people in zone four, watching people in zone six put their bags in the overhead while we wonder if there will be room when we get on the plane. Republicans are like, We got bags.

Speaker 1 These people are idiots. We're getting on the fucking plane.
Our bags are going in the overhead. And we're like, I wish somebody would do something about this.
Just get on the plane.

Speaker 1 Yeah, all right.

Speaker 1 Trump got big laughs when listing purported examples of fraud that Doge had uncovered.

Speaker 2 $8 million to promote LGBTQI

Speaker 2 in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of.

Speaker 2 $8 million for making mice transgender.

Speaker 1 What, you think it's cheap to make a mouse trans?

Speaker 1 You think tiny little androgynous mouse clothes grow on trees? Do you know how hard it is to dye a little mouse's hair blue?

Speaker 1 To make the AirPods small enough to play mitzvah?

Speaker 1 Also,

Speaker 1 the president is actually supposed to have heard of all the countries.

Speaker 1 Like we, the people, don't necessarily have to have heard of Lesotho.

Speaker 1 But the president is supposed to at least pretend to have heard of all the countries. Trump also defended his tariffs on Mexico and Canada with an uplifting message to Americans.

Speaker 5 There'll be a little disturbance,

Speaker 2 but we're okay with that.

Speaker 5 It won't be much.

Speaker 2 No, you're not.

Speaker 1 A little disturbance is when your your mom asks a question at the movies, not when we've got troops at the border between Detroit and Windsor.

Speaker 1 The president also warned farmers worried about the tariffs that they may face a little bit of an adjustment period. Iowa upholster Ann Seltzer wasn't wrong.

Speaker 1 Iowa upholster Ann Selzer was simply ahead of her time. Trump made the dubious promise that the tariffs will ultimately help American farmers, saying this.

Speaker 2 Our farmers are going to have a field day right now. So, to our farmers, have a lot of fun.
I love you too.

Speaker 1 Every day is a field day for farmers, you fucking idiot.

Speaker 1 In international news, unfortunately, the Zelensky-Trump Vance bitch sesh unfolded after we recorded last week, but the fallout continues. J.D.

Speaker 1 Vance went on state TV to continue to trash talk Zelensky and insult some other allies while he was at it.

Speaker 6 If you want real security guarantees, if you want to actually ensure that Vladimir Putin does not invade Ukraine again, the very best security guarantee is to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine.

Speaker 6 That is a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn't fought a war in 30 or 40 years.

Speaker 1 So eat shit, families of British and French service members who died in Afghanistan serving alongside Americans, answering the call to defend an ally.

Speaker 1 British and French newspapers attacked the vice president for his comments, calling him a clown, a disgrace, and J.D. dunce.

Speaker 1 Wait, am I British in French newspapers?

Speaker 1 Either way, I, for one, am proud to fight alongside Britain and France in the war against Jizdiper Vance.

Speaker 1 Got him.

Speaker 1 On Monday, Trump ordered a pause on U.S.

Speaker 1 military aid to Ukraine, and on Wednesday, CIA Director John Radcliffe announced the end of intelligence sharing with Ukraine in an attempt to force Zelensky's hand.

Speaker 1 Of course, under Tulsi Gabbard, that intelligence is just bulletins like Putin still handsome. So not sure how big a difference this is going to make.

Speaker 1 In domestic news this past week, Trump announced the creation of the crypto strategic reserve, in which the U.S. would hold billions of various cryptocurrencies.
God only knows why.

Speaker 1 And I'm not even talking about normal God. I'm talking about the new God Elon Musk believes in.
By the time these lawsuits are decided, we'll have digital God.

Speaker 2 So.

Speaker 1 I can't wait. Analog God made me 5'6 and like 20% more ambitious than my talents allow, which is just enough of a delta to make life basically torture.

Speaker 1 The president announced on social media that the reserve would contain lesser-known crypto like XRP, Solana, and Cardano, as well as more commonly used currencies like Bitcoin and Ether.

Speaker 1 Now, you might ask yourself, why on earth would we need a strategic reserve of a volatile, speculative digital currency, other than to reward the crypto allies who spent millions getting him elected?

Speaker 1 In other news, Trump announced, by the way, before we came out, they actually did some kind of an announcement basically

Speaker 1 saying that the crypto reserve is

Speaker 1 bullshit.

Speaker 1 It's just bullshit. It's going to be, it's made up of the currency they've already seized, and it just seems like a way to save face for some of these crypto bros that are constantly

Speaker 1 sucking Donald Trump's dick

Speaker 1 digitally.

Speaker 1 In other news, Trump announced a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico, which sent markets reeling just before his joint address to Congress.

Speaker 1 We were always telling President Obama to wreck the stock market the day before his big speeches, but he never listened. Guess that's why he's not president anymore.

Speaker 1 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum, Jewish,

Speaker 1 I think it's cool.

Speaker 1 Threatened Swift's countermeasures in the escalating trade war, with Drudeaux saying on Tuesday, this is a time to hit back hard and to demonstrate that a fight with Canada will have no winners.

Speaker 1 What a Canadian thing to say. Not that Trump will lose a fight with Canada, not that Canada will triumph, but just that a fight with Canada will have no winners.

Speaker 7 Trudeau addressed Trump at the news conference saying this: Now it's not in my habit to agree with the Wall Street Journal, but Donald, they point out that even though you're a very smart guy, this is a very dumb thing to do.

Speaker 1 Flattering Trump's ego, good strategy. Probably a tactic he learned from his father, Fidel Castro.

Speaker 1 Just a conspiracy theory.

Speaker 1 Just another conspiracy the mainstream media has claimed is debunked. I'm not saying it's true.
I'm just saying it hasn't been debunked. What about the second honeymoon?

Speaker 1 What about the second honeymoon? I'm serious.

Speaker 1 They all say the timing doesn't work out because of when the first honeymoon was, but they got to dig in to the reported second honeymoon. The timing lines lines up on the second honeymoon.

Speaker 1 Pierre and Maggie had a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 Just saying

Speaker 1 the Yaves went into a bowl and

Speaker 1 who knows whose Yaves came out.

Speaker 1 Can't remember the word for bowl.

Speaker 1 The Canadian prime minister also accused accused Trump of hoping for a total collapse of the Canadian economy because that would make it easier to annex us, which makes sense because breaking somebody's spirit until they don't believe they deserve any better wasn't just his trade strategy.

Speaker 1 That's always been Trump's dating strategy.

Speaker 1 And then on Thursday, Trump backed down completely, pausing tariffs on the vast majority of both Mexican and Canadian goods until April 2nd.

Speaker 1 That's only four weeks away, so be sure to stock up on your everything.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, the former head of the Social Security Administration, Martin O'Malley, told CNBC that Doge's proposed cuts to the department will jeopardize payments to the over 72 million people who receive Social Security, warning of a system collapse, and the interruption of benefits in the next 30 to 90 days.

Speaker 1 I'm hoping it's 90 because I'd like to finish this season of White Lotus in Peace before my parents have to move in.

Speaker 1 Do you always keep the house this cold?

Speaker 1 You can just ask for me to turn it warmer. That's just simply, you don't have to ask, you know what I mean? It's just to ask the question.
I'm happy to make it warmer. Do I always keep it this cold?

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Considering the likelihood that the payment system could become unreliable, O'Malley warned people should start saving now. Don't worry.

Speaker 1 I'm sure your grandpa will be fine if he just cuts back on luxuries like baked potato and the lady that comes to his house to make sure he's not dead.

Speaker 1 Unbelievable. In other Doge news, the Trump administration will reportedly cut 80,000 jobs from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Speaker 1 Keep in mind, the VA not only serves veterans, 25% of the VA's employees are veterans themselves.

Speaker 1 Just a little math. Cutting 80,000 employees from the VA would save you around $8 billion per year while making life worse for millions of veterans.

Speaker 1 Unless you think a 76-year-old veteran being told by an artificial intelligence kiosk that he has abdominal pain because he might be pregnant is a good time.

Speaker 1 Extending the Trump tax cuts will cost $4 trillion

Speaker 1 over 10 years. $8 billion, $4 trillion.

Speaker 1 Fun fact, a family making over $1 million would get an extra $70,000 on average from the tax cut, roughly equivalent to the salary a lot of the veterans who are about to be fired.

Speaker 1 Isn't that fun?

Speaker 1 Isn't that one-to-one comparison kind of fun?

Speaker 1 They don't like that, the Republicans, when you actually break out the numbers and say, oh, the Trump tax cuts will give a family with a million dollars, just an extra $70,000, just an extra extra $70,000 in the package, roughly the amount you might pay a nurse working at a VA hospital somewhere.

Speaker 1 That's the choice we're making. They don't want to make it like it's a choice, but that's the choice we're making.
And I'll tell you something.

Speaker 1 I went from making government money, I made some sitcom money, then I spent it in a period of clinical depression, and then I made some podcast money.

Speaker 1 And that was surprising because that was really never the goal. And you'd think it would make me kind of maybe relate more to these rich people, right?

Speaker 1 Like, you know, I understand there's always more. There's always more you could want.

Speaker 1 The idea that there are people out there with millions of dollars, let alone billions of dollars, complaining about federal taxes, these people are fucking sick. They are sick.

Speaker 1 They are sick to be anything other than appreciative for the luck and good fortune to get to be in America and make money in America that they are fucking counting every penny going to the federal government when the fact that we have some redistribution to make palatable this system that allows you to live this incredible life, how fucking Gary it is sick.

Speaker 1 And all of this, all of the fucking attacks on the trans people and targeting the immigrants and vilifying DEI, all of it is part of a big circus funded by billionaires to distract us from the very simple fact that on one side, you're going to give millionaires an extra hundred grand and on the other side, you're going to fire a nurse.

Speaker 1 Everything is about distracting us from that. And it just has been bothering me lately.

Speaker 1 Donald Trump also signed an executive order declaring English the official language of the United States. This is obviously divisive, but it pulls 80-20 among people who say Chipotle.

Speaker 1 In the meantime, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has a suggestion for Americans looking for cheaper eggs.

Speaker 8 I think the silver lining in all of this is how do we, in our backyards, we've got chickens too in our backyard, how do we solve for something like this?

Speaker 8 And people are sort of looking around thinking, wow, well maybe I could get a chicken in my backyard and it's awesome.

Speaker 1 This just in, Trump's Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has been revealed to be a coyote.

Speaker 1 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also helpfully suggested that Americans start chowing down on Nutria, a large amphibious rodent, to help control the invasive species population.

Speaker 1 I hope they taste as good as they look.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure why eating them is a necessary step. Can't we just kill them?

Speaker 1 All right, it's an invasive species. Let's kill them.
It seems like we don't have to eat them.

Speaker 1 Eric Adams didn't tell New Yorkers to start snacking on the rats.

Speaker 1 And you know what? He's usually on the wrong side of stuff. I'm sort of changing my mind on this.

Speaker 1 A New Jersey man was arrested this week after robbing 14 Dunkin Donuts in two months. Hey, man, I know you're going through a hard time, but I don't think that's going to impress Jennifer Garner.

Speaker 1 A Danish performance artist left three piglets to starve to death in protest of the pork industry, only to discover that the trio were stolen in a heist organized by his own employee.

Speaker 1 Looks like these little piggies are going to the black market.

Speaker 1 I hope they taste as good as they look.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Pretty confusing protest, I have to say. I'm going to kill these three pigs to protest killing pigs.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Do you have a second idea?

Speaker 1 LA's pricey Erewhon grocery store chain is once again going viral online, this time thanks to a fancy strawberry from Japan that is being sold for $19

Speaker 1 per berry.

Speaker 1 The strawberry has been described as delicious by at least one emperor parading naked before his subjects.

Speaker 1 Kennedy, bring out the inequity berry.

Speaker 1 Oh, in fact, we discussed getting a berry from the Erolon on our company card.

Speaker 1 But it was sold out.

Speaker 1 That's right. The $19 Japanese strawberry sold one at a time is sold out.
What a society.

Speaker 1 I thought it would have been funny if we had one and then I dropped it and stepped on it.

Speaker 1 Or even pretended to have a whole basket of them and just like,

Speaker 1 Mr. Beaned it.

Speaker 1 Some of my famous prop work.

Speaker 1 And finally, scientists have bred woolly mice seen in this clip being extremely hairy and adorable as part of their effort to resurrect the woolly mammoth.

Speaker 1 So cute.

Speaker 1 I hope they taste as good as they look.

Speaker 1 Scientists say the next step is to turn the dial on those woolly mice all the way up to trans.

Speaker 1 It's gonna be expensive though. Up next from my dead friend Zoe, it's my live guest, Natalie Morales.

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Speaker 1 And we're back!

Speaker 1 Welcome to the stage, an incredible actress who always makes you go, she's in this. I love her.
Please put your hands together for the amazing Natalie Morales.

Speaker 1 Hi. Hi, thank you for being here.
Good to see you. Welcome.

Speaker 1 First of all, we were reminiscing briefly backstage that you were on this stage in a very early iteration of this show when we were in San Francisco for Outside Lands, and it was shortly after Trump got elected.

Speaker 1 And we were thinking, how do we get through this? It's so strange. It's so different.
And here we are. Here we are.
Eight years later. Yeah.
And it's so different now. Yeah.
Here we are again.

Speaker 1 John, who would have thunk? Yeah. Right, right.
No, it does feel

Speaker 1 a hyper-real feeling of the era. It's, it's, the, and the, the kind of slow disintegration of your connection to reality that once you start to accept that this is a timeline, it starts to

Speaker 1 make it hard to

Speaker 1 think about living it and that you also need to get lunch. And you do always need lunch every day.
Yeah. Every day lunch comes.
It's a weird dissonance, yeah.

Speaker 1 But sometimes it's fun to think about lunch.

Speaker 1 Sometimes it's a nice part of the day. I hate thinking about lunch.
I hate thinking about what I'm going to eat. Really? Yes.
Unless I really want something.

Speaker 1 You know, you guys know. You hate thinking about what you want to eat every night.
Yeah. Thank you for joining me.
I'm so happy to be here, John.

Speaker 1 Give me some questions.

Speaker 1 Tonight, in honor of Natalie's incredible career, she and I will take turns asking you, the audience, about her film and television credits, which if you Google them, do come up alongside those of the other Natalie Morales, the journalist formerly of CBS, is the talk.

Speaker 1 This is not embarrassing for me at all.

Speaker 1 Let's do it. So it's time for us to play.

Speaker 1 Was I in this Natalie Morales edition?

Speaker 1 So here's how it works. We're going to bring the lights up.
Oh, people are going to actually answer this on a mic. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 This is exciting. Hi, what's your name?

Speaker 5 My name is Jason.

Speaker 1 Jason, oh, you have a very

Speaker 1 gravelly tone. Yes.
Wow.

Speaker 5 Every time I get a call, someone asks me if I'm sick.

Speaker 1 I was going to say, are you single? You know what I mean? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I was going to say that too.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You got a great voice. Still in tone.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Just say, like, no, I'm not single.
I'm sexy. That's all.

Speaker 1 All right, Jason.

Speaker 1 I play

Speaker 1 the deceased best friend of a U.S. veteran struggling to cope with life outside of the military.

Speaker 5 True.

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 1 Correct. True.
Good job.

Speaker 1 Good job, Jason. I star alongside Sonequa Martin Green and Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman in my new dramedy, My Dead Friend Zoe, that is out in theaters right now.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Hey.

Speaker 1 Hey.

Speaker 1 What's Ed Harris like? He's exactly what you think he's like. He's serious.

Speaker 1 He can be pretty goofy. He loves dogs um he's a delightful man but you he's so unreadable that it's terrifying because you'll be like you'll say you'll say a joke and be like yeah you know because

Speaker 1 you love dogs ed and he'll be like

Speaker 1 yeah i do and you're like oh god

Speaker 1 um but he's great and i loved working with him so much I was thinking of how in like the Truman show, Ed Harris plays Christophe and he lends it this sort of seriousness, like kind of, because Ed Harris is this sort of gravitas as an actor.

Speaker 1 And then you read that it was actually originally be supposed to be played by, who is the villain in the movie Speed?

Speaker 1 Hopper. Dennis Hopper.
And you're like, oh, this is written to be like a cartoon villain. And then Ed Harris gets in the role.
And he's like,

Speaker 1 Ed Harris. And then Morgan Freeman's there.

Speaker 1 That was crazy. I do want to just talk about Ed Harris again.
The other day, we were doing a lot of promo together and I was like, Ed, have you ever done a rom-com? And he was like, I don't think so.

Speaker 1 And I was like, Would you do one if I wrote one for you? I would love to see you in a rom-com. Can I make one with you? And he's like, You got my email.
And I was like,

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Wow. All right.
That's cool. Wouldn't that be great to see him in a rom-com?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'd love to see that kind of brooding energy in a rom-com. Uh-huh.
It's like, what if Notting Hill made you really sad?

Speaker 1 No, you want to see Ed in love.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Sweet guy.
All right. Up next.
Who else is going to go? Oh, this person has their hand up. Hi, what's your name? Rexy.
Rexy. It's a nickname.
I love it.

Speaker 1 Natalie starred as the titular bisexual ex-marine bar owner at the center of an NBC sitcom.

Speaker 1 True or false?

Speaker 5 I'd love to see it, so let's say true.

Speaker 1 Correct. Correct.
Good job. In 2019's Abby.
Titular. Titular.

Speaker 1 Another great character I noticed.

Speaker 1 And another show with a Latino lead that NBC buried.

Speaker 1 It's true. Oh, look at that.
That's us.

Speaker 1 And Abby was bisexual.

Speaker 1 You keep saying that. Yeah, she was.
I said it twice. You did say it twice.
She was.

Speaker 1 I was actually the first bisexual lead on

Speaker 1 a network show. That's cool.
Yeah. Was it central to the story or was it just a part of the character? In other words, was the pilot about, I got a date with a man and I got a date with a woman?

Speaker 1 No, no. And the pilot was about, and it would have been perfect.
It was in 2019. And it would have been perfect in 2020 because

Speaker 1 it was a show. We did the whole first season.
It was shot all outside in front of a live audience. Outside? Outside.

Speaker 1 Because it was a backyard bar. And it was Mike Scherk, who was the executive producer.

Speaker 1 It was awesome. It was really funny.
But the president of NBC who bought it left. And then the two new presidents who came in were like, that's not our show.
Let's not ever talk about it.

Speaker 1 And that's what happened with that.

Speaker 1 That was fun. Hollywood.
Hollywood. Hollywood.
Tough town. Yeah.
Tough town. Tough town.
Now there's a, surprisingly, there's now a show with Reba, who owns a bar.

Speaker 1 Is she bisexual in that? She's on NBC, probably. That's cool.
Bisexual, Reba? I'm in. Yeah.
I'm in. All right.

Speaker 1 Oh, it says here that you were the first Cuban woman to lead a sitcom in the U.S. Well, since Desi Arna, well, Cuban woman, yeah, but since Desi Arnaz, the first Cuban person since I Love Lucy.
Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, because I think Desi identified as a man.
He did.

Speaker 1 So is F. So Cuban woman.
Little fact about Desi Arnaz. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Married to Lucille Ball famously. Famously.
Desi Lou.

Speaker 1 All right. Let's go to somebody else.
Yeah. Okay.
Who's sitting next to Rexy?

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm Mandy. Love that name.
Hi, Mandy. All right.
I had a blink and you'll miss it cameo in Zoolander 2.

Speaker 1 Probably true. True.
False, unfortunately.

Speaker 1 That was Natalie Morales, the journalist.

Speaker 1 For some reason.

Speaker 1 We couldn't find a photo of her, so here's Ben Stiller as Derek Zoolander giving Blue Steel.

Speaker 1 Did you see him do the glam bot of that in the Oscars? It's great. He did the Glam Bot, and he goes, he does the thing.
It was amazing.

Speaker 1 Yep. All right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're moving on. Let's do, I'll do one.

Speaker 1 Now that he played a Sophic sheriff.

Speaker 1 Sophic. I think it means lesbian.
Yeah, no, it's sapphic. Sapphic.
Yeah. I know what it means.
I'm just correcting your pronunciation.

Speaker 1 Sophic? Sapphic? Sophic? No, sapphic. Sapphic or sapphic? Sapphic.

Speaker 1 All right, you dykes. All right.

Speaker 1 Fucking classic lesbians.

Speaker 1 Persnicky as always. I'm just going to say, you should trim that.

Speaker 1 Nah. Nah, I bully the lesbians on this show.
All right.

Speaker 1 It wouldn't be the first time again.

Speaker 1 We can still buy tickets. Okay.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to have a lesbian on this stage.

Speaker 1 I don't recognize that stripe of the flag.

Speaker 1 It'd be GBTQ if it were up to me.

Speaker 1 They could get their own flag.

Speaker 1 I'm sick of it.

Speaker 1 Those letters are the only time women come first.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 That's true. All right.

Speaker 1 He's pissed. Okay.

Speaker 1 Who wants to go next? Read it. Read it.
Read it. Go ahead.
Oh, yeah, no, we need someone to go next, right? Yeah, we need someone. No, no, no, it's handy.
No. Wait, who has the mic?

Speaker 1 Hi, what's your name? Vicki. Vicki.

Speaker 1 Natalie played a sapphic sheriff. Seems wrong.
In the Drew Barrymore cannibalism comedy, Santa Clarita Diet.

Speaker 1 I'm gonna go with True because I really want to teach you. It is true.
It is true. She was a

Speaker 1 deputy Ann Garcia,

Speaker 1 and she was also ultra-religious. It was one of my favorite characters I ever played.
She was like this really religious lesbian cop.

Speaker 1 And I loved every second of it. I only wore Wrangler jeans when I wasn't wearing my uniform.
And it was awesome. That's fun.
It was really fun, even though you hate lesbians. It was really fun.

Speaker 1 I just don't see them.

Speaker 1 I just see clothes floating. Yeah.
Makes it hard to watch women's soccer.

Speaker 1 It's like, who's it? What is happening? Oh, wait, I read that. I'm sorry.
No, it's fine. We're doing great.
You don't ever have to apologize. Did you? No, you read that.
I read the next one.

Speaker 1 You read the next one. Okay, sorry.

Speaker 1 Are we ready for that? Should we find an audience? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Hi, what's your name? Adam. Hi, Adam.
Hi, Adam. Okay.
I voiced a newscaster in Rio 2.

Speaker 1 Rio 2.

Speaker 1 Yeah, okay. False.

Speaker 1 Think it fucking through. Sorry, Adam.

Speaker 1 Newscaster was the clue. Newscasters, the other Natalie Morales, you dumb fuck.

Speaker 1 Although, like, also, like,

Speaker 1 she's very sweet. I really do like her, but, like, step off.
Like,

Speaker 1 why are you acting?

Speaker 1 Yeah, other Natalie Morales.

Speaker 1 Back off.

Speaker 1 Back off.

Speaker 1 She's really nice. Okay.
She's wonderful. Wonderful.
Good people. Salt the earth.
Natalie directed and co-starred in the 2021 coming-of-age comedy Plan B.

Speaker 1 What's her name? True. Robia.
Robia? You say true? True. Wrong.

Speaker 1 Thanks for volunteering.

Speaker 1 Natalie only directed Plan B. That's true, but I do make a cameo.
You do make a cameo? Kind of true. Kind of true.
Kind of true. Let's give her the good ding.
I feel bad. I was just a dream.

Speaker 1 If you've watched the movie, I draw a dick on someone's face while they're sleeping because I felt like I should be the one to do that.

Speaker 1 You know what's funny about the drawing a dick on someone's face prank? I'll tell you.

Speaker 1 Tell us, John.

Speaker 1 Drawing anything on someone's face is annoying.

Speaker 1 You know?

Speaker 1 But you were going to say what was funny about it. Well, I just think, like, draw anything.
Like, oh, my God, you drew a dick.

Speaker 1 Drawing a dick is, like, at least for me, pretty much always funny. It is always funny.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, in the movie, it's about a penis. Oh, vulvas are very serious.

Speaker 1 Vulvas are serious. They are.

Speaker 1 Vulva.

Speaker 1 Nobody laughs at a Georgia O'Keeffe. Everyone just cries.
But a penis, hilarious. Okay.
People cry, I think, when they look at a Georgia recruitment. I have.
Wow. Okay.

Speaker 1 Am I the next one? Well, I wanted to keep asking you. Oh, sorry, Peter.
So Plan B

Speaker 1 follows two teen girls as they try to obtain the morning after pill. Correct.

Speaker 5 Politics.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 1 Did you get any pushback? Was it hard to get it done? Like, was it hard to get it made? No, it wasn't hard to get it made.

Speaker 1 What was shocking...

Speaker 1 But maybe shouldn't have been as shocking was when we were promoting the film and when I was doing press for it, which i did a lot of press for it journalists many many many journalists were like so um you know this is a movie about them getting the abortion pill and i was like nope it's plan b and they were like so the abortion pill and i'm like nope it's contraception it's contraception it's not that and like so many people don't know that yeah which is shocking and i and i knew that ahead of time so i made sure that in the movie so many times we say what it is what it does contraception that you can't, that it doesn't work if you're already pregnant, that it won't kill a baby, that you can't get pregnant immediately after having sex, that it takes a few days, which is why Plan B works.

Speaker 1 And, like, but it's insane that, like, the sex education

Speaker 1 in America is such that people have no idea. Grown people that are doing news and interviewing people don't know that.
But you think that's led to any other problems?

Speaker 1 Let's do, let's do one more.

Speaker 1 Sure. Is this me? Yeah.
Okay. Who's our next victim? Hi, Maria.
Maria. Okay, hi, Maria.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 And finally, I played myself in the iconic 2016 picture Sharknado 4, The Fourth Awakens, and I got to wear an eye patch.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go with yes. It's false.
That was somehow the other Natalie Morales.

Speaker 1 Yet again, and now we do have a photo.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Is that a... I want to see that.
Yeah, I want want to see that too. Yeah.
I want to see that too. That's Al Roker as himself as well.
Yeah. Oh, wow.
You ever yell at him? No.

Speaker 1 But I don't think it would make me gimmick.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I've yelled at him once.
At Al Roker? Why was he getting your way? He knows what he did.

Speaker 1 He was in the bike lane. He's in the bike lane.

Speaker 1 Natalie, everybody should go see my dead friend Zoe. And you play.
Is there a spoiler if I tell what? No, I play Zoe.

Speaker 1 You play Who's who's dead yeah that's in the title right but so you're a ghost no I'm not a ghost but I'm dead I'm more of a guilt demon I would say oh a guilt demon yeah everybody should go see my dead friend Zoe thank you so much Natalie when we come back she's a small town girl living in a lonely world it's Emily St.

Speaker 1 James

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Speaker 11 And we're back!

Speaker 1 Please welcome to the stage the author of Crooked Media's latest release, Woodworking. It's the wickedly talented what? Emily St.
James.

Speaker 1 Come on out.

Speaker 1 Hi, hi, hi. Welcome back.
Good to see you. Hello.
Thanks for being here. Okay, now.
You brought the book. It's a prop.
That's it. Let me see.
We got the book right here. We got to put it right there.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 You know what? We can probably put it there. You can gesture to it now.

Speaker 1 I will gesture to it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I got it. Here we go.
We did it.

Speaker 1 So, first of all, welcome. Good to see you.
It's good to see you.

Speaker 5 Yes. Thank you.

Speaker 1 John, Tommy, and I wrote a book with Josh. That was four people writing a book that did have pictures, and it basically destroyed us.

Speaker 1 So this, congrats. Anybody that writes a real book, holy shit.

Speaker 1 Holy shit. And I just want to tell you, I love the book.
Thank you. I genuinely love the book.
And I'll just be honest, like I was excited because

Speaker 1 when the proposal came, I was like, this isn't. I thought about the politics first, sincerely.
I remember politics. And I was like, I love the politics of this book.
I love the message it has.

Speaker 1 I love you as a person. I'm interested.
Let's do it. And then I read it.
I was like, oh my God, it's so fucking entertaining. It is such a good read.

Speaker 1 Everybody should go to crooked.com slash books and buy woodworking. It's an incredible novel.
It is such a fun read. I promise you, the message is great.

Speaker 1 The politics of the book are great, but you won't care about that because it's an amazing story. And I just want to say that.

Speaker 5 On the front right here, it says big-hearted and hilarious. And they don't lie in those poll quotes ever.

Speaker 1 So we're going to dive into the substance of it, but I just want to start by saying that, like, truly, like, it's just like, it could be a beach read. And it actually reminded me a lot, like, of,

Speaker 1 like, of like normal people, just in that it's like, you know, I don't know if that, I don't hope that's not an insulting comparison, but like, I think like there's something, it's just, you'll really like it.

Speaker 5 I knew, like, I knew when I went out with the book that it was going to be, it's a book about trans people.

Speaker 5 And people were going to hear that and they were going to be like, oh, this is going to be so like. heart-wrenching and boring and I'm going to sit down.

Speaker 5 It's going to be like, finally, she put on the dress and saw herself as she truly was unfolding like a flower before herself. And I was like, I don't want to fucking do that.

Speaker 5 And so I just did a lot of jokes. That was my strategy to overcome that.
I just thought, what if it was funny and

Speaker 5 entertaining and there were plots? And it really is.

Speaker 1 Thank you. So now,

Speaker 1 look, this show is pretty gay.

Speaker 1 And we have a lot of amazing queer guests and no lesbians, but everybody else. And always welcome.
But

Speaker 1 we wanted to have you on as a writer and as a member of the larger crooked family. But like, I struggle with this.
Like, I hate the idea of like, oh, we have a trans guest on.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about trans issues.

Speaker 1 sure and you know we had nori read on a couple one show ago two shows ago and we were she was talking about that that like you just want to be a comedian but you're a trans comedian and so you have to be an activist um but like this is a book about the trans experience so let's talk about the trans experience what is woodworking uh woodworking is a term from the trans community in the 70s and 80s uh which basically the idea was that you would transition and you would get to a point where you could pass as a cisgender person.

Speaker 5 You would cut off all contact with your past life and you would disappear into a large city and you would disappear into the woodwork is how the term came to be.

Speaker 5 And there are a number of women who did this. I talked to several of them as I was working on the book.

Speaker 5 And, you know, they would have husbands, they would have whole lives where maybe their doctor knew that they were trans and like nobody else did. And so they were there.

Speaker 5 having these quote-unquote normal lives and they had this secret eating away inside inside of them.

Speaker 5 And then as trans acceptance started to sort of creep toward the mainstream in the mid-2010s, like more and more of them started to sort of share their stories and some of them spoke with me.

Speaker 5 But there's still so many people who now are like, I'm just going to not talk about that for the obvious reasons. And it was really eating away at them inside.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's something in the book. There's Abigail, who's the teen character.

Speaker 1 It's a little bit of fantasy for her. It's a lot of fantasy for her that she'll get to to leave this world behind and just be a girl and be a woman.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Abigail starts transitioning when she's 16.
And when you start transitioning that young, you know,

Speaker 5 you quote unquote pass very well. And so her idea is, right now I live in small town, South Dakota.
Abigail does, she lives in a town called Mitchell. And she's like, I'm going to leave there.

Speaker 5 I'm going to go to Chicago or Minneapolis. I'm going to change my name or my last name.
And I'm just going to live a life as this person. And

Speaker 5 it's a dream for her. And I think the book is, but that's like where you start her.

Speaker 5 And if you know how character arcs work, you know that she's going to like have that challenged across the course of the book. But it is, it is kind of like her idea of a thing to do.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, it's, you know, there's the ways in which characters discover that that's impossible, right? You can't, this is who you are.
You can't run from who you are.

Speaker 1 You can try, though.

Speaker 1 I'm doing it right now. You're doing it right now.
Amelia Perez tried to do that. But that is a little bit the story.
That is a little bit what Amelia Perez is trying to do.

Speaker 1 A movie we're not going to discuss. And unless you'd like to.

Speaker 5 We can talk, Amelia. Let's do it.
No.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 a perfect film. But

Speaker 1 as I've said on this stage, a perfect flawless film.

Speaker 1 But like what I was thinking about in reading it is that we spend so much time talking about

Speaker 1 trans tolerance and acceptance. and fighting to a baseline of not being persecuted.

Speaker 1 But what was interesting in just reading this story, which has from the perspective of two different trans people, both immature in their own ways, but one further along on their trans journey, the other further along in life's journey.

Speaker 1 And one of the characters is a teacher who's older when they're accepting themselves as being trans,

Speaker 1 is you see kind of unacknowledged the beautiful aspects of being trans and the access it gives you to certain truths about gender that most people don't see.

Speaker 1 And I was was wondering if you could talk about that.

Speaker 5 We're living in an era when transness is largely understood as

Speaker 5 we've backslid to this point where it's understood as like a trick.

Speaker 5 You know, Ace Ventura at the end when the character is revealed to be a trans woman and everyone's like, she was really a man and everyone throws up and it's, it was a trick.

Speaker 5 We're now back to that in this like weird sort of dark way. A lot of this,

Speaker 5 Tommy, Tommy Tuberville, our the world's smartest senator,

Speaker 5 was talking about how there's whole teams of boys dressed up as girls playing women's sports now, and that's not happening.

Speaker 5 But it is like every single thing that people are talking about is like a bad Rodney Dangerfield movie from like 1998, and we're just stuck with it.

Speaker 5 And I think that people don't sort of fundamentally don't understand that like this is a joyful, beautiful thing that is just a normal way of being a human.

Speaker 5 human and it's not something to be afraid of or something to feel is a trick or a fraud that's being pulled on you it's just it's just a type of human being and like i'm hopeful i'm hopeful that tommy tuberfilt will read my book uh and get past the first page yeah we have other ways of fixing politics we don't rely on that i hope we have other plans no the the whole plan is everyone reads my book and uh that fixes america

Speaker 1 one thing that made me think this just about like kind of if we could get past if we get past acceptance, which obviously is a hard place to get to that we're not at,

Speaker 1 Erica, the teacher

Speaker 1 is just desperate for a female friend, just like a normal female friendship. And what I thought when I was reading this, like,

Speaker 1 you know, in the eyes of this character, she's desperate for a female friend because she's discovered she is trans.

Speaker 1 But you realize, just like, my God, how many straight men would benefit from from having a female friend and that these straight men and these straight women cisgender in this world are so

Speaker 1 hidden from each other.

Speaker 5 Yeah, there's there's a sense where Erica, who was living as a straight man, air quotes, for so much of her life, like would start to be friends with a woman and then this wall would go up between them and would be like, this happened to me as well.

Speaker 5 It was,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 it feels like there's a thing that's happening here that I'm not entirely sure what it is. And I'm scared you're going to make it weird, basically.

Speaker 5 And I would always be like, no, I don't want to make it weird. I just want to be your best friend forever.
I'm just going to like lean in right here and let's hang out and go shopping together.

Speaker 5 And they'd be like, no, no, thank you.

Speaker 1 And then the second I came out, they were like, oh, that's what that was. Okay.
And then like.

Speaker 5 that switch flipped.

Speaker 5 And it didn't happen with every person I knew, but I sort of did want to capture that experience of like being honest with yourself lets other people see you in a way that can let them accept you.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But

Speaker 1 just the other part of the two is just the,

Speaker 1 there's a scene where Erica is trying on a dress and is kind of overwhelmed by the experience and talking to

Speaker 1 her ex-wife. And the ex-wife is a bit like, oh, you didn't like how you looked in a dress and it made you feel bad about yourself.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's us every day. And they'll kind of like

Speaker 1 the there's an there. I am always, I've thought about this myself as somebody that has often struggled to know the difference between

Speaker 1 dysmorphia and dysphoria. Sure.
And that's something that this character grapples with a lot.

Speaker 1 I'm just curious, like, if you could just talk a little bit about that, because there's a way in which, in that scene, I thought it gets at something, again, that I think transness exposes, which is this trans character who is still presenting

Speaker 1 more as a man

Speaker 1 wants to feel beautiful, looks at themselves, at herself, doesn't feel beautiful.

Speaker 1 And it's hard to tell where the gender dysphoria, the being in the wrong, feeling as though you're in the wrong body,

Speaker 1 ends and just the brutal experience of just being a woman begins.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think if there's one thing I hope everyone in the world can relate to in this book, it's that having a body is weird and bad and we should not have to do it.

Speaker 5 I do think that part of why transness upsets some people so much is that it's like we are saying having a body is weird and we can do something about that.

Speaker 5 And people are like, no, we are just here to suffer this body that we are put into. And I think, I do hope that like, I don't, I want this book to sort of show people the ways in which living a life

Speaker 5 that's that's more honest and more open can be beneficial to you and to everyone around you, even if there's pain and fear at the start.

Speaker 5 And that applies to literally everybody on the planet right now.

Speaker 1 Right. Yeah.
And I think that's, I do think that's part of what threatens people so much. And

Speaker 1 it does it on that, on the axis of the axis of just having a body, but also just in, you know, Trump said this in his State of the Union. And

Speaker 1 it's quite a trick that they're trying to pull. And I've heard some people on the right try to pull this, which is,

Speaker 1 you know, on the one hand, they have these incredibly rigid notions of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman.

Speaker 1 But then when all of a sudden someone says they're trans, they say, oh, you're being convinced convinced by the left that there's a wrong way to be a boy or a wrong way to be a girl. And actually,

Speaker 1 you think that you're, you think that being trans means that actually you are, you need to change your gender. But really, we just need a more expansive definition of what this gender is.

Speaker 1 And those things don't, those are in contradiction, obviously. Yeah.
But they're not wrong

Speaker 1 that what they're getting at, what they're, their, their, their own internal contradictions can't resolve is

Speaker 1 transness does challenge some fundamental ideas about gender and it is an interplay of culture yeah and biology yeah um one thing i find uh you know pat robertson the 700 club guy a totally uh rancid horrible human being may his memory be a blessing uh

Speaker 5 he uh

Speaker 5 he and right up until um obergefell the the marriage equality decision was saying well obviously trans people gender dysphoria is real and we need to treat it and the best way to treat it is transition you can find clips of him saying this in early 2015.

Speaker 5 O'Bergefell comes out mid-2015. By the end of that year, he's flipped around and has been like, well, we have to get rid of trans people.

Speaker 5 It's that transparent how quickly they flipped the strategy as soon as marriage equality came through.

Speaker 5 It's a way to drive a wedge between trans people and all queer people to slowly start wearing away at the broader acceptance of queerness. And it's really cynical.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think,

Speaker 1 because I'm in a relationship with a trans person

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 I still see myself as gay,

Speaker 1 but according to the Trump administration, I'm in a heterosexual relationship, but of course I'm not.

Speaker 5 I think we're both becoming straighter by the second because I'm married to a woman, but there are no lesbians on this show. So it's like I'm getting tugged in that direction.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, that's a good.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I mean, but according to this, according to the Trump administration,

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 We're American as apple fucking pie.

Speaker 1 Oh, this is what I wanted wanted to ask you about. You were an essay of Vanity Fair.
Let's come back to where we started, explaining that The Substance is a better trans film than Amelia Perez.

Speaker 5 This is true. Most films are better trans films than Amelia Perez, I have to say.

Speaker 5 Yeah, The Substance is a movie that is not unlike the novel Woodworking by Emily St. James, available at crooked.com books slash books.

Speaker 5 It is a book about when I first came out to myself and really started examining

Speaker 5 my gender. I had a 13-year-old girl who'd been locked up in the back of my brain because I was like, I'm not going to listen to you.

Speaker 5 And she woke up and she was like, hey, let's go sleep over at our best friends and then we're going to like prank call boys and it's going to be fun.

Speaker 5 I was like, I am in my 30s and I have a job and a marriage. So we're not going to do that.
She was like, it's no fun. So I was like.

Speaker 5 both the like rebellious teenage daughter and her mother at the same time.

Speaker 5 And the substance is kind of about that because it's about this woman who essentially gives birth to a much younger, hotter version of herself who's her, but also not her.

Speaker 5 And that just captured something so fundamental to me about like waking up one morning and being an adult who nevertheless has this much younger person who's like trying to get your attention and like having to like sort of synthesize those two things.

Speaker 5 In the substance, those two things are synthesized very well. Nothing bad happens and there's not a giant monster that explodes in blood.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's also not, I mean, that's a gay experience. I mean, I think there's a lot.
But no, but but it is a very gay, it is a very,

Speaker 1 you know, a lot of gay guys go through a kind of

Speaker 1 a late adolescence. They go through kind of like, they're, I mean, they go nuts in their 20s or there's, whenever they come out, because they like, I, you know,

Speaker 1 I miss the, I didn't go to my prom, you know, I missed the whole, the kind of high school experience.

Speaker 1 And you do actually see in the novel that like, Erica has some jealousy towards Abigail, who, despite feeling put upon in all the ways she really is, sort of struggling, does get a part of what every girl wants in high school that someone like Erica or a lot of queer people don't get.

Speaker 5 She gets to kiss the cute boy. You know, she, if Abigail's story is like, if she isn't trans, it's just the punk girl who the jock falls in love with.

Speaker 5 And like that is the thing that Erica will, Erica's 35. She's not going to get to have that.
She's not going to magically suddenly wake up and be 16 again. And that's good.

Speaker 5 I think that probably we shouldn't be 16 again. Sounds not fun, but it is also very sad sometimes if you're queer and have to cope with the fact that you have only become yourself as an adult.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and it does terrify, I think, the right to imagine a world where those queer kids just get to be kids.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they're wrong. Yeah.
Emily, thank you so much. Everybody, please go to crooked.com slash books.
Pick up woodworking. It's also available on an audiobook.

Speaker 1 Wait, before we get to our next segment, a couple notes.

Speaker 1 Trump's address to Congress was the longest in history, but beneath the 100 and minute spectacle was the same dangerous rhetoric on immigration crime and trans rights. So, what now?

Speaker 1 In the latest episode of Assembly Required, Stacey Abrams is joined by Jen Saki, host of MSNBC's inside of Jensake,

Speaker 1 to break it all down, strategize about how Democrats and all of us can push back. Listen to Assembly Required now.
New episodes drop every Thursday wherever you get your podcast.

Speaker 1 Also, if you're in LA, come to Dynasty Typewriter next Thursday, March 13th, to check out Love It or Leave It live with special guests, Tig Nataro and Stephanie Allen.

Speaker 1 Get tickets at crooked.com/slash events. We'll be right back.

Speaker 9 Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.

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Speaker 1 And we're back. Please welcome back to the stage.
It's Natalie Morales.

Speaker 1 Hello.

Speaker 1 Welcome, Natalie. Thank you.
Thank you. All right.

Speaker 1 Great. Here we go.
Emily, you wrote for the third season of Yellow Jackets.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 1 Currently airing on Showtime. Well, Natalie, you directed the hilarious and politically timely 2021 comedy Plan B.

Speaker 1 I wanted to ask you both about writing for and about Teen Girls, but I also really wanted to talk to you about cannibalism because Yellow Jackets and Santa Clarita diet are about eating people.

Speaker 1 So it's time for segment segment we call to all the boys I ate before,

Speaker 1 also known as 10 Things I Ate About You,

Speaker 1 also known as Gossip Grill.

Speaker 1 It's time for a rapid-fire segment. Are you ready? Yes.

Speaker 1 First,

Speaker 1 did you get superlatives in your high school yearbook? No.

Speaker 1 Yes. I can't remember what it was.

Speaker 1 It was like, you know, most likely to do this shit, probably, you know?

Speaker 5 I think it was most likely to play a hyper-religious lesbian cop cop on a show about a zombie. That's what I remember it being.
I was there.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Our plane crashes. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I'm dead. Okay.

Speaker 1 A chef was also a passenger aboard the plane. She, yes, she,

Speaker 1 also dead.

Speaker 1 But she was carrying a suitcase full of delicious spices. Would it be more wrong to use the spices when cooking my human flesh to make my flesh more palatable? Is it more immoral and wrong to make

Speaker 1 you taste good? To make you delicious? No. No.
We are going to make you delicious. Yeah, I think it would only do you honor.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think that's right. We talked about that.
I think you taste good with a little coriander. I think just a wow.
Just a smidge. If someone was going to eat me, I would want me to taste good.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But see, there's something to be said for

Speaker 1 that understanding that this is an emergency and you're doing something out of desperate need to have the experience match it. Like have the aesthetics match the energy.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, sure, sure.
It's about that kind of emergency. Hey, here's a question:

Speaker 1 You know, you're gonna have you crash. Yeah, you know, you're gonna have to eat somebody.
Nobody's coming. You're gonna have to eat people.
There just aren't enough pretzels, but there are pretzels.

Speaker 1 Okay, you have like a bunch of bags of pretzels. Okay.

Speaker 1 You will have to eat people. You know that.
There's no getting out of that. You're stuck in this mountain.
I don't know that I could.

Speaker 1 But sure.

Speaker 1 Do you finish the pretzels and then start on the people? Obviously.

Speaker 1 Or

Speaker 1 do you have,

Speaker 1 just to make the whole experience a little better, pretzels and human, pretzels and human.

Speaker 1 No, because you don't know when you're going to get rescued and you hope that it's at the end of the pretzels.

Speaker 1 Because if you go, so you go pretzel human and then you get rescued and you had all these pretzels.

Speaker 1 If you hear helicopters, you got to eat a lot of pretzels.

Speaker 1 Which high school fashion trend would you rather pluck your eyes from your skull than see Gen Alpha revive again? Mine or Jenkos? No, I love Jenkos. I wore those all the time.
I love them. Yes.

Speaker 1 The ones that they make now are not as good as the ones they made then. I would wear those any second.

Speaker 1 Those kids look so cool. They're great.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 What a time. Were you going to give us an or? Which nah, it doesn't matter.
All right.

Speaker 1 Let's see.

Speaker 1 Oh, we don't get to answer that. Just you? Well, I don't even.
What do you want to say?

Speaker 1 You were asking the question, weren't you?

Speaker 1 Okay, all right.

Speaker 1 Low-rise jeans is what else? Low-rise jeans? You don't like low-rise jeans? No. That one-inch zipper can't do that anymore.

Speaker 1 Do you think RFK Jr.'s meat would be better because he's free-range, organic, and unmedicated? No, it's full of worms. It is full of worms, yeah.

Speaker 1 That's correct.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 It's full of worms.

Speaker 1 Imagine if you had a cow and it mooed like RFK's voice. You'd be like,

Speaker 1 shoot that one. That one's not healthy to eat.
If that cat was like,

Speaker 1 you'd be like,

Speaker 1 that's not a good cow. Yeah, that's a really good one.
I'm a vegetarian. I don't eat animals, but yeah, no.
That's all bad. Let's put it this way.
If my plane crashed with RFK Jr., I wouldn't eat him.

Speaker 1 I'd be scared.

Speaker 1 That would be worse for me, I think, than

Speaker 1 eating like shrubs.

Speaker 1 That's actually a good question, actually.

Speaker 1 Would you eat someone you loved who you know was healthier versus someone you hated who you think might have sicker meat? Did they die first or would I have to kill them first? No, they're just dying.

Speaker 1 You're not killing anybody.

Speaker 1 They're dead. They're dead.
They're dead. They died in the crash.

Speaker 5 I think that I would eat the, I think I would eat the healthy person.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I don't want to get worms.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I would eat the person also with like a good butt, you know, like

Speaker 1 something that looked tasty. Okay.
Where do you think it's? Again, I don't eat meat, but you'd have, but in this case, you might have to. I don't know.
Start with the quads, maybe? No, the butt.

Speaker 1 I think we'd all start with the butt, right? The butt or the quads.

Speaker 1 The butt cheeks, obviously. All right.

Speaker 1 Who's starting with the butt?

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's a plot.
It's a podcast. People are starting with the butt.
Yeah. Who's starting with the quads? Quads.
Not a plot. It's a podcast.
That's a

Speaker 1 tough. Okay, so butt.

Speaker 1 Quads.

Speaker 1 Other part of the body.

Speaker 1 What? Stomach?

Speaker 1 You're starting with the sweetbreads? You freaks?

Speaker 1 You're starting with organ beat? Are you insane?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's nuts.

Speaker 5 There is an answer to this, and it's the butt. Yeah, but you start, you start with, I have, I, she wrote for yellow.

Speaker 1 Work on a show where we research, you start with the butt. And how do you do research on this exactly? Well, it seems the easiest also to like just

Speaker 1 bite into, right? Sure.

Speaker 5 So part of the problem with cannibalism, if you, if you really, really want to get into it,

Speaker 5 is that the human body doesn't really have enough calories to keep you going because it's already stuff that's in your body. So you're not really getting nutrients from it.

Speaker 5 So that's why often like people who resort to cannibalism sort of slowly waste away. Now, in the movies and on TV, we exaggerate that because it's fun.

Speaker 5 But I mean, it's fun to imagine eating people, I guess.

Speaker 1 But like, it's a taboo. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, exactly. But like the Donner Party or the Andes Plane Crash Survivors, like they were in very bad states of malnutrition.
No.

Speaker 1 That's good to know.

Speaker 5 Not just because they had little tea, but because they were actively eating things that were making them less healthy.

Speaker 1 Huh.

Speaker 1 Interesting. And also, there's like

Speaker 1 Preutzfeld's Pretz

Speaker 5 Jacob's disease.

Speaker 1 I just mispronounced that, but it's a thing that happens to your brain.

Speaker 5 It's disease? Yeah, it's a thing that can happen to your brain if you resort to it.

Speaker 1 Human flesh. You know, I feel like there was some.

Speaker 1 Is there a Yakov in there? I don't.

Speaker 1 I feel like there's a lot of cartoons when we were younger about cannibalism, people being cooked in a big soup pot.

Speaker 1 That was always a thing. That quicksand, right? Yeah, quicksand and cannibalism.
They loom large in the child's mind. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 5 Cannibalism for purposes of ritual and religious ritual has like always existed.

Speaker 5 It's this idea that you die, you have your plane crash and you're going to survive by eating people that I should not say this because I write for yellow jackets and I want the show to continue running, but yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's just something to think about now that the FAA is basically volunteer-based.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.
So that was high school versus cannibalism, I guess.

Speaker 1 Sure. Sort of a loose show today.
Any final thoughts in general?

Speaker 1 Buy my book. It's a good book.

Speaker 5 I'm just going to keep pushing the book. That's what I'm doing.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm doing this week.

Speaker 1 Check out my dead friend Zoe with our live friend Natalie Morales. I'm alive, and it's in theaters.
And I think it's a really good and funny movie. Please watch it.

Speaker 1 This is probably the last weekend it'll be in theaters because it's like an indie movie with a two-week run. So go see it.
Get in there. Yeah.
Well, the kid's good. What do you do instead?

Speaker 1 Sit on your couch at home, watch something on your phone while also watching something on television. You're You're fucking up your whole life.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Slipping through your goddamn fingers. Every single one of you is wasting your lives.
You're all wasting so much time. We're going to look back and think, my God, what we gave to these conglomerates.

Speaker 1 My God, we gave them our youth. My God, we gave them our attention for so many years until we figured out how to stop it.

Speaker 1 by not having electricity anymore after the troubles, after the troubles in the late 2013s and the Sino-American War of 2042.

Speaker 1 After that, we fixed it. But until then, we'll say we should have gone out and seen that movie.
We should have read that book. And if there's nothing else you take from that show

Speaker 1 that you heard then,

Speaker 1 this one. That's now.

Speaker 5 See the movie and read my book before you die.

Speaker 1 That's the message.

Speaker 1 Emily St. James, Natalie Morales.
Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody.

Speaker 8 That is our show.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much to our guests. I threw down the card that has the number of days until the midterms.
So they're coming.

Speaker 1 Have a great weekend.

Speaker 1 Love it or leave it as a crooked media production. It is written and produced by me, John Lovett, and Lee Eisenberg.
Kendra James is our executive producer. Bill McGrath is our producer.

Speaker 1 And Kennedy Hill is our associate producer. Hallie Kiefer is our headwriter.
Sarah Lazarus, Jocelyn Kaufman, Peter Miller, Elaine Pierre, Will Miles, and Mohanad El-Shiki are our writers.

Speaker 1 Evan Sutton is our editor. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis provide audio support.
Stephen Cologne is our audio engineer. And Milo Kim is our videographer.

Speaker 1 Our theme song is written and performed by Sure, Sure. Thanks to our designer Sammy Koderna Reeves for creating and running all of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast.

Speaker 1 And to our digital producers, David Tolas, Claudia Shang, Mia Kelman, and Matt DeGroat for filming and editing videos each week so you can.

Speaker 1 And our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

Speaker 1 Hello, hot people who vote.

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