Guest Tom Spurgeon of comicsreporter.com talks about losing half his body weight, gaining perspective, and how junk culture eats itself. This episode is sponsored by Out Of Print Clothing!
The Virtual Memories Show
Season 2, Episode 12 - Comic Sans
[music] Welcome to the Virtual Memories Show. I'm your host, Gil Roth, and this is a podcast about books in life, not necessarily in that order. I've got a pretty gnarly head cold going on, so I'm sorry if my voice is a little rough or I seem a little out of it. It's been a pretty frantic couple of weeks and I guess my immune system is just telling me to slow down a bit, like that's going to happen. Before I tell you about today's guest, I have some business to take care of. That's because the Virtual Memories Show now has its first endorsement deal. No, I'm not getting paid, paid, and no, it's not Nike or Adidas or Brunello, Coochenelli or anything, but it's still pretty cool. This episode is sponsored by Out of Print Clothing. They sell these really great t-shirts, fleeces and tote bags and other gear based on classic book covers. If you're geek enough to listen to this podcast, that's actually something that's going to appeal to you. As they put it in their website, which is outofprintclothing.com, Out of Print celebrates the world's great stories through fashion. Our products feature iconic and often out of print book covers. Summer classics, some are just curious enough to make great t-shirts, but all are striking works of art. The company really makes some great gear. I own a couple of their t-shirts, Moby Dick and Naked Lunch, and I asked them if they'd like to send me more shirts in exchange for plugs. So now I've got me some more nice ones, 1984, Death of a Salesman, and Don Quixote. The other great thing about out of print clothing is that for each product you buy, they donate one book to a community in need through their partner, Books for Africa. So you get neat clothing that shows off your literary bent, and you get to help promote literacy in Africa. How awesome is that? Go hit up atoprintclothing.com and check out the selection. This episode's guest is Tom Spurgeon, editor of comicsreporter.com. Tom is one of my closest friends, and while there are a ton of topics we could talk about for this show, I decided as Hegel tells us, that Gertha tells us to be great, one must limit oneself. So in that vein, we talked about weight loss. Specifically, Tom's incredible transformation over the last 16 months or so. He had an awful health scare in June 2011, and since then, at the age of 42, he's managed to drop about 175 pounds, which is my entire body weight, and get down to a weight that he hasn't seen since high school. He's working on a book now about the process and how his weight issues, and he wants top five bills, correlate to his entertainment consumption habits. As you put it in our conversation, one of the embarrassing things back when I was over 400 pounds is that I was one of the fattest guys in comics, which isn't exactly filled with the Catholics. So without further ado, here's Tom Spurgeon. I guess this episode is Tom Spurgeon, the editor of comicsreporter.com, and former editor of the comics journal. We're meeting at Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland. It's a 14th anniversary of the first time Tom and I came down to SPX. The main reason I thought we'd talk is about, essentially, your incredible health problems last year and how your life has kind of changed since then. Can you sort of just give us a background on what went down last year and then we could talk about sort of the transformation you've undergone since? You know, what happened to me last year was I was misdiagnosed a couple of times first as just having allergies, and then as having a double hernia. And when I went into the emergency room to get more painkillers as instructed to kind of negotiate these minor problems that were supposed to go away, the doctor on call told me that I had a massive infection that had turned into flesh eating bacteria. And they needed to get me into surgery and I had about a one in five chance of seeing Monday. That was a Saturday night. So they rushed me downstate into surgery and I was out on my back. They took a chunk of flesh out of me about thirteen by five by five. And I went through the long recovery process of someone who has a giant hole in them, which involved a lot of, you know, gauze being stuffed into me and a lot of antibiotics to make sure the infection didn't come back. And I was on my back for, you know, I was in the coma briefly. I was in the hospital for about a week, ten days, and I was getting post-hospital wound care for about three months after that. One of the things that I was prescribed was to get healthier and lose some weight and then so forth so good I've been able to do that at least. Yeah, how much weight have you lost? Because that's what the listeners are really going to care about. Right. I weighed about 430 pounds, a little over 430 in January 2011. When I went into surgery, they weighed me, I was about 385. And I've been down, right now, the other morning I was about 215 and, you know, kind of bounced between 205 and 215. So I lost all the massive adult fat weight that I had, which is about 200, 215 pounds, which is more than my body weight at this point. Yeah, it's like the old half of the man I used to be Joe kind of applies to me now and people think that's hilarious when they bring it up to me. And I use it too, so I can't really... Yeah, and you have to play off of it. You have to own it. Yeah, because it's actually true. Now, in addition to your appearance changing pretty significantly, internally what's, you know, what's gone on or how's your approach to life changed in the, I guess, 20 months or so since this whole episode began? You know what's weird? People would say, you know, you even have a scary experience like that and they give you, like, a certain percentage odds of not making it to the next day. Like what goes through your head and everything. The thing I remember is that I had to be driven downstate instead of flown downstate because there was a small child with a scorpion bite and then the same evening as I was. So the small child of course got the helicopter so they'd go to Tucson. So they found an ambulance to drive me to where I was going to the hospital. And so I was morphinged up and in the back of an ambulance looking out the back of an ambulance at a highway for about three hours, you know, and I'm not sleeping because I tell, you know, this and as I would be put under, I might not be waiting. I might not be getting back up. And what was weird is that you kind of see the whole, you get to see it as a beginning, middle and end and it never occurred to you that there would be, it doesn't occur to you in that real way. Of course you know that, but there's going to be a beginning, middle and end. But it's like, okay, my story might end in a couple of hours. And what does that mean? Like, what is that life like? And it was something that had been on my mind, you know, because I met that age, you know, it's not, it's not a surprising thing. Like, you know, grossly overweight man dies of, of infection and at age and complications from infection at age 42, it's not a shocker. It's not a, it's not something you don't see in the paper. It's not something that would be an amazing thing. So it's a pretty average life. But this is the fact that you kind of, you know, you won't get to talk to certain people again. And you kind of have to trust that those relationships, if that's the ending point, is that going to be okay? And surprisingly, it wasn't, there wasn't a panic. There wasn't any kind of the morphine help with that. Yeah, I think so. I think the fact that I was massively drug probably had a lot to do with it. And by the way, morphine is as good as that was my first morphine. It was pretty great. But I know there is this a sense of, they're not even existential, not even like a physical combat, but you just kind of, it's, it's done. It's going to be, it's going to be that, it's going to be that, that's going to be your life. And it's like, and, you know, I was lucky in that, I know that some of my friends thought it was horrifying that I was kind of not more distressed, because it certainly, you certainly have relationships, you want it to be better and you certainly have feet. And all you think about is relationships. You don't think about about much of anything else. But for the most part, you know, you kind of go, well, you know, I think I did trying in a lot of areas. And I, you know, I think the people that I love know that I love them. And so there was like a real sense of calm that came out of that near-death experience. What happened afterwards is that you get, when you recover from something like there and you have longer recovery, what it actually does is it just takes stuff off the table. And you just have to focus on one thing at a time. And it allows you to not be kind of scattered and unfocused. It's like, and you have only 15 minutes to do something. You do what you can in those 15 minutes and you actually get something done. It's kind of like when people, when before people, some people before they travel, like when they're getting on a plane, all of a sudden get a bunch of stuff done at work or at home and get a bunch of errands done. It's kind of like that, because you have a limited, it all sudden limits you. So there's something very freeing and having all these limitations and having to focus and having to be smart about what you do and having to process and actually get things done. So it totally changed my perspective in that way. In terms of work, certainly. Yeah. And personal relationships too. I mean, you just do what you can. You can't get everything at once. You can touch base and talk to people and be involved and care about them. But you can't, everything can't be restored at once. And if you can just reach out to someone or just, sounds a cliche. I'm not even sure how to put it. It's kind of like you don't. The danger isn't in the limits to what you can do for someone. The danger is not, is withdrawing and realizing you don't have those relationships anymore. And if you can be engaged with someone's life, even if you're just the person that gets to see them twice a year or you're just the person that gets to touch base once a week, that's what you have. So that's what you work with if that makes any sense. Hitchens near the end mentioned if there's somebody even putting off getting in touch with, just get in touch with them. Just do it. When he was in his late stages, just that notion of not finality, but at least it's much better to have made that gesture than to have, "Oh, yeah, should have gotten in touch with X before." You just kind of have to efficiently work on things. It's not all going to come at once and you kind of get that sense when you start doing that, that there are some relationships that could be better and some things that you do that could be better. So do you feel it the way your living has improved? I mean, again, the massive weight loss is great. Externally, things are much better. But do you feel that your approach has really have you changed your life essentially from this? We kind of have to. And the external discipline of having to make sure that you exercise and make sure that you eat and correctly and make sure that you are taking care of like wound process. And I forget the famous quote from an author that said life is best lived when you have to negotiate some sort of disease or some sort of ailment because that gives you a structure and a focus to your day. And I think that's kind of true. There's so much external, there's external discipline where I didn't have any internal discipline before. So it kind of cracks everything back into shape. So I hope it's better. I mean, I think it's better. We've mentioned partway through this the whole experience that your doctors were sort of astonished by your level of weight loss. And I think as you could tell, they just weren't used to somebody who was actually complying with medical advice. Well, yeah. You know, they actually told me like I had two doctors down in my, after the surgery, who told me that I wasn't going to lose the way. And I had the wound care specialist, I remember, told me just, you know, the advice they gave was so low expectation that it was almost ridiculous. It was like, you know, just try every so often to eat a can of tuna. This one lady said, you know, as if I was just going to just start chowing on large, like the second that I left the hospital, you know, it's like, you know, switch to light beer. It's kind of like instead of not drinking. Because I guess, and I'm hearing this now that I'm worth hanging about doing something with writing, me writing about the whole experience, is that it's very hard for old men over 40 to change habits. Well, I had one doctor tell me that only like one in 30 of his patients that come in was some sort of a desperate need for weight loss. Even when they're men, they almost never do it. And women only, you know, one in 10 will do it. So it's really hard to change those habits. So they were quite, you know, happy for whatever reason. There was enough of a wake-up call that I got that done. Can you tell me a little about the writing project at all, or is it still? You know, I wrote an essay because people, I went, when you work in comics, you go to these comic conventions. And I went to a comic convention and I had people come up and kind of grab me by the arm and ask how I lost the weight. And it's not a secret, even though I was one of the things that was kind of embarrassing about being over well over 400 pounds is that I was one of the fattest guys in comics. Yeah, that's that's an achievement. Which isn't exactly, which isn't exactly like, you know, full of decathletes and and beauty and beautiful bodies. But I, so there are a lot of people that have that carry a lot of weight. And so I had a lot of people grabbing me by the arm and asking how that was done. So I wrote a little essay about just just in the matter of Mac way that I was able to lose the weight by, you know, paying attention to what I eat and exercising. Yeah, any diet tips beyond getting a horrendous, yeah, getting a horrendous, yeah, massive infection and get really sick and then have to do it. That always helps. But more it was just just kind of getting through the mental process. So I wrote a lot about the mental process and kind of like the ways that I put off doing anything about it or the way that I had justified kind of continuing on in my in my kind of delirious food state. And it's kind of a crazy food state, you know, like buying $40 of the cheapest groceries I have and consuming all of it, you know, just piles and piles and piles of food. So a lot of people asked me so I wrote something about it. I wrote something very matter of fact and shortened to the point and hopefully it was funny. And a lot of people very strongly responded to that. I got like 50 kind of confessional emails from readers, which is a significant portion of of my readership, which isn't big. And so a friend of mine's, you know, is going to try is trying to shepherd and maybe put together a book project either serialize it on the side or or find a proper publisher and talk about trying to do that kind of weight loss and lifestyle change when you're a geek and when you're over 40, which I think it brings with a certain mindset. Yeah, we've also talked about that in the past. And if you want to go into it the way you're the way those sorts of food issues correspond to your entertainment consumption habits and how that may have both of those may have changed in the yeah. Yeah, well, you always want more when you're I mean, that's the kind of modus operandi for most like consumers of junk culture as you always want as much as you can have. It's not about curating what you have. It's about just collecting piles and piles and seeing all the movies and getting all the editions and getting all of the comics in a series and getting all the comics or all the art that you can by a creator. And that's kind of like this kind of sustained wallow in pleasure that you get from being into comics or movies or whatever is really kind of the way you approach end up approaching food. It just becomes like this. You're a pleasure junkie. I think a lot of geeks are. And I think that you kind of want to stay in that state of existence where you're just kind of super happy and content. And there's a nostalgic poll for that because a lot of people turn to food when they're young is kind of a respite or relief from the shitty parts of the rest of their lives. And I think that was true. You know, it was a really fun, quiet time where you'd curl up with a bag of chicken daggots and the latest copy of Nexus or something. You know, that's a very pleasurable experience. That's high end. That was an X-Men geek and fries. Or an exercise squad or old Mr. Miracles or whatever. So I think that there's a real, you know, that kind of unrestrained hedonistic kind of wallow in pleasure I think has a lot to do with the way geeks consume. And I think that there's not a lot of, despite the, I don't know, I think it's more allowed now. I think there's more of a permission. We're all getting permissiveness. There's more of a, there are a lot bigger people even. If you look at pictures of like geek culture from the 1970s, there aren't a lot of huge guys despite that stereotype. And so I think it follows all of culture in that direction that we are a large, we are a bunch of lumbering super mammals more and more as time goes on. But yeah. So I do think that marriage, there are consumption habits that you have and excuses that you make and the comforts that you take that kind of allow you to negotiate this kind of massively unhealthy lifestyle. And you know, even all the way out to the fact that when you get really, you get a lot of geeks that will simply refuse to take care of themselves because they're so fixated on one hobby or another. Whether that's, you know, not, I know of people that have not, you know, you hear of people that have not bought insulin so that they can buy some sort of comic book that they want, you know, that's disturbing with all the way out there that I'd end. So you do have to negotiate those ways that you think in the way that you kind of approach pleasure and maybe kind of divorce your food from the things in which you find pleasure. Yeah. And to that end, have you modified that side of your, your, your life at this point? How do you consume? I know you're not. Well, I know, I don't, well, I always could consume everything. Well, having consuming culture, you know, do you find that your approach has changed in that respect since you've got to get, you got to get a lot more pleasure out of it, you know, and it's not because you're not consuming everything. It's kind of like when, when you're eating and you have a meal that's presented to you, you're always looking when you were fat, when I was super fat and eating a lot, I always looked for the way like I was always very distressed when I looked at a menu and it's always I went to find like the biggest thing I could get. And if someone got like a plate that looked like better than mine, I was like, Oh, damn it. You know, like I got the wrong plate. And you'd be really upset and kind of churned up about that because you wanted to maximize that pleasure. And now I enjoy whatever, you know, like I can order anything that I want. And it's like the pleasure is not in consuming as much as possible. And it's kind of that way with culture too. You kind of realize that you don't always have to have a maximum experience with everything all the time. And it kind of lets you back off a lot of your, you know, angry unsatisfied kind of angry unsatisfied state that I think pop culture wants to put you in or junk culture wants to put you in where you're constantly dissatisfied and you constantly want to consume the next thing. I mean, the two things, the two things that allow people to consume more are rapture. This is awesome or kind of dissatisfaction. This sucks. Because you always either want to go the next thing because it's awesome. And you want to go the next thing to kind of replace this dissatisfaction experience you have. And that's why you always have these weird, just extreme points of view about any movie or comic or TV show that comes out. This is the best TV show ever. Or this is the worst, this is the season is awful. And it's always to, I think, I think it's a way to drive you to kind of the next thing. Whereas now you get, I kind of, you take pleasure in all of it, you take pleasure a lot more of it, it doesn't have to be a maximum experience. Yeah, to varying degrees, like you're not angry that Woody Allen doesn't make a film like Annie Hall every time out, you kind of go, oh, that's a Woody. You know, it's kind of like it's, it's a nice sandwich. You know, it's not, you're not constantly driven to maximize everything, I guess, to use a word I use over. But again, that sort of sums up who you were before this. Yeah, you're going to have a word that, that, you know, yeah, you want to, you want to write the most, work the most, consume the most, be the smartest kid in the room, this kind of lord of the basement, where you're, you know, you're in your element and you are the king of consumption. And I can't do that anymore. So why not? Why not enjoy the other part to it? I get to eat the rest of the food now. Yeah. And we say, you know, someone asked me, they're not, don't you miss chocolate, don't you miss? I think I pretty much had my lifetimes allotment of corn chips, of barbecue corn chips. I really do. I think I've done that. I think of some nice apples at the farmer's market down the street from here. I get one of those on the way out. I get, yeah, I can have an apple now and that's just fine. And that's, I get to eat the other stuff now. I get to enjoy the other things now. I don't, yeah. So they mentioned getting a lot of emails after the comics made me somewhat less fat, post. How supportive has the industry been in general? There are industry people you know, how much support have you gotten from comics culture for the transformation you've undergone? Everyone's been super, super nice about it. And not even kind of genuinely nice, kind of like directly nice. And I accept, you know, there's a dismay that some people feel if they're not, if they feel like they need to do it too, I guess. I guess that some people have told me they've felt bad when they've seen me because I'm, you know, you did something they haven't done? Yeah, they need to get to that. It's kind of like I did something that they needed to get around to. It's almost so, maybe that's a geek thing too, you know, like this guy's having an experience that I need to have. And so they're getting a little bit of that, but mostly people are really sweet and really nice. Yeah, there's no, absolutely no, you know, everyone's very complimentary and everyone's very happy that I'm not, you know. I think when it can cut it, that it came coupled with like a near-death experience. People are just kind of, wasn't just a glad fitness maniac, but that you're still glad to have me around. One of the thing that's interesting, you know, comics is a small enough community and there's a certain, there are certain kind of clear generations of people. And we have not, we've maybe lost one person that a lot of people know, and our generation, the people that are, you know, in their late 30s to mid 40s, most of us are still here. So there's not a lot of people that have been lost yet. So I think that kind of touched on people that, you know, we're getting, we're fragile and we're getting to that age and we are going to lose some people. But yeah, I think that I think that people were kind of glad to not to have another one die. And you know, the early 40s, I think that would have been, I don't know, some people would have been saying, some people wasn't happy. So yeah, well, DC. Yeah. Now, because of my books and life fixation, in your post surgery recovery and sort of this realization that life is short, books that you thought about getting to, you know, it's weird. The first one I read was I just never, I always blew off reading. I was a big fan of Somerset Moms. Yeah. And I, for some, you know, it was an author that I read when I was a kid. And I don't, I'm not going to make the case that he's the best author, but there's something about the plainness of his language and its kind of suitability for stage. I think a little bit that speaks well. And he has a very, there's a solicitousness that he has for his characters that I find very appealing. And I had never read Raiser's Edge. And I always kind of wanted to read that. And so in kind of that matter of fact, why I was like, I didn't make the bucket, like I have to make this bucket list of books, or I need to read the great books. And I need to decide which the great books are. And it's sort of like a great example of the overall kind of life change. It was kind of like, I just sort of need to kind of pay attention to reading more books that I want to read. And like, well, what's the first one that pops into my head? Raiser's Edge, I'll go read that. And then after that, I wanted to read David Copperfield. So I read that. And now I'm reading the the trolop. I've never read a trolop before. So that's, I'm going to read that. And then after that, I think Tolstoy. So it's a very, it's very kind of matter of fact, and kind of process oriented. Because it's not so much, you can make lists and decide you want to read. But it's very different from actually reading. And I think a lot of us get to the point where we don't, I wasn't reading. You know, even though I write, I wasn't reading. So when I came out, I was like, well, I just have to kind of pay attention to that. And maybe not plan things out, maybe not make a list, maybe not maybe just actually do some reading. Yeah. That's the list making phenomenon. I mean, we see it with an internet culture too, of course, but that idea of which I've had for my entire life, that inquisitive alchemy thing, we just have to build a correct bookshelf and get the right books on it. And then that'll be almost as good as actually reading set books. Yeah. So yeah, so yeah, so my choices are all just kind of like the ones that occur to me, but it's not so it's not a greatest hits list, or it's not the books I probably should be reading, because I've gaps in my reading history. But I, yeah, there's a, and there are mostly books that give me pleasure on some level too that I'm curious about. So, yeah, just kind of a very natural organic kind of plunge back into reading, in addition to all the art. So. And any places you wanted to see that you're, you're trying to? Just here. But you have, well, yeah, Bethesda, obviously, that's the one place I know you were lying in a hospital coming out of the coma thinking I got to get to SPX. No, you know, because the weird thing is like, even though I'm in the hospital, I didn't really have a good desire to go do anything, I guess I want to travel a little bit more like it's natural for everybody because I can. Yeah. And I don't. That really is just about making every day kind of a little bit, because you don't know which day is going to be it, you know, you don't know when that story is going to end, and you don't know. And the fact that it's no longer an extraordinary thing is no longer a hedge against that inevitability. It's no longer a, it's no longer a remarkable thing, so it could come anytime and people will go, okay. And then, you know, a couple days later, everyone will be going about their life. So, I'm more interested in just having a good day every day out and finding something to enjoy and something to, and you know, the grander plans all come. And I like to go travel and see friends and that kind of thing. I love coming to see you guys and I love coming to New York and seeing my buddies there. And so, yeah, I'm in a part travel, which travel will be a part of it, but not, I don't know, places to see. I've never been a places to see guy. Gotcha. You know, I like to, I like to plunge in. I like to get a sense of what life is like someplace, but I don't. I never really wanted to look at stuff. I guess if I wanted to look at stuff, it'd be like, you know, art museum. Well, Turkish, like, I like, I'm kind of fascinated by like those, the ruins that they have over, what is the, you know, like, is it Turkey that has a bunch of rooms and they're on and, and that kind of stuff fascinates me because it's so alien to me. And I like over developed, weird cities, you know, like, yeah, well, I think Tokyo would be fascinated to plunge into for like four or five days and kind of wander around and look at that stuff. And I like, I like a sense of continuity. I like a sense of, to get a sense of how things were and how things overlap and how things change and kind of increasing gentrification of cities and what neighborhoods kind of change. So, but I like those kinds of things. I'm not really a point and look kind of guy. And, you know, nature. Who needs nature? I hide out in the trees and then woods out in my neighborhood, but mountains, waterfall, deer and bear and everything else. Things of natural beauty, who needs that crap? Give me a city street, you know. And a comic store. Give me a funny bookstore. Yeah. Or give me a, you know, a funny bookstore that's been there for 30 years. And you can kind of see like what he was selling and what's in his back room. And I don't know. I was always a kid. Like, I used to like when I was a kid, I used to go out to people's garages and look around at people's garages, like what they had, what they no longer used, what they had out there and stuff. It's a weird little kid. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, you kind of, you kind of, I don't know, kind of what people leave behind is kind of more interesting to me. What's in people's shelves? You know, it's like making a bookshelves except with more stuff. Detritus and then the other, the things we accumulate. Yeah. I think that's very interesting. And that's, you know, a cityscape is kind of that for a collective culture. You know, all these forgotten shops and all these, you know, I got fascinated the other day by magic shops. I wanted to go see what magic shops were still existing. Yeah, we still have some in North Jersey costume shops too. Like the old style that the, you know, Halloween showcase. Magic shops used to be part of every town or every culture. You know, somebody that's a little powder and flash stuff and then, but they're still there. I still feel, that's crazy to me. How people organize their lives is just crazy to me. So, I don't know. Every house has a family in it. It just blows my mind. I did. I sound like tired old hippie now. But it kind of, you know, I mean, it's like, I was driving, I was coming through on the train from somewhere in New York or drive, or coming in the cab and I remember looking up and right across the river and there was a big high rise. And it was like, all those high rises have people in it. Like, that's where they chose to live. Like, I just do amazing to me in a certain extent, you know, that everyone finds a place. There's a place almost always finds everyone. And we're here to pick up Chris Ware's building stories. So, I'm sure that that's part of his whole, yeah, there's a big element of that cartoonist, you know, the cartoonist set that's been building little small cities, has built a fake city of dominion and up there and kind of populates it and just recently decorated a barber shop like it that would exist in this city. And that kind of idea of a virtual reality is really and kind of how that develops is really fascinating to me. Yeah, I think it's time we head downstairs to SPX and start to see some of the show. Okay, well, how about I'm bored, everyone, to the police. Okay, well, that's, yeah, thank you. Thank you for talking. I appreciate it. I love you. Get you an apple. All right. And that was Tom Spurgeon. Check out his site, comics reporter.com. You can drop him a line through the contacts link there. You've been listening to the virtual memory show brought to you in part by add a print clothing. Now, beside the guests and the occasional photography by my wife, this podcast is really a one man operation. So, if you'd like to contribute a little to help pay for bandwidth or equipment costs, travel and such, I've added a tip jar on the website so you can donate via PayPal. You can just visit chimera obscura.com and click on the podcast link for more info. As Mark Marin puts it, kick in a few shekels. When you're there, you can also check back for more episodes or subscribe to the show on iTunes so you never miss an interview. I'll be back soon with a long one with Michael Durda, the Pulitzer Prize winning book critic. Until then, I am Gil Roth and you are awesome. Keep it that way. [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]