Season 4, Episode 1: Gotta Collect 'Em All (the feelings)

Sara and Daniel interview writer Ross Gay to talk about his essay collection, Inciting Joy, which was released in 2022. In this conversation, which explores ReadICT Category 4: A Collection, Ross talks about the meaning of incitement, the interconnectedness of everything and why inefficiency can be a great act of self-care.

Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcription. Some errors may occur. If you find a transcription error, please contact us with any corrections and we will make those corrections as quickly as possible.

SARA DIXON: All right!

DANIEL PEWEWARDY: Hey, welcome to Read. Return. Repeat.

SARA: So this is our first official episode of season four. You might notice a few different things. We are doing our intros video style.

DANIEL: If you're listening on a podcast app, nothing has changed.

SARA: Nothing has changed except that we're more fun.

DANIEL: So yeah, I get... yeah, I think this is, I think this is cool. It's like Regis and Kathie Lee or whatever.

SARA: Ooh, except or like Hoda and Kathie Lee.

DANIEL: I can't keep track of them.

SARA: That's wine, though. That's wine. We don't drink on the job.

DANIEL: So this is our fourth season. And this is our first official episode.

SARA: First official episode. We had the kickoff.

DANIEL: Yeah. Which was great. That was fun, what did you think of it?

SARA: And that was fun. Yeah, you know, I always feel like my book choices aren't as cool as everybody else's. Do you ever feel that way?

DANIEL: Yeah, like sometimes I --

SARA: Would that be impostor syndrome?

DANIEL: Yeah. I read a lot of graphic novels. So that definitely, it's like, oh, you guys are talking real books. [SARA AND DANIEL BOTH LAUGH]

SARA: Although you were very intimate -- intimate? No, you were not intimate. [DANIEL LAUGHS] But you were very animated about the DJ Khaled book.

DANIEL: Oh, yes. Yeah, the DJ Khaled was one of my picks. I basically was able to take DJ Khaled's book and apply it to like every category.

SARA: That's true. There are a couple --

DANIEL: A recipe book. Didn't have a map in there. There was a, there was a line on the cover so I felt like that was close enough to count.

SARA: Oh, no, it was like a map to your success or something like that, wasn't it?

DANIEL: Oh yeah. We were able to apply it to most of the categories.

SARA: You don't have to relive it. If you want to know more about DJ Khaled's book, go check out our first episode --

DANIEL: We have talked about DJ Khaled on the season way more than we should have. But anyway, so I thought we'd start off with a game.

SARA: Okay.

DANIEL: And this game is called Four Squared Squared because it's season four.

SARA: Did you write this game?

DANIEL: I made this game, yes. Season 4, 2024. So it's like, like four squared, squared? Which, what I'm gonna do is I'll read you four excerpts.

SARA: Okay.

DANIEL: And every book is the fourth publication from that office.

SARA: Okay.

DANIEL: Does that make sense?

SARA: Yes. So I'm not going to know, I'm going to be horrible at this game.

DANIEL: First one.

SARA: Okay.

DANIEL: "Whipped cream isn't whipped cream at all if it hasn't been whipped with whips, just like poached eggs isn't poached eggs unless it's been stolen in the dead of night."

SARA: Uh... Mary Poppins?

DANIEL: All right. No, close. You're in the right...

SARA: Okay.

DANIEL: You're right in the right realm. "In the town there was no sadness and no sorrow and no poverty either, in the town of the happy little workers."

SARA: Okay. Is it Roald Dahl?

DANIEL: Close. Yes, you're right. Yeah. You're getting closer.

SARA: Is it Willy Wonka?

DANIEL: Yes.

SARA: Didn't even need four of them that time!

DANIEL: "The snozzberries taste like snozzberries" was gonna be the fourth one. Last one because we have to start the show.

SARA: Yes.

DANIEL: "She always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day."

SARA: I don't know. Go to the next one.

DANIEL: "For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were coming."

SARA: I don't know!

DANIEL: All right, this next one, I hope you get it. "She" -- because it has the title in the quote.

SARA: Okay.

DANIEL: "She had the oddest sense of being her self invisible, unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. blank; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard blank."

SARA: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

DANIEL: Okay, no, you have to guess -- that's the author.

SARA: Oh.

DANIEL: Virginia Woolf. Come on.

SARA: Ohhh, Mrs. Dalloway?

DANIEL: You got it.

SARA: I hated that book!

DANIEL: Half credit. Half credit, all right.

SARA: You know what? That's fine. Let's move on.

DANIEL: All right.

SARA: I got it. I get the points.

DANIEL: Okay.

SARA: Next time you better watch out.

DANIEL: Today's guest is a winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award.

SARA: Did we even say who it is? It's Ross Gay, everybody. We're excited about it. He's the author of four books and poetry and the author of The New York Times bestseller The Book of Delights.

DANIEL: And then he just came out with a sequel, The Book of (More) Delights. We talked to him, he's out of Bloomington, Indiana, where he's an English professor. So let's go ahead and jump to that interview.

SARA: But first, let's also just mention, we did not talk to him about The Book of Delights. We talked to him about Inciting Joy.

DANIEL: Yes, which is an awesome read. So yeah, let's hand it over to past versions of ourselves and talk to Ross Gay.

[MUSIC]

SARA: Thank you so much for joining us today, Ross Gay. We're so excited.

DANIEL: Yeah, it's awesome to have you here.

ROSS GAY: Yeah, glad to be here.

SARA: So tell us about the book. I know that this is not your newest book. But we wanted to talk about Inciting Joy today. Why did you choose the word incite as a way to describe like creating joy?

ROSS: There's like a handful, that book had several titles actually kind of in the process. There was a a riff on Chris Hedges's book called War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, so I was sort of thinking, oh, joy is a force that gives us meaning. But that felt a little too kind of spelled out in a way. And then there's another one... oh, what was that other title? It's a riff on a... Went Free, it was one of the titles and it's sort of like a riff on an essay that I wrote about my friend Patrick Rosal's comments on dancing. But then, then I just sort of thought it might be neat to... and then I thought, "Oh, Joy: A Provocation," or something like that. But there was a book that was sort of similar in title. And so I thesaurused it and the word incitement came up, and I'm like, oh, that's the exact word that I mean. And when I say that, I mean, all of the things that incitement sort of, sort of makes you think of. You know? The incitement to unruliness, or, you know, shaking stuff apart. You know, because of the way that the, I think the premise or the theory or the exploration or whatever, the query of the book sort of does suggest that joy is this thing that is, in fact, sort of disruptive to a certain mode of life, which I would call a mode of unlife. Joy is a kind of disruption to the brutality, you know, that we might call a kind of standard living, you know, what we have to survive. So joy feels absolutely like an incitement. It feels like a kind of ripping [expletive] apart to get toward what we know how to do, you know?

SARA: It does kind of be like an act of rebellion, almost. I mean, it's been, you know, couple rough years, I think, for everyone. And to be like, no, I'm going to just like, create these things that bring me joy, I'm going to create joy, I'm going to incite it feels like just rebellion. And so I actually had to look up incitement 'cause I was like, that seems like a weird choice of words. And then, as I was continuing to read the book, it was I just kind of like sat in that moment where I thought about it. I don't know, what did you think, Daniel?

DANIEL: I think like inciting a kind of, like, from like, it kind of seems like we do kind of have a ritual way to to bring joy into our life. And like, when I think of incitement I think of like, like a cult stuff, like inciting like, like, kind of, like, ritual to make something happen. And so like, it's like, we do that like, like, think of all the things you have to do to go to Disney World to experience like, like not maybe like very manufactured joy. So like, no, I like, I kind of got those vibes from the book.

ROSS: Yeah. And the word inciting is both a verb and an adjective. I like that too. So that, so it asks the question, how do we incite joy? And I guess it presumes that we might be able to incite joy. Joy is the thing that you can incite, but also how is joy incited, the description? How is joy itself incited? And I think sort of like my... we'll get into this, I'm sure. But like, my understanding or thinking right now about joy is that it's fundamentally about how we care for one another, and how we practice that care. It's fundamentally about, and I had to write this whole book to sort of figure this out, which mine is going to continue to be figured out because my life I suspect, but it's fundamentally about the practice of our entanglement, the practice of our belonging to one another. That's what I think joy is and so when we join with that, when we enter into that or submit to that, or whatever the word is, you know, it's a kind of the potential for kind of radical care is, is a or that's what we're submitting to the potential for a kind of radical care or maybe even spotting or noticing when we're in the midst of such care. You know, when we do that it does it test something, I feel very, very confident that it does something.

DANIEL: That's, yeah.... So you kind of talked about sorrow in your book and your book opens with an extended metaphor about bringing the personification of sorrow to a gathering, and how sorrow brings people together. The incitements or chapters are all about the things that bring you joy, and some of them are really heavy. How does sharing sorrow bring us joy?

ROSS: Well, I think that one of the things that I -- and this, you know, I'm kind of indebted to many people. One of them is Zadie Smith's beautiful short essay called Joy. But also all kinds of other writers and thinkers, some of them like, you know, Buddhist thinkers, the writer and nun Pema Chödrön is one and there are others. But to me, the feeling, my feeling is that one of the ways that we enter into joy or commune with joy, or... you know, you can tell, like, I'm always trying to figure out like, what is the thing that joy is or does or we do with joy, but whatever that thing is, one of the ways we arrive to it, or commune with it or whatever, is when we help each other carry our sorrows. You know, which is why like funerals, memorials, etc., are sites of joy.

You know, it's not like because we're, we're full of sorrow or because we're longing or we because we miss someone, the joy is not there. In a way, that joy feels more acute in the midst of knowing that someone is no longer with us, you know? And it feels like that. That's what, you know, the first essay in the book is sort of like meditates on my father's, you know, death from liver cancer. And it's sort of like the reason to put that up front is because I sort of firmly believe that there's something about the closeness that that illness happened to occasion between my father and myself, like his being sick led me to get closer to him, led me to be softer toward him, led me to sort of, like understand him in ways which is ongoing, that, that otherwise, you know, there was a closeness that I don't know otherwise would have happened, which is not at all to say, it's not also devastating. But devastating, part of the devastating-ness is that it also brought us very close to one another.

SARA: Yeah. I mean, the... it's a weird juxtaposition, right? Like sorrow and then this, like, what brings you joy. And when you were talking about funerals, I was like, oh, yeah, funerals, we do, like because people will go and they'll share their memories. And we call it a celebration of life. And there's still... I mean, I've been to some funerals that were just like, devastating and sad. But then you do, like with your community, kind of try to hold on to those memories and share the things that that were happy.

ROSS: And I'll say even... it's so hard to sort of parse out. But I'll just keep on sort of suggesting or offering that it's not a... it's not a juxtaposition. But it's that kind of tangle to get -- that's my sense, like, I'm not imposing anything on anyone else.

SARA: You're the professor so that's great. Bring us some knowledge.

ROSS: With the kind of entanglement the joy, joy does not exist absent sorrow, you know? There isn't joy without sorrow, you know, which is partly why it feels important, like the personification of sorrow in that essay, why it's important to bring sorrow into the room, you know? Once sorrow, you know, if we hold sorrow out of the room, we're never also going to know the fullness of joy. We're never going to dance together like we could, we're never going to attend to one another like we could. We're never going to like, look after one another like we could. We're never going to share like we could if we don't, you know, if we don't realize, oh, yeah, you're dying, and you're dying and I'm dying. Now what? You know? For one thing, let alone the fact of like, our heartbreak and let alone the fact of our sort of daily sufferings, let alone the sort of fact of our suffering connected to all of the suffering. You know, simply that we're all going to die. If we, if we forget that... [ROSS CHUCKLES]

DANIEL: You know, one of my, one of my, like, this is probably disclosing. I have anxiety, and like, a lot of that is about death. And so like, in the midst of a panic attack, I like think about, oh, everyone's dying or whatever. And so one of the things I've been having success with, is like, realizing that when those thoughts come up, they need to come out, like I can't just repress them all the time. And i like, kind of welcome them and be like, "Oh, we're thinking about this now." And like, it's, it's it wants to sit at the table because it's tired of being locked up in the basement all the time. And like looking at those, those anxiety, those anxious thoughts, like intrusive thoughts like that about just like, oh, you know, like, you know, like your dog's 12. You don't have that many years and stuff like that. Like when those come up, it's like, oh, it's just 'cause you don't like thinking about all the time. And so like, yeah, I kind of see there's an entanglement there. Like for me to enjoy life, I kind of have to also be, you know, like, I can't just walk all that away because I feel better after and I think that's kind of like when I think of your entanglement, it's kind of what I think of and stuff.

SARA: We've always considered it to be a juxtaposition, right? Like, two opposing values.

DANIEL: Yeah.

SARA: So anyway, just radical thinking all the way through.

ROSS: Well, when I was... I've also, you know, suffered from like anxiety, paranoia, you know, the number of... whatever these head [expletive] [expletive].

And partly, it was precisely that, precisely the desire or the need to hold out, to like, keep all kinds of feelings out, among them sorrow, for sure, among them heartbreak, but also among them, like, yeah, the fact that we are changing, that we are not always going to be like this, that this will not always be like this, that you know, that our bodies are temporary. And it's so interesting to hear you say it because that's my experience, too. Like one of the great lessons, however it came and probably came by being like in a mindfulness meditation class at Thomas Jefferson hospital, and by reading, you know, the nuns and the monks who I've mentioned and everything else. But to be like, if you hold that out, if we hold that out, we're gonna die. You know, like, my brain is going to explode if I can't also attend to my heartbreak. Sounds like that's your experience on that, too.

DANIEL: Yeah, yeah. It's like, yeah, I feel like that's what happens is this like, like, you can't, you have to, like, embrace it at some point. Like, you can't like... I don't know, I just... you see, like, especially with the older generation, you see people have repressed their emotions their whole life and it's like, you don't want to be like that. Like, I'm sure everyone has like an older relative that you're like... because society conditioned them to repress their feelings and things. Like, yeah, and so it's like, that's what I always think of is just like, seeing like, an older person frustrated at Dillon's and you're like, that's because you like, you're conditioned to not like... like, I don't want to end up like that. So yeah.

ROSS: Yeah, and there's versions of myself that I become acquainted with periodically. And I'm like, that's not that's not really being alive. You know, it's, I encounter those folks inside myself. And I'm like, "Ah, you need to soften up." [ROSS CHUCKLES] Yeah, I know what you're saying.

SARA: So, throughout the, throughout some of the first chapters, I remembered seeing this, this phrase, "remembered to us" instead of, like, "reminded us of," right? So especially in the chapter with your father. And then throughout the book, and even in this interview already, our words are -- your your words are very intentional. And so I wanted to know, where did that "remember to us" come from? Is that something that, I don't know, tell us where that comes from. Talk about your choice of words there.

ROSS: Yeah, I hadn't -- you know, it's funny, I hadn't thought of that until you mentioned it, and I couldn't remember where I'd written it. But now when you say it, and I think about it for a second, I think probably that way that that, the syntax of that, it's weird, it's a weird thing to say, "it's something that's been remembered to us" is part of the... it's sort of, part of the linguistic I suppose practice of... or inquiry around joy or whatever.

But the implication is that it's not, it's not... it's not just us, the implication being that these are things that are given to us. You know? The implication being that we're in a kind of network and even our memories, not even our memories -- among the many things, prominently is our memories are given to us, you know? And so that... and so you know, the way that the sun as it starts to, you know, set lower, you know, move lower through the sky, remembers to us some things. By the way a conversation with your mother or the way she looks falling asleep can remember to us certain things, or, or a dream can remember to us. It's just like the, to me, it's I think it's probably a way that I'm suggesting that even our memory, which we like to probably think of like our memory is what distinguishes us from other people. It's in fact how we are the... it's more evidence that we are other people and other everythings. It's more evidence --

SARA: It's our memories.

ROSS: Say again?

SARA: I said it's our memories like, you know, that's my memory of this thing. But what you're saying is you're kind of turning that on its head and saying, like, because we were together when that memory was made, now you're giving me that memory. And so --

ROSS: Yeah, totally, totally.

SARA: I think that's beautiful. And just, like a strange way of looking at it, but I really like it.

ROSS: Yeah, I mean, how many times I'm with my mother, who's 82 now and like, and I'm, I'm sitting with her and she remembers something that I don't remember. And I'm saying, like, that's an instance of something remembered to me. Or recently, I've been visiting and seeing my aunt Butter, who's 96 or something now. And she's remembering to me things that I don't know. So she's remembering things, which now become part of me. You know, remembering things about, say the way our origin stories, you know, our, our generations previous to her. Remembering things in her life that feel absolutely the way that my life has come to be or will come to be. She's remembering it to me.

DANIEL: I was always told I was in a hospital when I was like six months old or something. And like, I recently went to like, it was like, I recently went to the hospital, like the hospital system that had that file. And I was like, I just, I was told that I was like, I was six months old when this happened. And then I was like, looking at the chart. And like, I saw it, like, I saw this like thing that had been told to me my whole life, like, oh... like I saw, this is the first time I ever saw any kind of evidence that I was actually hospitalized before I can remember anything. And I've been like, resonating on that a lot, because it was like one of these things that was told to me. And like, whether it was true or not, or like what happened or whatever, but then seeing like the hard data, like kind of brings like, in... and so like I've been thinking about like, wow, that... like, you always heard this story. And you kind of like when you're like listening to a story from your mom, it's like you take it from like a different perspective than when you see facts about things. And it's just been kind of like, that's what the "remember to us" kind of reminds me of that hospital. I'm talking about a lot of trauma dumping, I'm sorry. [DANIEL LAUGHS]

ROSS: No, no, no. You get to talk about life.

SARA: Honestly, I felt like your book was one big therapy session, you know? It felt very like, because it was your stories, but it caused a lot of self-reflection.

DANIEL: Yeah.

SARA: So, yeah. And kind of in that same vein, and you were just talking about, you know, your family and your ancestry and, and in the chapter on gardening, I'm going to quote this because I really liked it too: "Whoever saved the seed loved us before they knew us. And then how that garden archives that love," talking about the seeds that you're getting from all these different people and family and Mr. Lau, the neighbor that you had, I thought that was just a really beautiful story and a really beautiful way to describe something like seed sharing. Libraries are doing seed sharing now, so it's just this special way of looking at it. And we consider gardening to be this very solitary activity, right? You talked about going out, drinking your coffee, talking to the plants. Sometimes I do that too, less the coffee, more the talking and like encouraging them to grow. But in this way of looking at it, you know, nothing is self-sustaining, right? Everything needs another piece. And that's a very long way to say, why do you think we have to look at the world this way? Especially because, especially in this country, we're very individualistic, right? We are constantly thinking about our own little bubble. But through gardening, you're making this argument that we need to be mindful of all these other ways that we're connected.

ROSS: Yeah. And I don't... you know, I think one thing is that I don't like -- I'm not imposing the mode of life, I'm just sort of wondering about things. So I don't think anyone should be anything. I'm happier when I... the evidence seems clear to me also, that when you walk into your garden like you were saying, when you walk into your garden, you encourage your plant to grow, you're not by yourself, you're having a conversation with this, with this being who was also having a conversation to you. And who, say if it is a pepper plant or a tomato plant or a collard plant or an ochre plant, will eventually actually transform your body by becoming your body. So it's not even like you have to like get real heavy about it or anything. It's just like, you're not actually alone. You know? And there's someone else who could say all of the things that are in the air. There are many things, but some of the things that you can see are like the honeybees and the mason bees or the little green wasps that look like flies and the flies and the hookworms and the beetles and the gnats. So it's like, oh, yeah.

And what a sorrow to like, have a like a shrunken notion of what "we" is, you know? In the garden, I think if you're like a decent gardener, you know, if you're not like a kind of murderous gardener -- [ROSS LAUGHS] -- you are required to be like, oh, right when I... you know, not only to like ask the plants kind of what they want by observing and and sort of listening and paying attention, but also to be like, "Oh yeah, like you all really kind of get along so like let's grow these close to this and like it's kind of cool how you can you know, the, the beans can grow up the sunflowers." You know, I've been like harvesting them, pulling down the beans, dry beans we grow. And there, we have a lot of like sunflowers planted by you know, us but also buy like goldfinches and stuff. And it's so beautiful to me that they're like all these gigantic, you know, they're kind of like scarecrow sunflowers. And also Castor beans, which just arrive in our garden. A lot of them are grown up, and kind of like, they look like Christmas trees with... dangling with beans dangling from them. So part of my harvesting thing is like pulling the beans off of these, the remnants of these sunflowers. To me, it's not a leap to be like, we're in a collaboration. And the sunflowers are every bit as important to that collaboration as I am. And the sun is really important to that collaboration. You know?

It's just so nice, because I think you're exactly right. I think it's absolutely an American mythology, a fantasy, a brutal one that imagines and kind of whatever, valorizes or whatever the word is that means lifting to the gods, that notion of the individual stuff, but it's just like, it's a lie. And in order to sort of maintain and preserve the lie, we will brutalize everything, including the earth, you know? We will beat it into, you know, into submission, but you can't do that actually. You can't do that, is beat yourself into submission.

SARA: Yeah, totally. I mean, it just... it's sometimes hard to look outside of yourself. But I think we're better people when we do.

ROSS: Probably.

SARA: There was a lot of reminding of that in your book, to look outside yourself.

ROSS: Yeah. And happier, and happier.

SARA: Yeah. Very true.

ROSS: It's just like a nicer life to walk around and be like, hey, you need anything? And also to be able to be like, yo, I need something. That's just like a happier life. And to be like, damn, I have all these needs. And here it is. I am in this garden and this garden that tends to my needs. And then there are people who would like preserve these seeds of these plants that I love. And they've been doing this for like hundreds or thousands of years. This is wild. I am, like, buried in care. [ROSS LAUGHS] Speaking of which, I've got to go to the bathroom real quick. Is that okay?

DANIEL: Okay. Yeah, that's fine. Run to the bathroom.

ROSS: Okay.

SARA: Oh, sure. Yeah, of course.

ROSS: Feel free to leave that in the podcast.

SARA: You know what? Let's just take a break real quick right now.

DANIEL: We'll take a break.

SARA: And then when we come back, we'll jump right back in.

ROSS: Be right back.

VOICEOVER: Did you know that the Wichita Public Library offers a large selection of digital magazines for free? They're easy to access and are now available to you on the Libby app. You can download Libby from your phone or tablet's app store, sign in with the with your Wichita Public Library card, and start browsing immediately. Magazines can be found under the guide section on Libby and include popular magazine titles about news and politics, cooking, celebrity news, healthy living, and more. For additional information on Libby, please visit wichita.overdrive.com.

SARA: All right, and we're back with Ross Gay on Read. Return. Repeat.

DANIEL: It's so awesome to have you. So in your chapter Out of Time you say we are "cogs in a machine that won't stop in service of productivity and capital and our time doesn't belong to us anymore." How do we stop the clock, make time our own, and find the joy that we deserve?

SARA: That feels like a really loaded question.

ROSS: Yeah. Yeah, like I said, I don't... I'm not real sure about... I don't think I have answers, but I have a lot of questions, you know? [DANIEL LAUGHS]

I mean, but I do know, there's like sort of very practical things, you know, that... when there are very few people who have all the money and they can make everyone else do kind of whatever the [expletive] they want to survive, you know, whatever they want them to do to survive, when they control, that is... that is, that is a challenge, that is an impediment. You know what I mean?

DANIEL: Yeah, I should have said like, outside of like complete class revolution. [DANIEL AND ROSS LAUGH]

ROSS: Well, you know, that kind of stuff... I don't know, what do you all think? What are the moments or the instances where you sort of feel like you're, have a different relationship to time or something like that?

DANIEL: Yeah, so --

SARA: I feel like when I'm with my dog, is that cheesy to say? Like, I feel like going and... I don't know, I've been thinking a lot about self care. I also just read an essay about it last night while I was getting ready for bed by Phoebe Robinson. I don't know if you're familiar with her, but she wrote about self care and how it's this like, multimillion dollar thing. And so we find the things that bring us joy. Anyway, it has nothing to do with my answer for this. But just that I've been ruminating on this concept for now, a little while. And I know that when I go and see my dog, she brings me these little moments of joy. And it's like pure.

ROSS: Yeah.

SARA: And then I don't have to think about what else is happening. The cogs, the machines, the time that's creating the anxiety, you know? I don't know.

ROSS: Yeah, yeah. Totally.

DANIEL: I do a lot of, like, meditation.

SARA: That's good.

DANIEL: Like I do... I mean, like, well, this is like a really like.. I guess, to answer the question like, so like... because it's like, the weird thing is, I don't know, I feel like it's really hard to detach from time. Like it's really hard, because like, I'm actually one of those people that knows what time it is without even looking at the clock. Like, I have, like an internal clock.

SARA: Oh, really?

DANIEL: Yeah, like, within two to three minutes, I can always tell you the time no matter like, I don't know, it's like... but like, but to like break away from just like the rat race or whatever you want to call it, it's like I just, I kind of look at this is like, I do like delve into fantasy, like I daydream a lot. I'm an active daydreamer. I create, like subplots. I don't think I've told -- no one knows. But there's always like ideas in my head. Like, about like, I don't know, like, I just can, like, sit there and then all of a sudden, I'm in like a mechanized space marine suit and I'm like, thinking of this big narrative space opera. And I've had these, these, like, fantasies, like, I've been daydreaming my whole, like, since like, I was a kid. And these, like, I will, like, come up with new ones, I'll come up with a concept. I don't like write these down or anything, they're just kind of for me, these stories that I can, like, switch on and just like, live in that world for a bit.

ROSS: That's really neat. I mean, that, that's, like neat, those two things. One is the imagination and the other is close relationship, you know, ways to interrupt or deal differently with time. That seems... that's my experience, too, I'd say. I mean, you know, like, when you're deep in a conversation, you have a different relationship to time. My experience of gardening almost always is that I kind of fall out of like, conventional time or whatever we call it. Because, you know, I'm, I'm utterly distracted. And I'm utterly like, utterly distracted and I'm totally, like, whatever the word is, like, focused at the same time, you know, like I'm way into what I'm doing. And then like, something happens on the other, I just see a glimmer of like a zinnia. And I'm like, "Oh, I'm gonna go look at the zinnias." You know? And before long, it's like two hours of happening to the thing that I came out the garden to do got halfway done. And then but I feel like my relationship to that kind of methodical whatever you call it is really changed, like garden conversation, playing basketball for me, play, actually play. Maybe more when it's proper play as opposed to competition, probably.

It's a good question, you know. It would be useful. If enough people ask this question and I am frequently enough like, "I don't know, what do you think," then it would be a good thing, you know, to like have a... have like a thing that we write together like a big old, like a chalkboard. There's like things that change our relationship to time or whatever the thing is, slow time down or disrupt or destroy time.

DANIEL: My friend has been obsessed with this Facebook group called "a view from my window." And we've been talking about it, and she's really heartbroken because now they're monetizing it and they're doing the "view from my window cruise" and like... but she was like getting a lot of joy from -- Oh, it was just like, people would like take pictures from their window from all over the world. And it was like a really awesome thing. But as it goes on, it kind of gets caught up into the mechanization of capitalism and everything. And but like, so it's just like, this was... she's like, like I feel heartbroken because she really enjoyed this Facebook group, and kept sharing it with me and just like, the simplicity of it, but now it's just kind of like what happens when something you know, catches on and like, loses its heart or whatever and stuff.

ROSS: Yeah. Yeah.

SARA: So you have a very literary sense of the world. And in your book you were talking about like Richard Pryor, Luther Vandross, who I know and love. Mark Gonzales, no idea but I got your like admiration. [ROSS LAUGHS]

And you regard them in the same sense that we might regard and you even quote like Whitman and Auden. "Ow-den," is that how you say it?

DANIEL: I'm not sure.

ROSS: "Aw-den."

SARA: "Aw-den?"

ROSS: Yep, yep.

SARA: Okay. So my question is, do you really see poetry all around you? I mean, even in your, the way you talk, I feel like your mind just kind of has that lyrical sense. So, yeah. Do you see poetry all around you? Do you see the world in poetry?

ROSS: I don't know if I -- [CHUCKLES] -- I wouldn't say that, no. But I think I have like a maybe, maybe what you're saying is that I have, and I think this is true, I have a highly sort of referential way, like associational and referential, like, I can kind of see connections between things. I practice doing that. But I think that's kind of something you learned by maybe writing poems and maybe inclines you to certain kind of poems. But I'm also like, constantly thinking of this reminds me of this and this reminds me of that, like in a kind of literary slash, as you say, like Richard Pryor slash music slash, whatever kind of way. Like I, I feel like that's how I think. I think through like, I think through the stuff that has taught me how to think, really, you know?

DANIEL: It's like pattern seeking behavior, like --

SARA: Yeah.

DANIEL: Intertextual I think is a term like I learned in like my English school program. But yeah, like, that's what I liked about your book was that it's like, your thought process was very intertextual but it's like, that's how we think as humans. Like, it's not a concise narrative. It's like we're referencing everything. And also, like, I was just kind of... I was kind of reading some of his stuff this morning. I didn't catch you had a Charles Bradley reference, which --

ROSS: Oh yeah.

DANIEL: Yeah, all my... his music was amazing.

ROSS: So beautiful, so beautiful. Yeah, there's something kind of really pleasant, like fun to me about a kind of rambunctious... you know, I write about it, but like a rambunctious citation-ality whether or not you're being like, "Hey, this is like a little Vandross reference," or not, you know? If you make it, someone who knows Luther Vandross might know what you're talking about, you know, that's, then that's who you're talking to at that moment. You know? Like, if someone -- Taylor Swift, I don't know Taylor Swift's music at all. But if someone reference, you said, she has a famous, she has a famous lyric that like all Swifties would know. And if someone said that in the presence of people, a handful of people would be like, "Oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about," and some of us wouldn't, and that's like, cool, you know?

DANIEL: It would fire synapses. Like I hadn't thought about Charles Bradley in a minute. And then I saw him -- I got like, I got like, I saw him live at Riverfest one year. And it's like, like just hearing like, you reference Changes. It's like, I could hear him singing that. I think it was like, I really liked that, especially with the comedy stuff, too. It was just like, it fires the synapses and activates those old memories and stuff.

SARA: I really liked your concept of the... in the chapter on covers, or the essay on covers where it was like, if this person did this cover of this person's song and I, so got me thinking of just different covers, and then I can't remember any of them that I thought of in the moment, but I was like, "Oh, yeah. Oh, that would be cool." It's just a fun little mind journey to go on.

ROSS: Totally. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a good thought experiment. I was thinking of other versions. What did I say? I was talking to someone recently on writing about it and that the opposite... there's some kind of opposite way. Oh, no, it was... so in the essay, I talked about what would be, who would be good, like unlikely covers like the... I start off with a Michael Jackson song, She's Out of My Life, which is kind of a teenybopper like a kid song the way he sings it. But like if Charles Bradley sang it, so different. Or Bjork sang it, so different. Or if Nina Simone sang it, so different. And then I started thinking about, well, what singers would be what pro basketball players? You know, so like, who would Charles Bradley --

SARA: You lost me but that's okay.

[SARA AND ROSS LAUGH]

ROSS: Et cetera. Yeah, those kinds of games. I love those games.

SARA: I was good with sticking with music, but it was... no, I really liked it.

ROSS: Think we all got our -- [audio cuts out]

DANIEL: In the chapter -- or in the essay Free Fruit for All, you talk about your experience planting a community garden, you write about the work isn't necessarily for you and those that organize the project because we don't know what the future holds. But now we are 10 some years into it. How is the orchard doing? And are you still involved?

ROSS: I'm very loosely involved. I mean, I might be on the board. It's like that, I'm not sure. But I go over there and check it out every once in a while and I'll chip into like a work day here and there. It's going well, you know, it's sort of, it's taken off. The trees we planted, you know, our... you know, usually playing like a two- or three-year-old tree. And so they're like, you know, 13, 14 years old, it's wild. But I think that in addition to the orchard itself being like, you know, carrying on and doing well... and I just was at a reading the other day and someone, young woman from somewhere around here in Indiana, but not right here, was getting her book signed, was like, "Yeah, I was just in Bloomington because I was doing a tour of the orchard because we're starting to community orchard in our town, and we wanted to." That, to me is like, oh, yeah, that's good. That's good news.

But equally good news is that the people who I was friends with, who I made, became friends with during the process of that are like, still absolutely beloved beloveds, you know? And the woman who started it, she lives like, right across the street, more or less, you know. And she was just here, working out with my partner, like, actually, while this was going on. You know, and we like share our lives, you know? Like we, we, they, she and her crew have a garden, and we have gardens, and we share each other's gardens, and we take care of each other, you know, try to help each other out. And, but there are other folks from that community orchard project that are like that. And so I would say it's, it's thriving. It's thriving. Yeah. And I love --

SARA: It's a cool concept.

ROSS: Oh, it's great concept. And yeah, I love that every time I see Amy, who's, you know, like, it was her idea, you know? No idea is only our own. But it was, it was her idea. It was an undergraduate thesis project that she, that she wrote about first and then she kind of drummed up support. And then she would kind of the whatever, led the thing until it became a little bit more, quote, unquote, organized, which it didn't really become for a while. To be able to see her, and always be like, oh, man, you like totally changed my life for the better. God damn.

SARA: It's special.

ROSS: Yeah.

SARA: Although you were describing the meetings that you guys had and I... I wouldn't consider myself like a type A person. But I'm definitely like, "Okay, what are our action steps? What are we doing? How are we doing this?" And those meetings sounded like they would stress me out.

ROSS: Yeah, I bet. I bet. And they were sort of, this was like a time situation, actually.

SARA: Yeah. But I think it's beautiful. I wish that I could just like, unplug myself and just enjoy those moments. But I recognize that about myself. And maybe it's a reminder that I do need to slow down and just enjoy the, the community that comes from such a project.

ROSS: Yeah, or even like to know that whether you enjoy it or not, because the meetings were entirely enjoyable, they were many things, you know. And sometimes they were annoying. And sometimes they went on, like plenty of us probably at different times were like this going on too long. But partly that kind of weathering that or whatever the term would be, was how it was the inefficiency, actually, that made the love grow in a way.

SARA: Yeah.

ROSS: It's like, you know, I was at a reading once and someone said, asked this question and reading in Minnesota, in St. Paul, Minnesota, and someone from the audience, who was a farmer said something about efficiency, maybe asked me to talk about efficiency. And together we got to this thing, which is something like, the question is, is efficiency ever not brutal? Does efficiency ever not cut off care? Not that efficiency can't also make more care possible. But does efficiency ever not come with a price of care? Some care is going to be sacrificed to efficiency. I think it's a really good question. And sort of like, which is why hanging out purposelessly is one of the ways that care kind of happens. But when you only have 15 minutes, and we're gonna be on the clock, and I go, "Okay, see ya, see next time." You know, you got to get the care in. Sometimes it's hard to do.

SARA: Rapid care!

ROSS: Rapid care. [SARA AND ROSS LAUGH]

SARA: But like, also, like, you have to get stuff done. I don't know. I see exactly what you're saying. And I think there has to probably be a balance, right, you have to have the care with the efficiency.

ROSS: Yeah. And the thing that I sort of mentioned in that essay is that, you know, like, three of those, three of the eight or nine people who are on the board at least had little kids. You know, who... you know, so those people are, tend to be a little bit more time constrained. And they had people looking after their little kids or sometimes their little kids would be at the meetings and we'd all be kind of like looking after them, you know. So it's like, it's like the... in a way, like the inefficiency was tended to by other people taking care of some stuff. And that also feels very important that it was never sort of like we were doing this. It was like, oh, yeah, the reason we were able to go slow was because other people were kind of looking after the stuff that we had to make sure we could get it done. You know? It's always the case, you know, it's always the case.

DANIEL: I think that's just kind of the whole communal concept that like -- and I don't know who said it, but people say like, we're like, humans are not supposed to live out of anything outside of a village. And so like in cities, basically, we build our own villages kind of thing instead. And that's kind of reminds me of.

SARA: Also, it takes a village.

DANIEL: It does take a village. Yeah.

ROSS: Yeah.

DANIEL: So your, your essays will start with one thing and then hop over to something completely different. For instance, the skateboarding incitement starts with a story about being in couples therapy. I liked it, because I felt like it cast a chaotic nature, like of life in those. Like, I feel like that's how I like think and like, get to stories, when I tell stories, like, in roundabout ways. Does it, does this reflect kind of how you see the world like, just kind of like -- I just like that your, your writing isn't just like... it's not like concise. Like, I like how it's just like, I like the structure a lot. I liked how it was like, when I was reading an old school thing, like how we talked about Melville for a second. And then it totally related to him, so I just didn't know, like, yeah, is it the whole intertextual thing, too, is it just kind of like how you examine the world? Like, I don't know.

ROSS: Yeah, I mean, I think there's, there's like, there's a way that that's absolutely the case. And I like it actually makes me think, oh, there's something inefficient about these essays that I adore. Like, I like a kind of inefficiency. And when I'm reading an essay sometimes that feels very efficient, like, it kind of knows its moves and knows where it's going, I can feel less interested, you know, than an essay that feels very much like it's figuring out where it's going. And the way it's going to figure out where it's going is maybe it might be like couples therapy, blah blah blah, but then I thought of skateboarding, and then skateboarding. And then you know, from skateboarding to like other kinds of things, you know, family, etc.

I mean, I'm more interested in my thinking when it's like that, as opposed to like, like a kind of more impositional thinking that I sometimes think, you know, like, like, I'm imposing my ideas, as opposed to like, following them. And I almost wonder if I could even write like that anymore. Like, when I try, when I feel like I have a thing that I need to write, I really struggle, I really have a hard time. And I know it's not good writing. I know that. But even like, when I have to, have to get it done, I'm just like, I'm kind of miserable, you know, but I'm very interested when I have no idea where it's gonna go. And I'm going to kind of follow it. I'm very interested in the writing that comes out of you in that case, whether or not it's writing that I keep, I'm very interested in it.

DANIEL: I kind of like the concept in the chapter on school, or the where you talked about unfixing with the workshops and things and just kind of like that approach to writing and things because it's like... like, for me, like, making it like, it's, it's easy to be like with writing things, like having it be very formulaic, but it's just gonna like to get something done. And like, but the thing about that is like, when you when you kind of use like these concise steps, I think of like, the whole, like, Blake's Beats for Screenwriting, which is like this book about how to write a screenplay. And like, I was reading criticisms about this book, get people saying, like, this book came out and the mediocrity that came out of this, like screenplay writing format, and things and it's kind of like... you have to unfix, like to be a good writer, you can't be... like you can't just follow the steps to be a good writer, you kind of have to unbreak it. So anyway, that's yeah, I like that chapter a lot.

ROSS: Yeah, I mean, but also, you can't, I mean, to be a reasonable person in their relationships, you can't just follow the steps. You can't know everything, you have to ask questions, you know, you have to be curious and like, willing to be lost, and willing to sort of admit, and actually treasure that... you have to treasure what you don't know. And you have to treasure that you don't know.

And that's one of the dangers I think or sorrows I should say of school is that we're constantly rewarding and valorizing and like, mandating knowing, but we don't celebrate the reason that we're actually gathered at all, which is because we don't know. You know, and in a way, it's like the coolest thing about school to me is when we like, sweetly tend to our unknowing, get together and we're like, "Ah, you too? Don't know? What are you trying?" And like, love each other for that, and not because of what you know, but because you're willing to come with what you don't know. You know? Yeah, so anyway, I agree with you on that, on that.

SARA: When I was reading that chapter or that essay, I was thinking of the library and how the library kind of feels that for adults after school, right, because we come together to continue to learn, and then you never know what you don't know until you learn that you don't know it, right? And that whole just... there's always something to learn, there's always a way to fill in a new gap that you didn't even know existed. And so...

ROSS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

DANIEL: I just think like, the communal aspect of college too, like, I wish that was more outside of college because it's like one thing to be an autodidact and just absorb knowledge. But if you're not like, sharing and like... like, you have to, like, learn what you don't know and things. And I think like, that's what happens sometimes is like, like, when you like people, like don't like, people that might like... they see college, it's just filling us with facts, but really my benefit from college was being around other people that didn't know anything.

ROSS: Totally.

DANIEL: It's just like, yeah, and it's like, I was able to process these ideas and things. I don't know what I'm going with this, but I'll stop.

SARA: I'm going to send you a TikTok. I just saw a TikTok about it.

ROSS: There's a, there's... what you're saying is like, well, I think one of the most important things, or the most important thing about college is that it's like a place where we can be together. You know?

DANIEL: Yeah.

ROSS: It's like beyond that -- I mean, there's all these sort of material things like maybe you'll get a degree that maybe will help you get a job, maybe you'll go into $100,000 of debt that you'll never actually pay off and you'll be you know... so it's like, you know, it's complicated. But there is a thing that seems mostly the case, though sometimes you have to really sort of advocate to have it happen, which is that you get to hang out. And hanging out is kind of where it's at.

You know, there's a beautiful quote, I'd love to say it, I'll never stop saying it and it's from a writer named Fred Moten. And he, he was talking about a very difficult book that he was teaching in his class. And he realized from teaching this very difficult book that it would be impossible to read the book without being in a group together, trying to work on it together. And he says, "We got to get together to figure out how to get together."

SARA: But that's not super efficient, is it? [DANIEL LAUGHS]

ROSS: Never efficient.

SARA: Never efficient.

ROSS: Never efficient.

SARA: Man, it's just like they're at war with each other. I keep thinking of going back to that every time. And I'm like, but that's not, but then there's no care. I get it. Oh, man.

ROSS: The best thing about a library, the best thing about a library is how inefficient it is, to me. Like, the coolest thing about a library is browsing. That old thing, that -- remember that, browsing?

DANIEL: Yeah.

ROSS: There's nothing cooler than going to the library with nothing to do. You're not looking for -- I mean, it's great. It's awesome to go because you know, you have a thing, you got to figure out how to like do your countertops, and you go in there and you get your book, or you got to like write your paper, you do this, that or you... but like, there's something it encourages and invites, the best libraries, walking through the stacks. And just be like, "Oh, that's a cool title. Let me look at that. Boring. That's a cool cover. Let me look at that. Whoa, you know." That is so inefficient.

DANIEL: The thing is, I don't know if this is just me, but like, we don't do that. Once you start working in a library -- because I used to do that a lot was just hanging at the library. But you don't do that when you work here because you don't want, because you're like you value your time off, which you could be here but it's like it also confuses regulars, like, "What are you doing here?" Like I just wear like a very like offensive heavy metal shirt so they know I'm not working.

ROSS: [LAUGHS] That's awesome.

DANIEL: But I feel that with thrift stores. That's what I do. Because like it my brother is like very profit, my brother is a very business-y guy. And so he'll be like, he goes to thrift stores and he's like, he thinks I'm only doing it because we have like a like an antique booth and I'm like no, this is a museum you can touch, like you can, like I absorb like I get to like browse and like what was this for, like what was this? It's not about like... and like, there's a lot of joy in going to thrift stores for me. I feel it's because I work at a library I can't do it at the library anymore. I gotta go to other places to get my fix so it's great.

SARA: And I hate to be a downer but like it just drives me insane. I can't do thrift stores because I'm like, I can't browse it and know what I'm going for and go in and get it and then leave and go on with my next chore, like there's always something that I have to go do next --

DANIEL: Yeah.

SARA: -- that I don't give myself the ability to just exist. So let's go on to the next topic.

DANIEL: I'm like, what's your lunch break? Do you have an itemized lunch break?

SARA: I go home and I walk my dog.

DANIEL: You got to walk that out, you got to be like power is a free hour just like they did in kindergarten.

SARA: I also, I also like, you know maybe you should be paid more and have more time off. That's actually what I think. Well, we'll make sure that we take that as a clip and put it out like, "Oh hey, City Manager and leadership. You heard it from Ross Gay." Okay, okay, so we'll move on from this. Let's go back to the music though, because you do reference in not even in just the unlikely covers chapter, a lot of different musicians throughout. So and because poetry is also your thing, and songwriting is poetry in a way, does music inspire your writing?

ROSS: Totally. I mean, even like, in that instance, in the instances of the book, I'm often thinking about music. I'm often thinking about music. So that's a way that inspires my writing, you know.

SARA: Do you play music?

ROSS: Do you play music? Like, play the music?

SARA: Okay.

ROSS: What's that?

SARA: Do you play an instrument?

ROSS: I played the saxophone when I was a child.

SARA: Okay.

ROSS: Yeah. And I like to sing. But I, I also was really, like, when I was a kid, I wasn't reading books too much. I was, but I was deep into music. And I was really reading lyrics somewhere. So I feel like that's really influential in how I, in ways that I can't, could never like articulate, but I know that some of the most important sort of words, texts that I was reading when I was a kid was, you know, Tracy Chapman and Public Enemy and De La Soul. And, you know, Simon and Garfunkel, and, you know, on and on and on. So, it besides the fact of just like loving music, you know?

SARA: Well, I think there's a lot of poetry in music.

ROSS: Yeah, absolutely.

SARA: So it makes sense that we would find it in your, in your writing, I guess.

DANIEL: Yeah, I do some Public Enemy and I thought about like, my first, like a film program I took, like, the first movie for intro was Do the Right Thing. And we spent a lot of time talking about Public Enemy and how it played into the thing and like --

ROSS: Yeah, yeah.

DANIEL: -- just like how much like... in screenwriting, they always tell you, like, don't put the songs because you don't know if you can afford them or whatever. But then I was recently told like that that's actually bad advice that like, you should because if that's part of you, if that song is like part of your narrative, like, put it in it, and like if it comes to it like, if you're making the movie, and maybe like, don't let that rule of, don't put names of songs that you're like, writing in to your screenplay because you don't know if you can afford them. They said, like I was, they said that, that constructs your reading, writing like it, that's like saying like, because that song is a part of your vibe. You think that song works. So it's like, recently, I'm breaking that rule for me when I'm writing.

ROSS: Yeah, nice. Nice.

SARA: I think you can just reference the song, rather than like playing the song in the movie, if it doesn't work out.

DANIEL: That's a good point. You can always get like a cover, you can always play 30 seconds of it. There's other rules about it.

SARA: Fair use.

ROSS: Yeah, totally.

SARA: Well, thank you for dealing with us and our therapy session for this episode, but this is our first episode of the season. And so rather than do how we've been treating our book recommendations, we're going to ask our guests to recommend books for our listeners. And so we would love if you could maybe give us three books that either you absolutely love, or things that you've read recently that you would recommend. Anything, you can take it the direction you want.

ROSS: Yeah, so three books, and they're right in front of me, actually, on this little table. There's a book called Chrome Valley by Mahogany Brown. And that's poems. And then there's a book called Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom. And that's by Norman Finkelstein. And then there is another book of poems called Revolutionary Letters by Diane di Prima.

SARA: Awesome, cool. Thank you so much. So we'll definitely include those in our show notes and put them in the record set that folks can access on our catalog.

DANIEL: So what's next for you? What do you got going on? Like, what's... you know what, what are you doing for the rest of the day?

ROSS: I'm gonna write a couple of letters of recommendation. I'm gonna procrastinate. I'm gonna exercise. I might cook some chili. We have a friend who's having like a little medical procedure, so we need to drop some chili off. Those are probably the main things on the books.

SARA: And you make vegetarian chili, right? You're a vegetarian. You say that in the book?

ROSS: I do, yeah.

SARA: So what do you -- I also don't eat meat. What do you put in your chili? Are you a beans person? Do you use the meatless crumbles?

ROSS: Oh, yeah. No, no. Beans. I might use like tempeh. I might use tempeh. Probably not in this one. We have some really good, beautiful, I think they're scarlet runner beans and some lentils.

SARA: Oh, are they all homegrown?

ROSS: No, they're not but it's funny because we grew scarlet runner beans this year and just shelled them, but these are actually some from, that we bought. But yeah, and onion, pepper, carrots, greens probably from the garden, kale and stuff from the garden. And we got some escarole from a local farmer we'll throw in there. Can't wait. Making me hungry already. And our tomatoes, tomatoes that we canned from last summer.

SARA: Okay.

ROSS: Yeah, there you go.

SARA: That's way better than my chili, I think.

[ROSS LAUGHS]

SARA: I don't like to do chili.

ROSS: I believe that.

SARA: Well thank you so much for joining us today and then helping us think like big thoughts that I think I still have to go and like process after this interview because my brain is still working.

ROSS: Thank you.

DANIEL: Yeah, I enjoyed this. This was a fun interview and reading your stuff reminds me of like my old like college days in spades and I enjoyed it a lot. I'm definitely recommending your book to some of my friends.

SARA: Well, and for our listeners, Inciting Joy, we've got The Book of Delights, The Book of (More) Delights, and several others that we will definitely link to, for, that Ross has written.

DANIEL: Awesome. Yeah.

ROSS: Thank you.

DANIEL: Thank you again.

ROSS: So fun talking to you all.

DANIEL: Have a good day.

DANIEL: Oh my god, that was a great interview.

SARA: First official episode in the books.

DANIEL: It was, yeah. And you know what? We're gonna have way more, more fun this season. I know we said that a lot on this episode, but I mean, some of the people we're trying to reach out to, I'm really hoping we can get some awesome interviews.

SARA: We already know we're gonna get awesome interviews. We just don't always know who it's going to be just yet.

DANIEL: Yeah.

SARA: But yeah, we're gonna have fun this season. So definitely stick around. Let us know what you guys think of these episodes.

DANIEL: Yeah, get down in the comments and let us know. Because if you want -- we know we're trying out different formats this year. So just yeah, if you like them, let us know. If you don't, let us know.

SARA: Although, be nice about it. I have a very like low tolerance for hate.

DANIEL: Yeah. And also just like limit the GIFs because I can't like, this is still my job. So like I can't, you know, when I get customer feedback -- I can't put a GIF in my like customer feedback.

SARA: That's true. Like that person shared a GIF of...

DANIEL: A very sad looking dog for some... I don't know what that means. I can't, you know, like I can't be... what am I supposed to do?

SARA: I would love to see that report. "We have plenty of sad crying dogs as a feedback from this episode." No, don't do that.

DANIEL: Yeah.

SARA: Give us good feedback. Give us constructive feedback. And just have fun with us.

DANIEL: Yeah. Yeah, it's gonna be a great time. All right. Yeah.

SARA: Let's get to credits.

DANIEL: See you guys later. Peace.

SARA: A list of the books discussed in today's episode can be found in the accompanying show notes. To request any of the books heard about in today's episode, visit wichitalibrary.org or call us at (316) 261-8500.

DANIEL: Thank you to Ross Gay for joining us for today's recording. This has been a production of the Wichita Public Library and a big thanks goes out to our production crew and podcast team.

SARA: To participate in the ReadICT reading challenge, visit wichitalibrary.org/readict. Stay connected with other ReadICT participants on the ReadICT challenge Facebook page. Find out what's trending near you, post book reviews, look for local and virtual events, and share book humor with like-minded folks. To join the group, search #ReadICT challenge on Facebook and click join.

DANIEL: And don't forget to log your books into the reading tracker app, Beanstack. Each month you log a book in the challenge, you're eligible to win fun prizes. If you need any assistance signing up or logging books, give us a call, reach us on chat, or stop by your nearest branch.

SARA: You can follow this podcast on the Spotify app or stream episodes on whatever platform you listen to podcasts. If you like what you heard today, be sure to subscribe and share with all your friends.

DANIEL AND SARA TOGETHER: Bye!