Ep 289: The Other Significant Others feat. Rhaina Cohen

SARAH: Hey, what's up, hello! Welcome to Sounds Fake But Okay, a podcast where an aro-ace girl. I'm Sarah, that's me.

KAYLA: And a bi-demisexual girl, that's me, Kayla.

RHAINA: And Rhaina Cohen, that's me, I'm the author of a new book about platonic partnerships.

SARAH: Woo! Talk about all things to do with love, relationships, sexuality, and pretty much anything else we just don't understand.

KAYLA: On today's episode, the other significant others.

BOTH: Sounds Fake But Okay.

[Intro Music]

SARAH: Welcome back to the pod.

KAYLA: Hello.

SARAH: Hope everyone's doing well. It's guest time here on Sounds Fake But Okay, so we're going to dive straight in. Kayla, what are we talking about this week?

KAYLA: This week, we are talking about an amazing new book that comes out on February…

SARAH: 13th.

KAYLA: The 13th, just in time for the Friends of Galentine's…

SARAH: Valentine’s 

KAYLA: I was going to say Friendsgiving, and I was like, that's nothing, actually

SARAH: Yep, perfect 

KAYLA: Galentine's Day, the book is “The Other Significant Others,” and we have Rhaina Cohen, the author with us to talk about it.

RHAINA: I'm glad to be able to talk about it with you guys.

SARAH: Hello. So, you gave a little bit of a brief intro at the top, but if you want to expand a little bit more, let us know who you are, what the book is, why everyone should buy it, because they should, because we read it and it was good.

RHAINA: I think it's much easier to have other people say something like, everybody should buy it, rather than...

SARAH: Buy this book, I dare you.

RHAINA: So, I'm a journalist, I work at NPR as a producer and editor, and I work on a show called Embedded, so like very narrative-driven stories and I also write about social connection for places like the Atlantic. And in this book, I'm looking at probably a kind of friendship that a lot of your listeners are probably familiar with, but I think a lot of people are not necessarily of a friendship that's close enough to be a life partnership, and using them as a kind of case study to rethink what we feel like we know about relationships. So, I think it's dealing with a lot of the same kinds of questions that your podcast, and I think the ace and aro community has been interrogating for quite a while.

SARAH: Absolutely.

KAYLA: I was very struck by, I think both of us while we were reading it, were struck by how many of the topics covered in the book felt so familiar to us and felt so familiar to the aspec community. I remember when I first found out about this book, I was like, is Rhaina like an aspec writer? Like I had never seen someone outside of the aspec community spend so much time talking about friendship in this way. So, it was just really exciting to see that like, no, it's not just our community that cares about this type of thing. So that was really, really cool.

RHAINA: Well, I was sort of hoping that the book would be uniting different groups that have really been tackling these same questions around like, why are romantic relationships privileged by default above all other relationships? Why do people think that there's only one relationship that you can build your life around? And if you don't have a romantic relationship, or don't have a sexual relationship, that there's something deficient about you, that's coming from the ace-aro world, but also people who are single, people who are non-monogamous, a lot from the disability community around care, like around mutual caregiving. There are a lot of different kinds of groups that I think are kind of a coalition, and I happen to be coming into this as somebody who's really interested in friendship, but pretty quickly discovered that there were many different kinds of people who had a vested interest in this. And the book Ace by Angela Chen really had a huge influence on me in terms of exposing me to all of the commonalities and these questions and perspectives from the Ace community.

SARAH: In this house, we love Angela Chen. She's the best.

KAYLA: Yeah, when I saw her referenced in the book, I was like, yes, the crossover of the century! I got so excited.

SARAH: I also felt like, because we have our book that came out about a year ago now, and I felt like so much of your book was really just kind of expanding on the stuff that we talked about in our friendship and our relationship chapters in our book, and it took a little bit of a more academic approach, but it's not like a super academicky text. You're not going to read it and be like, I'm bored. That's not what the experience reading it is like at all. But I was very excited to see we are completely on the same page about so many things, and it to me felt like a really great expansion of the ideas that we've talked about. And so, for our listeners who read our book and really liked those chapters, this is a great thing to go to, to expand your horizons.

KAYLA: Yeah, absolutely.

SARAH: I don't know, are you aware that you are quoted in our book?

RHAINA: I was not aware that I was quoted in your book.

SARAH: You are quoted in our book.

RHAINA: I'm sorry, I have such a back catalog of books to read.

KAYLA: Oh, no, it's totally fine.

SARAH: It's okay.

RHAINA: You probably have your experience of this, too, in the process of... between writing the book and then having it come out, then you're like, shit, there are all these books that are so related, and I still am in the process of doing all this other work, but I can't incorporate that. Anyway, you've been there.

SARAH: Well, because when I first saw the email from your reps or whoever emailed us being like, hey, maybe you should have Rhaina on, I saw the name and I was like, yes, I don't need to read the email. Yeah

KAYLA: Yeah, because I think it was some of your articles from… 

SARAH: It was from The Atlantic

KAYLA: The Atlantic, yeah, that we were just so taken by and so excited by how they talked about friendship. So, you mentioned that obviously you have a very vested interest in friendship. Could you talk about where that started and how that might have inspired you to start this book?

RHAINA: Yeah, I mean, there is a specific friendship that inspired me to write this book. I will say that I think I'm a person who's cared a lot about friends as long as I can remember and was always the kid who was at somebody else's house and in middle school with my best friend, I spent almost every weekend at her house and her family was kind of my own. So, I think I just have like a really long personal history of caring a lot about friends and enjoying making my friends friends with each other and just treating it as a relationship of value. But in the case of like this particular kind of friendship of like a partnership level friendship, I came to because of a friendship that I made when I moved to my city, D.C. And for the first couple of years of this friendship, my friend who I refer to in the book as Em and I lived a five minute walk from each other, which meant we could see each other like all the time and really become incorporated into each other's daily lives, into the sort of mundane things that you only really know about if you are really close with somebody and also into the deeper parts of each other's personal lives, like, you know, knowing each other's colleagues and families and close friends and all of that. And the friendship for me really surpassed what I would even put in the category as best friend. And it made me kind of want to understand why such an important relationship didn't have a term for it and how we could talk about each other to other people in a way that that felt like it did justice to the friendship. And I kind of knew a little bit about some historical precedent for more intense friendships and knew some people in my personal life who had something like this, had seen Broad City and those kinds of shows. So, I had some sense that it just like it wasn't only us. And I wanted to find the people who were out there and kind of what I can learn from the friendships.

KAYLA: Yeah. I just love that it came from such a personal place for me when reading about your experience with friendship was just so engaging. And the book really follows, you know, it's a nonfiction book, obviously, but it follows kind of your friendship with Em as well as the friendships of a lot of people that you interviewed. And it took a very almost narrative approach for me. I was like, I've never read a nonfiction book personally and been sitting there thinking like, oh, my God, what is going to happen next? Like drawn in like there was a plot. So, I really enjoyed that. You know, you kind of… every chapter you're talking about a different set of friends and you're kind of using their friendship, like you said, as like a case study to understand different societal implications, historical implications of friendship. But it turned it so much more into a story that I just… I felt so engaged and drawn in. I like definitely cried several times because the people's lives were just so real and so genuine. So again… 

SARAH: The reveal about Stacey's identity and how that changed over time. I was like, I know

KAYLA: I love this, I was like, yes, Stacey. Yeah. But I think, like, if any of our listeners struggle with nonfiction and they're like, this sounds cool, but like I'm never able to stay engaged with nonfiction, I would definitely urge you to read this because I think it's so much different and more narrative driven than any other nonfiction I've read.

RHAINA: Well, that makes me happy to hear because that's sort of like the style that I try to use and not just because it like makes you know, it makes you think like what's going to happen next. But I think also particularly for a kind of relationship or a group of people that like readers might not understand, it takes going deep into somebody's life to see themselves in it and to really understand the situation that someone is in. So, you guys know this because you've read it. But for like people listening, each chapter is structured around one set of friends. So, you're… it's kind of like almost like a short story that you're reading. But then woven in has the questions that these friends… like this particular story raises. 

[00:10:00]

RHAINA: Like I write about a pair of friends who end up raising children together. And then that kind of opens these questions about, well, how do we figure out who makes suitable co-parents? Like do you need to be in a romantic relationship to make good co-parents to each other? So yes, each chapter is really like going deep on people's lives and that they were willing to share so much about themselves because they thought it might like help other people understand the kind of situation they were in. 

SARAH: Since so much of this book also kind of, you know, we have these chapters about these individual partnerships or relationships in general. And then you kind of have your through line with Em and the people in your life kind of going throughout the book. I know you said that it was really like your relationship with Em that kind of inspired you to write this book. Was it always your intention to have so much of your personal story in it? Like was that something you grappled with about whether you should include or not? Or was that always the idea?

RHAINA: You know, I definitely did not expect to include as much of myself in the book as I ended up including. I thought that I would include some part about myself, about the friendship with Em because it was the catalyst for the book. And so, it's like, it's… it's the like, why you to tell the book, like answers that question. Why me? And then I, you know, later on I ended up moving in with friends who I live with now and they were at the time one child and now there are two children. And I was talking to a colleague about, you know, like, should I write about this? I don't know. Like it feels kind of navel-gazey. Like I don't want to be talking so much about my life. Like other people's lives are more interesting. And she had told me that like, I absolutely had to write about my living situation because it showed that I had skin in the game, that I wasn't just kind of like observing people from afar, but I had actually, I was sort of walking the walk. So, then I ended up including that. And then you know, my… the nature of my friendship with Em changed in the years that I was working on this. And I hadn't really planned to write about that for until… I don't even know what the kind of point was where I decided like, yeah, I should probably write about this. So yeah, I ended up adding more of myself over time and it's partly just like a reflection of… I started this almost five years ago and, you know, lives and relationships change. And I was seeing my own kind of life refracted through some of the things I was exploring in the book.

SARAH: And there's a portion where you're talking about your relationship with Em and then you say in the text, like, it was only after Em read this, like a draft of this book and like came back to me that I, you know, realized more about our relationship and better understood what was going on. And I think that like, self-awareness is really cool and the fact that like this, the process of writing this book did kind of help you look in on your own life and like figure out what was going on there is super cool. And that's, I think a lot of thing… a lot of what aspecs are kind of forced to do by virtue of being aspecs. So, it's just, it's, it's always lovely to see, you know, stories of people, like being able to make meaningful steps forward in their relationships, whether it was kind of by accident or whether it was, you know, something that they did intentionally, I just thought that was very cool.

RHAINA: Yeah. I mean, I think I was forced to process on the page and then also like wanted my friend to see everything that I had written about her and then got a sense of like where her head had been and what we had and hadn't been able to like fully understand about our internal experiences let alone communicate. So, you know, I think there are like hard things about writing about another person or another relationship when it's like, by definition, going to represent one perspective, even if you try to incorporate the other, but in other ways, I think it's, it really made it possible for us to have like conversations that maybe we wouldn't have been able to have otherwise because like we had to push ourselves to that level of self-awareness.

KAYLA: Yeah. I think it's also just so important that you showed those ups and downs, both within your relationship and other friendships and partnerships, because I think you even talk about in the book, you know, I think there's a quote that friendships are supposed to be made of harder stuff than romantic relationships. They're supposed to be more resilient. You are kind of, you know, shamed if you have a friendship breakup because you're not supposed to do those things. I think, you know, there's just so much less structure around friendships. You know, we don't have ceremonies around friendships. I know you talked a lot about that in the beginning of the book. And so, it was so important to me that it showed kind of the structure that people are putting around their friendships and the ups and downs people do have, because I think those just aren't represented enough. And so, when you have people in these very deep partnerships, they may not know what to do with themselves because there really is no relationship script or kind of examples to look upon of, oh, you know, looking at your parents' relationship and trying to figure out what you should do in your own. You know, there just aren't those examples, which makes it really hard.

RHAINA: Yeah. I mean, a couple of the people that I wrote about in the book had told me that, like, they were excited to read the book and to maybe meet other people who I write about because they wanted elders. Like, they are, you know, around 30 at this point. And they, like, they have got, you know, they're two Christian men. They have gone to a pastor in their community to do basically the equivalent of premarital counseling for their friendship, because that is like the closest that they can find for their relationship. And they can talk to and have talked to, like, people who are long term, you know, partners or spouses. But it is not exactly the same as the kind of friendship that they are, you know, creating from the ground up in a way that, like, these married couples are not experiencing. So, you know, people really are trying to figure things out on their own, which can be kind of this great imaginative territory, but also can make people feel really isolated. And, you know, the other thing that you're pointing out, Kayla, is the acknowledging the hard stuff. That felt really important to me from the beginning because I didn't want this to be a kind of saccharine celebratory book about friendship as much as I love friendship. Like, I think that that would be a disservice to the complexity of friendship and that any kind of close relationship is going to have difficulties in it. Like, if something is 100% good and easy, then it probably also tracks with some limit on the intimacy in it and maybe, like, you know, ability to fly away from it, like, not necessarily committing. So, like, I wanted to show what does it look like when friendships change or fall apart or like what is the experience of loss and then compounded, you know, on the loss of the relationship in whatever form is also people not understanding the relationship in the first place, which felt like it's, like, all the more important to really understand, like, when things go wrong or get hard, what does that look like? Otherwise, you know, if I only focused on the good parts, it wouldn't show the full spectrum of experiences and would also, you know, I think it's actually in the hardest moments that you realize how important these relationships can be to people. 

KAYLA: Yeah, absolutely. And you talk about in the book, you know, how much stigma there is around something going wrong in a friendship, so yeah, I think to leave that out would just kind of be compounding that. So, yeah, like you said, I think that is really, really important.

SARAH: I think it would be dishonest, too. Like this is, you know, this book is an honest portrayal of, you know, the joys and the struggles of what happens when you kind of look beyond the expectation of what, like, a partnership should look like. So, it's important that you included that. So, as you mentioned, each chapter kind of focuses on a certain relationship and then kind of has a theme or a topic around it. How did you find these people and then how did you kind of narrow down, you know, who made it into the book, what you were going to talk about, that sort of thing?

RHAINA: So, it's a little difficult to find people who are in a socially invisible category. What ended up kind of being the most helpful that I only realized kind of after the fact was identifying communities where people might be more likely to have these sorts of friendships and then finding somebody who could act as a kind of broker to that community. So, you know, perfect example of this would be the chapter where I focus on somebody who's ace. I ended up talking to an acquaintance of mine, Julie Kligman, who maybe you've encountered. 

KAYLA: I love her.

RHAINA: Yeah. And Julie had like after our conversation, like I just wanted to sort of have a background conversation about asexuality and how, you know, how Julie was thinking about friendship and so on. And Julie made a post in the meetup group for like NYC ace folks. And that's how I found several people, including one person that I profiled, Stacy, and then go on to, you know, also talk about Stacy's friends. And I did that in a few different ways. I reached out to senior centers. I became aware of a gay celibate Christian community where people think a lot about friendship. And then I went, you know, I had written this Atlantic article that you referred to earlier from a few years back that was a precursor to the book, and I had gotten some people reacting to that. So that was also an avenue to find people. So different kinds of ways of, you know, trying to track people down and often like I can't even use the term like platonic partner or queer, you know, maybe queer platonic partner in like this aro community. 

[00:20:00]

RHAINA: But beyond that, I just sort of had to describe like, you know, like, like, Oprah and Gale, like that level of closeness, they're like inseparable, that sort of thing. And sometimes people would get it, which is great. So, I ended up interviewing like about 70 people with these sorts of friendships. And then also had had a survey that that dozens of people who, you know, some of whom I got shocked and didn't… have responded to. And I originally had kind of thought I would, you know, the book would be sort of a mosaic of a bunch of different anecdotes. And one of the first note from my editor at the publishing house was like to try to tell fewer stories, which I didn't, I thought would be a challenge, because people didn't really understand these friendships. But then I tried it with one chapter and it worked. And what, you know, basically, like, the criteria was like, is it are there enough twists and turns in someone's story that you're going to want to read about them for like 2030 pages. And I also had to play some Tetris to make sure that the themes of different stories were distinct enough. So, like, there is a story about these two women who I just referred to very much in passing at the end of the book, named Valentina and Yahaira, who I loved. But I ended up, I thought I'd read a whole chapter about them. But I realized that like, thematically, it was so similar to the chapter on aging, which had a lot to do with caregiving and illness, that I couldn't really justify, like, carving out a whole chapter for them. So, there are sort of cases where there are people who I absolutely found their story riveting. But it was either kind of repetitive of something else that, like, felt essential or it might work for like, you know, a few pages, but it, like, there weren't enough things that kept changing or questions that it opened up that it would be a full chapter. And I was also like, aware, you know, trying to have a range of ages and, you know, I didn't want everyone to be from like major metropolitan areas and have fancy degrees and, you know, I wanted to have straight men, like, in the book I want. So that was kind of the Tetris of, like, trying to, like, fit all the pieces together and make them feel like they were both speaking to each other but distinct. 

KAYLA: Yeah, that sounds incredibly difficult. And it just makes me want to read the rest of them. Like I wish, like for many reasons, obviously, I wish these relationships weren't so invisible. But they're also, like I was saying, and you were saying, these are such compelling stories. And we so often hear from like Hollywood that you, you know, have to have a romantic relationship and a plot to make things compelling or you have to have certain things. And it's like, no, like friendship without any romance or sex or whatever can still be these incredibly compelling and just like heart-wrenching stories. 

RHAINA: I do think that if any place is kind of like moving in the right direction, it is TV and to some extent films. Like, you know, you were just referring to Osmond before we press record and like, you know, like Heartstopper has a lot of, you know, has like stories of friendship that are compelling. There are, you know, I mentioned Broad City earlier. There's Insecure. They're kind of like a variety of TV shows that have, I think, are showing that like the friendship plot can be really interesting and also can be evoked like just as strong emotions and, you know, have the kinds of unexpected twists and turns that, you know, are usually assigned to romantic, the romance plot, but it's often, I don't know, can be quite predictable and that friendship might be like a new terrain to be exploring other kinds of narratives.

SARAH: Yeah, I was in a meeting recently. So, I work in television development and I was in a meeting recently where someone was like, we're talking about a certain project and this person was like, well, we shouldn't include this person if like they don't serve the plot, like they need to have like a future romantic relationship with this person or like they have to. And I was like, no, like, like that's not the only interesting thing that a person can do. And I think it's so important to have, you know, people like me who are aspec to talk about that. But it's also so important to have voices like you and voices like so many of the people in your book who were not aspec who can also speak to that and be like, no, this is important too. 

RHAINA: Well, I'm glad you're in those rooms and I hope that it becomes easier to like make the very obvious case that like just think about our own lives and what are the what are the dramas in our lives and they don't entirely revolve around romance. So, you know, like, I'm eager for more depictions that actually mirror the realities of our lives in which kinds of relationships and stories matter.

SARAH: Yeah. 

KAYLA: Yeah. Like, I've been in a long-term relationship for like five years. Maybe like 1% of my life drama comes from romance at this point and the rest of it all comes from like friends and coworkers like that's the thing I'm gossiping about. It's like not my partner. It's the stupid people around me.

RHAINA: And like it doesn't… and I say drama as if that means like drama, but like it doesn't have to be like that kind of… but also just like, you know, who like, you know, who are we most excited about or who's introducing us to things that we want to tell other people about or what are the experiences that we're sharing? You know, I just… yeah, I guess I maybe I have to moderate what I was saying that like TV is ahead of the curve in some ways, but I guess it depends like where you're looking and I'm sure in the writers’ rooms people really have to push for the like progress that we have seen.

SARAH: Yeah, progress is good, but it is very slow, so. 

KAYLA: I think we should just clip… we should clip that and show it to the person you were talking to and be like look noted journalist NPR journalist published author amazing person Rhaina Cohen said that this was very important and needed and then maybe they'll be like, oh shit. You're right.

SARAH: Perfect. Let's do that.

RHAINA: LA seems like a pretty… you're in LA?

SARAH: Yeah.

RHAINA: Yeah, it seems like a really tough place.

SARAH: It's the place where I live.

RHAINA: To be not like hyper normative.

SARAH: Yes, it's… people are always like, oh, like, “do you like living there?” and I'm like, “it's where I live.” And they're like, “why don't you move?” and I'm like, “it's where the industry is.”

KAYLA: My favorite thing is when people ask me about you, like checking in about you and they're like, oh, she lives in LA. Does she love it? And I tell them no, she hates it and then the people just kind of are like, they don't know what to say. That's not what they thought I was going to say. They don't know what to do with it.

RHAINA: I would think there's… it's like big enough that there are subcultures actually really don't know LA very well. So, I… and I, you know, so I should not be like… 

SARAH: No, it's okay. 

RHAINA: No, no, no. I would just think that it's a big enough place that you could find like subcultures and communities within the prevailing culture there. 

SARAH: It's kind of at the point where I'm like, I'm just, oh, what's the word? I'm like, I accept that I live here and it's like, we got to figure out what the best way to live here is for me as someone who maybe if I had the choice wouldn't necessarily live here. And then people are always like, “oh, like, if you did have the choice, where would you go?” And I'm like, “I don't know, because I've never considered…” like I've always known that this was what I was going to do. So, like, I've never considered where else I would go. Anyway. Well, on the note of just LA, though, like, I know some people who they're married now, but they weren't when they bought this house where it's two couples that share a house together. And a large part of that is a financial need, because living in LA is so expensive. But then they also, you know, have this, like cool platonic setup where like they're fully grown adults, they have careers, they're married, they have a dog, and it's like and… but they live in the same home and they cohabitate and they have just like this cool relationship and I'm like more, more of this, please. Not because it's necessary, necessarily, but because people want to.

RHAINA: Yeah, I mean, I have definitely heard lots of stories about things like this in the Bay Area where it is so expensive and I do think that kind of what is it necessity for its invention or whatever the… I know I'm getting a little bit wrong, but that people are forced to come up with like novel ways to pool resources when like everything's really expensive. And you know, I just like to try to make a disclaimer that I am not a person who's like, there's one right way to do everything. Like, I think that's what the kind of problem is, is being told there's one right way to do things. So, I'm not saying like having a nuclear family and living in the suburbs or, you know, any… like these sort of things that are currently very aspirational for a lot of people. I don't think that's a problem. I just sort of want there to be more options on the table that are seen as legitimate and where you're not viewed as like lesser for pursuing them. And I think that far more people than maybe currently entertain an option like living with friends could find it enormously fulfilling. But it doesn't occur to people because we don't really have a lot of examples of it or it's kind of seen as like, oh, you have roommates and you're in your 30s or your 40s or whatever. Like it's not something that you… you know, is obvious to people that you would choose to do because it is this kind of added benefit to your life. So, I certainly hope that that it is something that more people consider as a slate of like different options that they could have that that might work for them.

[00:30:00]

SARAH: I think some people view it as like a very black and white thing where it's like, you know, if you're going to live in a in a different setup, it… we're suggesting that you live on a combine with like with like a whole bunch of different people. And it's like, no, like there are so many ways to customize your life and your relationships and that, you know, is really what this book is about. 

RHAINA: Yeah, I don't think you have to go like there's a whole range of like what anything under the umbrella of like communal or co-living or co-housing is and it doesn't have to go all the way to like sharing all of your income and, you know, yeah… 

SARAH: You don't have to join a cult. You don't have to form a cult. You don't have to do any of that. 

RHAINA: Cults and communes are also not the same thing. But yeah, you don't have to. 

SARAH: I was… I recently learned a lot about the Jonestown massacre. So, like I just really have it on my mind. 

KAYLA: Good. 

SARAH: It's just a fact. It's just a fact. 

KAYLA: I love that. Well, I'm very surprised to hear that, Sarah. And on the note of surprise, excellent segue, Rhaina, was there anything that when you were either interviewing people or just doing research on like the history of friendships that really surprised you, just something that you would never thought about before? 

RHAINA: I mean, I think like the this really extensive like going way far back history of friendship being regarded in this different way than we do now in a place like the U.S. in 2024, where friendship is pretty much a peripheral relationship in a lot of people's kind of perspectives. And it is a private one, one where you like, you know, you spend time with your friends, but you aren't going to make a big ceremony out of it to commit to the other person. So that's the way we see things now. You can look back to like starting in the fourth century, where monks would pair off and have these spiritual unions together, which would later turn into a kind of it's a brother making ritual. It's a very it's a word that I cannot pronounce for the life of me. It's like Adelphioesis or something like that. I have tried and failed to pronounce it correctly, but it's something along those lines that you know, you can see versions of all over the world and like, you know, going back to things… periods like the 8th century, where two men would walk into a church and put their hands one on top of each other, on top of the gospels. And the priest would say a blessing over them and then declare them brothers for the rest of their lives or even like beyond their life into death. And, you know, family and friends and others might be present for this. It was a way of turning friends into kin. And this was sort of was just part of like a broader reality where there were different like you didn't just have marriage as a way to commit to different people that you could also become, you know, have godparents. And there were other kinds of ways that people could be turned into sort of like official ties. And I think just knowing that this has been going on, this was going on for so long and now we have this these very different ideas about friendship as kind of ephemeral and peripheral it like just really underscored for me that we could we could like, see it totally differently in the ways that people have in the past. 

KAYLA: That was definitely one of the things in the book that struck me the most to the especially the ceremonies of brother making it really got me on the track of thinking like, like what kind of official things could I have around friends like if I'm getting married one day, like what could I do to bring friendship into the like ceremony of marriage and things like that. And yeah, just the history of knowing that I think it was just so affirming that like it's not silly to think about friendship as so important as much as you know, the general society may not agree with the importance of it that no, there is so much evidence that this is maybe the way we should be thinking about it because people have been doing it for so, so long. 

RHAINA: Well, at the very least that the way that we think about it is not like inherent to what friendship is, that is just how we have decided, you know, to define it now, even though I think in practice, lots of people would like to have deeper friendships and might enjoy having ceremonies, but, you know, we… it's really hard for people to make the first move out of fear of rejection. So, you know, there are just lots of situations where people like would like this but wouldn't articulate it. And I remember, you know, what comes to mind for me is a memory of sitting on a couch with a couple of my friends and I had asked them like, do you want more physical affection in your friendships? And they both said, yes. And I said, would you initiate physical affection in your friendships? And they both said, no. And I was like, well, like that's going to be… that's going to be hard. And then we're all just like sitting there, like not like that physically close to each other. I'm like, okay, so do we, like are, is one of us going to initiate physical affection now? Like, like how will this all work? And so, you know, I think at least realizing that it is possible to treat friendship differently might make it a little bit easier to imagine that other people might want the same thing. And so, it's not such a stretch to maybe be the one to try to move a friendship in that direction. 

SARAH: Yeah. And I also really appreciated, you know, we talked about like the ceremonies of brother making, but like, there's a lot of just history and historical context in this book that describes the types of relationships and partnerships that were normal and normalized in the past. And it really just highlights how all of these things that society tells us are innate, that they're, you know, how everything has always been. You know, our conceptions of relationships, of masculinity, of love generally. They're actually so profoundly recent that it's shocking sometimes. Like when, when you were writing about how, you know, I believe it was like 1749 in England, you know, men still kissed as a standard greeting. And then only like 30 years later, that had been replaced with handshakes, but the adoption was slower in the United States. So, I was like, okay, so like the ritual of men greeting each other via handshake is younger than the United States. Like, and so like thinking about it that way, I was like, not to say that people didn't ever shake hands before the United States was formed, but y'all get it. Like just thinking about that, like really highlights like how much of this is new. And there are these like timeless ideas that people who are, you know, making decisions now, I feel like I, the like, the zillennial in me wants to just like blame it on baby boomers. But, you know, there are these people of all generations who make these claims. This isn't actually timeless at all, because, you know, their parents and their grandparents may have actually been the first to embrace them. And it was just really interesting seeing like the actual history and like timeline of that sort of thing. 

RHAINA: And one of the things that I find kind of interesting is seeing what we can learn from history and not assuming that history is linear and that we're always moving in this more kind of progressive place that just like concepts change over time, or there are, which can, you know, there are different possibilities and it's a little complicated because some of the stuff that was… the ways that men could interact or women can interact in same sex relationships was also tied to like not having the granular language we have now around sexuality and identity. So, there are some trade-offs, but there were also, you know, there's some kind of some freedoms. And I think it's just, it like can be really instructive to… and like can make us much more creative to see, okay, how have people in this case, like experienced relationships and emotions and things that we think of as really fixed now, like what did those look like in the past? And is there anything that's familiar to us or like, are there concepts that we can revive? I had actually initially thought about this as like a project about romantic friendships and that that was what this was about. And I ended up changing over time or just I'll say that romantic friendship is this historical term for a kind of like really intimate same sex friendship. And those, you know, were common up until about the turn of the 20th century. And then I ended up sort of changing how I… like what I was looking at. It wasn't so much the emotion but the commitment. So, I didn't use that term, but I think it's like even knowing that this idea existed felt like actually really helpful for it to make sense of my own friendship and the fact that it did feel like had a lot of like the flutters of romance, but it didn't have a sexual component and it very much was, you know, is a friendship. So, history basically has a lot to teach us. 

SARAH: Yeah. And it's so important to look at history in its whole because like something that I just as someone who's coming at this from like a queer perspective in the, you know, sections where you're discussing how, you know, same sex affection was more normalized in part because the sexes were so like separated. And so, I was like, okay, that's still a very binary view of gender and that sort of thing. So, like we've definitely made strides in kind of removing those like male and female as the only two boxes. But that has also had, you know, a negative impact on specifically the way men can feel that it's socially acceptable to display their affection for each other. And so, like it's always just like two steps forward, one step back, two steps back, one step forward. It's all just like a complex, complicated thing. But knowing more about it is a really great just background to have. 

RHAINA: And I'm glad that was the experience. Yeah 

[00:40:00]

KAYLA: I think it was so important that you also talked about how we look at those historical moments now. You talked about kind of the… I think there was a story about a historian looking at these two. I think there were monks or priests that had a very close relationship. And at first, he was like, these men are definitely gay. These are gay men because they had like burial plots next to each other. And he did a lot of research and found that, no, they were friends that had had this very close relationship and they had this ceremony. And you kind of talk about the risk of overcorrection, of looking back at these very close same sex relationships and immediately saying like, “oh, they're gay.” Like the kind of… the joke we have about like history will say they were roommates or whatever. And it's difficult because I think as queer people really want this representation of queer people throughout history, you also have to remember they didn't have these words. Like the word gay was not around until very recently. 

SARAH: Well, it meant something different. 

KAYLA: Well, it meant something different. The idea of queerness. And so, I think I even fall into that trap now where I'll see two modern celebrities and be like, “oh, my God, gay.” And it's like, well, why can't I just let them be friends? You know, like so I think that was a really important point to make of like, yes, it's great to see queer representation. It's great to see those same sex relationships, but you also need to allow room for things that don't have anything to do with sex or romance, that they are purely friendships. 

SARAH: And I would argue that that's still queer representation because it's a queering of the status quo. It's like even if they're not aspec, like the perspective that we're coming at it from, you know, that's still it like it's a queering of what we understand, like relationships and partnerships to be so like it is still queer representation. And there are going to be people out there who are like, it's not representation unless gay people are kissing. 

KAYLA: Kissing 

SARAH: And I'm like, we really, you know, it's important to us that we start to look beyond that. And having this framework is a great place to kind of start doing that. 

RHAINA: Yeah. This was so hard for me to figure out how to thread the needle really carefully. Like you guys have the advance copy. There's like a footnote that I changed in the final copy that I agonized over about like how to, you know, like how do we think about these relationships? Like I… like I'm part of the queer umbrella. I'm bi like I would, you know, love nothing more to be able to look back in history and find people who, you know, had similar desires that I did. And it would have been nice if I'd encounter those like when I was younger and kind of doing stock history when I was in school. But yeah, I just I think that the… like there is a risk of overcorrection. And I was asked just the other day by somebody like, oh, do you think people, you know, sexualize these friendships out of homophobia? And I was like, well, you know, it actually can cut both ways. Like I think sometimes there's I don't know, a salaciousness that can maybe come from a place of homophobia where people like which affected like these straight men, for instance, who I write about where their boss was essentially gossiping about whether these men were in a romantic relationship. And I don't think that that's coming from a good place for that person. But I do think that there is a, you know, a way that like you can come from a really good place of being like, we don't want to straight wash history anymore. And like, let's call these relationships what they were. But I think it is it is complicated because the to know exactly what happened in any number of these romantic friendships or Boston marriages, because like the… some core concepts were not the same as they are now like, you know, as one historian puts it, like people did not assume that you… like in order to love you also had to lust after somebody that those could be distinct. So, I am trying to be really careful to chart this line where like, I'm sure some of these like same sex friendships, or in fact, sexual relationships, you know, what appeared, you know, things that appeared to be friendships, but I think it's very likely that like, not all of them were and that actually, like considering the possibility that these were friendships and occupy this kind of in between territory can teach us much more than assuming, you know, then slotting them all into this box of a sexual relationship. 

SARAH: Right. And also, just from an aspec perspective, looking at history, like we want to have this queer representation. And you know, you have to kind of make educated just like, not decisions, but educated guesses about, you know, how people may have felt attraction or identified because as you mentioned, like these terms, as we know them today, just didn't exist in the same form. And I think that's especially difficult with aspec identities, because not only did the terms not necessarily exist, but because aspec identities are in absence of a certain type of attraction, it's very hard to retroactively put that on someone, especially someone who you can't speak to. And so, I think, you know, it's… that's part of the reason why a spec representation now is so important, because, you know, to have that, you know, explicit discussion of how people feel is so helpful and, you know, looking to the past to see these like, you know, relationships that may have been queer in some way, like people are often so eager to jump to like, “Oh, it was gay,” oh, it was whatever, because they want to see themselves seen in that. But sometimes that can lead to like, potential erasure of like, more… I don't want to say complex or more complicated identities, but like, identities that might fall under the aspec umbrella. So, like, it's a very difficult balance to achieve. 

RHAINA: Yeah 

SARAH: And so, I just, I don't know, that's it. That's the end. 

RHAINA: Well, it just, it sounds like really frustrating to know, like, surely, like, you know, David Jay was not the first person who, like, was ace, but that like, people have been ace, you know, or, like, been on the ace spectrum forever, but like, if you just like the people who I told you about, and who I write about in my book, where they're like, we want ancestors or we want elders, like that, that sounds just really difficult to like to know that they're aspec people, but not be able to point to them. And like, it's even hard to do the reading between the lines that maybe people who are like, looking at somebody who's like, allo, but lesbian, like, would be more… could make a sort of strong, stronger case for I guess. 

SARAH: Yeah, it's all complicated and complex. And again, I'm just glad that we have, you know, the resources and the books and the conversations that we're having now. So hopefully, you know, we become those elders for people, which is a nice thought. Kayla didn't like it. She didn't like thinking…

KAYLA: I think that's… it's a lot of stress to be put on to become an elder, I don't know if I'm ready for that responsibility. 

SARAH: I don't mean it in like the sense of like, you know, we are the experts. We are the elders, capital T, capital E. I just mean it in like that younger people who, you know, identify with similar identities or have similar relationship structures as the ones you talk about in the books, have older people to look at to say, oh, yeah, this is normal. This can be done. Here are options. Here's someone who has actually been through it. 

KAYLA: I'm just not ready to have children. I'm sorry, Sarah. 

SARAH: I'm going to stamp on your forehead, the elder, trademark, copyright. 

KAYLA: I’m just not ready. I'm just not. I'm sorry. 

SARAH: I don't know what to tell you. 

KAYLA: It's embarrassing to have this conversation in front of Rhaina, but I'm not ready for this next step in our relationship. 

SARAH: I’m sorry. I never said anything about kids. 

RHAINA: I just feel like I created a problem that didn't exist like an hour ago. 

SARAH: I never said anything about kids. I just said getting older as human people. It happens every day. 

KAYLA: I’m not ready to get older, I'm sorry. 

SARAH: Okay. Kayla, is there anything… Is there anything else you want to hit on? 

KAYLA: I mean, I could really talk about this book for like literal hours. There were so many things that came up that I was like, this could be a full episode. This could be a full episode. Like there are so many topics that are so relatable to the aspec experience, but also, you know, like this book is obviously not just for aspecs. There's so much that is so relevant to anyone that has ever had a friend. 

SARAH: Which I would argue is pretty much everyone. 

RHAINA: I would hope everyone. 

SARAH: 99.9% of the human population. 

KAYLA: So, I'm sure we will be returning to topics from this book in future episodes. But yeah, I would highly recommend reading it, especially to aspecs, I think. It's just going to feel very familiar and very validating and just kind of, I don't know, give extra evidence to things that I think all of us are already kind of thinking about. But now there's like solid, like, okay, yes, there is historical proof for this. There are other people that feel this way is just very validating. 

SARAH: And it gives credence to the idea that, you know, as we talk about in our book, like the aspec lens, it comes obviously from an aspec perspective and what we've learned about ourselves because of our asexual and aromantic spectrum identities. But it applies to everyone. You know, the things we learn from that lens can apply to everyone. And so seeing in your book, all of these people who, as far as I'm aware, only one person who you talked about in your book identified as aspec, everyone else was, some of them were straight, some of them were lesbian, some of them identified entirely, you know, there's a whole slew of different ways people identified. And so, I think being able to see those like concrete examples of like, it's not just us, like they're, everyone can really be benefited by this. And, you know, it's the sort of thing that like, when you're doing your aspec TED talk to someone, and they're like, give me evidence, you're like, okay, I have a book for you. Like, it's not just us. And I honestly, I think that that is a really important thing. I remembered one more question that I have for you. 

[00:50:00]

SARAH: When you're talking about these, like in these chapters, you mentioned several times that you visited these people in person and like went to their homes and spoke to them there. Was that always the intention? Like what, why? I mean, I know you're a journalist, so I'm sure like, that's your preferred way of doing it. But like, you know, how important was that to you for the process? 

RHAINA: Well, I started reporting the book in 2019. I did my first interviews in 2019. So, before the pandemic, and I, you know, it hadn't occurred to me that I like, I don't know that I wouldn't be able to visit people's homes, but you just learn so much from people being in person with them. And the kinds of interviews that I do take hours and hours. And also, I'm like talking to people over time. And people's kind of stamina is much higher when it's in person. And you just like, see things, especially when people are living together, that and you see how they interact in real life. There's just like, it's… I didn't get to meet every single person in person. But almost everyone I did and, you know, like, there's a, like, a bit of there's a scene that I described in the book that happened just about a year ago was like one of the last things I put in the book where I went to a New Year's party that a few of these friends hosted. And like, we were, I mean, this was, this was on a very kind of like aspec theme about like, what is romance, like, how do we even define what this thing is, and why does it matter? And I was talking to this group of friends. And then like, as people are coming into this party, one of the women who I was interviewing was just asking people as they were taking off their coats, like, how do you define romance? And then I was just like, ended up in the all these different, like, kind of sub conversations about this, which ended up being really illuminating. And also, it just like, I felt like I understood, like, you know, this was this person I write about Grace, like, I feel like I understood her as a person much better, just spending like a few hours with her kind of like, it like, not in a stage setting of an interview, but just like her existing around her friends. So, you know, to the extent possible, I think, being in person, it's sometimes hard to justify from the outset, because you're like, I don't really know what I'm going to get, that's going to be different, but I just know I'm going to get something.

SARAH: This seems expensive. This seems like, you know… 

RHAINA: Yeah. I'm going to understand something about these people that I will be able to transmit about them in a much richer way. Because, you know, as I was saying earlier, I just like, I think really, having people like understand the people and their relationships is so important to treating them like not as others, but like, or, you know, othering, but like, as people that they can totally relate to.

SARAH: Yeah. Kayla, what is our poll for this week? We won't ask have you read Rhaina's book because this is going not this is going to come out just before it comes out. But have you pre ordered it? 

KAYLA: But I think you could pre order it? And you should

SARAH: Have you pre ordered Rhaina’s book? Have you spoken to your local library and expressed your interest in it so that they will pre order it in the book? If you work at a library, have you pre ordered it for your library? All important questions.

RHAINA: I did not pay you guys to say this. So just to be clear 

KAYLA: No, we've gotten very… we're very… we talk about… we make people buy our book all the time.

SARAH: We make them, it sounds like we're like holding them at gunpoint 

KAYLA: And we are 

SARAH: Oh, wow 

KAYLA: So, I feel like we've become very good at the book selling… 

SARAH: I didn't realize either of us were gun owners.

KAYLA: I'm not, it could mean… 

SARAH: Me neither. Anyway.

KAYLA: Okay. Um, what's the poll?

SARAH: Have you pre ordered it?

KAYLA: Okay, I'll think of something better than that.

SARAH: Also include that to get people to do it.

KAYLA: Okay, I will.

RHAINA: Have you asked whether people have their own, you know, like they if they have a QPR or… 

KAYLA: True. Yes. I know. Yeah, I know a lot of our listeners have a lot of interest in QPR. But yeah, we could ask you ever had… 

SARAH: An other significant other 

KAYLA: An other significant other. Yes, exactly. Good. Rhaina is just doing our jobs for us. Clearly, there's one actual real journalist in this call and it's neither of us.

SARAH: All right. Kayla, what is your beef and your juice for this week?

KAYLA: My… I'm going to combine mine, my beef and my juice, which I think the listeners decided was…

SARAH: At the gravy? Yep 

KAYLA: Is the game Contexto, I don't know if either of you have played it but it's like a wordle style game where there's like one game a day or like one word a day and the word of the day you have to like get to it by what… like what context is used in so like you'll guess any word and it'll tell you how far away it is from being used in the same context as like the word of the day. And so, it's just like you can literally guess any word. And so, it just like takes a long time and it gets very complicated. And sometimes I don't agree with the context like a couple of days ago the word was liver. And like the best word I had was like meat. So, I was guessing things like chicken and whatever and that was doing well. But like I had no idea we were talking about like an organ in the human body. Anyway, it's an incredibly frustrating game but like it's fun but also, I hate it but also, I do have to play it every day so that's my great. 

SARAH: It's giving New York Times connections. It feels like a similar vibe. 

KAYLA: I do play it. I do play it after I play the connections. 

SARAH: Yeah. I mean I have that issue sometimes with like because I've recently gotten into playing all the New York Times games because my sister got me a game subscription 

KAYLA: Of course 

SARAH: Is with like Spelling Bee and with Wordle like sometimes I give it a word and it's like that's not a word and I'm like that is homophobic. Like what do you… what do you mean? That is totally a word. 

KAYLA: Yeah. Contexto doesn't like any… like anything that's related to like drugs, anything related to sex. I haven't tried many sexualities but it does not like those words. 

SARAH: Yeah. 

KAYLA: Okay. Prude. 

SARAH: Yeah. The number of times I've tried on Spelling Bee to play clit and it doesn't let me. 

KAYLA: Like that's just hateful. 

RHAINA: If it was the full word though is it just that it's a... 

SARAH: I don't know. 

KAYLA: Oh, that's a good question actually. I bet they wouldn't take it. 

SARAH: They also won't take cunt but that's you know. 

KAYLA: That's just hateful. That's just like hateful against my culture as someone who likes saying the word cunt. Anyway

SARAH: It's incredible. 

RHAINA: I think the context is pretty important there though speaking of context. 

SARAH: That's true. That’s true. Yeah. Contex.

KAYLA: Contex.

SARAH: You know I was thinking I was like maybe we won't have to mark this episode as explicit. I'm just kidding. 

KAYLA: I'll always find a way.

SARAH: We always find a way. My beef and my juice. My beef is the same as it was last week. Tomorrow I have to move into an Airbnb for at least a week. I have not packed anything. I'm getting kicked out of my house at 8:30 in the morning. It'll be rough. 

KAYLA: It’ll be

SARAH: My juice is I'm going to a dance class today which is making it more stressful about packing because it's less time but it will be good. 

KAYLA: Also, how are you going to watch the Lions game if you're packing?

SARAH: I will not watch the Lions game. I’m so sorry

KAYLA: Sarah they might go to the Super Bowl.

SARAH: I know. If they're in the Super Bowl I'll watch the Super Bowl.

KAYLA: My other beef is that the Lions… 

SARAH: You live in a football house. I don't.

KAYLA: Okay here's the problem. I know I do live in a football house but the problem is that the Lions are playing the 49ers which is my boyfriend's team and so he's made all of us 49ers fans and I've never been a Lions fan because they suck but now I am a Lions fan because now they don't suck.

SARAH: That's our legacy.

KAYLA: Because that's the whole thing and so now I don't know what to do about it.

SARAH: You're a Lions fan.

KAYLA: I am a Lions fan. I’m wearing…

SARAH: Don't let him convince you otherwise.

KAYLA: This is the bluest thing I own and I'm wearing this and I pointedly left my 49ers shirt in my closet

SARAH: As you should 

KAYLA: And told him I was rooting for the Lions. Anyway, I might be broken up with later today. We'll see. 

SARAH: We’ll see. Anyway. Yes. All right. Rhaina, what is your beef and your juice for this week?

RHAINA: They are related and not quite gravy because they're sort of in opposition. So, the beef is that I came down with a stomach flu a couple days ago which sucks period but it means that I'm still contagious and couldn't do a thing today that I really wanted to do which was see some of my friends singing because a couple of my friends wrote a song based on the book that is about friendship that is called Dear Friend and as part of… like the recording process they're having friends do, other friends do backup vocals so I had to miss out on that but the song is going to be…

KAYLA: That's so sweet.

SARAH: That’s so cool

RHAINA: It's like such a good song. It is like kind of crazily catchy. So, yeah.

SARAH: I love that.

RHAINA: I'm just sad that I can't witness it.

KAYLA: So, is the song like officially being released for everyone to hear or is it staying?

RHAINA: It will be. It's like in the… it was very DIY and it has like turned into more of a production, I guess. A couple of my friends who have written songs like they are government officials by day but they like do a lot of songwriting and they've done written songs for friends weddings where they'll like interview the couple and then like make a song for them that they'll perform

KAYLA: Oh, cute 

RHAINA: And my friend was telling me one day that she was kind of tired of writing love songs and I was like well you want to write a song about friendship you could use my book as you know inspiration and they were really into it and then I loved the song and then we started talking about like you know having a friend another friend beat the drum… like who's on the… who I write about on the first page of the book like drumming like backup and then they have a friend who's a professional and very talented music producer so he's producing the song and then this like backup vocals thing came you know came to be so it's like yeah, my friends were inspired by a book about friendship to write a book… or to write a song about friendship and involves other friends and so it’s so great

[01:00:00]

SARAH: Friends are so cool 

KAYLA: That's so fun, we will… I'm going to keep my eye out for that song because I know our listeners are always complaining about how there's too many love songs and there's no songs about friends so 

RHAINA: That's a big part of the reason that like we wanted it to exist, I think it'll be out in time for the… in time for the release of this and I will send you the… I think it should be on Spotify by then 

KAYLA: Oh, my gosh! I'm so excited 

SARAH: All right, well you can tell us about your beef or your juice on our social media @soundsfakepod. Rhaina where can the people of the internet find you? 

RHAINA: They can find out things about me by reading my book The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life With Friendship At The Center and if you're listening to this before February 13th you can pre-order it and afterwards you can order, you know order it or buy it in a bookstore and then I'm like @RhainaCohen on Instagram, nominally on X these days, I have a Substack called “Related” that writing the book has made it hard for me to write regularly but I am still trying to write about kind of the social sciences is sort of the idea there but yeah that's where you can find me on the internet 

SARAH: Delightful 

RHAINA: And on the… and like in a book form

SARAH: Right, yeah, the most important place, in the book 

KAYLA: Yes, yeah 

SARAH: All right, well in addition to spending your money, your hard-earned money on Rhaina's book which she worked so hard on, I swear to God y'all she worked so hard on it, buy it

KAYLA: You have to buy, you have to 

SARAH: In addition to that if you want to for some reason give me and Kayla money you can do that on our Patreon, patreon.com/soundsfakepod. Sarah from the future will give you the patrons. Hi, this is Sarah from the future, the Lions did not win, they did not win, so go Chiefs, I guess. Our $5 patrons who we're promoting this week are Jennifer Smart, Yogh or possibly Josh or possibly Jogh, harsh, it's probably not harsh, I don't think it's harsh. Jolly… Catherine Bailey and Kelly are again our $5 patrons sorry for any name butchering that does happen. Our $10 patrons who are putting something this week our Arkness who would like to promote the Trevor project, Benjamin Ybarra who would like to promote Tabletop games, Selena Dobson who would like to promote the critical role foundation and David Harris who would like to promote the cradle book series by will white, our other $10 patrons are Derek and Karissa, Albeter, my aunt Jeannie, Kayla's dad, Maff, Martin Giselle, Parker, Purple Haze, Barefoot Backpacker, Song of storm, Val, Allison and Annie. Our $15 patrons are Ace who would like to promote the writer… oh my God, Ace who would like to promote the writer Crystal Sharer, damn it. Andrew Hillam who would like to promote the invisible spectrum podcast, Dia Chappelle who would like to promote twitch.tv slash/melodydia, Hector Murio who would like to promote friends that are supportive, constructive and help you grow as a better person, Nathaniel White who would like to promote NathanielJwhitedesigns.com and Kayla’s Aunt Nina who would like to promote KateMaggartArt.com. Our $20 patrons are dragonfly and my mom who since my mom has not told me at what she wants to promote they are both together going to promote microwave popcorn, I just think it's good. Thanks for listening, tune in next Sunday for more of us in your ears… no wait, that's not, I'm sorry, for a second, I forgot I was Sarah from the future, back to the past. Thanks Sarah from the future your microphone quality was bad, uh okay what's next I got so thrown off by preemptively announcing the poor quality of my microphone. Okay, thanks for listening, Rhaina thank you so much for writing this book and for joining us and for being a part of this… the conversation 

RHAINA: With capital T and capital C? 

SARAH: Yes, exactly 

KAYLA: Yes, the conversation by the elders 

SARAH: The elders. Everyone, buy Rhaina's book and tune in next Sunday for more of us in your ears 

KAYLA: And until then take good care of your cows 

SARAH: If they can read get them this book, if they can't… 

KAYLA: Well, you can read it to them 

SARAH: If they can't read, read the book to them 

KAYLA: I think that would be soothing 

SARAH: Yeah, I think so too

RHAINA: There's an audiobook where you could just hear me read for almost nine hours 

KAYLA: Oh my God 

SARAH: Have all of the above 

KAYLA: Yes, play the audiobook while you also read it at the same time 

SARAH: Perfect

[END OF TRANSCRIPT]