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- [00:01]
A
Audio for sleep by hatch. Hey there. I'm Wills.
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And I'm Josh. Welcome to the nightly from Hatch, where your late night thoughts go to rest.
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Hey, Josh.
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B
I will. It's so nice to see you. Per usual.
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A
It's amazing to see you.
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B
Yeah. How are you doing?
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A
I'm doing pretty well. I had a nice workout earlier today. I.
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B
Cool.
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A
I went to my friend Marley's show at the Bell house last night, which was very fun. I was being a little bit of her roadie last night. I was helping her sell merch and do all this stuff, which was very. Yeah, it was fun.
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B
Oh, that's fun.
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A
And people kept me like, you're on the show. I was like, no, I'm just. I'm just. I'm just basically working. Working. Yeah.
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B
I love that. Wait, tell me more about being a roadie. Like, did you meet anyone interesting? How. How. How are you at selling merch? Because I'm so bad at it.
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A
I'm. I. So I haven't met anyone interesting. I just helped Marley with her show last night. But I. I said it a bit like, facetiously. But. Yeah, I mean, I'm. I'm always, like, willing to lend a helping hand, especially as, like, I don't know when in this business or whatever, like, you need help to do all these things. And I'm often in a position of, like, having a lot of free time. So I'm, I'm. I try to film where I can, but I felt like I honestly wasn't doing that good of a job at pushing the merch. I was kind of letting people come up to the table and I was. And then I. I was like, you should get it. You should get it. But I feel like I could have. I could have done something more. I need to work on my.
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B
Play hard to get. I think that's good.
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A
Okay. Okay. I. I, like, play it cool and I leave. I. I leave them wanting more. And that'll. That'll push sales.
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Leave them wanting merch.
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Exactly.
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B
Wait, we should have merch for the show.
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A
Oh, my God. We should.
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B
What do you think we should have?
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A
I mean, it should be like sleepy stuff. I feel like an eye mask would be cute. I'm trying to think what else we could do.
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B
Like, wicked big T shirt to sleep
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in a moo moo. Basically only xls. Only. Literally only xls. We could do mouth tape for those. Those of us who like that.
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What about those hats? Or one of those. The things you hold a candle on for when not a creature is stirring. You know what I'm talking about?
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Yes. Like a little candle that you wander around in a nightgown.
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I think that would be cool. Nobody's selling those.
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A
Yeah. Wait, who is that guy? Who is the guy? That's not a creaturist.
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B
Oh, I don't know. It's night before Christmas. Right? But I don't know that we know who that narrator is. And Scrooge, I think, had one too.
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A
Okay. Yeah, we need a scrooge. We need, like, a full nightgown, a little, like, candlestick with a candle, and one of those, like, little hats, I think. Could be amazing merch for the show.
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B
I think so too.
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A
How are you, Josh?
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I'm all right. I've been doing this thing lately where, like at night, sometimes I'll get off the train. If I'm on my way home late, I'll get off the train, like an extra stop early, and then I'll. Cause it's nice to unwind with a little walk at the end of the night. So that's like the feeling that I'm bringing into this conversation is like, that is good. Took a little extra walk instead of coming off the train and then just scooting right into the apartment. Just like, meandered. Took in the sights. It was great.
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A nighttime walk. A little stroll is always lovely.
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Yeah, I'm in real little stroll mode lately.
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You're in your little stroll bag these days.
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Stroll maxing.
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We're strollmaxing. That's gonna be the next big thing.
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I'm in my meandering era.
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I don't know if you ever saw this, but one thing I. I saw, like last summer on TikTok, I think was someone who was like, I'm creek maxing. Have you seen this?
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B
I don't think so. Just hanging out in a creek.
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A
It was this person who would hang out in a creek, but they would, like, float. So they would, like, be like completely, like kind of like starfishing on the water. And they would always be in a creek that was, like, running. So they would do these time lapse videos where it's them kind of starfishing on the water just like going in circles and circles and circles. And it looks so lovely. I was like, I need to do that sometime soon.
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B
That seems extremely soothing.
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Yeah, it's it. That would be. That's like the next step up from a. From stroll maxing, I think is creek maxing.
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That's right. Just getting brook built.
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Brook maxing. What else is on your mind, Josh? What have you Been thinking about lately.
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Okay, I gave up for now.
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Okay.
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On a book.
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Let me hear it.
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As listeners may know, I have been making slow, enjoyable, but extremely pokey progress reading Inherent Vice, the Thomas Pynchon novel. And I read a lot of other stuff. I don't read as many books as I should, but this was kind of like boxing out new books. And I would read it, like, I would go away and I would pick it up for, like, half an hour in a hotel room and read a few pages. And if I had enough space on the plane to kind of like, stretch my elbows out, I read on a plane. But, you know, I was making, like, 20 pages of props progress a week.
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How long is the book, do you think? How many pages?
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Like, 350 pages.
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Not outrageous, but it's slow and steady. 24 weeks.
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Yeah, it was slow and steady. I gave it up for now. I stopped because I was like, I would like to read a book or I feel a little more propulsive. And then I'm going away with my wife for a little while, and I think with some time out in the. We're just going upstate to a cabin for a few days, and that will be the perfect place to focus on finishing this book. Whereas it's not good in little increments.
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Yeah, yeah. You have to really commit yourself to it, maybe.
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Yeah, I think that's right. I really have to get dialed into the frequency that the book is on and devote kind of a swath of the day, because I do think it will be very enjoyable to read that way. But it's not something that, you know, I get home and I'm not like, ooh, let me crack this book and read for half an hour. Because I'm excited about it. It's like, well, let's see what this doofus now.
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I'm actually rereading a book right now, which I also don't do that often.
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B
Ooh, what are you rereading?
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A
I'm rereading Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters, who is an amazing author. And she just put out another. A new book, which is why I was, like, decided to reread Detransition Baby. She just put out a book of short stories called Stag Dance. And I read this book when it first came out. It basically is a story about someone who detransitions and is, like, now living as, like, a man what had previously been a trans woman. And he is embroiled in a romantic relationship with his boss, and she becomes pregnant, and he then Is like, I don't feel like I can be a father. That feels like scary. And so he brings in his ex girlfriend, who is also a trans woman, to be like, what if we raise this child together, the three of us, in a kind of like non normative way that allows like me to be a parent basically. And I really am. I'm enjoying it. I'm. I'm kind of tearing through it. I. I don't remember how it ends at all. I have like a terrible memory. So rereading books for me is actually like quite easy because I literally, I'm like, I have no idea what's going to happen, by the way. I'm like, wow, this book is good. I'm glad I already own this. Yeah, I. Last time I read it, I like, basically wasn't transgender or whatever you want to say. So reading it now is obviously a completely different experience. And it's interesting to read it as like, I feel like obviously I have more understanding of like what is being written about, of course, which makes sense. There's a lot of like. And I don't think it feels like heavy handed or anything, but there's a lot of like exposition that she has to do to kind of like explain stuff to the audience. But she does it in a way that is pretty seamless, which I feel like is a big feat as well.
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What specifically do you feel like you're like? This is really speaking to me in a way that I don't. It like wasn't in the same way before.
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I don't even feel like it's necessarily things that are speaking to me in particular. There are points for sure where she talks about transness or being transgender that I feel like I relate to. It is different because it's about. It's focused more obviously on trans women. There's not really like that those are the main characters, but more so just like the information that she has to provide, I think so that a wider audience can kind of like understand and like contextualize what's going on. I feel like I have a. Obviously more of like a baseline understanding of for sure. I think probably like lots of people do too, because it was written like 5 years ago at this point or whatever. But I'm really enjoying it. It's definitely a book that I would love to see be made into like a movie or a limited series.
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Yeah, I wonder if that's in the works. It was like a big book.
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I feel like it has been. I think someone like bought it. I don't know if it's going to be made. But I think that maybe that was, that was happening. But it's one of those books where I'm like wanting to reach through the pages and shake the characters and be like, oh my God, come on. It's like in particular, one of the characters, Rhys, who is the trans woman that aims the person who detransitioned is bringing in to help raise the child. She is understandably being difficult at times, but I'm like, I just want to reach through the book and be like, they're giving you what you want to say. Yes.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So in your dream adaptation of this novel, who would you want to write it or who would you want to star in it?
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Okay. One of the main woman, Katrina, who is the cisgender woman that is pregnant. I'm trying to think who I would cast her as. She's mixed race. I was kind of like, but this is a white woman. But I was, in my head, I was kind of Dakota Johnson.
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Interesting.
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I honestly could almost see Kieran Culkin playing Ames, who is like the guy who's detransitioned a little bit.
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I can see he has that energy that you're describing before. If you want to reach into this and be like, dude, chill, get it together.
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I feel like it has to be a guy who's a little bit slight and cute. Yeah.
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Cool.
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Have you picked something up now that you've put down Inherent Vice?
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Yes. So I had to pick something up to close the last book and I really wanted to make it something that I was like really psyched to read that I think I will really like dig into. And so my friend J. D', Amato, who I used to work with at Desus and Marrow, just wrote a middle grade graphic novel.
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Oh, cool.
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With this really great illustrator named Sophie Morse. And it's both of their first book length work. And it's so lovely. If there's anyone listening that has kids, you know, I think it's like 7 to 11 or 7 to 12 is kind of the age group it's pitched at. And it's this really lovely book called the Endless Game. And it's about this little town in Illinois where a new kid moves in and there's this decades long game of capture the flag that the whole town, all the kids in the town play and no one has ever won. And it lasts all summer, every summer.
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Oh my God.
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And it was so sweet. I read it in part because JD Asked me to moderate a conversation with him and Sophie and so I read it so I could be prepared. And it was just so sweet and wonderful. And JD Said, I don't think this dung tail's out of school. That part of the book was inspired by. He moved around a lot when he was a little kid and in, like, kindergarten. And he remembers, like, having dinner with his family and a neighborhood kid. Like, they had just moved to a new town. The neighborhood kid, like, rang the doorbell and was like, hey, we heard there's new kids here. Can they come out and play? And him being like, oh, I'm like, part of this neighborhood now. And then that kid, obviously, is an adult now. And he was at the book conversation launch event.
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Oh, that's so cute.
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And it was really, really sweet. Yeah.
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Oh, my God. That, like, warms my heart.
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It's, like, truly so precious and fun and whimsical. It just, like, has this really wonderful kind of. This quality of. That's, like, really sweet and, like, fun for kids. But there's also this kind of, like, real melancholy aspect to it of, like, being a kid and not kind of being in charge of your own life.
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Yeah.
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Which I think is, like, such a common feeling of, like, oh, I gotta do what the grownups say. That's, like, most of it. And so having this other world of kids that's slightly fantastical is really great.
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Oh, that's sweet. Okay. The Endless Game is what it's called.
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The Endless Game, yeah. By J. D'Amato and illustrated by Sophie Morse, which is really killer. And then I started reading Dr. No by Percival Everett, which I'm very psyched for.
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Oh, okay. I haven't read this. Tell me about it.
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So I just started, and it's very like. I don't know. I'm such a sucker for this kind of book that is, like, very smart, but also really silly. Like, the setup happens right away, which is. There's this character who is a theoretical mathematician who studies the idea of nothing. Like, nothing, not as the absence of stuff, but as kind of its own theoretical entity. And Cyr, like, it starts off like this, like, first eight pages, he's like, I'm this guy. This is what I do. A man approached me. He's like, I want to be a Bond villain. Like, that's my goal, literally, is to be a James Bond villain in real world. I want to do, like, evil stuff.
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I want to be as evil as possible.
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He's like, I want to be evil just to be evil. And the thing I want to do is rob Fort Knox, which I have Come to learn is full of nothing. Like there is military grade nothingness inside Fort Knox instead of gold. And I want you to advise me on how to accomplish this heist. And I'm like. Immediately was just like, yeah, buddy, I'm in Percival Everett, if listeners don't know. I've brought him up on the show before, but he wrote Erasure, which was adapted into the movie American Fiction written and directed by Cord Jefferson.
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A
So you read. What was the other book of his you read? The Trees.
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The Trees.
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It's really fun to read a lot of an author and really get to know them. I'm trying to think the last author. Do you have other authors that you've read? A lot of their works? I'm trying to think of who else. I've done that one.
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Yeah, I've been pacing out. I don't think he has that many books, but I think I'm like three for four. Maybe with Paul Beatty, who wrote the Sellout, which I love. That was the last author that I was like, I just gotta find all this guy's stuff.
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Totally. Yeah, yeah.
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What about you?
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The last time I did, I mean it was only two books, but I read Heart the Lover by Lily King, which like a lot of people have been reading. And then I read Writers and Writers and Lovers or something. The other one that I forget the name of. And I really enjoyed that. I've famously read a lot of Emily Henry, who is a rom com novelist, of course.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we talked about this.
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That is a little bit different than like what I'm talking about.
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But it isn't. It isn't it?
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Right.
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Because it's like I think there are people who. I think just anything in that realm, they're like, yeah, I'm ravenous for this. But like, I think to be really on the same page, no pun intended, with like a specific author and be like, I just like the way she does things.
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It's like, I just like it.
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I think it's kind of its own cool thing.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. I read, I read a lot of the Emily St. John Mandel books, which she does Station 11. And then I read like the other books in that universe. So that's the last one that I. The last person. I think I really got.
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Yeah.
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Like hooked by like her and everything that she wrote. But it's always so fun. It feels like so it's just fun to be. You're like, I'm in this world and
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it's like, yeah, I'm like exploring the different corners of someone's brain.
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Yeah, yeah.
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What is it about Emily Henry and Emily St John Mandel? All the Emily's that like stood out above other kind of authors in that genre?
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Well, the Emily Henry ones, they're just very formulaic so you kind of know what you're going to get. Like it's very, you know what you're going to get and it's an easy read and I enjoy them. The Emily St. John Mandel. Once I just got so like station 11 I loved so much. And I think also because I, I started. I started reading kind of like speculative books for the first time. Like I usually read books that are pretty grounded and don't have like any type of like mystical or, or sci fi or like any type of kind of like speculative aspect to them. And so I think I liked. I mean she's just a really talented author but the way that the books still felt grounded and also have all of them have some type of like either like with Station 11, it's this like apocalypse book. There's one that has like time travel, like they have these like kind of like fantastical elements that I found compelling but in a way that wasn't like, I didn't have to like have a book that had a, A key at the beginning that had to like explain like, like, or like a map or whatever, you know what I mean?
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B
Here's a map of Zarvandel and like.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So I think I was, I was very taken by that. But the she, I mean, yeah, she was like, she just builds these worlds that I was completely drawn into and all the books are pretty propulsive and yeah, she's just like fantastic. So those books were really, really fun to read.
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Yeah.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Well, this has been such a wonderful chat and I think it's time that I say goodnight to you. And also I am going to say goodnight to Doc Sportello, the protagonist, let's say of Inherent Vice, who I'm gonna let rest for a little while.
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He's gonna take a slumber and then we'll wake him back up in a little bit. Yeah. Good night, Josh. And I think the other person I'm gonna say goodnight to is I'm gonna say goodnight to Sally Rooney. Because when that woman releases a book, I'm reading it in a heartbeat. Know that. So I'll say goodnight to her. I hope she's, I hope she's resting and I hope she's writing something new.
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B
Good night.
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A
Sa. Foreign.
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B
To learn more about our Phone Free Light and audio experience. Head to Hatch Co. You can also follow us at Hatch Podcasts.