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- [00:00]
Emma Rosenblum
This is not a drill. You can get the new iPhone 16e with Apple Intelligence for just $49.99 when you switch to Boost Mobile.
- [00:06]
Freddy
Wait, that's the actual fire alarm. We need to go visit your nearest Boost Mobile store for full offer details. Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later. Restrictions apply.
- [00:17]
Michelle Norris
Hey everyone, I'm Michelle Norris, here to welcome you to your mama's kitchen. Every Tuesday we bring you new stories from the childhood kitchens of fun guests like Stephen Colbert, John Legend, Ina Garten, Big Frieda, Roy Wood. So many more people. I'll talk to guests who are artists, actors, chefs, musicians, and more about how the food and the culinary traditions of their youth shape their lives in interesting and sometimes surprising ways. It's delicious. Make sure to listen wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:51]
Zibby Owens
Today's episode is sponsored by gab. The youth mental health crisis is everywhere right now and we know social media.
- [00:58]
Sidney
Plays a huge role.
- [00:59]
Zibby Owens
The US Surgeon General warns that kids who spend more than three hours a day online are twice as likely to experience depression and anxiety. That's a real wake up call with four kids of my own. Back to School always brings up the same questions. Who needs a phone? What kind? And how do we make sure it's actually safe between after school activities, carpools and practices? They need to be connected but not pulled into social media. So here's the good A company called Gab Gabb has solved the problem by doing something no one else is doing. Their approach is called Tech in Steps and I am obsessed. Tech and Steps provides kids safe phones and watches with no social media, no Internet apps, tailored to every age. And by the way, it looks just like a real phone so the kids.
- [01:44]
Sidney
Are super happy about it.
- [01:45]
Zibby Owens
From GPS enabled watches for younger kids to parent controlled phones for tweens and teens. It even, by the way, tells me when the battery is running low. Each device supports your child's growing independence so safely. Bottom line, you don't have to give your kid a phone made for adults this school year. Get them Gab. It keeps them connected without the downside. I can't recommend Gab enough. It finally put an end to all the fighting about phones. Use my code to get the best deal on something that will make parenting easier and give you peace of mind all school year long. And by the way, make your kids happy. Visit gabb.com and use code totallybooked for a special back to school offer. That's Gab G A B B.
- [02:34]
Sidney
Welcome Emma. Thank you so much for coming on. Totally booked so Excited to have you here to talk about mean moms.
- [02:40]
Emma Rosenblum
I am very excited to be here. As I said, this is my first time doing an interview about mean moms. We are just starting on the press for it, so I'm glad it's you, Sidney.
- [02:52]
Sidney
I would expect no less. Let me read you a little bit about Emma Rosenblum. If you don't know a lot about her. Although maybe you've listened to my, what, three podcasts with her already on? Totally booked. Emma Rosenblum is the best selling author of Bad Summer People and Very Bad Company. Previously she was the Chief Content Officer of Bustle Digital Group, the executive editor of Elle, and before that an editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, Glamour, and New York Magazine. She lives in New York City with her family. Yay. By the way, before we talk about anything else, I just saw the announcement that Bad Summer People is going to be what? A show? A movie. What is it?
- [03:31]
Emma Rosenblum
Well, it's going to be adapted into a TV show. Fingers crossed. You never know. But Sarah Michelle Gellar is attached to executive produce it and star in it as one of the leads. So that was exciting because I love Buffy. And when that deal came through, I was like, yes, thank God. We're going to be best friends. We haven't met yet, but I can, like see it. It's like Sarah and Freddie Prinze Jr. And me and my husband together.
- [03:56]
Sidney
Double dates.
- [03:56]
Emma Rosenblum
We're gonna be trips.
- [03:58]
Sidney
Yeah. White Lotus style.
- [03:59]
Emma Rosenblum
I'm manifesting it, so I can't wait.
- [04:01]
Sidney
Stay tuned for that. We will be keeping our eyes full.
- [04:04]
Emma Rosenblum
It's more important than the actual TV show getting made.
- [04:06]
Sidney
Yes. I would like a TV show made just so I can be friends with her. That's all I need. Perfect. Okay, mean moms. This is so funny. I mean, I love all your books and I love the way you write. And maybe because I am a mom here in New York City, it is particularly relatable to me. But I laughed out loud like a hundred times. I even started reading passages out loud to Kyle. I was like, this is so funny. And it's just your quick, dark wit. And I'm like, what is she thinking about me now? Is basically what I'm thinking. Because you have this running mind.
- [04:35]
Emma Rosenblum
Everyone always thinks about me now when they meet me and they're like, oh my God, what is she going to put in one of her books? It's all with love. I love this life that I've made in New York City. And I love the moms that I know. And it's not based on anybody. It's just the idea of moms together in a group, Whether it's in New York City or anywhere else, There comes certain dynamics with that that I find very funny.
- [04:59]
Sidney
So tell everybody what Mean Moms is about.
- [05:01]
Emma Rosenblum
So Mean Moms is about a group of mothers at a private school downtown in Tribeca. Ish ish. And they are kind of a clique in the school. And at the beginning of the school year, a new mom comes to town, and she's kind of mysterious, she's very beautiful, she's from Miami, she's divorced. They don't really know that much about her. She becomes friends with them, and then all this mysteriously bad stuff starts happening to all of them. So one gets hit by an e scooter, one is opening up a spa, and they get robbed. You know, I don't want to give it all away, but there's these kind of darkly funny things that start to happen to their perfect lives that causes big disruption and drama, and you don't know who's doing it or why. And so by the end, you know who is doing it and why.
- [05:52]
Sidney
Even without a plot. Oh, sorry. Even without a plot, the book would be hilarious because every paragraph has, like 20 different cultural references. And I know you've been in, like, the Zeitgeist your whole career and all of that, but all the brands and all the archetypes of moms and all of the. The mom who only wears the workout stuff and the mom but you don't do it in a flat way. It's just so funny. So talk about how you figured out, like, which of the characters was gonna be which. And were you really just looking in this at drop off and pickup and scouting out your targets?
- [06:31]
Emma Rosenblum
I mean, my whole. As my career as a journalist and as a writer, I'm always observing, quietly observing. I'm part of it. But I also find myself to be somewhat of an outsider looking in in certain situations. Not that you would necessarily know that if you. If you know me. But the. There was something once that struck me at some mom interaction where this mom was so nice. She was so kind, like, dripping with, you know, the. Just. She wanted to help everybody. And so the funny thought in my mind was like, what if she's actually psychotic? That to me, I was like, she might be like a serial killer. She's that nice. And so I sort of ran with that as part of the book. But the mom interactions together can be so genuine and lovely and fun and funny, but also so fake. And so mean. I mean, there's just so much stuff that I was watching and as my kids were getting older and as I was a mom in the community. And again, there are these archetypes of the mom that works so she's never around and that's a thing. Or the mom that's always working out, or the mom that seems to know everything. How do you know everything? How do you know the place to go where your kid is playing soccer? Or the exact field on Central park where they're doing baseball? There is that one mom that's just a fountain of information. So I was just sort of picking up these little things, and then I wanted to bring them to life in characters. But as you said, the challenge is to not make it flat, to make it feel like these are real people. So I hope that throughout that, with those sort of observations, these are still real characters that you're following through and you want to kind of know what's happening with them. And you kind of hate them, but kind of love them, too.
- [08:17]
Sidney
Well, in your book, the mom who knows everything is Morgan. Right. And you mentioned in the book that the moms think she should start an Ask Morgan substack with all of her tips. You have to start that.
- [08:28]
Emma Rosenblum
Well, I don't know anything.
- [08:29]
Sidney
It doesn't matter. It could just be, like, completely false, really funny information.
- [08:33]
Emma Rosenblum
Oh, that's a good idea. Like a parody for, like, promo. Yes, that is good. I mean, now I know stuff because people give me the information. But yes, there is a specific mom. I wonder if she'll read it and be like, I know this is me, but it's not really her. But the idea that everybody on all the chat groups are always like, let's ask.
- [08:51]
Sidney
Well, there's somebody like that in every group, right?
- [08:53]
Emma Rosenblum
Exactly.
- [08:53]
Sidney
I mean, there's always someone. There's always the mom who knows so much more. I know exactly who to ask.
- [08:58]
Emma Rosenblum
Yes, exactly.
- [08:59]
Sidney
Sometimes it's, like, specific, like, this is the mom I ask about anything sports related.
- [09:03]
Emma Rosenblum
Yes. Or like the academic mom that knows all the tutoring stuff. And there's also a mom in there that's kind of the ethereal, cool mom that dresses really interestingly and is just a little bit more beautiful than everybody else, but, like, in an unkempt way. And I feel like there's one of those in every group also. So, you know. But then all of these people have their own secrets, and there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of stuff that's going on below the Surface.
- [09:30]
Sidney
Well, you find out pretty early on that of these three best friends, one of them is actually sleeping with the other one's husband in such a blase way. It's like, not even introduced with much fanfare. It's just like, oh, yeah, I was like, wait, the same people. Did I get that right?
- [09:44]
Zibby Owens
Yeah.
- [09:45]
Emma Rosenblum
You know, I like to have affairs in my books, not in real life. But, like, I find that idea that, again, it's sort of you go into the party or the school function and you think to yourself, I wonder if, like, one of these ladies is having sex with one of the husbands. Like, that would be so amazing. So I always just make it up in fiction.
- [10:06]
Sidney
What are you wondering in this room?
- [10:08]
Emma Rosenblum
Nothing. These are all perfect, lovely people with no secrets. I don't know.
- [10:14]
Sidney
I know. I wonder where your head is going for all of them. So the whole what you see is not what you get sort of underlies all of your writing. And surprises then, of course, have to follow because what does it mean? So tell us a little bit about your past two books for the people who maybe didn't read those and what the sort of common theme is in all of them.
- [10:39]
Emma Rosenblum
So I think you've nailed it a little bit in that I do. I find, like, fakery and sort of like surface level social interactions and dynamics and sort of the whole patent place of it all and the drama very fascinating. I love that. I love that people are fake to each other and then go to the other room and are like, talking shit about each other. That is like my lifeblood in fiction. Not like I don't. I don't necessarily do that all the.
- [11:07]
Sidney
Time, but, like, you obviously do that.
- [11:08]
Emma Rosenblum
I mean, everybody does that. Gossip is a thing. But, like, that idea that people have different levels and that there are different people in different social situations and with different crowds is very interesting to me. And I feel like that infuses a lot of my writing and the characters. It's a lot of kind of funny social satire. And then you go into the character's internal thoughts and it's not at all what they're actually thinking is what they're saying. And I just love that. And I love sort of bringing that out. I find that very funny and fun. And I think also the idea of. I think that the dynamics, the social dynamics amongst wealthy people, people who are motivated by money, people who are motivated by status, is very interesting to me. And that infuses all of my books also. I mean, I live in New York City, I worked in media. I'VE been around people who are very motivated in business, motivated socially. And that kind of drive is also, I think, throughout all three of my books. For Mean Moms, it's more about the social status of these women and kind of what their lives mean to the other women in the school. My other book, Very Bad Company, was a lot more about being motivated purely by money and stature in a company. And then Bad Summer people had a little bit of both, for sure. And so those are all throughout. And I think in Mems also, Me Moms is less specifically focused on money, except for there is a character who needs it, but they're all just very wealthy, so that's not kind of the drive.
- [12:43]
Sidney
But they're still always trying to keep up.
- [12:44]
Emma Rosenblum
Yes.
- [12:45]
Sidney
And they're so competitive, even though they're friends. You have some funny joke about how one person's Architectural Digest was two pages longer than the other friend's profile and how she was still so annoyed about that.
- [12:57]
Emma Rosenblum
She was annoyed. That was unfair.
- [12:59]
Sidney
Totally unfair. Oh, my gosh.
- [13:00]
Emma Rosenblum
But these are valid feelings. Again, I don't like to. I don't. When I write characters, I'm not judging them as good or bad people. They're just people. They are real friends with each other. These women do actually enjoy each other's company and value, you know, the things that the other person brings to their life. And their pain is real. It's not just because they're, you know, wealthy and. Or maybe competitive in certain ways. It doesn't lessen their actual feelings. And so, again, that's why I think I can write these characters without making them caricatures, because I feel that they are real people and that, you know, you can't discount. Just because someone's like something doesn't mean that it's not worthy of being on the page or their motivations should be clear, I think. And so I try to do that.
- [13:50]
Zibby Owens
Today's episode has been sponsored by Quince. As summer winds down, I am all about refreshing my wardrobe with staple pieces for the season ahead. Quince totally nails it with luxe essentials that feel effortless and look polished, perfect for layering and mixing. Their styles are so versatile, I find myself reaching for them again and again. In fact, you'll see me wearing them all over my Instagram feed. Think cashmere and cotton sweaters starting at $40, washable silk tops and classic denim pants. The best part is that everything with Quince is half the cost of similar brands. By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quince gives you luxury without the markup, and Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes you'll see on Instagram. I love my quince skirt. I've been wearing it all summer and it is a fabulous fabric. It's long, the pattern's amazing and it's just amazing.
- [14:49]
Sidney
Plus the price was great so I just absolutely adore it.
- [14:54]
Zibby Owens
Elevate your fall wardrobe essentials with quince Go to quince.com zibby for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's qU-U-I-N-C-E.com zippy to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com zibby.
- [15:15]
Freddy
Hey, this is Freddy from Dungeons and Daddies and if you're like me, buying anything turns into a nightmare research spiral. But listen, you're trying to upgrade your phone. I'm about to save you from yourself. Because right now you can get the new iPhone 16e with Apple Intelligence for when you switch at your nearest Boost mobile store. That's a brand spanking new iPhone 16e for the incredible price of $49.99. Plus you're getting all the latest Apple Intelligence features too, like Cleanup, which removes distractions from photos with just a tap. Visit your nearest Boost mobile store for full offer details. Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later. Restrictions apply.
- [15:51]
Unknown
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- [16:35]
Sidney
Well, in mean moms, you also go into the next generation of snarks, so to speak. And you have twin boys and you have the girl who won't wear the love shack fancy dress that her mom gets her and only wants to wear Champion sweatpants and whatever else, which I totally get. I have childhood. I was just saying this the other day to my husband. Like, what is with this whole sweatpants style? Like, everybody just wears sweatpants. Like my son, we went out to dinner and then he went to meet his friends. He literally like went home, changed and put on sweatpants. It's like, what are you doing? You're going out in this? It's a thing. It's a thing.
- [17:05]
Unknown
I know.
- [17:06]
Emma Rosenblum
For girls too.
- [17:06]
Sidney
Can you change that. Yeah, for girls too.
- [17:08]
Emma Rosenblum
I don't know. It's probably just rebellion against their annoying mothers who are like, why are you wearing that?
- [17:13]
Sidney
I am not an annoying mother.
- [17:15]
Emma Rosenblum
I'm an annoying.
- [17:16]
Sidney
I am like the coolest mom there is.
- [17:19]
Emma Rosenblum
Yeah, no, I. The kids are not huge characters in the book. It's definitely about the dynamics between the moms. But the kids pop up here and there and the kids are all good. I mean it's. But they're. But generally you have. The children, to me in these situations are generally the voice of reason. At least one of the main characters has a daughter, the one who wears sweatpants, who's very much looks at her mom like with that critical eye of why are you. Why do you care about all this stuff that's happening with your friends? And why do you need to be exactly like them and dress exactly like them? And so she's kind of, in my mind, the person who is seeing it the clearest and she's young, but I think that's probably true sometimes of real life. As you, as you get older, you kind of lose that. You know, you can lose that clear eyed adolescent like eye roll in a way. Particularly women when they are aging and trying to fit in. And it's so hard to be a mom. And it is. And I have so much sympathy. And this is not anything mean about moms. This is. I mean I am one and all my friends are mothers. But there's something about the combustible thing that happens when, particularly in a small school environment when everybody just gets a little crazy. And I don't know if it's. And in the joke. This is actually not in the, in the galley, but in the finished copies. I played up a little bit one of the characters experiences with perimenopause. And so that's also a joke within it of like it's all just hormones, you know. But I do think that something happens in women's 40s where they just start to go a little insane, which I enjoy. And I like to write about that.
- [18:59]
Sidney
So this book is so entertaining. This is like a pull out the popcorn. Like, I am just completely entertained. I am laughing. I am taken out of myself because I just am laughing at everybody. Is there a deeper message or like something you're like, is it that we're all in this together and like we just kind of have to laugh it off or what is it you're.
- [19:18]
Emma Rosenblum
What is.
- [19:19]
Sidney
Like if there is.
- [19:19]
Emma Rosenblum
Someone always asks me this about my.
- [19:21]
Sidney
Books, you don't have to have A deeper message. It can just be entertainment, which is great too.
- [19:26]
Emma Rosenblum
It is literally just entertainment. Okay, great. It is using it is my own funny thoughts to entertain people and to get them through a long haul flight or a beach weekend. And to read it and to laugh and to come away either out of a reading slump, because a lot of people have told me that their books help them get out of a reading slump because they're so fast and they're just, as you said, popcorn fun. And just to take the piss a little bit out of a certain type of. That I think takes itself very seriously.
- [20:00]
Sidney
Love that. So can you talk a little bit about your experience with Bustle, with running a massive company, with having your eye on trends and people and writing and working with so many others. Like in this journalistic environment that is rapidly changing and is now all online, how do you stand out? How do you learn how to market based on all of the things that you've learned?
- [20:24]
Emma Rosenblum
Well, that's a good question. I in September stepped back from my full time job at Bustle and in media, which was a big deal for me, having worked full time in Media for 20 years. And now I'm focused mainly on writing, which has been an interesting transition. I think I wasn't necessarily prepared for how solitary writing is and I don't necessarily think I'm that much more productive without a full time job writing my books. I sort of used to just fit in my writing when I could and now sometimes I'll find myself for an hour at the computer and I'm like, where did the time go? I guess it went to the New York Times. I mean, like, I just have. It's like the time stretches in a way that's not necessarily conducive to my own working style. But I still find myself, because I was in media for so long, being very up on everything. It's just a habit. I read everything all the time people say to me, and this was always an annoying thing for people on my staff where they'd say, did you see that? And they'd say one word of the headline. I'd be like, I already read that. Like, it's just something where it's like the news consumption part of my brain is so trained that I can't really turn that off. But I do think that helps with my writing, which is very kind of topical and about what's happening in the world right now. I mean, it's obviously not political, but like just the idea that to be infused in online culture. As someone who's into my 40s now, I think is actually very good. I mean, it is kind of time wasty, obviously, because now I'm not putting it to use by assigning articles and editing cover stories or whatever. But the idea that I kind of know what's up is I think, something that starts to differentiate as you get older and you see people who are, who don't know what's up. And I try to have conversations with them and I'm like, how did you not read all of this? How do you not know what's happening with the 20s? And they're just like, because I'm a mom and I have two kids and you need to calm down. So I can take all that energy that I have and put it into my fiction, I think, and sort of like take it off to the side because it starts to be kind of useless in a way beyond that. And that's been an interesting thing. But yeah, I do kind of miss the hustle of it.
- [22:45]
Sidney
So how do you get your news? This is totally off topic, but I am feeling like this is a really weird time in the world to get news because some I just get through Instagram. Most I get from my husband forwarding me what he finds. I leave my newspapers kind of stacked in the kitchen and often don't even open them anymore. I don't trust those news sources. Then there's Apple News. Just like, what is the best way? I need to be more efficient and I need to get the news and I want to be up on it. And what is the answer?
- [23:12]
Emma Rosenblum
I mean I am, I always, I read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Not cover to cover, but just, I'm going through their app, I'm going through the Today tab on their app. The newspapers now are very good at laying out stories in a way where you're like, okay, I sort of got it right. Like, and I listened to the headline podcasts for all of them. So they're just giving you kind of the 20 minute summary of what's happened that day. And obviously I'm not. I'm more cultural. So I always am going to go straight to culture and lifestyle news rather than the sort of like hard hitting everything. But because I'm reading the sort of top stories, I kind of know what's happening. And then because also I still, even though it's. I hate it so much, am on Twitter, X whatever, I monitor it. I don't actually post on it. I know what's happening. You still do know what's Happening if you're on Twitter and all I follow on Twitter are journalists, because that's I what. That's what my profession was. So if you're following journalists on Twitter and you can scroll through for 20 minutes, you're like, okay, I kind of like understand what's happening. And it's all different news sources. The Atlantic, it's New York Times, it's New York, whatever. But I find that my attention, because of the phone and because of all of our collective attention problems has gone a little bit and I'm finding it harder to get through the long form stuff that I used to easily be able to just breeze through and sit through. And now I'm starting to be like, oh, it's happening to me too. It's like that weird zombie movies where you're like, oh my God, I always have been reading everything about this happening to people and I'm like, it's me now. I'm the zombie. I can't focus.
- [24:53]
Sidney
Gone to the other side. I know. So as a content producer and someone who acknowledges like the rest of us that we don't have the bandwidth to necessarily ingest so much information all the time and, and yet we're both writing books, right? Why stay to this format and why are people still committed? Why do we all believe and why is it true that people still consume books and yet it's harder and harder to consume a movie versus a short video?
- [25:23]
Emma Rosenblum
Well, because my expertise is in media and in digital media and in magazines, I can speak more to that. The. The book form is completely separate from the way people consume other media online. It is, it's. It's an escape for most people particularly. I mean, you see how well Romantasy does. You see how well like it's. It's like this kind of format that doesn't. It like perks up different kind of like pleasure center for people. People do not read articles on the Internet anymore. It's just like not a thing. People maybe a little bit like our age and older are still kind of sometimes reading articles, but younger people do not read. So it's completely true. I mean I've worked at number of digital media companies. We saw our traffic plummet from millions and millions to zero. So you can put an article up on Bustle, which used to, at some point you would put up an article and know that it would get 300,000 clicks. Like it just would. It gets now like 8,8000. Like it doesn't. And it's not because people. It's. It's also because what is getting served to people? It's because Google has changed the algorithm and news and articles like that don't get surfaced anymore. I mean, it's very complicated, but it's true. And it's slightly depressing, but like the art form has moved away from that to short form video, which is what people do consume. And then books, thank God, have been left as this little like jewel. I believe that people do not associate with their daily scrolling habits. So they're not. It's an entirely different mindset that you're going when you're going to sit down and read a book and you're sitting and getting a manicure, you're at the beach or you're in your bed going to sleep than it is any other media. Now granted, I can't speak to tv, I do think, or in movies. I do think people still watch tv. Movies are a different story. But that's not my expertise.
- [27:23]
Sidney
It used to be with my older kids, like watching a movie would be such a treat. In fact, at one point I was like, we're only allowed to watch movies when it's raining out. Which was my random rule because all they want to do is watch movies. And now my younger kids are like, ugh, we have to watch a movie. It's so long. Are you kidding? You're not even that. You're like seven years apart. What is going on? Yeah.
- [27:42]
Emma Rosenblum
Crazy. Anyway, yeah.
- [27:44]
Sidney
Well, thank God we are still here to talk about books.
- [27:46]
Emma Rosenblum
I know. And fiction. Fiction is so different too.
- [27:48]
Sidney
Fiction is so different. When you're writing fiction, how do you get into that mental space? How do you say, I'm putting away the emails. Do you need to block out big chunks of time? I know you have it, but do.
- [28:00]
Emma Rosenblum
You know it's so bad. I toggle back and forth. I'll write 300 words and then I'm like, oh, check Instagram. And then I go back. It's a constant struggle to stay on the page. I should probably have some kind of method where I just like lock away my phone. But as a mother, I'm like, I need my phone. What if someone throws up at school and I need to, you know, I can't. It's hard for me to like completely put it away. Also, again, you know, it's your connection to other people. Particularly now as a person who's not like at an office all the time. It's like, that's the sad truth is that your phone is where you're seeing emails and messages and texts and DMs or whatever, but I can. If I'm in the story, I'm in the story and I'm like. With the characters, it's not that hard for me to sort of go in and out, stand up, get a snack, come back. I try to get through, like, 2,000 words a day, and if I don't, I'm kind of mad at myself.
- [29:02]
Sidney
Are you working on another one now?
- [29:04]
Emma Rosenblum
Oh, my God. I haven't told you it was from an idea from you.
- [29:09]
Sidney
Yes, finally. I throw out ideas all the time and no one ever does anything. I suggest.
- [29:16]
Emma Rosenblum
You told me last summer, so it's. Yes, I have another book that's coming out next summer, and I'm in. You know, I'm almost done with it. And it is about a country club in Greenwich. The one you told me about was in the Hamptons, and someone in the morning dies and the country club gets shut down. Do you remember the story?
- [29:38]
Sidney
I told you this?
- [29:39]
Emma Rosenblum
Yes. The country club gets shut down for the day. The police come because it becomes an active crime scene. And everybody who's at the country club, it's like, high time in the summer. And there's hundreds of people there. There's supposed to be a wedding there that day. So there's all these people that are, like, stuck there from the wedding. They can't leave because the police have to interview everybody about this death that's happened. And again, it's like a darkly funny take. And by the end, you know what happened with the death. And if it was a suicide, it wasn't. If it was, you know, an accidental death, if it was a murder, whatever. And everybody's kind of intersecting. There's different areas where people are kind of huddled. The pickleball courts, the tennis courts, the golf hut, the, like, pool area. And you sort of go between all of those places throughout the day.
- [30:29]
Sidney
Oh, I'm so excited. I mean, this is a terrible story, but it's a terrible. At this golf club that we used to belong to, for a short while it was closed. As I tried to go there for lunch one day, and it turned out that someone had hung themselves on this overpass in the country club.
- [30:48]
Emma Rosenblum
That's not what happens in my Buffalo.
- [30:49]
Sidney
And that this person was actually a guest. And I was like, why would you, on a golf round, as a guest at someone else's country club, decide that is the moment to. To kill yourself? It just seemed, like, so random. And I was like, what a crazy story this is. Like, what?
- [31:05]
Emma Rosenblum
Anyway, but it was a detail A specific detail that you told me where you said, and all the moms were so annoyed because they had to go pick up their kids from camp or what? And just, like, everybody rearranged their day because this annoying guy killed himself. You know? So, like that. I was like, that's my book. I'm gonna do that. Where people are super annoyed even though someone has fallen to their death from the top of a clubhouse. So it's. This is like a Greenwich thing.
- [31:33]
Zibby Owens
That's amazing.
- [31:34]
Emma Rosenblum
I know. I have some friends in Greenwich. I'm trying to do more research about them because that is not my natural.
- [31:40]
Sidney
Well, set it in the Hamptons habitat.
- [31:43]
Emma Rosenblum
Sorry?
- [31:43]
Sidney
I said, set it in the Hamptons. Well, okay, then people would know. I better end up in the acknowledgments is all I'm saying.
- [31:48]
Emma Rosenblum
You will. Cause you said to me this would be a good book for you, and I took it and ran.
- [31:53]
Sidney
Thank goodness. That just made my whole day.
- [31:56]
Emma Rosenblum
Yeah.
- [31:56]
Sidney
Well, Emma, congratulations on Mean Moms. Can't wait to read whatever that ends up being called.
- [32:01]
Emma Rosenblum
I think for now. It's titled I think Members Only. Oh, Love it. Yeah.
- [32:06]
Sidney
Amazing. Thank you. Thanks so much for coming. Congratulations, Mean Moms.
- [32:11]
Zibby Owens
Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly Moms. Don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review. Follow me on Instagram izibbyowens and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.
- [32:36]
Unknown
Surprise.
- [32:36]
Emma Rosenblum
Beach day.
- [32:37]
Sidney
No excuses. I'm in.
- [32:39]
Emma Rosenblum
Gimme five.
- [32:40]
Unknown
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- [33:03]
Sidney
Let's go.
- [33:07]
Emma Rosenblum
Acast powers the world's best podcasts.
- [33:11]
Freddy
Here's a show that we recommend. Hey, folks. Looking for a whole new thing to be into?
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H
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Freddy
Like, pretty much the new classic guys.
- [33:27]
H
We were in a comedy group called the Birthday Boys with Bob Odenkirk, and now we're an indie band. And we have a podcast about the drinks of the summer, like the gator bite or the grape gorilla.
- [33:37]
Freddy
And we have guests that are music people like Jeff Rosenstock or Stefan from the Band Pup or comedy people like Tom Sharpling or Mitch from Doughboys.
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Emma Rosenblum
Yeah, dude, we talk about TV and.
- [33:46]
Freddy
Movies and music like Turnstile or King Giz, and it's completely kind of cool.
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Emma Rosenblum
Ooh.
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H
Give it a listen and check it out to see what you think. But don't forget that we're the new classic guys.
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Freddy
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Emma Rosenblum
Acast.
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Sidney
Com.