335. Sweet Valley Nostalgia: An Interview with Karyn Moynihan and Anna Carey from the Double Love Podcast

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there! I have two cats on my desk and a microphone, so it must be time for me to record the intro to Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. Hi, I’m Sarah! This is episode number 335, holy cow, and I am very excited that you are here today. [Thunk] I – thank you, Orville. Orville is also excited enough to kick my sound box. Two cats on the desk; this is going to be a great intro.

Today I am talking with Karyn and Anna from the Double Love podcast. If you are familiar with the Dairi Burger, the chocolate bar, Nicholas Morrow, Winter Carnival, and 1BRUCE1, this episode is entirely going to make you very happy. Sometimes I get to interview people whose work I really admire, and when I get to it is a delight. Today I am chatting with Karyn Moynihan and Anna Carey from Sweet Valley High – actually, no, they are not from Sweet Valley High; how amazing would it be if they were from Sweet Valley High? – they are from the Sweet Valley High podcast Double Love, which I’ve mentioned on the site, and I think I’ve mentioned here too.

We start by talking about Irish slang, and then we move into a discussion of many, many things. We talk about what it is about Sweet Valley High that creates so much opportunity for examination, even decades after they were first published. They have this strange mix of nostalgia and camp, and there is no limit, as Karyn and Anna say in their intro, of strange and terrifying things to talk about in the world of Sweet Valley. We begin with how they found Sweet Valley books, what led them to start a podcast about them, and we also talk about how many people have some familiarity, if not full fluency, in the world of Sweet Valley and Sweet Valley lore. We also learn what an Irish book token is and how badly I want one, and we discuss the terrible messages contained in the series world regarding dating, sexuality, masculinity, healthy body weight, class, consent, and generally existing in the world, to say nothing of the kissing booths – ugh! They’re compelling and ridiculous and campy and addictive, so of course we talk about them and about what they say and how much some of the more horrific parts shock us when we reread them today. You also get a little bit of nostalgia from me about my own college’s beauty pageant, which was indeed a real thing, and we talk about, of course, what they’re reading.

Now, I have two major notes, so this part is important:

At about forty-one minutes in, we talk about and criticize the fat-shaming of Sweet Valley High, but if that is something that would be upsetting to you, you’ll want to skip ahead about two to three minutes.

Second, I’m doing something a little different for this episode, and this is the really important part I want to make sure that you listen. During the recording, we talked a little bit about the Irish referendum to repeal the eighth amendment, which banned abortion in Ireland. Both Anna and Karyn campaigned actively, and after the amendment was overturned by a very wide margin, they talked about it in one of the episodes of Double Love and their exhausted joy and relief was really reassuring to me as a listener, so I asked them about it, about the eighth amendment, and what for them has been a lifetime of activism on behalf of women. However, because they discuss the details of some of the horrible events that were caused by the eighth amendment, I’ve relocated this part of the conversation so that it is after the outro and after the music. That way, if you’d like to hear our conversation about the referendum, their activism to overturn the amendment, and the inspiration of actually winning a thing that you worked for, you can do so, but if details of assault and abortion activism are not for you, you won’t miss any other part of the interview. So if you wait until after the music, there’s an additional section, but if it would be extremely triggering or upsetting for you to hear stories of assault or rape or to hear discussion about the amendment and its effects, then you can just listen to the music and then stop. I hope this solution works for you, and if it doesn’t, I hope you’ll please let me know a better way to handle this sort of situation.

And if you love Sweet Valley High, or you have feedback, or you want to ask me questions, please do get in touch. You can email me at [email protected], or you can call me at 1-201-371-3272 and leave a message or tell me a joke – I love those too; those are always great.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by Suddenly Mine by Samantha Chase, the newest book in her fan-favorite Montgomery Brothers series. If you like Susan Mallery and Bella Andre, you will love this contemporary romance set on the California Coast. Christian Montgomery is burnt out – the family business might be his entire world, but his father’s judgment means Christian never stops working. His only respite is gazing at the beach and the carefree surfers riding the waves…especially the curvy redhead who caught his attention. Sophia Bennington has just fled from her small Kansas town to California, where she’s trying her best to embrace her new beginning. Soon Christian and Sophia find one another, and it feels like sanctuary. But when their difficult pasts catch up to them, will they run away from each other or toward a new future? Samantha Chase has been called classic, thoughtful, and as lyrical as the stars, and Booklist says, “Chase just gets better and better.” Sweeter than hot and hotter than sweet, Suddenly Mine by Samantha Chase is coming January 29th wherever books are sold. You can find out more at chasing-romance.com.

This week’s transcript is, as always, hand-compiled by garlicknitter – thank you, garlicknitter – and it is brought to you by our Patreon community. If you have supported the show with a monthly pledge of any amount, thank you. You are helping me ensure every episode has a transcript, and you’re making each episode accessible to everyone. If you would like to join the Patreon community, it would be awesome. You can have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges start at one dollar a month, and we are starting a podcast book club! The Patreon community is going to be telling us what to read, so if you’d like to give us all your opinions, have a look, and you can join us at patreon.com/SmartBitches.

Also, a special hello to Jennifer G., who sent in last week’s K9P joke. She listens while she’s baking, and she sent me pictures of her baking in progress. It’s like pastry porn, and she said I could share the picture, so have a peak if you want to look at carbo inspiration.

And to Cheri C., I have a compliment. Ready, Cheri C.? Thank you so much for being part of the Patreon.

While I always advocate taking the vacation time that you have earned, I also know that for your friends and family, being around you is so relaxing it’s like taking a mini-vacation.

If you would like your own compliment, totally have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches, and thank you to everyone who’s part of our Patreon community.

I will have information at the end of the podcast about the music, about what’s coming up on Smart Bitches, and I will have a truly terrible joke, but it is time for this interview, and it’s a bit of a long one. I hope you enjoy it. On with the podcast.

[music]

Sarah: I found your podcast earlier this year, and I would listen to one episode after another after another while I was cross-stitching, and there’s a couple of things that I had to change: one, I usually listen to podcasts at about 1.4 speed, and I had to slow yours down because I was terrified I would miss some awesome Irish slang.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Like, every time you call somebody a wagon, it gives me life! ‘Cause I had no idea what that meant, and I had to look it up. Like, they’re a wagon? Like they’re a drag? Is that what that means? They drag behind you?

Anna: We don’t know what the origins are!

Karyn: Yeah, we’re not sure. It’s pretty must just like a woman who makes life difficult for people. [Laughs]

Anna: Yeah! It’s a, it’s a –

Sarah: It’s a pain in the ass!

Anna: – it’s a better, I think it’s an even better version of, of bitch.

Karyn: Yeah. Just like –

Sarah: Yeah, ‘cause bitch has sort of an element of anger and aggression, and wagon, it sounds like, is someone who’s just really a drag.

Anna: Yeah, somebody’s a –

Karyn: Yeah! [Laughs]

Anna: – pain in the hoop. I’ve used another, another bit of Irish slang.

Karyn: Okay, I think we’ve –

Sarah: Hoop? A pain in the hoop?

Anna: It basically means a pain in the arse, so.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Karyn: I think we need to put a glossary in her show notes or something. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah!

Anna: Yeah! If you have any other questions for, you know, puzzling Irish slang –

Karyn: Yeah. [Laughs]

Anna: – that, that has come up, then feel free to ask.

Sarah: Okay.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So I had so much, so many hours of utter enjoyment listening to your podcast, so I have to start, before I even ask you to introduce yourselves – whoever’s listening to this is going to be like, who are these people? – thank you so much for your podcast. Oh my God!

Anna: Oh, well, I’m so thrilled to hear that you like it, because I’ve been a big fan of your site for a very long time! I remember ages ago going on a massive Julia Quinn binge, purely thanks to discovering her on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books!

Sarah: Eee!

Anna: So, and there’s plenty of other writers I’ve discovered over the years thanks to you, so it’s, it’s mutual appreciation!

Sarah: This is brilliant; I love this.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Okay, so this is the awkward part: would you please introduce yourselves, now that I have squeed embarrassingly and let my inner thirteen-year-old just out of her cage. Could you introduce yourselves to the people who will be listening?

Karyn: Sure! I’m Karyn Moynihan. I’m a graphic designer and big-time Sweet Valley fan.

[Laughter]

Anna: And I am Anna Carey. I am a journalist and author and also a massive Sweet Valley fan. Or is, is fan the right word, Karyn? I don’t know.

Karyn: A critical fan. Yes. Yes.

Anna: [Laughs] Sweet Valley obsessive?

Karyn: Well, that’s true, yeah.

Anna: Perhaps?

Karyn: Yeah. [Laughs]

Anna: Basic- –

Sarah: I don’t know; I think critical fan is, is a perfectly appropriate term. That’s kind of the territory I squarely occupy for romance novels.

Anna and Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: I suppose it’s like we get massive – I suppose the difference is, between, obviously, with, with Sweet Valley and romance novels, is that obviously there are loads of romance novels that are genuinely really smart and, you know, fun and, and, and emotionally satisfying, which you cannot say about Sweet Valley books, but –

Karyn: [Laughs]

Sarah: No. [Laughs]

Anna: – but we do get masses of genuine entertainment out of –

Karyn: Oh, absolutely, yes.

Anna: You know, there aren’t that many of those ‘80s teen books, ‘cause, like, I was, you know, ten or eleven when the first Sweet Valley book came out, and so I remember the other books of that ilk that were out at the time in the sort of late ‘80s, mid ‘80s, and not, there aren’t that many others that are fun, are entertaining to mock.

Karyn: Mm.

Sarah: No!

Anna: So, I, I think people underestimate how much skill goes into making a series that, however ridiculous and stupid it is, it’s still very entertaining to read. Like, reading them –

Sarah: Yes!

Anna: – is fun.

Karyn: It is so much fun, yeah. That’s true –

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: – yeah.

Sarah: And they have this longevity! Like, they’re, you can be very fluent in Sweet Valley High and meet another person who’s fluent in Sweet Valley High, and not only do you have about nine hours of conversation –

[Laughter]

Sarah: – but there is a fluency in this world that is, is completely not of this world. It’s, it’s like utter fantasy land, and yet it’s really campy and fun to talk about!

Anna: Yeah, well, I mean, Karyn, you started doing your, your Sweet Valley recaps. How long ago was that?

Karyn: God, yeah, a couple years ago I started – yeah, I had found – that was it, ‘cause I was such a big reader of Sweet Valley High back when I was maybe ten or eleven, and it was just one of those things that when  I outgrew them, kind of forgot about them for ages, and then found one in a charity shop a few years ago and just, when I read it, it all just kind of came flooding back, and I was like, oh my God! Oh my God, all of this!

[Laughter]

Karyn: So I started writing recaps of the books on my blog, and it was just such a fun nostalgia buzz, like. It was just sort of so much fun to do and so much to talk about with people then who also just loved it too.

Anna: And I think they are burnt into everyone’s brain.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: Like, if you –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Anna: – if you had them at the time, because they, they are so, you know, there’s so many iconic things in them –

Karyn: Oh my God! [Laughs]

Anna: – like the Hershey bars, the Fiat Spider, this, the clever shop names- .

Karyn: The lime green Triumph!

Anna: Oh my gosh!

Karyn: I mean – [laughs]

Anna: 1BRUCE1!

Sarah: Dairi Burger.

Anna: Oh, yeah, the Dairi – well, we, we had, we got very annoyed when we were, on our podcast, when we were reading the book in which the Dairi Burger gets a makeover –

Karyn: Yeah!

Anna: – and it’s with tasteful, you know, wooden booths.

Karyn: Oh, it sounded awful, yeah.

Anna: Terrible.

Karyn: We just decided that that didn’t happen.

[Laughter]

Anna: It’s just like, it’s a ‘50s-style diner –

Karyn: All designer, yeah.

Anna: – in our brains.

Sarah: So you retconned the Dairi Burger? [Laughs]

Anna: Yes, we had to.

Karyn: It was for the best! [Laughs]

Anna: That’s one of those books that we’re not sure is, like, there’s a lot of stuff that the ghostwriter – I think it was Dear Sister –

Karyn: Oh, maybe.

Anna: – or was it – no, it was the one where Todd got the motorbike. It’s one before Dear Sister –

Anna: [Laughs] Dangerous Love.

Sarah: Dangerous Looove!

Karyn: Yes! I think a ghostwriter went rogue or something. [Laughs]

Anna: Oh my gosh, they kept putting stuff in –

Karyn: Yeah!

Anna: – and, like, giving people names that didn’t have names before, like the owner of this, of the Dairi Burger, and you just thought, this person’s going, this is my one chance!

Karyn: I’m putting my mark on it! Yeah!

Anna: [Laughs] Yeah! And I bet Francine was just like, never employ that woman again! So, yeah, we, we, we don’t really accept the Dairi Burger renovation –

Karyn: No

Anna: – that was in that book. There, there were out of, out of, out of the canon.

Karyn: [Laughs]

Sarah: So how did you end up starting the Double Love podcast?

Anna: Well, I had, I think I, I, there was an, a pod, I’d listened to an episode, I think it was of the Teen Creeps podcast –

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: – where they talked about The Evil Twin, one of the most amazing Sweet Valley books, the, where, I mean, it’s the point of no return is The Evil Twin, when, it’s the climax of the, of the se-, this miniseries in which there is a lookalike of the Wakefield twins called Margo –

Karyn: Oh God, I’m so excited!

Anna: – who goes, who goes on a killing spree across America before arriving in Sweet Valley and attempting to kill one of the twins and take her place, and when I was – like, this was a, a podcast that did all sorts of, you know, ridiculous teen stuff, and I thought, oh my God – and it was more a general discussion of the, of the book –

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: – rather than a straightforward, you know –

Karyn: – in depth kind of –

Anna: Re-, recap –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – explaining where everybody was, where everything – and so I thought, God, it would be, you know, it’d be really fun to do a podcast in which you actually traced the whole series, and ‘cause, obviously I know Karyn, and I knew that she had done, I loved her website, and I loved her recaps – they were really, really funny – so I got in touch and said, would you be up for this?

Karyn: [Laughs]

Anna: And then we contacted HeadStuff, who are the podcast producers who, who produce and release the show and gave them a pitch, and fair play to them, ‘cause they’re, like –

Karyn: Oh, that’s right.

Anna: – two blokes and their attorneys, like –

[Laughter]

Anna: – they are the –

Karyn: We came in with these armfuls of Sweet Valley High books, and he was just like, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, but you seem really excited, so –

Anna: Yeah!

Karyn: – let’s just give it a go and see what happens! [Laughs]

Anna: So thank God they did, they, they, they took a chance on us –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – and, and it’s been great working with them, so yeah. And, and from that, it took ages for the first episode to, to come out, and, and so there was a bit of a gap. I think we, we recorded it like in –

Karyn: It was during the summer, yeah.

Anna: – really early summer, and then we ended up going, like, it wasn’t released till the end of August, and in the meantime another Sweet Valley podcast was launched and started, yeah.

[Laughter]

Anna: And like, oh no, people’ll think we’re copying! We aren’t!

Karyn: [Laughs] That was it, ‘cause I remember us doing a search at the time when we were kind of pitching, and –

Anna: There was nothing.

Karyn: – there was nothing! There was no other Sweet Valley podcast. We were like, all right, this is great! We’re going to be the first one!

Anna: Yeah, then, like, five months later –

Karyn: [Laughs] Yeah!

Anna: – we actually get round to releasing it. But yes, we’ve done it more or less, released an episode, with a couple of little breaks –

Karyn: Mm, yeah, every two weeks –

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: – for about a, a year and a half?

Anna: Year and a half, yeah. It was, it was August last year –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – I think we, we started.

Sarah: Yeah.

Anna: So we’re thirty – and we get very confused with this now –

[Laughter]

Anna: – and we’re thirty-, we’re thirty-one books, plus two specials.

Karyn: Yes, and, at this time.

Sarah: Oh, the specials.

Karyn: [Laughs]

Anna: Well, we’ve got some more amusement –

Sarah: Have you ever figured out how it is they have two Christmases, two spring breaks, and two summers, but they’re still juniors?

Anna: I know!

Karyn: Oh, like, yeah, the school year lasts about five years, I think?

Anna: Yeah!

Karyn: [Laughs] It doesn’t make any sense.

Anna: And also, I mean, ‘cause they never go to class.

Karyn: True.

Sarah: Right?!

Anna: Everyone’s being taken out of class to, like, have a beach barbecue or something.

Karyn: [Laughs] Yes! Like, let’s not have maths class. We’ll go and play softball. Okay!

Sarah: Yay!

[Laughter]

Anna: Mr. Collins will chaperone.

Karyn: ‘Cause of course he is.

[Laughter]

Anna: When is he not there?

Karyn: He’s always there. Always.

Anna: Oh God. So, so yeah, the time is, time is a – what did you say in the last episode?

Karyn: Time is a flat circle –

Anna: Flat circle.

Karyn: – in Sweet Valley.

[Laughter]

Anna: So we’ve done – well, our next episode, which is airing tomorrow as we record this –

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: – is going to be on Special Christmas, which –

Sarah: [Gasps]

Anna: – our Christmas special.

Karyn: I think so, yeah.

Anna: Yeah. And we’ve got another special episode coming out in two weeks. I don’t know, can we give an exclusive?

Karyn: I, yeah, I think we can.

Anna: On the podcast. Okay, we will be discussing, in another two weeks, the Fowler saga! This is –

Sarah: [Gasps]

Anna: – of Lila Fowler’s ancestors.

Sarah: That one is bonkers.

[Laughter]

Anna: I know!

Karyn: It’s completely insane and amazing.

Anna: We, we recorded the episode, and it is, it’s just, it’s unhinged!

Karyn: It’s incredible –

Anna and Karyn: – yeah.

Anna: It’s, it’s actually, the book is genuinely amazing.

Karyn: It is, it is.

Anna: Like, it’s so incredibly entertaining, we loved it. So, you know, that’s, there’s, there’s a lot. It makes the Wakefield saga look like, oh, gritty realism. It’s –

[Laughter]

Sarah’s dogs: Woof! Woof, woof, woof!

Sarah: My dogs do not like the Wakefield saga. They are not fans.

Karyn: They’re unhappy. [Laughs]

Anna: Well, I –

Sarah: Alas.

Anna: – know there’s a lot of, of nonsense in it.

Karyn: Oh, man, so much.

Anna: They don’t –

Sarah: There’s a lot to bark at.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: Yes, absolutely! [Laughs]

Sarah: Do you remember when you read your first Sweet Valley?

Anna: Do you, Karyn? Was it a library purchase?

Karyn: I was trying to think of this, yeah, and I, and I can’t remember the first one I read, ‘cause it was like, I was so into it when I did get into it that suddenly it was just like, I’m surrounded by Sweet Valley, and it’s always been here, and –

[Laughter]

Karyn: – and I’m never leaving! [Laughs]

Anna: I live in Sweet Valley.

Karyn: But I did use to get them from the library in my hometown. There was just this one big shelf full of Sweet Valley High books that I just worked my way through, and then when I’d get, like, book tokens or something for my birthday, I’d go and buy Sweet Valley Twins books, ‘cause they were the new ones that were out in the bookshop at the time.

Anna: Ohhh!

Karyn: So I would read Twins, High; whatever was going, I was into.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Just everything.

Anna: And I used to, when they launched first, I think it was in 1985, -86, -87, so I was sort of between sort of ten and eleven, and I didn’t have any copies of them of my own. They didn’t have them in our local library, but what I would do was, when we went to the supermarket, me and my sister would go to, there was a little newsagents-cum-bookstore in the shopping center, and we would go and read the blurbs on the back of the book, and we knew where everybody was, and then by the time I was, you know, about twelve, I think I was getting a couple in, like, secondhand shops and charity shops, but my, I think it was almost even getting on too old to take them seriously –

Karyn: Right.

Anna: – and by the time I was thirteen or so –

Karyn: Okay, yeah.

Sarah: Yeah.

Anna: – when, my big Sweet Valley thing was, when I was in my mid-teens, maybe, or maybe about seventeen, my sister somehow came home with a copy of Crash Landing! and Alone in the Crowd –

Karyn: [Laughs]

Anna: – and –

Sarah: Oh!

Karyn: Two classics. Classics! [Laughs]

Anna: Absolutely.

Sarah: Absolute classics.

Anna: Yes, exactly. And because at that stage, you know, they were just, as far as we were concerned, these were just camp, insane masterpieces.

[Laughter]

Anna: Like, we were just reading for the nonsense. I was really into John Waters films, and as far as I was concerned, this was an extension of them, so we just read all of them! Like, my sister’s just two years younger than me, and between us we’d got every, more or less every one that had been published at that stage, and it was just like a massive joke, to the extent that, like, my, my other two sisters got in on it, and I have a copy of a comic that my sister made, my youngest sister made when we were teenagers that is like a horrible nightmare of me being transported to Sweet Valley –

[Laughter]

Anna: – and there’s Todd being like a –

Karyn: Rage monster.

Anna: – Yeah. So for me it was always a joke, but like I said, you know, there’s a reason we joked about them and didn’t become obsessed with The Baby-Sitters Club or something, or the much tackier teen books that were out at the time, ‘cause I think there –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Anna: – is something iconic about Sweet Valley that is both hilarious, but really entertaining.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: So, like, you’re taking the piss, but you’re, you’re reading them! You know, no –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Anna: – you read them –

Karyn: Yeah, you’re, you’re still reading every one of them in the series, like –

Anna: Yeah!

Karyn: – and it’s, it’s a commitment, ‘cause there’s, like, over a hundred books in that series!

Anna: And by the time, like, the, The Evil Twin stuff came out, we were buying those ones new.

Karyn: Okay.

Anna: I think when one of us had seen it in a, in a shop, that there was, like, some miniseries with a serial killer –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Anna: – and Elizabeth had killed somebody, you know, arrested for drink-driving, except she was drugged!

Karyn: Oh man.

Anna: Then it was just, oh my God, this is amazing. We were literally, like, waiting for the next one to come out, and I think I was, I was in college at that stage, and I was living at home, so we could always share them. And so yeah, like, it may be a joke, but it’s a joke that’s lasted –

Karyn: It’s enduring.

Anna: – five, six years, at least!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Now I really want a Waters-directed Sweet Valley movie.

Karyn: Oh my God, can you imagine?

Anna: I –

Sarah: Oh my God, like, the pastel wonderland –

Anna: Oh, I –

Sarah: – would be exquisite!

Anna: That would be, that would make me so happy.

Karyn: That’d literally be my dream film.

Anna: So –

Sarah: So, Anna I think it was, you said – and I apologize if I’m not remembering correctly – you said something about getting a book token for your birthday. What’s a book token?

Karyn: Oh, that was me, sorry. Yeah, no, it’s just a –

Sarah: I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Karyn.

Karyn: No, you’re fine! Yeah, book tokens – do they still do them?

Anna: Oh yeah, they do! Yeah!

Karyn: Yeah, it’s just like –

Anna: I got one as a –

Karyn: – a voucher that you can use in any bookshop, pretty much.

Anna: Yeah, anywhere.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: So it’s like a big thing in, in Britain and Ireland. It’s like a confederation of booksellers –

Karyn: Yes!

Anna: It’s like a book –

Sarah: I can’t close my mouth right now. I’m like, this is amazing; are you serious?

Anna: Yes! Yes, and because I do, you know, because I write about old books myself with, with no, you know, evil blonde twins in them, they –

Karyn: Yes.

Anna: – and sometimes –

Sarah: Yeah.

Anna: And sometimes when you do book events, you know, you get, like, you know, you get a fee, and, but you sometimes also get a book token –

Karyn: Oh, nice!

Anna: – and some events like for, you know, for charities and stuff of, they won’t, you know, you’re doing this from your own, from the goodness of your heart, but they’ll give you, like, a fifty-quid book token, which is amazing, ‘cause you can just buy books guilt-free, ‘cause you can’t spend it on anything else!

Karyn: It has to go on books!

Sarah: [Gasps]

Anna: Yeah. And it could do it at any shop anywhere, so yeah, they’re amazing!

Karyn: Mm!

Sarah: So it’s like a book-specific currency.

Anna and Karyn: Yes!

Karyn: – actually.

Sarah: [Gasps] Oh my God!

Anna: And it’s like a, it’s like a card with, you know, sort of credit card, but it’s like a card with credit on it, so, these days, so you’ll get, you know, say you get a fifty-euro book token: when you pay for one book with it, they’ll just take that off the top of it; you know, they’ll take that off the token, but next time you go you’ll have, you know, forty or whatever left.

Sarah: Thirty or whatever.

Anna and Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: It can last you a while!

Karyn: Mm. It’s amazing.

Sarah: Oh my gosh.

[Laughter]

Anna: I thought they were sort of universal –

Karyn: I thought they were sort of a universal thing, yeah.

Sarah: Oh no! I mean, we have gift cards for bookstores, but I don’t think there’s, like, a universal networked currency of just book money, and, like, now I want one.

[Laughter]

Sarah: I’d have to go to Ireland to spend it, which is fine, but oh my gosh! That’s so cool!

Anna: The campaign for American book tokens start here.

Karyn: [Laughs]

Anna: We’re here at the beginning.

Sarah: Yeah, somewhere Jeff Bezos is really pissed off, and he doesn’t know why.

[Laughter]

Anna: It’s like the anti-Amazon thing, because you can use it in –

Karyn: Yeah!

Anna: – just any –

Sarah: Any bookshop.

Anna: Yeah.

Sarah: Oh my God. Oh my God! Okay. I remember very, very clearly the first Sweet Valley High I read. I have a habit of discovering books that are being read by other people and then wanting to take them away from them, which I realize is a terrible habit.

[Laughter]

Sarah: But I was at church youth group, and a friend of mine was reading Winter Carnival, which –

Anna and Karyn: Ooh!

Sarah: – I don’t remember if you’ve remembered that one, but it ends with this wackadoodle dream sequence?

Karyn: Oh my God, yes, it does!

Sarah: And, like, somebody dies, and then it’s all a dream, ‘cause somebody was clearly watching Dallas, and –

[Laughter]

Sarah: – that’s what happened.

Anna: The ‘80s –

Sarah: And I was like, I couldn’t put it down! I couldn’t stop reading it! It was so compellingly ridiculous.

Karyn: [Laughs]

Anna: That is literally the perfect summary of all Sweet Valley books: compellingly ridiculous.

Karyn: True, that’s a good description, yeah. [Laughs]

Sarah: You can’t stop reading them! It’s incredible! They’re like potato chips, or crisps or however you call them. Oh my gosh!

[Laughter]

Anna: It’s true! Yeah, they are just, I mean, they’re, even though you know what’s hap-, what’s going to happen –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – you can always predict it, somehow –

Karyn: There’d be something that would just –

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: – catch you off guard or by surprise. [Laughs] Like, why are you doing this?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Anna: You know, all those post grads, I mean, they were mostly, you know, young, like, twenty-five-year-old –

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: – Ph.D. students –

Karyn: Yeah!

Anna: – like, you know, getting these con-, this contract work from the publishers. They, yeah, they knew what they were doing.

Sarah: Yeah!

Anna: [Laughs]

Sarah: And I know you’ve talked about how, for the podcast, you’ve had to borrow them from your college library. Do you still have to do that, like, request them from, is it Trinity College?

Anna: It is Trinity in Dublin, yeah, because it’s got a copyright library, which means it gets copy automatically of every book sent, published in Britain and Ireland, so it’s got everything. Actually, when, when I was in college, my younger sister was two years behind me in Trinity, and once she came up to me in the library, ‘cause she had called up, and the book, and it was, I think it was the, Outcast. It’s the one after Regina dies –

Karyn: Ohhh!

Anna: – and one of the characters is blamed for it?

Karyn: That’s right, yeah!

Anna: Somehow we’d never read it, and she’d called it up from stacks, and I was like, look! Look what I’ve got!

Karyn: [Laughs] Oh, the most incredible use of Trinity’s resources.

Anna: I know. We should be proud. That’s what, we had to pay fees; there were still college fees in those days, so that was –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna:  – you know, that was what our fees were going to: buy Sweet Valley books –

Karyn: Well worth it. [Laughs]

Anna: – to get Sweet Valley books, but yeah, I, I don’t anymore, but only because Kindle recently published the, I don’t, at least the first hundred Sweet Valley books on Kindle Unlimited, so I can borrow them, or if I have to borrow more than one, I can buy one for, like, two euro or something –

Sarah: Right.

Anna: – which is cheaper than my bus fare going into, going into town –

[Laughter]

Anna: – to go to the library. But yeah, I would have to call them up and spend, like, three hours in the library just reading –

Karyn: Taking notes!

Anna: – and taking really intensive notes!

[Laughter]

Anna: So much hassle! But honestly, when I was, I went to America on a student visa when I was, just after I graduated college, so I was, like, about to turn twenty-two, and I was in, in Boston, and I joined the Boston Public Library, and they had a massive set, shelf of Sweet Valley books, and I had never read the book in which – I’d read the Jeffrey books; I’d read the Todd books, obviously; but I’d never read the crossover when Todd comes back, and I got, they had it, and I got it at the library, and I was so embarrassed that I told the librarian at the big central Boston Public Library that I was writing a thesis on young adult literature, and I needed to get all these books –

Sarah: No!

Anna: Yes, it was a lie!

Karyn: Oh. Cover story!

Sarah: Amazing.

Anna: Yeah! I was quite proud of myself!

Karyn: [Laughs]

Sarah: Amazing! So one of the things that I know from my own history of reading Sweet Valley is that the Sweet Valley High books, for a lot of romance readers our age, were sort of the gateway book, which I find completely bananas, considering the politics and the portrayals of dating and the number of toxic men that are running around.

Anna or Karyn: So many.

Sarah: I don’t, I don’t understand exactly why, but I know that it is true that so many people read Sweet Valley and then discovered romance and were like, oh, this is great! And so much of each Sweet Valley High book is some kind of terrible, dysfunctional courtship –

[Laughter]

Sarah: – of one type or another. As you reread them and you take, like, a really deep dive, what are some of the things you notice about messages that they have about dating and sexuality and masculinity?

Anna: Oh God.

Sarah: Nothing good, right?

Anna: No!

Karyn: No!

Anna: Completely.

[Laughter]

Anna: I think one of the things that’s really struck us is that they need a date to go to everything.

Karyn: To go anywhere! To their friends’ parties.

Anna: Yeah!

Karyn: It’s like, you don’t need a date to go –

Sarah: Yeah!

Karyn: – a friends house! [Laughs]

Anna: Yes! It’s like, you’re just going to your friend’s house on a Saturday night –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – but, but who’s your date going to be? It’s like, this is absolutely fricking insane!

Karyn: Yeah. Even their parents are asking them, who’s your date for the party? And it’s like, why do you need one?

Anna: They, yeah. I think that’s one of the striking things.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: And you know, they have the odd bit of lip service to Elizabeth’s fine on her own! But it’s like, yeah, you’re fine on your own for five books, and most of them you’re interfering in other people’s –

Karyn: True. [Laughs]

Anna: – relationships, and then, now she’s, well, as of the last book that we, we recapped, she’s, she’s got Jeffrey!

Karyn: Oh, she’s got Jeffrey, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anna: Yeah. So that’s one of them.

Sarah: God, he’s boring!

Anna: Oh –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: Well, he turned out to be a bit more unpleasantly boring than we remembered, ‘cause he’s, at the end of the, the last one he was, he was like, you fool! Why are you trying to fix –

Sarah: Yeah, then he puts his hands on her!

Anna: Yeah!

Karyn: He did, he put his hands on her. He kind of shakes her, and it’s like, take your hands off her this instant!

Anna: Oh!

Karyn: Oh my God, seriously!

[Laughter]

Anna: ‘Cause we just remembered him as being super boring –

Karyn: Yeah!

Anna: – and then he was both boring and violent!

Karyn: Yeah, kind of, yeah, borderline! It’s weird! It’s like they suddenly fly, fly into these rages, and it’s like –

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: – what is going on with these men?!

Sarah: That’s not healthy!

Anna: Yeah, so that’s what I’m – I mean, I think one of the really unhealthy things is – and genuinely kind of dangerous – is the stuff about consent or the lack thereof –

Karyn: Oh yeah.

Anna: – ‘cause it’s, you know, even though they, famously, in one of the series, there was a book about an attempted sexual assault –

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: – and, but – and Bruce, you know, that said, basically tries to rape Elizabeth –

Karyn: He does, yeah!

Anna: – in one of them, but it’s still very much seen as being, you know, in other cases, boys sort of pushing it is seen as being acceptable –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – and even romantic.

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: Take Nicholas Morrow –

Karyn: Nicholas Morrow, oh God!

Sarah: What is with him?!

Karyn: [Laughs]

Anna: Oh. He’s, he’s Dennis Reynolds from –

Karyn: He is.

Anna: – It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – Yes.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Karyn: It was decided.

Anna: He is a monster, except the difference between him and Dennis is that in Always Sunny Dennis is presented by the show as being a monster.

Karyn: True, yeah. [Laughs]

Anna: You’re not meant to think he’s cool and suave; it’s literally the opposite. Whereas in, in Sweet Valley, Nicholas is just like oh so charming!

Karyn: He’s such a good guy! It’s –

Anna: Yes!

Karyn: No, he isn’t!

Sarah: And he’s such a catch, because he’s wealthy!

Anna: Oh, yes!

[Laughter]

Karyn: He lives in his cozy mansion! Yes, the coziest, yes.

Sarah: It’s staggering how he is, his behavior and no one else’s behavior is ever called out as, as unacceptable unless they’re actually a creepy orderly who kidnaps –

[Laughter]

Karyn: Yeah!

Anna: That’s the line; kidnapping is the line of –

Karyn: Yeah!

[Laughter]

Sarah: If you have to get the chloroform then, then we, that’s not okay.

Anna: Yes, and it’s, it’s kidnapping and also being, not being hot is the thing.

Karyn: That’s true! Yeah, he’s –

Sarah: Oh!

Karyn: – handsome; it seems like then it’s fine.

Anna and Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: So I suppose Jack, the, Jack the hunky construction worker who turned out to be a drug addict –

Karyn: Ooh, yeah.

Anna: That sort of –

Sarah: Yep.

Anna: – drug addict, he was a hunk, but in most cases it is just like, if you’re rich and good-looking – unless you’re Bruce, but even Bruce gets redeemed in the eyes of the – you know, Bruce does terrible things, and then it’s like –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – well, he’s changed! The love of a good woman has changed him –

Karyn: Oh God.

Anna: – which is another really dodgy mess-, message.

Karyn: Yeah, that’s true.

Sarah: Yeah. There’s the, the sort of, the morality chain of this one person is the only thing that, that, is the only reason that I have to not be a bad person, which is also related to a very common romance trope that I hate –

Anna: Yes!

Sarah: – which is terrible male has a feeling and learns to grapple with that one emotion, and therefore they are entirely redeemed of all the shitty things they did.

[Laughter]

Anna: Yes! I mean, that is, like, as you say, it is a romance trope, and it’s definitely how they present Bruce.

Karyn: That is Bruce in a nutshell, pretty much, yeah.

Anna: Yeah!

Sarah: Right? He had a feel, and, and he’s okay with it, so that, then, you know, he, he, he’s redeemed because he had a feel.

Anna: He’s good now!

Karyn: [Laughs] Yeah!

Anna: Yeah, that’s basically –

Sarah: He knows how to have a feeling that isn’t lust or wanting to, you know, put his penis in somebody.

[Laughter]

Anna: Or, in Bruce’s case, parade around in tiny shorts.

Karyn: Tiny shorts!

Sarah: I don’t understand! How is there a candid picture of him for an auction in his bathing suit?!

[Laughter]

Anna: Oh my God! Yeah, we have so many questions in this of –

Karyn: Oh God.

Anna: – of, of school auctions –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Karyn: School auctions! Incredible! [Laughs]

Anna: – in which a prize of you – a charity auction!

Karyn: Oh yeah.

Anna: Is a candid photo of one of the students in a bathing suit.

Karyn: Incredible. It’s insane.

Anna: And who took a photo of it?

Karyn: Who bought it? [Laughs]

Anna: Yeah. Oh, we don’t know –

Sarah: And somehow it’s okay, because it’s, it’s a male, but if it was a female we would all be like, what?!

Karyn: [Laughs] It’s very true!

Anna: Somebody would be arrested!

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: In fairness, I mean, quite a lot of the, the – we’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again, but they need consent classes on everything.

Sarah: Oh my God!

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: It’s just, it’s a hotbed of, of terrible lessons.

Karyn: [Laughs]

Sarah: I mean, there’s some foundation-level things that you have to accept as true in order for the whole universe to work, and the, the, the hurdle to get to that level is so ridiculous. Like, you know, you have to believe that Elizabeth is this great writer because she writes a gossip column.

Anna or Karyn: Yeah!

[Laughter]

Anna: That is one of the biggest things for me. Just, like, really? You know, that’s what the would-be writer concentrates on is just, someone tell, a little bird tells me that Jessica W. won’t be single for long! It’s like –

Karyn: It’s basically Ernest Hemingway!

Anna: Yeah!

Karyn: What’s your problem, Anna?

[Laughter]

Anna: Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t acknowledge the greatest literary talent of the late 20th century!

Sarah: And you know, it’s funny; I wanted to be a writer, and I was like, ooh, I’m reading a book about a writer! This is great! And it never occurred to me when I was, you know, twelve to, to, to question that that was not exactly the height to which I could aspire. Like, that was a pretty low bar.

[Laughter]

Anna: And I was saying, like, oh, someone’s got a date for, you know, the next, I don’t know, Christmas week carnival? They just have so many celebrations, you really –

Karyn: School dances, yeah. [Laughs]

Anna: Yeah, we’re running out of things. Like, they’ll have something for Christmas and then they’ll have something for, I don’t know, the third Sunday in Advent or something like this.

Karyn: Oh yeah.

Anna: Any excuse for a party is the real thing.

Sarah: Pretty much. Or a barbecue.

Anna: Oh yeah, that’s true.

Sarah: Or a pool party.

Anna: Or a, a pageant of some kind –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Anna: Indeed, like Miss Second Week of December, or whatever they’re up to next.

Sarah: Now, I went to a women’s college in South Carolina for my undergraduate, and it does not exist anymore, but while I was there, there was a pageant.

Anna: [Gasps]

Karyn: Really!

Sarah: And so I, like, I feel like Sweet Valley prepared me for the absolute lunacy that was the Miss Columbia College pageant, and you have to understand, I went to a school with, in my Freshman dorm, there were so many regional beauty queens. Like, I was with Miss Georgia Peach, Miss Sunshine, Miss South –

Anna or Karyn: What?!

Sarah: – Southern Teen Champion. There was Miss Grits?

Karyn: Wow.

Anna: Miss Grits?!

[Laughter]

Anna: Oh my God!

Sarah: Like, I went to so, I went to class with so many, like, legit beauty queens who know how to do things with makeup at that time that I still don’t know how to do now, but I, I was then, I then became the editor of the school paper, and I had to cover the, the college beauty pageant – [laughs] – and seriously, Sweet Valley gave me so much good understanding of how to cover this thing!

Anna: Oh God! Did you, you – I can tell you that when I worked for the college paper, and when I was an undergraduate, there were no beauty pageants!

Karyn: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, you missed out! You really missed out!

Anna: Yeah! I couldn’t follow in Elizabeth’s footsteps!

Karyn: Oh my God.

Anna: So, oh, I feel, I feel quite, quite hard done by now!

Sarah: Yeah! You missed out! You should’ve gotten that student visa and come to a small women’s college with a beauty pageant!

[Laughter]

Anna: Might I ask why it is that a women’s college had –

Karyn: Yeah!

Anna: – loads of pageants? Like –

Sarah: It was a very different world.

[Laughter]

Sarah: It’s very different. I was the only Yankee, which is, I mean, it, it, it, you understand, like, the cultural differences of geography, being in Ireland –

Anna and Karyn: Yes.

Sarah: – right? I mean, like, that’s kind of obvious? The South, and especially the very deep South, is so very different.

Anna: Oh, oh yeah.

Sarah: So many, so very different, and at the time – so there was a professor who I had in the English department whose name was Dr. Savory, and he passed away after I graduated, but they renamed an award for him, so now it’s the Savory Award –

[Laughter]

Sarah: – for a woman who, who, a college graduate who, who exemplifies a lot of really excellent things. But the name of the award that it was before it was the Savory Award was Most Womanly.

Anna and Karyn: WHOA!

Karyn: [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh my gosh. And it –

Anna: Oh. My. God.

Sarah: – and it’s like, it’s, it’s like a, a foundation level of, okay, this is fine. Yep. Okay, sure. Ma’am, I’m along for the ride here. All right, yep! And I got that training from Sweet Valley!

Anna: [Laughs]

Karyn: Oh, it’s the perfect training, really, isn’t it?

Anna: Yeah!

Sarah: Oh yeah! And I was mad that I didn’t get Most Womanly, because if you win Most Womanly or you win the Savory Award, there are dolls in one of the alumni rooms, and they make a doll to look like you.

Karyn: Oh my gosh! [Laughs]

Anna: Nooo!

Sarah: I –

Anna: I’m completely –

Sarah: I will tell you, I got a really good education because I went to this very small college where I didn’t have to study dead white dudes. I could study Southern women writers, and I could take really interesting classes, and there wasn’t a graduate school, so professors were teaching all my courses, and I, I am very glad I went to this school, because it gave me a perspective and a confidence in myself that I don’t think I would have had, had I not gone through that experience, but I also look back and were like, they dress up dolls to look like Most Womanly!

[Laughter]

Karyn: Whoa!

Anna: Oh my God!

Sarah: Yeah, so, like, I read Sweet Valley; I’m like, yeah, okay, this isn’t even in, even, even the most ridiculous thing.

Karyn: That’s incredible.

Anna: Please send us a picture or tweet a picture of these dolls.

Karyn: I need a, I need all the information. [Laughs]

Anna: I’m obsessed with this now. I just –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Anna: Blow my mind!

Karyn: Oh my God!

Sarah: I will find them for you. I’ll find you some pictures of the, the doll collection. They’re all in a room, and they all stare at you?

Karyn: Oh God! [Laughs]

Anna: Oh my Lord. I’m just imagining if, if, if my – my college has recently opened an alumni room, which is really handy ‘cause it’s in the middle of Dublin City Centre, and it’s just, like, a room with a kettle and just basically –

Karyn: Oh nice!

Anna: – You can make tea, but I could just imagine if they had a wall of terrifying dolls. That’s just –

[Laughter]

Anna: – I don’t know, dressed as Oscar Wilde or Samuel, Samuel Beckett or some other –

Karyn: Yeah! [Laughs]

Anna: – alumni.

Sarah: It’s, it’s something. It’s really something. I got to tell you, it is, it is something. Now, as you read, as you read through all the books, one of the things that I really appreciate about your particular rereading is the way that you look at the sort of frame about bodies and diet and worth and, you know, self-actualization, and you look at it, and you, and you critique all of the things that are wrong.

Anna: Well, there –

Sarah: What are some of the things that you have been most astonished and outraged by?

Anna: Hmm.

Karyn: God. Well, like, the entire plotline of Power Play is –

Anna: Oh yeah.

Karyn: – pretty horrific.

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: Yeah, it’s just astonishing when you’re reading it now, just how much they go on about her weight and how she’s only popular when she loses weight, and it’s just –

Anna: Yeah!

Karyn: – it’s really damaging messaging, and I’m kind of amazed that that didn’t really sink in when I was reading it back when I was younger.

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: Like, a lot of that kind of stuff seemed to have just gone over my head, and I’m really glad it did.

Anna: I, yeah, ‘cause I, I think that some of the, this, the wealth and stuff, especially –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – in that book is, you know, she’s bullied horrifically for being, for being fat, but the book also mocks her.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: So it’s not just, like, these bitches in Pi Beta Alpha are, are being horrible to her, which they are –

Karyn: Mm-hmm.

Anna: – but the book, you know, presents her as being kind of gro-, a bit gro-, you know, she’s nice –

Karyn: Kind of pathetic and, yeah.

Anna: Yeah. So even that in itself is, is horrible –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – and then she loses weight by starving herself and, like, compulsively exercising, so everything about it is just terrible. And then I think even in other books, like, people who aren’t the focus, but it still comes up in other books, you know, where anybody who’s a bit plump or, or fat is sort of shown as, like you say, being pathetic –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – and –

Sarah: Yeah!

Anna: – it’s a really nasty, nasty message, and I, I’m sure if there were kids reading that who felt self-conscious about their weight or body or, you know –

Karen: Mm.

Anna: – or worried about their weight in any way, it just, like, reinforced every single negative feeling they had about themselves, and I think that’s one of the most irresponsible things, you know, that we, we take the piss out of a lot, but that is, when, when it comes to that stuff, I think it is genuine horror.

Karen: Yeah, it’s horrible!

Sarah: Oh yeah. I definitely remember internalizing a message that, as an overweight young person, my life didn’t start until I lost weight, and that I wasn’t fully a person until I was thin.

Anna: Yeah, and I think that is persistent through the entire series.

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: You know, not even just the books, like, that focus on, on a character who, you know, is dealing with some weight-related issue. Like, it’s a, it’s kind of just taken for granted, as you say, and I find that really upsetting –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – but it, you know, it’s really sad to just see that it affected you. I think you must have been just one of thousands, millions maybe, who, who was made to feel bad about a book that should have been just silly fun.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: So there is a –

Sarah: And it’s only the women, too. I mean, like, Winston Egbert eats a ton of food and everyone’s like, oh, he’s hilarious!

Anna: Yeah! Whereas Robin eats a cake, and it’s like, ah, yes!

Sarah: [Gasps]

Karyn: And there’s all these weird little throwaway lines even, where there will be any major kind of food storyline or anything, but they’d be like, oh, she really wanted to lose weight, but, like, it’s just, it’s really irresponsible, and there’s just no need!

Anna: And the way they describe anybody, like, eating, you know, like there, in the most recent book that we did –

Karyn: Mm. Oh, yes.

Anna: Yeah. So the Wakefields’ cousin comes to stay, and she goes to Casey’s, the ice cream place, and has an ice cream, and –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – it’s Jessica thinking it, but it’s, the reader’s kind of encouraged to share the view; it’s like, ugh, look at her, you know, stuffing that into her, into, into her face, and spilling ice cream on the table, and it’s sort of very much presented as being out of control and –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – any sort of enjoyment of food, if it’s not done by a Wakefield, of course –

Karyn: Of course! [Laughs]

Anna: – who do whatever the hell they want, is seen as being kind of grotesque and –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – messy.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s horrible, horrible fat-shaming.

Anna: Yes.

Sarah: What are some of the, the good parts that you love the most? Like, what are the things that you’re like, when it shows up in a book you’re like, yes! This is why I read these pastel pieces of insanity?

Karyn: [Laughs]

Anna: Any ridiculousness with Mr. Collins!

Karyn: Oh my God.

[Laughter]

Anna: We just find him hilarious!

Karyn: So funny!

Anna: It is –

Karyn: It’s so funny; he’s just always there!

[Laughter]

Anna: He’s always on the cusp of doing something inappropriate, but –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – actually, in fairness to him and the ghostwriters, he never actually does, apart from his recent offer in, in the charity auction –

Karyn: Of the home-cooked meal.

Anna: – of a home-cooked meal.

[Laughter]

Anna: What else is particularly amusing? Oh, tiny gangster talk.

Karyn: Oh, love it.

Sarah: Oh, that’s the best.

Karyn: [Laughs]

Anna: Ever since we noticed that Bruce Patman was saying things like, I’ve got big, strong arms, see?

[Laughter]

Karyn: We live –

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: – for any hint of old tiny gangster talk now. [Laughs]

Anna: We haven’t had much recently?

Karyn: Hasn’t been much, no

Anna: I hope the, the next –

Sarah: I want you to know, I looked for Mr. Collins/Miss Dalton fanfic, and there isn’t any –

Anna or Karyn: [Gasps]

Sarah: – though there is a ton of Sweet Valley fanfic out there. I could not find anything with Mr. Collins and Miss, Miss Dalton, and I always thought they were sort of being subtly put together.

Anna and Karyn: Yeah!

Karyn: And I think it’s so weird.

Anna: They state they aren’t together, but I think maybe they were only together in, like, one of the specials or –

Karyn: I know they turn up to a dance together, I think, at some point.

Anna: Mm. I think they probably felt, at a certain point, we need to give Mr. Collins a girlfriend.

Karyn: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah.

Anna:  Since he’s constantly, always hanging around at these school dances like –

Sarah: Well, I can tell you there’s a lot of fanfic about Elizabeth and Mr. Collins, which does not surprise me at all!

Anna and Karyn: OHHH!

Sarah: It’s not surprising in the least.

Karyn: [Laughs] Oh God!

Anna: It isn’t, but it’s still horrible!

Karyn: Oh no.

Anna: We, we want someone to do a fanfic about the, the winners of the auction and that –

Karyn: [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh my gosh!

Karyn: We need answers! [Laughs]

Anna: Yeah! Though we may regret that.

Karyn: We say that now.

Anna: Yeah.

Sarah: Or, like, a sort of apocalyptic Sweet Valley after the scourge started by the disease passed at the kissing booth.

Anna: Oh!

Karyn: Oh, the kissing booth! So gross!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Karyn: That’s so gross!

Anna: Yeah, that’s – all of the Sweet Valley carnival activities, they’re another thing that they, ‘cause they keep having so many events –

Karyn: Events, yeah.

Anna: – and they’re, they’re going to include things that are uncomfortable –

Karyn: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Anna: Oh God, but yeah. Going to be traumatized thinking of all those – I bet there’s some line in it where it’s like, I must have kissed, like, a hundred people today! It’s like –

Sarah: Ew!

Anna: – hope you got your shots!

Sarah: Let me introduce you to the concept of a dental dam, because dear God!

[Laughter]

Anna: Yeah, I think that might come, come under the, the, you know, any sort of prophylactic or –

Sarah: No, no!

Anna: – protective, like, device is a no-no in Sweet Valley, because that would mean acknowledging the existence of genitals, which they never will.

Karyn: Absolutely not.

Sarah: I know exact-, I knew, and probably still know, exactly which books have mentioned of, of, of breasts.

Karyn: [Gasps] Yeah!

Sarah: Like, I, I re-, I reread and reviewed Dear Sister on Smart Bitches because I remembered that one being, as being the first encounter where Bruce Patman puts his hand on Elizabeth’s breast, and I was just like – [gasps] – oh my God!

Anna: And isn’t there another one? And it’s also Bruce. It’s –

Karyn: He takes off Jessica’s bikini top!

Anna: Yes!

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: And the water, like, hits her bare breasts!

Karyn: It swirls around her boobs, yeah.

Anna: Yeah. So I think bare, that’s the nearest it comes to acknowledging that they’re not, like, plastic Barbies from the neck down.

Karyn: [Laughs]

Sarah: No. Although, when, when the one where Eliz-, where Jessica’s out all night, were people just banging on a mattress in this shack, and she had to, like, sit in a corner? Is that what was going on?

Karyn: Oh –

Anna: It is so sordid, yeah. Like, they’re, they’re smoking something, and I think we’re like, what –

Karyn: Oh yeah.

Anna: – like, what are they smoking? And it’s just, like, it’s just weed.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: Like, it’s not, it’s not anything particularly dramatic, but there is a bit about, Enid talks about her cousin had been to some pajama party where they all had mattresses on the ground and were in their nightgowns!

Sarah: [Gasps]

Anna: Like, is this some sort of massive gangbang?

[Laughter]

Anna: What are these two doing? They go from zero to a hundred!

Karyn: There’s no middle ground with these guys. [Laughs]

Anna: No! It’s like, hands off to group sex on a mattress.

[Laughter]

Anna: Each to their own, but that does sound –

Karyn: Oh –

Anna: – kind of sordid.

Karyn: It does, now you say that. It does –

Sarah: I also learned, I learned from your reread of one, the book with Enid, that hopped up on bennies has been something I’ve said –

Anna or Karyn: Oh no!

Sarah: – so many times, and I knew it was, like, nonsense, and I couldn’t remember the source until you said it in an episode, and I’m like, oh my God, that’s where I got that?

[Laughter]

Anna: What?! It’s like something out of On the Road, like, just taking all their prescription drugs –

Sarah: Yep.

Anna: – and heading on down the highway.

Sarah: They were hopped up on bennies – okay!

Anna: As if she was! She’s never been near a benny in her life.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Oh my gosh!

Anna: They can keep telling us how wild Enid is.

Karyn: No, I just, I just don’t believe it. No, no.

Sarah: And she’s boring!

Anna and Karyn: Yeah.

Sarah: She’s hella boring!

Anna: I know. We felt sorry for her in the last one, ‘cause Elizabeth was trying to fix her up with Jeffrey –

Karyn: Oh yeah, that was awkward.

Anna: – and yeah, it was very awkward.

Sarah: And she’s like, really, no, it’s okay! Like, I’m not that into him. No, you must be with him, ‘cause –

[Laughter]

Sarah: – you are my sister!

Anna: You cannot deny the Wakefields’ vision!

Karyn: No one says no to a Wakefield.

Sarah: No, speaking of apocalypse.

Karyn: [Laughs]

Anna: God, I, I hope somebody has done a post-apocalyptic Sweet Valley High, ‘cause I would read the hell out of that.

Karyn: Oh.

[Laughter]

Anna: I’m too scared to look for fanfic –

Karyn: [Laughs]

Anna: – but I would look for that.

Sarah: Oh, dive in; it’s really amazing. Lot of Liz and Collins, unfortunately, but it’s still pretty amazing.

Anna: I don’t know if you’ve ever read the very last Sweet Valley High book, which is literally an earthquake, and the Sweet, the split level ranch house falls into the, fall to the ground!

Sarah: And doesn’t this, doesn’t a, a refrigerator kill Olivia?

Anna: Yes!

Karyn: That’s right, yeah!

Anna: Yeah!

Sarah: I never read it, but I can’t believe that their, their ranch house falls into a ground, into a hole in the ground.

Anna: I know, it’s like the end of Buffy. It’s like the, you know, the hellmouth.

Sarah: What if Sweet Valley and Sunnydale are the same thing?

Anna: [Gasps] Well, they are both in Southern California!

Karyn: It’s true.

Sarah: And they are kind of a hellmouth.

Karyn: Yes, absolutely!

Anna: I think Sweet Valley is the real hellmouth. That would explain a lot.

Karyn: It really would

Sarah: Oh my God.

Karyn: It would explain the Wakefields.

Anna: [Laughs]

Sarah: It would explain Bruce, too! He’s like a vampire!

Anna: Oh my God!

Karyn: It all makes sense! [Laughs]

Anna: Oh, actually, I would write that. If I –

Sarah: Anna, that’s your new series! Paranormal Sweet Valley!

Karyn: Get on it immediately!

Anna: If there was – I’m not joking – if there was any way I could do it without being sued, I would write a book in which everybody was a very thinly disguised Sweet Valley figure in a sort of vampire-ridden town. I think that would be so much fun, but I don’t know if –

Sarah: Oh my gosh.

Anna: – Francine would be up first.

Karyn: Doesn’t Jessica date a vampire at some point?

Anna: Oh my – yeah!

Karyn: They do go spooky at some point! Yeah.

Anna: Yes! So after book a hundred, it just goes completely insane, and –

Sarah: Oh yeah, it’s off the rails.

Anna: Yeah, and it’s all these miniseries, so there’s, like, a miniseries where they go out on a survival weekend and, like, in the desert or something. There’s another one where there’s a new cheerleading co-captain, and, you know, they’re all, they’re, they’re not standalones any more. They’re all, like, book one, two, and three of –

Karyn: Oh yes.

Anna: – The High School War.

Karyn: They’re trilogies, kind of.

Anna: Yeah, exactly. But then a few of them are supernaturals, so there’s this werewolf in London one which is absolutely batshit, but in that, the werewolf is not really a werewolf.

Karyn: Oh, okay.

Anna: It’s just somebody in a mask. But then there’s a vampire one, and you think reading that one it’s going to be the same, so it’s not really a vampire –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – but! But he is!

Karyn: Is he actually a vampire?

Anna: He turns into a magpie!

Karyn: [Laughs]

Sarah: What?!

Anna: Magpie.

Sarah: As you do!

Anna: Yes! [Laughs] It’s insane!

Karyn: Oh my gosh.

Anna: He’s literally a vampire!

Karyn: It’s a Halloween special, right there. [Laughs]

Anna: [Gasps] Oh my God. Yes, it has to be.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: So yeah, that’s, I mean, they really lose all of themselves after a certain point, but I think, I think maybe they realized they’d crossed a line in that one, ‘cause it never happened again.

Karyn: [Laughs] There’s no going back!

Anna: I think they tried to pretend that the Sweet, the supernatural stuff wasn’t canonical afterwards.

Sarah: Yeah, ‘cause otherwise you break the canon with that kind of stuff.

Anna: Then anything’s possible, so I, I think they, they kind of dogged down that –

Karyn: They do reel it back in a little bit.

Anna: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Anna: But, yeah, so it’s, the precedent’s there, so maybe I could.

Karyn: Mm.

Sarah: You totally could! And you can, you can involve, like, Irish folklore, like the fairies all transform into Fiats and drive around?

Anna: Ohhh. Oh my God.

Karen: [Laughs] The thing is writing itself!

Anna: It really is. Okay, Hollywood! Give me your number, Producers! If you’re out there listening –

[Laughter]

Anna: – we’re all ready, the three of us are ready to collaborate on this –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Anna: – Yes.

Sarah: It’ll be amazing.

Anna: Let’s make it happen!

Sarah: So what aspects of this really alternate-dimension American culture have baffled you the most? And I need you to know I was – I usually listen to podcasts while walking my dogs, and I was bent over laughing when you first tried onion dip?

[Laughter]

Sarah: And I want you to know, because it’s the holidays, it’s on sale right now! I could get you, like, five boxes for a dollar!

Anna: Ohhh, well, it was, I would be tempted. I still have some left over from last year.

Sarah: [Laughs] It doesn’t go bad; you’re fine.

Anna: But it was delicious!

Karyn: It was! Like, surprisingly so!

Anna: Like, it was, it was so gross, it was amazingly delicious. It was just like salt.

Karyn: It’s a bag of salt, yes!

Anna: It’s a bag of salt.

Sarah: It’s a bag of sodium with dehydrated onions in it, yeah.

Karyn: Yeah!

Anna: Delicious!

Karyn: What’s not to love? [Laughs]

Anna: It was almost – that’s why we didn’t do it again with our Christmas recordings this year, because I think it was too distracting, and also too smelly.

Sarah: [Laughs] It’s very smelly!

Karyn: Oh yeah. The studio just smells like onions for about a week afterward.

Anna: I know. So it wasn’t fair to them.

Karyn: Wasn’t fair to all the other podcasts!

Anna: If we just recorded it in the privacy of our own home, I think it would have been – or one of our homes – it would have been fine –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – but –

Karyn: When you’re sharing a studio – [laughs].

Anna: Yeah. So yeah, we didn’t, we had no idea that was a thing.

Karyn: No, we were completely proven wrong, ‘cause we just thought it sounded so horrible, but –

Sarah: Oh no, this is America. We can combine dairy and sodium in ways that you’ve never even imagined.

Anna: [Laughs] Yeah, you made it work, I’ll give it to you!

Sarah: Yep!

Karyn: That was delicious!

Anna: I mean, we figured out this, this Christmas! What else baffles – oh! The drinking out of a hose.

Karyn: Oh my God! What was that?

Anna: When someone is drinking out of a hose, we were crying, we were laughing so much. We thought it was like, she was like a Labrador.

Karyn: She’s a Labrador, yeah! [Laughs]

Anna: And loads of people got in touch and said, this is just a thing that we do in the summer –

Sarah: Oh yeah, absolutely, and the hose water, because the pipes that lead to the outside hose, they have this really nice metallic quality, so that the water tastes really good?

Anna: You’re not selling it there!

Karyn: Wow.

Sarah: Hose water is the shit! It tastes great; it’s really cold, too, so when it’s hot, because the pipes are all underground, when it’s hot the hose water –

Anna and Karyn: Oh!

Sarah: – is freezing cold.

Karyn: Okay.

Anna: See, it never gets hot enough here for that to be necessary.

Karyn: No.

Sarah: Oh, and the other time I nearly lost control of myself was when poor, I think it was Caroline could, Caroline couldn’t go out because she had a cold and it was raining?

Anna and Karyn: Oh!

Anna: It was Cara!

Sarah: Cara! And she couldn’t leave the house ‘cause –

[Laughter]

Anna: It was like, never move to Ireland, Cara.

Karyn: No, she would not last an hour in Ireland. [Laughs]

Anna: No, you, she’d never leave the house. Her social life would be –

Karyn: Over.

Anna: Yeah. Well, her school life would be over. We’d never even notice, ‘cause they never do any lessons.

Karyn: That’s true. [Laughs]

Anna: Yeah, what else has baffled us?

Karyn: The whole sorority and fraternity thing in high school. Like, what is that?

Sarah: That is weird.

Anna: – do what?

Karyn: It’s weird, right? It’s not a thing –

Sarah: That is pretty weird.

Karyn: – in high school.

Sarah: It’s very rare, if there is a thing.

Anna: ‘Cause we don’t understand how – I mean, to be honest, even at a university level, it’s still –

Karyn: Yeah, it still seems bananas –

Anna: Yes.

Karyn: – at a university level too.

[Laughter]

Anna: But, you know, the fact that the school tolerates, a high school that’s looking after minors –

Karyn: It’s like, yeah, it’s like school-sanctioned bullying, basically.

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: I’m like, what are you doing? Come on.

Anna: But even stuff – I mean, I think growing up, there’s things we don’t know, is this just the fantasy land of Sweet Valley –

Karyn: [Laughs] Yeah.

Anna: – or is this, like, America? I didn’t go to America until I was, you know, twenty-one, like, or nearly twenty-two, and so I remember when I first saw, just, like, in a Boston suburb, saw cheerleaders, and it was like, oh my God. It was one of the, you know, school –

Sarah: Yep.

Anna: – it was, September had come around and school tournament had started, and it was like seeing mythical creatures. You know, it was like seeing –

Karyn: They’re real!

Anna: So it was like, oh my God! They’re actually, they actually do do this as much as –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Anna: – in films and books, like – so those sort of things were –

Karyn: Yeah.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Anna: – just seemed kind of fantastical.

Karyn: That’s true, and, like, like, even recently, like last year, I was on holidays in the States, and we were driving to Vegas and stopped at, like, a McDonald’s, and, like, about twenty cheerleaders came in, and I could not stop staring at them!

Anna: Yeah!

Karyn: Like, how?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Karyn: And they all had these, like, ribbons with their names on them in glitter.

Sarah: Whoa!

Karyn: It was incredible. I was just fascinated.

Sarah: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, and then, like, my older son is going through high school, like, he, he gets to tour different high schools, and not only are there cheerleaders, but there’s pep squad, dance squad, there’s the drum line. I mean, there’s all of these squads that come with a uniform.

Anna or Karyn: Whoa!

Sarah: I remember during the height of the Twilight craze, Forks, Washington, is a real place –

Anna: Yeah.

Sarah: – and they have a cheerleading squad, and girls who were on the cheerleading squad were being offered thousands of dollars to sell their Forks cheerleading –

[Laughter]

Anna: Oh. My. God.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Anna: Wow. If it –

Sarah: Yeah, we go a little bonkers for cheerleading.

Anna: If somebody offered us a Sweet Valley cheerleading sweat-, sweatshirt or sweater –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – we, we’d bite.

Karyn: I would take the hand and all off them, yeah.

Anna: I think there was one on a cover once, and we were just like, yeah! [Laughs]

Karyn: I need it!

Anna: And the jacket! And a Pi Beta Alpha jacket –

Karyn: [Laughs] Yeah!

Anna: But I think because, you know, American teenhood is so fictionalized and, and stylized in so many films and –

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: – and stuff that we’ve grown up with that –

Sarah: Iconic.

Anna: – it’s hard to figure, you know, figure out what is just the sort of language of teen movies, and what is actual –

Anna and Karyn: – reality.

Anna: So it all seems a bit fantastical to, to, to us, I think –

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: – on this side of the Atlantic.

Sarah: Oh, totally! And it’s, it’s all very iconic in a way, where you’re, you’re not just a character; you represent teenhood –

Karyn: Yes.

Anna: Yeah.

Sarah: – in a weird sort of total way. Like, I absolutely had the idea of, oh, if I just dye my hair and become very pretentious, my life will be better. If I lose weight, I’ll be better, because I’ll fit this character mold that is the popular character.

Anna: Oh, well, I think, like, as somebody who was a teenager in the early ‘90s, it’s like, thank God for Winona Ryder, because she was just the heroine of the sort of –

Sarah: Yes.

Anna: – pale, dark-haired, grumpy –

Sarah: I am strange and unusual –

Anna: – teenage girls.

Sarah: Yep.

Anna: So she, she, she stood out.

Sarah: And then you have, you, you, I think you could really trace a line between Sweet Valley and 90210 and every other teen drama.

Anna: Yes!

Sarah: Like, you can see repeated elements!

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: Yeah! I mean, and, and I think Sweet – like, 90210, they were – well, I was going to say, they were the same age as me. They were meant to be the same age, except they were all clearly, like, twenty years older – and they seemed just as fantastical –

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: – you know, as, as the Sweet Valley-ians, to be perfectly honest.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: Like, I, I definitely, when, when 90210 came out – ‘cause obviously it was shown over here – thought it was just as, like –

Karyn: Just as strange and amazing.

Anna: Yeah! [Laughs] And I loved –

Karyn: It’s an alien concept, but we’re into it.

Anna: Yeah! Well, Andrea Zuckerman is very much an Olivia figure!

Karyn: That’s true, actually, yeah.

Sarah: Absolutely. All these archetypes repeat! There’s twins, there’s – yeah, it’s, it’s a repeating series of archetype characters.

Anna: Yeah, though, although Andrea did look about thirty-five.

Karyn: That’s true, yeah.

Anna: Like, there, she was the probably the, the oldest looking one of them, but yeah, it’s a, it’s, I think maybe at that time, it was still a time of unironically celebrating kind of the fun and, you know, partying teens, and I think by the time –

Sarah: Yes.

Anna: – you got to something like Gossip Girl, obviously it’s still, it’s, there’s more sort of self-awareness and –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – irony about, you know, the dark side of popularity, and you’re not meant to unequivocally identify with the rich, gorgeous kids. Even the obviously –

Sarah: Yep.

Anna: – poor kids in these shows are always also gorgeous, but they’re just, like –

[Laughter]

Anna: – less, you know, they don’t have chauffeurs. So I think that probably 90210 was the last gasp of that unironic teen madness.

Karyn: Mm.

Sarah: Yes, and that high school is the best years of your life. Oh, come on!

Karyn: Oh God, yeah. You’re doing life wrong at that rate, I think.

[Laughter]

Anna: Very much so! God, I hope not.

Sarah: I mean, I met my husband in high school. That is the best thing I got out of high school.

Karyn: Oh, that’s pretty good!

Anna: That’s pretty good, yeah!

Sarah: Yeah, I’m all right with that.

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: [Laughs]

Sarah: So which are your absolute favorite Sweet Valley Highs? Mine is always Winter Carnival, just because it’s so bananas, and it was the first one I read, and it was like, oh my gosh, this is literary crack!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Utter crack.

Karyn: Give me more! [Laughs]

Anna: Well, what’s your favorite?

Karyn: I think, of the ones that we’ve done so far, Dear Sister is probably up there, be- –

Sarah: Oh, it’s so good!

Karyn: So much, like.

Anna: Yes.

Karyn: I mean, you’ve got Elizabeth just going off the rails, being Jessica; Jessica having an existential crisis –

Anna: Mmm.

Karyn: – Elizabeth regaining her memories by getting, like, a bump on the head. Like, it’s just, it’s got everything, you know?

Anna: Yeah, it is one of the best –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – but I think mine has to be one of my gateway-drug ones, Alone in the Crowd.

Karyn: Oh yeah.

Sarah: Oh, so good!

Anna: It’s so – it’s got, it’s got the jumpsuits –

Karyn: Oh, man.

Anna: It’s got Elizabeth in interfering mode, so it’s kind of hilarious, and it’s, it’s got a lot of Droid action.

Karyn: That’s true, yeah.

Anna: It’s got somebody who’s an outsider, but of course, it being Sweet Valley, isn’t happy to just go, you know, screw you guys!

Karyn: Yeah, I’m grand over here. [Laughs]

Anna: Yeah, they still always want to be part of the, of the Sweet Valley set. So yeah, I think that’s my, that’s my all-time favorite.

Karyn: Extremely entertaining.

Anna: Yes.

Karyn: I have to say, I’m, I’m really looking forward to getting to the Margo books –

Anna: [Gasps]

Karyn: – and, and that whole storyline. I cannot wait! [Laughs]

Anna: Oh God, it’s so – yeah, that’s when it just –

Karyn: It just completely loses focus, yeah.

Anna: Yeah. Once Elizabeth kills –

[Laughter]

Karyn: There’s no going back!

Anna:  After the Jungle Prom, where her drink is spiked!

Karyn: That’s right! The Jungle Prom! Oh my God, yeah.

Anna: Oh, yeah. That, it will take us a while to get on to that, because that – oh! I’ll tell you another one that’s coming up quite soon is the one where Regina dies!

Karyn: Oh God, that is great.

Sarah: [Gasps] Okay, that scared an entire generation off of cocaine.

Anna: Yes!

Karyn: Yes, absolutely!

Anna: You could have an, a strange reaction to it, and you just drop down dead!

Karyn: So just don’t take the risk!

Anna: Yeah! Just so you know, kids!

Karyn: [Laughs] Yeah! Oh, maybe Nancy Reagan was right after all!

Anna: Yeah, it’s a, it’s, it’s a classic, and it is –

Karyn: I suppose that’s the first one where something really, really serious happens.

Anna: Properly dramatic, yeah. And there’s no, there’s no really going back after that.

Karyn: No.

Sarah: No, there’s really not, and she’s, Regina is always such this, this, this universal good figure? She never does anything wrong; she never gets in a fight with anybody. She’s just perfect!

Anna: Yeah, and then she, just one, even a perfect girl –

Karyn: That’s it.

Anna: – to go near with drugs, and that’s, that’s it! Actually, and if I remember right, she sort of turns to partying because Bruce is cheating on her with Amy.

Karyn: Ooh! Or is it that she thinks he’s cheating on her with Amy? Was he –

Sarah: I think he is.

Karyn: Oh, he is.

Anna: Yeah –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – I think he is, ‘cause they go out together then.

Karyn: Oh yeah.

Anna: So yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a good one that’s coming up.

Karyn: It is, yeah.

Anna: Of the ones we’ve done, I think mine is, is Alone in the Crowd.

Karyn: Alone in the Crowd. It did give us our theme tune, as well, so that’s –

Anna: It did!

Sarah: It did!

Karyn: – too.

[Laughter]

Anna: Which I can’t sing without laughing, so it sounds very out of tune in every version of it, because I’m trying not to laugh constantly, so I need to, need to do a proper, serious re-record of that tune.

Karyn: Take it seriously, Anna! [Laughs]

Anna: I know. I’m sorry! So unprofessional! Sweet Valley –

Sarah: Now –

Anna: – needs me to do my job.

Sarah: You know, the, the old television show, which I love, Beauty and the Beast with Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman –

Karyn: Of course.

Sarah: – had, had a, had a, an album, which was songs from the soundtrack, and then Ron Perlman as Vincent reading poetry. You could do this entire Sweet Valley album –

Anna: [Gasps]

Sarah: – of songs and then Elizabeth’s poetry and crap that people write. Like, you could do a whole album.

Karyn: We actually could!

Anna: Oh my God.

Karyn: And Droids songs as well. Oh my God!

Sarah: Yes! Oh my God, how has there not been a Droids CD?

[Laughter]

Sarah: How has there not been a Droids CD released somewhere?

Karyn: You always get the names of the songs.

Anna: Yeah, and sadly, not enough lyrics, but, like, I think we could –

Karyn: We could definitely cobble something together.

Anna: Yeah, we could!

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: All right, that’s a new mission.

Karyn: Oh my God, I’m so excited! [Laughs]

Anna: The Sweet Valley concept album! I cannot believe there is a Beauty and the Beast album. That is a –

Sarah: Oh, I have it in my car.

[Laughter]

Sarah: ‘Cause I’ve been stuck in traffic – I live outside DC; traffic is terrible. If I’m stuck in traffic and I’m really stressed out, I just have Vincent read me poetry.

Karyn: Oh! [Laughs]

Anna: My, my parents used to live in Friendship Heights, just near Bethesda, so I’m, I’m aware of the glamorous DC suburbs. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Anna: I can imagine in the, yes, in the traffic, you would need whatever gets you through.

Sarah: That’s right. Ron Perlman with fake cat, and he’s reading poetry, it really gets you through.

Karyn: Oh wow.

Anna: Oh my God, I would – I, I need to hear this. If someone put it on the internet, ‘cause this just sounds amazing.

Sarah: Oh, I will send you a link. It’s, it’s probably on, on SoundCloud, at the least.

Karyn: Maybe.

Anna: Okay, well, that’s, that, now I, I feel, I feel that will inspire us to fresh Sweet Valley heights. It will inspire us – Olivia’s poetry.

Karyn: But there’s so much stuff you could use!

Anna: Suzanne – Bruce giving a monologue?

Karyn: Yes, please!

Anna: Mm.

Sarah: Oh man.

Anna: Mr. Collins gives his guide for his rules for life! Don’t know what that would be.

Karyn: Lack of rules for life. [Laughs]

Anna: Very much lack of rules. It’s a problem.

Sarah: Totally!

Anna: Oh, we’re inspired!

Sarah: Do you have a favorite cover?

Anna and Karyn: Ooh.

Anna: Alone in the Crowd is, was also one of my favorites, just because it’s got such, you know, Lynne, who’s meant to be like this massive, you know, like, dork with –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – terrible hair and everything.

Sarah: She looked fabulous! I love those glasses!

Karyn: She’s so beautiful on that cover!

Anna: And her hair was so cool, and so were her glasses.

Karyn: Yeah. She looks so much better than Elizabeth, like, on that cover.

Anna: Oh, well, that wouldn’t be hard. I think one of the ones, the one with Lila and Jessica back to back is a good one.

Karyn: Ooh!

Anna: That’s the one where they’re fighting over Jack.

Karyn: That’s Showdown, yeah.

Anna: Showdown, yeah. And, and any of the ones that have a sort of – oh! The, DeeDee and Bill, and Lovestruck! Will Suzanne succeed in changing Jack?

Karyn: [Laughs] Ken! No, sexy, idiot Ken! I love him.

Sarah: Oh, he’s so dumb.

Anna: Do you, do you have any favourite? Can you think of any more? Any favourites?

Karyn: Oh –

Sarah: I will send you mine. I don’t know if you remember this one: Sweet Valley High Special Edition Spring Break?

Anna: Ooh!

Karyn: Oh, I think I can picture that one!

Anna: Are they frolicking on a bike? On bikes?

Sarah: No, no, that’s the other one. So if you go to the recording software that we’re using at the bottom, I just pasted a link for you to see?

Karyn: Ooh, let’s see.

Sarah: So they’re, they’re in France –

Karyn: Oh, here we go.

Anna: Oh my gosh, it’s a – !

[Laughter]

Anna: Oh. My.

Karyn: Oh my God.

Anna: God!

Karyn: They both look like they’re just screaming.

Anna: They. Have. Lost it! How would you describe this image?

Karyn: I don’t know if I can!

Anna: Okay. God.

Karyn: Oh my God.

Anna: On the left –

Karyn: Elizabeth is looking at a map of France, and –

Anna: It’s just France.

Karyn: Just, just France.

Anna: Not a part of France.

Karyn: We’re not tying it down to any particular area.

Anna: No.

Karyn: But I can, Jessica has just lost her mind! She’s just staring deep into the sky and, I assume, screaming!

[Laughter]

Anna: And she’s wearing, is it an, is it another ill-fitting, big polo shirt? Oh no, it’s just a regular shirt.

Karyn: Oh, they love dressing like Florida retirees, don’t they?

Anna: I think Elizabeth has a silk blouse on.

Karyn: Of course!

Anna: Her trademark look, and a pair of high-waisted slacks!

Karyn: Oh yes.

Sarah: Pleated, they’re always pleated.

Anna: Of course. Yeah, for that sexy look. And what is, is Jessica wearing a blazer and kind of holding out the lapels?

Karyn: She’s –

Anna: Or is she holding out sort of braces or suspenders to –

Sarah: No, I think it’s the lapels of a jacket.

Karyn: It’s the jacket, yeah.

Anna: Oh my God. And what’s that in the back? Oh, it’s a lake!

Karyn: Mm!

Sarah: Oh God, I love this cover so much!

[Laughter]

Anna: I, I do think this might be my favorite. This is the most –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – they look the most demented.

Karyn: Scrap everything we just said in the last ten minutes; this is it. [Laughs]

Anna: I don’t, I mean, I definitely don’t own this one.

Karyn: I think I do!

Anna: [Gasps]

Karyn: They go to France, yeah.

Anna: But I think I read it! Maybe I got it at the library.

Karyn: You probably did. [Laughs]

Anna: Like, I’ve described it out of the shame was too much for me.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Anna: That is the maddest I’ve ever seen Jessica look.

Karyn: It’s so good. It’s demented.

Sarah: [Laughs] They look so silly!

Karyn: Boring.

Anna: I notice how it’s very un-Jessica-like. Unless there’s, like, a hot boy or sale of, like, Parisian fashion! I can’t imagine looking that excited about, you know, a lake –

Karyn: Oh my God.

Anna: – or whatever the hell they’re looking at.

Karyn: No. There must be, like, a row of men or something that’s probably on a building site or something.

Anna: Or a chateau that belongs to some local punk that she can try –

Karyn: [Laughs]

Anna: Well, she has had fantasies of –

Karyn: Oh, swanning around a chateau, the lady Jessica.

Anna: Yeah!

[Laughter]

Anna: Meeting her vassals and servants. So maybe that’s what she’s got planned for the –

Karyn: Amazing.

Anna: – for France. Oh good Lord, that French Revolution couldn’t come soon enough. There’s going to be a lot in the, in the Lila backstory. There’s a very historically inaccurate depiction of the French Revolution, which is quite something.

Sarah: This is the one where they go to France as exchange students, and the older brother of their host family is, like, a total dick to them, but then, of course, ends up falling for Elizabeth because everyone does?

Anna or Karyn: Of course! [Laughs]

Sarah: Of course. But the thing about the special ed-, the Super Editions is that whatever happens to them in those episodes – or episodes – in those books is not canon; it doesn’t come back. They never mention it again, and they, like, they have these wonderful love affairs that are –

Anna: Never mentioned –

Sarah: – completely disconnected from the rest of the series.

Karyn: Yeah, it’s like a little parallel universe or something they happen in.

Anna: Though the one exception to that, I think that Special Christmas, the one that is going to be our, our –

Karyn: Our Christmas episode.

Anna: – Christmas, Christmas episode that’s coming out tomorrow as we record, I think that kind of is canon, because that’s the kind of final rupture between Elizabeth and Todd –

Karyn: Mm!

Anna: – and –

Sarah: Oh, you’re right about that! That is the sort of, the, the death knell of their relationship.

Anna: Yeah, and I think when Todd comes back, the books that I got out of the library – thank you, Boston Public Library in 1997! – the, I think that they reference him having a thing with Suzanne then, when he comes back –

Sarah: Oh right! Right, right, right!

Karyn: So, but that’s probably the only one of those. Like, they, like –

Anna: I think it is the only one.

Karyn: – for the most part, they just kind of happen –

Anna: Oh yeah.

Karyn: – in this very, very self-contained bubble or something. Yeah.

Anna: Yeah, it’s like there’s another of the – all the summer ones –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – are definitely – I mean, summer. Which summer is it?

Karyn: [Laughs] Like, how many summers are you going?

Sarah: How many Christmases exist in one school year?

Anna and Karyn: Yeah!

[Laughter]

Anna: Oh, well, I mean, the, the specials, as they, like, they had Super Thrillers as well!

Karyn: Mm, yeah! I don’t know when they were meant to take place.

Anna: Random times of year, I suppose?

Karyn: I don’t know!

Anna: But we –

Karyn: Yeah, but she’s off working for the paper or something, so it must be, must be holidays of some sort.

Anna: Well –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Anna: – we have found out recently that, that in this universe, kids are taken out of school to go do random shit quite constantly. Like, their cousin, just, cousin stays with them for two weeks in term time. Why?

Sarah: Yeah!

Anna: What’s she doing? Is she going to school? Who knows?

Karyn: Who even knows?

Anna: Who cares?

Sarah: Not us. Doesn’t apply to us. We don’t care.

Anna: We’ve got a flexible approach to –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – the educational time table.

Sarah: They have a flexible approach to everything.

Anna: Well, that is –

Karyn: Very true, yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. Oh, what a magical, terrifying world.

Anna: It really –

Sarah: I love that description: terrifying. These are terrifying books.

Anna: They, well, they are!

Karyn: They are! [Laughs]

Anna: I think we’ve terrified ourselves. Didn’t realize it was so full of body-shaming, slut-shaming, racist sexual predators!

Karyn: There you go, yeah!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Pretty much!

Anna: There’s very few decent people there.

Karyn: Yeah. So –

Anna: There’s a couple. We, every so often we decide, you know, who you could actually bear to hang out with in real life, but it’s, like, three people.

Karyn: Yeah. It’s a short list. [Laughs]

Anna: Yeah. Very, very short.

Sarah: So I always ask this question: what are you reading right now that you want to tell people about, and you may absolutely feel free to pimp the dickens out of yourselves, please.

Anna: Have you got any suggestions?

Karyn: What am I reading? Actually, I’m reading that Nora Ephron collection, I Feel Bad About My Neck? It was an offer there on my Kindle –

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: – and it’s, I’m really enjoying it.

Anna: Oh, she’s – yeah.

Karyn: So good.

Anna: She’s amazing.

Karyn: Yeah, and then the next thing I’m going to read is the Tana French series, Dublin –

Anna: Yes!

Karyn: – Murder Squad? I’m really excited about that; I’ve heard really good things.

Anna: I have just got a proof of the new one –

Karyn: Ooh!

Anna: – which is out in America, but it’s not out here for a few months –

Karyn: Okay.

Anna: – so I’m ready for work. I haven’t started it yet, so I’m excited about that. I, actually I just read a biography of Charlotte Brontë by Claire Harman, which is amazing, really entertaining, and really interesting about people’s attitudes to romance, and –

Karyn: Oh!

Anna: – and people’s romance, romance novels.

Sarah: Yep.

Anna: So that’s been one of the best books I’ve read recently, and what else? One of my favorite books this year was Transcription by Kate Atkinson, which I really, really loved, and it’s about a young woman working in, for MI5 during World War II in, when they had a mission to try and entrap Nazi sympathizers by getting an agent to pose as a Nazi sympathizer, and being like, tell me all your information that you want to pass on to Germany!

[Laughter]

Anna: Just passing it on to, to the, to the British authorities, and it’s just a really clever, subtle, twisty sort of book, and I absolutely loved it. So that’s, that’s one of my big recommendations for 2018!

Karyn: Mm!

Anna: But if you have any, you know, any –

Sarah: Fabulous!

Anna: What are you reading at the moment? Have you got any romance recommendations for us?

Sarah: Oh, always. That’s, like, my whole –

Anna: It’s your thing.

Sarah: – like, my whole entire job. Okay, so there’s two books that I’m reading and, and looking at who are, that are coming out? In the States next week, there’s a new Elizabeth Hoyt series. She writes historical romance, but she writes sort of adventure –

Anna or Karyn: Ooh!

Sarah: – romance? There’s always ass-kicking and chases and, and, like, action mysteries. So it’s like, if, if you like romance in the vein of, of The Scarlet Pimpernel, you would like her books too, the Maiden Lane series, and the new one is called Not the Duke’s Darling. The heroine is a member of a secret society of wise women –

Karyn: Ooh, yes!

Anna: Oh!

[Laughter]

Sarah: – which is descended – yes, it’s so interesting, and it’s, it’s very orderly. It has a very long history, and it goes back to Celtic women organizing, quietly, the information that women were allowed to have that they didn’t want to tell anyone, and there’s all of these elements of history that sort of come into the book. So there’s a person who’s a member of parliament who’s trying to introduce a bill that would allow witch-hunting again, and they’re trying to stop that, because they always get accused of witchcraft, and the knowledge that they have, like birth control and midwifery, all of that is connected to accusations of witchcraft. So I did an interview with the author, and she talked a lot about the ways in which witchcraft, as an accusation against women, is deployed over and over again in history, when really it’s just women not being under a man’s control?

Anna: Yeah, I did an essay on that in college! It was not –

Sarah: Right? It’s, it doesn’t fucking stop!

[Laughter]

Anna: It’s so, yeah! Oh, that sounds amazing!

Karyn: That sounds really good! Yeah.

Anna: And actually, that reminds me of another romance novel that I read recently and really liked: Stephanie Burgis’s Spellswept? So she’s got a series that are set in sort of a parallel version of Regency England in which men, women run politics, and men run magic, and the heroine is somebody who is, is a woman who, who joins sort of wizard university –

Karyn: Oh!

Anna: – or kind of library, but now she, she, she’s not allowed to use magic anymore, and it’s a really good adventure, and it’s got a great romance at the centre of it, so it’s, it’s fantastic. So, there was a –

Sarah: Ooh, and it’s a novella, too!

Anna: Yes! So it’s a, I wish, that was my only fault with it: I wanted it to be longer.

Karyn: Oh!

Anna: ‘Cause I was –

Sarah: So there’s Snowspelled and Spellswept.

Anna: Oh! Snowspelled is the one I’m thinking of, actually, with the, the – Spellswept is a, I think it’s a prequel.

Sarah: It’s a prequel, yeah. It’s a prequel novella.

Anna: Yes.

Sarah: Ooh!

Anna: So yeah, she’s a, she’s a recommendation.

Sarah: And the other book you might find interesting, I don’t know if there’s any romance in it, but it’s being promoted among romance fans, which makes me think there’s probably a, a romantic element? It’s called The Gown by Jennifer Robson, and it’s historical fiction about the women who made Queen Elizabeth’s – the current queen’s – wedding g-, wedding dress.

Karyn: Ooh!

Anna: Yeah, I, anything set in a fift-, in a 1950s –

Karyn: [Laughs]

Anna: – like, sewing studio, that sounds very much my sort of thing!

Karyn: You’re in!

Anna: So –

Sarah: That’s your, is that your catnip?

Anna: Pretty much, yeah! Anything about, sort of ‘bout 1920 to about 1960, you know.

Karyn: Yeah. [Laughs]

Anna: Yeah, pretty much. So thank you for that!

Sarah: You’re very welcome! The other one I’ve been listening to is Rhys Bowen’s Constable Evans series, which is about a, a Welsh constable in a small town?

Anna: Mm!

Sarah: And there’s lots of, you know, grumpy gentlemen saying the Welsh double-L, which I really like, ‘cause I’m –

[Laughter]

Anna or Karyn: Ll-?

Sarah: Yeah, I can’t do it. So I like that one a lot. Oh, and, and Rhys Bowen also has a series you might like if you like the ‘20s. The Her Royal Spyness series is set in the ‘20s. It’s about Lady Georgiana Rannoch, who is, like, thirty-fourth in line for the throne but has no money, and so she’s trying to make a living in a way where she’s – she’s not allowed to work publicly, she can’t be seen working publicly, so she comes up with all these schemes, and then also realizes that she’s really good at solving crime, hence mystery series?

Anna: Oh, that sounds, any vint-, like classic set mystery series is also my catnip!

Karyn: [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh yeah, you would looove this series. The, the narration, if you like audiobooks, the narration is brilliant.

Karyn: Oh, lovely!

Anna: Oh, I’m going to get that. I’ve got some Audible credits.

Sarah: Oh yeah. Oh, and her love I-, her love interest is, is an Irish guy.

Anna: [Gasps] Ooh.

Sarah: Darcy O’Mara.

Anna: That could sometimes be dangerous –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – ‘cause they sometimes try and put Irish characters into –

Karyn: You need to tread carefully.

Anna: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Anna: Things that have Irish dialect, which can be, it can be a bit dodgy.

Karyn: If it’s not done right, yeah –

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: – it can be quite grating.

Anna: I’ll be – but I’m intrigued! I’m going to give – what’s his name? Darcy O’Mara.

Sarah: Darcy O’Mara: he’s the son of a, of a, of some sort of British – or, British – Irish, some kind of, of Irish aristocracy, but he has no money, and at some point during the series, his father sells all of their lands to some rich American who wants to own a horse farm and then ends up moving into the stables, and it just kills this guy that his dad is now living in stables and running the, the, the property that used to be theirs?

Anna: Oh, lad. ‘Cause Irishmen living in stables, I am sold!

[Laughter]

Sarah: So there’s a horse an Irish guy and it’s set in the ‘20s, done? You’re good?

Karyn: We’re in! [Laughs]

Anna: There’s some stable-based romance in the, in the next Li-, in the Lila saga as well.

Karyn: That’s true!

Sarah: Oh yeah, Lila’s got a lot of horse action – wait, that didn’t sound right.

Anna or Karyn: [Laughs] Yeah!

Sarah: That sounded bad.

Anna: That’s – yeah, whatever. I wasn’t going to bring attention to it, but – [laughs].

Sarah: Oh no, I will.

[Laughter]

Anna: Oh, well, I might, I’m, that’s going to be my, my Christmas holiday reading sorted. I’m going to load up the –

Sarah: Oh, dude, email me anytime for recommendations. I always have.

Anna: Oh, well no, I’ve, well that’s, I’ve used the site many times! Great recommendations!

Karyn: [Laughs]

Anna: I think Julia Quinn and Courtney Milan are my favorites.

Sarah: Oh my gosh, Courtney Milan is so good. You would like Tessa Dare too, if you like Courtney Milan.

Karyn: Tessa Dare.

Sarah: Tessa Dare, yes.

Karyn: What a great name.

Anna: Yeah, it is very – okay, I’m going to look up her too. That, my Kindle’s going to get a, get a workout. Super!

Karyn: [Laughs]

[music]

Sarah: And that brings me to the end of this episode, or most of this episode. I want to remind you, after the outro and after the music, there’s an additional section that I relocated where they talk about the eighth amendment overturned in Ireland and what that campaign meant for them, so if you’re interested in listening to that part, keep listening. It’ll be after the music.

I will, of course, have links to the podcast, to Anna and Karyn’s work online, to some of the books that they mentioned, some of the books that they’ve written, and all of these other things, so you can have a look at the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast. If you’re looking to add this to your podcast queue, I hope you do; it is really fun!

And you can email me at [email protected], or you can leave me a voicemail at 1-201-371-3272. Ask me questions, give me feedback, tell me a terrible joke – you know I love those – but I love hearing from you, so thank you for getting in touch.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by Suddenly Mine by Samantha Chase, the newest book in her fan-favorite Montgomery Brothers series. If you like Susan Mallery and Bella Andre, you will love this contemporary romance set on the California Coast. Christian Montgomery is burnt out – the family business might be his entire world, but his father’s judgment means Christian never stops working. His only respite is gazing at the beach and the carefree surfers riding the waves…especially the curvy redhead who’s caught his attention. Sophia Bennington has just fled from her small Kansas town to California, where she’s trying her best to embrace her new beginning. Soon Christian and Sophia find one another, and it feels like sanctuary. But when their difficult pasts catch up to them, will they run away from each other or toward a new future? Samantha Chase has been called classic, thoughtful, and as lyrical as the stars, and Booklist says, “Chase just gets better and better.” Sweeter than hot and hotter than sweet, Suddenly Mine by Samantha Chase is coming January 29 wherever books are sold. You can find out more at chasing-romance.com.

Every episode gets a transcript, and this transcript, like all of them, is hand-compiled by garlicknitter. Thank you, garlicknitter! [You’re welcome! – gk] The transcript this week is brought to you by our Patreon community. If you have supported the show with a pledge starting at a dollar a month, you are making a deeply appreciated difference in continuing the show and making sure that every episode is transcribed and therefore accessible to people who want to read or listen or both!

If you would like to join the Patreon community, please have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges begin, as I said, at one dollar per month, and you’ll be part of the group that helps me develop questions and tells us what to read for our quarterly book club, which we will be starting this year! Have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches for all of the details.

The music you are listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. This is the Peatbog Faeries. This is their album Blackhouse. This track is “Jakes on a Plane.” It’s one of my favorites. You can find the Peatbog Faeries and all of their music at Amazon and iTunes, or you can find the Peatbog Faeries themselves at peatbogfaeries.com.

I will have links to all of the podcast information we discussed, including links to their podcast, Double Love, and I will have links to their websites; their Twitter, Twitter handles – Twitter feeds? Twitter accounts? Where they are on the Twitter – and I will have some other links to things we discussed, as well as all of the books that we mentioned, and there were a lot, because, well, book people talk about books, and then we mention more books, and it becomes very expensive. So if you’re looking for any of that information, it is at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

Now, it is time for me to tell you what is coming up on the website this week, and I am very excited; it is a very big week for us! Saturday, tomorrow if you’re listening on Friday, it is time for our monthly, much-anticipated, wonderfully expensive discussion of Whatcha Reading? We share what we are reading, you share what you are reading, and then we all buy still more books. It’s great fun, and I know a lot of you look forward to it each month, so I’m really excited that it is time.

This week we also have a slew of new reviews. Maybe I need a better plural noun for reviews. What would the plural noun of reviews be? I need to think about that. Either way, new reviews, we’ve got some. We have a new edition of Cover Snark, which I know you all enjoy, and we have a rant from Amanda, plot bunnies from Bigstock photo, Books on Sale, and another recap from Elyse of the train wreck that is The Bachelor.

But this week we also have a very special event. Are you ready? Thursday, the 31st of January, is the fourteenth anniversary of the start of Smart Bitches. Woohoo! Fourteen years! That’s a big one. Now, I will be celebrating with some fun giveaways. Usually I look at the traditional anniversary gifts, but the anniversary gifts are gold and ivory, so I’m getting a little creative this year. As always, it is an honor and a complete joy to discuss romance and learn from all of you every day. Thank you for being part of Smart Bitches, and thank you for being part of our fourteenth year of mayhem and merriment and man-titty. I hope you will stop by and help us celebrate.

And now it’s time for the bad joke. You know I love this part. Here we go. [Clears throat]

What is the opposite of ladyfingers?

Do you give up? What’s the opposite of ladyfingers?

Men-toes.

[Laughs] Mentos! Yeah, Mentos. Actually, I haven’t told that one to the husband, and because furlough is terrible, he’s actually home. Hang on a second. Let’s do a live retelling of this joke.

Okay, I have acquired a husband. I mean, I had one for a while, but now I have the actual husband in the room. You look very nervous about this joke.

Adam: I’m all good. Let’s go.

Sarah: Okay, all right.

What is the opposite of ladyfingers?

[music]

Sarah: Ooh, you’re actually thinking. Is this like a trivia podcast?

Adam: I don’t know.

Sarah: Are you like, is it time to think out loud?

Adam: I had, that, that’s, that’s the way I, that’s the way my brain naturally works, but just go ahead.

Sarah: You don’t know?

Adam: I don’t know.

Sarah: What’s the opposite of ladyfingers?

Adam: Okay.

Sarah: Men-toes.

Adam: Ew! Not the Freshmaker in this case.

Sarah: [Laughs] That’s really bad, right?

Adam: That’s pretty bad!

Sarah: Okay! Well, on behalf of my poor husband, who has to put up with me, and the cats and myself, we wish you the very best of reading, and we will see you back here next week.

And remember, there’s more podcast after the music, so if you want to stay tuned, keep on listening.

[smooth music]

Sarah: Before I get to my final question, I have to say that I loved how excited and happy you were after the referendum passed.

Anna: Oh yes.

Sarah: And how just over-the-moon joyous you were, because, let me tell you, hearing people win is, is, is really nice – I haven’t had that here in a while –

Anna: Yeah.

Sarah: – and having people win the right to own their own bodies and sexuality in, in a country where that was so not true –

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: Yeah.

Sarah: – for so long, that was just delightful. Are you still, are you still out activating – or activating; what the hell, Sarah? – are you still out canvassing and working, or is that, like, done-done, and you don’t have to worry about it anymore?

Anna: Eh.

Karyn: It’s kind of, it’s going through the Sea-, the Senate at the moment –

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: – so the upper house in the government at the moment.

Anna: The legislation.

Karyn: Yeah, so we’re kind of, we are kind of getting there. Like, it’s –

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: – it looks like maybe in January it’ll actually be done and in law, yeah.

Anna: Y yeah. And –

Sarah: Amazing.

Anna: – so we did have to, you know, and I, like, contact our TDs –

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: – which are, who are members of parliament. We had to, you know, after the referendum, there was a bit of a push on them to sort of carry through the, the suggested legislation, because before the referendum they had, they had to give proposed leg-, you know, proposed legislation for what was actually going to be law, because the referendum, obviously, just got rid of the eighth amendment, and the eighth amendment had essentially banned all abortion by equating the woman’s life to her, to, right to life to that of the fetus, and so – which, which effectively meant that you couldn’t legislate for abortion at all.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: So what they, before the referendum to repeal it, they had to say, okay, well, once it’s gone, this is what we’re going to bring in.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: And after, after we won, we had to keep reminding them, you know, this is what was proposed!

Karyn: This is what we’re voting for, yeah. This was –

Anna: People knew that this was likely to be the legislation.

Karyn: Yeah. You know, basically, yeah, yeah.

Anna: Which, yeah. Bring it into, into, into the floor, and that has gone through, so, I mean –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – it is going to be effectively abortion on request in the first three months –

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: – and then after that in, like, certain health cases –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – and so, you know, it’s not entirely perfect –

Karyn: No.

Anna: – but it’s, it’s not bad.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: And, and the important thing is, is that it can be, you know, it can be improved by legislators, not by –

Karyn: Instead of having to go to referendum every time, or anything, like, yeah –

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: – we’ve done that bit, so it’s like –

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: – they can actually just legislate and just do it right, yeah.

Anna: And the thing with the referendum is ‘cause the referendum to bring it in had been brought in in 1983 –

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: – you know, when – were you even born?

Karyn: Nope! [Laughs]

Anna: I was, I think I was eight the week it went through, and it –

Sarah: Yeah, we’re the same age; I was eight at that time.

Anna: Yeah, so, like, that’s our en-, you know, a massive chunk of my life – all of your life –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – and it was impossible to, you know, to do anything. Like, I went to my first march in about 1992? And –

Sarah: Wow!

Anna: Yeah, which was the X, ‘cause the X case happened, which was a case where a girl was raped. She was fourteen, so she was younger than me, which really struck me, and she was raped, and her parents wanted, they were going to take her, she got pregnant, and she, her parents were taking her to England to have an abortion, but they went to the police first, because they wanted to get a DNA sample from the fetus to, you know, convict the rapist, and the attorney general stepped in and said, you can’t leave the country to have an abortion, because you’re leaving the country to commit a crime, effectively. Under the eighth amendment, we have to stop you, and she was basically stopped from the leaving the country, and that caused such mass public outcry –

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: – in fairness to the country as a whole.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: Like, there were very, only diehard extremists were defending this, and that, there were referendums, and that year – I was – allowing the right to travel and the right to information, because before that it was illegal to disseminate abortion information.

Sarah: Right.

Anna: So people would, you know, you’d get, in English magazines with the pages at the back for family planning clinics were whited out.

Karyn: Yeah. Crazy.

Anna: It’s absolutely insane. And, like, when I was in college there’d be, you know, people would write numbers for abortion clinics and abortion help lines on the back of the toilet doors, and, and the students’ union in my college, one of whom is now a, the head is now a senator who has been campaigning for this for ages, they were taken to court by a pro-life organization because they were giving out abortion information in college, and the students’ union was, like, bankrupted and everything. It was just, it was very severe –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – and we didn’t think for ages we’d have a chance in – I mean, did you think that we’d ever get to really change it?

Karyn: I just – no! I – no, and, like, that’s the thing, you go out and you go on marches, and you hope for the best, but, like, it just never really seemed like it was really within reach –

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: – that it was really going to happen, and then when it did, it was just like, God, we did it! [Laughs]

Anna: And I think with the canvassing, ‘cause we both did a lot of canvassing –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – in the ones in our separate – we, we canvassed together –

Karyn: We did!

Anna: – or we leafleted together –

Karyn: Yeah!

Anna: – which was amazing once, but you know, you’d go round the doors, and it would be mostly yes –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – but you keep telling yourself, well, this is a juggle, and it was always –

Karyn: We were afraid to believe it, like.

Anna and Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: And I think we all thought it was going to be fifty-one yes.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: You know, 51/49 –

Karyn: Mm-hmm.

Anna: – and then the, that night, I had spent the day at the referendum, giving out, like, don’t forget to vote! cards –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – and stickers, and I came home, and I was so tired, and I was, I was just, I was crying with tiredness.

Karyn: Yeah. I think I did, like, four leaflet drops that day.

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: Totally, totally, it was ridiculous. My hands were in tatters. [Laughs]

Anna: Yeah. And then, getting the exit poll –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – that said it was, like, sixty-eight percent –

Karyn: Yeah!

Anna: – like, I just, I, I went down to, we, there was a spontaneous gathering at my local canvassers, and we all just gathered and just cried, and –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – it was, it was astonishing. And it did come from people – I think this is the thing that could be inspirational to people elsewhere is that it came from a very grassroots campaign –

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: – and it was literally going out and knocking on doors.

Karyn: Yeah.

Sarah: Yep.

Anna: Talking to people.

Karyn: Talking to people face to face, yeah.

Anna: Yeah. And having the awkward conversations with relatives and –

Karyn: Yeah, yeah.

Anna: You know, it was very much, I think none of us wanted to wake up on that morning and think, I could have done more –

Karyn: That’s it, yeah.

Sarah: Yeah.

Anna: – and, and that’s what galvanized everybody. So, you know, it can be done!

Sarah: I know! It was so inspiring. That, and the videos of people from around the world who traveled for hours to go home to Ireland just to vote.

Karyn: Home to Vote just breaks me every time!

Anna: Yes!

Karyn: Like, oh my God!

Anna: People turning up at, at Arrivals at the airport –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – and just strangers being there and hugging them, and –

Karyn: Oh, it was incredible.

Anna: Yeah, and, like, my sister’s lived – because you can’t automatically vote if you’re, you, you can only vote if you’ve been out of the country for, like, two years –

Karyn: It’s eighteen months, yeah.

Anna: Oh yeah. So my sister’s lived in London for, like, nineteen years, and she can’t vote, but she could donate to a funding page –

Karyn: Mm.

Anna: – that was paying for, like –

Karyn: Flights.

Anna: – twenty-five-year-olds, you know, to, to go home and vote. So there was just such solidarity.

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: It was, it was incredibly moving. I think it’s one of the –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – things I’m most proud of being involved in –

Karyn: Absolutely, yeah.

Anna: – ever, and –

Sarah: And it was, it was delightful to listen to your, to your relief and your happiness –

[Laughter]

Sarah: – against the context of Sweet Valley, which is such a –

[More laughter]

Sarah: – terrible sexual world. Like, okay, in the real world, shit is getting better. So let’s talk about this other one.

[More laughter]

Anna: Well, I hope that it has been, like, you know, because I, I, I do understand what it’s like to be in a country where you just feel, you know, what’s the point?

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: We can’t change anything.

Sarah: Yes! Yes. Yes, we have that feeling.

Anna: And, yes, and, and you have our massive sympathy –

Karyn: Absolutely.

Anna: – but I think, you know, we have had two referendums in the last few years, and – you know, we had an equal marriage referendum three years ago, and – sorry, three years, and three years ago, the eighth this year, and the progressive side won overwhelmingly –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – in both, in both cases. So sometimes you get these reports like, universally it’s, you know, all around the world, it’s a massive swing to the right, and it, you know, it isn’t always, and I think a lot of that does come, both those campaigns were very much grassroots.

Karyn: Yeah. It was people in stories that, that did it in the end, like –

Anna: Yeah.

Karyn: – people sharing their stories.

Anna: Yeah, and I think that is the, you know, if anybody elsewhere can take anything from it, it is the, you know, feet on the ground, if you can –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – and, and getting involved in a really practical way, because as, it does, it does reach people, I think –

Karyn: Yeah.

Anna: – in a way that not, you know, things being a bit more disconnected doesn’t necessarily, so. You have all our sympathies, and hopefully a certain politi- – well, I wouldn’t even call him a politician – a person who, who I won’t name will be in jail within a couple of years.

Karyn: [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh my God, that would be amazing.

Anna: I think that’s the only thing that I will find satisfying as those –

Karyn: Absolutely, yeah. It’s the only conclusion, really.

Anna: Yeah. My –

Sarah: Yeah.

Anna: Long jail sentence and Beto O’Rourke in the White House, that’s what I would like to see.

Karyn: Oh, nice!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Oh my God.

Anna: An example of an Irish-American in the public sphere who hasn’t been disgracing himself –

Karyn: Who hasn’t made a show of us, yes! [Laughs]

Anna: Yes, like a lot of the White House staff –

Karyn: God!

Anna: – in recent, recent times.

Karyn: Yeah.

Sarah: [Laughs] When-, whenever somebody in the States who’s Irish does something dumb, do you just sort of go, oh God?

Anna and Karyn: Yeah.

Karyn: Like, they’re not one of ours.

[Laughter]

Sarah: That’s why they’re not here; we sent them out.

Karyn: Yeah, yeah, we didn’t want them! Sorry about that! [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, that’s all right; we take everyone. I mean, come on, we took, we took Justin Bieber from Canada. No, I, the way with Justin Bieber, I figure we broke him, we bought him?

[Laughter]

Sarah: So he has to stay.

Anna: Yeah, he doesn’t have a choice, really.

Karyn: No.

Sarah: No, we’re responsible for that. I, I, we’re responsible for definitely that. Very sorry.

[Laughter]

Anna: Oh dear. On that lofty note, I think, I think we’ve moved, we’ve moved from the sublime to the ridiculous. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes.