440: Laziness Does Not Exist with Dr. Devon Price

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there. Thank you for welcoming me into your eardrums. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. This is episode number 440 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. My guest today is Dr. Devon Price. I am so excited to share this interview, I cannot even tell you! Devon Price is the author of Laziness Does Not Exist, which outlines the three main ways in which the “laziness lie” deceives us into denying ourselves rest and care. As I said in my review, this is a book with something for everyone. It talks about the historical roots of the laziness lie in colonialism and capitalism, and it talks about productivity myths, diet culture, gender, sexuality, activism fatigue, parenting, relationship management, and self-abuse. Plus Dr. Price has a chinchilla, and we are going to talk about his name. This is the key part of the interview. I will have links to the book Laziness Does Not Exist and where you can find Devon Price’s writing on Medium and on Twitter, but this is an interview that I am tremendously excited to share with you.

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I will be back after the interview with a terrible joke, because that is how I end every episode of this podcast, but now, let’s get started with this interview. I am so excited to share this conversation with you. On with my conversation with Dr. Devon Price about how laziness does not exist.

[music]

Dr. Devon Price: Hi! Yeah, I am Dr. Devon Price. I’m a social psychologist, I’m a professor at Loyola University of Chicago, and I’m an author, and my book is Laziness Does Not Exist.

Sarah: Well, first, congratulations on your book!

Dr. Price: Thanks! Yeah, it’s also a weird paradox to be writing something that’s, like, anti-achievement-hunting and then have this, like, thing that I’m supposed to be proud of that’s, that’s a book? But yeah, I’m, I’m still happy about it.

[Laughter]

Sarah: I, I can understand the feeling. I have to say that I read your book, and the file is now about twenty-five times bigger because I highlighted probably half of it. This book was exactly what I needed to read. Thank you so much for this book.

Dr. Price: Oh, yeah, I’m, I’m, what’s, what’s the phrase? Sad/proud, right? Like, I’m glad –

Sarah: Yeah!

Dr. Price: – it connects with people, but it’s so unfortunate that so many people need to hear it, you know?

Sarah: Yes. Yes, exactly. So what will readers find in this book? If you have, like, an elevator pitch, this is the perfect place for it.

Dr. Price: Sure, yeah. So this book is all about how our culture’s fear and hatred of laziness is really used to browbeat people into working too much, how it’s used to really justify exploiting people and not meeting the needs of really vulnerable and marginalized people, and the book kind of explores what are the historical origins of this hatred of laziness and this fear of being lazy that we all have, which it mostly dates back to the Protestant work ethic and enslavement and the ideologies that we use to justify enslavement in American history, and so the book goes into just how dangerous and damaging and dehumanizing the fear of laziness is, and then it also goes into some practical tips for how people can try to resist this fear of laziness and kind of embrace their own need for rest and relaxation, and ultimately to kind of hopefully fight for everybody to have the ability to take breaks and take care of themselves.

Sarah: I love the way that you frame this book, because when I was in Australia a few years ago, I was speaking with a friend of mine who is an Australian podcaster and blogger, and she said something off the cuff like, that laziness, her, her approach to podcasting was as, that laziness is next to godliness, and I remember being deeply, deeply horrified that she was proclaiming herself lazy, and my first thought was, no, don’t say mean things about yourself like that! Why would you say that?! And I realized how much I’d internalized the idea that laziness is very, very bad. Very bad! And I’m like, oh! That was really an American perspective, and I hadn’t con-, contextualized it that way until I remembered that reading your book, because we, we, we internalize this idea that taking it easy is the very worst thing for you to do.

Dr. Price: Yeah, we really equate action with being virtuous, and –

Sarah: Yeah!

Dr. Price: – inaction with being shameful. Which, if you even think about it for a second, like, doing nothing is by definition a neutral thing! You’re not putting any harm into the world; you’re not, you know, using up any resources. You’re not hurting anybody! So why would we feel bad about doing nothing, you know?

Sarah: And I’ve, and I’ve read books and listicles and, and articles about how to do nothing, and I’m like, but these are all doing a something!

Dr. Price: [Laughs]

Sarah: It isn’t nothing! You’re still doing something! And then I get very confused.

Dr. Price: Yeah, I kind of hate that about the, like, self-help industrial complex. Like –

Sarah: Yes!

Dr. Price: – like, self-care becomes another thing that people feel pressured to put on their calendar and check off on their bo-, like, check off that box on their to-do list, and then also probably even to, like, document on Instagram how, like, beautiful their bubble bath was or their manicure –

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. Price: – or whatever. And our, our injuries are so much deeper than taking a bubble bath can cure, you know?

Sarah: Yes, and it’s all such a – even self-care has become a commodity.

Dr. Price: It’s not that those things are, are negative, but just the idea that that will fix people being overworked and exploited and being told that they’re not enough is just, it’s just not true.

Sarah: No, it’s not. Now, you outline three components to the laziness lie, and could you explain what they are? And also, did you almost call this book The Laziness Lie?

Dr. Price: Yeah! So the laziness lie is my name for kind of the cultural belief system that we all implicitly absorb about the value of hard work and how we need to hate ourselves for being lazy, and its three tenets are, one, that your worth is defined by your productivity; two, that you can’t trust any feelings of tiredness or any needs and limitations that you feel inside of yourself, that you should doubt those feelings and try to kind of beat them outside, out of yourself; and the third tenet of the laziness lie is that there’s always more that you could be doing, and that’s really true of any realm of life, not just work. There’s more activism you could be doing, your house could look better, you could be raising your kids better, etc., etc.

And we didn’t, we didn’t talk about calling the book The Laziness Lie, but we did really waffle back and forth about whether it should be In Defense of Laziness versus Laziness Does Not Exist, ‘cause it kind of depends on if you’re going with, like, the neutral versus the kind of evil connotation of the word.

Sarah: Yeah. And if you’re, if you’re going to frame the idea of calling something lazy as a negative and you’re going to explain that actually, no, laziness doesn’t even exist, it’s all a form of control and manipulation, then you’re sort of leaning into the whole, embrace the evil, basically.

[Laughter]

Dr. Price: Right, and that there’s this bogeyman that we have been taught to fear that makes us police how other people act, it makes us deny people social welfare benefits –

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. Price: – you know, and that if we actually look under the bed there’s nothing there. It’s just a dog taking a nap, which we all need a nap, you know? It’s, it’s harmless; it’s neutral.

Sarah: I was sharing some of the parts of the book with one of my colleagues, and when I got to number three, that you’re never doing enough, she messaged me. She goes, I feel very attacked right now, and I need you to stop.

[Laughter]

Dr. Price: Yeah!

Sarah: – the one that got me too! That was the one that got me right in the chest! [Laughs]

Dr. Price: Yeah, it’s so reflexive for so many of us. Like, even if I do get all of the things that I said I need to get this done today, which, did I really need to get that thing done today? Probably not, but I’ve come up with some rule in my mind that’s like, I need to do this thing. If I get it done faster than I expected, then I feel bad for not using that time that I have left, which, like, what? There’s a no-winning under the laziness lie. No matter what you’re doing and accomplishing, it’s always going to add more boxes in a variety of different realms of life, and –

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. Price: – yeah, you just have to break out of it.

Sarah: So one of the things that struck me about, about the book while I was reading it is that it is coming out at such an incredible time, during what I’ve been calling the Quarantimes, because we have this idea that, this pressure, really, to be doing more. Like, now is the perfect time to start your side hustle! I’m like, no! We’re experiencing global extinction; now is not the time to create more work for yourself! And, you know, our bodies are sending very specific signals to slow down and rest, and we’re constantly told, nonononono, don’t, don’t do that, don’t do that. Start another side hustle! Like, what the actual crap?

Dr. Price: Yeah, and you know, I understand why people, especially when they’re in a state of shock, people want to feel helpful, they want to feel like they’re in control, so it made sense that when the pandemic first started, a lot of people were just scrambling to bake all this bread and start working on their novel or, like, learn Spanish or whatever it was, but that’s something that you do when in you’re in a state of shock. That is not a sustainable amount of running on fumes. You’re running on fumes; you can’t do that forever, and you are going to, unfortunately, have to pay for all of that energy being spent, and it’s, it’s so disturbing that that has really become the narrative a lot of people have about their time in quarantine, and even though data shows that worker productivity has gone way up because people don’t have a commute and they’re just kind of chained to their desks all day anyway, a lot of companies have started imposing screen-tracking software, keylogging software, because they don’t trust people to “get enough done” while they’re working from home. So it’s, it’s really troubling, and I hope that how extremely bad it’s gotten at least kind of speaks the lie to people, makes people realize how unsustainable and ridiculous it really is.

Sarah: I have read so many threads on Reddit about that exact topic: when you know you’re being monitored, how do you give yourself the normal breaks that if you were in an office you would have? You would go to get some water; you’d take a tour to the supply closet; you’d go talk to that person who always has that good convo about that one thing. You don’t work all the time, as you said in, in your book, yet there are, the, the expectation is, well, if you’re home, you must be doing nothing. Like, no! That’s not it at all!

Dr. Price: Yeah, it’s, it’s really horrifying, and like you said, productivity research has shown for decades at this point that if you have someone with an eight-hour workday, they’re only actually producing some kind of output maybe three hours out of that day on average?

Sarah: For sure! Oh yeah.

Dr. Price: And that’s, yeah, we just need time to do other things. That’s just – and that’s been looked at as this time theft that employers want to destroy, but if everybody does it, how is it a problem? It’s, like, it’s something we need to describe, not pathologize, you know?

Sarah: Right, and, and to, to see the incredible creativity that people have used to circumvent the keyloggers, just so they can feel free to go to the bathroom and breathe is just, it’s both inspiring – like, wow, humans are so adaptable and creative! – and yet, why? Why do we work under these conditions? It must have been really enraging to research and then still see us as a community and as, as a society, like, oh wow! We are still in the Bad Place here!

Dr. Price: Yeah, it’s so twisted. I have a friend who, at their work, they have a mouse-tracker, so they’re, they need to be active, you know, on their computer –

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. Price: – during the workday. So what they did was they created, they took an iPad and they put, like, an animated GIF of, like, a swirling spiral, and they laid that down and then they put their mouse on top of it so the animation is, like, setting the mouse off all the time, and that’s how they take breaks to help their younger siblings that they live with, like, finish homework and stuff like that. And it’s, on one hand it’s like, oh, God bless you for scamming this system, but also it’s so twisted that you had to scam it in the first place!

Sarah: Yeah! And the thing that really struck me when, when looking at how, how, how much brain energy does it take to then circumvent something that’s actively depleting your brain energy as it creates stress because you know you’re being monitored?

Dr. Price: Right. Self-monitoring is a really cognitively taxing task. That’s part of why people just need downtime after being around people all of the time, because even just being around a person who isn’t judging you, you’re still having to filter your actions and making sure you’re not doing anything inappropriate. So then when you add to that the really, like, life-and-death stress of, oh, if I accidentally open up the wrong website and go on Facebook while I’m at work I could lose my job and face eviction. That is a whole other level of just exhaustion and, frankly, trauma.

Sarah: A lot of the things that are described in the book can trace back to trauma that, the, the inability to rest and the prevention of people from resting is a trauma.

Dr. Price: Absolutely, yeah. I talk about, in the book, some of the burnout research from Christina Maslach, and she des-, she was the first person to really describe what does burnout really look like? And she studied nurses, social workers, teachers, and then eventually broadened it out to any, basically any line of work. But when people are burnt out, it’s not just being tired. It’s having apathy; it can be a loss of sense of identity; failing to remember why you even cared about the work that you used to be passionate about; and even having trouble, like, empathizing with other people. So it is this really soul-deep problem, and people need more than just, you know, a night off of work or a weekend to come back from something that profound.

Sarah: Yeah. That was another part that I highlighted, that, that apathy, the inability to focus, the desire to, you know, “waste time” doing “nothing,” those are all signs of exhaustion and burnout. They are real, valid signals of our bodies like, yo, whoa, whoa! You need to chill now. But then we, like, I know I panic when I feel those things. Like, oh my gosh, what’s wrong with me? I have to work even harder to combat these feelings! Which are really just my body trying to protect me, and then I call it laziness and get mad at my body. That’s a terrible cycle. [Laughs] How do we break out of that?

Dr. Price: It is so brutal, and when we talk about how to break out of it, I always want to be mindful of how little power a lot of people have at their jobs and in their lives, so I don’t want to ever say that it’s, oh, it’s just as simple as, you know, you need to advocate for yourself and do all these things.

Sarah: And take a bubble bath; don’t forget the bubble bath. That’s –

Dr. Price: Right! Put time on your, on your schedule to take a bubble bath and post it to Instagram and all that stuff.

[Laughter]

Dr. Price: But I, I do think finding whatever freedoms that you can to check in with your body and to start honoring your body’s needs, listen to dread if you’re dreading something, that is useful information. If you can start to reframe these things in terms of, I am noticing them and I’m describing them, instead of assigning a moral value to them or trying to argue with why I’m experiencing them, that can be a really good start. It’s, it’s actually really similar to, to what you learn in eating disorder recovery: that if you have that kind of outlook, you hate your own hunger a lot of the time, you, and you’re wondering, why am I hungry? I don’t deserve to be hungry right now. And you have to kind of unlearn that and get to a place of, oh, I’m hungry; that means I need to eat; and it just being factual like that. So I think that’s something that takes a lot of practice for a person to get in the habit of doing when you’ve had it beaten into you for so long that being tired is a weakness or being apathetic is a sign of moral failure, and people need a lot of support in unlearning that stuff.

Sarah: It’s, it’s like a multilayer of, of disenfranchisement and dehumanization, right, to constantly be told in all of these ways, like you said in number two, you can’t trust your own feelings and limits.

Dr. Price: Yeah. The laziness lie really erodes our ability to consent, is a thing that, that I also want to emphasize, that if you have been told that doing something is better than doing nothing, you’re almost always going to feel bad saying no to anything. You have a baseline rejection of your own no, and so this is a really deep, pervasive problem that doesn’t just affect our work habits, though it certainly affects those in a huge way. It affects our ability to set boundaries with other people, to consent, to take care of our bodies, to protect ourselves, and we have to really, to break out of it, unlearn this idea that doing something is better than doing nothing, and that saying yes is more moral than saying no, and that disappointing people is okay.

Sarah: That just blew my mind! ‘Cause, I mean, so I run a romance novel blog, and the, the podcast is connected to the site, and in the course of spending a lot of time reading and examining romance fiction, obviously, consent is an issue that we discuss, because romances are narratives of courtships, they’re also narratives of autonomy: that you deserve love exactly as you are, and that the person you are is worthy of love and happiness exactly as you are now. And some novels support that message, and some novels do not support that message, so the idea that denying the signals of your body and denying the things that your body needs is eroding your own consent, I mean, that just blows my mind, ‘cause it’s very true! How often do individuals feel pressure that they always have to accept something? If you’re invited, you have to go. You can also say no, but some, I know so many people, I can make a list on both hands and both feet of people who feel like they can’t say no, and that was, for me, a really hard lesson too. Oh my gosh, my mind is blown. Thank you!

Dr. Price: Yeah, yeah, it’s a deep one, and it’s something that’s really hard for me to unlearn too, just even something as simple as somebody emailing me and asking for help. Of course, like, of course I want to say yes, and I feel bad anytime I, like, say no or advocate for myself in a way that, that could let somebody down, you know? So it’s, it’s so deeply ingrained, and it touched, touches on so many elements of our lives –

Sarah: Yes, and so many –

Dr. Price: – including when we’re, when we’re not at work. Yeah.

Sarah: Yes. Yes, and one of the things that I’ve really liked – and this is horr-, I feel horrible about this, but I liked about the Quarantimes that the answer was default no.

Dr. Price: Mm.

Sarah: I liked the default no, because now I have this opportunity to look at everything that I do and say, okay, do I really want to let that back into my life, or can I just be like, permanent no? That’s, that’s a permanent nuh-uh. Not, nope. I don’t have the energy to do this; this is going to cost me. And I wonder, do you think that’s going to be true for more people, that they’ll look at life after a period of – well, in some places – a lot of no and keep the no?

Dr. Price: I don’t know! It’s so multifaceted, right? Because on one hand, this has been this huge moment where people have had to let a lot of things drop, and it also is this big moment of re-examining your life and having that kind of mortality salience of, oh my gosh, my life is not going to last forever; what really matters the most to me? What do I –

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Dr. Price: – want to center and, in my life, and what, what can I do to make my life worth living right now during this really terrifying time? So in that way, I think it has woken up a lot of people and given some people the permission to say, okay, I’m not, I’m not doing things the way that I used to. I’m not spending time over the holidays with this relative who is abusive to me, or I’m not, you know, volunteering at this organization that always, you know, pressured me to do things that I wasn’t comfortable doing, or whatever it is. But at the same time, this has been a time where workplaces have demanded so much of people, people are suffering so much that we, if we’re doing okay, relatively speaking, we feel this pull to make sure we can help as many people as possible, that kind of survivor’s guilt that I certainly have at least, as someone who –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Price: – still has a job no? So it’s just a really ambivalent time, where we both realize that things are unsustainable, and we also, I think, all feel so vulnerable that it’s still really hard to say no and to leave things behind, because –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Price: – everything’s so easy to lose right now, or it feels very precarious.

Sarah: Yes, and it’s, it’s a feeling of vulnerability that I think is a big threat  to an individual who’s internalized this idea that you always have to be doing something; you can’t do nothing.

Dr. Price: Yeah, absolutely. And just even – and it makes sense right now too especially, that just, like, sitting still and letting the dread seep in –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. Price: – like, of course you do and are like, okay, now I’m going to go make that fluffy coffee, please God! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, like, the existential dread is, has moved in.

Dr. Price: [Laughs] Yep.

Sarah: Should be paying rent; it has not. It’s quite a problem.

Dr. Price: [Laughs]

Sarah: One aspect of the book that really struck me was the way in which you examined how systemic marginalization of vulnerable groups is so innately tied to using laziness to justify the discrimination, as you wrote that insecurity makes us easier to exploit. Holy smoke, is that true. I mean, how much of the narrative of any form of social support is try, is tied, the, the, the negative support, or the – what’s the word I’m looking for? It’s the end of my day, and my brain just stopped working with words – the denigration of any kind of social support is often tied to enabling laziness. Was this, was this like looking at white supremacy? Like, once you see it in one spot, you see this, this constant denigration of laziness just, just everywhere?

Dr. Price: Yeah, absolutely, and it is white supremacy, ultimately, that also drives hatred of laziness.

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. Price: Enslaved Americans had a very particular kind of Protestant work ethic Christianity pushed on them that was very, you’re not free in this life, but work will kind of set you free, so to speak, and that work is virtuous, and there’s something wrong with you if you aren’t willing to accept your place and work hard. And then after Abolition, one way that working-class whites were kind of kept from organizing with newly free Black people was, basically, white people were told that, that Black people were lazy and were exploiting the system, and that they couldn’t trust them, and that they couldn’t kind of combine forces to, to fight for better, you know, workers’ rights. And then moving into the 20th century, you have the kind of Reagan-era demonization of “welfare queens” –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Price: – the idea that providing social welfare to the American public was wrong because there were these, usually in the stereotype, Black people who were taking advantage of the system and didn’t really deserve that help. And that is still with us. It’s really ingrained in our stereotypes of what laziness looks like. It’s a very racist idea; it’s a very fatphobic idea; it affects how we portion out disability benefits; all of these things. So yeah, it really is this, this, this beast that has its tendrils wrapped around almost everything.

Sarah: That must seem very daunting as you try to write it and translate it. Were there points when you were writing this where you were just like, I cannot fully describe how bad this is and how everywhere it is?

Dr. Price: Yeah, it was kind of a lot, especially later in the book, to decide, okay, which aspects of it are the most important for me to tackle?

Sarah: Right!

Dr. Price: Because there is, every area of life you can feel pressure to do more and to be perfect and, and things like that, so I tried to really focus on, you know, work, education, body liberation: like, all of the big things that touch on a lot of people’s lives, but I could just go on and on and on about it, really.

Yeah, I was also really happy that I had the opportunity to kind of slip in those social critiques, because there have been a lot of books about how important it is to do nothing, setting work-life boundaries, all of these good things, self-care, and so I was glad that I could kind of, while I’m giving people those messages that are important and very good, I could also kind of get people to think about, okay, so if you’re not lazy, who else isn’t lazy?

Sarah: Yes!

Dr. Price: [Laughs] You know? So I hope that is something that people walk away from, or that it opens people’s minds, that when they want to denigrate someone else for not trying hard enough, whether it’s a student they’re teaching or a person asking for money on the corner, can they think about, how is this person failed? Is this person a failure, or were they failed? And what can I do, if anything? Sometimes you can’t, but can I do something to be compassionate towards them?

Sarah: Yes. And that’s something I wanted to ask you about: before I moved to Maryland, I lived in New Jersey, so Cory Booker was my senator, and I remember him very clearly saying, you know, never let your inability to do everything get in the way of your ability to do something. You can do a thing; you can help; and I appreciated so much the chapter that you wrote on activism fatigue and not feeling as if, because you can Big-Gulp all of the information about what’s wrong right now – [laughs] – doesn’t mean that you should, and that you can do things to combat that. So I, I get it, and I really appreciated that chapter specifically.

Dr. Price: Yeah, I think this year has been a great example of this problem, that a big, that big issues happen – mass evictions, police murders of Black people, you know, income inequality, climate change, all these things, wildfires – and get inundated with really upsetting imagery and lots of calls to action on social, social media, and it can be so overwhelming that you just check out, or you go into a little bit of a, like, activist frenzy, which I certainly did in, you know, April and May of this year, and June, where you’re overcommitting and it’s not sustainable. It’s very, you know, well-intentioned, but if I’m signing up for a bunch of different causes and organizations and then later on I’m not going to answer any of their emails or go to any of their meetings, what good am I doing for anybody by kind of –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Price: – setting myself up in that way? So finding a way to kind of localize the impact that you’re having – and it’s hard, because social media makes these things so big and, and global and hard to take perspective on.

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Price: But I think the way that you said it is, is exactly right, that you can do, you can do something. What are the things that are going to be rewarding to you? And that often is helping someone in your community in a small way, ‘cause then you get to see the benefit of it, which is rewarding and motivating. It gives you some energy to, to keep doing it again, instead of just staring into the eye of the storm and feeling so small and so powerless to stop all of it.

Sarah: Yeah. Another major component of the laziness lie’s effects is the, like you mentioned with consent, is, is conditioning people not to set effective boundaries for yourself, for your other – setting boundaries is a lot of work. I mean, it’s a lot of work to change the narrative and the pattern that you set with someone. And you also talked about how your, your research created changes in your own boundaries and your own habits. What were some of the changes that the, that your research created for you?

Dr. Price: I, for me, I had to really learn, even as I was writing this book and maybe “should have known better” –

[Laughter]

Dr. Price: – how much it was hurting other people when I was trying to, like, have no boundaries and help all of them; that my, that my kind of reflexive overcommitment to a variety of different things was kind of dishonest. It was, it was not treating myself properly, and it was also setting people in my life up for being disappointed in ways when they didn’t necessarily have to be; that it’s better for me to tell someone, I’m not available to do that, than to say that I am and then to have to ghost them because I’m exhausted, because I’ve taken on too much. So that’s, that’s been a big thing for me, but also, it is so constant that I’m having to re-examine and relearn these lessons over and over again, because if your reflexive response is to say yes to things or to equate, you know, there’s a problem; ergo, it’s my responsibility to fix it, even if it’s not a problem of my creation or my responsibility; you have to kind of butt up against that a lot of times and remind yourself a lot of times, oh, it’s actually okay to not respond to this text yet. Oh, it’s okay to say, I can’t do this, or ask someone, you know, can you, can you tell me what you need from me, to make somebody articulate what it is they’re expecting out of you, because sometimes it is unreasonable, or it’s left unsaid.

So yeah, yeah, it’s a lifelong journey, I think, and I always, when I think I finally figure it out, I find another weird, like, rule that I’ve imposed on myself –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. Price: – about what I think I need to be doing every day, and then I have to, like, you know, it’s a Whac-A-Mole.

Sarah: Oh, and it’s everywhere! Like you said, it’s just pernicious. It’s like kudzu! It’s just everywhere.

Dr. Price: Yeah, it’s just, my whole approach to myself is still very like, well, I need to do this, this, and this, or else I’m, I’m, I’m failing and then I’m a disappointment. It’s like, what are you talking about? [Laughs]

Sarah: Right? I liked, I like very much the idea that you wrote that, that fighting the idea of the laziness lie requires that you question all of the shoulds that you’ve internalized, especially the shoulds that make you feel guilty? And one of the – so, you know how there’s a trend online sometimes where you pick a word for the year; you pick, like, a guiding word that’s, that’s going to inspire you. So last year my word was two: it was Opt Out, and two years ago it was Fuck Should.

Dr. Price: [Laughs]

Sarah: Which, which were very helpful words, I will say. But we’ve, we’ve really, when I was reading your book I realized, wow, so many people have internalized so many arbitrary external expectations to keep us feeling insecure, and it, it must be so both invigorating and overwhelming to look at all of them. Like you said, like, every time you turn around, oh great, there’s another one. Ugh!

Dr. Price: Yeah. But it can also be a very liberating thing where I realize, oh, wait a second, I don’t need to, to live this particular way. Like, my, my – you find new things to let go of, which is also –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Price: – very freeing, even though it is kind of a struggle. So, you know, oh, I don’t actually have to sign up for this committee at work. Nobody’s actually going to do anything if I say no to this thing; it’s just become a social norm that you say yes to every meeting you’re asked to go to, and I’ll actually free up other people if I start saying, oh, I, I don’t have time for that, or I’m not interested in that.

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Price: Or, or just, I don’t need to have a home that looks a particular way; I don’t need to dress a particular way. I don’t need to have whatever kind of standards of adulting, ‘cause I think adulting is a very, like, kind of tricky concept where people think they need to achieve certain things, buy certain things, have a certain kind of, like, nuclear family lifestyle or whatever, and so many of those things are just kind of conformity pressures, and if you realize, oh wait, I don’t actually want to do this –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Price: – how much, how much time is that going to free up in my life to do the things that actually feel authentic and enriching for me?

Sarah: Authenticity is a very big theme, too, in, in combating laziness.

Dr. Price: Absolutely. It’s honoring your feelings, including when they’re feelings that you might initially kind of feel guilty about, like apathy or annoyance; pursuing the things that you truly are passionate about, even if they’re not “impressive” on paper to other people. Yeah, it’s all about checking in with who you really are versus –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Price: – the person you’ve been told to be, which is a really hard fight, but it’s so worth it.

Sarah: Yes, especially when the things that you realize about yourself are so far from the standard of what is adult or human or, or this class or this culture, when you find yourself in great conflict with the things that are expected of you, it’s very painful, and it’s, it’s a lot of work to, to undo that.

Dr. Price: Yeah, it can be a real grieving process. So I think a lot of my approach to all of this is very deeply informed by the fact that I’m nonbinary, so I’ve had to resist a lot of gendered norms and gender expectations that have been put on me –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Price: – my whole life, though I think everybody has that experience; it’s certainly not only a trans experience?

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Price: That kind of questioning, okay, do I really want to look this way? Do I really want to carry myself this way? Or have I just been told that this is what being a professional adult means –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Price: – for the gender that I was forced into as, as a child? And I, and it’s also very informed by the fact that I’m neurodivergent, so being someone whose brain works a little bit differently from what is the kind of neurotypical mold, and how do I socialize? How do I – what do I want to do with my life? What do I, how do I want to sit? You know, like, can I have weird mannerisms that aren’t neurotypical mannerisms? Can I, like, flap my hands when I’m excited and not be afraid of looking “childish” or whatever? And there’s so many benign things that we judge in our society as childish, lazy, inappropriate, unprofessional, and giving yourself permission to not care about that, it’s really hard to find, find the courage to do it, but once you –

Sarah: It is.

Dr. Price: – start trying it, you, you just uncover more and more of who you really are and what your life is going to look like, and yeah, it’s, it’s like stepping into this, like, warm light that you kind of slowly move closer and closer towards over the course of your life, if you’re lucky enough to, to get to do it.

Sarah: Yeah. When you start to recognize the things that make you you and the things that give you joy and the things that give you passion and, and make you happy, you start to sort of hone your focus on what are the things you actually want to be doing? And you can focus, as you said, on doing what matters and doing it well, which is a really powerful message, especially at the New Year, where everyone’s like, what new thing am I going to transform into this year? What will I overhaul about my life? Well, becoming your actual self is, you know, kind of intimidating but also pretty great!

Dr. Price: Yeah, yeah! The only kind of New Year’s resolution kind of thing that I am super on board with is, like, what can I stop doing that is –

Sarah: Yes!

Dr. Price: – bringing a lot of stress into my life? You know, who do I need to stop talking to? What, you know, can I stop ever trying to lose weight and kind of, you know, worship that kind of, you know, fatphobic mythology? Like, what kind of thing have I been told I need to be doing that I feel really bad about, that it takes up a lot of time in my day, that I can just say, oh, screw that, and, and free myself from? That’s, that’s the only, like, New Year/New You thing that I, I see circulating that isn’t so toxic, like, doing less, because that gives you time to do more of whatever you actually care about.

Sarah: Yes. Mine for this year is Slow Down And Settle In.

Dr. Price: Mm.

Sarah: Slow Down: pay attention to what actually speaks to you, ‘cause sometimes it takes my body a minute to react to things? Like, sometimes I don’t immediately know what I think, and that’s okay. Slow Down And Settle In to where you are, and you’ll figure things out, but divest yourself of crap that isn’t doing you any good. Oof!

Dr. Price: Mm. Yeah, and slowing down is so great for giving yourself a chance to kind of question that kneejerk, oh, I need to say yes; oh, I need to do this. It’s just –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Price: – really helps you reframe and push back against things.

Sarah: I mean, I even struggle with, like, oh, I have to reply to this email, because somebody emailed me. No I don’t! I get a lot of email, and somebody once said to me, you know, the purpose of an email is to convince you that a reply is needed, and I was like, whoooa!

Dr. Price: [Laughs] Oh, that’s a good framing! Like, have I really been convinced that this needs to be – yeah, I’m getting into a place now where I try to reply to every Instagram DM that I get, and, and why am I telling myself that I need to do that? Like, I already know –

Sarah: Yeah!

Dr. Price: – when people message me, a lot of times they say, I don’t know if you’ll have time to get to this; I just, something you posted made me think about this. Like, I, I don’t need to, to do that, and it takes up so much time that I could have spent, you know, maybe writing or, you know, playing a videogame or something else, I don’t know, so I, yeah, I have to question that all the time. I only recently gave up on having inbox zero. I did it for years, and at some point I realized, this is just busy work! Why am I doing this?

Sarah: Yep. And if there is something that I can, that I, that I need to deal with, I can set a time to, this is the email time, as opposed to doing what I call weeding, where I’m constantly like, oh, I don’t need to do that. I’m using energy when I’m weeding my inbox. That’s energy that I need to apply to the things that I want to do and that I want to do well!

Dr. Price: Mm-hmm, yeah. Spending time setting priorities and kind of being the project manager of your life is –

Sarah: Yes!

Dr. Price: – so exhausting. And I, one thing that I wish I had put in the book, but I ended up writing an essay about it after the book, is defensive scheduling, which is something that is just blocking out time on your calendar for the things that are necessary, but that we usually don’t get credit for at our jobs. So actually putting time out – if you, and this is only if you really work a kind of job where there is, like, a, a work Outlook calendar or where it makes sense, but if grading papers is a part of my job, why don’t I schedule a two-hour meeting with myself –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Price: – twice a week where I’m grading, and then people can’t intrude on my workday to schedule some other meeting with me, because that is my grading time.

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. Price: Which, you know, a lot of people in education, your whole day gets filled up with meetings, office hours, all this stuff, and then you grade late into the middle of the night, and it’s like –

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Dr. Price: – screw that! I want to get credit for the work that I’m doing! I’m going to make it a part of my workday! And if my day is taken up with that stuff, then great. [Laughs] I don’t have time for some meeting; I’m doing grading!

Sarah: I’ve noticed, so it’s holiday break, and I have two high schoolers, and our school year has been all virtual, and I have so much empathy for the teachers because I know that this is not a method of teaching, it’s not a pedagogy that they were, they were trained in! They’re, they’re high school teachers and middle school teachers; they, they were expected to pivot to a full virtual curriculum in a matter of months, and I mean, that’s a skill set that takes more than a few months to learn, to say nothing of all of the variations in access, technology, and capability that people have in their homes. So I’ve been getting alerts that, you know, papers are being graded on, like, the 25th of December, and I was like, wait, what? You’re grading – yeah, of course you are. I’ve been an adjunct; yeah, that’s, that is when the grading happens. So you really do have to sort of defend your time and set, like, public announce- – I’m doing the work now? Do not schedule the thing with me. ‘Cause there’s always another task for us, right?

Dr. Price: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and –

Sarah: Always.

Dr. Price: It’s so sickening when you want to kind of just like leap into the grading portal and, like, shut it down and be like, it’s your day off, you’re not, you’re not allowed to do it. Please do something nice for yourself, but also –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Price: – I have totally been there, and sometimes you do have to steal it from weekends and holidays. And education is just a realm where, where this manifests in so many sickening ways, where –

Sarah: Oh yeah, so true.

Dr. Price: – the people who have to move their classes online, they just added so, like, I knew so many instructors who had to, like, they added all this busy work ‘cause they were worried the class was now too easy, because it was online?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Price: Which is so backwards! They’re creating so much stress for themselves and for their students because they have this idea drilled into them that to be a good education it needs to be super challenging, super busy. Like, that’s what, like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Price: – suffering is rigor, you know?

Sarah: Yeah. And, and classes that are – like, for example, virtual gym: how do you do that? How do you do virtual PE? And the, the approach is left up to the individual, and there are some people who are like, all right, I want you guys to run a mile every day, and my kids are like, yeah, no? Not happening. [Laughs] Not, not happening.

Dr Price: [Laughs] Yeah, why can’t we just trust people, especially for things like that, and just say, okay, reflect on what your physical health needs are and what feels good for your body and –

Sarah: Right!

Dr. Price: – and, and do that, and I’ll trust that you did it? Like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Price: – wouldn’t that be more healthy? Like –

Sarah: Oh God. And then there’s teachers like my older, my older child’s math teacher. He realized early on that he could not effectively communicate math if they weren’t actually able to do the problems on paper, so he sends out a PDF and he says, you can do this on the screen or you can print it out and take a picture of it; however you want to show me your work, you figure out the best way that works for you. And I was like, you are, you are awesome! You are most awesome! This is so great! [Laughs] Because it, it, it’s, it’s a trust exercise. It, okay, here is the work we need to figure out: how does this work for you? I trust you to make this work in your way.

Dr. Price: Yeah, and at the same time, I’m also kind of struck by how just even a little bit of flexibility, students are so thankful for it, when really, like –

Sarah: Oh my gosh, yes!

Dr. Price: – they should just deserve that! They should be entitled to that. Like, when I let someone have a really long extension on an assignment now because it’s a global pandemic –

Sarah: Uh-huh!

Dr. Price: – they’re, like, so surprised and thankful, and, and I feel like I don’t deserve that, because it didn’t cost me anything to say, hey, as long as you get it in by the end of the semester, we don’t have to do any paperwork, so let’s see if we can do that, and, you know, and if you need to take an incomplete, we can still do that, you know? Like, it’s not hard for me to, to be flexible, and yet so few people are granted that kind of just basic dignity that when they do get it they’re so grateful for it.

Sarah: Like, I, I respect your personhood and the fact that as a human this is hard for all of us, so we can be flexible. That’s a revolutionary statement.

Dr. Price: Yeah, it is, and I’ve seen – part of why I even wrote this book in the first place ‘cause, was because I had seen so many other educators at, especially when I was teaching as an adjunct at a lot of different places –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Dr. Price: – who would talk, they would say such terrible things about their students, that if somebody was skipping their class that, there was just no curiosity about why they might have been skipping class or what else was going on in their life, or if somebody missed a deadline, you know, it was because they were lazy or whatever, instead of really thinking about how, hey, my class is not the center of this person’s universe, and maybe they’re making a rational decision about what fires in their life they need to put out first, you know?

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Dr. Price: So.

Sarah: You also wrote that wasting time is a basic human need, which I also thought was extremely dangerous and revolutionary, but also very true!

Dr. Price: Yeah! We, we shouldn’t even call it wasting time, right?

Sarah: Yeah!

Dr. Price: Like, our brains and bodies are doing so much all the time, even when we aren’t, you know, in my case, typing on a laptop, right? Like, my brain is working on all kinds of things. Creativity needs an incubation period.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Price: But also, rest is just good in and of itself; it doesn’t need a payoff with, you know, increased productivity down the line or some great ah-ha moment. It’s –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Price: – it’s something we need, and it’s idle time, play, exploration, awe, and just connecting with other people that really make up the texture of life. Like, that’s actual life –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Price: – not work or the routines we get stuck in.

Sarah: So what, for you, have been some of the more pernicious and challenging parts of combating lazi-, the inculcation of the laziness lie, and what parts have been really joyful for you?

Dr. Price: I think the biggest struggle is always the tension between individual steps a person can take versus the huge structural problems that make taking individual steps so impossible, right?

Sarah: Yes! So true.

Dr. Price: So it’s – and I’ve already mentioned this in this conversation – just, I don’t want to give people just individual advice when I know that sometimes you don’t have the freedom to advocate for yourself at work as an individual, and what you actually need to do is organize and get a union or find some way to kind of push for being treated more humanely. Or if you are stuck in a really dire economic circumstance, it’s really hard for a person to say, oh, I’m going to stop driving for Uber in addition to working at the grocery store, because I need to do both those things to survive. So finding a way to navigate that tension is really hard for me because I want to affirm for people: disappoint somebody today, say no, do what you can; but also I recognize that if, if you try everything and you’re still penned it, it’s not your fault.

Sarah: Right.

Dr. Price: Self-care is not a thing that you can fail at, as much as it’s been framed as this individual choice.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Price: We need more systemic changes than just individuals saying no more. So trying to navigate that tension is really hard.

And the joyful aspect of it for me is, I think, some of what I was already saying before about learning to step into my own light and seeing other people step into their own light –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Price: – leaving behind lives where they were miserable and seeing them flourishing creatively, or just getting really into some really weird, obscure thing; like, I love that?

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Price: I love when people –

Sarah: Love it too!

Dr. Price: – pursue a weird thing. Like, please be weird! Please do something that’s not going to “do numbers” on social media. Like, we need – [laughs] – we need people being joyful weirdos and eccentrics and not doing things that are impressive achievement culture things. So that’s, that’s my favorite part, when I see people cultivating those kinds of spaces and experiences for themselves.

Sarah: I am like you; I love listening to someone nerd out about whatever they’re passionate about? Like, I, I don’t know anything about this topic. This is fascinating; please keep going. I love that so much! [Laughs]

Dr. Price: Yes. There’s, like, no higher art to me than when someone’s doing something super obscure and it only has a very particular, very passionate group of people who are like, I get this; I love this. We’re, like, a community. You know, like, I love, I’m here in Chicago, so we have Midwest Fur Fest, right?

Sarah: Yeah!

Dr. Price: So furries are a group of people that people make a lot, people make fun of furries, but I love furries, because they, they make all this beautiful art and these crafts and these costumes that even though a lot of people make fun of it, like, they’re such a joyful community, and they’re doing something that’s, like, chasing their bliss, even when it’s maligned, and we just need so much more of that –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Dr. Price: – in the world.

Sarah: Oh yeah. Now, I didn’t send you this question, but I forgot to ask you, and I hope that you will share this with me: you wrote about your chinchilla Dump Truck.

Dr. Price: [Laughs] Yeah!

Sarah: Which is a most outstanding name for a pet! How did Dump Truck get its name?

Dr. Price: I, I wish I had a good story for it, but we, my partner and I, we both knew we wanted to get a chinchilla ‘cause it’s one of the only, like, you know, hypoallergenic pets you can have and I’d already had one as a kid, and so I was trying to think, like, what’s a good, you know, cute name for these guys? And every name that I put in the Notepad app on my phone – I think U is the funniest vowel because it was all, like, Fluffernutter, Muffin Mix, Dump Truck.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. Price: It was all stuff like that.

[Laughter]

Dr. Price: And so I presented these options to my partner, and he liked Dump Truck the best because a chinchilla’s kind of shaped like a Dump Truck also.

Sarah: Yes!

[Laughter]

Dr. Price: So it seemed very fitting, so that’s how he got his name.

Sarah: That was one of my favorite sections of the book, too, that, that Dump Truck is just going to do what Dump Truck does. It’s going to sleep when it wants; it’s going to eat what it wants. Its, its whole job is to exist.

Dr. Price: Yeah! I think looking at a pet or at nature is a really good way to kind of reaffirm for yourself, your life has value and all lives have value innately, no matter what they’re doing. It doesn’t matter what he’s doing. Like, if he’s like a little curled-up lump in the corner, I love him; he’s perfect; he’s beautiful –

[Laughter]

Dr. Price: – and that’s true, you know, when he’s, like, tearing up the floorboards in my apartment too.

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Price: And that’s true across the board, and if we can feel that way about people we love and animals we love, maybe, just maybe, it’s also true about ourselves.

Sarah: Yes. I remember having some very strange revelation walking my dogs one day like, oh, wow, birds don’t have a to-do list! That’s nuts!

[Laughter]

Dr. Price: I know! Have, do you ever get, like, envious of, like, an animal that, like, on paper it has a very more dangerous existence than your own in the wild, but you’re like, you know what? They seem so –

Sarah: Yes!

Dr. Price: – un-neurotic. They’re just vibing.

Sarah: Yeah!

Dr. Price: God, I wish I could just be a worm on the sidewalk. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, seriously! Like, wow, you have absolutely no to-do list. Nice! That’s pretty cool!

[Laughter]

Dr. Price: And talk about authenticity, right? Like, most animals, when they’re tired, they sleep; when they’re hungry, they eat. They do what they want and, and they don’t question whether they deserve a nap, because it’s actually –

Sarah: Yeah!

Dr. Price: – a totally illogical, like, it’s a non sequitur to ask if you deserve a nap.

Sarah: Oh no! My, my dogs are elderly; their job is sleeping. Like, they sleep because it is their job. [Laughs]

Dr. Price: Mm, absolutely. [Laughs] Employee of the Month.

Sarah: Oh, both of them, absolutely. Perfect, wonderful, perfection in every way.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So I always ask this question: what books are you reading that you want to tell people about?

Dr. Price: Oh boy. Let me look at my list, and I don’t know how many to touch on, but let’s, we’ll just see here.

So one thing that I read, it’s ten years old, this book, but it seems so relevant to COVID times, is A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit?

Sarah: Ooh!

Dr. Price: Yeah, and this book is all about how in the wake of disasters, people come together and take care of one another? So it profiles a bunch of different places throughout history following earthquakes, fires, terrorist attacks, all kinds of disasters, and how even though in that moment people always fear “rioting, looting, the fall of society,” that’s actually when society is at its finest. People –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Price: – come out of their homes, they meet their neighbors, they feel a really intense need to be helpful and to hold other people, and it just seems so relevant to COVID times, because we’ve done so much this whole pandemic of demonizing other people for making bad choices and not being virtuous enough in their fight against the pandemic, when really we’re all just operating with very little support, and it’s really hard to perfectly quarantine, and we really –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Price: – we really need to kind of uplift and support one another, and we’re all so desperate for that kind of community connection right now. So that book was really healing for me to read during this time.

Another one that I read recently that’s more recent is Having and Being Had by Eula Biss? And that is a really interesting book that is all about her experience of being, becoming a successful author and then buying a home and grappling with how getting wealth starts to really distort you as a person, and how, and just kind of grappling with, how do I keep myself from becoming a gentrifier and a person who is viewing my neighbors with suspicion and someone who becomes more conservative because I have more to lose? And it was really, you, there’s very few books where somebody lays bare some of their worst qualities and really grapples with them in a way that’s, like, really confronting how capitalism alienates us from each other? It can make us really –

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. Price: – crueler people. So I really love how just bold that book was in showing, okay, this is what a culture of consumption and generating wealth is starting to do to me, and how can we not do that?

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Price: Yeah, so those are two that I would really, really recommend to a lot of people right now.

Sarah: Those are, that’s brilliant. Thank you! And –

Dr. Price: Yeah.

Sarah: – thank you so much for your time in doing this interview, and thank you for your book.

Dr. Price: Thank you so much for having me and for, for really digging into it. These questions really were, were, were great to, to probe into. And any excuse I have to talk about Dump Truck is, you know –

Sarah: Oh! 

Dr. Price: – highlight of my day! [Laughs]

Sarah: I can’t believe I forgot to ask, like, include that in my email. Like, I mean, this is essential, essential parts. I mean, I –

[Laughter, crosstalk]

Dr. Price: I love you, Dump Truck! I love that he’s in the index of the book; that’s the funniest thing to me, that I can open up the book and be like, oh yeah, there’s the Dump Truck page!

Sarah: [Laughs] But it’s an important illustration of laziness! Yes! We don’t call our pets lazy, unless it’s with affection!

Dr. Price: Right, yeah. When we use it, it’s like the way that, the word like lazy Sunday is used: it’s celebratory. It’s beautiful.

Sarah: Yeah!

[Laughter]

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this interview. If you are thinking, I want to read this book, I will have links to it in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, and I will have links to where you can find Dr. Devon Price and their writing on Medium, on Twitter, and the books that they mentioned as well.

I was not exaggerating when I said I probably highlighted at least half my copy. This is one of those books that I’ve read and still think about and love thinking about in terms of how it reframes and deconstructs all of the things that I habitually do to beat myself up. I cannot recommend this book more.

And speaking of things I recommend, this podcast episode is brought to you in part by Headspace. If you are one of the thirty-four percent of Americans who made a resolution to be less stressed, or if you are not American but you would like to be less stressed, Headspace is here to help. Headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easy-to-use app. Headspace is one of the only meditation apps advancing the field of mindfulness and meditation through clinically validated research, so whatever the situation, Headspace really can help you feel better. Overwhelmed? Headspace has a three-minute SOS meditation for you. Need some help falling asleep? Headspace has wind-down sessions their members swear by – Amanda loves those. And for parents, Headspace even has morning meditations that you can do with your kids. Headspace’s approach to mindfulness can reduce stress, improve sleep, boost focus, increase your overall sense of wellbeing. I’ve been using Headspace for over fifty consecutive days, and I really like it. I’ve also noticed a difference in how I feel mentally and emotionally. I just completed the course on acceptance, which was incredibly helpful in giving me the tools to recognize when I’m resisting something and why. Headspace is backed by twenty-five published studies on its benefits, six hundred thousand five-star reviews, and over sixty million downloads. Headspace makes it easy for you to build a life-changing meditation practice with mindfulness that works for you on your schedule, anytime, anywhere. You deserve to feel happier, and Headspace is meditation made simple! Go to headspace.com/SARAH – that’s headspace.com/SARAH – for a free one-month trial with access to Headspace’s full library of meditations for every situation. This is the best deal offered right now, so head to headspace.com/SARAH today!

As always, I end with a bad joke. Real, really, really bad. So, so bad. In fact, I had three bad jokes and I had to pick one, which was really difficult ‘cause they were all really bad, but that means that I can save them for future episodes. Or you could send me one at [email protected]. But here is this week’s bad joke for you to share with all of the people in your life so that they can groan at you the way you are about to groan at me. [Laughs evilly]

What do you call James Bond in the bathtub?

What do you call James Bond in the bathtub?

Bubble O Seven.

[Laughs] I had to do that one because we started joking about bubble baths! Bubble O Seven! [Still laughing] And listen, if you like bubble baths, more power to you. I just, I get cold, always! It’s so annoying!

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend, and we will see you back here next week.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

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