How 'The Joy Luck Club' highlighted the complicated dynamics of immigrant families

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We're talking from Giovanni's room to Gone Girl. So today, on this special episode of Code Switch, I want to bring you a conversation I had while co-hosting Books Weve Loved. You're going to hear me in conversation with the Indicators Whale and Wong and my co-host Andrew Limbong, discussing Amy Tann's The Joy Luck Club, which, believe it or not, I only just read for the first time. We'll get into the cultural impact of the 1989 novel and zoom in on its author, Amy Tann. Public media counts on your support to ensure that the reporting and programs you depend on thrive. Make a recurring donation today to get special access to more than 20 NPR podcasts, perks like sponsor-free listening, bonus episodes, early access, and more. So start supporting what you love today at plus dot NPR dot org. Are you thinking about making any changes in the new year? The Life Kit Podcast is here to help. In each episode, we have research-backed strategies and expert advice on everything from meal prep to strengthening relationships to paying down your credit card debt. Make your resolution stick, listen to the Life Kit podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. On Planet Money, we have covered a lot of topics, like just try searching something on the internet and adding Planet Money to the end of it. Terrific prices, Planet Money, that's an episode. Stop sign war, Planet Money, that too. Alaska Halibut Derby, Planet Money. If you can ask it, we have probably answered it. Planet Money, listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. The Joylit Club is about the shaky relationships between four Chinese immigrant mothers with their four American born daughters and is told through these interlocking vignettes that each story attempts to bridge the gap between generations. And I'm curious of what the two of y'all fought over the book. What was your relationship with the book first of all? I first read this novel as a teenager. Really? And I was reflecting on what I was like as a teenager, reading this book. I was not yet at a developmental stage of life where I was ready to consider that my mother was a full human being with a complex inner life and emotional baggage of her own and hopes and dreams. She's there for me. Yeah, she's there for me. So I was like really resonant to read this now as an adult when my mom and I have gotten a lot closer. I'm also now raising a twin. I have a 12-year-old daughter. So now I'm in this sandwich generation thing where, you know, I was first generation born in the U.S. I'm now raising second generation by racial Chinese Americans. So it's a lot. It's a lot to take in but I loved this novel when I was little. It was really eye-opening and it was very emotional to read it again. When you said you were a teenager, are we talking like close sort of 14 or 17? Because I think that's a big difference. Like we're in that for sure, close to the 14. Close to the 14? Okay, you're just there. That's too soon, Whaling. That's too soon. I mean, lots of stuff I definitely didn't pick up as a teenager, you know? Yeah. Oh my gosh, now do you have a twin a couple of years going to give your kid Joy Luck Club? Well, she might want to read it now actually. At 12? Yeah. I mean, my husband and I big proponents of kids reading books kind of before they're really ready. Yeah. That's how we were. So I was encouraging her to pick it up now if she's into it, you know? And they could reread it as an adult and be like, oh, that's right. My mom is a person. Is a person. Is a person. I'm a human being. What about you, Andrew? I've never read this book before. I've pretty much only experience of this book was like through the trailers of the movie, you know what I mean? And it's like, I thought that this was some like kind of saccharine, kind of overly sentimental movie about mothers and daughters who just like get along and hold hands and everybody's in love and happy the whole time. And so I was writing the first part, not the second. Yeah. Yeah. It's I was pleasantly surprised, but I read it where it's like, it's a lot more realistic. It's a lot more true to life and it's a lot harsher and harder than I thought it was going to be. Really? Yeah. But Parker, you picked the book, right? This is this is your choosing, right? I did pick the book. I picked it, I mean, mostly because I feel like it slipped through the kind of like 90s literary canon of my parents' bookshelf. Isn't it so interesting how your inner life is shaped by what is on the bookshelves of your home growing up? The fact that like I read like the color purple or like, divine secrets of the Yahya sisterhood or just like all these big quote-unquote women books. And somehow it's like the Joy Luck Club, the slip through that. Like I had seen the movie because it was one of those that was like on TV a lot when I was a kid. So I know bits and pieces. Like there's like a scene even to the as an adult when I'm on a date. Like when the one daughter whose husband is very like everything has to be equal. Everything has to do. When the bill tells you to think about Harold? I think about Harold regularly more than I need to as an adult because of the Joy Luck Club. I'd like to zoom out and talk about Amy Tan, the author a little bit more. She was born in 1952 in Oakland and wrote much of the Joy Luck Club while working as a freelance business writer. So all of us can need a side hustle. So she was ghost writing for companies before deciding to try fiction. Hopefully she was a better writer than Jingmei. And then the book started as a short story that like expanded into these interconnected tales. So Tan initially thought the manuscript might sell only a few thousand copies and then it became like the surprise bestseller spending over 40 weeks on the New York Times list. Yeah, like is it not surprising? But this is like the because it is the template. The fact that it has gained so much traction so quickly there's also with most things that become that popular. There is a bit of pushback. Yeah, against that. And I wanted to talk about that pushback a little bit. I read that like in some instances the idea like Amy Tan's name has been a foreslur of like a certain kind of distinctive literature that some feels betrays Asian men in some aspects. You know what's so interesting as I was talking to a friend who's Chinese American. And he said that his dad hates Amy Tan. And it's because of this reason that like Amy Tan was portrayed Asian men in this really derogatory way. And this is something that his dad is carried with him for all this time. I mean, and I was like that is like powerful stuff, right? Because I think the backlash is especially around the portrayal of Asian men and men in this novel. I think it started kind of immediately, right? And like some people will still hang on to it. Just so interesting to me. Yeah, I went and read Frank Chin who's a playwright and like a literary critic. He had like bones to pick with Amy Tan, Maxine Hongkings and David Henry Wong. And his article was sort of like taking them down. He's got to pick a struggle. Yeah, I mean, I disagree with the article. I do love a professional hater. So I got a perspective on that front. You know what I mean? This guy. When he's talking about Joy Luck Club in particular, I hope I'm characterizing his argument correctly. But I think his argument is like it sort of orientalizes China and mischaracterizes it in an inauthentic and insincere way. Which at first I was like, I don't know because his bone to pick is like the way that Tan uses the short stories about the swans right in the interstitial chapters isn't accurate to how Chinese people think of as swans. My gut reaction when reading it was like, I don't care. It doesn't, this doesn't matter to me at all as a reader as a person reading the book. Like how true it is to the mythology of China. It's like I understand it how it works, how it functions in the book. It doesn't matter to me like the history, right? But I know that because I'm a man in his 30s, I do love internet dark holes. And so I will do it. Do you go some Asian men's rights? Oh, brother, you know, you know, you know, you just gaze right into the abyss. Yeah, you know, I'm getting a stomachache just to be fair. I think their bone to pick right is that many of the daughters end up with white guys, which again, okay, cool, like love is love, whatever. And that the depiction of Asian men is as villains paints Asian men in America in like a bad light. And I don't know, maybe this is me talking from the comfort of 2025 where not that baggage is over and done with or whatever, but it's like, maybe she just needed a bad guy for the story. To me, the villain in the story is not the men or any particular man. I think if anything, to me, the novel red is in different to men's interiority. Oh, that's so much worse though. Oh, no. I mean, I think like Amy Tan was not like super concerned with what the men were feeling because this is a novel about mothers and daughters, right? Yeah. So this is how I read the novel. If there's a villain, the villain is the patriarchy, right? It's always about a system to me. The villain is the patriarchy, the way that the women, their options are very limited for marriage and for motherhood and how that informs kind of their relationship with their daughters down the line. And so to me, the villain is the patriarchy. But it's also, okay, this is also like my pushback is like, this is a very specific type of genre of book again, like the color purple. Oh, my life, I had to fight. I had to fight. My daddy, I had to fight my uncles. I had to fight my brothers, like fried green tomatoes. Do you ever touch her again? I'll kill you. Where like a man has to be the bad guy in order for this book to thrive. And that bad guy tends to be of the culture that the protagonist is in. But then what you get because of the color purple, Spike Lee made, she's got to have it. Like that was his, he was so mad at the creation of the color purple and how it's demeaned black men that like this need to be a response. I'm sure, well, I don't know, hopefully maybe now someone can respond to the Joy Luck Club in a healthy mature non-hostile way in literature. But I wonder how much of that is the movie's fault because I watched the movie, right? It was like 1993, directed by Wayne Wang. And because it's a movie, it has to pick and choose, that it has all the like most, quote unquote, exciting stuff. And all the most exciting stuff that happens, one would argue is when dudes are being really bad to the women in the thing, right? And so it really showcases that where there is the book, there's all this interiority and you realize it is about the system and not about these specific dudes. And so I wonder how much of it is the fault of like the movie being popular and people not actually reading the book itself, you know what I mean? I don't know. I don't like the movie very much, but yeah. You didn't like the movie? I thought the movie was what I thought the book was going to be, you know? It was like, it was a bit too sentimental for me, too sentimental, yeah. So it's me, you mad at. No, I'm just sorry that you got stuck with such a loser that I've always been so disappointing. What do you mean disappointing? Piano? Everything. My grades, my job, not getting married. Everything you expected of me. Not expect anything. Never expect. Only hope. Only hoping best for you. It's 1993. It has to be sentimental. I mean, aren't they they're making a new one, right? Yeah. I mean, there's a script has been written for a sequel to the Joy Luck Club, which I don't know what that would mean. Would that be like the next generation down or something? I mean, God help them. Like we're going to relay all of your grand mothers. Yeah. And then you're going to remember that now I'm a person. And the cycle, the cycle continues. But when we we talk about in this book, kind of like these generational stories and how that has kind of picked up in the zeitgeist now, I think about with everything everywhere all at once, I think about seeing red would stress me out. Oh, I love that movie. Turning red, right? Turning red, turning red was so cute, but also stressed me out. Mom had real lindo energy. And wait, that movie that was about like periods, right? Yeah. Yeah. But like when your mom is, like, is it a little too controlling? You know, like, mine need you to let go. I was thinking about the Farewell, right? Oh, Farewell. If you need a good cry. Yeah. More recently, I watched that movie Didi a couple months ago. Oh, that one I haven't seen yet. That was that was a rough one, Angie. I mean, as a yeah, that was you are I bones to think about skater culture and like email culture, but other than that. But I mean, I think because these stories, now that they're more prevalent, we just named what for three that's still not a lot. But it has grown more so than from like 1993 or this from this book in 1989. But do we feel like because it was the only representation that existed at the time that now there is space for more expansive stories. So now it's not like, oh, we're mad at the Joy Luck Club because this has to represent all Asian people in 1989. I think the blame, if you want to call it that gets a little bit misplaced, right? Like I don't blame Amy Tan for creating a world in which it seemed like the only pieces of pop culture getting greenlit from Asian creators would have to be about intergenerational drama. I think this is a function of how cultural gatekeeping works, right? That publishers, movie studios, they think in terms of comp titles, right? They think of like, what does this new thing you're proposing? What does it resemble? And Joy Luck Club did so well that they were like, well, more of that, right? And it's kind of like Maxine Honkingston, a woman warrior came out in the 70s. So it's like in the 70s, we got one. Then it was 80s and 80s. And so if intergenerational immigrant trauma stories that emphasize the otherness of the Chinese experience in America or whatever, if that's what proves popular, that's what the publishers will demand more of, right? Which is frustrating. It's not Amy Tan's fault, right? I think Kathy Park Honk talks about this in minor feelings or essay collection. The constraints that this is put on like future generations of writers and Asian writers. When I feel like there's still like that pressure, even when like an Asian film wins best picture at the Oscars, it's just like this has to represent all of these like a whole entire group of people. I did appreciate how mid the women are, right? Like, I'm, I'm a big fan of low achieving Asians and Asian mediocrity. Asian mediocrity coming up. This version of Chinese culture that's presented in the novel that does ring true to me in a lot of ways like this idea of your swallowing bitterness. Stay with us. This week on up first the Trump administration and Venezuela, can the US run a foreign government as the president says? They simply may not adopt the policies that Trump would like to see. It's a complex, fast-moving story. As always, we're working overnight and every night so you can start each morning knowing what matters. Listen up first on the MPR app or wherever you get podcasts. Want to get strong in 2026? Turns out you don't need to spend hours at the gym every week. Even just one session 30 to 45 minutes a week doing about one or two sets per exercise, that can be quite effective. How to get started with strength training? This week on the Life Kid Podcast. Listen in the MPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Netflix's Stranger Things has reached its end and we're unpacking the biggest moments in the final season. We'll talk about what we thought of the finale, what happened to our heroes when they set out to battle the forces of evil one last time, and of course the terrible wigs. Listen to pop culture happy hour in the MPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Code Switch, I'm BA Parker. I recently co-hosted a special series of NPR's books we've loved where we read classic favorites and discuss them with our colleagues. This week we're bringing you one of those episodes a discussion with my co-host Andrew Limbong and the indicators Whale and Wong about the Joy Luck Club. Let's get back to it. So I want to talk about just like these larger themes that are in the book because there's a lot of stuff going on. We've talked a little bit about the mother-daughter relationship but I don't think we fully discussed just how like fully dysfunctional that it is that they are like every pair of mother and daughter of this book feels like two ships passing in the night. Like in a way that the mom feels like through osmosis my daughter is going to understand me and then the daughter has like an outburst and it's just like well why is my daughter mad at me? Why doesn't she get that I'm doing this for her? I think the way the book is structured makes it so that every interaction between mother and daughter is subtext that you know already right so it'll give you the history and then you bring with that all the baggage you understand all the weight that everybody is dealing with but you know that and they don't know that and that's what makes it work it's like oh if only you guys would just like know about this little tidbit from this other person's live you guys would get along swimmingly and I think that is one of the fun things about the architecture of this book that makes it really work. You know like there's like this like really fun dramatic irony throughout but there's also a scene where was it Lindo was getting her hair done and for the wedding for the wedding and daughter wafel is getting more and more frustrated with her mom and Lindo is like trying her back and I just want to leap through the book and be like okay here's what's happening. You want to go in and like hold their hands and be like mediate a little bit. There's like a doctor fill inside of me that feels like I could fix this. I mean I feel like the main argument for this book is that you should talk to your parents and ask them what their deal is. And that's so hard right like and I think like a prevailing theme is the difficulty of that in Chinese culture at least this version of Chinese culture that's presented in the novel that does ring true to me in a lot of ways like this idea of your swallowing bitterness you know like that's a phrase it's like this idea that like horrible things happen or you have a lot of grief or things in your life that don't go your way but instead of expressing them or you know burdening someone else of those things you swallow all that bitterness and you internalize it and you never learn how to talk to other people about what's going on with you and sometimes I can turn into kind of like a slow poison right that like poisons the relationships you have with other people I have seen this kind of cultural generational inability to really talk about what's on your heart you know and I'm grateful that in my own family I think we've kind of maybe adopted some more Western notions or some more modern notions of trying to be more open about our feelings but it's it takes work and it's not it's not a given yeah when you had like a dinner or something and an elder just casually drops the most traumatic experience so they're like in this to be like what do you mean you abandoned some children back home and now I'm the only child in the America now that they're like oh do you are there to more sodas in the fridge do you know wait no no circle back yes exactly I think also when it comes to like not understanding your like the teachers passing in the night and like just not knowing like the fullness of your parents in the case of this book what also struck me is I guess because it might just be because every scenario was so traumatic for the moms you can feel the the consequences of their decision making like I've got to get to America somehow I want to have to abandon my kids or like I want to have to make these like really heavy decisions that feel like all encompassing and I feel like we've rewrite a couple of other books this season we're just like marriages the thing and it's like this flight you think I was gonna I was just gonna bring on pride and prejudice go go go go go please please oh yeah I know so yeah earlier the season wait we're we're we're reading pride and prejudice I love pride and prejudice we're a big defender of Lizzie's mom right who oh yeah Mrs. Bennett yeah Mrs. Bennett he's just trying to secure her daughter's futures exactly exactly and her nerves are very fragile yeah for one second yes exactly and so I don't know I was thinking about Mrs. Bennett a lot in reading this book which is kind of funny if you think about it for a second we're it's like oh I wish we got the Joy Luck Club treatment for Mrs. Bennett right like to see what kind of what what she what baggage she was bringing to the table um my cultural understanding of me just trying to figure out while reading the book we talk about like the villain and I'm the villain like the bad guy of the book and I feel like the bad guy is assimilation for me like that was the bad guy it was because so much of the book the moms have to think such a binary when it's like you're either Chinese or you're American and I guess as a part of me now in like the 21st century that's like oh no baby you can be all these things together there can be all the things and it's like no this smile is Chinese this smile is American there's like this great divide and the daughters that they have here have to like absorb that so that was something that I as an outsider to that was just trying to navigate and thought was really interesting yeah and I think that this novel is important well it's important for a lot of reasons but I think one of the reasons it's important and resonant is because it may be kind of introduced this idea to a mainstream audience when it was published this idea that you have children of immigrants in the US who hold this duality and it is a source of struggle for them I wonder if for a lot of non-Asian non-Chinese readers if this was kind of the first time they had considered that kind of emotional experience for maybe people they knew in their life for and we're in community with and I think that that's like the lovely thing about what literature can do right and portraying that kind of interiority am I entering my old head era where I was like agreeing with the what you're saying when one of the mobs is like you're either Chinese or you're American you know I was like yeah I was like I was feeling extremely like you're cranky reading this book agreeing well we're just the mom's you know he just could just be a grump yeah I might just be a grumpy guy okay so we learn why should this book be read now it is honestly just a great read and it's easy to read it goes down really easy the fact that it's these interconnected vignettes it's very digestible it's very readable and I think that oftentimes we're like oh you should read this because it's important because it's like dense it'll make you feel smart and like you know this novel perhaps will make you feel smarter or more informed or kind of illuminate some portion of the Chinese American experience for you but honestly it's just a great fast read and I think sometimes we deny ourselves the pleasure of just like a really well-written kind of mainstream novel that just clocks along and that has a lot of memorable moments and so I think just as like a pure pleasure read it's well with your time Angie what do you think yeah I think I agree I you know we've talked about this before I think this is like the template for a lot of immigrant narrative stories if you're gonna add another one to the pile we have a lot already on the deck but if you're gonna add a lot to the pile you got to shoot for like this or higher is what my thinking is it's like the ear text the ear exactly yeah yeah yeah fully agree loved it I'm really disappointed that I hadn't read it earlier because it does like it fits the mold of a book I could talk to my mom about that I really I don't know like she's I've been annoying her with my takes on the Joy Luck Club for the past week so it's been really really good she has been like the low-key editor of this entire series she has been all of the books that were on the bookshelf and I was a kid that I like pulled from her and my grandparents bookshelves so this has been like it's been really nice this also a side note that there's an audiobook I also listened to because I'm cooking because sometimes you know nice but like the the actress Gwendolyn Yao putting in work she did everybody they didn't do the thing we did everybody she did everybody all right so now we're going to go to if you like this read that if you didn't like this try that and we're going to put in our book recommendations if you feel in the Joy Luck Club here's another option will anyone go first yes my recommendation is the Fox wife by Yang Zi Chu this was one of my favorite books from last year it is historical speculative fiction is how I would describe it it takes place in Manchuria in the early 1900s and it's a detective story that's interwoven with Chinese folklore and it's about motherhood and family bonds and it's really evocative really beautiful I cried buckets reading it and just was really moved by it and it also has such a vivid sense of time in place so that is the Fox wife by Yang Zi Chu right Andrew I was thinking a lot reading this book about I did this piece a few years ago about this author named Anthony Viesna so he died really young he died at 28 but after he died they posthumously released his first short story collection it's called after parties and it's about essentially Cambodian Americans living in like a California suburb what I was thinking about it with this novel with Joy Luck Club is that it does have the baggage of like the parent's history and if you know anything about the history of Cambodian immigration and all of that stuff going on but also it's just about dirt bags smoking weed and making out and stuff like that I liked how it was pushing this narrative forward about what Asian American literature could be and thinking about this book so yeah that's Anthony Viesna's those after parties so I went with like another classic I went straight for the generational trauma and being haunted by the past and so I went with Toni Morrison's beloved because I felt like it is in the vein of just like mother who can't communicate because of the past and like daughters who not who have to enjoy because of it then I got to call my mom all right this is what the Joy Luck Club tells me at the very end I feel like the last sentence Amy Tan what right was call your mom call your mom I know I literally I had a very emotional call with my mom yesterday and I think it's because I've had all of this like in my head Whalen thank you so much thank you this was so fun so let's hear my conversation with one of our favorite writers about the Joy Luck Club author Jasmine Chan for this week's segment of phone a fan hey Jasmine hey Parker thanks so much for the opportunity to be here are you kidding me this is great so for listeners who haven't read your debut novel the school for good mothers is about how if you're labeled quote unfit mother you're sent to a school to learn to be a good mother so to speak but you're under constant surveillance and your protagonist Frida is fighting to get out of the school to be reunited with her daughter Harriet that's succinct enough yes I generally describe is about a Chinese American single mom who has to spend a year at an imaginary government run reform school and under to get her toddler daughter back and what I tell everyone if for like the shortest elevator pitches it's a little like 1984 but for moms geez Louise I mean accurate that's right so I wanted to talk to you because you are a big fan of the Joy Luck Club and you read the Joy Luck Club when you were a tween right yes when I was a tween a very very long time ago so the Joy Luck Club was really a foundational text not just for my journey as an author but also just a foundational text for just being a person I mean I read this book in the early 90s when I was in junior high and the copy that I re-read for this taping was actually my parents first edition copy from 1989 that has some of my mom's notes in the margins and has like an occasional like splash of food so it was a really special experience to get to revisit a book that's so important to me so now that you've revisited it has the perspective shifted well I think what was interesting in rereading it was how much of the book captured this story of my grandmothers and mothers generations because I'm the Gen X generation that came after the baby boom daughters in the book and so the mother stories in the book really reflect what my grandmothers went through and then my mother is now around the same age that the Joy Luck Club daughters would be in 2025 and so it was certainly really eye-opening and similarly profound to read it as a 47 year old mom of a biracial eight year old daughter and to really think about what my grandmothers went through and like surviving war and like how strange it must have been to come to America and also the fierceness of the mother's love really like is something I could only really understand now as an adult yeah interesting okay if Amy Tan's storytelling is about remembering the past and yours is about surviving the present what do they both suggest about the future of motherhood so I've been thinking a lot about freedom in relation to motherhood and also because we live about five minutes from the Broadview Detention Center I'm suburban Chicago and so I was reading this book that's so much about the American dream while military helicopter circle overhead day and night and so I've been thinking a lot about the hope that these mothers have of coming to America and the lives that they want for their daughters and so it's been kind of scary to think about how the current administration almost wants us to go back to this past vision of motherhood that occurred in China in the early 20th century and incurred all over the world of forced birth then wildly repressive patriarchy and girls and women having such limited options so I hope the future of motherhood will be one of greater freedom than we have right now and I think that what is exciting about the ability of books is to be able to help people stay curious like there's part of what is causing the societal break now it's like a total lack of curiosity about other people's experiences and I hope that both books will encourage empathy because one of the things that I was reflecting on and thinking of the commonalities between the books is I think there is a thread of community and the importance of community and the danger of moms having to do it all alone the friendships and the joy look of earth I think were something that gave me so much hope reading about it as a lonely Chinese girl in the early 90s where I was like one of the only Chinese kids around and so it gave me this vision of this future where you're not just like all alone but you're one of many. Jasmine okay that was a perfect answer. Thanks so much Jasmine like so glad I could give you a ring and be sure to pick up Jasmine's latest novel The School for Good Mothers Out Now. You can listen to more books we've loved on the book of the day podcast feed. You can follow code switch on instagram at npr code switch if email is more your thing ours is code switch at npr.org and subscribe to the podcast on the npr app or wherever you get your podcasts you can also subscribe to the code switch newsletter by going to npr.org/code switch newsletter just a reminder that signing up for code switch plus is a great way to support our show and public media and you get to listen to every episode sponsored free so please go find out more at plus.npr.org/code switch this episode was originally produced by share Vincent and it was edited by Megan Sullivan it was produced for code switch by Xavier Lopez it was edited by Jess Kong and Dalian Martana our engineer is Robert Rodriguez and a big shout out to the rest of the code switch massive Christina Kaala Leah Denella Villain Williams and Gene Demby I'm B.A. Parker hydrate up first good morning is a golden globe nominee good morning because of you good morning this is our first your support makes it possible here in Tennessee for public media reporters around the world here in Montana here in Gyeongju on the line from Moscow to bring you three essential stories every morning what's the latest from the front line so Ukrainians want to make sure the reason up first now a golden globe nominee for best podcast on ye gods with Scott Carter here from the faithful I told my very Catholic mother that she needs to meet Jesus the faithless I just so don't believe in God and the fearless serve people connect with people that's how we thrive if life's a mystery we investigate who done it I pray that the you were God listen religiously to ye gods with Scott Carter, wherever you get your podcasts.