Pushkin.

Hello, Hello, okay, Hello, can you hear me?

Hello?

Yes, Khalila, Hi, Hello, Jonathan, Hello.

Stevie Hello.

Hi.

Wow.

That's some real, like citizen cane lighting in that studio.

Yeah, very expressionistic shadows.

I'm not big on overhead lights.

So how are we?

It's been a while, it's been a year, it's been over a year, So what's new, what's happening?

Well, we were all laid off.

Ye, yes, your point being.

You said what I was just answering about what we've been up to.

I guess I get a little differensive about it.

No, we had like kind of a crazy year of trying to find a new home for the show.

Yeah, a lot of meetings.

Some good meetings, some bad meetings.

I could not believe how long it took, I will say.

I know.

And everyone told me.

I was talking to other people, you know, who have taken their shows to new places or how their shows canceled, and everyone told me like, it's going to take longer than you think.

And I was like, but I already think kind of a long time, so I'm going to be getting ahead of this.

And so it took a long time.

Yeah, so whatever, And get up to with all your unstructured time.

Well, for me, I realized that I had been kind of on the carousel of deadlines and production for almost twenty years.

So, you know, stopping affected me in a way that I didn't anticipate.

But I did kind of.

Go through a period of feeling very etsy and took me a while to get used to, like not doing anything in a way like except for you know, taking my son to school, picking them up and going on runs and trying to teach myself, not very successfully, how to play the piano.

Can you play any basic songs?

Not even I mean it's very it's very jazzy, you know, it's very like avant garde.

The way that I play the piano.

I play random notes.

Kind of.

So yeah, so that that those are the those are the major things.

What have what have you guys been up to?

Stevie?

I know that you've probably been up to all kinds of You're a very productive person.

What about me?

What kind of person?

Am?

I?

Uh, this isn't about you.

Fine, I'll hold my question.

And I don't know.

I could see you didn't.

I don't know, maybe you joined a cult or something.

I'm not sure, I would be easily sucked into a cult, you think, so, Yeah, it's a fear of mine.

What would be the thing that would that would suck you in?

I think if they just caught me on a bad day where I was feeling really isolated and they were like come on, and I didn't want to disappoint them, I'd be like okay, and I'd be like these people are so nice.

And you'd be like, I always have plans.

Now my calendar is so full with events.

Yeah, because you know, cults are really using Google Calendar every day.

It is just blocked off within it, just as cults.

But to answer your question, Jonathan, I also did a whole bunch of nothing this year.

Really.

Yeah, you're not just saying that to make me feel better.

No, no, no, I keep calling it my year off and everyone's like off of work, and I'm like.

Off of everything.

Yeah here, yeah, exactly.

Let's see.

I traveled a lot, I visited friends, I read like multiple books.

I get like multiple books.

Like like three books maybe.

Yeah.

And as and as you guys know, I do a lot of jewelry making and blacksmithing.

Like you make horseshoes.

I'm so that's not nothing.

So you were you were working and you were making jewelry and things.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was being creative, I guess, but very unstructured.

Yeah what about you, Kaylee?

What did What did you do?

I also traveled some the other thing I did which was very fun.

I'm a big fan of the Brooklyn Public Library and they did something in this last year called Browse the Branches where you got a little booklet like a little passport, and you tried to go to every Brooklyn Public Library branch and they would give you a little sticker at each one, and if you got all the stickers, you got a tote bag, which I did.

How many branches are there?

Sixty two?

Okay.

It was a little embarrassing always to walk up to them and be like, hey, can I have the sticker?

But I did it.

So that was probably my biggest accomplishment of the year.

Well, should we talk about what we've got coming up?

Yeah, so we've got a new season later this year, but before then, we have some other little treats.

Just to tie our listeners over and to say hello again after all this time.

Yeah, so we're going to revisit some favorite episodes and have some little updates at the end of what's happened since, but before that.

Yeah, So one thing that we did this year was that we would occasionally check in and we would let each other know what we were up to in the form of audio stories.

You know, we weren't making heavyweight.

We're trying to entertain each other and keep those gears from rusting that a machinery works.

Yeah, I think gears can get rusty if they're not oiled with the juices of creativity.

Yeah.

I didn't want that.

But then what happened was, you know, we kind of made them just as like a silly thing, and then we played them for each other and we were like, oh, these are kind of great, and we thought that they could be fun in this time while we're making the new season, to share with our audience for fun.

Yeah, so should we say what our stories are about.

I made a story about something I found myself doing a lot of in this time off, which was solving long standing customer service issues.

That's one of your passions.

It is I would also call it a passion, Thank you.

Really, I spent some time trying to do things that freaked me out, but that I felt that I needed to try at some point in my life.

So I wrote a little essay about one of the things that I tried.

Jonathan, what's yours?

Yeah, So I made a story about one of the things that I did during our year off was I stopped drinking, which is something that I'd been doing on a daily basis for at least the past, you know, a couple of decades.

I mean, to be clear, I should say it wasn't like I hit rock bottom or anything.

I didn't bottom out, but.

You stopped bottom sing.

Up, I bottomed, I bottomed up.

Is that an expression bottoming up as in like tilting the bottom of the yes?

Right?

Because that is true.

I did.

Yes, I also feel like I did this.

You know, when it was announced that the show was coming back, I did this interview with the New York Times, and you know, they asked me what I've been up to in the past year, and I was like, well, you know, I quit drinking.

So I feel like if I start drinking again, it'll be like I've lied to the New York Times.

They're going to have to do a.

Correction in the italic pant at the bottom.

That's like, mister Goldstein.

Started drinking again.

Yeah, I don't need that, Okay.

So we're gonna release these three little stories and then we'll have these old favorites with updates for you over the summer.

I'm going to take a little break and we'll be back with a new season.

Jonathan, do you want to play us out?

You know, conveniently, I've been sitting behind the piano this whole time.

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