Stacey Abrams (Coded Justice) feat. Dan Pelosi, Guest Gay Reader

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Gaze reading where the greatsdrop by trendy authors.
Tell us all the who, what, andwhy.
Anyone can listen.
Comes we're spoiler free Readingfrom politic stars to book club
picks where the curious mindscan get their picks.
So you say you're not gay.

(00:24):
Well that's okay.
There's something for everyone.
Gays rating.
Hello and welcome to GA'sReading.
I'm your host, Jason Lipman, andthis is the start of season
five.

(00:44):
I cannot believe it.
It's been two full years of GA'sreading.
This is the start of year three.
It's gone by in a flash and alsofeels like I've been doing it
forever in a day.
I should have come up with likestats or something to tell you
about the amount of authors thathave been on the show.
Um, but you just need to go backand scroll through and find some

(01:05):
of your favorites.
Because there have been so, so,so many.
If this is your first episode ofGay's Reading, welcome, I'm very
happy to have you here.
Welcome back to those of you whohave listened before, and in
case you didn't know, you don'tjust have to listen.
You can also watch all of theseepisodes over on YouTube at
least.
Certainly from.
The last year or so, um, tocelebrate the beginning of

(01:27):
season five, it would mean somuch if you liked and subscribed
wherever you get your podcasts.
And, uh, especially if you leavea five star review, it certainly
helps a lot to get other peopleto find gaze reading, and the
support means so much.
And I'm super grateful to all ofyou for your continued support.
So, whew, y'all.
On today's episode, it is StaceyAbrams.

(01:50):
The Stacey Abrams.
I cannot believe it.
It's, she's incredible.
And she's here to talk about hernew book Coded Justice, which
came out earlier this summer.
And the guest gay reader for theday is Dan Pelosi, AKA Grossy
Pelosi on Instagram.
Dan has a new cookbook calledLet's Party, which is out now.

(02:13):
Both of their bios can be foundin the show notes.
A couple other books that comeout today.
Uh, one is Buckeye by PatrickRyan, and that was just
announced as this month's readwith Jenna Pick.
And another book that comes outtoday is To the Moon and Back by
Eliana Ramage.
And that was just announced asthe Reese's Book Club pick for
this month.
Both of them, both Patrick andEliana will be, uh, guests on

(02:37):
gay's reading in the comingweeks.
They're both incredible.
The books are so good and Icannot wait for you to hear
those conversations in thecoming weeks.
Make sure to follow us onInstagram.
We are at Gay's Reading.
There's fun content andgiveaways.
There's a great giveaway rightnow.
And speaking of fun content,there's also a gaze reading.
Substack, and merch I'mcurrently wearing, which you

(02:58):
can't really see, but maybe sortof if you're watching on
YouTube, uh, a gay readersweatshirt.
'cause of course I am your gayreader.
If, uh, you are not a gayreader, I am your gay reader for
you.
Uh, and there is also.
The Gays Reading Book Clubthrough Allstora.
There's still time to join theclub for the September book That

(03:19):
is The Sunflower Boys by SamWachman.
If you're curious to learn moreabout that book, there's a
conversation that just came outa few weeks ago that I have with
Sam.
The link to all of the thingscan be found in the show notes
in the Link tree on Instagram,and i'm so grateful to be back.
I am happy to be in your earsagain or on your computer screen

(03:43):
or big screen in your livingroom, which I know is sometimes
how my sister watches thispodcast.
and it is a joy and a privilegeto be here with all of you and
to talk books and get excitedabout all the things.
And there are so many greatguests coming up that I can't
wait to share with you.
And I, uh, yeah, I'm excited foryou to be on this journey.

(04:04):
Uh, with me together.
We're all in this together.
Don't start singing.
I'm really sorry.
Alright, y'all, it was an honor,a privilege, a joy for me to
welcome Stacey Abrams and DanPelosi.

Jason Blitman (04:16):
Things good so far?
Good day.

Stacey Abrams (04:18):
So far so good.
Just finished taping this week'sepisode of Assembly Required my
podcast and

I think the full official title is Assembly
Required with Stacey Abrams.

is accurate and crooked Media Would greatly
appreciate the fact that you didthe official full

Yes.
Hello.
Thank you.
I pay attention, I do myresearch.
Stacey Abrams, welcome to Gay'sReading.
I'm so excited to have you.

I am delighted to be here.
Thanks for the invitation.

Here of course to talk about your book Coded
Justice the third in a seriesthat rumor has it slash I'm
pretty sure you officially saidon someone else's podcast that
there will be more.

There will be we have now inked a deal, and so
Avery has two more outingsguaranteed.

does that stress you out?

Not yet.
You know, the closer we get tothe, the date the book is due I
like to say they either want abook or their money back so they
get a book.

Yes.
Amen.
Oh my God, that's right.
That's so true.
I'll give you whatever you wantif that means I don't have to
give you your money

exactly.

So fun.
Okay, for the people, what isyour elevator pitch for Code of
Justice?

Coded Justice is a legal thriller about what
happens when good intentions forAI go wrong.

Yes, succinct.
Brilliant.
Good intentions.
I love that this is specificallywhat you brought up first.
Good intentions comes up so muchin the book, but it also comes
up a lot in how you talk aboutyour life, the way you live.
Your goal is to do.
Good in the world and I'vewritten an adaptation of

(05:53):
Pinocchio.
I've lived in the world of doinggood existentially in my head,
and I have never really landedon what it means to, to do good,
to be good.
What does that even mean to you?

So I adhere to a sort of stoic philosophy of
goodness, which is what are yourintentions?
How do you think about whatyou're trying to achieve?
Goodness isn't guaranteed.
So you may have good intentions.
That doesn't mean good will comeof what you do.
But you start by wanting what'sright for people.
You want their success, you wanttheir thriving.

(06:29):
For me it's, I want people tohave choices.
I want them to have free will.
And so much of my work isgoverned by how can I ensure
that the people I seek to serve?
Get to make their own choicesand get to have opportunity.
But the stoicism part is thegrounding part and part of the
existential crisis that you'redescribing, which is you can't

(06:51):
guarantee that what you do willyield what you intend.
And that's why intention is apart of the conversation.
I can't guarantee outcome, but Ican guarantee intent, and that's
the place where I have the mostcontrol and the most
responsibility.

And I think the.
Intention of the technology inthe book really is about health
equity,

Yeah.

which people, which I would argue is a good
thing.

Yes.

I almost said people should would argue it's a
good thing, but I guess that'snot true.
I would argue it is a goodthing.
How, how did you go aboutcreating this technology in your
brain, in your world?

So if we're gonna be on the elevator for a little
bit longer

I guess that's your right we're back to the,
we're right.
We're still in the elevator.

so Avery is a lawyer who has been involved in
some.
Political shenanigans not of herown making, and she thinks she's
in this now safe space ofcorporate law.
She is given a chance to workwith a client who is a former
retired major who's a veteran.
He wants to build a healthcarecompany that can serve veterans.

(07:59):
And for me, that was animportant conversation because I
wanted to talk about threethings.
One, healthcare, as you pointedout, healthcare equity.
We have a right to healthcare.
That is something I believe tothe core of my being.
And if there's a population thatproves it, it would be our
veterans.
They're the most sympatheticpopulation, or at least they
should be, and yet they haveperennially been denied.

(08:23):
The best healthcare, sometimeseven any healthcare.
And a lot of that has to do withthe complexity of delivering
healthcare to a population thatis so intentionally diverse.
And so the conversation is howdo you use a technology like AI
to deliver a fundamental needlike healthcare to a population
of deservedness veterans?

(08:44):
And the.
Pitch is unfortunately that evenwith the best intentions, the
technology trying to do good maynot always yield the best
outcome.
And so when the story opens, oneof our intrepid heroes meets his
end.
And the question is, who done itor what done it?

And what, so was it a matter of, this is your
opportunity to in a perfectworld, in a well-intended world,
this is your manifestation ofwhat technology could be used
for.

Exactly.
So in, in your question, what,how did I create it?
I spent a lot of time, I did alot of research into AI at
large, and then did deep rabbithole dives into the different
ways that healthcare is lookingat leveraging ai.
Looking and learning way toomuch about Com, compounding
pharmaceuticals, looking at theissues of diagnostics,

(09:38):
understanding how do you track aperson's history, because we
also know that your historyimpacts your healthcare, not
just.
What you did, but thesurrounding environment, your
epigenetics.
And so I did a lot of research,but the way I constructed the
idea was what would idealizedhealthcare look like for this
population?
Not 20 years in the future, butfive years in the future, three

(10:00):
years in the future.
And so I tried to make it.
As accessible as possible toanyone who's used Alexa or been
in a doctor's office recentlyand watched them not writing
things down because someone elseis recording it.
Exactly.
I went on websites and I lookedat different doctor's offices
that were using or claim to usethis technology, and then I
constructed what's the bestpossible version of this, and

(10:23):
then what are the gaps andwhat's the flaw?
And what could go horriblywrong?

Yeah.
Yeah.
It was horrible.
I had nightmares and I don'trecommend anybody read the book,
so

stop.
Stop.
Okay.
So for the person who's

I'm obviously teasing.
I'm teasing.
I'm teasing.
Of course.

But that's exactly, so part of the reason I
wanted to write the book and thefirst two, Avery Keen outings,
the first one had a clearantagonist.
The second book had a bit of ananti-hero.
The third story I wanted towrite, I really wanted to
explore when people want to dowhat's right, but they have

(11:02):
competing interest and sometimeseven their highest ideals run
afoul of just human experience.
Like we've gotta live with whowe've been and we've gotta
understand that to be what wewanna become.
And so I didn't want there to bethis clear right and wrong.
And particularly withtechnology.
Technology is a tool.

(11:23):
It is.
It can be used to build and itcan be used to destroy.
And we sometimes believe thattechnology is inherently going
to be good unless it's used bysome bad person.
But we've seen too often thattechnology has no value.
System.
Technology is imbued with thevalues of its creator, and

(11:45):
that's the other problem.
When the creators decide theydon't have to ob observe any
values or if the values they'reobserving are in a bit of
conflict, what happens to us?

Yeah.
And to be fair, I, I.
Obviously was kidding when Isaid no one should read the
book.
But what I am grateful for isthat it, it underlined and
confirmed the fact that myhusband and I don't use Alexa or
Siri or any of those things inour life.
And I was like, oh.
And at this moment, afterreading this book, I'm grateful

(12:18):
that that is the case, though.
The flip side, of course is,this is not a spoiler, but there
is a moment in the book where AIcan observe.
People's behavior and watchingsomeone's posture technology
said, Hey, if you standdifferently, your back will stop
hurting.
And then sure enough, that wastrue.
And I was like, oh, okay.

(12:39):
Yeah, Uhhuh, I want that.
I need that.

But that, and that was part of the fun of
writing is that we, we tend tothink about these things as
either so fantastical orfuturistic as not to be real,
but in our daily lives.
I, I point out there aremillions of Americans who, if if
I said to you, Jason.
I want you to give me yourbiometric data, and I'm the
government.
Just hand it over to me to useas I want.

(13:04):
Your instinctive reaction iswhat?
Exactly.
Okay.
The average person if someonefrom the FBI walks up and says,
give me your biometric data,you're gonna be like, show me
your warrant.
E.
Except we give it to TSA so wedon't have to take our shoes off
at the airport

Also, for listeners I gestured handed my
phone over to Stacey becauseSure.
That's all of our informationand our data is there anyway
but,

and so we've become so used to how
technology, how ai, and I wannabe really specific, how AI
exists in our world.
It's not just Alexa and Siri andchat, GPT AI is also gathering
every hotel check-in that you dowhen you give them that six
digit or nine digit number thatgoes into a database about you

(13:48):
when you are logging in and youdon't feel like remembering the
15th password that you had toupdate.
That site that you're going tois tracking.
And when we dismiss how easilytechnology either makes our
lives easier, we are missing howit could possibly make our lives
harder.

(14:09):
And so I don't want us to bescared.
I want us to be aware.

Yes, a hundred percent.
I saw a funny meme on Instagramthe other day.
Saying, I went something like Iwent to Oreo's website and
clicked accept all cookies andnow I'm waiting for my cookies
to arrive.
And I was like, of they, ofcourse the word is cookies'cause
it sounds delicious.
I'll take the cookies.
Oh my God.
So stupid.

(14:32):
But it makes me think of LittleShop of Horrors now that I'm
thinking about it.

Okay.
You gotta unpack that for yourlisteners.
I know exactly where you'regoing with it, but go ahead.

Just the concept for anyone who's unfamiliar with
Little Shop before is, there's aguy who works at a plant store.
He finds this really interestinglooking plant that, and then it
grows and starts to eat peopleand it takes over the world,
right?
That's

But he does find love in the

he does find love and there's some joy and it's
like gory and wonderful andterrible all at the same time.
And great songs.

Exactly.
And and the villain gets introuble.

Yes.
The bad guy.
Yeah.
Yeah.

But the plant itself, the plant is doing what
the plant was designed to do.
And if you were to ask, is theplant evil?
No, the plant is.
Perfectly opera is operatingperfectly given its design.
My issue is who's designing thetechnology?
What is their intention and whatare our guardrails?
And so I wanted the book to be aplace where people, one, could

(15:27):
learn the language because weare hearing all of this AI
language thrown about.

Sure.

When GR decided to become a Nazi, like they,
they had grok, apologized.
No grok didn't become a Nazi.
The programmers and the codepath and the LLM that it learned
from had all of this data thatfed to it, this legitimate
belief that it's okay to beracist and antisemitic and

(15:52):
instead of gr apologizing, itshould have been the programmers
and the developers saying, thisis what we did, but we've.
Imbued these technologies with asense of sentience or humanity,
where we should actually belooking at the real humans
asking, what were you doing?
Why did you do it?
And tell us how you're gonnamake sure it doesn't happen
again.
And part of what I want peopleto take from coded justice is

(16:15):
that the technology can be forgood.
Part of the story is that you'vegot this doctor who is trying to
serve her patients, and sheunderstands this information.
In fact, one of, one of thebenefits was that the technology
figured out that somebody wasadopted, didn't really follow
the protocols for revealing aninformation,

right.
But helpful,

yeah.
But it's helpful.
And the, and Rafe Diaz whocreated the technology, he did
it because.
When he was, in theater, when wehave veterans, when we have
military personnel who are indifferent parts of the world, it
would be useful to know whathappened to them there and for
that information to travel withthem.
It's good to have access.

(16:58):
The issue isn't, should we orshouldn't we?
It's how should.
Or what should we, but not if,because it's, we're too late for
if,

yeah.
No, it's

the plant's here,

right the plant has grown, the plant has eaten
some people already.
Now what are we gonna do aboutit?
Yeah.
And there's thinking about, oh,AI's listening, or my phone is
listening.
I said something at lunch with afriend and now I'm seeing ads
for it on Instagram and on onehand that can be helpful because
if you're talking about needingto buy sweatpants and that just,

(17:31):
it's a nice reminder, oh yeah Ineed to buy sweatpants.
And that is helpful.
It's just, anyway, I was, twodays ago, I was with a friend in
a car that could self-drive, andit was the very first time I, it
wasn't one of the ones.
That it like literally droveitself like they have in LA
right now.
But he was in the driver's seat.

(17:53):
But the car was doing all thedriving and I had never done
that before.
I was like, the fact that I'mabout to talk to Stacey about
this book in two days just feltso important.
I was like, wait, thistechnology AI is literally
moving me around the world rightnow.
And it was so bizarre.

Part of what I want folks to read the book to
think about, so in thatself-driving car, which you
know, as you pointed out,different than an autonomous
vehicle, your friend coulddecide to take the control back
and so there is, there's aguardrail.
Yes.
We love the convenience.
We love the fact that a lot offolks don't know how to parallel
park and we don't get theminutes back in our day or the

(18:37):
hours it takes them to figureout how to line up and move the
car.
Yes, it is a convenience forhumanity that there are
self-driving cars, but at thesame time.
What are the value systems thatthe car was trained on?
Is it that it should get to theplace it's trying to go fastest?
Or, as we know, for someautonomous vehicles and early
iterations, it couldn't see darkskinned people.

(18:59):
It couldn't see black,literally, and so the likelihood
for accidents in certaincommunities was gonna go up.
One of the things that worriesme, and the reason I think the
book is so timely is that, Trumpjust issued an executive order
saying that you can't use DEI totrain.
Ai.
That means you, it would beillegitimate to train an

(19:20):
autonomous vehicle to makecertain it doesn't, have the
wrong value system.
That speed doesn't trump safetyor that race can't be a
predicate that you ignorebecause you're trying to get the
car out there.
And I look at Joy Bini.
She's an author that I used formy book.
She did a book called a maskingai as a student.
She built a technology that shecouldn't use, and it's one of

(19:42):
the ways she started to uncoverthat AI has fantastical
possibilities.
But there are real worldconsequences if we don't pay
attention, which is not to sayget outta the car with your
friend.
It's just to make sure, not onlyare you in the car, but your
friend knows how to, take thewheel back if Jesus doesn't come
to do it for him.
So

Oh, that's what Jesus take the

there you go.

Okay.
Something, a concept that comesup in the book is the idea of
getting technology to write.
What does that mean to you?

so there are not just Overcorrections, but
there's a sense of perfectionthat we can sometimes ex expect
That can ignore.
Part of the beauty of humanityis the flaw and one of the
challenges with a technologythat is trained.

(20:33):
To be perfect is that we aren't,humans are deeply flawed, and we

you talking about?

not you, you of course, are perfect.

I know we are deeply flawed.
Yes.

flawed, and so if we're going to build technology
that serves us, we don'tnecessarily wanna build in all
of our flaws, but we need tounderstand them.
And those goes, that goes backto the question of guardrails.
What do we put around us?
What do we put around ourtechnologies?
What do we put around ourleaders so that they aren't
blinded to the possibility thattoo good can be as bad as not

(21:09):
good?
And part of the challenge whenyou're dealing with technology
is that it's not sentient.
It can't think, it doesn'tactually have a moral compass.
And we know that sometimes anextreme version of morality
brings us all the way around toamoral.
And that's just as dangerous andjust as harmful, so we've gotta
be thinking about it.

Yeah, you talk, you say it's not sentient, but
you in the book acknowledge thatwhile it might not be sentient
it, it can be clever.

Yes,

We can, but something that is valuable to us
as humans is that we cannegotiate with clever.
Do you have advice for that?

Here's how I think about it.
Look it's it's like dealing witha really smart teenager.
Or a freshman in college.
Okay.
Remember freshman year ofcollege when, or if you've met a
freshman from college, they comeback with perfect knowledge.
They now know everything.
They are the first people inhuman history to learn, and your
instinct is to be like.

(22:07):
No, you don't know everything.
But there is the joy of knowing.
They want that knowledge, thathunger they have.
There is the pride that theyactually learn something.
'cause you were very concernedthat was gonna happen.
But then there's also theresponsibility, and that's the
negotiation.
It's the responsibility oftrying not to thwart knowledge

(22:28):
and thwart learning, but to helpgovern it and help guide it.
And I think that's the placewhere we are weak right now.
The United States has no realrules.
Other nations have figured thisout.
The reason we have the cookies.
The only reason we have that isbecause Europe said we won't let
you use anything over hereunless you help us understand

(22:50):
what you're gonna do with it.
And so we have the weakerversion of it.
We've got a responsibility ifwe're going to lead an ai, then
we also have to lead withresponsibility and that.
That notion that clever isenough, that negotiation is
enough, you gotta negotiatebefore the fact.
As Avery discovers, negotiatingon the fly may not always work

(23:13):
out the way you want it

And speaking of, again, something else that
really stuck with me from thebook is that the, it is not
uncommon that one of the firstquestions we ask is how and
where.
Really the right answer inquotation marks is why.

Exactly, so I've borrowed this, I learned it from
a professor who said, she, shesaid there are three questions
like, what's the problem?
Why is it a problem?
And how do we solve it?
And most people do.
What's the problem?
How do I solve it?
And the example she used wayback, she said, look, you drive
by a car and you see someonestranded on the side of the

(23:51):
highway and you're a goodperson.
So you stop.
And someone said, and they'relike, oh my God, my car isn't
working and I need to get to,get to the hospital and, but I
need, I need to drive.
And so you jump back in your carand you race to the closest gas
station, you fill up a, a canyou come back?
And they're like, yeah, myengine's missing.
You solved a problem.

(24:12):
It just wasn't that problem

wrong problem, right?

and your instinct was good.
Your intentions were good.
Your actions were noble.
It just didn't work.
And so often because we don'task why?
Why isn't your car working?
Why do you need this?
We go from what to how, and ifwe miss the why.
We're missing the humanity ofit.
And that's the thing.
Most of us are why people, butwe just don't talk about it.

(24:36):
We talk about the what and thehow, but most of our therapists,
they learn about the why.
That's their

Why do you think we don't talk about it?

Because why is hard and why is complex?
What is easy?
Because what is complaining?
What is, this is the thing thatis irking me.
How is.
Again, it's not easy, but howmakes us feel smart?
It makes us feel useful.
It makes us feel engaged.
I'm gonna solve the problem.
Why is complicated?

(25:06):
Why requires investigation anddiscussion and analysis and
being wrong?

And I wonder, just thinking about my sister
who has a newly three-year-old.
Is why, is asking why traumafrom childhood where we would
ask why over and over again andkept getting shut down.
And so we all have this likedeep seated trauma of, we're not
allowed to ask why.

And that's exactly it.
And it's this trauma of askingwhy.
But the reason we are taught notto ask why is because people are
afraid of getting it wrong.

Or maybe afraid of answers.

Yeah, I mean, if you're the adult being asked,
why is the sky blue and youdon't remember eighth grade
science?
You don't wanna look stupid to athree-year-old.
So you either say, don't ask me,or you make up an answer.
And then the child's convincedthat God is in the sky with the
crayon, which is cute until theywrite that down in an essay.
Part of our responsibility is tobe comfortable not just with

(25:58):
why, but with the fact that it'sgonna take us time to answer it.
It's okay to get it wrong.
I've.
I believe very strongly inpracticing being wrong.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
You can work on inflection, youcan work on sentence order, but
we've gotta practice it.
And especially if we want ourtechnology to work, because one

(26:22):
of the things we talk about inCode of Justice is
hallucinations.
The technology isn't really goodat being wrong.
The technology AI hallucinates,it makes up information and as
we saw with Robert Kennedy, heput out a whole report that AI
generated and AI generated itsown sources.
So it has fake sources to make.
Its fake reports Sound real.

Right.

Because if we could have done that in eighth
grade, we would have, but thewhole point is if our technology
will hallucinate in order toavoid being wrong, what will
else will it do to avoid givingus the wrong answer or not being
sufficient to its programming?

And what's also scary about it is, you use
something like chat, GPT and.
Six times in a row it knows whatit's doing.
It does a good job and it's beensuccessful.
And then the seventh time it'swrong.
But you have, it has trained youto believe it, to be right.
Just the other day my husbandplugged something into it and

(27:22):
asked it a question about somewebsite that he was looking at,
and he sent me the same link andhe was like, oh, I figured it
out.
Chachi BT told me this.
And I was like no, it, that'swrong.
'cause I'm looking at it with myhuman eyes and my human brain
and I know.
What this, what I'm seeing andwhat we're talking about.
And so that was another one ofthose moments of just it being
startling,

But that's the perfect example of why it's so
important.
The technology gave him six goodanswers, so got him starting the
right direction.
Humanity says, but we gottadouble check.
So the Ja, the Jason of it, theJason of it says.
I can't exempt myself fromparticipation in my own future
and in my own solutions.
And there is an ease.

(28:01):
There's a convenience, like weare too often willing to
exchange convenience forhumanity.
It's easy to have this thing, ithurts if we have to do it this
way, so we will.
We will privilege, convenience.
And what AI does is it lets usprivilege, convenience to a
really high degree.

(28:23):
There was a recent article thatcame from Apple or the report,
and it basically analyzed thereasoning ability of ai and it
turns out not really good atreasoning.
It's good at patternrecognition.
It can take information as yourhusband discovered, and it
repeats the information enoughthat it creates a pattern.

(28:44):
Even if the pattern get, theyget it wrong.
It's like plaid plaid, zigzag.
But you've been, once you'veseen everything jumbled
together, it makes sense.
When AI was given reasoning pupuzzles when reasoning models,
which are different thanlanguage models, but when this
version of AI was told to solvecomplex problems, it basic.
Spun itself in circles, itcouldn't do the complexity

(29:06):
because it doesn't necessarilyhave the ability yet to reason
it has the ability to createpotential solution sets.
But when you give them pretty,not simple, but medium
complexity puzzles.
They're not great at it.
And that's again, the spacewhere I wanted code justice to
enter that.
Sometimes what we think isreasoning is just pattern

(29:29):
matching.
It's not that we know somethingand we figured it out.
It's just it looks likesomething we recognize and so
we're gonna go with it.
And that doesn't work out wellin relationships.
It doesn't work out well intechnology.
You shouldn't pick the thing youkeep picking just'cause it's the
thing you're used to picking.

But we're trained.
It's actually funny, the examplethat I just gave of my husband
and I is a version of code ofjustice, right?
Avery comes into be the humaneyes in the situation.

You're the hero

You said it, not me.
That's gonna be the soundbitefor this episode.
Jason, you're the hero.

and do it duly noted.
Absolutely.

Abrams said everyone, it's fine.
Okay.
When you were talking about thefreshmen who comes home from
college and as though they'vejust learned everything for the,
they've learned everything forthe first time, but it's they're
amazing and they knoweverything.
This was me with reading aboutsix years ago.
I started reading and I wouldtalk to people about it as
though it was brand new.

Huh?

Have you heard about this thing?
Reading.
I love reading books areamazing.
Did you know that?
They're amazing.
That is not the case for you.
You have been a reader yourwhole life.
You talk a lot about yourparents and your sister really
getting, being the springboardfor you in terms of reading.
You have also said many timesdifferent books that you love.
But in this moment, if you canbe a trailer for the Phantom

(30:49):
Toll booth, I have never readit.
So if you can

yes.

what is a Stacey Abrams movie trailer?

Oh my

why should I read it?
Tell me more.

Okay, so if you can't see my face, it's episodic
because this is one of myfavorite books.
So Norton Jester is the authorand the Phantom Toll booth is
the story of Milo.
He's a little boy who's bored.
He's sent to his room and heopens his closet door and out
comes this dog named Talk.
Talk is a clo a watchdog.

(31:20):
Meaning he actually has a clockin him.
And that's the beginning of thefun.
He's got a twin brother namedTick, who's back in the other
world, and Milo has to go withTalk to save basically the world
of words and the world of math.
And there's a huge battleraging.
And Milo has to be there to helpresolve the conflict.

(31:42):
And it is one of the most fun,thoughtful, I don't even call it
thoughtful, it's just the mostfun book.
But I read this book.
I was like nine and I rememberit.
To this day, it is one of mymost favorite books, and it does
not matter how old you are.
You want to get into the PhantomToll booth?

I love that and I love a story like that.
So I am, you have me already.
And it's short enough that I canslot it in into all the other
crazy reading I need to do.
But yeah, it alluded me.
I, like I said, I'm a late inlife reader, so some of these
classics I just completelymissed, including the Phantom
Tobo.
But you have said so much aboutit that I.
Needed to hear from the horse'smouth why I needed to read it.

(32:19):
And I am very excited about itnow.
Wait, so you said had you, haveyou read it since childhood?

I've read it again probably about 10 years
ago, but I was gonna say thisand I learned this from my mom
who's a college, when she was acollege librarian, she did
children's books.
Some of the most fantasticliterature was written for kids,
and we sometimes eshoo readingchildren's books because it
feels beneath us.
Good writing is good writing.

(32:47):
The question is what audiencewere they trying to reach?
But a good reader can findsomething and so I just wanna
celebrate you being willing toread broadly.
You may be catching up, but youare getting ahead, so celebrate
it and celebrate reading.
I love.
I read children's books.
I read young adult novels.
I read.
I read words.

(33:08):
I love good words, and I don'tcare who they were intended for.
If I can find something in itand it can make me happy and
make me enjoy my time there, I'mall in.

I love that.
Okay.
How do you go about choosingbooks to read at this point in
your life?
For fun

so my siblings, I have five brothers and sisters.
We actually recommend books toeach other.
You can tell.
Andrea the oldest, like she'sthe best recommender, but she,
because she has the most, she's,she reads broadly and she reads
voraciously.
Each of my siblings has a veryspecific book type they like, so
you just have to know whatyou're getting into.

(33:44):
Like one, is really weird,science fiction.
Another one likes somebody'sgonna die, so you know that
there's gonna be a body count.
Like it one is really intoromance romantic.
Another one really likes sciencefantasy, but not science
fiction.
And so it's great because I canhelp, I can aggregate from them.
So I, I look to

what's your, what would they say is your type?

I really, I do action.
So here's the challenge.
I read two books at a time.
So I read a fiction and anonfiction, and I cycle through
each of them.
So I read the waterfront, yIthink they're just usually tired
of me'cause I'm having them readmy books.
For

But you did say action for the, that was the
first word that came to your

Oh yeah.
So action, adventure, sciencefiction.
I really like a good, likeemotional fiction.
Not the, I'm not beingdisparaging, but I'm not a.
I write romance, but that's notthe thing I read the most, but I
want there to be some emotionalheft to the story when I get to
the end.

Yeah, I feel you.
Okay.
But the back circling back tohow you choose your book, so
everyone has their thing andthen you filter out, okay, what
am I in the mood for right now?

Yep.
And so I read the back of thebook to see what it sounds like.
I read the first.
Chapter because as a writer Iknow that sometimes you don't
figure out what you're doinguntil you get to the end of that
chapter.
But at the end of that firstchapter, if I have not, if I
don't have a reason to comeback, you might be sitting on my
to be red pile for the nextthree to seven business years.

(35:14):
And then, but I might mentionit, if someone says, get to
chapter three, then I'll go backand then I do read reviews.
I wanna know, not becausethey're gonna tell me what to
read or not read.
But I wanna know what someonethought they were gonna get from
a book.
And if the topic or the if it'sinteresting enough, I'll give it
a chance.
But I find that sometimesreviews, and this is not just

(35:36):
because I've been reviewed,critic, cultural critics are
important, but you've gotta knowwhat you like.
And sometimes what somebody elsedoesn't like is a reason for you
to pick it up.

A hundred percent.
My background is in theater andwe took a theater criticism
class in college and the thequestion we were told to ask is
what were they trying to do andhow well did they do it?

Exactly.

So the key really is understanding what they were
trying to do in the first place.
And not all critics can do that.

No, sometimes I'm like, did you read the back of
the book?
Did you know what it wassupposed to be?
Because you are absolutelyright.
It's none of those thingsbecause.
That's not what it said.

no, you said that reading should bring you joy,
even if it doesn't always bringyou happiness.
I think that is a very wisething to just remember as we are
embarking on our readingjourneys for everybody.
What journey do I wanna takethis on, right this second?
You call yourself stacey AbramsProfessional troublemaker.

Yes.

I relate to this so deeply.
Because this comes from notwanting to be a jack of all
trades, but master of none.
Can I don't want this to turninto a therapy session, but I,
this is, I, my background is intheater.
I wasn't a reader.
I'm now a reader.
I host a book podcast.
I do I feel like I'm a jack ofall trades.

(37:01):
How do you have time to writebooks?
How do you have time to savedemocracy?
How do you have time to bingewatch, fun television?
How are you a professionaltroublemaker?

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna push back on one thing
that you, I've heard you saybefore, and I'm gonna no.
So I did theater in co in highschool and a little bit in
college.
You read plays right?
you were a reader.
You may not have read novels,but there is in you, there's
always been this reader in youand the reason I anchor it there

(37:30):
is that we've gotta letourselves be more than the
labels tell us we are.

Yes,

that is you.
You may now have made readingfiction and nonfiction and
reading books the center.
But you came to it having alwayshad the curiosity of wanting to
know, and that's why theater wasso important to you because you
could see it acted out, but youhad to read the words to get
there.

I do boil it down to loving stories, loving
storytelling.
A hundred percent.
Yes.
So I'm a late in life novelfiction and nonfiction consumer.
It just takes a lot more words,but

It does, and

totally right.

but the reason, so you started with therapy.
So this is why I'm doing

Thank you.

for the folks listening who think I'm not a
writer, but I journal, or I'mnot an activist, but I
volunteer.
I call myself a professionaltroublemaker because I contain
all of the things, and I've beenvery comfortable since I was
young.
Being okay with being able to doall of these different things.

(38:34):
I can't do them all at once.
I can't do them all at the samelevel, but I've never let myself
believe that I can't, that I'mnot entitled to do as many of
them as I can fit into a day.
And so part of why I push backor not push back, the reason I
brought you in is that we,professional troublemakers are
the ones who decide that we aregoing to do all of the things we

(38:56):
think need to be done,irrespective of whether we're
invited to do it or not.
And sometimes when we are toldto go away.
I've been told to go away byreally good people really bad
people by those who are horriblyindifferent, and my
responsibility is to figure outwhat takes priority.
So the way I talk about it,there are things that are urgent

(39:18):
and important.
So Eisenhower actually said itfirst, but I borrow it from him.
So there are things that are,president Eisenhower said there
are things that are importantand urgent things that are
important, but not urgent.
Things that are urgent, but notimportant, and things that are
neither urgent nor important.
Important and urgent is where wespend most of our time.
That's the place where a lot ofthe work that people know about

(39:40):
that I do, that's a lot of thatwork.
And those are the things thathave to be done and they have to
be done now or someone will behurt.
There are things that areimportant, which are things I
wanna do, and I can't do itright at this moment, but I can
think about it, I cancontemplate it, I can engage in
it, I can read about it.
There are things that are urgentbut not important.
And usually it's'cause I forgotto do something or someone else
forgot to do something.

(40:00):
It's not important at all, butit's either gonna annoy me or
annoy them and they're gonnaannoy me.
If I don't help them.
So there's that list.
I spend the least amount of timeI can there, but then there are
things that are not importantand not urgent, and that's where
fun and rejuvenation and theability to go back into the
other three comes from.
And I am very comfortableplanting my flag there and

(40:23):
sitting myself on the couchthere because that's the place
where if you're gonna be aprofessional troublemaker, if
you don't get renewed for thefight, you can't do any of the
other stuff.
And so I just organize my day soI can be in all four quadrants
and deliver.

I love that.
I Do you ever, but what if youwant something urgent to be fun,

Yeah, urgent.

does that

yes, it can be urgent, but not important.
That's my point.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.
Urgent but not important.
Now, usually urgent, but notimportant happens because
someone else makes it urgent.
If

Oh, that's fair.

Yeah, because usually it's this, it's, and
it's usually someone who's callsthemselves your boss or who
gives you a paycheck and they'relike, this has to get done.
Or worse, it's the middlemanager who's telling you that
it's urgent but

most likely them.
Okay.
This is perhaps verycontroversial and I don't, I'm
putting you on the spot.
I'm so sorry.
You are quoted when chosenbetween these two things
Hamilton over wicked rereluctantly, but assuredly, tell
me more.

(41:27):
What, why, what would've tippedyou over into Wicked Camp?
What,

Oh no.
I chose Hamilton.

I know you, what you said, Hamilton, over Wicked.
What would've tipped you?
What

Oh,

You were reluctant to plant the firmly
say Hamilton.

I was contemplating, I love

I know you were I want to know more.
Tell me what is, what was thisthought process?
How did we get there?

theater matters, you and I both know theater
matters

I know this is important to

it's the first act and the third act that
everyone is good at.
It's the second act that you'relike, why?
And why did it drag?
Who wrote the songs?
Who was napping?
What happened there?
And so I had to think like IWicked is one of the most
coherent retellings of a storythat I've seen.

(42:15):
And the way they were able tostage it is fantastic.
The music is amazing and thelongitudinal storytelling is fan
is great.
But here's the thing withHamilton.

Yeah.
Tell me.
Oh.

there's not a Hamilton song that misses, there
is not a narrative thread thatcould have been pulled.
That doesn't get pulled.
And when you're talking about somany characters and trying to
knit together so many years ofhistory, if I compare the two
stories, what Hamilton does isjust, it's different than

(42:50):
Wicked.
And if I have to give priority,it's gonna be Hamilton because
that's for me both.
So it's triumph, tragedy, joy,depression, but it's also
aspirational and a reminder ofwhat we're capable of.

Yes.
Love.
Well Said.
Okay.
You've said multiple times nowtheater is important to you and
you've done it in the past.
What was, were you a performer?

Yeah.
So my,

Were you in high school?
Tell me more.
Who did you play?
What was your favorite role?
What did the critics say?

So we, we moved to Georgia when I was a junior
in high school, and we went to amagnet school, and my younger
sister, Leslie wanted toaudition for, and she sings.
I can sing, but I'm a, I've gota, I've got like a club voice.
Like as long as there's smoke

oh,

low lights,

and everyone's a little bit tipsy, right?
Yeah.

She's like a real singer, so she wanted to
audition, but she was shy.
And wanted me to go with her.
And so I was like I can act alittle bit.
So she auditioned to sing and Iauditioned to act, but I ended
up doing mo more of thebackground.
So I did lighting design fortheaters and I was a scab, did
not realize it because I did notgrow up in a place with a lot of

(44:06):
labor unions.
But the theater, we had atheater at the high school and
people would rent out thetheater and I would design the
lights.
And then later on when I startedlearning about unions, I'm like.
Huh.
I could have charged a lot morefor what they had me doing.
But we did the very first we didthe boyfriend so I'm always a
back, so we did live musicals,so I was a background player,
but we did do dolls, which wasthe play I start in.

(44:28):
And then when I got to collegemy last full year as a theater
maven.
I was the co-lead with SaulWilliams in the death of the
Last Black man in the wholeentire world by Suzanne, Lori
Parks.
And for people who don't knowwho Saul Williams is, you should
know he's amazing.
But if you saw the movieSinners, Saul plays the father
of the guitar player.

That is bonkers, and Susan Lori Parks is
incredible.
I, one of my first jobs in NewYork City was working as an
assistant at the public theaterwhere she was a playwright in
residence and would pass eachother all the time.
And one day when she likeacknowledged me and called me by
my name, I was like, wait, youknow who I am?

(45:10):
What's going on?
This is amazing.
But the, who knew this was yourprevious life.

that was it.
I decided that I appreciated andlove the theater, but it was not
the calling I had and I wasgoing to leave it for those who.
No, and not leave it for, I wasgoing to appreciate it from afar
and celebrate those who wantedto do it every day.

Yes.
I love that so much.
And you are right.
You are an avid supporter, whichis art needs, the support.
Where does your love of dadjokes come from?

I don't, I'm just deeply corny.
I really am.
It, I enjoy being amused and Ithink I.
It just tickles me like, what doyou call, what'd the fish say?
Who ran into the wall?
Oh, damn.

I'm so mad.
I like, I have such a love forDad jokes.
I so wanted to come up with theanswer quickly.
I would've not gotten there.
That is amazing.

there you go.

Oh my God.

I really do.
I love, I see.
I don't call them dad jokes.
I call them corny jokes becausethey, you give them dads are
good at it, but.
There's a whole universe ofterrible joke telling out there,
or just mildly amusing jokesthat become hilarious when they
are told with verb andenthusiasm, which is what annoys
my siblings so much about me.
I will call so excited and willlead them down the path and by

(46:36):
the end they want me dead.
And that is when I know I'vedone my job as a storyteller.

Yes, exactly.
I know.
It's like mini storytelling.
A good, a solid joke.
Oh, that's so funny.
Okay, back to Code of Justice'cause that is what we're here
to talk

Absolutely.

You said it is one of the most fun books you've
ever gotten to write.
Why is that?

It was the first book where all four of the gang,
so Avery, Jared Ling, and Noahare together and they're working
together intentionally.
They've always helped her, butthis time they're actually all
pulled in.
They have roles to play and itwas really fun writing them as
full characters and having them.

(47:16):
Reveal more of who they are,having them fight with each
other and having each characterhave an interaction with another
character they don't normallyengage with.
And so just writing teams,writing families, that's fun for
me.
And then having to think aboutai, I went down, I did research,

(47:37):
I did, courses online to reallymake sure I understood it
because I want people to feel.
More comfortable with theirquestions and it's hard to
believe that you have the rightto question something you don't
understand.
I want Code of Justice to bethis place where you can come in
and you can find yourself.
I also had fun messing withAvery's relationships and

(48:00):
teasing.
It was just, it was fun justwatching her navigate.
And yes, I know I wrote her andthat she's a creation of my own
mind, but like the bestcharacters feel like they are
separate because sometimes shewas making decisions.
I'm like, Avery, why are youdoing that?
And I had to figure out why.
And so yeah, it was just a lotof fun to meet her at this stage
and who she is.

Did you ever have the opposite where you felt
empowered by her?

Yes.
I've, I feel like I can talkabout AI now because she did the
research

And it's so interesting too.
Sorry, go ahead.

No, please.

I was just gonna say it's, people see you as this
figure, who I will say is savingdemocracy and.
To hear oh, and she just wrote athriller.
It's okay not only was it athriller, it's like book number
35 of the books that she'swritten and it's multiple
thrillers in but it isinherently political.

(48:53):
Does it feel political writing abook like a thriller like this?

It is.
But there's a difference betweenpolitical and partisan, and I
think people presume onerequires the other.
Our lives are political.
I tell young people when I talkto them like, oh, I'm not into
politics.
I'm like, politics is into youand it is a stalker.

Yeah.

So we, politics simply means that there are
things and forces controllingthe way you live your life.
My job as a storyteller, as anactivist, as a politician, as a
business owner, is to help tellthe best story and help you tell
your best story.
And thrillers are a great way todo that.
The very first Avery Keen novelwas about the fact that the

(49:35):
Supreme Court, there's someflaws in it that people are
starting to realize, and maybewe've given Homeland Security
way too much power.
So I talked about that.
Rogue Justice, it's about theelectric grid, which very few
people understand is notactually a grid.
It's a bunch of hope, like tiedtogether with the transmission
lines.
And I want people to understandthat.

(49:55):
And then you've got rogue,you've got coded justice.
AI is really cool and it isgreat that I don't have to type
in.
Every time that I can go andstand in front of a door and
give it just a little bit ofinformation, it can now tell me
all of these things until Irealize if I can get that
information about me, someoneelse can't.
And so it, it's all politicaland my mission with everything I

(50:17):
write, with everything I do.
And this goes back to your veryfirst question.
Or second one, I want people tobelieve they have choice.
I want them to believe they havethe right to information, the
right to decision making.
They have the right to choose.
And that's not, again, not apartisan decision.
It's the nature of free will.
And if we tell stories right?

(50:38):
Plays, if we do this right,people feel emboldened.
And when people are emboldened,they tend to actually do better
by folks because they don'tthink they have to fight over
scraps.
They think they can build,cathedrals.

Yeah, the other day I was at a restaurant and
was just like nice to the hostand they were fully booked and
yet.
An hour and a half later afterbopping around the city, they
got us a table and sent overfree dessert.
And I, there was nothing that Idid that was above and beyond.
I was simply just trying to be anice person and I was like, what

(51:15):
does this say about the state ofthe rest of the people that are
engaging with the people thatwork here that like me, just
like being status quo, kind feltabove and beyond to them.
And I was like, this is feelsscary to me.

It's scary, but it's also wonderful because.
In that moment, you didn't dosomething because you thought
you were going to get somethingfrom it.
You did it because you saw thehumanity in another, and
instinctively you knew.
You knew to celebrate it.
And in turn that led that personto doing something for you.
Not because they had to, butbecause they felt empowered and

(51:52):
emboldened to do it.
Good stories remind us of who weare and challenge us to be
better.
And that's why it's important tohave villains and anti-heroes
and heroes who are a littleflawed, but also to have AI that
tries to help you and I won'tgive

Yeah.

But it, that's the whole point that we are
better people when we rememberthat we are good people.

Yeah.
I wanna.
Total non sequitur, but justshout out the fact that there's
a, my heart will go on referencein the book and that is
important and everyone needs toknow that.
And if for nothing else, that'sthe reason to read the book.
But what were you gonna say?

Oh, no, I, it was one of my, it was, again, it was
one of the most fun lines to getto write.

But okay.
That similar to what I askedabout the Phantom Soul Booth.
Before I let you go, StaceyAbrams, I have never seen Star
Trek in any way, shape, or form.
Where do I begin?

Okay.
Having spent this time with you.

yeah.
Yes.

There would be many who would tell you to start
with the original Star Trek,because it's a little campy and
it's a little fun.
It's overly dramatic.
I'm actually not gonna suggestthat purist would tell, or the
secondary purist will tell youto start with next generation,
because that's thereintroduction.
But if you're not already asci-fi fan it could get you, but

(53:18):
it may not.
I'm gonna actually suggest youstart with strange new worlds.
Now my favorite of the Treks isactually Voyager because it's
the best captain.
I love Captain Janeway and shehas to uphold the values of the
Federation while beingcompletely cut off from the
Federation.
But the reason I think you'dlike strange New worlds, it's a

(53:39):
Star Trek for people who didn'tfollow all of the other star
treks.
It gives you just enough tobring you in.
It lets you see the development.
Of what the Trek world is, butyou didn't have to be present at
the creation.
And it's a lot of fun.
You don't have to memorize, youdon't have to know what Tachyon
field is, but you can get inthere and it's currently on

(54:01):
right now, it's gonna be acontained five season, so you
don't have to commit the rest ofyour life to it.
But strange, in the world'sseason one, I think you'd like
it.

Written down.
Amazing.
Thank you.
I deeply appreciate

There you go.
And every question requires a 15second answer.
I apologize.
I take this stuff reallyseriously.

I appreciate it.
Listen, I this is, again, sounrelated, but I wanna manifest
you on Celebrity Big Brother

oh.
I, so I watched Big Brother whenit came to the us, my older
sister and I, she was livingwith me at the time and or we
lived together at the time andit was like appointment tv.
We watched a lot.
I've, I will say that I'vefallen off, but I very impressed
that, or I'm taking myself veryseriously now that you suggest I

(54:46):
should be on there.

I for a lot of reasons, like in reading the
book I did think, oh, StaceyAbrams needs to be on Big
Brother slash She's probablyloves the sort of mind.
Human games like this.
And then of course, I learnedthat you like competition
reality shows.
So this is like a perfectmarriage.
So we're manifesting StaceyAbrams on Celebrity Big Brother.
Everyone go get your copy ofCoded Justice by Stacey Abrams.

(55:12):
Thank you for being here.
This is the season five premiereof gay's reading.
I couldn't have asked for abetter guest.
Thank you so much for beinghere.

This has been amazing and delightful, and I
just appreciate you.
Thank you.

I appreciate you too.
Thanks so much.
Dan Grossi, Pelosi.
Dan Gross.
Pelosi.
Pelosi.
'Cause I think all of grossPelosi would be in the quotation
marks.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi (55:40):
that.
Is first time anyone's evergotten it right?
Thank you.

Welcome to Gay's Reading.

Thank you.

Thank you for being my guest gay reader today
and to talk about your book.
Let's Party.

Oh, she's got a hard copy

do.

I have right here.

This is like such a weird thing to say.
The pages are like, they're verylike silky.
They're really nice pages.

I'm so glad you said that I,
production of a book is reallyimportant to me and I'm really
proud of this.
I'm proud of this one

this is your as we call it in the book world,
sophomore book.

my sophomore book.
Absolutely.

At the beginning you say every day can be a
celebration, so I'm wonderingwhat are you, what are we
celebrating today?

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelos (56:25):
Today, what am I celebrating today?
This week has been a celebrationof like first Tomatoes from our
garden.
And so Gus and I, my boyfriend,go out in the morning every
morning with our, in our robeswith our like coffee.
And I like water, the garden,and he like weeds.
And we like, we check and seeand we've been getting some of
our tomatoes are blushing, soit's really exciting.

(56:45):
And by blushing I mean they'returning like red or orange so
you can pick them instead ofgreen when they're not ready.
And so it's been a good week forcelebrating First Tomatoes.

They're not saying to you, oh, I'm naked,
blushing.
Not that

No, it's not.
It's a consensual blush.
It's for, it's about progress.
It's about hope, it's about thefuture.
They're saying, I'm ready foryou to cook with me.
And I do have a whole recipe, awhole menu in this book that's
focused on tomatoes.

I, Dan, my heart is also a tomato.
I was so excited.

She read.
She read the book.

Listen, I don't mess around on Kay's reading.
Even the cookbooks I make sureto read.

I was so honored to be as part of
Gay's reading a cookbook to beon.
I wasn't sure what the limitswere, but then in your question,
prep, it was like you could readanything.

You can't read anything.
Since

can.

since you're bringing it up, Dan, what are
you reading?

So I am not like I am.
Very much in love with anddating a reader, like a proper
reader.
Like he reads, he's reading fivebooks at once.
He's also reading a magazine.
He's also like reading somethingabout the book he's reading and
then he is so I, but I am so notthat person.
I've never been a reader.

(58:07):
It is so hard for me to read afull book.
I have to be like sequesteredand it's like horrible.
But I read a lot.
I consume a lot of media.
Yeah.
And I read a lot, but it's likevery short.
But what's really funny is whenI read this, it was like, what
are you reading?
And I was like, I'm constantlyreading the Dr.
Braun's soap bottle in theshower.

(58:27):
But that is like the thing thatI've been reading the longest.
That's my Bible.
Like I consulted often, butthat's like LO Ellie.
But it's true.
Like I'm like this fuckingbottle.
And then do you wanna do youwant, do you wanna pause and.

I'm, I have so many things to say.

Oh, okay, great.
You,

I am, I need to talk to Gus and find out what
five things he is reading.
I'm so curious.
That's a separate thing.

he should be a guest on your
podcast.
'cause he's also he's acomedian.
He's but that's a

that's a separate thing.

Yeah.
But.

I re reading the Dr.
Bronner's bottle.
I have two things to say aboutthis.
One, it from afar givesreligious, but then you actually
read it and you're like, wait,this isn't religious.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelos (59:15):
You're like power to the

Yes, exactly.
Thing two, it takes meimmediately to my childhood when
we didn't have phones.
And so you're like sitting atthe table eating cereal in the
morning

yeah.

you're reading the cereal box, or you're like
sitting on the toilet, likelooking around the bathroom
being like, what can I consume?

This is wild because I have been
truly going down the road ofwhat did people do?
Do you watch the Gilded Age?

No.

All right.
First mistake.
But there, there is, there'scarrot.
Like you're watching a showthat's set in like the 18
hundreds and you're just,there's so many scenes where
everyone's just sitting in aroom and there's nothing to do.
And there's one scene where,like this season, one of the
like younger girls is likeprotesting her wedding and she

(01:00:08):
sits in her room for two weeks,won't leave it.
And I'm like, what?
The two weeks in your room?
If that's my dream now.
I'm like, put me in my room fortwo weeks.
Like I'm in

Jason Blitman (01:00:18):
with nothing to do.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelosi (01:00:20):
Like I'll watch every show.
Like I'll watch the comeback 45times, let's go.
But what did Gladys Russell dofor two weeks in her room in 18,
like 92.
She read like the same bookover.
It's like crazy.
But there you go.
She was a reader.
She's Gladys Russell from theGilded Age as a reader.
And then I have a third thingthat I when, like my close asked

(01:00:42):
me what I'm reading so my likeporn is not necessarily video,
it's erotic fiction.

Yes.
This is

I read, yeah, so I read do you
know Nifty, the website?
It's Nifty nifty.org, and it'san erotic fiction website.
It's mostly gay and lesbian andthat world.
And there's just like deepcategories and much like the
period dramas of like film andtelevision.
I need I love like a storyline.
Like I will be like 50 chaptersdeep into some like erotic

(01:01:16):
fiction on Nifty, and I likeknow the characters, like that's
what gets me

that's but also that is.
Reading.
You're

Oh, it's, oh,

characters.
I'm obsessed with this.

No, it's the best reading.
It's like those are my likenovels.
It's like serves two purposes,but it's also like you really
get in there with these peopleand you like know what they're,
you like know why they'refucking, or why they're not
fucking, or like what they're

What they're into, what

And by the way, erotic fiction is so
much more than just sex.
It's like the buildup.
It's the it's really cool.
I mean it's very much like thegals who read the, like
paperbacks with Fabio on thecover.
I'm that girl.
I love it.

Are, does, how does, I'm curious how nifty
works.
Do you know who wrote them

Yeah.
Yeah.
And I have like favorite authors

That's what I was gonna say.
You must know who's who you vibewith

And you could like deeply search to
such a level of specificity,like this is not for you, but
there's like a celebrity like,and not in a creepy way, maybe
that I don't

But in like a fan fiction,

It's like fan fiction.
It's it's all fantasy and it'sall there's also very much it's
very like before every story,it's like this story contains
like these topics.
If this isn't for you move on.
It's very it's not likedisgusting, smart.
It's like very adult and I likelove it.

I am obsessed with this answer.
This has never come up before

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelos (01:02:38):
Really

hundreds of people that I've talked to, and
I love it.
People, there's, I think shameis part of it.

No, no shame

Yeah.
No, I love that.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelo (01:02:48):
because it's I'm sorry.
What's better than like gettingoff?

Amen.

Pick your poison, not poison.
Pick your medicine.

Pick your journey.
Pick your,

pick your fight song.
What's your fight song?

what's your fight song?
That's a great question.

a good question.
It's a really fucking goodquestion.
I got really high for four daysstraight in Ville.
Do you know Ville?
Northern California?
It's like a gay town in theRedwoods with my friends.

literally just told me they were on vacation
this past week in Kernville.

It's the best.
When I lived in San Francisco,Gardenville was my Palm Springs,
so we would go up there all thetime.
And I've a bunch of friends whoon cabins there and five years
ago, pre pandemic, we were sostoned and we just kept asking
each other what our fight songwas like on a loop.
And it was like the funniestthing.
And then we would play, fightsong, which is like the worst,
best song in the whole world.
I've announced both of my booksto a soundtrack of Fight song

(01:03:42):
because it's just like the songthat I'm like, this is hell, but
it makes me cry it's

This is also, so not only do I read the book,
Dan, but I consume content.

Oh

I know that you've been talking about this
for literally years.
This is not a new thing.
You said this on gay ass podcastin 2023.
This is.

It's

rooted feeling for you and I'm, I love it.

It's huge.
It's like I have a list of sixsongs that I play and all my
stories, and they're like thesoundtrack to Gross, and that's
like the number one.

So that is a great segue into asking some of
these guest, if these brand newguest gay reader questions that
you are the first person thatI'm asking.
If the chapter of your life thatyou're in right now had a title,
what would it be?

Don't get your pantry in a bunch,
which I love

Yes,

because I, my pantry is like very much
in a bunch right now.
I am so busy.
I'm so busy.
I'm I'm the luckiest.
Person in the whole world.
I'm living my dream, I'm workingmy absolute ass off.
I get to write cookbooks.
I'm writing for New York Timescooking.
I'm doing all these incredible.

(01:04:56):
Projects with brands.
I am like doing merch collab.
I have so much fun stuff that'sgoing on and it means that sort
of everything just feels likeinsane.
And I am always trying to makeit better.
I'm always reorganizing myspices.
I'm always like figuring out newcontainers to put things in.

(01:05:18):
I'm always checking theexpiration date on things like I
am.
When I run out of special K, redberries, watch out, like I'm
crying, so it's very much likefood centered, but I think that
pantries are a metaphor forevery, like they, I'm a pantry
girl.
I grew up with pantries, like myfamily had pantries.

(01:05:40):
Then of course the sort of likethe pun of don't get your
panties in a punch is just so

Yeah.
No, that's a good

Or twice or whatever so don't get
your pantry and a bunch Is my

chapter.

that this chapter or the title or,
yeah, this chapter in my memoir.

Yeah.
And what would your memoir becalled?

So I have long referred to myself as
a meatball making meatballsbecause I'm like a teddy bear,
gay, like beefy boy proudly.
So then I was like, I don't knowif it would be called a meatball
making meatballs, but then I waslike, oh, what if it's called
like in a very, like sassy butsincere way, like putting the me

(01:06:19):
in meatball could be cute.

obsessed.
How many times could I say I'mobsessed on one episode?
This is, it's been too many

I think I've, I'm happy that
you're happy

putting the me and Meatball.
I love that so much, and I wouldread it.

I think it's really good.
I think I'm gonna start, I'mgonna start writing it.
There's many, there's there'svery strong gross iconography.
There's like the teddy bear,which I'm like wearing my teddy
bear shirt that I'm the teddybear's holding up thing in
meatballs.
And then there's the meatball.
So it's and then there's likethe tomato,

Okay.
I'm gonna take your brand andput it on your memoir title
because your last two books arelet's books.
So your memoir should be, let'sput the Me and

let's put the Me and I know, but in
the same I just, while I am on aLet's Journey, I don't know if
it's going to make it all theway to

Fair.
You don't need to be fullycommitted to the lets,

I do already know, like the, and
we'll talk about this'cause inthe next question, this ties in.
So let's just, we'll, yeah.
But yeah, I do think, lets, issticking around for a while?
Should I be blessed enough towrite more books?
I have a lot of Lets things Iwanna, let's a lot,

I want a Lets a lot.
That's another great memoirtitle.

I wanna let, and then the final
book will be, let's wrap it up.

Let's get outta here.
So you were not a big reader,but is there a book that has had
a big impact on you in some way?

So books one through 13 of Einer
Garten's Cookbook Catalog.
Are the books like Those are thebooks.
I have some books, like somebooks that I've read that I've
like learning from Las Vegas waslike huge for me in college
because I went to design schoollike.
There's some real thearchitecture of happiness is
like a beautiful book, but nah,it's really like the in ina

(01:08:12):
Gardens the bare cookbook isincredible.
I would say.
Barea parties literally inspiredlet's party, right?
Yeah.
So I am like, there was, I waslike, in this New York Times
pandemic, like career pivotarticle, and I said I want to be
known as like the bear fuckingTessa, like BEAR.
And so I like reclaimed thebear.

(01:08:33):
And I'm not doing like I'm adrag, she's like an icon.
So I would say bear has a party,let's party.
And then, but Barefoot at Homeis just my favorite.
It's so good.
It's so good.
It has so many good recipes asthe peanut butter and jelly
bars.
It has the coconut it's justlike such a good book.
But then she has so many other,she's like cooking for Jeffrey,

(01:08:55):
like she's going to Paris.
It's just like such.
It inspired me to it inspired meto in my brand.
And so those are the books.
Also, the thing I love aboutAna's books is and by the way,
every gay man is obsessed withIna Garten.
So I'm not unique obviously, andI don't need to be, but my first
book was like all my familyrecipes, how I grew up Italian
American.

(01:09:17):
So like I was raised to be likean Italian American comfort food
like king, right?
But as far as American comfortfood that was ina she taught me
how to like really understandAmerican comfort food.
And that's my brand is likeItalian American comfort food.
Groceries in the middle, andyeah, I just really give her
credit for that.

(01:09:38):
And of course, the TV and justin general, but her TV show.
But yeah, those are my books,

those are great books and important books and
books that I think a lot morepeople own than a random, novel.
I think that's, those arestaples.

yeah.
Yeah.

I wanna talk more about you.
So in my gross research, I neverheard where Gross Pelosi came
from.
I surmised, but

it?

no, I know you started the brand during COVID.
I heard a lot of lore, but Inever heard gross itself and
where it came from.

So when I was in college, which was
like 2000, 2000 to 2005 I wentabroad and all my friends, when
I was, I would call back to likemy friends.
I'd be like, call us at thistime.
We're all gonna be in like aroom together, like partying.
So I like called back once andthey were all so drunk and it

(01:10:39):
was right, like when never beenkissed was like a thing with
Josie Grossie.
Drew Barrymore's character.
So they all were like wasted andchanting like Gross Pelosi.
Gross Pelosi to me and like themost loving, we miss you way
possible, but also like raggingon me.
And so that was really funny tome.
I was like, oh my God, grossPelosi's so funny.

(01:11:01):
I love it.
It became like my nickname.
But this was also a time wherewe had to start branding
ourselves through.
First it was Friend Stir, whichI don't know how old you are,
but Friendster, you may rememberher.
So it'd be like Friendstir.com/like grossy pelosi,
right?
And then I would be like, facemyspace.com/grossy pelosi

(01:11:21):
facebook.com/gross.
And then it was like, and thenInstagram came out and I was
still giving gross Pel, so Ijust made it.
That and then, it became thiskind of like funny thing, but
until the pandemic, I only hadthree or 4,000 followers
Instagram, so it was like funnywith my friends and whatever.
But then I just kept it becauseI think.

(01:11:43):
As I through the pandemic becamethis like person or this like
resource in food, like the thingthat surprises me most daily is
how much anxiety cooking givespeople and how serious they
consider it, right?
And I'm like, oh girl.
Like food is just meant to belike fun and silly and burn
shit, and taste it If it tastesbad, like that's good to know.

(01:12:06):
Fuck it up.
Who cares?
Laugh at yourself.
Spill something on the floorlike that's cooking to me.
It's like the scene in familyStone where Sarah Jessica Parker
is making Estrada, and then thethree of them like split all
over the place and fall on theground.
And then they start laughing.
That's gross Pelosi.
We're laughing, we're cooking,we're crying.
It's not a perfect science.
You should be funny and so I waslike, oh my God, the word gross
with a food, it's not it's likejust makes you think and

(01:12:29):
hopefully allows you to takeyour bra off a

It allows it, it provides an opportunity to not
take it too seriously.

yeah, like not at all, like just have
fun, like I write recipes,there's a hundred in this book
I've written, a ton.
And no one, like people readthem and then they don't follow
'em.
So I can't take my job thatseriously.
I'm just trying to get you inyour kitchen.

That's really fun.
I was not much of a cook or muchof a reader for that matter
until a few years ago, but itwas because of Blue Apron that
really got me into cooking.
Like

I love that.

I was it taught me how to do it, and then
suddenly I was much moreconfident to make mistakes and
have fun and play around and

Yeah.
And I think I think, I dunno,that's just the joy of it for
me.
So I kept gross Pelosi and thenit just became this kind of
brand.
It's confusing sometimes, butyeah,

I don't think so.
It's, that's why it's Dan Gross.
Pelosi.
Pelosi.

yeah.
Dan Gross Pelosi.
People.
It's so funny.
It's just funny, when you have alarger or like a, I don't have a
huge audience, but I have enoughpeople for me and it's great,
but they call me all kinds ofthings.
It just doesn't.

as long as I don't call you late for dinner.

uh, Thank you.
That's my grand, my grandfather.
My grandfather taught me thatearly

Uhhuh s speaking of the book, something that I
find so special about this book,about cookbooks in general is
the.
The homage that you get to payto people that you love.
So in this book you have Gus,you have his mom, you have your
dad.
What is that like getting tofeature these loved ones in a
book like this?

It's the best.
It's this is what we dream of.
Like I am a mama's boy.
I am a family boy.
Gus is a mama's boy.
Like we just like love.
We are two people.
When we met, it was very clearthat we like, really like our
families and that reallyimportant to us.
And that's just always been partof this.
Like I am the first person totell you that, like I'm not a
professional cook.

(01:14:28):
I don't know everything.
And I learned so much of what Iknow from so many other people,
including my family.
So I think it's really importantto not, we're not in the kitchen
by ourselves, even if we areright.
People early on told me that theway I write my recipes makes
them feel like I'm in thekitchen next to them.

(01:14:49):
And to me, I was like, oh mygosh, wasn't my intent, but it
completely makes sense thatwould be the way that I would
naturally write a recipe becausethis is how I learned how to
cook, right?

You didn't learn how to write a recipe.

yeah, I learned how

wrote a recipe based on how you learned how to
cook.

Yeah.
And so it was really like, I waslike, that's it.
Like it is about the peoplewho've taught me all the things
I know, which allow me to standnext to you, however that in
your kitchen and be there withyou and help you cook.
And so that's just it, like it'sthe best thing ever

speaking of loved ones and family, I don't, this
is so funny I don't want to saythere's a spoiler'cause it's a
cookbook, so there's nothing toquote unquote spoil, but what I
will say is.
Seeing the pictures of BIM

Yeah,

got me emotional, and I don't wanna say more than
that.
I'll let people get the bookand,

Yeah.
He was in the first book and Idedicated the first book to him,
and

but it was it was the recipe and then the photos
right after that really got me.

Yeah, I'm actually going to see him on
Saturday and I'm gonna make therecipe for him and bring it to
him.
I've made it for him before,but, and he came to my house for
the photo shoot and he's just sofunny, refuses makeup, like he's
a hundred and 104 refusesmakeup.
I put that cardigan on him.
My friend Eddie, and I likeEddie styled all the looks and
we had some options and it waslike, it's like a pink cardigan

(01:16:13):
and he's this is a woman'ssweater.
I was like, just keep it on.
And then 15 minutes later, he isI'm never taking this sweater
off.
He was just like, so cute.
And then he is like eating thepie.
And then suddenly he, everyone'soh shit.
He just picked it up.
Takes it up with his hands andis just like shoving in his
mouth.
He's just the best.
And so that energy and everyone,people follow me for me, but

(01:16:38):
they really follow me for likemy mom, MPY, Gus's mom, gus it's
just, it's a family affair.

Yeah.
Where did your love of dips comefrom?

Dips.
Okay.

you like that segue?

Yeah.
Yeah.
No, there's a whole, there's awhole chapter.
I was just actually I'm gonnamake some of those this week, so
I was just look reading throughthem again.
My dips of the pool chapter isreally inspired by my very
strong like vacation house mom.
Energy summer's on fire islandsummer's in P town, winter's
doing puzzles and cabins a dip.

(01:17:13):
It's a great way to feed peoplein the middle of the day when
you're we know we're gonna havea big dinner or we had a big
breakfast and as a mom or avacation house mom, they're just
great to have in the fridgecause you can just pull'em out
and dip.
And then what I also love aboutdips is, you can use them for
other things.
So all the dip recipes in mybook tell you many other things

(01:17:37):
you could do.
Like you could use them on meator fish, or you can use it for
breakfast or you can put it onice cream or you can, make it a
little bit thinner and it's agreat salad dressing.
So I just think that it's like,they're like secret weapons, but
the energy of the chapter isafternoon by the pool ledge of
the pool.
There's just like a spread ofdips.
You're in and out

And a bean dip is perfect for a pool day because

because the best place to fart is in a
pool.

yes, we all know that.

We all know that.
Like that, that made it in,right?
It did.
Obviously.
Yeah, because my editor, I waslike, oh, my editor's gonna edit
this out.
But she actually thought it wasreally funny because I love
farting in a pool.
It's like the best.

It is.
There are so many pros.

Yeah.
So many

It is.

Yeah.
Yeah, it's just great.
I'm glad you caught that.
It's really important.
So I call that dip beanie bikiniDip

Yes, you do.
I see I read, I do my research.
I am prepared.
I didn't know where Grossie camefrom, but I knew

that, that's in my, that was in my,
that's in my first book and it'salso on my website, but it
doesn't really matter'cause it'sbetter from my mouth.
Also, I will tell you one thingthat I hear about my, I heard
about my first book, which mademe very happy, is that not only
is it a good cookbook, but it'sa good read book.
Like people really like to justread it.
And so I had people tell me thatthey read it from cover to

(01:18:58):
cover.
At least the head notes and allthe writing.
I don't know if they read theshit though, like ingredients
and all that but yeah, like

enough.

I really think of it as like I'm
not just like writing the headnotes to be like, celery is
yummy.
Like I somehow, I'm like, celeryis was with me since birth and
like my,

celery is yummy and I wanna try that Mai with
the celery.

Oh yeah, that's good.
The drinks are reallyinteresting.
We went wild.
The phone, the Nana's Negroni islike, has the tea.
It's just all good.
It's also good.

That I am.
It's a fun, the, I'm glad we'recircling back to tomatoes
because I would say, in flippingthrough the book, the one thing
I'm like, I want to make thisyesterday, is the icy thing

Oh, the tomato granita, I have to
tell you.
There's five recipes in the bookthat I'm like, they fucking
slap.
That one is unreal.

I love tomatoes.
It sounds so good.
It looks so easy to make

It's so easy to make.
You have to kinda scrape itevery few hours, but it's so
easy.
And also like this book comesout, like literally, it might as
well be called like tomato day,like September 2nd.
Like tomatoes are just likebursting.
So I'm gonna be like everyonemake all the tomato.
The Tomato Girl.
Summer chapter?

and this episode is coming out on September 2nd.
So

it's coming out on Pub

on pub day, everyone get its party.
Go buy to tomato, right?
Go to the store, get the book,go to the grocery store, get
your tomatoes and then make allthe tomato things.

All the tomato recipes and
everything else.
Make that tomato garita.
Make the, oh the sunshine pasta.
No cook.
It's so good.
You could make it with sungolds.
You can make it with cherrygrape.
It's delicious.
It just, oh, the tomato pie.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
This one's such a fun book towrite because it's I love,
people always ask me like, howdo you make a menu?

(01:20:50):
Like they're like, I wanna makethis one thing, but what should
I serve with it?
And I'm like, oh, this is myfavorite thing in the world talk
about.
And I also love, like people arelike.
People always throw like groceryparties.
So they'll make a bunch ofrecipes from like my books or
whatever.
So I'm hoping that then peoplewill use these menus to throw
those parties, which is great.
So it's not just like you haveto make everything, but you can

(01:21:10):
invite other people.
Like I'm like, Hey, come to myparty, make this recipe.

Brilliant.

Dan "GrossyPelosi" Pelos (01:21:17):
people like that.
Like you can dummy mommy, be adomestic, pop

A dummy mommy.
And the dom is domestic.
Yes,

I'm a, when I say Dom top, it stands
for domestic.

it's domestic.
Yes.
Just like our friend EricWilliams, his dad texted him
yesterday to say that he madeyour sauce.

no, I, and he sent me that photo and
I was

How cute is that?

made my sauce.
The cutest thing in the wholeworld.
It's just too much.
Like people just making myrecipes, like I just get choked
up.
It's so fucking sweet.

When I make the tomato stuff, I will send you
pictures.
To send us off.
I will.
I wanna thank you for being myguest gay reader today.

Yeah.
Thank you for having me.
This is so fun.

I can you give a what's the right word?
A reading, a line reading of howyou tell your guest it's time to
go home

Oh, sure.
When you're ready for the partyto be over nicely.
Tell everyone to leave.
My go-to announcement is, thishas been so fun, but it's
approaching my bedtime.
Most people will be relieved andready to make their exit.
The party never ends.
Crowd will keep going somewhereelse.
They have, they don't have to gohome.

(01:22:33):
They just can't stay here asthey say.

Perfect.
Dan.
This has been so fun, but it'sapproaching my bedtime.

same.
I'm so, I'm so relieved you saidthat.

Perfect.
Thank you so much for beinghere.

Thank you.
You're the best.
Thank you Stacey.
Thank you, Dan.
Thanks to all of you.
As always, if you like whatyou're hearing, please share us
with your friends.
Follow us on social media, likeand subscribe.
But give us a five star reviewand I will see you next week.
Have a great rest of your day.
Thank you so much.
Bye.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

24/7 News: The Latest

Dateline NBC

The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Stacey Abrams (Coded Justice) feat. Dan Pelosi, Guest Gay Reader

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}24/7 News: The Latest

Dateline NBC

The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

All Episodes

Stacey Abrams (Coded Justice) feat. Dan Pelosi, Guest Gay Reader

24/7 News: The Latest