Ring doorbells at the ready! (with Bonnie Garmus)

0:00Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most advanced heart rate sensing in an Apple Watch. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, could tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. For general wellness purposes only, not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor or treat medical conditions. Requires iPhone 11 or later. Hi, this is Nicaela Matthews-O 'Conway from SideHustle Pro.

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1:10Enter Weight Loss by HERS. It's designed to support you in reaching your goals. And HERS now offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the WeGovi pill and the WeGovi pen. Even better, with a range of affordable GLP-1 options, HERS makes it simple to find an approach that fits your needs and your budget, if eligible. You'll get a treatment plan personalized to you and unlimited dosage changes as needed. It's weight loss designed to work with your life. Ready to reach your goals? Visit ForHers.com slash eligible to get personalized, affordable care that gets you.

1:44That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash eligible. ForHers.com slash eligible. Weight loss by HERS is not available in all 50 states. Wegovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wegovi clinical study information, and restrictions, visit ForHers.com.

2:18Right, right. That is my paper shuffle, like what they used to do at the end of the news, but they don't do it anymore, do they? because it's completely paperless. Completely paperless. It's quite a good signifier. Yes, I agree. Of wrapping up. I very much agree. Well, that signified us commencing. Yeah, and now you see at the end of the news people don't really know what to do so they pretend that they're typing something into a laptop but they're not doing that at all. And you try and work out, don't you, what it is. Are they doing a control-alt-delete? What are they doing? What would yours be?

2:52I'd maybe just fiddle with a button. Would you? Yep. Okay. Didn't have you down as a fiddler? I am a bit of a fiddler. Are you? Yes, it's actually a trait I detest in myself. Okay. We've still got papers, haven't we? Yes. I took some home with me last night. Yes. And then I realised when I saw them by the side of my bed, I thought, oh, no, I'm not meant to bring any of us home, am I? But it's just, it's me and my daughter and Nancy, Barbara, Brian and Cool Cat in the house at the moment. Nobody else is there, so nobody's really bothered. But it did mean that I could go back through some of the emails we've received over the last couple of weeks.

3:33And it has been such a bumpy ride. I kept some back thinking Jane was going to be back next week and then et cetera, et cetera. So we are going to go back to a great name for a cesspit emptying business, which is in the annals of time, isn't it? But this one came in from Lisa, who says, Hello from Lisa the Posty, regular truck in the Meridian area. is success. Do you get it? Suck. Success. Best avoided hanging around it in the summer heat. You. That is very good. That is very good but disgusting. It is. Always revolting. I don't think you can have... No, maybe that's true. ...a slogan or a name for a cesspit emptying business that isn't a little bit...

4:21Because once you know what it is, it's just, oh, right. Yeah. But the problem with exploring this vein or reopening it is that any time you laugh, it sends you off in a coughing event. I know.

4:35So are you sure you want to do this? No, I'm only going to do incredibly serious things for the rest of this week. Eventually the cough will go. Although there are people... You do hear quite a lot of the hacking cough at the moment in and around the London town. And there is a rumour, it's just a rumour, that it's come in from Australia as all of those Australian, lovely, lovely young Australian people, many of them living in the East London environment and they popped home for a little bit of family time over the summer and they came back with a buck. I don't resent them at all. This one comes in from Jackie who says, lovely ladies, never girls.

5:16I found so many things you said over the last few weeks have resonated completely with me. I shouldn't be surprised as you're both of a similar age to me with some similar lived experiences. picking up just a few, boys reading, the book club and going grey. So firstly, my son and reading. He is 23 and living in the fast lane in London. I tried everything to get my children to read. I read to them, with them, bought them suitable books and was often reading around them. My daughter read occasionally and has now really embraced it at 25 but all was in vain as far as my son was concerned. He'd simply never picked up and read a book.

5:49So you can imagine I almost fell off my chair when a couple of weeks ago he told me he'd picked up and could not put down Fatherland by Robert Harris. Have you read it? No, I haven't. Neither have I. Okay. End of the conversation. I was amazed, such a first book on asking further questions. He said he liked factual history. So agreeing with a recent emailer on this, as you can imagine, I couldn't be happier. This will open up a new world to him. Now, we should look up Fatherland. I really love the writing of Robert Harris. I'm not as good at reading his classically based tomes so the one that's out at the moment which is Agrippa I haven't read that I think Jane might have given that a go I think she did give it a go but I don't think it gripped her Okay, so Fatherland hang on a sec 1949, so no, it's more modern history Well I'm sure that's absolutely brilliant and you're right, what a first book what a first book to go into next somebody recommended The Wager by David Gran and you passed this by too quickly it is an amazing true story of survival after shipwreck it has an incredible twist to it it's slow at the start but I literally will never forget reading it I think that was recommended by your beau or Hannah's beau it was, it was my boyfriend and someone else also emailed in to say that we shouldn't overlook it which makes me feel a bit bad because whenever my boyfriend tried to speak to me about it, I overlooked him.

7:21Did you? Yes. Right. Well, maybe he just needs to listen to the podcast more where he'll feel more heard, Eve. That's just what this podcast is for. Making men feel heard. Making young men feel heard. It's absolutely the reason I get up in the morning, Eve. Finally. They don't have anywhere to go. Do I am quite sympathetic to the plight of the young man at the moment, but yeah there are some other things on the list as well can we just keep those other things on the list finally going grey I'm on the path at 60 having dyed my hair for years I see beautiful grey often stylish and chic hair but I also see awful examples I think it is the transition that's tricky not so much the final look I consider myself to be very resilient and not too bothered by other people's opinions but within weeks of not dyeing my hair I reach what I thought was a temporary washing and it turned out to be permanent i had to confess to my lovely hairdresser that we were back to square one we are off again it is tough to transition but i'm hoping worth it in the end keep on carrying on from jackie oh jackie now it's easily done i find it incredibly difficult in the pharmacy aisle to tell the difference between permanent semi-permanent just a wash a wash in a wash out a root touch up all of those things very very easy to go wrong you're looking at me with a very very it's a world i'm not particularly familiar with yeah it's an aisle that you've yet to have to stop well because i'm i'm in the i'm in the highlights camp yeah so i can't really do that in the supermarket anyway but you will be lucky because you're blonde i think it's much much easier for blondes to go grey and in fact friends of mine you barely notice that they're going great it's just it seems to be a rather beautiful harmonious thing yes and and i do completely agree with you it is the transition phase jackie that is slightly phasing me and also this visualization thing has just come along at the wrong time eve because you know i've never been more photographed and sent out there as a visual image and and jane and i talk about this in our private time and in fact we should talk about it in our public time a bit more there is a minor backlash going on at the moment about the visualization of podcasts i completely understand why we're doing it because you do have to go where the eyes of the audience are and they are heading towards YouTube.

9:54You know, it is the phenomenon of its ilk. So I understand why we're doing it completely. The pressure that it then puts on you, I think, is something that we should talk about a little bit more. I think it's really fine for some people in the podcasting world to have more of their visual image out there. They seem to enjoy it. They look good, I think. Well, you do also look good. No, you do. I'm not kind of, you know, fishing around or whatever, Eve, But there is something so strange about having actually chosen an industry to work in because it's not the visual image and to then find that you're just in it anyway.

10:36You never asked to be a sort of visual representative of your demographic. Completely not. Completely not. And I think the challenge is to then carry on absolutely being yourself. so you know the conversation I'm having with myself about whether or not to finally grow my grey out I just need to be braver about the fact that that will be captured on camera you know for the next nine months until I am finally grey so we should stand firm though the you know just that intense pressure that we often talk about about aging is just so bloody it is another thing it's another thing to factor in when already everyone has so many gripes with their appearance to then have it put on blast yeah isn't something that you asked for it's happening it's happening because it also ties into the conversation that we have about ai and everything else that we shouldn't resist it because then you end up left behind completely no you want to be i absolutely want to be inside the tent pissing out that's very much where i want to be but i just have to stand really really firm and also be that person that i would like to have seen more of when i was a bit younger well yes which is the person who just gets on with with with ageing and doesn't, you know, seek to...

11:51But that is what I meant when I said you didn't ask to kind of be this symbol. No, not at all. No, I don't regard myself as a symbol either. I did also think that maybe there's something very clever that we could all do as women who do want to go grey along the lines of Movember, where actually we could all have a couple of months and we could call it going back to your roots and we could do a bit of a campaign where instead of the money that we spend on route touch-ups and visits to the hairdressers, we could all put that money into a charity, couldn't we? And then we would have some kind of feeling that we were all doing something together.

12:29That's a fabulous idea. So we could do that. Not least because it costs so much to get your roots done. Well, it certainly does, doesn't it? So if anybody is up for that, then in all seriousness, I think we could start something really fun. And it's always more fun to do those kind of things together. we could share quite a lot of pictures. But I shouldn't talk about this without Jane because Jane did go down the I'm going to grow my hair route and then went, nope, I don't want to do this anymore. She turned around and went back. So I don't want to make her do something she doesn't want to do.

12:59But I mean, actually, you can't make Jane do something she doesn't want to do. God forbid. So it will be okay. Right, thoughts on that. God, how did we get there? We got there from Jackie's email, didn't we? you have another couple I think about what has proved to be obviously such a rich seam of experience for all of the wrong reasons about the hassle that we get on public transport I'm going to come in with this one from Rasheen which is well in regards to women's experience of men on public transport I wanted to share my experience as it stayed with me almost 10 years on I'd been attending an early evening event at the Royal College of Nursing I'm a nurse at said event there was a man who was being persistent about wanting to continue chatting, turning up at every corner of the room I moved along to.

13:44I grew tired of this and decided to make my way to the train station alone as I had a three-hour journey home ahead of me. With my stranger danger senses already heightened, I boarded the evening train aware that there was not many people around and mostly men in the carriage. We set off and 10 minutes into the journey I noticed a man standing behind me in the aisle just looking at me not saying anything he was smartly dressed but looked as though he'd had a drink or two he began to just lean towards me and it got to the point where he was standing directly above my seat in the aisle blocking my exit at this point i looked up at him and asked that he please move away from my seat he just stared at me and seemed to mutter something at which point a man behind us spoke up and asked him politely to move away from me this caused the man to move slightly and I took this as my opportunity to collect my belongings and move to another part of the carriage.

14:39Somebody went to report his behaviour to the conductor. However, in the meantime, the man's phone rang persistently and he wasn't in a fit state to answer it. The bystander instead answered it for him. It was his wife and she explained that he is a type 1 diabetic and prone to having hypoglycemic attacks which can cause you to appear quite drunk. The conductor had arrived and called out for any doctors or nurses on the train. At this point, I sheepishly got up, went to the man, feeling so embarrassed for misjudging him. He must have been trying to ask me for help, but was too poorly to get the words out.

15:13I sat with him taking his blood sugars and rubbing sugar into his gums until the next stop, where an ambulance crew got on to intervene. This has caused me to reflect so much. It's so important to stay safe, especially in light of these horrendous experiences described over the past week. I don't know if I should have done anything differently but I was relieved to have been able to help in the end Love your podcast, Rasheen Oh Rasheen, it's such an amazing story and just well done for telling it because you're definitely kind of telling it against yourself but it's so true, isn't it? that our experience just makes us immediately go to a suspicious place rather than a, you know, the guy I mean maybe he sensed that you were the one person in the carriage who might be able to help him and he just couldn't get the words out I think she was right to have her guard up, but it is nice to have a slightly lighter email amongst some that we have received.

16:07It is. And overwhelmingly, people have said the same thing. Practice in the mirror, go to a self-defence class, do the Susie Lamplew Trust online class. Just make yourself break through what will in the moment be a fear of shouting or doing something or whatever. And it really, really genuinely makes a difference. So many people have emailed to say that. just practice losing your fruit loops and then in the moment it will be easier to lose your fruit loops i just want to say a very big hello to louise because you sent such a lovely lovely picture of you and your friend kate isn't it who helped you through your recent cancer treatment and the picture is of you dipping in the sea in cornwall from a couple of weeks ago and you both look really really happy and the water looks calm you can't even see any poos floating around in it so it's always worth celebrating the good clean water when we find it and also thank you for the picture now we've had so many place names and i'm going to compile them all we'll do a massive great big readout list uh in fact if i can get my whatsit together that'd be quite a good fun thing to do at Cheltenham wouldn't it yes it would actually right eve i'm going to get on the case get your what's it together.

17:29The picture that Louise has sent in is from, where is it? I think it's Braintree. So this is an actual sign, an actual street name. Here we go. Pig's head in the pottage pot Gant. That's the actual street name. What? I know! Madness. What madness. Thank you as well to everybody who wrote in saying that Joanna can just jog on. So Joanna was the person who wrote saying, why don't you just stop doing this shenanigan podcast because you're not together enough and it was she felt insulting to the listener we have had so many emails you are all absolutely lovely and we've had messages via spotify and all of that kind of stuff and it's always important to read out the people who are finding it difficult to listen to us and whatever but overwhelmingly the message is we are right obviously to let jane be where she needs to be and we are right to say thank you to our company actually because it's only good practice isn't it eve where companies get the credit for being nice places to work and allowing enough time off when you need to go and do your caring duties.

18:46So, you know, we're very happy to advertise that, actually. I think for some people, it might have struck a bit of a nerve because they found themselves in places where they haven't been given enough time off in times of need. And that is difficult because it can end up staying with you for life, actually. So let's sing the praises of something good when it happens. But in answer to your very specific query, Virginia, you are coming along on Thursday, and your daughter has taken a day off work in London to come along to Cheltenham. And yes, Jane is going to be in Cheltenham. We are both interviewing.

19:20Annika Rice will be on stage at 3.30. Please do come along if you can. This one comes in from Pat who says, just over 30 years ago, my son entered his second year of uni and was self-catering. During one of his rare phone calls home from the phone box, I was amused, delighted and proud to hear him state, doesn't a cabbage last a long time, Mum? And it does. It does. It really does. It really does, doesn't it? You can actually make a cabbage last, especially a red cabbage, make it last a whole time. Which is good because if you're making a bit of coleslaw or something, they are enormous. You don't need them.

19:57Yeah. And I don't think, you can't really do that thing of coleslaw on a Monday, red braised cabbage on a Tuesday, something different. Yeah. Too much cabbage. Too much cabbage. Way too much cabbage. My son and son-in-law, both now in their early 30s, read really widely and have eclectic tastes. One is currently reading The Pearl by John Steinbeck and the other is reading The Devils by Joe Abercrombie. That comes in from Liz. We are deciding our young male perspective book at the end of next week, Eve, aren't we? Yes. Can you give out a little bit of a warning to all of the people who are still receiving scams?

20:38Yes, so this has been ongoing for quite a while and we've tried to mention it as much as possible, but unfortunately people are still getting in touch. It's still happening. There's not much we can actually do to stop it. There's a scam circulating at the moment where an AI bot gets in touch with authors and offers them an appearance on the radio show pretending to be Jane Orphy. and it's very flattering and it has lots of detail that they've managed to strip about your book and your work and then eventually they will ask you for a fee to appear on the radio show which we would never do. It's not Jane and Fee.

21:18It is unfortunately a really nasty scam and we apologise. Yeah, and please, I mean, just don't ever, ever think that we would ask for money for any guests that appear. But it's such a clever thing, isn't it? because you're right, it's the way that it says, oh, your book is amazing and this particular bit we found particularly interesting and that keyed into something else we were talking about. It has a lot of flattery. We actually got, we've had quite a few people kindly flagging it to us. But one person said, when they realised that it might be a scam and it was AI, they replied and said, okay, but I have a few conditions.

21:52I want to be dressed entirely in rubber and something else and something else. And the chatbot came back and said, okay, that sounds great, as long as you'll be entirely dressed in rubber. and we'll do this and they'll do that. And it was just completely outlandish. But the AI hadn't picked up on the sarcasm, so it just went along. And that's when they clocked that it was definitely a scam. Well, I mean, why not have a really decent laugh at AI's expense? Have you seen the Tom York keeps on coming to my house dressed as a big fat snail AI thread? No. You weren't expecting that. Do you know what?

22:30I will, hang on a sec. It's not actually as a giant snail. This is an AI thread. You can find it on the Instagram. Tom York from Radiohead keeps dressing up as a Toblerone, ringing my doorbell, then running away. So this is somebody who's popped it into, let's just say it's either ChatGPT or Claude or something like that. The reply, if Tom York is repeatedly coming to your door while dressed as a Toblerone, ringing the bell and running away, don't confront him or chase him. Lock the door and avoid opening it. and document the incidents. New question. Why is he doing it? You can see it's him because he doesn't hide his face.

23:07AI. If he's deliberately doing this and making no attempt to hide his face, there's no way to know his motive from the behaviour alone. He may be trying to provoke a reaction, play a prank, or simply get your attention. The important point is you don't need to work out why he's doing it to set a boundary. Don't engage. Keep documenting the incidents. New question. Why would he do this? He's such a talented man. and he could be making music. Why is he wasting his time ringing the doorbell of an unknown while dressed as a Toblerone? AI. There's no rational explanation for Tom York to dress up as a Toblerone and repeatedly ring your doorbell like this.

23:44New question. It's a homemade costume as well. It must have taken him ages. You can see he's used bits of sponge for the honeycomb and cardboard for the nougat. AI. That makes the behaviour even more inexplicable. A homemade Toblerone costume involving sponge, honeycomb and cardboard nougat would, nougat, whatever, would require considerable time and effort. Whatever Tom York's motivation, he's putting substantially more work into the doorbell routine than simply buying a costume and doing a quick prank. Do you think it's safe to confront him? No, don't confront or chase him. Keep the door locked.

24:17Don't open it while he's there and document the incidents. And so it goes on. Oh my gosh. He then, whoever it is, he or she then says, what should I say to the police if I have to call them? And then this is the icing on the cake. Final question to AI. Can you make a poster for me to put up alerting neighbours? Just let it be known that there have been sightings of Tom York from Radiohead, dressed up as a Toblerone in the area, ringing on doorbells and running away. And that is the poster, which we will put up on our Instagram. Oh, do you know what? It just made me laugh so much. So, so much. you do have to slightly question the sanity of the person who came up with it well you do but i think that uh it is it is very much uh why ai uh was invented this side of things is going to keep us going in the doom loop that we've also entered into about it so at the bottom of the poster it says if you see him or experience this behavior please take a recording and report it to the authorities, if necessary.

25:28And you just so wanted Tom York to actually reply. I don't know whether he did. It's been liked by a lot of people. He must have seen it. Yeah, I hope so. Oh my gosh. It's good, isn't it? Yeah, that is really good. We'll put the final poster up on the Insta.

25:47Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most advanced heart rate sensing in an Apple Watch. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, could tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. For general wellness purposes only, not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor or treat medical conditions, requires iPhone 11 or later. Hi, this is Nicaela Matthews-Aconley from SideHustle Pro.

26:20This holiday, the difference between buyers just checking things out and checking out comes down to the last few clicks. PayPal Checkout is a trusted conversion engine fueled by 400 million active PayPal and Venmo accounts. Add Pay Later and turn holiday shoppers into regulars. 96 % of Pay Later shoppers are repeat users. PayPal is built for all business. Get started at paypal.com slash business. Disclaimer, PayPal Pay Later data, eight markets, March 2025 to February 2026. Repeat users more than one Pay Later purchase in the past year. If you felt stuck trying to lose weight, you're not alone.

26:56Enter Weight Loss by HERS. It's designed to support you in reaching your goals. And HERS now offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the WeGovi pill and the WeGovi pen. Even better, with a range of affordable GLP-1 options, HERS makes it simple to find an approach that fits your needs and your budget, if eligible. You'll get a treatment plan personalized to you and unlimited dosage changes as needed. It's weight loss designed to work with your life. Ready to reach your goals? Visit ForHERS.com slash eligible to get personalized, affordable care that gets you.

27:30That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash eligible. ForHERS.com slash eligible. Weight loss by HERS is not available in all 50 states. WeGovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, We go for clinical study information and restrictions. Visit ForHers.com.

27:55Now, Bonnie Garmus's Lessons in Chemistry is a publishing phenomenon, winner of so many prizes. It spent years on the bestseller list and sold millions of copies, but it might never have seen the light of day. Bonnie Garmus knew she wanted to write, but an earlier manuscript was rejected 98 times, enough to put many people off. But she kept going with her day job as a copywriter, often being on the receiving end of the kind of sexism that runs through lessons in chemistry. That sexism is directed at the heroine of the book, Elizabeth Zott, the talented chemist who couldn't get taken seriously because she was a woman, but who had the last laugh by turning her scientific knowledge into a blockbusting TV cookery show.

28:39Well, now Bonnie has given us Bata Gray, a young man whose love of poetry leads him to New York and the shimmering illusory magazine publisher Peck and Peck. That's the name of her new novel. It's all about justice, about words and their beauty. You have got a lovely, lovely description of what it's like to be a novelist right at the end of your book. And I'd like to start with that, please, Bonnie. Here we go. I find writing a novel is like setting out on a long hike with an outdated map and not nearly enough food. The entire thing is uphill. The trail is badly maintained. The weather is terrible.

29:15The shoes aren't really waterproof. The socks don't wick. The blisters don't heal. And that middle toe no longer looks quite right. There's a lot of backtracking and self-doubt, a lot of time spent in the woods. But, can you finish the but for us? Because that sounds horrible. It is pretty bad. But as I say in the book, The people you meet along the way are irreplaceable. And I think the views, you will never ever see views like this in your life, you know. So it's all worth it, but I think it's hard. It's hard work to write a novel. And when I first tried it, well, with Lessons in Chemistry, I remember thinking, I felt like I just ran five marathons back to back.

29:59So if one more person says, isn't it fun to write, I'm going to kill them. And presumably you didn't. No, I didn't. Nobody said that. We will come back to lessons in chemistry, but let's talk about Peck and Peck. And let's talk about how in your head you first met the hero of the story, a young man with a very interesting name. Yes, Batter Gray. I first met him when I was driving home from work one day and I heard a poem come on the radio. It's a poem by Nicky Giovanni. I hadn't read poetry much at that point. I didn't really listen to it. But I heard this poem once when I was 14, and then that day I heard it again.

30:40And it's called The Laws of Motion. And as I listened to it, it started making me question what I was doing with my life. And that's where Bader Gray comes from, questioning whether or not he's on the right track. Because Bader Gray's only skill, apparently, in life is that he has an ear for poetry, which is a skill that absolutely no one cares about or wants or probably would ever put on their resume. he finds himself at peck and peck which again is a very interesting name to choose it's this extraordinary almost magical poetry establishment isn't it yeah he finds himself there that the name peck and peck came from the word peck which has double meanings it can mean to harm someone to peck at them it could also mean to kiss them if if you're in a company there's a pecking order There's also a pecking order in a family.

31:34And when we say that we feel peckish, we're in need of something, but we're not sure what it is. And that, for me, sunned up the entire book. It's a book full of conflicts, but at the heart of it is this young man who's really trying to make his way in the world and is getting stopped at every single point, and it gets very confusing for him. It's a real love story about creativity as well, isn't it? Can you tell us a bit more about that? Yeah, that day that I was coming home from work, and this was way back, I was working in technology, in advertising. And I was really unhappy that day because I felt like technology was really moving in a direction I didn't feel comfortable with.

32:17When I started, it was the kind of innovative, creative, first, you know, do no evil kind of thing. and the people that I worked with and whose products that I would write about were so excited about doing things for humankind. And then it really shifted. It shifted, you know, for me, I started seeing this shift around 2009. And that day when I was driving home and I heard that poem, and it's sort of like, you know, taking stock of yourself. And I thought, what am I doing? And so at that time, I thought creativity and originality, they want it to go away they want people to conform and they want everyone to think alike because people are much easier to control that way so in the book batter takes us on his own journey through his young adult life but it is also exactly that it's the journey about how commerce and creativity have combined with not a particularly easy outcome often but what i found fascinating, Bonnie, is that you don't publish poetry within the book.

33:27Peck and Peck is a journal devoted to poetry. The book is absolutely full of poets. Batter wants to be a poet, but there's no poem in it. Were you tempted to put some in? Well, I did put little tiny snippets in. There were two, so the first, the very first time I wrote it, there was no poetry. And one of the reasons is, is because if you stop an average person on the street, they will tell you that they don't like poetry. And I really understand that because I had to be kind of dragged kicking and screaming to it. And once I became a little bit of a fan and I read a poem a day now and I have for about a decade, I realized I was stunned by what I was missing.

34:08I couldn't believe how many of the answers and questions we grapple with today are answered by the poets. And they answer it very simply and very economically. And, uh, and so I became fascinated by it, but that's sort of how it all evolved was this idea of, I couldn't actually, I had a permissions problem too with poems. Um, you use one line or five lines and there are poets who go, okay, but you can't publish this one in Germany or you can't, I don't like, you know, the Bay area. So you can't publish it there. It's Like, wow. So I had to be very careful about what I could include. And unfortunately, these days, poets are misquoted.

34:49So I used to have a quote in there from Carl Sandburg until I found out that the quote I thought I had had been rewritten by AI. He never said what AI says he said. So I couldn't use that. Therefore, it got smaller and smaller. But in a way, I just wanted to give people a flavor of this art. because I know some people go, I'm not going to read a book about poetry. Well, I found it intriguing and I didn't actually realise that there weren't full poems in the book until I kind of got to the end of the book. And because there's a meeting, isn't there, between Bata and a man who turns out to be very significant in the plot when he's originally in the copy room downstairs and this strange character comes in and says, read this piece of poetry.

35:33And initially Bata goes, I don't think that's great. But it turns out to be of great meaning. but I hadn't kind of noticed, I didn't know what the poem was. So you've done it well. Oh, thank you. Thank you. You know, I was really, really aware that I didn't want to bore people. I also didn't want to prove their point by putting in poetry that they might find boring. I just really wanted to, and this has been interesting. I've talked to people who've read the book now and they said, I went and I looked up that poem and I read it or I heard it and now I get it. And that's really what I was hoping to have happen.

36:04And you do write towards the very end of the book a very succinct sentence that just says poetry is problematic. Yes, it is. And you've just explained why poetry is problematic. We could, I think, all do with more poetry in our lives. But you've also just been quite illuminating on perhaps the difficulty around access to poetry. If people are terribly protective about this stanza and that verse, it's creating a barrier, isn't it? I agree. And poetry can seem very elitist. It can seem very hard to understand or so far out there that, you know, you think, OK, this doesn't apply to me. And what I've learned by studying poetry is that it comes in a million different fluencies.

36:50It's impossible to become fluent in poetry because poetry keeps evolving. It keeps representing the culture very accurately, by the way. It will never, I believe, go extinct because it is so much smarter than we are because it keeps changing its spots and it keeps reaching people in a different way. And that's the poets doing that. They're really leading the frontier in that. Do you think that we will inevitably give an awful lot more credence and credibility to poetry, to art, to writing once we get over this extraordinary bright light of AI? We're in a place, I think, at the moment where we are terrified by it and we assume that it's going to kill creativity.

37:37But we will want original thought and original beauty even more, won't we? I completely agree. I think, you know, I was at a university recently in the United States and there were about 1500 students in there. And they said, what do you know now that none of us want to go into computer science? What should we go into? And I said, what about the humanities? What about the arts? I mean, the the clapping, the laughter, the cheering, the relief of having a choice to do something creative was so palpable that day. I could, you know, sense it from everyone. And because I think at our hearts, we are all creative people.

38:16I'm mostly concerned right now about AI going into education, especially of younger people who haven't had a chance to develop reasoning or even their imaginations. And to have your imagination replaced by a machine, which is conforming you, it's not teaching you, is really frightening to me. So I do think there's going to be a huge call for people in the humanities. I just hope it happens really soon, sooner than later. And commerce will always come into play, won't it? And this is exactly what lies at the heart of your book, whether true creativity can somehow win out. We won't talk about the ending to your story to not ruin it for your readers.

38:59But we're right to be fearful that the march of the dollar will crush so many people in its way. Yes. And so in my book, you know, there's this late stage capitalism at work. There's someone running this company who doesn't really care about poetry. He cares about the bottom line. And of course, that's how corporations operate. You know, they have a duty to their shareholders. And I think that's gone to the extreme at this point. So I hope that we can shift gears and I hope that we can do it more rapidly than it's being done. Because I do see a really huge impact on entire generations of young people who won't know how to think, who can't make a decision without consulting a computer.

39:48AI is a confidence eroder. They will not know. Somebody told me the other day that they had to ask ChatGPT if they should wear this shirt with the bottoms or whatever they had on. And I said, don't you have a mirror? You can't even make that decision yourself. Yeah, that's worrying. Yeah. I've seen a lot of people who've definitely asked ChatGPT for their wardrobe combinations, many of them in this building. you wrote lessons in chemistry from a place of anger didn't you because you were just really sick of being an invisible woman in the workplace yeah tell us a little bit about that and whether there is a similar anger that spurred you on to write Peck and Peck I do think I tend to want to write about things that I'm passionate about and sometimes that passion starts in frustration or anger.

40:42And yeah, so for lessons in chemistry, I was definitely that woman in the all-male meeting who was just being ignored simply because I was female. And somebody else, once he presented my ideas in his voice using exactly the same words, all the ideas were acceptable. And that day when that happened to me, then it happened that, you know, I'd been in plenty of meetings where you're ignored. But that day I just decided, no, no, this is the last day of this. This is the last day. And so that's where lessons in chemistry came from. And Peck and Peck, actually the idea of it came before lessons in chemistry.

41:22And when I was thinking more and more about, I was having almost a panic attack. Where is technology marching off to? It's 2009 and I'm feeling very uneasy and now it's 2026. So in fact, it moved in the direction that we were all hoping it wouldn't go. And Elizabeth Zott comes into my head at least once a day because it was just such an extraordinarily clever thing to do, Bonnie, to put her in a kitchen, in a commercial kitchen, to tell us the lessons of life. So I think of her when I'm cooking of an evening and I recognise that it is a valuable thing to do. How often do you think about her? Do you think about her every time you cook a meal too?

42:11She comes in my head constantly. You know, she's, when I, people ask me who Elizabeth Zott is based on. She's not based on anyone. She's my role model. As for thinking of her when I cook, she's a much better cook than I am. I'm a pretty bad cook, but I live with really good cooks. So I think that's okay. I'm a really good cleaner upper. But I think Elizabeth Zott comes to me very, very frequently when I start to lose confidence or if I am plagued by self-doubt, I can hear what she would say about that. And so that helps guide me. And it's been invaluable for me to have written that character just for my own self-worth.

42:53And can I ask you, as clearly a sensitive writer, when you write moments of real trauma and tragedy, of which there are many in Lessons in Chemistry, where does that leave your head? In trauma and tragedy. I do feel each of those moments very strongly. And I've certainly talked and heard from a lot of people who also feel them very strongly. I think if I can't feel them, I'm not doing my job. Are you ever tempted to write yourself better on the page? I, you know, I don't ever put myself in a book. I don't put anyone I know in a book. First of all, I'm under too many NDAs to ever go down that road.

43:39But also, if you write about yourself, I mean, this is just me, but I think if you write about yourself or you write about people you know, you've now just limited your character. I don't want to limit my characters. I don't want to especially be exactly like my characters. It would surprise me how many people would say, Elizabeth Zad is so unlikable. And I think, oh, and then some of the other people would say, she's so likable. And so I just liked hearing the divergence of opinion on how people feel about these characters, because we all read differently. We all see something differently. So if I started to put someone I know on the page and someone would say, you know, my best friend, they'd go, I hate this character.

44:20I'd think, oh, you just insulted my best friend. So no, I don't, I'm not in it. It's interesting that you say that there's such a wide interpretation of her as a character. I was fascinated to read that some of the book covers around the world seem to have made quite a wide interpretation of what the book was about. Yeah. Tell us about those. Well, the United States, they came out with a cover that was extremely controversial. It was a little bit of a Barbie cover. And, you know, you could certainly see it on the bookshelf because it was just this very bright kind of coral pink, very much the antithesis of Elizabeth Zott.

45:00But they defended that choice. And, you know, back then I didn't have much say. I, you know, I kind of registered my concern. But what was funny was that it became a talking point in the United States. This is how women in science are represented as Barbie. And it became a very angry sort of call to action. And so I was at an event with all-woman scientists, and they took out their books, and they took off the cover, and they threw them away. And I had to tell my publisher, this is getting to be a big deal. And I think they really understood it was a big deal when the New York Times wrote an article with the title, Don't Judge This Book by Its Cover.

45:42However, I will say I had a European publisher whose designer sent me his first design, and it was of Elizabeth Zott naked. She had a pot and pan over her private parts, and that was it. And I'm pretty sure he hadn't read the book. But anyway, I said, okay, this is unacceptable. And I have to say he ended up doing one of my most favorite covers. But when I explained what the book was about, he said, oh, my creative brief, and this is how it read, was bimbo teaches cooking. Whoa. Who would have given him that instruction? I'm really curious about that. No one has claimed ownership. Good God. But that was a different, you know, it was a different country.

46:27So, yeah. It's also extremely inadvisable to ever cook naked, especially with hot pans. Yes, well said. Oh, my goodness. Yes. And font is incredibly important, isn't it? Yes. In the world of Peck and Peck. Tell me about fonts and do you get a choice in which font the book comes out in? They've been really great about including me in some of these decisions. And I studied typography at one point. I love type to such a sort of, you know, anal degree. Is it a fetish? Yes, a little bit. I mean, it's just like, you know, and kerning and the whole letting everything to me, it's really, really important.

47:10And I was taught that that should be important. And so there's a little bit, I would say, of my training in one of the characters in Rainy Gray, where she talks about how important topography is. And when you think about it, topography is, of course, an art, but it's how we form our words. Every typeface says something. It has it's why it's a typeface. It has a personality. It always comes in a family. Sometimes the family fights. That's called kerning and letting and spacing. And so you have to make the family work well together and make it work with other fonts together. And that's what a really, truly great graphic designer does.

47:50That is something that is getting lost in the digital world, isn't it? We are all reading stuff with the same font, probably the same font size. Right. And, you know, it's very interesting. when I studied typography, we could name 10 or 12 fonts off the top of our head where they would, these will increase your reading ability by 20%. You know, if we knew that now, we wouldn't be reading these fonts that we're using. Right. What's the worst font? Oh, there are so many really, really bad ones. Digitally, I don't know if I could really choose at this point. The very cursive ones. Oh, yeah, you can't read.

48:27Yeah, you can't do those. Quick chat about greyhounds please. Oh yes, yes, yes. Okay, our time is almost up. But tell me about your greyhound. Obviously a huge character in Lessons in Chemistry is a dog. Yeah. 6.30, the dog. Is your current greyhound a numerically named canine? Yes. So although 99, unfortunately she passed away. But she was just incredible. She wasn't the dog in lessons in chemistry. The dog in lessons in chemistry was our previous dog Friday. But 99 Greyhound, our very first dog that was, you know, a breed. We'd only ever had mutts. But she was a rescue greyhound. She'd raced, you know, for six years.

49:14She had all the broken toes. And we ended up just, well, we adored her. You know, the most, the quietest animal, the most sensitive thing. we just love spending time with her and she became very much a part of me as i wrote you know she'd come over and nudge me and then look and i swear to you i have a picture of her where she's looking at my computer and like no you know i don't like that phrase i think they're incredibly emotionally intelligent dogs and i have a greyhound myself she's she's very intellectually stupid but emotionally she is uh absolutely brilliant they i think they do sense uh atmospheres emotions all kinds of things yes 99 seemed to have one special ability that that floored us and worried us which is that she could sense sadness deep sadness in people and uh she would approach somebody just out of the blue we we trained her to be off lead so she was very impeccable off lead but occasionally she would look across somewhere and see someone reacting to something or being in a certain way she approached an elderly woman on a park bench in hyde park and she just pressed her entire large body up against this frail woman and i ran over there and i apologized and the woman said no it's the first time i've been touched in 10 days my husband died 10 days ago and that was our 99 whenever she sensed she found a child crying after school one day walking by himself and she ran up to him and then she pressed her body and then the mother came running up um and she was very worried 99 was quite large but then the child just instantly quieted and then he wanted to take her home and she wanted to go home you know she wanted to stay with him until he was okay I've got all the tingles, Bonnie, all the tingles.

51:12It's such a pleasure to meet you. Thank you very much for coming in. I've really, really enjoyed talking to you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bonnie Gamas and Peck and Peck is out on the 13th of October. Is that today? It is. Oh, crazy days. Okay, good to know. Paycheck comes in at the end of the week, lovely. I'll buy you all a cuppa. Lovely. So we don't have a podcast tomorrow. No. But we do hope to see as many of you as is humanly possible live at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Thursday. We're interviewing Annika Rice. That will go out as a Twixmas special. There won't actually be a podcast episode on Thursday, but maybe take this as your opportunity to retune your radio, four times radio, and hear Jane and Fee reunited in conversation with Annika Rice.

52:02Absolutely marvellous. You take over the mantle of corporate Catherine. You do it beautifully. And then Jane and I, fingers crossed, we will be back together again for the whole of next week. And I'm going to apologise in advance. So I don't even say it. I know. So, I mean, we just couldn't see this coming, but I'm off on secondment the week after writing a very, very, very arduous piece for the Sunday Times spa supplement. Oh, God, you've got to own it. It's knackering. I've got to own it. but it does mean that I'm going to Germany on holiday, a topic that we've discussed on this podcast before.

52:39Not many people do, but I'm going. That's true, actually. Yeah. Oh, you're going to come back so zen. Well, I don't know. It's an interesting one, isn't it? I can't wait to go. It's a medical spa and I have tried one of those before. I checked myself out after four days. I just found it so ridiculous. I wasn't in the right headspace to go to any place where deprivation was involved. Yes. It just wasn't the right time in my life to do that. I actually just needed to be eating large doughnuts and somebody stroking my hair. So I think this is very different. And I am intrigued by it because apart from anything else, I think you do, I don't know a 58-year-old who doesn't want a bit of a health check.

53:20Do you know the most bonkers thing that they offer? Are you going to have salmon seen? Well, yeah, I mean, there are quite, I don't think it's very bonkers, it's very, very methodical. Okay, quite clinical. Yes, it's quite clinical and you're absolutely eating at a certain time. I'm not doing medical fasting, that's not for me at all, it just makes me want to weep. But it will be, you know, it's quite a kind of controlled thing and it is aimed at just making you better, actually, without too much kookiness involved. There is one trip out, Eve, which I just couldn't believe it when I was reading through the schedule because there's a lot of stretching and there's a lot of movement and all that kind of stuff, but it's very much all on campus.

54:01the only trip out, it's in a minibus is to an alpaca farm of all of the things what? of all of the things I'll be so intrigued to hear what the health benefits of that are just to cheer you up maybe just for your mental health it's like the support pets that they get on the campus university it's exactly that we are going to an alpaca farm where I will be able to be photographed with my spirit animal just put your fingers really deep in the fur I know, I just love the way they run and the fact that they bounce. So does everyone go, or just you, because you put on a form that you love alpacas? No, they didn't.

54:37They're completely unaware of my alpaca love. That's what's so incredible about it. So they're not organising individual trips for everyone to various forms? No, I've got a book early to avoid disappointment. Make sure I've got my place on the minibus. I'm going to be sitting right at the front. I mean, I'd drive it if I could, Eve, you know I would. And, yep, I mean, I may never come back. I might meet an alpaca with teeth as squiffy as mine called Fred and live happily ever after. Just bring him back, he'd love Dalston. Yeah, he would love Dalston. It's only a matter of time before in Dalston you see somebody walking across London fields with a pet alpaca.

55:13It'll be in my lifetime, that's for sure. And there'll be one of those young gentlemen with complicated facial hair, wearing Crocs and socks. It'd be a very literal case of when an owner looks like their dog. Yeah, no. Would you like to see my alpaca face?

55:30I don't want to say that it sort of rings true, but it does.

55:37It's like a corporate albacar. We've got to stop. Goodbye, everybody. Bye.

56:00Congratulations. You've staggered somehow to the end of another Off Air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale. And if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online on DAB or on the free Times Radio app. Off Air is produced by Eve Salisbury and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.

56:55So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, could tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. For general wellness purposes only, not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor or treat medical conditions. Requires iPhone 11 or later. Hi, this is Nicaela Matthews Okome from SideHustle Pro. The sale's right there. Don't miss it. This holiday, give shoppers a flexible way to pay with PayPal Pay Later and turn them into regulars. PayPal is built for all business.

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57:37Welcome to the Haunted Library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place. From gothic masterpieces to pulpy penny dreadfuls, join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts.