Mentally Oddcast Transcript: Journalist Sarah Rigg
Find an audio version of this episode here.
Find more from Sarah Rigg here and here.
00:00:01.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
You are listening to the Mentally Oddcast. My name is Wednesday, Lee Friday, and we are brought to you. Well, actually, we're not brought to you by sometimes hilarious horror anymore. I'm so used to saying it. You can find us on Ko-Fi. That's K-O-F-I. This week, we have my friend, Sarah Rigg, and she is an Ypsilanti-based reporter and editor who has been involved in journalism since she started producing one-page photocopied neighborhood newspapers in grade school. Oh my god, like a zine, right?
00:00:35.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
She later edited for her high school paper and began writing for Concentrate in February 2017. We're going to talk more about that. When Sarah isn't writing for Concentrate or doing freelance reporting and editing for other publications, she can be found cuddling her dog and two cats and doing jigsaw puzzle puzzles with her husband or playing board games with friends.
00:01:01.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
Welcome, Sarah.
00:01:02.92
Sarah Rigg
Thanks for having me.
00:01:04.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, it's my pleasure. My pleasure indeed. We always get started by asking guests to tell us about the first horror movie that they remember seeing. So I actually don't know yours. So this will be good.
00:01:17.24
Sarah Rigg
So I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and we had so I'm actually going telling you about a TV show rather than about a movie because we had one of those, you know, kitschy like horror things, you know, like Elvira or whatever, but it was a local one to the Upper Peninsula up there. I don't really couldn't tell you anything about it except it was like, i want to say it was like five o'clock on a Friday or a Saturday.
00:01:41.30
Sarah Rigg
And I'm pretty sure I saw Psycho when I was like five or at least saw this shower scene because i remember,
00:01:47.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
00:01:47.80
Sarah Rigg
being horrified by blood in the tub um you know but even in black and white it just freaked me the crap out and I don't think my parents let me see it my brother had his own tv he was a teenager at the time because he's quite a bit older than me so I was probably five or six so I probably saw at least some excerpts from Psycho um when I was like five or six years old I'm pretty sure
00:01:51.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yeah.
00:02:10.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow. That's wild.
00:02:13.51
Sarah Rigg
It's actually a very early memory. I don't have a lot of early memories before five but five years old, only just a handful. So that's a super early memory.
00:02:22.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
See, that's shocking to me because I know that you grew up um among, like, religious types. And i I, you know, my parents didn't give a crap.
00:02:32.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
But even I didn't see Psycho until I was, like, 12. Because that's that's a rough one. it it It really is.
00:02:37.72
Sarah Rigg
Yeah, I don't think I was supposed to see it.
00:02:38.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because there's not, like, a ton of... I'll bet not... Because, yeah, because that one has like, there's a couple of murders in it, not very many for a horror movie, but they're all so impactful.
00:02:52.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, it's not like Voorhees killing, you know, 10 or 12 counselors before the police get there. It's, it's, so wow, that's fun.
00:03:02.49
Sarah Rigg
Yeah, my recollection is that, you know, so we had one TV upstairs and we had one in the basement that my brother basically kind of was, ah he was a teenager when i was in, you know, just a kid. He was already teenager.
00:03:13.56
Sarah Rigg
He was lurked in the basement, had his own TV. And I'm sure he was probably watching the horror films. Not something my parents would let us watch. In fact, they would turn off the sound or turn off the TV altogether if a beer commercial came on.
00:03:20.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
uh
00:03:25.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:03:25.53
Sarah Rigg
So, I mean, no, you they weren't like just voluntarily letting me watch that stuff when I was five years old. That's not something they would do on purpose. That's something the the the older brother would let you do.
00:03:34.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah Right, right. Now, you you are a professional journalist. um I have to think that the current socio-political climate must seem at least horror-adjacent.
00:03:49.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
I know that when when we started with Trump, part of his ethos was... calling the press enemies of the people. And now the fascists are like buying up networks. Like CBS is just straight up gone to the fash. So as a journalist, how does that, I mean, how do you live with that? How do you day to day do what you do?
00:04:17.11
Sarah Rigg
And this question was coming and still I just I don't even know how to answer it except that local journalism is a pretty different animal. And we just kind of keep our heads down and keep doing what we're doing. But watching what's happening on the national landscape, I mean, the gutting of these institutional institutions like CBS News and The Washington Post and arresting Don Lemon and independent journalists and Yeah, definitely. I'm like, you know, if if there was a bingo card for fascism, um we haven't just had multiple bingos. We blacked out the card. You know, it's it's not good.
00:04:55.00
Sarah Rigg
But, you know, what disturbs me more than what our administration is doing, which is, you know, obviously disturbing, but not really new, because we've known this from when he was campaigning the first time around, is sort of more the mind fuck against the, am I allowed to say the afforded right? Yeah.
00:05:14.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
Fuck yeah, you are.
00:05:15.19
Sarah Rigg
right The mindfuck of the American people because like journalism to me and like I forget there's people out there that don't trust journalists and like for good reason because you know there's yellow journalists as they used to call it.
00:05:26.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:05:27.32
Sarah Rigg
ah But you know because I'm just lo so passionate it's like it's one of the few ah careers that's mentioned in our Constitution. It's super important no matter what you think about individual journalists or individual even outlets.
00:05:42.19
Sarah Rigg
Journalism as a whole is a social good because it's a check against authoritarianism, which is exactly why Trump's going after it. So that people, the fact that people have bought into it is what breaks my heart, that they're anti-journalism because of some bad experience they've had.
00:05:58.20
Sarah Rigg
And the part that's really ironic, and I think it's real ironic, not Alanis Morissette ironic, one, is that you'll see on social media, I'm like, why isn't anybody...
00:06:10.58
Sarah Rigg
in the media reporting about this. They're suppressing it. And then the link to a story that appeared in the media. I'm like, it's in the media.
00:06:21.18
Sarah Rigg
What you mean is that it's not in legacy media.
00:06:21.50
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:06:23.86
Sarah Rigg
It's not in mainstream media. But you shouldn't trust them anyway. I mean, we've really seen that with CBS and Barry Weiss, right? I mean, and it's not to say that you can't get a slant one way or another in local news too, but those are much more independent.
00:06:38.87
Sarah Rigg
um And a lot less uniform. And in fact, the big news outlets, the big national ones, they get our news from looking at outlets like the ones that I work home work for. they They pick up our news and run it as their own because they're too lazy to, you know, and too, you know, budget constrained to send their own reporters out into the community, which if you want to talk about embedded journalism, that's one of the benefits of of embedded journalism models.
00:07:07.35
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right. yeah Yeah, see, that makes so much sense. And, you know, I studied journalism and in undergrad as well. And... the The two main publications that were held up as the the paragons of good journalism are the New York Times and the Washington Post.
00:07:27.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
And those are both rags now. I don't know who's running things at the New York Times, but Jeff Bezos can kiss my ass. Jeff Bezos, if you're listening to the Mentally Oddcast today, please, please kiss my ass. No, um the thing is, Bezos could be a hero.
00:07:43.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
He could keep real journalists at that paper and give it away for free so that people had access to real news. And he wouldn't notice it. I mean, that's essentially the the change in his couch cushions to him.
00:07:53.27
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
00:07:57.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
And he doesn't want to do it because he'd rather kiss fascist ass. And i is that slander?
00:08:01.96
Sarah Rigg
Right.
00:08:04.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
I don't think it is. i would stand by that. um And it's it is such a shame for all of the reasons that you described. The way that we have an educated populace is with good journalism.
00:08:17.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's, you know, and when you don't have it, then you have people shooting up pizza parlors and you know believing just ridiculous, demonstrably false things. I know people that are talking to people in their own families that say, Renee Goode shouldn't have run over that guy.
00:08:36.54
Sarah Rigg
I
00:08:37.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
When we all watch the video and we know that no one owner was run over, no one was hit, but a woman was shot to death by a man who filmed his own murder and then called her a mean name as he walked away from her corpse. So...
00:08:52.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, i got off on a little bit of a tangent there. But but yes, the journalism. Now, you ah you have been doing journalism since childhood. Like, you have always had a thirst for journalism. Do you think that that is because you have an innate sense of justice? Or do you think it is something else?
00:09:12.05
Sarah Rigg
You know, that's interesting that you would say that because I think my mother, rest in peace, would have identified that as part of my motive. And it probably is to a certain extent as an adult, but as a child, and's just a storyteller.
00:09:27.13
Sarah Rigg
ah And journalism, I like to joke because I would get like recruited early on in my When I was a journalist, I get recruited for job fairs to go talk to kids about different you know jobs and I tell them it's chance for me to collect the community gossip and disseminate it and how to get paid for it. It's amazing. I love it.
00:09:45.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
Kind of like being a librarian, but on paper. um
00:09:49.21
Sarah Rigg
yeah But yeah, so, you know, this this childhood newspaper I like to bring up. So I did it one year on my own and in another year with my dear friend, Chris, who I'm going to send him a link to this because I've known him since second grade.
00:10:02.78
Sarah Rigg
And he helped me put it out in one year. And you said like a zine. And we actually did little cartoons for the second year. And it would be stuff like, um like letting people know about vacation Bible school was coming up and stuff like that.
00:10:08.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, neat.
00:10:13.90
Sarah Rigg
But I also did want to like, why are those so many girls coming and going from the White House, you from the, you know, the the white last name, not the White House.
00:10:23.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:10:23.86
Sarah Rigg
um We'll call them the Browns. Okay. By the Browns house, you know, and because they have two teenage boys, age 19 and 17. Which ones are they stopping their boy? Okay. Look, I see little gossip cuffs like that. they
00:10:37.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh my gosh.
00:10:37.72
Sarah Rigg
You know, probably because I had a crush on the boys next door. They were both really cute and they'd drive their ATV around and give me rides around. but
00:10:43.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
he
00:10:47.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
So now getting back to local journalism, and I guess the idea that as we're finding out with with places like CBS and WAPO, that news outlets, they're made of people. you know they're They're not concepts that have been brought to life. there it's It's a bunch of people getting together and deciding what to do. And my presumption would be that that is why local journalism tends to be less divisive because the people in ah in a particular news outlet are going to be more or less on the same page. You're not going to stick around and work for someone that you think is a fascist and then try to do the news, right?
00:11:29.83
Sarah Rigg
Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know about divisive because I'm like, God, if you cover small town politics, talk about divisive. So the stories themselves are divisive, but not so much on staff. I think, I mean, there's this stereotype from the left, from the right um and from the MAGA crowd that journalists are left leaning and liberals. And that is absolutely true because I don't know how you could possibly be as educated and experience so much of the world as the journalists I know and not lean left, not realize the lies that the writers telling us.
00:12:04.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, when you've got people like J.D. Vance that straight up say, yes, I'll make shit up if it gets my point across. Well, why would anyone listen to you after that? After Fox News had to pay like, what was it, like $100 million dollars or some crazy thing? Because they lied to everyone.
00:12:23.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
they They don't appear to have lost their viewership.
00:12:27.46
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
00:12:27.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
i can't i I can't get my head around that. That they're like, yeah, we're pretending to be news. We were always pretending to be news. But also we're lying to your faces. See you guys tomorrow. And and everybody showed up. I don't.
00:12:42.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
that's That's just... I mean, because if if Jon Stewart did that, he wouldn't have a crowd anymore. If Stephen Colbert went on TV and was like, yeah, I've been bullshitting you for the entire time I've been on the air, what?
00:12:55.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Relax. It's not that... I mean, they they couldn't because the audience wouldn't stand for it. So why do MAGA people stand for it Why do they stand for being lied to their faces...
00:13:08.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
I can only assume that it's because that's what they want to believe.
00:13:13.69
Sarah Rigg
Well, increasingly less and less so, right? We're seeing these these opinion polls are really bad for Trump right now.
00:13:22.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, the the interesting thing is that, like, as a disabled person, I do a lot of my quote-unquote living on social media. That's where i interact with the most people by a wide margin.
00:13:34.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I am largely on the meta platforms. And meta would have you believe that Trump is much loved and that his fans aren't going anywhere. Whenever you see a news story...
00:13:46.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
that that deals with Trump, the the top comment with like tens of thousands of likes is always a bot saying like how the victim deserved it or the the victims are lying or, you know, Trump is right and ISIS great and, you know, whatever, whatever the Republican party line is, the bots are saying it and then other bots are pretending to love it.
00:14:02.82
Sarah Rigg
Right.
00:14:10.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that, i'm I'm sure the reason that he does that is because it is so disheartening. to Because, you know, for me, it's so frustrating to see it. And I just I want to correct it every single time. And then I'm like, well, wait, though, that's a bot. This is not. Well, but what if somebody sees it and thinks it's real? And you got to, you know, and I have this whole like frustrating mental process that goes along with that.
00:14:38.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then I don't get anything done. Wait, I digressed. But but no, but that's the thing that I agree with you. I think that MAGA people really are slowly starting to realize that, yeah, the racism and the sexism and the oppression of people they don't like was real. He really meant all that. But the stuff about low prices and better wages and, you know, like none of that was real.
00:15:05.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
All the stuff that, you know, the the Trump loves us, Trump cares about us stuff, that was never real. And then, you know, all the progressives and liberals and independents are like, well, no, of course it's not.
00:15:18.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Have you seen his family?
00:15:18.42
Sarah Rigg
Well, are you following,
00:15:19.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
He doesn't care about anyone.
00:15:22.62
Sarah Rigg
are you following the, uh, uh, tread on me, daddy trend at all?
00:15:28.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
a little.
00:15:30.23
Sarah Rigg
I just, yeah, it's the, yeah it's the, it's because for the people who are hanging on there, the, you know, the core reprehensibles that are still hanging their 29% or whatever.
00:15:30.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
mean, you know, I do love kink.
00:15:42.13
Sarah Rigg
they' but That's still left that approve of it's what he's doing. Um, they, ah
00:15:52.45
Sarah Rigg
What I was going to say is that they are they're the ones with the yeah the cognitive ah dissonance that they just have to to work out by worship by the appeal to authority because they worship authority. They don't worship justice. They don't worship the Constitution.
00:16:10.04
Sarah Rigg
They don't even really worship Trump per se, only him as an embodiment of authority. And that's why we have this authoritarian moment right now in our country. That's what I think.
00:16:22.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep, i'll ah I'll concur with that. you No one can see me, but I'm nodding my head. um
00:16:28.15
Sarah Rigg
it
00:16:28.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
we We don't typically talk about up-to-the-minute events on the show because it takes a couple weeks to get something out after we record, but we're both in Ann Arbor, and something happened in town recently at the Smoothie King that I would like to talk about, if you're cool with that.
00:16:46.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:16:47.68
Sarah Rigg
Oh, no, I would have decided right because I remember, but okay, go ahead.
00:16:50.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
oh Oh, it's recent. um Two women were working alone at a Smoothie King and a rather obnoxious couple came in in MAGA gear and, you know, started obnoxious-ing and the manager said, you know what?
00:17:07.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
Get out. we're not serving you have a good day get out of the store and the wife went off about how they're discriminating and they're going to call the police on them for discriminating against them and not giving them their smoothie and they were just like no we're not serving you get out and anybody who's worked retailed knows that you reserve the right That if people are obnoxious, if they're yelling, if they're swearing, if they're starting shit, try to come behind the counter, any of that stuff, you boot them out of your store for your own safety.
00:17:40.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
And Smoothie King did not concur. The owner fired both of the women and the company backed them up. So I find that gross. And the thing is that when people are discussing it online, what I'm hearing a lot of is they didn't like that he was wearing a Trump shirt, so they threw him out.
00:18:02.02
Sarah Rigg
Oh, you know, actually, now that you're bringing that up, I did actually see that in passing. I just assumed that was fake news myself. i didn't actually dig into it. But that's how I saw it framed exactly on social media.
00:18:12.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes, whereas I would come at that as saying two women were working at a store alone when some people came in and advertised how much they like rapists.
00:18:23.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
And the women said, wow we don't like that, and I think you should leave. And once the people who are running a business tell you to leave, you are then trespassing.
00:18:35.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
If you stay and refuse to leave... you are not supposed to be doing that because the people told you to leave. That's what reserving the right not to serve means.
00:18:46.16
Sarah Rigg
right.
00:18:46.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
So as ah ah somebody who's worked a lot of customer service situations and also has had some experience with trying to get police to help you with bad customers and customer situations, I i think these women did absolutely the right thing.
00:19:03.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
and and my comeback to all the people saying, eh, you can't throw somebody out for what they were wearing, is that if somebody came into your store in a fucking Klan robe, i don't think you would serve them.
00:19:14.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
And at this point,
00:19:14.20
Sarah Rigg
Well, what about no shirt, no shoes, no service?
00:19:16.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right?
00:19:16.87
Sarah Rigg
No.
00:19:17.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right?
00:19:20.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
but But I mean, ultimately, we i am of the belief, and this is a personal belief, i can't it's not the law, but if you're still wearing MAGA gear now, it might as well be a Klan robe.
00:19:36.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
it It might as well be a Klan robe, because you are espousing the same ideals.
00:19:42.52
Sarah Rigg
Well, you know, live i live in a predominantly POC neighborhood I love in West Willow in Ypsilanti. Not all of Ypsilanti Township or Ypsilanti is predominantly black, but my neighbor happens to be.
00:19:54.42
Sarah Rigg
And we have a couple of MAGA guys. And the one guy had the big old Trump flag, but all the Trump stuff has been getting aggressively smaller and smaller. one of the other guys took down his Trump flag.
00:20:07.00
Sarah Rigg
Which is good, because every time I walk my dog around the neighborhood, every time I walk by their house, I want to scream, IS IT GREAT IS IT GREAT YET?
00:20:15.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
me Yeah, well, we just did our grocery shopping and we are not finding a lot of greatness. It's, uh, I mean, did you know a bottle of A1 sauce is like $8?
00:20:29.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's a bottle of sauce. No offense, but what the hell are you doing? Um... But it's the only thing I want on my Steakums.
00:20:40.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
So you are at Concentrate, and Concentrate is a locally focused publication. So let's talk a little about embedded journalism. For people who don't know it it it simply means journalism ah that comes from people that are in the community.
00:20:56.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because when I hear the term embedded journalism, I think of Anderson Cooper in the middle of a war zone. But that's not really what it is, right?
00:21:03.26
Sarah Rigg
No, no, that's not what it means. It just means that you are part of the community or cohort or, you know, eutraz in his case, he travels with the same troop.
00:21:16.22
Sarah Rigg
um And so I'm embedded in my community. It's not necessarily true for all of Concentrate's coverage, but our on-the-ground project, which is part of, ah we have a parent company that have on-the-ground projects in other communities, but ours is the longest running one.
00:21:31.90
Sarah Rigg
um
00:21:32.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
So,
00:21:33.33
Sarah Rigg
It is an embedded journalism project, and it means that you cannot even be considered for the job of reporting on the community for this project, unless you live in the community. So if you want to be on on the ground Grand Rapids, you would have to live in Grand Rapids. If you want to be the reporter for on the ground Ypsilanti, you have to live in in the city of or township of Ypsilanti. That's what that means.
00:21:57.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
And so the the obvious benefits are that the people that are reporting are the people that are impacted by the news. And also you have a sense of of how everything relates to the community in general. Am I understanding that right?
00:22:11.67
Sarah Rigg
Yeah, absolutely. I'd sent you a clip and I don't know if we're going to be able to include it in this conversation, but it was a clip of me talking with my colleague on WEMU radio or local college station. Um, cause we have a partnership with them where we tape a segment that comes out the same day as the written piece that I've done comes out and kind of coordinate with one another.
00:22:31.67
Sarah Rigg
So I'm on the air talking with my colleague about, um, the University of Michigan moving their health services for Ypsilanti to a different location that was going to be way better for the community.
00:22:44.31
Sarah Rigg
So if you were a Detroit based reporter and you were coming in, you could look at a map and kind of figure out where everything was. But I live here. I knew the guy that owns the property. I parked um right next to the transit center. So I know exactly how close it was to the transit center. So you can hear all these things.
00:23:00.95
Sarah Rigg
If you listen to that radio interview, Where I am saying, yes, it's right next door to the transit center. And I know this because I drove right by it because I'm in embedded journalism.
00:23:07.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:23:10.68
Sarah Rigg
I live in a big community. I drove there to get a tour of the building. I've been there multiple times. I know the owner. I knew him independently because I talked to him for a different regional story. that's That's the advantage of having the embedded reporter.
00:23:24.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice. Love it. um Now, because you tend to work for smaller local publications, I'm curious to know if you've had ah your editor or even the publication owner push back on a story because of politics or networking, businessy things, anything like that.
00:23:42.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
and And I understand you probably can't be too specific, but but give us the dish.
00:23:42.94
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
00:23:49.56
Sarah Rigg
You know, I don't want to talk too much about my current job because they've actually been great, but I will say that it's got an interesting funding model. It's sort of like NPR being underwritten where somebody will give you money, like a foundation will give you money and they're not telling you what NPR should report on. They're just saying we want to support the health reporting that you're already doing, do more health reporting. doesn't have to be about us. just has to be about health, right?
00:24:14.42
Sarah Rigg
So that's how underwriting works, or that's how it should work.
00:24:14.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:24:16.62
Sarah Rigg
So there's no interference with the editorial independence. So that's what we have. And and some of the on-the-ground projects are only funded by one person what or one entity, like the DDA for the community or whatever. What I like about Apes Lannies is that it is and has always been funded by a coalition of funders. So there's no one backer that can tell us what to write about. They're just like, we want to see you write more about Ypsilanti. Ypsilanti is a news desert.
00:24:43.51
Sarah Rigg
We want to see you write more about Ypsilanti. That's it. That's the agenda. a So they give us funding each year to tell stories about Ypsilanti. So I have not gotten a great deal of pushback. There's been one or two because it was political. There's one related to gun violence. I'm just going to say that, you know, you can see that would be a very political story. So there was some pushback about one of those, but a lot of times it's not even from like my direct report, it's like higher off the chain than that.
00:25:10.10
Sarah Rigg
So, but definitely I could, you know, I could name names now about old, you know, publications that don't exist anymore for sure.
00:25:11.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, I see.
00:25:17.17
Sarah Rigg
Yeah. You know, I'd get pushed back. I had a nearly weekly opinion column for a weekly that I worked at in a small town newspaper.
00:25:27.30
Sarah Rigg
I started off as a reporter and later became editor of a small town weekly print newspaper and for almost the entire time I didn't start my column until as regularly I would just write it every once in a while early on but later on probably for about four years running I had a weekly column where I had to come up with something every week so it was a really good practice like forcing myself to do kind of like the five or six paragraph essay about something but I would try to pick something local like you know our school board is arguing about this and here's what I think about it and this is why or you know, what whatever the topic is, you usually put something pretty local.
00:26:05.40
Sarah Rigg
um And so that was really fun. That was a very consistent process. And, you know, occasionally before before I was the editor and I got to sit aside and the paper, my ah my editor would occasionally question something I wanted to put in my opinion column. But for the most part, I've not been censored.
00:26:25.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow, that's good to know. um So, CBS News. I want to talk about it just a little or or a lot because CBS News, again, 60 Minutes is another one of those entities that used to be the the paragon. If somebody was going on 60 Minutes and it was something you had an interest in you were going to sit there and watch it when it aired live.
00:26:52.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
And now... it's i mean It's a joke. It's a straight up joke. What do you think is happening over there? I'm actually wondering. i mean, it it seems like it's a fash takeover.
00:27:06.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
But could it be anything else?
00:27:09.62
Sarah Rigg
ah Well, short answer, no. Longer her answer is, um of course, I did love 60 Minutes News. I've been a news nerd for a really long time, as you can tell from me being on my high school newspaper as well.
00:27:20.51
Sarah Rigg
So I did watch 60 Minutes a lot, but I will just, this is my bias right straight out front is that I think that um TV news has been trash for a really long time and I just don't watch it.
00:27:20.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:27:30.90
Sarah Rigg
I see clips online sometimes, um but that's it. I've always trusted print news a lot more. I haven't watched TV news at any significant levels since like 2000. Uh, so that's my, that is my, i know lot of people don't, don't agree with that.
00:27:46.30
Sarah Rigg
However, ah with that all being said, i know that that's an important news source for it, a significant, hintt um, you know, chunk of the population. So the takeover of CBS is very concerning to me.
00:27:59.16
Sarah Rigg
ah did see it coming. I saw there was some kind of like, this is Barry Weiss interview, ah
00:28:06.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
00:28:07.29
Sarah Rigg
Very early on, I'm like, this is ringing some alarm bells, but I'm cautiously optimistic that maybe, maybe they'll be independent still, but no, but no.
00:28:13.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:28:20.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then they fired Stephen Colbert. So, I mean, to just in case anyone was wondering like whether or not they're gonna kowtow to the rapist in chief, ah yes, yes they are.
00:28:22.66
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
00:28:32.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
um And as a ah TV enthusiast, you know, I have reviewed a lot of TV. I'm ah um a, cause you know, I come from an abusive home and watching TV was the only thing that my family could do in a room together that didn't end in somebody getting their ass beat.
00:28:49.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
So TV was always a very big deal to me. And now if I want to pay for a streaming service to watch things like Dexter and, ah you know,
00:29:03.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah Star Trek. Like all the Star Trek is on Paramount. And Star Trek is some of the most progressive affirming TV we've ever had.
00:29:14.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
And now if you want to watch it, you have to give fascist money. And I'm not going to lie, man.
00:29:18.51
Sarah Rigg
yeah
00:29:20.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
I find that very upsetting. Plus, the new Matlock is on CBS. And it's so... I mean, i you know, I don't do a lot of cozy viewing, but it's real cozy. And it's... It's Kathy Bates. And it's it's just not fair that I have to... I mean, I'm not giving fascist money right now. I'm having somebody else pay for it for me so I can sleep at night. but um
00:29:44.15
Sarah Rigg
I did watch one Matlock episode. i missed the window to watch the very first pilot episode for free on their website, but I watched like the second or the third one. It was actually the one about the sexual harassment suit one.
00:29:55.15
Sarah Rigg
I actually really loved it.
00:29:55.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, yeah.
00:29:56.55
Sarah Rigg
I loved it.
00:29:58.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and the dude that plays the owner's son, you know, that's Jason Ritter. so So he's John Ritter's son and and he's married to Melanie Linsky.
00:30:02.87
Sarah Rigg
Right, right.
00:30:10.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I mean, I know not everyone is a Heavenly Creatures fan, but I got to think you are.
00:30:16.76
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
00:30:18.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because, you know, she's the one that's not Kate Winslet. and And the thing is that dismissing her as not Kate Winslet is such a profound, ah you know, I mean, no.
00:30:21.46
Sarah Rigg
Right, right.
00:30:30.14
Sarah Rigg
You and I should totally freaking rewatch that together sometime. I have not seen it in a million years and you would appreciate it more than anybody else I know i to watch it with.
00:30:33.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, yeah.
00:30:38.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, well then, yeah, we'll definitely do that. It's it's definitely, I think the last movie that that you and I watched together, just just for listeners to know, is The Long Walk. And pretty much anything would be more uplifting than that.
00:30:51.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
And, you know, i mean, there' a story where the the mom dies at the end, it doesn't get more wetness than that, seriously. So...
00:30:58.78
Sarah Rigg
but
00:31:03.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
um Now...
00:31:03.57
Sarah Rigg
Oh, I'm still traumatized by that movie. I want your listeners to know that Wednesday has kind of taken me under her wing. and We've been friends since I interviewed her for an article, well, these many years ago.
00:31:17.27
Sarah Rigg
And as she has taken me under her tutelage to make me catch up on some of the old classic horror films that I've watched and some of the newer hidden gems that I may have missed.
00:31:29.42
Sarah Rigg
And she... She periodically um forces me to watch them with her.
00:31:30.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh yeah, because...
00:31:33.28
Sarah Rigg
No, I'm just joking. It's been great.
00:31:34.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
but Well, we watched Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte before the series Feud came out. And that was a great viewing because I think you had seen Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, but you had not seen the follow-up movie.
00:31:49.06
Sarah Rigg
I had seen Hush Hush, but i had been a teenager the last time I seen it. I think I was 19 or something.
00:31:52.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:31:53.18
Sarah Rigg
So I had it been a really, really long time since I had seen it.
00:31:56.50
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, it it very much hits different as an adult. It's it's definitely one of those where like when you side with the the stupid young girl that has the crush on the married man, it hits very differently when you're, you know, the the ah full-on adult that says, wait a minute, that shouldn't have happened.
00:32:00.09
Sarah Rigg
Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:14.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
None of that should have happened.
00:32:16.66
Sarah Rigg
Yeah, I would imagine it's the same type thing if you like read ah the novel Rebecca when you were 19 versus when you were 38 40.
00:32:16.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:32:25.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, right. so So, okay, in terms of journalism, now I would say that atheism is a necessary qualification for hard news journalism. um I don't think that is a universal belief. As someone who grew up with religion and is passionate about journalism, what is your take on that?
00:32:49.85
Sarah Rigg
I don't think atheism isn't necessary. No, I just, you know, I am an atheist myself, but I understand that something like 90% of the world on average believes in some kind of power and power. Not necessarily, you know, in God as as Christianity envisions it, but they believe in some kind of higher power of some kind. So that I'm in the minority. always just keep that in mind. I'm not one of these atheists who's like, yes, I'm just one of the enlightened 10%, right? um No, I because I think for most people, it's a matter of intuition.
00:33:21.56
Sarah Rigg
And ah so I think that people can be very religious and be a journalist and just do that, do a really good job with that squashing of the kind of cognitive dissonance.
00:33:34.46
Sarah Rigg
But I would think that the percentage would probably a lot be a lot higher, especially anything, you know, like when you're in the world war zone, you know, makes you question, you know, humanity.
00:33:45.94
Sarah Rigg
or whether evil exists, those kind of beats, I imagine you would probably trend more towards atheism in that case.
00:33:54.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
I am actually stuck on the idea that 90% of people believe in a higher power. um I mean, I don't have
00:34:03.29
Sarah Rigg
Because even if you if you look at these statistics that religion is getting smaller and smaller, it's shrinking. But what's growing is the number of people who are like spiritual but not religious. So they believe in some kind of higher power. They're spiritual in some way because grimorron when it's not you just the U S. So obviously those numbers are very different in developed worlds. And there's a huge number of atheists that say in the UK, but if you average it out around the world, about 90%, and this has been a while ago, so maybe it's shifted by a few percent, but I don't think it's by a lot.
00:34:33.14
Sarah Rigg
Um, it's just that people have left religion, but they've gone to spiritual, but not religious. They haven't gone all the way to atheism. They're a pretty small percentage.
00:34:42.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
That makes me want to parse whether we're talking about, like, how much of that is wishful thinking. Because I definitely understand, like, the wish slash hope that there's someone with a grand plan and that this isn't all as bleak as it seems.
00:34:59.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
But, yeah, I have a hard time getting my head around that, that that that many people believe in something, you know, inherently supernatural like that.
00:35:11.16
Sarah Rigg
Well, you know, I try to, this is my sort of like my compassionate atheist take on this is that, you know, I used to be like, oh, these stupid people, how can they believe this? But, you know, I was a very devout child and you do handle it through cognitive dissonance. You know, my family was very intellectual and yet they were very pious and these things clashed a lot for me and probably brought on one of my first mental health crises ever.
00:35:35.86
Sarah Rigg
when I was in my early teens because I knew that if I followed this path that was going to take me to atheism because I could see it, you know, but that was going to take me away from my family and that made me want to kill myself.
00:35:49.46
Sarah Rigg
Can I say that out here? I'm sorry. Do you have to add some kind of suicide disclaimer?
00:35:51.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes, we have we have ah we have we have trigger warning we have trigger warnings in the main description, and then we do them per episode if we need to.
00:35:55.26
Sarah Rigg
Okay.
00:35:59.35
Sarah Rigg
Okay. All right, so yeah, so definitely, yeah, I knew very early, 13, 14 years old, that if i went down the route of deconstructing my fundamentalist Christian faith that I was brought up in, and even if I became a liberal Christian, much less an atheist, it would divide me from my family and that we would not be close anymore. And that's pretty pretty much true. I mean, to a large extent.
00:36:28.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that's probably pretty common, right?
00:36:32.31
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
00:36:32.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, i guess I guess by its nature, we wouldn't know how common it is because it it keeps people from talking about it. But that, I mean, I kind of had the opposite experience because my family was not religious, but every so often my mom would get an idea in her head because, you know, we're both nuts, but she was never treated.
00:36:55.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
So she would decide, oh you're going to go to Catholic school, so we're all going to be Catholic. And so at like 13, was suddenly like baptized and then confession. And then ah I think, wait, it's like baptism.
00:37:09.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then you have a communion, which as a kid of 13 who likes zombie movies, telling me about eating the body and blood of Christ was all kinds of messed up for me.
00:37:21.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, yeah.
00:37:22.41
Sarah Rigg
Yeah, do you think it was, cut do you think your mom like thought she had caught on some kind of scam? I mean, she sounds like the kind of person from what you told me about her. Or she'd be like, oh, yeah, I'm going to get something out of you. gay they I'll let them baptize my kids because then I'll get X, Y, or Z.
00:37:35.68
Sarah Rigg
Did you think she was going to get something from being Catholic?
00:37:37.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
What, I mean, she, no, she she actually kind of was because she wanted us to go to the Catholic school and the Catholic school was less expensive, even taking tithing into consideration if you were a member of the church.
00:37:37.92
Sarah Rigg
Or was it less rational than that?
00:37:52.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
So we all joined a church. And even...
00:37:54.75
Sarah Rigg
That's it. See, I knew there was an underlying motivation. Sadly,
00:37:58.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, yeah, yeah. it It certainly wasn't that she suddenly thought Jesus was cool and wanted to be more like him. That was that was not it. no No one thought that.
00:38:05.89
Sarah Rigg
sadly, sadly.
00:38:05.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
No one thought that was happening. um
00:38:08.17
Sarah Rigg
sadly
00:38:08.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
But the thing is that I had, I think the term that they use is thirst. I had a thirst for... Something that would make everything make sense.
00:38:21.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
That like, cause I mean, what I was living in was a fucking hellscape and, you know, not as bad as what a lot of kids went through, but, you know, violence and, and abuse and substances and, you know, that,
00:38:34.36
Sarah Rigg
Oh, don't minimize what you went through. My God, it was bad muff.
00:38:37.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
the The guy next door to us was the neighborhood child molester, and he was our, like, emergency go-there-if-you-get-locked-out-of-the-house person. So, you know, lot lot of shit like that.
00:38:48.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
So, a guy with a grand plan that that wasn't giving me any more than I could handle? Like, that that whole concept? I was like, alright, I'm cautiously optimistic, but can you can you make him stop?
00:39:02.36
Sarah Rigg
You know, yeah, I get that because I've been consuming a fair bit of ah former cult member content lately. And I guess for a lot of people, you know, they think it's the sensationalism of because they've seen a lot of documentaries and stuff. But for me, I'm seeing the raw interviews with people. And it's more about the particular channel I'm watching doesn't follow because a lot of times there will be like one about one specific cult or, you know, religious group.
00:39:27.99
Sarah Rigg
But she does this whole broad spectrum of different ones. And it seemed the themes of control across all these different religious groups is just like been blowing my mind.
00:39:42.33
Sarah Rigg
And it's like, I thought I had like deconstructed my faith a really long time ago and I have, but there's obviously, you know, still some ideas that had not completely unpacked. It's been really, really amazing.
00:39:51.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:39:54.36
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
00:39:56.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, it's, I mean, we're finding out so much now about
00:40:04.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
I'll just be blunt. the The evil things that men do and the women that that help them um and how so much of that is tied into the idea of, well, if you don't if you don't go along with this, you're a bad person. like it's It's so easy to manipulate good people because good people want to be good.
00:40:27.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
you know, whereas bad people that are only in it for themselves are, you know, their their motivation is much different. You can't convince a bad person not to do.
00:40:35.54
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
00:40:38.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
so I mean, it's it's like when people try to appeal to to MAGA boys by talking, ah you know, by pointing out their hypocrisy. Like, they don't care that they're hypocrites.
00:40:45.59
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
00:40:47.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
They think it's hilarious. They think it's hilarious that other people care about things.
00:40:48.73
Sarah Rigg
Right.
00:40:51.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
They're basically... Trey Parker and Matt Stone like ah ha you care about the planet you fucking sucker you know and so you you can't and that's why like I think so many people like you know Donald Trump pretends he read the bible he pretends he has favorite bible verses but it's too personal for him to talk about and there are people that that don't see that as bullshit they're like oh yeah because that's how I feel about my you know like I
00:40:55.73
Sarah Rigg
Right.
00:41:00.30
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
00:41:21.08
Wednesday Lee Friday
It really just goes back to my whole, how are people falling for that? And they're not falling for it.
00:41:25.88
Sarah Rigg
Oh, right.
00:41:26.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
They're choosing it.
00:41:28.92
Sarah Rigg
Yeah, I guess the thing I was going back to the cult, because I got off track too, was um just that, you know, you want to think that these people are weak, or they're stupid, or there's something wrong with them for falling into a cult. But the thing is, is they're generally like you're talking about, you know, you're a kid, and you were a very vulnerable kid. So they get people at vulnerable times, like they're transitioning in, you know, into college from high school or out of college into real life, or they're You know, for, you know, whatever the transition is or somebody their life has just died.
00:41:57.29
Sarah Rigg
I mean, there's some cults, they're that diabolical. I want say it was like Scientology. They would like have targets and then they would move in on purpose when they knew somebody who just had a parent died because of that we have vulnerable time to recruit them.
00:42:02.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, dude.
00:42:07.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
Scientologists came after me as a kid. I had silent Scientologists give me the Scientology test like five or six times as a kid. They would just come up on me and start talking to me. And like one of them came to see me at school. Like they were worse than the Mormons because the Mormons came after me pretty hard too. But yeah, they they did the thing where they they I got hooked up to the machine once.
00:42:31.10
Sarah Rigg
Gotcha. Yeah, well, they think that that that children are just tiny adults and that they have all the responsibility and guilt and knowledge and decision making of ah of adults are just tiny.
00:42:33.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, but
00:42:41.78
Sarah Rigg
And so, you know, they should be able to recruit you directly. It's just so weird.
00:42:46.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I was just talking about that because um when when I worked for McDonald's and as a teenager, like in the eighty s ah age test, um one of the rules was that you couldn't upsell a kid. Like they really, really wanted people to upsell, get a bigger drink, get a bigger fries, get a dessert, whatever. But you were not supposed to do that to kids.
00:43:12.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because McDonald's, which is not one of the most ethical companies on the planet, felt that it was inappropriate to advertise directly to a child, that children are...
00:43:25.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
not capable of making that because what kid's gonna say no i don't want an ice cream cone most kids will not say no and they know that so but yet if you watch tv like when i was a kid you come home from school and watch tv it was nothing but toy commercials just constantly i could sing any song a commercial ever had about gi joe
00:43:35.19
Sarah Rigg
Right.
00:43:43.59
Sarah Rigg
Something
00:43:47.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because that's how often we saw them.
00:43:48.50
Sarah Rigg
special.
00:43:50.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, G.I. Joe is even worse, man. Because, like, that's not just a toy commercial. It's a war toy commercial. So...
00:44:00.31
Sarah Rigg
something special
00:44:00.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
but but But I digress. Now, on another topic, you and I have something in common, which is that we are bi chicks and we are married to dudes.
00:44:12.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
So I actually laugh because that's I call that being LGBTQ on like the easiest difficulty setting. um But that's kind of a dismissive way to go about it. What's your take on that? How's all that going for you?
00:44:27.54
Sarah Rigg
Yeah, didn't you get some pushback by joking about that online? Yeah.
00:44:31.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
I have indeed. i have indeed.
00:44:34.60
Sarah Rigg
I'm not sure if I believe that because, um you know, i and I guess it's sort of like when people talk about third world problems, I mean, I guess, yes, I'm not being shot outside a gay nightclub, but the bisexual erasure of people who are married to, you know, so bisexual women and men who are, you know, partnered with somebody who's opposite sex,
00:44:56.18
Sarah Rigg
And it's so funny because there's a little bit of a double standard too, even with women men celebrities. If a man dates another man, it's like, well, he's gay. And if woman is like, she could, but they might, you know, actually assume that she's bisexual.
00:45:08.06
Sarah Rigg
But with the man, it's like, oh, he's become gay. it's like No, i still date women and men.
00:45:11.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, Pedro Pascal, man. That's that's crazy. Because first of all, how are you going to watch the guy who played over in Martel and be like, oh, he's bi?
00:45:15.32
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
00:45:20.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
He likes dudes? What? What? Like, there's there's nothing shocking taking place there.
00:45:28.09
Sarah Rigg
So yeah, I always like it when people correct me. No, still pan, bi, pan, or whatever. So I love that. Yeah, I don't like bisexual erasure. I just, you know, this so I've had a couple of novels that I tried to write and and put aside, and one of them had a theme of bisexual erasure. And I just don't know how to talk about it. And so I was trying to write something about it in fiction, and it didn't really come together. But maybe I'll revisit that someday.
00:45:56.92
Sarah Rigg
But just, it's so frustrating.
00:45:57.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:45:58.68
Sarah Rigg
I think in the eighty you know, we've come a little ways from the 80s at least to where, you know, so it was like if you're a woman and you said you're a bisexual, you're probably straight and just trying to get attention from men.
00:46:09.16
Sarah Rigg
If you were a dude and you said you were bisexual, you just didn't want to come out as being gay. Those are the stereotypes that I grew up with. I bet you grew up this with the same ones.
00:46:18.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep, yep, very much so.
00:46:19.93
Sarah Rigg
Now,
00:46:20.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Although when when H and I first got together, I had a boss at the, um well, I won't say where, um but um they talked often about how much they loved women, but I never saw them with a woman, which is you know not necessarily evidence of anything.
00:46:40.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
But she very much talked about her love of women like with men. And I was like, huh, that's weird.
00:46:50.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
I only see her flirt with chicks and she's ah I mean, I only see her flirt with dudes, but she's always talking about chicks. And so, like, you know, my little mind was like, oh, what does that mean?
00:47:02.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Does that mean stuff? I'm going to decode that behavior because I'll bet I'll figure something out. And like, first of all, it's none of my business. But then she hit on H. And so then it it like became my business um because the thing is when that.
00:47:13.24
Sarah Rigg
Right. Oh, I'm not saying that those stereotypes never are fulfilled in real life.
00:47:17.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, sure.
00:47:18.39
Sarah Rigg
I mean, for sure they are.
00:47:20.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I'm just saying, like, I had that particular one, um you know, like, there was, it became evidence-based for me. And the thing is, it happened so early on in our relationship, because, like, people flirt with each other all the time, and I'm just like, LOL, good luck.
00:47:28.82
Sarah Rigg
Right.
00:47:36.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
um But at the time, i was still much more insecure. Like, we were living in our first, actually... We weren't even in our first apartment yet. I was still living with my old roommate and and just dating age. So yeah, I was way less secure about all that than I am today.
00:47:52.84
Sarah Rigg
I would like to report that I have never flirted with Wednesday's husband.
00:47:52.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
So I was...
00:47:56.61
Sarah Rigg
he is extremely handsome, but I pretend that he's somebody's 90 year old grandfather interact with him on that basis. So it's not to cause any jealousy for my good friend.
00:48:06.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, but yeah, honestly, it's it's fine now because that guy's not going anywhere. um Well, because, I mean, we've had people be, like, very forward. Like, more forward than I would ever be. It would not occur to me to say to a married man, just point blank, let's have sex and not tell your wife.
00:48:29.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, that's, like, it's not even a romantic fantasy. That that sounds like a business deal. Like, I don't... I mean, I get it. I get why people want to get with my husband because he's a wife guy and there are few things in the world like more attractive than that.
00:48:47.22
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
00:48:47.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
But um yeah.
00:48:49.62
Sarah Rigg
So, so what about you? i mean, are you one of these people that says you're bi, but I've never seen you with a woman.
00:48:55.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's true. You have not. You have not. Um. And I mean, i think that like on a, on a personal level, I do, I do prefer men.
00:49:08.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
So I don't know if, if that like somehow impacts my buying is, I know it's all, it's all spectrum. Like that's my understanding. Some people are super, super straight and some people are super, super gay and everybody else is somewhere in the middle.
00:49:23.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
So if, uh,
00:49:25.85
Sarah Rigg
And you can slide around up and down that Kinsey scale over the course of your life too. I know I certainly have.
00:49:29.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, right. i mean, because it's not even about like whether someone is male or female or, or you know, anything in between. It's about the person.
00:49:39.32
Sarah Rigg
Well, you know, i have this theory about bisexuality that maybe you have not talked about with any of your your previous guests, but my take on this is that there are, there's two kinds of bisexuals, no there isnt but there's at least two kinds of bisexuals.
00:49:39.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, it's always about the person.
00:49:51.48
Sarah Rigg
There's bisexuals, I think, who are like, I need a set. I want a man and a woman at the same time. I mean, they exist out there. And maybe it's just because i've I've seen people post stuff about it online and maybe they're the outliers, but they really do care about gender and they don't like the i idea of gender, ah gender queer people. They really are invested in the gender duality. I don't think they're the majority, but they exist.
00:50:13.43
Sarah Rigg
And then there's other people who are like, no, I'm bisexual, not because I need to collect the whole set, but because I don't care about the gender. I care about the person and I don't care about, which package it comes in or what type of package it comes in.
00:50:26.22
Sarah Rigg
So I think you can kind of, that maybe that's a spectrum too, or maybe you could be a little bit of both.
00:50:30.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and that actually brings us to another stereotype about bi people is that they are much more likely to be unfaithful because they want that varied experience.
00:50:43.48
Sarah Rigg
Right.
00:50:43.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
And...
00:50:43.72
Sarah Rigg
Which I hate that myth. I wish I would die in a fire.
00:50:47.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right. And again, I'm sure that that is true of of some people at some point. But I think we also know that you could never say that about heteros. You could never say heteros are more likely to cheat or less likely to cheat because of, you know, who they're into, even though we all know a hetero person who has cheated.
00:51:07.35
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, I would be shocked to meet someone who has never met a cheater.
00:51:08.25
Sarah Rigg
yeah we
00:51:12.57
Sarah Rigg
We do know that bisexual women experience the highest levels of domestic violence of any LGBT group. We think that the dumb mechanism might be that women who were battered and by or but by a man, who were bisexual or innately bisexual, could go either way, but were with a man who battered them, were more likely to end up with a woman.
00:51:35.86
Sarah Rigg
And so that's how that situation ends up. I think that's kind of an interesting possible causation, but right now we just only know the crook, know, we know the statistics.
00:51:44.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow, that's, yeah, that that is a huge conversation that belongs in a different episode, I think. But yes, that's, there's um because there's so much to parse there.
00:51:56.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
And ah yeah, the domestic violence conversation, goddamn.
00:52:00.86
Sarah Rigg
Well, I'm just saying, you know, it it has to do with being, you know, a queer person and outwardly seeming hetero marriage.
00:52:05.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:52:07.10
Sarah Rigg
It's more complicated. I think that people think and not necessarily always being LGBTQ on um on easy mode. Not always.
00:52:17.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
True, true. And, you know, there there is a certain stripe of straight man who ah feels very threatened by anyone else who might pleasure their wife.
00:52:29.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
And if they ever were to find out that women are better at it than them, which, you know, but that stripe of man, that's the kind of man that doesn't try. You know, like I had, cause, cause you know, I'm a sex writer and and people ask me questions and someone asked me about that in particular, like, why isn't my dick good enough for my wife?
00:52:39.10
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
00:52:51.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
And i don't know if you know this statistic, but roundabout 70% of women require some other stimulation. They require it on their, their clit or their G spot in order to, to have an orgasm. And which means that sex and particularly, missionary sex isn't going to do it.
00:53:10.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like that's, that's almost ah a movie myth or a TV myth that if you're really connected to someone in a relationship and then you have sex, that she will have an orgasm from PIV sex.
00:53:21.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that's just not so.
00:53:22.16
Sarah Rigg
Right.
00:53:24.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
And so when men are taught that, that's also one of the things that I think porn does men a disservice, because if you find that out when you're, you know,
00:53:30.54
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
00:53:35.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
11 to 15, whenever you're listening or watching your porn or whatever, and and don't carry that with you, it's not as big a surprise when you're 30. If indeed you ever learn it.
00:53:44.63
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
00:53:46.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, we've all been on the internet. We know that there are men who think the female orgasm is a myth.
00:53:51.71
Sarah Rigg
Yes.
00:53:52.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then other men say, my God, you could not have waterboarded that out of me.
00:53:53.06
Sarah Rigg
Mm-hmm.
00:53:56.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:54:01.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right. So let's see where I'm looking at my list because I have a list of questions. um Oh, well, okay. You actually indicated a willingness to discuss a time in your life when you felt in legitimate fear for your life.
00:54:17.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
um And that is a question that we only ask with permission because we don't think it's nice to spring that on people. What what do you want to tell us?
00:54:23.55
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
00:54:26.71
Sarah Rigg
So was thinking about this because i want to have a, like a coherent story to tell you, but I think it illustrates, like actually it actually goes back to the mental health conversation that we touched on a couple of times, which is um that a couple times where I thought I was in, really thought I was in fear for my life was all car related.
00:54:45.94
Sarah Rigg
One was pretty bad. i was in an accident. where somebody else was driving on an icy road. And we rear-ended somebody My glasses flew off my face. And I remember I couldn't couldn see. And was like, oh my God, i've like smashed my head and it's ruined my sight.
00:54:59.48
Sarah Rigg
I'm like, Sarah, your glasses flew off your face.
00:55:01.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:55:02.97
Sarah Rigg
you know so But that one was really scary. And there at least one other time where it was a really scary accident. ah There's been a couple of times where I probably was more in danger of my life where I didn't act. I wasn't in fear. So it was really weird.
00:55:18.30
Sarah Rigg
um So I'll tell you one other car related one was one time my husband and I got stuck on a ride home from the Upper Peninsula visiting family up there. Really bad snowstorm around Gaylord, Grayling. And we ended up, going story short, it was getting off in, I think it was Gaylord, and getting a hotel room for the night because the road conditions were so terrible.
00:55:39.13
Sarah Rigg
But while we were on the road, you know, we it was whiteout conditions and it's a 70 mile an hour highway And it's whiteout conditions in the snow. We're seeing cars left and right.
00:55:49.85
Sarah Rigg
And I'm like rocking back. I trust my husband's driving, but I am so terrified and rocking back and forth. And I'm like having trouble not talking about how freaked out I am. And that actually was one of the triggers that made me decide to get help for my generalized anxiety disorder. Not that that wasn't a very anxiety provoking situation and we could have slid off the road. We probably wouldn't have died in a crash because we weren't we't going that fast. But you know, you could have gotten lost in the snowstorm. We could have ultimately died. But I mean, it wasn't like we were going to go up in flame in that second. And my reaction was, it was okay to be stressed out. But my reaction was like at nine where it should have probably been like a four, you know? And so like, that was like one of the things I thought about later on. I have other examples, but that's one of the ones that comes to mind because Like I really did. I thought we were going to die. And I just had that that horrible fear that we were going to, we're going to die. We're to crash.
00:56:46.04
Sarah Rigg
We were going to get lost in the blowout snow. We were going to die in the snow and gailer, which we didn't thank God. ah But there has been a couple of other cases where I probably freaking should have feared for my life. And I don't know what's wrong with me. But apparently I see danger and I run into it. Instead, i had somebody break into our house. I've worked from my my own home and my own,
00:57:07.45
Sarah Rigg
home study for decades. And this is, so this was a long time ago. I had somebody break into our house and instead of, know, somebody would instinctively hide in the bedroom and call 911 run, I went shrieking after him and told him to get out of my house.
00:57:21.78
Sarah Rigg
And there was another time I was at a friend's house who lives in one the most notorious housing complexes in Ypsilanti Township. You know who you are.
00:57:29.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:57:29.94
Sarah Rigg
not my, friend not my friend, the housing complex, you know, who you are.
00:57:34.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep. yep
00:57:34.42
Sarah Rigg
And, uh, We were hearing the neighbors arguing. And in fact, her daughter, when she had to leave her daughter alone at home, the daughter was barricading the door because she was nervous about these neighbors who were always fighting over there all the time.
00:57:47.58
Sarah Rigg
And apparently the person who actually had the lease over there had an abusive partner and somebody had called management on them while I was there visiting my friends. And I left my friends to go get in my car. And this guy thought that I had called the management on him.
00:58:06.26
Sarah Rigg
And i hadn't, it was not me. And it wasn't my friend that I was staying with any either. Somebody else was pissed off because this guy was being such an a-hole. And he followed me out to my car screaming that he was going cut me.
00:58:18.74
Sarah Rigg
But I didn't realize it at the time until I was like five or six feet away from my car. Cause I'm like, why, why is, Why's that guy yelling at Who's he yelling at me? I didn't realize he was yelling it at me until I was like almost already in my car.
00:58:28.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yikes.
00:58:31.98
Sarah Rigg
So I wasn't even all that afraid. But i in looking back, I'm like, man, i um yeah, that guy was yeah having a mental health crisis. That was not good.
00:58:42.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
yikes Yikes. Well, and I mean, that's also a whole thing with like poor neighborhoods and people being under more stress and what poverty does to you over time and how that, you know, takes down in anger and stuff.
00:58:56.03
Sarah Rigg
Oh yeah, absolutely. I felt so sorry for the person who lived there because she ended up hurting her family and they had like all this big family with a kid who had a disability all jammed into this tiny like two bedroom apartment. And she got kicked out because she was letting that guy come around. It was like the third time he caused her ruckus. It's like, good job, dude. you know I felt bad about the whole situation. It was terrible. was just, it was not good all around.
00:59:22.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
I actually did...
00:59:22.28
Sarah Rigg
Cause we live in a dystopian nightmare. Kessler- Apple is nightmare.
00:59:26.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
i was trying to develop a theory... that if more people had air conditioning, that there would be less domestic violence in the summer. And I got, I'm, you know, ADHD, so the research, the the whole like meticulous nature of it didn't come together, but I was onto something.
00:59:47.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
I'm sure of it because i I mean, people would be less angry if they weren't trapped in a hot place.
00:59:47.51
Sarah Rigg
Kessler- And
00:59:54.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
um but But yeah, I don't wanna digress too much.
00:59:56.89
Sarah Rigg
People are angry in general, yeah, if we were living in a capitalist hellscape, yes, that's totally true.
01:00:01.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, just like, ah yeah, exactly. Like living wages, you know, stop telling people not to buy coffee and just pay them enough to live. um and But yeah, I'm sure that we are in a agreement.
01:00:12.92
Sarah Rigg
Yeah, there's all these studies about how they're coming out really recently about how the difference in longevity in race comes down to freaking prejudice, especially anti-Black prejudice.
01:00:24.13
Sarah Rigg
I mean, there's a lot of anti-POC in general, but specifically Black folks in the United States are experiencing a lot of anti-Blackness, and it's taking a decade off their life, and it's BS.
01:00:25.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:00:33.97
Sarah Rigg
I hate it. It makes me so angry.
01:00:36.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah People treating each other badly is the source of of so many of our issues. And I think so much of it is rooted in fear, you know, rather than hatred. It really is fear, which is why poor people help each other out and rich people tell poor people to go fuck themselves, by and large.
01:00:56.02
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
01:00:56.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because, well, and it it always reminds me of Mr. Potter from ah It's a Wonderful Life, but Elon Musk says the same things. He says, nobody would help me if I needed it Well, no, dude, because you're a fucking asshole.
01:01:09.78
Sarah Rigg
Right, yeah.
01:01:10.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
that's you know it's It's not that people are mean and they don't want to help you.
01:01:11.61
Sarah Rigg
No.
01:01:13.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
If you're a mean, because I cannot think of a time when I went on, say, Facebook and said, we are having an issue. i need help.
01:01:24.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
And people will send a card or a gift certificate or a you know a small amount of cash or advice, or they'll hook me up with a person or an organization Or, you know, people want to help each other.
01:01:38.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
The average person wants to be kind.
01:01:38.77
Sarah Rigg
Yeah. Right.
01:01:40.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
They want to be helpful. And typically, when people like decent people, if they're not helping you, it's because they don't know how. Which is why if I need something...
01:01:52.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
I will say to the community, this is a thing I need. Can someone help me? And by the same token, when people say to me, I need help. I need a resume. I need someone to watch my kid. I need, you know, I haven't eaten in two days. Can you can you help me out?
01:02:08.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
then of course you jump back in and and you help people. And we have gotten further and further away from that because that is what the fascists want. If we all hate each other and are suspicious of each other and are reticent to help each other, because what if you don't deserve it?
01:02:24.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
What if you don't deserve Medicaid? What if you don't deserve healthcare? care
01:02:27.66
Sarah Rigg
Right.
01:02:28.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
A guy who admitted to snorting cocaine off a toilet seat has said that I don't deserve food stamps because what if I buy soda or potato chips? That's an unhealthy life choice.
01:02:38.15
Sarah Rigg
I know. if, right? I know it's great.
01:02:42.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
Heaven for fun, Mr.
01:02:43.80
Sarah Rigg
It is.
01:02:45.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
the Commander
01:02:45.27
Sarah Rigg
It's Orwellian. Yeah, I know.
01:02:47.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, but but one thing that we did not talk about, though, is that you you have anxiety, but an an anxiety disorder, which I guess is when you need help with your anxiety, because everybody has some anxiety, um
01:02:55.55
Sarah Rigg
Yes.
01:03:04.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
do you Do you want to parse at what point it becomes a disorder? Because I think that is kind of related to the the story that you just told, where you felt that your anxiety reaction was disproportional to what was actually happening.
01:03:16.55
Sarah Rigg
Yeah, absolutely. So I have a really complicated relationship with this whole thing. i think that probably being anxiety prone runs in the family, if that's a thing, because my mom was as well.
01:03:28.89
Sarah Rigg
And dabbled with Xanax, especially after my father died. i have gone through a really sort of complicated process about how I feel about anxiety and anxiety drugs. My diagnosis is generalized anxiety disorder. I don't have any fancy ones, just just anxiety. And like most um mental health diagnosis, where it crosses the line between normal stress reaction and and anxiety disorders, when it interferes with your work life, your home life, your satisfaction, your your general life satisfaction.
01:04:04.38
Sarah Rigg
And that was definitely happening with me. Just everything in my life was, ah you know, freaking nine, you know, on a scale of one to 10, an emergency, everything was like an eight or a nine all the time.
01:04:14.78
Sarah Rigg
And it's just not tenable. You can't live like that. i was probably shooting cortisol into my system multiple times a day.
01:04:17.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:04:20.60
Sarah Rigg
it was not tenable. And ah so i kind of had this societal, you know, probably absorbed all the same ideas everybody has ah picked up in the late 80s and early 90s about how these mental health drugs were just a crutch.
01:04:35.68
Sarah Rigg
So you shouldn't do that. You should get out and get a walk. or go get therapy or whatever. So i probably absorbed some that. But then I met people who were like, you know, if you're diabetic, you know, you need meds. If you have this condition, and you need meds.
01:04:46.76
Sarah Rigg
But it's the same thing with my psychiatric meds. I'm like, okay, well, that model makes that sense to me as well.
01:04:49.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:04:51.74
Sarah Rigg
So I think this is this probably a story about how mental health and how you treat it. is The model has changed for me over time. Kind of our nation has changed how it's looked at it over time, but it's definitely changed for me as well.
01:05:03.32
Sarah Rigg
So then I morphed into this like, okay, well, SSRI isn't, In particular, i i do wonder, you know, I've seen some studies that they weren't that much better than placebo. So I'm wondering how effective they are. But like, you know, if people want to take them and they find it useful, that's great. But I should just be doing these lifestyle things. I should be meditating. I should be going in for walks. I can get light therapy. I should be doing all of these things. And then I wouldn't need the drugs, right? But I'm writing.
01:05:33.05
Sarah Rigg
But i you know I had a couple of traumatic ah experiences and ah you know maybe if I had had gotten, I might've gotten some kind of PTSD diagnosis. I don't know, I'm not gonna self-diagnose, I think that's BS. But yeah I think that really um created an uptick in my symptoms and made it a lot harder to deal with. And um so luckily I finally just talked to my GP and said I was interested in exploring anxiety ah drugs And we just went on two.
01:06:01.58
Sarah Rigg
And the first one I tried made me feel so much better immediately. I'm like, oh my God, I didn't know if I could feel this calm. This feels amazing.
01:06:08.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right?
01:06:09.94
Sarah Rigg
But it gave me a headache every day. So then we tried, yeah.
01:06:12.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
Aw.
01:06:13.22
Sarah Rigg
So then we tried a second one and it was pretty good, but I didn't like that it interfered with my sexual function. i didn't love it, but it was more tolerable in every every other way.
01:06:20.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:06:24.22
Sarah Rigg
So I did that for a long time. And I really still believe that they're a super useful tool for calming your nervous system, that I was able to take day-to-day stress. And remember, this happened. I started going on SSRIs right before the first COVID lockdown.
01:06:44.92
Sarah Rigg
So it was extremely useful a couple ways because I had to talk to a therapist periodically as I was adjusting on my meds. So I was to also talk getting talk therapy on top of it. during the very first wave of the COVID lockdowns, which was actually, the timing was amazing.
01:06:57.94
Sarah Rigg
I couldn't thank myself more for doing that for myself.
01:07:00.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, that's that's fortuitous.
01:07:00.90
Sarah Rigg
I was like, I was like past Sarah.
01:07:02.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
Definitely.
01:07:03.97
Sarah Rigg
Thank you so much for doing that for me. Really? I mean, amazing. Um, so, um, yeah, definitely found them useful, but, um,
01:07:15.67
Sarah Rigg
Over time, I really was annoyed again with the effect on my sexual function. And then I've also done some research that perhaps some of the gut issues that I've had have been linked to SSRIs lately. and I'm like, I'm going to do a trial period. I'm going to go off them. I think i maybe I have calmed my nervous system enough that I can get to the place where those holistic things will help me. So I am currently not taking any meds. It's not going great because we're in the middle of the fascist takeover of our government and everybody hates women and the Epstein files have been released. So um it's been a pretty stressful time. And I think it's kind of natural for my eye to be twitching periodically.
01:07:55.10
Sarah Rigg
um
01:07:55.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
01:07:56.73
Sarah Rigg
So, ah but overall, i do actually think that the SSRI that I was on interfered with my gut health and I am probably that's going to be healing for a while.
01:08:07.54
Sarah Rigg
So I kind of have come not, I wouldn't say full circle. would say that just that my my understanding of these things is more many times and I would never tell somebody not to try something that would help them calm down and calm their nervous system, help them get a grip when things are really off the rails for them and they just can't cope. I think that they're a great tool, but I think you probably should go on them having an exit plan to get off them. Um,
01:08:33.50
Sarah Rigg
or at least talk to your doctor about whether, whether that's the route for you, because I'm, I'm kind of concerned. I'm concerned for people. Um, on long-term effects, I know for a lot of people, they have to switch their meds up a couple of times. They stop working.
01:08:47.26
Sarah Rigg
Um, they don't like the side effects. And as I said, there's some fairly recent evidence that, um, they interfere with your gut health, which has been a ah big issue for me for the last few years. So,
01:09:00.18
Sarah Rigg
That's where I'm currently at, but I'm not saying never say never. I have a much more nuanced view, I guess, of all of this at this point.
01:09:06.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. Well, yeah, all that makes a lot of sense. And there are ah studies that say that there is a very strong connection between good gut health and mental health. And i have actually, that has rang, rang, rung? it's It's true. It's true for me. um Because what I discovered is that certain things destroy my gut bacteria. And then I'm in a bad mood for days because my stomach feels gross.
01:09:34.55
Sarah Rigg
Right.
01:09:34.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
And for me, diet soda is one of those things. Like I'm fine with zero soda in terms of gut health, but diet diet soda just massacres it. So then I got get like fermented foods and yogurt and all that there. But when I actually do pay attention to gut health, like it's in pretty good shape right now because I figured out all the things that were messing it up and stopped having them.
01:09:57.85
Sarah Rigg
Yeah, nice.
01:09:59.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
That it made a difference for me. I'm also on a mood stabilizer, which like is is actually good for me. I've been on the same one for years. It's kind of surprising, actually. Once in a while, you know, I've also had like physical health issues. So that impacts my mental health as well.
01:10:18.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
But for the most part, like I'm on something that technically I'm allergic to. If I take more than 150 milligrams, I have an allergic reaction with like swelling and hives and stuff. It's happened to me once and that it just totally freaked me out because I didn't know what was happening. um But as long as I stay under that, it's okay for me.
01:10:38.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
and ah And I feel really good about that. Like, I think I would say that like my main health problems now are physical and not mental and emotional.
01:10:51.35
Wednesday Lee Friday
So it doesn't sound like it, but that's good news.
01:10:52.41
Sarah Rigg
you You know, just yeah we've known each other for a really long time, and I just feel like you are pretty st stable in your mental health, and like especially like the last. I mean, despite your health challenges in a lot of ways. Although, i mean, i know when Trump won, we were pretty devastated, though.
01:11:09.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I mean, that was the the last time was the worst time because I was actually working for Kamala. Like, that was my money source at the time was calling people for for Kamala.
01:11:20.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah So to find out, like, i just want to say, i don't i don't think the the actual numbers are real. I'm sure that Elon Musk messed up the numbers on purpose to give Trump the victory. I think he tried to do that in 2020, but he wasn't able to because of...
01:11:38.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
the the number of absentee ballots, and that's why he went crazy and appointed to joy and you know all that there. i I have big theories about this, but I don't think the numbers are real.
01:11:46.99
Sarah Rigg
Mm-hmm.
01:11:48.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
I don't think it's possible that every swing state went Trump by a wide enough margin that there was no recount. I don't think that is numerically possible, and I honestly think better of my countrymen than to think that I'm sure that far too many people did vote for the the traitorous rapist. I'm sure that that lots of people did. I don't believe that that many people did.
01:12:14.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
And i I don't understand. it seems like no one even looked into it. And then he hired a bunch of freaking teenagers to come in and just go hog wild on government records. You know, I have a family member who works for the IRS. s So we won't say who it is, but I...
01:12:34.36
Wednesday Lee Friday
what I mean, the the things that I'm hearing, like I found out about the the food stamp things. When they cut off food stamp things, I found out about that like way early and that nobody was allowed to say anything. And it's it's insane, the stuff that's going on. like that you could just The idea that you could just go to work and be like, hey, the government's about to starve a bunch of poor people. Did you hear? No, I didn't. What time's lunch? It's surreal.
01:12:58.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
Something that...
01:13:01.11
Sarah Rigg
And that was, you know, that that stamp ah fiasco was like a true illustration of what you're talking about.
01:13:02.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
like something that
01:13:10.21
Sarah Rigg
Rich people saying, fuck you and poor people stepping up and feeding their neighbors. That's what I saw everywhere, everywhere.
01:13:15.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh yeah. Yeah.
01:13:16.70
Sarah Rigg
The people who are barely surviving feeding the people who are just below the line.
01:13:22.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep. It's like, all right, you guys like rice and beans? Come on over.
01:13:29.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah You know what? After that, let's actually get into something fun. what What's your favorite song by The Cure?
01:13:37.95
Sarah Rigg
Uh, love and used to sing to my friend in high school. Why can't I be you?
01:13:46.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice.
01:13:47.38
Sarah Rigg
I don't know why, but that that was always a favorite of mine.
01:13:51.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
Awesome. Awesome. Now you are a big reader. um You read way more than me. Like how many books would you say you read in a month?
01:14:00.31
Sarah Rigg
Well, you know, I'm down because I've been gaming so much on my phone. It's kind of a little bit of a scandal and Jeff is like, like shaming me for it. So I haven't been reading as much as usual, but I kept kept track from 2006 through the early 20, you know, 2022, 2023. And I was on average reading about a book a week.
01:14:17.72
Sarah Rigg
So there was one year where I just had a lot of time to read at one of my jobs, on a part-time job that I had that was not journalism related. And i read like 87 books that year.
01:14:28.12
Sarah Rigg
But in general, the the last couple years, I've been more like just 20 or 30 books ah a year.
01:14:29.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
01:14:33.32
Sarah Rigg
So it's not as many.
01:14:35.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right. Well, we okay. So we got to talk about Colleen Hoover um because I, yeah well, yeah, I mean, normally I read horror and people recommend horror books to me.
01:14:41.17
Sarah Rigg
Thank you.
01:14:47.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
As listeners know, romance, not really my genre. um not I don't like hate it or anything, but it's not to my taste. I don't enjoy the tropes. I don't enjoy, like whenever I tell someone what I didn't like about a romance book, they'll say, well, yeah, that's just romance. So I just assume that it's not for me and I move on about my day. But there is a woman named Colleen Hoover who I guess turned out to be a pretty vile person. Like her son was accused of some bad stuff and she was mean to the...
01:15:20.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
victim i like i don't know all the details but the stuff i heard was not good but what i want to talk about is that i was told by lots of people to read a book called verity and that i would really like it and it's so creepy and it's so scary and it is without a doubt like no hyperbole the worst book that i have ever read in its entirety And I want to remind everybody that I never finished Triggered.
01:15:49.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
I couldn't read Triggered. But um but this book,
01:15:52.13
Sarah Rigg
Did you burn any bridges with any book friends for saying that?
01:15:55.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, i did ask everybody who recommended it to stand in a straight line so that I could run down and slap them all like with one one swift motion, but but we haven't arranged it yet. No, I don't, it was so bad. like Like everything about like the characters were bad, what happened to them was bad, everything in the relationship was toxic,
01:16:19.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
And the prose itself, like I'm pretty wordy in my prose and I require editing because I'm just bla blah, blah, blah, blah. You can't see me. I'm making the blah, blah noise with my hand. um Blah, blah, blah. You know, I'm ah um'm a blah, blah, blah writer that has to go back through and edit things out, which is interesting because if you read reviews for my books, people talk about my economy of language. Yeah.
01:16:44.50
Wednesday Lee Friday
and And I assure you that that happens in post. But have you read any Colleen Hoover? Any at all?
01:16:52.45
Sarah Rigg
You know, haven't, but she is on my radar because I know she gets requested at libraries a lot for number one. And number two, I do watch some booktubers and that just savaged her novels.
01:17:04.59
Sarah Rigg
Like, I have a favorite booktuber who's doing her top 10 favorite books of the year and her top 10 worst books of the year. And 9 out of 10 were Colleen Hoover books.
01:17:15.86
Sarah Rigg
because she'd read a bunch of Colleen Hoover books as part of a challenge because people were like, stop hanging on Colleen Hoover.
01:17:16.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh my gosh.
01:17:21.54
Sarah Rigg
You've got to read some of her books. Try this one. And that one, she ended up savaging nine Colleen Hoover books at the end of the year. it was It was beautiful.
01:17:32.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yeah, see, I, I believe that because this book Verity is supposed to be a horror book written by a romance person. So it's, it's people going off genre and, you know, I went off genre to write Don jr. Books. And I mean, I deeply regret it, but I'm sure not everyone deeply regrets going off genre. So, so i mean, do you know what it's about?
01:17:55.61
Wednesday Lee Friday
Cause it's about a writer that gets hired to write a book and it's, You know what? I don't want to give anything away.
01:18:02.46
Sarah Rigg
sound It sounded kind of like it, it had kind of like echoes of Rebecca where you're like finding out about the the previous person like through through somebody new on the scene type of a type of dealio.
01:18:03.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
is
01:18:09.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes. Yes.
01:18:14.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Except that absolutely everyone is full of shit. Everyone is. For reasons that are Like, I actually learned a term recently, and I didn't know that this was a term, but there's something called an idiot plot.
01:18:29.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
And it is a plot that only works because everyone in the story is an idiot.
01:18:34.53
Sarah Rigg
Thank you.
01:18:34.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
and I never knew that was a thing. And now I'm like, wow, I want to make a list of all of the the movies and books that I have encountered that only work because, I mean, even even Dexter is like that sometimes, the show, not the man. but i And I love Dexter, but sometimes it's like, well, what what do you mean you don't know how, what? so So yes, the idiot plot. And that is very much what what Verity is You know, if you think someone is paralyzed and then you see them standing at the top of the stairs, you're probably not hallucinating because you had one drink.
01:19:12.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
What? Like, and that's a thing that is in a book for adults that are adults are just supposed to go, oh, yeah, she must have been hallucinating. ah Those women always seeing things. Yeah.
01:19:25.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
but But also the prose is bad. And that's unforgivable to me because it doesn't cost anything to to write well.
01:19:28.07
Sarah Rigg
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
01:19:33.21
Sarah Rigg
I know, I've name-checked Rebecca twice, I think, in this conversation now. I'm like, just don't think you're no Daphne Dudamori. Just, just, come on.
01:19:40.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, you know, it's funny because when you say Rebecca to me, I don't even think Daphne du Maurier. I think Alfred Hitchcock. So, right.
01:19:49.02
Sarah Rigg
Ah, right. It is beautiful movie, too, though.
01:19:51.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because even though I'm a writer, I always just think about movies first. And, you know, I'm going pause so everybody can judge me for just a moment. um So we didn't...
01:20:07.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
really finish talking about rfk jr and i think we should because like i'm i'm disabled physically and i've got some mental health issues most of our listeners have some mental health issues and i know we've got plenty of regular people with things like chronic pain and limited mobility um the current director of health and human services has hinted at um i believe the word he used was wellness camps but uh we both know what battle creek is so we we don't want to go to wellness camps um what i i guess first what i'm wondering is like i realize he's a kennedy and everything but even then where does he get the fucking audacity
01:20:56.54
Sarah Rigg
Well, you know, it's not just him. I'm just so i'm just connecting some dots here. There's something like 15 different states are pushing back on national legislation about having to care for people with disabilities in the community rather than institutionalizing them.
01:21:11.74
Sarah Rigg
And because they're, let's say, it's like an unfunded mandate whatever. It's like, even though studies show that caring for people in community settings, letting do letting disabled kids be mainstreamed with other you know kids in schools, you know that kind of thing, It saves us money.
01:21:26.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:21:26.70
Sarah Rigg
It is more expensive to put people off in institutions. I don't understand. they wish They're supposed to be fiscal conservatives. What is their problem?
01:21:36.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and as as people so often say, the cruelty is the point. And that seems to be more and more apparent when a guy says, well, we don't have any money to feed people.
01:21:42.33
Sarah Rigg
Yes.
01:21:49.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
We don't have money to educate people. We can't afford Meals on Wheels. But hey, we'd look at my ballroom. You know who's going to have a great time in my $300 million whatever dollar ballroom? Ice! Because they just got a whole bunch of more money too. And I don't want to get into a whole big thing about Ice because it's it's like too much and it'll make me angry for like the rest of the week. But...
01:22:16.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
the things that they do seem to find money for are things that hurt people not help people because they're a bunch of mean bullies who never confronted their dads and so now we all get to live with this no i i stand by that
01:22:30.70
Sarah Rigg
Oh, man, have you seen any of the online mockery of Bovino before he stepped out?
01:22:35.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah well i've been a big fan of mocking bovino since he uh blocked me on twitter but but no Well, I didn't know who he was at the time.
01:22:44.79
Sarah Rigg
Oh,
01:22:46.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
I was just mouthing off about Don Jr. and he blocked me. And I'm like, does anybody know who this guy is? And they're like, dude, you should know who that guy is.
01:22:55.61
Sarah Rigg
I mean, they just like people who went to high school with them stuff were dragging him by just telling true stories about true stories about him and his family. Like, yeah.
01:23:04.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, wait. Didn't I hear that he was like, got caught masturbating in a hallway or something?
01:23:08.70
Sarah Rigg
Yeah. Yeah. I think it was in a a boy's bathroom, but yeah, by a teacher.
01:23:11.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, and the thing is, I'm, I'm,
01:23:13.18
Sarah Rigg
Yeah. Somebody's like, They're like, next time you see Bovino, ask him, hey, Bovino, remember the time your dad killed a woman? Because his dad killed a woman while he was driving drunk. So they're just suggesting things that you could yell out to Bovino if you saw.
01:23:23.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, Jesus.
01:23:26.14
Sarah Rigg
You know, normally I wouldn't like advocate saying that to somebody, but you know, in Bovino's case, I think, you know, i go for it.
01:23:33.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, know what? I'm extremely pro-masturbation. write about it often, but I'll i'll definitely mock an asshole for that. If you're a fascist, everything is fair game. And that is one thing that I am just sick and fucking tired of, like this Smoothie King thing.
01:23:43.61
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
01:23:47.68
Wednesday Lee Friday
I'm sick of it. I'm sick of people telling me that I have to be nice to fascist, traitorous rape apologists. Okay?
01:23:55.84
Sarah Rigg
Right.
01:23:56.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
I'm not doing it. And I don't have a lot of respect for people who, like, I am going to think less of you if you tell me that I have to be kinder and more ah generous with my my feelings toward team rape.
01:24:11.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, team, like, I mean, even if 70% of what we're seeing in those files turns out to be safe, or it turns turns out to be false, rather,
01:24:23.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
Even if a huge giant swath of it isn't even true, the stuff that's in there, i mean, any 10% of it is is vile and should land all those people in prison. And i honestly, like when stuff first started coming out, I'm like, yeah, I'm sure there's going to be a name or two that I don't like, but nothing's really going to surprise me. What do you mean there's cannibalism in there? What?
01:24:47.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
What?
01:24:48.01
Sarah Rigg
Yeah.
01:24:48.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, i I was shocked. I was shocked by some of the people. You know, i watch a whole lot of nature shows and and paleontology shows and finding out that Jack Horner hurt people sexually for fun is I mean, i don't, that makes me hate the whole world.
01:25:10.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's like, who who do we get to like? Who do we get to trust? Who who can we feel good about following? Like, it it just messes everything up.
01:25:18.55
Sarah Rigg
Yeah, to me, it just really points out that so much of it, I mean, because I think the cannibalism and the child sexual abuse are all part of the same thing, which is that it's less about, you know, run-of-the-mill pedophilia, which is a horrible phrase for me even say. But it's more than that. It's about the whole thrill of I'm doing something that is so completely forbidden, but I am so rich and fucking powerful that I can do whatever I want, no matter how forbidden it is. And what are the two things that are super, super fit in our culture?
01:25:50.32
Sarah Rigg
cannibalism is right up there with the other one that I thought was a taboo in our culture, but apparently isn't that bad.
01:25:50.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
01:25:57.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, no. And you know what? If you're ever in my presence and you make the slightest hint towards saying that any child quote unquote deserved, led on, inspired, they they wanted it, like like any of that,
01:26:14.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Don't be surprised if you get punched in the face. Because there's way too much of that shit now being said way too casually. If you think it is possible for a child to lead on grown-ass man, you are not safe.
01:26:29.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
You are not a safe person.
01:26:30.59
Sarah Rigg
Right.
01:26:32.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because if you cannot be in a room with 55 naked children for 24 straight hours and not molest them, get out of society. Get the fuck out of society.
01:26:44.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, if you can't be around a naked children without hurting them for your dick. You know? Like, I'm not normally that blunt. Or am I? I don't know. but But I'm just sick of fucking...
01:26:57.85
Sarah Rigg
I just, I, you know, I just feel so sorry for everybody I know, all all the victims of sexual violence, whether or not they're in the Epstein files because they're being re-traumatized all over again because just this is in the air generally.
01:27:10.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
01:27:12.58
Sarah Rigg
And then seeing how people and their families are reacting to it. And I saw somebody post like, are we going to talk about the fact that every family has their own Epstein file? And I'm like, yeah, yeah.
01:27:23.32
Sarah Rigg
Are we going to talk about that?
01:27:23.61
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
01:27:26.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, we're not. We're not. Because not only did the men protect each other, but the women defend their silence. And there' there's way too much of that as well.
01:27:36.49
Sarah Rigg
Karen Hollweg,
01:27:39.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because there are you know...
01:27:40.03
Sarah Rigg
Karen Hollweg, it's disturbing.
01:27:41.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
i want to blame it all on the men. I really, really do. But I can't. Because, A, I've read some of the things that our friend Ms. Maxwell... Not our friend.
01:27:49.51
Sarah Rigg
Hollweg, Right.
01:27:50.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
Has has done. You know, like... ah Once I saw the phrase... Disciplined with an oversized dildo... i was like, yep! That's enough internet for me for today.
01:28:01.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's... Good God. And that's... I mean...
01:28:04.98
Sarah Rigg
Yeah, well, the thing is, is because it's not about men per se, it's about patriarchy. And women can be tools of the patriarchy or think they're going to be protected by their sort of like like people who like the the Mexican folks who are like just so shocked when their family members get deported because they voted for Trump because they thought that their proximity to whiteness was going to save them.
01:28:12.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes.
01:28:26.10
Sarah Rigg
But it doesn't. And you can lose your proximity to whiteness. if you side with marginalized people and then you become fair target, you know, like the people who've been killed in Minnesota, but it's also the same thing that women, there's a certain, always a certain segment of, you know, with the mega ladies who are going to side with men because they know where the power is.
01:28:46.45
Sarah Rigg
And so they're going to cut towel and they're going to try to fit in. and They're going to be one of the boys or get this plastic surgery or whatever it takes to be part of it. So, but that doesn't,
01:28:57.24
Sarah Rigg
But there's still that doesn't, ah you know, there's still part of the patriarchy. There's still tools of the patriarchy, even if they are women.
01:29:04.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, I'm reminded of, ah I think a lot of us watch the Handmaid's Tale show. um There's a part in the colonies where if you're getting punished bad enough and they want to get you out of Gilead, they send you to old America, which is radioactive, and they send you to do like post-nuclear cleanup. And one of the women that is encountered there is a wife, a wife of Gilead, which is very much the patriarchal. She's the wife of the commander. So she has a fair bit of power.
01:29:36.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, the commander fell in love with his handmaid and decided the wife was in the way. So they set her up and then sent her to the colonies. And she gets to the colonies and she's like, oh, I was so wronged.
01:29:48.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
they were so bad to me and it's full of you know handmaids and marthas that are like oh fuck you bitch you're lucky we don't kill your ass right now so so yeah the and and you know the whole thing with serena on the handmaid's tale she went through that entire story feeling like she was the victim and kept having all these little religious epiphanies oh i guess that's what god wanted me to do like no you awful bitch sit down and be quiet um
01:30:08.50
Sarah Rigg
Yep.
01:30:19.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
But you know, Handmaid's Tale, that's another thing we could probably talk about all day long. um We're going to have link tree in the description of this episode. But like, for now, where's the best place to find your work?
01:30:34.06
Sarah Rigg
So concentratemedia.com, if you look at the top of the page, it has a list of reporting projects. And under one of those tabs, you can pull down and look at for on-the-ground Ypsilanti. And I share the beat with some of my colleagues, but my name is on a lot of those. So that's where you will find my work.
01:30:53.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
And is it like, I know where I write, if you click on my name, it'll like bring out my whole archive of all the stuff that's just me.
01:31:02.62
Sarah Rigg
Probably. I know there's an on-the-ground tab where you can look at it. There's probably some way to look at all my stuff. I haven't looked at it. We actually did a a wris site refresh recently, so I haven't gone back and looked at it, but probably.
01:31:12.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah Okay, cool. So your your personal goals for journalism in the immediate future, do you have anything you want to share? What are you working on?
01:31:24.50
Sarah Rigg
so We're always trying to come up with stories that aren't being told in other media. So, you know, pretty much the only time that the Ann Arbor or Detroit big markets pick up anything about Ipsley, it's about when somebody gets shot here.
01:31:41.08
Sarah Rigg
So we're trying to, um you know, pick up stories.
01:31:41.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:31:44.34
Sarah Rigg
says not you know Sometimes people accuse of us only being good news, and that's not true because I've done stories about infant mortality and gun violence and all kinds of dark subjects. But What we do try to do is focus on people or organizations or initiatives that are trying to make a difference or trying to address the problems because we know if you look at the data that people get burned out on the news and that's a really you know big recommendation is to take news fast to help your so your um mental health.
01:32:11.32
Sarah Rigg
But ah part of it is the way that our news is framed. You know, if it bleeds, it leads. And um So who needs one hundred the 100th article about the opioid epidemic? Wouldn't you rather hear you know hear a radio spot or read an article about an organization that has a mobile mobile opioid epidemic van and goes around and does programming and gives away free Narcon? I mean, because they're addressing the community need, just hot not just talking about how terrible it is, right? So that's the kind of community reporting that we're looking to do.
01:32:45.33
Sarah Rigg
I'm always on the lookout. I'm always in Ipsy. trying to listen to people and hear what they want to what they want to hear more about. I know one of the things that's on a lot of people's mind is a data center coming into Ipsy Township.
01:32:58.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep, yep.
01:32:58.84
Sarah Rigg
So I'm keeping an eye on that.
01:33:01.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes, YouTube cannot stop with the commercials for that. Every break, they tell us about the data center. And they say things that make you wonder what they're hiding. Because, I mean, i'm I find it a data center like that inherently suspicious. I don't want people holding onto our data. I know people, like, if I say something in my living room, I'll get an ad for it in my Facebook page.
01:33:26.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
So there's already a lot to be frightened of. But one of the things they say in the commercial is that the data center will use less water than it takes to farm the land.
01:33:37.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that seems like something that demands many follow-up questions. Because it it sounds good on its face.
01:33:43.86
Sarah Rigg
Well, even if that even if that's true, what happens to water after it's gone through the process it's dirty as shit coming out of there. So, yeah, let's just let's just start with that.
01:33:53.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep. Yep.
01:33:56.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and it doesn't say like farming what? Like you might think they mean corn because this is Michigan and there's like corn everywhere here. But I mean, does it take less water than farming almonds, which takes like lots and lots and lots of water? Like I i just, I find it vague to the point that it's it's insulting my intelligence by saying like, oh, well, it's less than farming. Isn't that great? And I'm just supposed to say, oh, okay, good.
01:34:23.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
Put the data center there. that You know, what and And I think that's, it's it's part of the the dumbing down that I'm not a MAGA person, I think, and I'm not based on just like what I hate or whatever. So I feel offended when people try to give me information like that in that way.
01:34:47.87
Sarah Rigg
Yeah, no doubt.
01:34:48.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
um so So next question about your journalistic goals. Do you have a dream interview subject?
01:35:01.50
Sarah Rigg
You know, i don't think so.
01:35:01.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, it's a tough one, right?
01:35:03.86
Sarah Rigg
you know, I don't think so, because the ones that are the greatest sometimes are real surprises to me. I mean, I could go in like talking to somebody who is really famous and think it's going to be great. and they're actually kind of dull in person.
01:35:15.34
Sarah Rigg
And i that that's not much of what I've done anyway.
01:35:15.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:35:18.26
Sarah Rigg
Like some of the best interviews when I think about it are just with people who are so passionate about whatever niche interest they have. I love that. I always love geeks, which that's the definition of a geek, right?
01:35:29.90
Sarah Rigg
Somebody who has a get a ni niche interest and they're really passionate about it, want to tell you all about it.
01:35:34.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, now it is.
01:35:35.45
Sarah Rigg
And sometimes that, yeah.
01:35:35.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, the original definition of a geek was the, you know, the the guy in the sideshow that bites the heads off chickens or whatever.
01:35:40.78
Sarah Rigg
Slideshow, right? Yeah.
01:35:44.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
But no, and the the nerdy part, that's that's the kind of geek I like.
01:35:47.22
Sarah Rigg
Yeah, no, I love yeah nerds then, shall we say. um It's like one of my favorite all time interviews um was the one I probably thought was going to be cool.
01:35:58.49
Sarah Rigg
What was cooler than I could possibly have known was that somebody gave us a tip that we should do a story for Concentrate and our On the Ground Ipsy project about local two local ladies who ran a genealogy group free through the Ypsilanti District Library for African Americans because they have special challenges doing genealogy research, as you might imagine, especially pre-1880s.
01:36:21.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
hu
01:36:24.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:36:27.48
Sarah Rigg
And I went down to the library, and met them in one of the rooms and talked to them. And these are two friends that had known each other for like decades. And while they were doing their genealogy work, they found out that they were cousins.
01:36:39.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh my gosh.
01:36:40.60
Sarah Rigg
And so like that is one of the favorite stories I have ever reported on. These ladies went on to talk on the radio. They got picked up by like a national NPR station. They got written about because it like i was talking about, they pirated all their news from a little small little news outlets like us.
01:36:55.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, right.
01:36:55.09
Sarah Rigg
So everybody just snapped up that story. They loved it, you know, right? So, but oh my gosh, they were just fabulous. I love those ladies so much.
01:37:04.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow, what a cool story. we're ah We're actually nearing the end of our time, so I want to make sure that we covered everything that you wanted to cover. Was there anything you wanted to talk about that we didn't get to?
01:37:18.90
Sarah Rigg
No, I think ah the only thing I wanted to talk about ah a little bit more was that I have really appreciated your friendship trip through the years and I appreciated the opportunity to come on here and talk, even even though, as you know, I had a little bit of imposter syndrome because you've had some really high powered guests on the on the podcast before. So thank you for having me and thank you for being my friend.
01:37:43.35
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, it's, it's ah both things have been such a pleasure. um I don't, I don't actually have a lot of friends in the area that I see with any regularity because I don't drive. So I can't go out and see people. So it's, it's ah always a little ah heartwarming when somebody makes the drive out here just to see a little old me, you know, for, for movies and whatnot. But yeah, I think,
01:38:09.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like a lot of people, when I approach them for the show, feel like they're somehow not enough. Like they're not mentally ill enough. They haven't struggled enough or their work isn't popular enough, you know? And that's, I think not feeling enough is one of the most universal human experiences there is.
01:38:32.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
And if nothing else, Finding out that other people feel that way too. Like even with social media, we don't always get that from each other because so many people are not honest on social media.
01:38:44.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
They're they're really concerned about projecting a very specific image that might be kind of like who they really are sometimes.
01:38:45.05
Sarah Rigg
Right.
01:38:54.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
but But not always. Like, you you might not know this to look at my ah my Facebook, but every once in a while, H and I disagree and we argue.
01:38:56.37
Sarah Rigg
Right.
01:39:04.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
You won't hear that on the internet because that's just not something that I do.
01:39:04.63
Sarah Rigg
No.
01:39:08.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because when I was on Facebook for...
01:39:09.85
Sarah Rigg
Well, I have a rule about that too. You and I are both married to men for a very long time, decades in both of our cases.
01:39:15.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:39:15.63
Sarah Rigg
And that's why, you know, I don't know. Like, we didn't sit around and like agree on this, but I think we were both on the same page. Like, don't trash your spouse on social media. That's just tacky.
01:39:24.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I mean, I've watched people fight with their spouse about money, like on Facebook, just like that back and forth at each other.
01:39:31.38
Sarah Rigg
That's so tacky.
01:39:32.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, we had X amount of money. Where did it go? Like, holy shit, this is none of my business. You know, i mean, i have i had a neighbor once that I actually watched with binoculars because they were just so fascinating.
01:39:46.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I don't want to watch couples fight about money on Facebook. That's just too much.
01:39:51.99
Sarah Rigg
Ah.
01:39:52.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's too much. But no, this this guy was doing science experiments and I was checking to make sure he wasn't making meth. And then I realized I didn't know how to make meth. So I didn't know how to like, like that looks like a chemistry set. I don't know what it is.
01:40:09.50
Wednesday Lee Friday
um It turned out I eventually met the guy and he was a crafter and he was growing crystals. like for science or something i don't know if he like was a teacher or what his deal was but it was legit science it wasn't that and he was like you you really just admitted to me that you look through my window with binoculars like yeah because i mean i'm kind of a messed up person but i i own it i very much own it i stand by my messed up-edness
01:40:41.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
For better or worse, I guess. um Oh, and you know, the next the the only other thing we do at the end of the ius episode is um I give guests a chance to ask me a question if they want to. Now, we we've been friends for a long time, so I'm sure you like know like all my pertinent stuff, but you do have an opportunity to ask me something if you want to.
01:41:07.00
Sarah Rigg
Do you and, well, all right. No, was going to say, okay. No, I don't have anything. You know, I should have had something prepared, but I don't have anything and I don't want to put you on the spot to say something that you wouldn't necessarily want to say on the podcast.
01:41:20.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, well, that that should not be a factor, honestly.
01:41:20.42
Sarah Rigg
Okay.
01:41:23.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
i Because if I don't want to say, then I just, I won't say. But, yeah, that's...
01:41:29.30
Sarah Rigg
Okay. So I know there's this practice with committed couples where sometimes they'll have a hall pass for a celebrity. I don't know if that was something that you and H ever did. And I'm conceding you having one more than him because he's like just so Mr. Straight and Narrow.
01:41:46.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes, that that is accurate. He does not have one. He has, ah you know, he's... I've asked him about that. um The thing is, I don't...
01:41:57.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
I don't have one in that the people that I really admire are not necessarily people that are sexy to me. Like, I think the sexiest man in the world is James Purifoy.
01:42:09.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
i i just... I mean, just in terms of, like, visual hotness and and overall vibe, James Purifoy is the single hottest man on the planet.
01:42:22.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
If I met him, sex would be, like, not... front and center in my mind at all. I would want to ask him about Rome. I would ask him like what Polly Walker was like. And I mean, I might like gaze adoringly at him, but I would have so many questions about his life and his career. And like, it wouldn't even go there. Now, most people don't know this, but you know that I have online friends that I have dirty talking with that I meet on dating apps.
01:42:51.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
And this is something that H knows and he approves of because H, ah like our sex life is banging, but he's very vanilla. So if I want to talk through a scenario where I'm like, you know, whipping some skinny white boy with a belt for my own amusement, I need to find guys that are into that because he's not into that.
01:43:12.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
So so that's that's a thing that I do, but i don't I don't meet up with people like that. So I'm not really interested in like boning people that aren't my husband, even like famous hot people.
01:43:24.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because, you know, there are people that I occasionally get obsessy with, and it's not it's just not sexual. I can't explain it. It just like isn't.
01:43:32.89
Sarah Rigg
More like trauma bonding in some cases, maybe.
01:43:35.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Hey! yeah Don't make me write a book about you. All right. Well, you know what? That means that it is time for the Mad Lib.
01:43:47.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. um
01:43:48.93
Sarah Rigg
right.
01:43:49.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
So this one starts out, looks like we got a lot of adjective here. One, two, three, four, five adjectives I need, please.
01:44:00.22
Sarah Rigg
Okay. Green. Hairy.
01:44:13.38
Sarah Rigg
Tumultuous.
01:44:18.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:44:22.24
Sarah Rigg
Lean.
01:44:25.36
Sarah Rigg
that four or five?
01:44:27.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
I need one more.
01:44:27.36
Sarah Rigg
One more? Yeah. ah
01:44:33.32
Sarah Rigg
I try to go through my my all my senses. um How about aromatic?
01:44:35.61
Wednesday Lee Friday
you
01:44:40.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, cool. And I need, let's see, one, two... three plural nouns, please.
01:44:50.84
Sarah Rigg
Three plural nouns?
01:44:52.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
01:44:53.88
Sarah Rigg
ah Zebras?
01:44:58.06
Sarah Rigg
Shoelaces?
01:45:01.29
Sarah Rigg
Bookmarks?
01:45:03.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, I need a place.
01:45:13.94
Sarah Rigg
Timbuktu.
01:45:19.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I need two verbs.
01:45:25.66
Sarah Rigg
Slouch.
01:45:28.73
Sarah Rigg
And... Ruffle.
01:45:34.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right. I need a part of the body plural.
01:45:39.24
Sarah Rigg
Mmm.
01:45:43.29
Sarah Rigg
cheeks.
01:45:46.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
And another part of the body, singular. And if you don't say penis, I don't think I'm going to be able to be your friend anymore.
01:45:55.53
Sarah Rigg
What about scrotum?
01:45:55.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
it All right, scrotum works.
01:46:01.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right, and I need a silly word
01:46:10.92
Sarah Rigg
Snuffleupagus.
01:46:15.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
But Gus. Okay, cool. So this is actually, we had been in the sports section of the Mad Lib book for a long time, and now we're not, and it's actually hilarious because this is the first one of a new thing, and it's about journalism. Because my Mad Lib book is one of these really like big books that have a bunch of different books in them.
01:46:35.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I'm hoping to be like really super famous by the time we get to the end of it so I can auction it off for charity. But yeah, so this is the first journalism one. And this is called Behind the Scenes.
01:46:48.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Putting on a newscast might look easy, but it takes a lot of green work. Go by. Oh, God damn it. I missed one. You got to give me a verb ending in ING.
01:46:59.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
I think I hit my thumb there.
01:46:59.16
Sarah Rigg
Okay. ah How about slurping?
01:47:03.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. All right, here we go. So, yes, green work. Go behind the scenes and you'll see dozens of hairy workers slurping in every direction.
01:47:16.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
Reporters run back and forth between studios and locations all around the Timbuktu to cover tumultuous stories and interview zebras. they Right?
01:47:27.85
Sarah Rigg
That worked out right.
01:47:30.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
They are joined by videographers who operate handheld shoelaces to capture all the action. The anchors are people who slouch behind the news desk oh wow that's like too accurate and read the stories during the newscast.
01:47:45.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
They have to look lean on air so they can often be found getting makeup applied to their cheeks. then The director tells everyone where and when to ruffle.
01:47:57.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's easy to spot a director because he wears a headset on his scrotum and yells things like, Camera 2! and cuts a commercial! and snuffleupagus!
01:48:09.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
A newscast is live television, so if you make an aromatic mistake, everyone watching at home on their bookmarks will know.
01:48:21.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
And there we have it.
01:48:25.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
I do love the Mad Lib.
01:48:28.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, there.
01:48:29.51
Sarah Rigg
it's funny it was just a coincidence that it was on journalism or you purposely skipped a journalism
01:48:34.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, no, I didn't. I don't skip. That was one thing I said I would do at the very beginning was that we would do them right in order just for for exactly that reason.
01:48:41.32
Sarah Rigg
That's amazing that it worked out that way.
01:48:43.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, right. it It totally is. Because that's, yeah, that's the first one too. The first one in the the newsy one. So yeah, thank you so much for being here. I'm so glad you could come by. I think we covered a lot of really good ground.
01:48:58.49
Sarah Rigg
Hopefully some things you haven't previously touched on.
01:49:02.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, sure. And I mean, even if like we we do the same topics, it's always different because it comes from people's personal experience. I mean, you've seen my guest list. It's a very, very eclectic a bunch of of folks. And so I think having a journalist on the show, especially now, is is really valuable. And I hope that that people got um a lot out of it, I think.
01:49:28.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
Maybe we didn't we didn't talk enough and about ah like actionable solutions, but I think that simply inspiring people to pay attention is is actionable at this point, because so many people are not.
01:49:41.66
Sarah Rigg
Well, I would say the number one is support local news. You know, don't worry about the big legacy landmark ones. Support your local news.
01:49:48.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep, yep. and And if you can, pay for your news. If you can afford to to support journalists with your money, please please do that.
01:49:52.28
Sarah Rigg
If you can.
01:49:56.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
But but not, like,
01:49:57.47
Sarah Rigg
Honestly, sharing on social media is great if you can't, too, because a lot of companies do look at how much reach your stories get.
01:50:04.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep, yep, that is true. All right, everybody, so do find us on Ko-Fi, that's K-O-F-I, because your donations allow me to keep doing this. We actually got an offer for sponsorship, but it was from an energy drink, so I'm not doing that.
01:50:24.30
Sarah Rigg
Gotcha.
01:50:24.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
that's That's not a thing.
01:50:24.44
Sarah Rigg
Yeah. ahcha
01:50:25.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, we're open to sponsorships, but they have to be things that aren't terrible. Because I would be full of shit if I took money for things that are going to hurt people that use them.
01:50:35.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
so So no energy drinks, but anybody else, you know? Maybe like a weed company? um All right. We will see everybody next week.
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