Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs.

Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable

themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there.

Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time. From startups to scaleups, online,

in person and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Thinking of Godfather, when Rick is talking about what they did to The Lightning Thief in the first movie. He could say, They massacres my boy!

Yeah! What's good?

Thank you so much for tuning into this special interview episode of the Neust Olympian.

My name is Mike Schubert.

I'm the titular Newst Olympian.

I'm a 32-year-old man who never read the Percy Jackson books as a kid.

I read them as an adult.

And then I started consuming all the other Percy Jackson content, which included the musical. And I'm on this journey today with someone who literally wrote the book for the musical and also went on to write, be in the writer's room for the TV show, getting credited with episodes four and six. It's Joe Trace. Joe, How's it going? It's great. So great to be on, Mike. Yeah, I am happy to have you here. We have done a couple of episodes about the Lightning Thief musical so far, and this is, I think, the best way to conclude it out. We started it with a chat with Chris about a little bit of the history and his role. We did two breakdowns, one for each act.

And then now to bring it all home, we'll talk to the person who basically started it all, which is really cool. Yeah, me. I'm so happy to talk to you. Yeah. So I always ask this of guests. So I will do this since you're making your TNO debut.

What's your history with the Percy Jackson books?

Obviously, we'll get into the play,

but just like, when did you first read the series?

Yeah. you're making your TNO debut. What's your history with the Percy Jackson books? Obviously,

we'll get into the play, but just like, when did you first read the series? Yeah, so I read them as a young adult. So I was too old for them when they were coming out to be, you know, the proper age for it. But as you proved, there is no proper age. No. You're never too old or too young to enjoy the Percy Jackson series. So I was working at a Borders bookstore when they were coming out. So I remember

finding the Sea of monsters in the break room. It was like the ARC, the advanced readers copy and being like, this cover looks awesome. There's a giant eye. It has the word monsters in it. You know, and then I realized I'd seen a lot of people buying the Lightning Thief. So I knew that it was a book that people really loved.

So I started reading it from there. A little known fact, if you work at a Borders bookstore, I can say this now because they don't exist anymore. Yeah, what are they going to do? You can check books out as if it was a library. So I would just like constantly, I'd be taking the books home and, and, uh, and reading them. And yeah, and I remained a fan to this day. So you started with the second one.

Did you finish the whole second one before going back and reading the lightning piece? I did realize that I needed to read the first one first. So I did start with the lightning thief. I did start in the proper order. You agree. I'd just be like, empathy link. What's got, huh? What's going on? I mean, like I've read the lightning thief just because of the musical and the TV show. you know, I think there's probably no book I've read more times than The Lightning Thief. Yeah, no, that makes sense. That makes sense. So as far as writing the play and doing all the work there, there's a couple of, like, great historical deep dives of it. I'm sure you were interviewed for the YouTube video. It's like a 40-minute documentary called like something like

the audacity of the like the musical waiting in the wings which you did they do like

...