Laura Belgrade is the founder of Talking Shrimp and my partner on The Copycure.

She's been featured in Fast Company, Money Magazine, Forbes, Vox, and Business Insider.

She's also written for Fandango and Bravo and NBC and HBO and Nick at Night, Nickelodeon, TVLand, VH1 Lifetime, and so much more.

Belgrade lives here in New York City and except for college has never lived anywhere

else. Can you believe it? Her book, Tough Titties, is available wherever books are sold.

Dude, Belgrade, you did it. Like, congratulations. We're going to talk so much about it. So there's

likely going to be explicit language. So if you're like super sensitive, we're going to talk about some things. You need to put your headphones in or just choose not to listen to this one, but do not send me like dear Marie mailed. Like, why are you so unprofessional? No, I don't want to hear it. So back to you. Tough titty. That's, you know what we would say to them? Tough titty.

Tough titty.

You got complaints about the language? Tough titties. That's what we're saying. Honestly, I have never been on a podcast that didn't have an E next to it for my episode. Are you serious? That's really cool. I didn't know that. Good track record. Really good track record. So I know tough titty was tough tities to actually write, and we're going to talk about that.

But before we get into process and all the fun things, what was the core inspiration to write this particular book?

And what are you hoping that readers get out of it?

Yeah, great question. Well, as you know, I always wanted to write a book. Yes, forever. Yes, forever. And I wanted to write a book of my stories

and I was writing my stories and I still didn't know what is this. What is the theme? What is the title?

What is this book about? That was the biggest struggle for me. And I found

myself saying one day, the working title was New Dork City. Oh, really? Yeah, coming of age.

I mean, that was how I thought it was shaping up, like coming of age story of a dork

misfit in New York in the 80s and 90s.

But then it was so much more than that.

And I found myself saying something that I say all the time, which was, well, tough titties.

Which is, to me, kind of the ultimate, sorry not sorry for, in my view and in my life,

for being a not supposed to person. Like, you want me to do things this way. You want me to drive a car, learn how to roast a chicken, have children, tough titties.

You want it going to happen. You want me to do my business this way.

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