Okay. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Fat Mascara. I'm Jen Sullivan. It's Friday. It's Friday

before Memorial Day here in the US. So a little housekeeping first. We're actually going

to be taking off next week, little summer break, but we'll be sharing two interviews with

you with great new introductions. But there won't be a fresh episode of Jess and I doing

the news until Wednesday, June 7th. But you can keep coming to the RSS feed. They'll be

new podcasts for you. Everything will be great. And Jess is actually already away on a

little break. So today, I'm having more of an intimate chat with my guest, Elise. Who?

We'll be talking about her new book, Flawless. Lessons in looks and culture from the K beauty

capital. And that just came out two days ago from the publisher, Dutton. So listen, fam,

when I read this book, I immediately reached out to Elise because I knew we had to have her

on Fat Mascara. She takes a closer look at South Korea's beauty culture and kind of uses

it as a lens to explore all sorts of topics we discuss here on Fat Mascara. Like I would

turn the page. There would be another former guest on or another theme that's come up

on our show. She talks about look is the effect of technology on beauty culture, feminism,

plastic surgery, skincare, so much more. So I'll let Elise explain a little bit of how

she started working on this book. But just to give you some background on what she's

doing today, Elise, who is a correspondent and host at large for NPR, and she's the host

of Ted Talks Daily, the daily podcast from Ted. Her work as a journalist has earned her

the National DuPont Columbia Edward R. Merrow and Gracie Awards, along with, again, at Foundation

Award for Innovation in Watchdog Journalism. So I think you're going to love for her take.

On how to approach today's beauty culture with some balance, to make sure you're aware

of all the larger forces that are sort of subtly shaping the way you think. And I think

...