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Hello and welcome back to big mood, little mood. I'm your host, Danny Lavery, and with

me in the studio this week is Hugh Ryan, a writer and curator and most recently the author

of the women's house of detention, a queer history of a forgotten prison, which New York

magazine called one of the best books of 2022. And so do I, frankly. His first book,

when Brooklyn was queer, won a 2020 New York City book award. Hugh, welcome to the show.

Hey, Danny, thanks for having me and happy New Year. Thank you so, so much for being here

and for writing such fantastic books. And I'm beyond thrilled to have you here telling people

how to better live their lives. I feel like I should probably get my life together before giving

that kind of advice. But the nice thing about doing this podcast is I feel like I get to ride on

your co-tales and you're so good at giving advice that I'm just going to sort of like

hope that people listen to me too. And as always, you know, none of the advice that we give

are legally binding. And they're not required to do what I say exactly. And they don't even know

what your life is like. So you could be as big a mess as possible. And they still wouldn't even know.

Fabulous. I am hoping that you will read our first letter. What, by the way, I sometimes don't

...