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Just a reminder that Big M. Little Mood with Daniel M. Lavery happens twice a week.

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Sign up now to listen at slate.com slash mood. Hello and welcome back to Big Mood Little Mute.

I'm your host, Daniel M. Lavery, and with me in the studio this week is Kate Beaton, a New York Times bestselling author.

Her highly anticipated graphic memoir, Ducks Two Years in the Oil Sands out this fall,

recounts the time she's been working and living in Canada's oil industry man camps.

Kate,

welcome to the show. Welcome. Thank you. I'm such a pro. Gosh. I mean, I thank you. Thank you. I'm, I feel welcome. Good. I want you to say. What a say. No, I'm very excited to be here. I think this is

the first time that we have talked face to face, even though I feel like I have been connected to you in the online world for a long time.

I think that that's true. Although, to be fair, only you have seen me dancing in the background of the video. I haven't seen you.

Yes. Yes. Well, I can see it. Well, I can see it. But darkly. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

But yes, no, I was thinking about this too.

I was just talking to Nicole Cliff, my former business partner and best friend yesterday.

We're coming up on a decade since she and I started the toast together.

And you and I both kind of came up in similar corners of the internet around, I think, a similar

-ish time. And it's, it's kind of remarkable to think of like that particular era being a

decade in the past. Oh, exactly. And you and I were both making like jokes about literary stuff

that we enjoyed. So people were like, this is like the same. Like these two are the, these are my faves and stuff.

And it's always nice to be to be lumped in with somebody who you also admire.

You know, I would read your stuff and be like, oh, God.

This is way better than mine.

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