Chapter 6, Switzerland.

As I drove home, I wasn't paying much attention to the road that shimmered wetly in the sun. I was thinking about the flood of information Jacob had shared with me, trying to sort it out to force it all to make sense.

I'm Vanessa Zoltan and I'm Julia Argy and this is hot

and bothered twilight and quarantine. Today we are lucky enough to be joined by Rachel Hampton, a culture writer and reporter from Slate.

And Rachel, you have a very specific relationship with Twilight.

Yes, I do.

I was one of the many teenage girls who was obsessed with Twilight when it came out to the point that I could pretty much figure out where like the plot of any book based on a single sentence being read. My friends would play a game at

lunch and they would just pick out a random section in the book and read it aloud and I would be like,

oh yeah, before this, Edward was doing this, and after that,

Bedla was doing this.

And unfortunately, I've realized in the past few years

that I still have the ability to recall all these pod details. That is the way that they would test like rabbinic

scholars with the tall moves. Just so you know it's called the needle test and they

would like put a needle into the tall mood and then pull it out and be like okay the needle touched page

372 in the middle of the page and people were supposed to be able to be like yes that is commentary on this kind of law.

I'm just saying that you're a Talmudic scholar.

I'm gonna put that in my sort of bio.

Well what, how do you feel about it now? I feel kind of disgustively fond of it. Like I objectively know that it's trash, but I can't stop consuming twilight content. None of it unironic. All the twilight

content is ironic content but there's always the fondness I have for things that I loved as a teenager just because you just have such strong emotions for it

And then as an adult realizing how bad it is is kind of even more fun. You're just like what was I thinking? Why did I think that this was okay?

Well Rachel I'm really glad that you're here today because I think that this chapter is the

epitome of trash. I think that's entirely accurate which is why I'm so excited to discuss it. I had so many emotions while reading it. It was, it was a lot.

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