Hi friends, welcome to another episode of that sounds fun. I'm your host Annie F. Downs. I'm really happy to be here with you today. We have got a great show and store.

Today on the show I get to talk with my buddy Tyler Merritt. You may remember Tyler from when he came on the show in 2020 episode 246. Well his new book I take my coffee black is out now and y'all you're going to love it. It's such a profoundly personal and beautifully honest look at what it feels like to be Tyler a black man in America today.

I counted a great honor to call my friend. It I'm so thankful for how he's teaching us so generously. I can't wait for you to hear from him too.

So here's my conversation with Tyler Merritt.

I'm sorry you will we'll for sure have you on in our end of the year this year. We'll see. We'll see how it goes. We'll see what happens.

Okay so you were on last fall. Yeah right. Yeah it's just a little more official because I I don't know if you know but I did a show a really moving show where some where the guests kind of said things they never said before.

Right. And I was recording by myself in here and I lost their half of the recording. And at the end of that day I called my team and I said never again I will not record one more podcast without an engineer in the room I can't I can't I'm not gifted this at all.

And then that's why we have all Gregory. Craig the man he does it all for us.

So here's what I'm concerned about is I don't think people ever get to see you're like beautiful and tall.

You're like tall gorgeous curly hair. I know they seem sometimes they seem sometimes we put them on. Yeah I mean yeah yeah I mean we got him a girlfriend out of it so.

Oh don't yeah bro last time I came it was only women that worked in here. Yeah when it was kind of intimidating.

We're diversified. Yeah. So you were here last year. You came between then and now I didn't even know this was going on the background about cancer.

Do you write about cancer in the book? Is it in no because the book happened before cancer?

Because I turned in the book at the end of November. Yes.

And then was diagnosed with cancer like five days later. Yes. Will you tell that story? Whatever you want to tell?

Yeah sure. I appreciate you asking about it because it's a super rare form of cancer called liposarcoma.

I'll try not to get too emotional about it because I'm better now. But I was having some GI issues.

Yeah.

And I went to my normal care doctor. Yeah.

And they were like let's go and have you get an ultrasound we'll send you to some people and smart access right here my stuff to carry.

And I went in and saw a guy and he was like, something's weird here. We don't know we're going to get some more tests.

And I knew it was weird and it was unusual when I went to go get the ultrasound.

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