Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of Maximum Fun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorne. Consider with me the Choose Your Own Adventure book,

a format of novel in which the reader, usually a younger reader, chooses how the story in their book

unfolds. It's a thing that's been around for about 50 years or so, depending who you ask. And here is how it works if you don't remember. You get a few pages into the story. You have to make a decision to fight the goblin. You turn to page six. To run away towards the castle. You turn to page 11. To ask the wizard to help, you turn to page 30. Go it alone, page 45, et cetera, et cetera.

The authors included R.A. Montgomery, Edward Packard, R. L. Stein, and now Riffin McElroy.

He's one of the hosts of the podcast, My Brother, My Brother, and Me, Wonderful, and the Dungeons and Dragons play-along show The Adventure Zone. He is also a former longtime video game writer for Polygon and a New York Times best-selling

graphic novelist, a friend of mine and one of the funniest and nicest guys in podcasting.

In his book, The Stowaway, you are a Stowaway, not on a pirate ship, but on a spaceship,

one in which the crew has vanished and the helpful robots have gone berserk.

Can you navigate the ship to safety?

Can you find your way home?

What weird experiences will you experience?

It's all up to you.

I'm so thrilled to welcome my friend Griffin McElroy,

back on Bullseye. Let's get right into it. Griffin McElroy, welcome back to Bullseye. It's

nice to see you, bud. Thanks. It's nice to be here in the context of something a little bit more legitimate than podcast clown. Like, you know, obviously what I'm saying sounds bad, but like author, I feel like I'm coming in with a little bit more dignity, I guess, is the word I'm looking for. Griffin, we have some time to destroy your dignity. Don't worry. Okay, good. Did you read, choose your own adventure books as a kid?

So I didn't read a ton as a kid. I was a gamer nerd sort of first and foremost. I was like

born into a house that just always kind of had a game boy in it. So there was really no excuse like I could

be playing a game basically anywhere. And as we all know, games are like way more fun than books. So they really couldn't hold much of a candle to it. So there was really no excuse. Like, I could be playing a game basically anywhere. And as we all

know, games are like way more fun than books. So they really couldn't hold much of a candle to

them. But that truth was, was countered by the fact that whenever we would go on like a family

trip, a vacation or a road trip or something, our dad would always stop at a used bookstore.

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