Grocery stores.

Known for produce, cereal,

famous for produce, cereal,

$5 chickens.

Nobody thinks much about them,

so let's have some fun.

Let's find out why grocery stores are

secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks, welcome to a whole new podcast episode.

A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is.

My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone.

Also, this intro will be marginally longer than the other ones so far, just a heads up,

because I want to cover two things in detail.

One of them is this show's

bleeping of certain words, and two is this episode's guest and his phenomenal new novel.

Because my guest today is known by many names. He writes for the New York Times bestseller list

as David Wong. His true name is Jason Pargin. I could go on and on about how excited I am to have

Jason guests on this podcast. If you've heard me do stuff before, you probably know why I'm excited.

But enough about me, I want to make sure you know about his new novel. And the title of that novel is

Zoe punches the future in the dick. It. It comes out in October, publishers weekly says

this about it, quote, biting humor and blatant digs at modern society overlay a subtly brilliant

and thoughtful plot, end quote. And I'm glad it's not out till October, in the specific sense that

you have plenty of time to pre-order the book now. You know, you're hearing

...