In 1813, Jane Austen wrote what would become her most famous sentence.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Those are the opening words of Pride and Prejudice, which you may know is a classic novel about Five Sisters.

The person you're hearing is the actor Joel Kim Booster in a recent adaptation called Fire

Island as a male Lizzie Bennett.

Fire Island is actually a gay adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

It was really popular.

And in it, instead of Lizzie Bennett and her four sisters, it's Joel's character

and his four best friends.

Bitch! I knew I smelled some bottoms.

Fire Island is the latest in a string of recent Austin adaptations.

There's Persuasion on Netflix. There's Pride and Prejudice the Musical in the West End in London.

There's a new version of Emma that came out in 2020. And my colleague, Brooke Masters, has been obsessed with

Austin since she was a teenager. And she and I have been chatting about these adaptations for months,

like every time we bump into each other in the newsroom, we talk about it. So I invited her on,

alongside her childhood friend Caroline Bix, who's an English professor.

We wanted to get into it.

Brooke is so into Austin that someone she dated once knew that the best way to court her

was to compare her to her favorite character.

There was an extraordinarily charming guy in my life who was, you know, slightly unattainable, you know, definitely was messing with my mind. I told you this is the guy. Everyone knows this guy. It is the guy. He compared me to Lizzie Bennett. He said, you know, you remind me of Lizzie Bennett. You know, it was part of the whole thing. I was totally suckered by it. And I later learned he had never even read the book.

What? Yes. And I'm still mad. Can you tell? I'm still mad. Oh, my guy. He probably just read the

cliff notes. Today, we talk with Brooke and Caroline about all things Jane Austen. 30 years ago,

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