Hello everyone, and welcome to Speaking with Joy, a podcast to fill your soul, challenge your mind,

and make you brave. I'm your host, Joy Clarkson, and an evangelist for all things good, true,

and beautiful. So make yourself a cup of tea, find somewhere

comfortable, and let's dive in to this week's episode. The mother leaned closer over the tabletop,

and her eyes narrowed till her face filled eight boxes, leaving only the peripheral boxes for the waterfall.

And for a moment it felt to me her expression varied between one box and the next.

In one, for instance, her eyes were laughing cruelly.

But the next, they were filled with sadness.

The sounds of the waterfall, the children, the dogs all faded to a hush to make

wait for whatever the mother was about to say. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to reading

with joy. We are reading Clara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguru, and I'm so excited to dive

into part two with doctors Jeremiah and Sarah Coogan,

some of my friends who I have met through basically through a coffee shop. This is a great

testimony to the community forming and shaping capacities of a good local coffee shop. I met

Jeremiah because we both sit in mark papers and do things and I ended up in Cameron and Sarah,

and they're both fascinating scholars and lovely people. And I learned also enjoyed clearing the sun.

So I'm very excited to welcome you all on the show today. So welcome Jeremiah and Sarah.

Thanks for having us on. Yeah, thank you. So before we dive in, why don't you all give a little

introduction to yourselves and what you spend your days doing and then how you first encountered

Claire in the Sun. Okay, I guess I'll start.

I'm Sarah Coogan. I am a literary scholar. I did my PhD in English at the University of Notre Dame,

focused on 20th century literature, British, Irish, Caribbean, kind of a little bit of everything,

...