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Music Hello and welcome back to Big Mood Little Mood. I am your host, Danny M. Lavery, and with me in the studio this week is Helen Rosner, a staff writer, the New Yorker who covers all things culture, although most of it is about food. And behind me, you will probably hear my dogs squabbling, which they have just started to do. Helen, welcome to the show. Thanks, Danny. I also have a dog behind me, though she's not making any noise yet. I'm so happy to be here. I am so happy that you're here, too, not least because I have already been able to turn this into an opportunity to force you to translate a book from French into English for me.

Using my extremely meager culinary French, but I will do what I can. Anything for you?

I want you, you know, I just, I want you to use your influence and I want you to specifically use your influence to make sure that I don't have to learn French. Yeah, I think that's a

totally appropriate responsibility to put onto your guest podcast

co-host. Thank you. Well, I'm excited about the questions that we have before us today.

I don't know if you have any strong feelings about any one of them over the other, but I feel

like it's a it's a thematically cohesive bunch. Like it's very, it's been a little while

since I had just like straight up and down,

like Lauren Berlant, the female complaint one right after the other. But as, as they say,

what is it? The expression is, the problem of women is that women live for love and love is the

gift that keeps on taking. Wow. That's a new one for me.

I guess that is the problem with women. I mean, would it sound better if I said it was Jane Austen? We could say it was Jane Austen. It kind of does sound like an Austin line. It does. But like through the Dolly filter. Yeah, no, I'm just now thinking, like, I feel like my mind has to kind of grapple with this idea that there is one big problem with me.

I think I don't want to go out of my way to claim that I know exactly what Perlant was driving at because I just know the one line.

I did not continue to read the book, which was like an analysis of certain types of like American literature and may very well have been like fairly tongue and cheek.

So I just want to let it be known. I'm not saying all women have the same problem.

Hashtag not all women. No, but we do have a lot of women and what it means to be a partner today,

which is a partner to a man,

which is an extra special category of partnership, yeah.

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