Welcome to the gathering pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast.

I'm Martha Beck.

Now I can stop jibber jabbering and rejoice in having with us today the inimitable, astonishing

Catherine May, one of the most beautiful writers working right now, and one of my

very, very favorite writers of all time. I'll let her tell you more about her career, but her

latest book, Enchantment, you can see she's got a copy behind her. I've got a copy here. I've got a copy on my Kindle. I've got a copy on Audible. I've got a copy in my brain. And I keep scribbling bits of it on pieces of paper because it's magnificent and everybody should go get it and read it. So I am going to get my, hang on, I have to get

my document with all Catherine's quotes on it. All right. So instead of, it's not intimidating at all.

I'm just, see, here's my plan. This is how it serves my narcissism. I'm just, see, here's my plan.

This is how it serves my narcissism.

I'm just going to take over completely.

But then I also serve myself by reading your words, which are much better than mine could

be.

That's not true at all.

So first of all, I just want this to be a conversation. Usually I jabber for a few minutes and then we take

questions, but today we're in a different format. And I would love to just talk to you, Catherine. Is that what

you go by, Catherine? Yeah, I'm a Catherine. I go for the full length of the name. Catherine the Great. Okay.

So I first read, the first book of yours that I read was the electricity of every living thing.

Is that what it's called?

That's what it's called.

Yeah.

It once got called in a British magazine, the electricity of every loving thing, which made it sound a bit like a sex toy catalog.

There's a whole branding line you could go into now.

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