Welcome to Our Hen House. This is Marianne Sullivan. And this is Jasmine Singer. And this week, Jasmine will be speaking with Christine Benson. She is the author of a book called Marrying Myself, a book I tremendously enjoyed. And if like me, your secret

or not-so-secret pleasure is romance novels, or if you're definitely not-so-secret pleasure,

at least it better be not-so-secret, is vegan advocacy. And you would like to see how to put

them together. This is the interview for you. Don't you just love it what a book has a vegan

character?

Yeah, and chatting with Christine was really fun. She's super smart. And we talked a lot about how there's definitely not enough representation of vegans in media. And especially when it's not like necessarily about their veganism completely.

They just happen to be vegan.

So I get really excited.

As I said, I read the book as well.

And I really like the way she worked it in.

It was not a main focus of the book, not a main focus of the character,

but she definitely got in some advocacy here and there. I don't think it was overdone, though, you know, most people get a little defensive, but I think she did it really, really well. And she made one of the creepiest characters to be the most anti-vegan. I thought that was a nice touch. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, you'll look forward to this conversation if you're listening to this.

I can't wait for you to hear it. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Here we are, 2023. Yeah, we started our

hen house this month 13 years ago in that little cafe in Philadelphia. Remember? Oh, yeah,

it was really cold out. Why do I remember that?

It's not like it's not cold out a lot in January, but it was unbelievably cold out. It was, but we,

I don't think at that time we could have ever conceived of the fact that we would be here now

and doing this 13 years later.

So it's really fun.

And we made our match.

That's a wonderful way to start the new year.

We made our end of year fundraising match.

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