This is a studio both and production. Hey everyone, this is Josh Hallmark,
the host of The Karen and Ellen Letters, and we are reviving and
reformatting I guess the old after shows. For those of you new to the
show and its original run, each episode was followed by what was often a
drunken rehashing of the episode's events. So we're going to do that, but
I think have maybe some more philosophical, psychological, ethical conversations. And we're
doing it every two episodes. And I told Charlie I was not going to
drink, but I did decide to port myself a glass of breakfast Rose for
this perfect I have a cup of coffee. So I am here with Charlie
Warrell, host of Crime Lines and Crime Lines and Consequences. And you are
the first guest of the After Show for a very specific reason, which is
you've been on this journey for longer than this was a podcast. So tell
me about your introduction to The Karen and Ellen Letters. Alway, So I
was many years ago on a i'll call it a parenting forum, but it
was really more like a forum of parents who didn't necessarily identify with the normal
parents who go on parenting forums and want to talk and brag about their kids.
So it's a little bit more of a like snarky parenting board. So
we would find posts online from really insufferable parents and also blogs, and so
someone had found the Karen and Ellen letters and are they were like, you
guys have to read these, and I would. So I was an avid
reader of this blog of this guy. I didn't know at the time.
And I have to say, it was a long time ago. When did
you have the blog? I want to say two ten. I would say
that sounds about right because my older kids were a little at the time,
and I mean they're adults now, and I think my daughter was like five.
She would have been about five at the time. So now let's say
twenty twelve, because I think it was right around the time I met my
partner Andrew, And that's okay, twelve years ago. Yeah. I was
on that board for many, many years until Facebook kind of slowly took over
the forum world and people started shifting to social media versus forums more than they
do now. So you were reading the blog and then cut to I guess
five or six years later, the podcast shows up. So that's a funny
story. Yeah. I read the blog, and then I got into listening
to podcasts and I saw maybe even in a podcast group, someone posted,
Hey, there's this funny new podcast. It's called the Karen and Ellen Letters.
And what I immediately thought was that someone ripped off an old blog and
took it and turned it into a podcast. I was like, wait,
these can't be the same letters. Wait, I gotta listen to this.
And as soon as I hit play, the first thing you say is how
you got the letters and how they were a blog, and I was like,
oh, it's the same guy, all right. I don't have to
like yell at anybody on the internet today. And now we've been friends for
going on six years. Yeah, and now we're friends, which I think.
It's just so funny to think about where you were when you got the
letters versus where I was, because it was, you know, shortly after
Katrina, I was pregnant with my daughter, and my cousin and her kids
came to live with us. Right, So I have three kids and another
on the way, and my oldest at this point is six years old,
so I have like, you know, six four almost two, I'm pregnant,
my cousin comes with her four children, and we live in a house
that's about eleven hundred and fifty square feet. It was, it was,
it was, it was an interesting time. So I kind of am picturing
you at your now. I mean, I've celebrated your birthday with you now
and thinking of you at your birthday. It's just it's interesting to see where
our lives were at that time and all the things that had to be put
into place for you know, us to be friends now. Yeah, it's
funny. I've been thinking a lot about, you know, the Karen and
Ellen Letters as a timeline for the people who have like participated in it,
and I think that's the beauty of doing this in cycles. You know,
a lot of people asked why I took it down and republishing it, and
I think because that has been consistent with how I have consumed the Karen and
Ellen Letters. Is like you read them for three weeks and you laugh and
laugh and laugh, and then you kind of like put them away for a
couple of years, and then they find their way back into your hands again.
And so as I've been going back and re narrating the show, it's
really fascinating to look at, like all a different views of my life every
time the letters are resuscitated. So yeah, it's interesting to hear your story
about where you were then, or like talking to Sarah Stapleton who plays Karen,
and when I got the letters, she was in Hawaii, kind of
like feeling a little lost at sea, wanting a child, not knowing,
you know, how that journey was going to happen for her, And now
she has a child, and so I just think it's really lovely because they
do have this cult following and resurface every few years to go back and say
where were we all at this iteration of the letters. So I guess it's
different in these after shows as we're going to have to talk around how it
ends. You know, I know so much. I know so much.
It's interesting to re listen and also to get the narration is you're framing is
a little different. The letters are the same, obviously, and you're presenting
him in chronological order. But I feel on this listening and maybe it was
in the earlier ones and it just wasn't what was resonating with me, but
it feels more like we're on your journey as much as we are on the
letters progression. As you got the letters, started wondering, Okay, are
these real? What happened? Are these really two teenage girls? Does Mark
even exist? And kind of following that thread a little bit more so,
I actually really enjoyed that on the even though I know how it ends.
You know, everyone loves a good mystery that unfolds, so it's still good
on re listening. Yeah, it's funny because I think, you know,
we're taught as reporters or journalists or whatever we want to call ourselves these days,
like never insert yourself into the story, right, And so I guess
I struggle with that because definitely the narrative this time is not as much about
me, but I play a bigger role in it. But also like the
story is as much about these letters as it is about how they've affected me,
and I guess, and then in contrast, how I've affected the story
of the letters, which is a weird thing to find yourself in a position
of power and someone else's narrative. So yeah, I thought that was important.
I think it's also important to talk about what these letters did for everyone
who has consumed them over the years, because it's a story of initially two
bimbos, and then at the end, you know, maybe it's about two
women who were did wrong and didn't have control over their own narrative and were
painted quite singularly by some one. Not to give too much away, but
I may have to edit that out. I think it's interesting how many people
are going to find the letters this time through hate to even mention him in
this context, but Israel Keys. How many people are listeners of that podcast
are going to be like, oh, Josh has this other podcast, let
me go listen, and they're going to know it through your investigative lens,
because that's how they know you. And I think that's really interesting. I'm
interested to see the discourse around the letters versus back in the roomies days,
where you know, we had a group on Facebook and it was just a
little bit I think, I honestly think it's going to be a little bit
more analytical a lot of what people are thinking about the letters and what they're
wondering about Oakland in the nineteen eighties, whereas in the roomy days we were
just like whatever, you know, drunken after shows. And although I will
say one of those after shows had one of the best insights on Mark that
I have ever heard, And it was one of your friends who I don't
even know, and he said, I just picture Mark living in the Bay
Area in the nineteen eighties. He's a gay man who has lost a lot
of friends to the AIDS epidemic. And how much of that kind of colors
how he's dealing with these entitled girls who apparently come from money if they can
afford five hundred dollars gurus, how he's interacting with that with his life experience.
And I thought, I don't know if Jeff ever had even that idea
in his head when he was voicing it, but it was an interesting insight
into the possibilities of the backstory of a character. Yeah, that was Jason
Leroy, who was actually just hearing the Berkshires a couple of weeks ago.
And it's funny because it's not something I had ever thought about, which is
ironic considering, you know, I moved to San Francisco at the tail end
of that, and you know, you talk a lot about as a gay
man in the Bay Area, where like you didn't meet a lot of men
between the ages of forty and fifty because many of them had passed, and
so I thought, I agree, that's one of the best insights into at
least mark Psyche that I've heard while doing the show or reading these letters.
And then back to your point about broadening the audience, it's strange to go
back and think, you know, there were five hundred people listening to the
podcast and its initial run, which was actually fewer than the number of people
who were reading the blog. So it will be interesting to see new people
find the show, and presumably a lot more new people find the show.
And yeah, this was my first foray into like an investigation, which is
funny to go back and listen to it because I'm quite green and don't know
what the fuck I'm doing. I think also, you know, there were
a lot of things I wasn't challenging about myself that first go around, where
now, you know, having had a crash course in investigative ethics and research
and viewing the whole story through a lens of humanity, it's weird, which
is I guess my first question for you, knowing what you know now are
the letters? Do they still have the same comedy to them? Oh?
I don't, I'll say, knowing what I know Ellen's do Karen's are a
little different, knowing what's coming into her life in the future. It just,
you know, I feel more it's a young woman trying to figure out
her path, and Ellen, I feel, remained a bit of a more
elusive character even toward even in the big picture, and a little more like
one dimensional, whereas there's a lot more about Karen, you know, get
people excited about what's to come. There's a lot more coming, the many
faces of Karen, the many phases of Karen. I mean, you don't
know Karen till you know. Aloha, Rob, like you have to,
you have to, you have to be on this journey. Yeah, it's
weird. I have a hard time. I think also, like I've read
and recorded and listened to these letters so many times that they basically they're no
longer even words. It's just like background noise for me. So it's weird
going back now and reading them, I guess for the first time through the
lens of the truth, because I think even in its last iteration, we
were looking at them with like investigative value, like what could this mean and
where could it lead us? And now like we're at the end of the
road. We've seen the whole story in all its different lenses, or most
of its lenses, and now it's it's looking at like what was actually happening
here? And so I think there are moments of comedy, there are moments
of just like frustration, and then there are moments of severe empathy, which
is funny because you go back to the first time we read these and we
were just like laughing at them without any thought to what the story actually was.
Right well, and I think for those who are also re listening this
time, there's a certain amount of nostalgia. Like as soon as they said
there was a smell behind the stove, I was like, oh wait,
wait, here we go, Here we go. And you know, they
mentioned the avocado tree, and I'm laughing at jokes we made a few years
ago about that there's a clock that's going to come up. There are certain
things that will you know, I still say it could have happened to anyone,
Like on a regular basis. I say it to my children. I'm
like, coulda happen to anyone? Whenever they do something absolutely ridiculous. It's
just it's funny how these things are going to come up. And for me
at this point, being that you know, I read them on the blog,
which is honestly nothing like the podcast really, you know, because the
people you have voicing is just like so perfectly cast, especially you know,
Mark, I love I love how Mark is presented just through inflection and a
lot of sighing and things like that. But I think for people who have
listened before, they're going to get that nostalgia. And I think for people
who are listening for the first time, they're going to come in on an
inside joke that you've had with how many groups of friends at this point?
How many cities? Yeah, like five or six. These are avocados and
clocks and gurus. These are all inside jokes you've had with like every group
of friends you've had, and now you're bringing kind of your true crime bullshit
friends into it too, And I think that's it's kind of it's an interesting
journey. Yeah, it's funny even you know, I'm in the Berkshire's now
and the Karen and Ellen letters have not made their way here, and so
it's fun watching my friends here experience these and you're like it's funny. Yeah,
I'm like, oh, I'm opening a door to my history for you,
which it's fun and it even you know, the true crime bullshit listeners
or the pack listeners who are following along and I get to watch them experience
these and not know what's coming. And it's delightful because I think for us,
you know, the big twist of like the truth to these letters was
so organic and authentic, and we got to experience that together and we all
kind of like have this whiplash of like challenging what we had just endured or
been through. We're both so it'll be fun. And obviously anyone listening to
this now has like a little lead into like not everything is as it seems,
but I think it'll be very rewarding, especially where the culture is now
versus five years ago, versus ten years ago versus fifteen years ago. It's
odd to be presented with a character to voice act. But all you know
is, I'm casting you as the exasperated Bay Area landlord. I'm casting you
as a flighty rich girl who moves there, who likes art. Like I
mean, it's not like they have a whole lot to work with, but
big picture, I feel like the voice has nailed it. Like that's exactly
what those people have sounded like. In my opinion, it's funny because Jeff
Powell, who plays Mark, and I were good friends for years before he
took on this role because we did this live show and I needed actors,
and so I only ever listen to Mark as Jeff my friend and not Jeff
an actor, right, and now going back with some space, I'm like,
my god, he's brilliant at this, so good he's acting as ass
Off and again like no one knew how this was going to end. But
there there's nuance to all of their performances. Well there is because he writes
to his uncle Albert, and you get Jeff is laughing as he's doing that,
because that one is we're gonna get. But then the other way,
it's just it's hard to do that with the voice only, and he did
it brilliantly, and then just the voices, so it's the over the top
voice that is like, what is what is needed for that? And it's
just I think it's just fascinating that they nailed these characters when they didn't actually
know who they were as real people. And I'm sure they don't really sound
like that, but that's definitely what I would cast them to sound like,
Yeah, I mean, I you know, I know what two of them
sound like. I guess away that we have found at least two of these
people out in the wild the wild, and I would say it is close
and it's not even like it's just two different people. So I guess with
that. Talking about, you know, these two episodes, they have two
of my favorite letters, which are the car Wash and Roger Rabbit, which
are still hilarious to me. The car Wash I could listen to that letter
just on a loop all day every day. What were the standouts for you
in these two episodes. I'm I'm all about the Guru and just the well,
I can't get my budget guru because he is he might be dead,
but the other guy's going in check on him. So now he's out of
town. But now we can get a spirit box instead, just you know,
And I would never ask you to pay for all of it. So
let's go have these like I mean, it's just like so, but I
have to say, there's a guy staring at me as I wash my fish.
That is just so classic and that's iconic. Yeah, it was in
the backyard washing my fish and this guy's just staring at me. But I
mean, again going back to the nostalgia jurisdiction, that was like the word
we. That was one of the jokes with the on the Facebook roomies group,
where you know, it's like take a shot every time they say jurisdiction,
and it's just it's very funny. So it's like the nostalgia part made
me laugh about the jurisdiction still this day, because jurisdiction comes up a lot,
yeah, our in our current podcast, Yeah, particularly in true crime
bullshit, And anytime I say it, like I chuckle, or if Kaz
is around, she'll like start laughing or look at me, or someone will
whisper drink. I think the podcast amplified its presence in my life because there
were more people to have these inside jokes, right yeah, and people who
overlap in weird ways into your life. I mean, if you're sitting there
discussing with your research or something about jurisdiction, which like you said, comes
up a lot when someone is purposely avoiding jurisdiction, and then just for them
to pop into your head and you know, the Berkeley Rent control and it's
just so funny. So I want to talk about now like the journey of
the show, because it's weird. I kind of have this opportunity to go
back and like right wrongs or fix things or change things. And I think
about season two, which is at times a wild departure from season one.
It's yeah, definitely, it becomes narratively much more complex, and also my
style changed a lot. I was very depressed. I was watching a lot
of twin Peaks, and I think that resonates in the production. Wow,
I that actually makes a lot of sense. She just put some pieces together
for me because it was a sharp departure from the format, and it was
bringing in like side characters that it was. It was definitely different. Well,
I think it was like, you know, we did the Letters and
that was season one for the most part, and then season two was like
the same story, but I knew journey, and so to me it felt
like it had to be it couldn't be the same, just right, logistically,
it couldn't be the same. And totally it felt like, Okay,
we're involving other people, we're finding out new things, We're going on these
investigative pads, and much like in true crime bullshit, like sometimes there are
dead ends, and I think that's the fun of season two. I think
it alienated a lot of people. It was funny watching the downloads. I
think we lost like thirty percent of the audience going into season two. But
as I've been going back and editing, I'm like, I'm really proud of
season two, Like it's range, but I love it. I'm like,
really gonna offend people here, but I think not everyone who listened to season
one was like smart enough to follow season two, if you know what I
mean, Like, nah, I don't want to say smart can tell.
I mean like a sophisticated listener, like are you reading beach reads or you're
reading literature? And I'm not going to say it was literature, but it
was like, if you think of season one kind of as a beach read,
you can passively listen season two. You had to be a more engaged
listener because there are more characters, there's more paths. But honestly, some
of the I mean it had very old person on Facebook vibes with all of
that, and I love that. So I mean, I loved season two,
but I also loved your Kelly Cochrane season so much, and everyone else
You're like everyone skipped out. I'm like, why it was so good?
Well, people are finding it now. I think it just a context is
everything, because in the context of like Keys, everyone was like I don't
want this, but you know now that it has its own Yeah, it's
a fascinating season. There's this book I don't know. It's called House of
Leaves by Mark Daniel Luski. Have you heard of this? Yeah? I
literally have it on my shelf and have not touched it. I like in
Season two to that book because it is a very complex read and that it's
like a story within a story, sometimes within a story. I think a
third of the book is in footnote and it's just kind of you have to
really pay attention. You have to remember where you've been, have a sense
of where you're going, and be able to like manage these different narrative styles.
And I think Season two is a lot like that, which is also
what makes it fun is you're disoriented. Yeah. Yeah, I liked season
two. It was very different than season one, and I think maybe that's
just and like you've said, with you know, putting Kelly Cochrane in the
middle of Israel, Keys, sometimes people you know they're coming to your podcast
for a certain tone, a certain feel, and I are not getting that.
Then they're like, oh, this doesn't this doesn't feel right. But
I mean, I like you said, though, like season two couldn't be
the same as season one because you read the letters and now we're kind of
bringing in a different aspect. So I guess, looking at the whole journey,
do you have any regrets or hesitations or pauses for how you have consumed
these up until the ending of No No, Because I think it was it
was the journey because when I listened when I read them the first time,
when I listened to the podcast, I didn't know where it was going.
I didn't know if they were real. I didn't know if like like in
my head, Mark had like photocopied all these letters because it was going to
be part of illegal action as he's trying to evict these two teenagers. Like
that's where I thought it was going, And so I don't think I really
necessarily can assumed it. I mean, I'm glad I didn't know where it
was going. I think I enjoyed it more that way. I think if
I knew, you know, whether they were real or not, what they
were copied for why this Kinko's person thought, this is ridiculous. I'm going
to grab some of these. Like if I knew all of that at the
beginning, I don't think I'd enjoy them as much. So I'm glad I
didn't know. Yeah, the same, And I think now the question I
find myself asking is can someone be both a hero and a bimbo? Then
two things be true at the same time, which obviously, I mean the
name of my company is both and exactly exactly I think. And it's funny
because they are dumb letters and dumb demands and ridiculous and these girls say and
do very stupid things, and it's like an honesty check to be like,
oh, I can still value you and value your journey and have empathy for
you and like laugh at the stupid saying yeah, especially the stupid things you
say and do at like eighteen or nineteen, So to some degree, we
can kind of look back at when we were starting out. Did we know
what our landlord was supposed to do and what we're supposed to do? Did
we know you know how to get a phone installed into another bedroom? And
I mean there this is like an extreme version of that, but to some
degree we can kind of laugh at the missteps we made or the assumptions we
made when we were starting out. I mean, we didn't. One of
the things that always struck me as when we're listening to them the first time
was why are they not like talking to their families and being hey, Dad,
I'm confused about blah blah blah, rather than just immediately writing to Mark.
But then you get to the letter where Ellen does talk to her grandmother
who lives in Death Valley, and she's like, I don't know why she's
not giving you an air conditioner you should ask, or wanting the wood because
he gives firewood to his other tenant who has a fireplace. Those those things,
it's like they are talking to people and they're just either getting bad advice
or they're like confusing it in their own heads. But also, I mean,
I assume they go to UC Berkeley. This is not a great endorsement
for the college. I don't know what their admission rates are like, but
yeah, it's a little rough for for UC Berkeley. There. I think
that's you know, that's the one thing we all struggled with as we were
investigating this is like, there are no way, regardless of how wealthy these
girls are, they got into UC Berkeley, And I think that's you know,
there are three things that come up or came up throughout the letters that
made me question their validity. That was one of them. The other one
we're going to get to around Christmas time of eighty nine, I think,
and then something involving pickles, And you know, I think those are the
moments where you're like, Okay, this can't be real, and then that
gets us into like fiction versus non fiction, and sometimes there's a very muddy
line between the two. I do think it's interesting that the letters do have
these weird moments that haven't come up yet, but they are things you can
check. You can fact check. A lot of it is do you know
if this landlord wouldn't give these girls an air conditioner? There's no way to
fact check that. But there are other things that get mentioned that come up
that are that are moments in history that are very local moments, very localized.
But then you can then take that moment and fact check it and say,
wait, this really this part happened, so what so somewhere along the
line, either someone was really good about getting really local local news into these
letters or there is some validity to them, and that line is a little
fuzzy some times. So what are your thoughts on like propriety over a story?
And I, you know, like we are in true crime, and
that's I think an ethical question that you know, I live with every single
time I press publish. Exactly I think here it's just as complicated, you
know, again without going into how this all ends, But what are your
thoughts on, like who does this story belong to? Who gets to have
ownership over this? Who gets to tell this story? I think this one
is so different than a lot of what we cover in true crime because in
true crime, we we're not usually using somebody's private correspondence that they never meant
to be public. If that is what this is, right, Like if
I write a letter to my landlord, I don't expect it to one day
show up on some guy's blog. You know, you have an expectation of
privacy there. So if we go with the Okay, these letters are real,
these are real people. Yeah, to some degree, it's like how
how much of an ownership do I have over these letters to tell the story?
But I also think there's a little bit of like a time, their
time has passed that we're not talking about people and where they're living today.
We're not giving out identifying information about them. You've changed the name. Like,
there's certain things in there where I think you can tell a story using
basically, they're found historical documents from the nineteen eighties. As as much as
it pains us, the nineteen eighties is history, I mean, it's I
have it's thirty five christ I have a child who's twenty four years old,
and he was born in nineteen ninety nine, so we're talking more than we're
talking like ten years before that. So what we're talking about really is kind
of found historical documents. As ridiculous as that sounds to apply that to this
letter, to these letters, I mean, it's like if I found my
grandmother's journal and I decided to publish it. I don't feel like that's necessarily
like wrong or it's a story that doesn't exist out it's not. I feel
like it's it's found historical documents, even if the nineteen eighties we want to
think was sooner or more recent than it was. Yeah, it's funny,
I because you know, Obviously I made a choice to do the show and
continue the show and now revive the show, and it's still kind of murky
to me. I think there's a case for the ends justifying the means.
But again, that's very easy for me to make that call because my stakes
and this are quite low. So yeah, I don't know. I guess
that's the one thing that hasn't changed this time around. Is I still kind
of question who gets propriety over this and at what point do personal letters,
if that's what they are, become public discourse, right? I think that
I I don't think it's a story that's not worth telling. And it is
interesting because now that you know the whole picture, there is a bigger story
to tell, whereas maybe if it was earlier on and you're not just sharing
them with friends, but you're putting them out there for everybody, and it's
just like laughing at it. I mean maybe that that's where I'd feel a
little more murky. This I don't feel is quite as murky. Yeah,
And I guess in some senses, like if I'm going to give myself a
pass, like sometimes I'm the one who looks bad in this narrative, you
know, I was a little baby investigator and didn't know what I was doing
and was sometimes careless, and like, I will not shy away from that
in this narrative, and it got you ready to, you know, do
more investigative things that are you know, bigger, with much higher stakes,
forever everybody involved. So I think it's an interesting progression from I wonder if
Mark is real to what you're doing today with your work. So yes,
that's an interesting kind of that. The fact that they're even connected, these
letters are connected to what you're doing now is kind of wild, but it's
mostly the investigation. I also think what's fascinating is because you don't know,
as a new listener whether these are real or not, you have to have
the conversation with yourself of how am I consuming this? Am I consuming this
as fiction or nonfiction? Which begs the question why should there be a difference,
And it's a question I don't have an answer to necessarily, but it's
like, should we adjust how we consume media based on how real or accurate
it is? And thus, like it's realness or accuracy, should that change
our perspective on it? And that I think is a really great conversation that
I'm looking forward to having throughout this reiteration of the letters. How how long
do you expect this to go this go round? I've I don't know I
should have any answer to that, but I don't. I think I think
I like planned for we're going to do two seasons. We'll do a break
in between seasons. But I imagine at the rate ongoing season one will probably
be like six episodes, and then season two. I think in the first
run had a longer episode of a count and each episode was longer, So
maybe season two will be eight episodes. Okay, I mean, we have
a lot of places to go, and we still I mean, we've gotten
to hear about Rob and his tough university, but we haven't quite gotten to
Rob yet. And that I think was honestly in the whole thing. As
much as I think like Mark's voicing is what I really like most about that
character of the characters. Rob is just such such a wild ride and such
a wild card to throw in there, and anything that can go wrong,
Rob's probably connected to it. It's you have to kind of wonder how the
Karen and Rob found each other truly, truly, especially in the pre Internet
days, like yes, like how these nobody's been too No, two people
have been better suited for each other than Karen and Rob. But what's interesting
is like Karen becomes much more complex and dynamic as the letters go on and
as the truth reveals itself, but Rob essentially remains flat throughout, which I
think is nice because then he becomes kind of an anchor where you're like,
no matter how strange or challenging this gets, we can always laugh at Rob,
which is like a very uniting force. Yeah, absolutely, I guess
my final thought slash question. So you know, in season two, we
don't spend a lot of time in the Bay Area. We're in Washington State,
We're in Hawaii, We're in Kansas, We're in Arizona. We're briefly
in New York, which I'm just now remembering what's going on in New York.
And I think as the story gets bigger and bigger and bigger, all
it does is like create more focus on the small origin of it all,
which is that cottage in Oakland. My question for you, as I try
to articulate it in my head, is with all that season two is does
it change the way you feel about the letters, and I know we've kind
of talked about that more broadly, like do you have regrets to you know,
does it change the way you consume them? But like, are you
still able to separate the letters as art per se versus the letters from reality.
That's a really good question that I don't know that I've really thought about
how I'm I think right now re listening to them, I'm just so struck
by the nostalgia of what we were, those conversations we're having back then,
which we're definitely I may not have had those same conversations if I knew where
this was going quite so much poking fun or at specific people, knowing what's
going to happen we're citing with a specific person, when in the long run
my view completely changed. So I definitely interact with them differently in the sense
that I'm seeing different points of view differently knowing it's so hard to discuss this
without like talking about trying to talk around it, not use names. I
definitely think that the letters, I'm still just consuming them as entertainment at this
point, and I feel like I will. I think that I'm just accepting
them as they are right now, and then as we get closer to it,
I'll start feeling the weight that I felt the first time as things were
progressing. Yeah, I guess that's one of the reasons I was asking.
And I think as we have this conversation, it's made me concerned about the
people who are listening for the first time. It's like, should they get
to or should they just period laugh at these letters? And I think the
easy answer is yes because they are funny, and the complicated answer is yes
because it makes the journey that much more impactful. I think if you give
these letters weight now, I mean, there shouldn't be any weight to them
now. And I don't think anyone should worry that when we get to the
end they're going to feel bad for laughing at them, because we're still laughing
at them. I mean, just can't open my windows on a hot day
because there's a car wash, Like, I mean, how can you not?
How is that not? And then just Mark's responses they're funny, and
and then Karen's very shaky math. It's just it's just you get you get
ought to just go with the journey of it. Yeah, there's like a
point a beautiful anthropology or like vernacular to these, like you know, I
can't be like vacuum, alligator, stupio that they're just like things that come
up that just like will always be endemic to the Karen and Ellen letters.
And I want people to get to experience that without I guess, thinking too
much about like the scope of where we're going, but also to be cognizant
of like there is a story here in the story is bigger than correspondence,
right exactly, And I think that people need to go on on that journey
to get there. I mean, the journey's the point. So laugh because
the letters are funny. They are funny, and I think that even now,
like I laugh and I also cry a little bit. And I think
that's kind of the beauty of this story too, is it is not to
like jerk myself off both and like it is both funny and sad, or
it is both ridiculous and heartwarming. It's it's it contains multitudes, and I
think it has been a very valuable part in my growth as a narrator.
Is like understanding that everything exists in the gray, and the Karen and Ellen
letters are just like a paragon of that, right and I think it's something
that I didn't appreciate when I read them on the blog and just kind of
took them at face value and laughed and then even listen to the podcast the
first time, it didn't I didn't give them any depth, like they just
were what they were, and then it starts kind of coming around. So
I just I think as people listen to them and they're like, oh,
these are just kind of funny weird letters, just know that there's more.
It's not just going to be the reading of funny weird letters. There's so
much more to come. Yeah, I think that's such a big part of
my career is like I never once like I was like, I need to
find out if these are real, but I never once thought about like what
happens if they are real? And like so that I think is a great
story too. So yeah, I'm I'm glad we had this conversation because I'm
excited to now, yeah, look at this through a very different lens.
Yeah, I'm excited. I'm just I'm excited to hear people talking about these,
like, like I said, these inside jokes that you've had with so
many friends over the years, and just bringing new people into that. So
whenever you have a weird smell, be like, is that an avocado behind
the stove? Just like like, the next time we have a weird smell
in your kitchen, you're gonna think of a do I have an avocado behind
my stove? And who can I get to pay for it? Like it's
it's just funny, and it is and it takes over parts of your life
because it is such day to day things that just come out so funny when
these two are surrounding it. Well, let's end on a low stakes,
trivial question. Okay, are going to have a great opportunity next month to
have a social do over. I feel called out a little bit. So
we were doing a live reading of the Karen and Ellen Letters. Unfortunately only
one of the original cast can make it out to the Berkshires because it is
a track, and that is Jeff who plays Mark. Charlie tell us about
when you met Jeff for the first time. Okay, I need to give
us od like some backup. So we went to Seattle for meat up,
and we went to this bar that served double. Everything was double, by
the way, Just just for the record, I didn't drink I didn't think
I drank that much, but I did. But we did the meet up
first and then after we were there for what two hours. Well, it
was the most raucous meetup I have ever been at. It was a lot
of people, it was it was packed. It was in a very interesting
location that Josh had chosen, an old railway car on the side of the
highway that happened to have Chinese food, a bar, and karaoke machines that
were also in Chinese that my husband was trying to work for everybody. It
was a night. But what Josh did, He's like, let's do the
meetup and then my friends from Seattle, because of all the very many places
that Josh has lived, he's lived in Seattle. Then my friends will come
and then we'll just like kind of party with them and have a good time.
But so by the time Jeff got there, I was in talk he
did and I was so excited to meet him, And he did not look
interested at all in talking to a very drunk, middle aged woman in a
train car on the side of the highway. So we did not. I
don't know. So I have been spending like the last two years pretty sure,
like Jeff, who probably doesn't even remember me. Like you know,
you have those situations where you relive it and you're like that person probably hates
me and they're like, I don't even remember you. Anyway, I'm going
to the Berkshire's next month, and so is Jeff, and so now I'm
going to have a very sober conversation to prove myself to him as an intelligent
person who is not going to fangirl over a voice on the internet. I'm
going to keep it together. That's my plan. If I may, you
did drunkenly demand multiple times that he do the voice? I did? I
did, well, he doesn't sound like Mark when he's just talking, like
not really. I did ask him to do the voice multiple times and kidney
to It's that thing where you ask someone to say something like oh, no,
do it in that voice or they speak another language, and you know,
you're like, well, can you say something in the language that'd be
cool to hear? Well, you just put them on the spot. They
don't know what to say. So he's like, I literally he didn't know
what. He's like, what do you want me to say? And I'm
like, something, do you have a letter to read, I'm like,
I don't know, yeah, but then Lars figured out the karaoke machine,
and I think he's smoothed over a lot of a lot of things for me
that night. I mean, in a karaoke to Jeff. Every now and
again someone will ask me to say that dreaded town name in the Upper Peninsula
of Michigan, and like, you know, like I'm some sort of circus
monkey, and it really evokes a cacophony of emotions same, anger, frustration.
So I understand Jeff, but I also under stand you because we've been
friends for a long time. And I think also that is the joy and
the pain of like becoming notable, is you do become singular in one dimensional
much less in these letters. And that's the perfect ending listen perfect, Well,
thank you so much for doing this with me, And like, I
just it's so wild to have a podcast friend who's been on this journey since
before it was a podcast. Yeah, it's kind of weird when you're like
you wanted to do it. Karen and Ellen letters after show, I'm like,
well, I don't know if I'm in that mindset anymore. And we
used to do these. They used to be like chaotic because it would be
four people on a call, no video because do we do it over Skype
or something? I think we did it over Skype, yeah, and so
you never knew when the other person was trying to talk, and so it
was just like four people all talking over each other while drinking and they were
so fun. But what the listener experience was like, we did do video
the first five and then there was an unfortunate incident where someone drank too much
and forgot they were on camera, and so we decided we were not going
to do a video anymore. Yeah, I mean it was a very different,
different podcasting experience. Then now we're sitting in our office spaces, we
have real microphones that sound really good. Is going to be we're more weathered
and we're weather weather it is the word. Well, it's i'd say matured,
but weather both. And thank you for being here. I'm sure i'll
talk to you in the very near future. We need to discuss New York.
But yeah, all right, all right, by Hi Hi,