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My name is Lee Hawkins.
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I ve been a journalist for over 25 years.
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On my new podcast, What Happened in Alabama, I get answers to some of the hardest questions about how things came to be for many black Americans and the truth that must come before any reconciliation can happen.
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I investigate my family history, my upbringing in Minnesota, and my father s painful nightmares about growing up in Alabama.
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What Happened in Alabama is a new series confronting the cycles of trauma for myself, my family, and for many Black Americans.
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Listen now.
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Dana s and Becky s, I have a big announcement, so please lend me your full attention.
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On April 24th, Don t Ask Tig will have a special live virtual show that you can attend.
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I ll be joined by the one and only Mark Maron.
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You know Mark from his IFC series, Marin, Netflix s Glow, and of course, his hugely popular landmark podcast, WTF with Mark Marin.
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If you want to join us for this one-time event, go to DontAskTig.org slash live and donate $15 or more.
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The show airs on April 24th at 6 p.m.
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Pacific time, 9 p.m.
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Eastern and 8 p.m.
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Central.
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Pause this episode, head to DontAskTig.org slash live and sign up right now.
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Ten lucky audience members will be a part of a special surprise during the broadcast.
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Again, Dont Ask Tig Live with Marc Maron is on April 24th at 6 p.m.
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Pacific Time.
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Donate $15 or more at DontAskTig.org slash live to join.
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It s going to be a good time with a lot of fun, laughter, and hilariously unqualified advice.
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I cannot wait to see you all there.
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Also, on April 14th, I will be in the Biloxi, Mississippi area, and then on April 20th, Red Bank, New Jersey, April 21st, Poughkeepsie, New York.
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I ll also be in Las Vegas on May 2nd, Fayetteville, Arkansas on June 23rd, and also keep your eyes and ears peeled
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For the date that I will be taping my next stand-up special, I will be revealing that very soon.
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So come on out and see the last few shows that I m doing before my taping.
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Go to TigNotaro.com for all show links and ticket information.
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See you there.
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Now on with the show.
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My wife has more of an understanding of the Kardashians.
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I had to introduce Kim at some event, and then I was retelling something about the evening to somebody, and Stephanie, my wife, overheard me say, yeah, and then I was bringing Michelle Kardashian out.
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And Stephanie was like,
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Did you just call her Michelle Kardashian?
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I was like, what is her name?
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I will never again see her face in anything and not think that there s Michelle.
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Michelle Kardashian.
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That s going to be it.
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This is Don t Ask Tig, I m Tig Notaro, warning you that while my advice is free, you will pay the price at one point or another.
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Amber Tamblyn is an Emmy and Golden Globe nominated actress, director, and writer.
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The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Joan of Arcadia, and Why the Last Man are just a few of her many credits.
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She has written six critically acclaimed books and edited the best-selling anthology, Listening in the Dark, Women Reclaiming the Power of Intuition.
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She is an opinion writer for the New York Times, The Cut, and The New Yorker.
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Her most recent writing can be found at ambertamblin.substack.com.
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Amber Tamblyn, welcome to Don t Ask Tig.
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Thanks for having me, Tig.
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What an intro.
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Yeah, well, what a life.
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What a career.
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You recently wrote an article about how Bravo s franchise, The Real Housewives, has real value for its mostly female audience.
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Can you tell me more about that?
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Okay, I love that you picked up on this particular article because I love that article and I feel like I was like, I m not sure people read it, but now knowing that you didn t,
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Also, I just did a podcast with Bethany Frankel.
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She s an interesting character.
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I ve had a couple experiences with her.
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Yeah, that was my only experience.
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And the world of the Housewives, that was the first thing for me.
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And I am very curious what your take is.
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Yes, yeah, so the article is specifically about that, about, I think, what we re really getting from women on reality television, specifically, I think, Vanderpump Rules and the many different Real Housewives franchises, maybe not so much the Kardashians.
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because that feels more kept together and more branded and more like a very specific thing that we re going to see them for, like eating salads.
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But I think the rest of the Housewives and some of these other shows, it s like a powder keg of emotion in which you don t really know when someone is going to pop off or when someone is going to sort of show you the full breadth of their
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anguish or frustration or sadness or jealousy or rage or whatever it is and there s something kind of cathartic about that i think just as a viewer to wonder to sort of fantasize almost what would it be like if i could just say and do what i really felt
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and especially as a woman where we are trained and brought up to really sort of have different relationships to the values of our emotions.
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And we are, you know, often told that emotional intelligence is not a good place to think or act from.
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And while I do think that s true on occasion, there is something worth exploring in seeing someone, specifically
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women get to act out in that way, in such a public manner.
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And in the Substack post that you mentioned, that sort of has a much deeper dive about all this, I actually reference a Jeffrey McDaniel poem.
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I think it s called Air Empathy.
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It s a very short poem, but the piece is specifically about riding on an airplane.
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And I make this analogy, I make this sort of comparison.
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Riding on an airplane as an adult while an infant near you is screaming their lungs out.
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And then, sort of that anguish taking over person by person, the entire plane, until it s just a bullet flying through the sky of screaming, crying adults.
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You know, their emotions on full display.
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And so, to me, those are sort of connected because I think at times, reality television and the women and how they behave
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while we might gasp and say, oh, my gosh, I would never.
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At the same time, it s sort of touching this deep desire to be able to behave and more importantly, feel whatever you want to whenever you want to.
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Interesting.
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So, if you were in that world, what would Amber look like?
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Oh, Lord.
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I have no idea.
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I don t know.
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I would be like the quiet friend judging in the corner, sipping on a straw of vodka or something.
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I don t think I would be, I don t think I would have the bravery to do some of the stuff that they do.
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There is a famous episode of a woman who s an amputee who throws her leg at somebody.
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And I m like, that s just good television.
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And she s essentially like, the only thing fake about me is my leg!
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And she throws it.
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It s excellent.
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Do you think that was scripted?
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I think all of it, to a degree, is not scripted, but I do think, like, good politicians, they work on their lines.
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They know what they want to say.
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about the angle they re gonna take in any given scenario or party, which is why it obviously is, quote-unquote, supposed to be real in reality.
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But that it s not.
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It s actually something that you re watching where you re like, okay, I know someone is going into this situation and they wanna fight.
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This one s gonna go into this situation they know they re gonna be fought with.
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Right, right.
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Now, Amber, in addition to everything that you do, you re also an award-winning poet.
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I wrote my fair share of poetry as a child, and I won t share it with you.
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But if I were to really try to write a poem right now, where should I start?
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I m going to need to see your poems now, Tig.
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That s like the Michelle Kardashian of the bombs that you just dropped on me.
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I remember a line that I wrote when I was in, I think, seventh grade and it started out, sometimes I think of you, but then again, I always do.
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Oh, come on.
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That s so sweet.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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That was the beginning of a poem.
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My first book was Freestallion, which was like a cult.
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And also, I don t know what that term means.
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I think I just was really into Tori Amos and Ani Franco.
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I was like, it just sounds right.
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It s about a horse being free.
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you know, adolescent girls.
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But there was a poem in there that I had called Kill Me So Much, which was like, it was a collection of poems from about 12 years old to 22.
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And they very much wanted to be like hyper political, like the musicians and the other poets that I loved, such as the two women that I sort of mentioned.
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But I think the opening line of that is something like, die, die, we all cry with our stubborn cannons blowing off and our noses like dead poodles.
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Yep, that s it.
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Arriving on a nightmare, praying for a dream.
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You re welcome.
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That s a line I remember from it.
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It s a very dramatic kid.
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How old were you?
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I was 12.
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I was about that same age when I wrote, sometimes I think of you, but then again, I always do.
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I think that s a bit of a side effect, a wonderful side effect of my life growing up around a lot of poets.
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And growing up in Los Angeles and Southern California, around a lot of the remaining beat poets, Diane DiPrima and Amiri Baraka, and my late mentor, Jack Hirschman.
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And they were all, like, deeply political poets.
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And so, my early, my very early work, of course, I think, tried to emulate them a lot.
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Things were always an ode.
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to them.
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But to actually that poem, Jack Hirschman was an editor of a small magazine in San Francisco Chronicle called Cups.
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And that poem killed me so much he took that poem and he published it in there.
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So I had a poem published for the first time at a young age and sort of
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for the first time ever looked and felt this profound sense of self, even that young of like, wow, this is really powerful.
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And I feel sort of seen my work and not really realizing how much that was gonna affect the rest of my life, especially as an actress in my other career, which is a very disorienting business that sort of everything you do is you are an object, you are a mirror of yourself, you are
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learning other people s lines, you are playing another character, your work is being edited together by a director and an editor, and you don t know how that s gonna turn out.
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So, it s really only sort of 50 percent yours, whereas seeing my poem published on a page was 100 percent mine.
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And so it felt very different in a lot of ways, and was sort of revolutionary to my young mind.
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You also, you played, speaking of your acting career, you played a conservative pundit in the series Why the Last Man, which imagines a world without men.
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What did you learn from playing a character with such polar opposite views from your own?
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Well, that short-lived show, which was absolutely brilliant, an adaptation of the beloved graphic novel by the same name, and it s Y, like, just for listeners, Y as in, like, the letter Y. And it is about a world where there is a big pandemic.
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and all cisgendered men are left out.
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And so everyone else is there to try to figure out what the world is.
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And it s not necessarily great all the time.
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It s a little, you know, Lord of the Flies, but with ladies.
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It was incredible.
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It was created by Eliza Clark, who is a brilliant writer, showrunner.
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One of my most memorable and joyous experiences was working on that show.
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And also because of this character,
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Kimberly Cunningham was her name.
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And she very much was a sort of, you know, Meghan McCain character.
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Her father s the president of the United States.
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He dies in the opening episode because all the men do.
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And she s also sort of like a self-proclaimed boy mom.
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She s got three sons.
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Her identity is really through them and through this idea of we re destroying
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masculinity, we re destroying the future of our boys and what they re meant to do.
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And so I loved it because, you know, I m turning 40 this year and I ve been acting since I was 10 years old.
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And it s few and far between where there s something that you go, that I haven t done before.
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That is not a kind of character that I ve gotten to play with.
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And so for me, it was very different, but it was
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wonderful to be able to bring a character to life that s antithetical to my own personal views and my own personal opinions, but to make that character kind of funny and humanize them in sort of an effort to say, look, underneath it all, we re all just messy human beings and some of us were...
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taught in certain ways to believe certain things that are wrong.
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And some of us were taught other things that I believe are right.
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And so, at the core of it, though, is human nature and human capacity to see that we are connected through our emotions.
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And that we are connected through things like our grief and all of these different things that sort of make us human beings.
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Now, the legacy of the Me Too movement is something I ve discussed on this show with past guests like Anthony Rapp and Rebecca Corey, and I ve talked about it in plenty of other places as well.
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But like Rebecca and Anthony, you were one of the first prominent figures to publicly share your Me Too story.
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And I m curious,
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how you feel about the state of Me Too today?
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Well, it was an interesting time.
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I think we ve all been through a very complicated several years, not only with Me Too and, you know, the creation of Time s Up, of which I was one of the founders and, uh, but I think also with the 2016 election, which I still think a lot of people are, you know, when we talk about
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PTSD.
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I think there has been a string of it that has come since 2015, all the way up through the pandemic.
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And I think the election of Donald Trump in 2016, but even more so the defeat of Hillary Clinton, which is
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I think it really transformed most women I know, even women who didn t like her, who didn t vote for her, but felt like if that woman can t make it, we are all fucked.
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And that sort of sent this ripple effect, this message through all of our central nervous systems, through all of our psyches, and I would say even through our ancestral psyches, like way back in hundreds of years ago to the feelings of what women are just not allowed to achieve.
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when we talk about power.
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And so obviously that was like, in my mind, a huge catalyst for what happened, you know, in the years before the Me Too movement had happened.
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And then also several months before the Harvey Weinstein article came out, I had written a piece in the New York Times that was called, um, I m done with the
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not being believed, which was essentially about this perception of women in any position of power, whether you are vying for the presidency of the United States, or whether you just wanna raise, you want equal pay, you want someone to stop touching your leg at work, you want someone to trust you and believe that your opinion matters and it has perspective in the work that you do, whatever that imbalance of power may be.
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I bring all this up to say that I think we were sort of under a collective zeitgeist in 2017.
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Everyone was sort of ready in that moment to speak out.
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People were ready to say, we re truly done.
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We re done with this mechanism and the way this has been going.
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We re also done for asking for permission.
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That s over.
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We re not doing that.
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Now, I think currently we ve gone back to asking for permission again.
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As of right now, it sort of feels quiet.
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And I think maybe that that s a good place for it to be because we have had a lot of change in the industry.
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But as always, I don t think we ve had enough.
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And there should be more.
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There will be more.
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Absolutely.
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I agree.
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And it s interesting to think back when you re talking about that time period, because I had a TV show, One Mississippi, that we were writing before Harvey Weinstein.
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And we were getting so much pushback and notes from the network.
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And they were just like,
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doubting certain aspects of what we were writing about, and everybody was bringing in their personal stories, and we were just like, we felt so united in that writer s room.
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This is real, and this goes on.
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This goes on from childhood, through the workplace, and families, and everywhere.
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And it was so interesting because the show aired, and then a few months later, Harvey Weinstein was called
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called out and taken down, and people are still finding that show.
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And they re like, did you know something that other people, and we were like, no, we were just.
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See, see, that s what I mean.
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That s what I m saying is when you talk about the zeitgeist, it s really an interesting time because it just all teed up perfectly.
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Take you were there in that meeting that we had one of the first ones.
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Yeah.
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And so I remember you and many other women in our industry emailing all of us sort of emailing and coming together.
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There was one specific meeting that then became multiple meetings and meetings and meetings.
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And that is sort of how
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Time s Up was formed, but also from Tarana Burke s Me Too movement, which she founded, you know, decades ago.
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It sort of became this secondary fire that was burning underneath that conversation.
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But I just remember reaching out to you, and I remember reaching out to other women who were like, I m there.
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What are we doing?
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Let s do something.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, for sure.
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It felt like a time of, like, certain people messed with the wrong people, and it all came to a head.
1
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Yeah.
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Now, Amber, do people come to you for advice?
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They do.
1
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Okay.
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They do come to me for advice.
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I am someone who gets asked advice a lot.
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Well, this is perfect because, I mean, my audience, they need guidance.
1
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Are you ready to help some people out?
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I m ready.
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I don t know if I ll be, you know, I can t guarantee.
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Oh, please.
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I can guarantee.
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I can guarantee.
1
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Oh, stop.
1
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Go on.
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Go on.
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You played a teenager who talks directly with God in Joan of Arcadia, and I m hoping that ll come in handy for this first listener question.
1
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Perry in Atlanta writes, Dear Tig and interesting guest, I m going to just dive right in.
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When I pray, I hear God s voice in my head as your voice, Tig, board size included.
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How do you feel about this?
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Is it healthy?
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Wrong?
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Do I need help?
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Yeah, I kind of want to know how you feel about that, Tig.
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First and foremost.
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Yeah, I guess I m thinking, are you literally thinking Tig s voice?
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Or are you thinking, Perry, a Tig-like voice that sounds bored?
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My wife calls me Eeyore when I talk.
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She s like, okay, Eeyore.
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And I m not bored.
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I just, I m like, would I be bored as God?
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These are big questions.
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I d have to say no if we re looking at God as a non-denominational entity that is all-powerful and can do whatever he, she, they wants.
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But I feel like he d be definitely a very funny God that would tell very good jokes.
1
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Well, thank you.
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If there is a God, I feel like I am an extension of God, and I don t feel bored.
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So I m going to say I, as well as this God, whether it s all around or just in your head, Perry, is not bored.
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I would just take that vibe as like a comforting, reassuring,
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Just take a deep breath, is what this voice and this God and this vibe is trying to impart on you, I guess, is what I m thinking.
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I have a bit of a confession, speaking of God.
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Oh, okay.
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I think I m kind of in the same boat as Perry without even realizing it, but I cannot look at a baby without hearing your voice as well.
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Me?
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Yeah, that has been a thing for me for years.
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And I think what it s tied to is, like, that you are the voice of the baby, and it makes me laugh.
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I think I ve even made that joke to David, my husband, numerous times.
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That I m the voice of the baby?
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Yeah, when they re looking, when they just look at you.
1
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And I know that it s tied to that joke
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which has pulled me out of more depressions than anything, which is the joke about the baby showering and turning around and looking at you is one of the great jokes of all time.
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And I think that s where it comes from.
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But I do, I will say, I m like, what would that baby say in Tig s voice?
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And I only just remembered this because of his question.
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That is so funny.
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Look at that, Perry.
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That is the God pulling us all together in this moment.
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That s right.
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Working in mysterious ways.
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Very mysterious.
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I mean, that s one of the most mysterious ways I ve ever seen this God work.
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And I hope I didn t sound bored answering your question, Perri.
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Amber, we re going to return with more questions right after this short break, so do not go anywhere.
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I m ready.
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We are back.
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Amber, as I mentioned at the top, you edited the new anthology, Listening in the Dark, Women Reclaiming the Power of Intuition.
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This next question touches on that theme.
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Dina writes, Tig, I just listened to your episode with Karen Kilgareff, who co-hosts the podcast My Favorite Murder.
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She said that women should listen to their intuition more to avoid horrible things happening, for example, being murdered.
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But isn t that what some 911-calling Karens say they are doing to earn their poor reputations?
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They are nervous.
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They feel they are listening to their intuition to get help.
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How can we stay safe, be smart, and navigate the world safely without bias, including racism?
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I have a lot of thoughts about this.
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Okay, great.
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Let s hear it.
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First of all, I m thinking of, and it s an excellent question, and it is at the heart of several of the essays in Listening in the Dark.
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One of them in particular is called Practicing the Quiet that our friend Amy Poehler wrote, which sort of takes place and starts with this story about when she was younger about being followed home and attacked.
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and how she didn t really react, she didn t really do anything, and how that sort of informed who she became, and this need to be the biggest, funniest, loudest voice and persona in the room.
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But how that sort of became a detriment for her, including an experience she talks about in the essay where she saw something happening between two unhoused people by the side of the road in L.A.
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and she wanted to get involved and she wasn t sure if she should and...
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sort of second-guessing herself and saying, like, am I being that white lady?
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Am I doing the thing that is wrong?
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So she sort of explores that in the essay a little bit.
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And, you know, another thing I ll say about this is that intuition is a muscle.
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Just like we work out to get strong, right?
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To have good bone density.
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To do stuff like that.
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Intuition, contrary to what some people might believe, is not just a thing you tap into and have immediately.
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And you re like, look at that!
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I feel my gut.
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I know what my gut is telling me.
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I m good to go.
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It is something you have to work at understanding and work at creating a path to, to having a relationship with in your own self.
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And part of that work
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from the research that I did for this book is untangling this horrific knot of understanding what the difference is in women between intuitive intelligence and anxiety.
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And we have been taught to lean on anxiety as a preferred option of what to do with those feelings.
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So when you have Terrence calling the cops out of a place of racism in a situation like that,
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that is actually not necessarily coming from a place of intuition.
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That is probably somebody who is deeply untethered to their own intuitive voice, to what their gut is really telling them, which is actually probably not that.
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Ask yourself difficult questions that might be hard to hear the answer about.
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For instance, am I racist?
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Now, there s gonna be an immediate sensation, which is part of our flight or fight mechanism, that is going to demand that we are not, and is gonna make a thousand excuses and want to run away from this very quickly, because it is deeply uncomfortable, and there s no way I could because, you know, I have a Black friend.
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Whatever the excuse is.
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But if we sit with the discomfort for a moment, and we try to figure out what is the connection between
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what our body is trying to tell us and what our rational thought and our rational intelligence is also trying to tell us.
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And intuition is sort of the connection between both of those things.
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But so often, we are ignoring the physical self and what that can be telling us.
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And so when we re ignoring that, what comes into play, what takes over for us is our anxiety, is the fear.
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And intuition is not about fear.
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There should be other elements of this decision-making experience that are filled with enlightenment and joy and like a deep sense of fire and curiosity.
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Intuition is like a, you know, all cylinders firing at once.
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and you re getting a sense of something that feels bigger than you.
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Shout out to Perry.
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Could be God.
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And so, to my mind, this long answer is to just say, don t take it for granted, your intuitive intelligence.
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Go at it slowly.
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It s a muscle to be nurtured and to be aware of and to think of as something that is very important in your life.
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But it s not something to think that that s just immediately a place in which we react and behave from, because it isn t.
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Yeah, it s interesting.
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Just even the term of listening to your gut.
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I keep bringing up my wife, but she, I always say, it s such a part of me of my gut and listening to my gut.
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And, and she said recently that
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She hasn t really heard of it in those terms.
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And I talk about it always of like, oh, I could just in my gut or I just I have to listen to my gut.
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And that term is so tied to when I was a kid and I was always getting in trouble and I was sitting in the principal s office and I became very close to my principal, my vice principal, the disciplinarian.
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And instead of disciplining me, she would always talk to me and try and
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walk me through these decisions I was making.
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And the main thing she would talk about is listening to my gut.
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Listen to your gut.
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That is the answer.
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It s right there.
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Listen to your gut.
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And I was always, I truly felt like a kid in a movie being like, listen to my gut.
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What does that mean?
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Like I, I couldn t even grasp the concept.
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And now it is 1 million percent.
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what has driven me to do my TV show on Mississippi that made me say that I had cancer on stage, that made me take my shirt off on stage.
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Every risk and leap that I have made has been based solely on listening to my gut.
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And that is to just back up the idea of it s a muscle.
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And I feel like it is very strong for me now.
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It can be for anybody.
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It s a listening process.
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That is your principle, your person setting you up to say, like, here, let me see your arm.
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This right here, that s where the muscle is.
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She pointed it out for you and said, by even telling you that and allowing you to go, listen to my gut, hmm, what does that mean?
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That s a beginning process.
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We can t take that stuff for granted.
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That really, really matters.
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And that set you up towards a path to investigate it and find out what that means for you.
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It s fascinating and very important.
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Dina, thanks for the question.
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I hope that helps.
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Amber, this next one comes from a listener in Pennsylvania.
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Christy writes, my amazing daughter is 17 years old and has a diverse circle of friends.
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One of those friends identifies as a lesbian and her parents don t support her for religious reasons.
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Let s call her Rory.
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I love that she chose the name Rory.
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I love the name Rory.
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The problem is junior prom is coming up and Rory s parents won t let her go unless she wears a dress.
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She is uncomfortable in dresses.
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She was planning to stay home and miss prom, but my daughter and friends bought her a super cool pants outfit to wear.
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They asked if Rory could come to our house to get dressed for prom.
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My initial reaction is yes.
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However, I don t want to lie, quote unquote, to her parents.
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Any advice?
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When I was little, my mother definitely did the typical thing of, you know, it s this occasion, you have to wear a dress or, oh, here are these shoes.
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And there is a lot of pushback.
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And my mother
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who was also a very free-spirited, artistic, wild person, kind of came to her senses and was kind of like, what am I doing?
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I m the most rebellious person and I love you and I love you for who you are.
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And then my mother really started to embrace it and thought I looked so cool all the time, no matter what I was wearing or what my hair looked like.
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And it makes me sad to think that people
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aren t out there living and experiencing their lives in that way.
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I don t know if it s lying to her parents, but maybe she walks out the door in her dress or with her dress and then she puts on her cool pants outfit at your house
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And you re like the safe haven, the place where she can be herself, because it does get tricky.
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Obviously, you don t know all the ins and outs of what this child Rory might be dealing with in her home.
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What is your feeling, if you have any, about it, Amber?
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I don t really have much to add because that s probably what I would say.
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And I think our kids, especially right now,
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with the onslaught of everything from what s going on in the LGBTQ community, but to gun violence and everything else, need, as you said, some kind of safe havens that are adults who can help support kids.
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But I also agree with you that I don t know what Rory s home life is like, so... it could be complicated, but I do love the idea of having someone in your corner who is also an adult, but who s like, I see you, and I get you, and I know that this is who you are, or who you want to be.
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Yeah, I wish Rory the absolute best, and I think it s wonderful that whatever happens on prom night, that there is somebody in Rory s corner, and we re in Rory s corner.
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Rory, we are in your corner, big time.
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Yes, a million percent.
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Okay, Christy, best of luck to you and Rory.
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Amber, there s one last thing for you to do before we wrap up here.
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I call it name that thing.
1
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Name that thing.
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This is a segment where we help listeners come up with a good name for something of theirs.
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My guests and I have named many things, including vegan meatballs and a pickle tattoo.
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The only catch is whatever name we choose, the listener must use.
1
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Wow.
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This is very stressful, but I m, yes, it makes sense.
1
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I m in.
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Azalea K. writes, dear Tig and future guest, I m 13 and going to see my grandparents for the first time in two years.
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As a present, I m making them a book of my writing, and I don t know what to call it.
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I m including essays, speeches, poems, short stories, and a witch s spell.
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I know.
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Extremely excited.
1
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Go on.
1
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Continue.
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I had a feeling that was going to be a reaction.
1
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It s going to be bound and I m going to make a cover, but I m stuck on the title.
1
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Can you help me name that thing?
1
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Thanks.
1
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Are these her essays?
1
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This is her writing?
1
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Yeah, it s a book of my writing, she says.
1
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So she s making a hand-bound chapbook, is what it s called.
1
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I actually write about this in Substack, too.
1
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Highly recommend reading the one on chapbooks and how to make them.
1
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I am a deep, deep lover of chapbook making.
1
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Let s see here, 13 years old.
1
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Yeah, yeah.
1
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Azalea Kay.
1
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This feels like a much bigger responsibility than like a pickle tattoo.
1
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It is, but we ve named children.
1
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That s amazing.
1
Yeah.
1
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That s pretty amazing.
1
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If you re coming to me for this segment, you know you re in for it, you know?
1
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And I don t have an idea quite yet, but I m thinking that we have talked about ourselves when we were poets in our early teen years.
1
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Was there anything we talked about that we can bring back?
1
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I m just trying to do maybe some word and age association.
1
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I m even thinking of using some of the words from the one line of your poem.
1
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Mm-hmm.
1
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Sometimes I think of you, but then again, I always do.
1
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Can we just go back to that just for a second?
1
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I thought that was the greatest line in the world.
1
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I truly sat there like, wow, this is good.
1
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Or what about, do you have a line from something that you ve written that you re like, oh, this never quite fit anywhere, or a name?
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Well, I don t have a name.
2
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But the thing that I instantly thought of... Because Azalea Kay s got a thing.
2
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Azalea Kay s got a thing.
2
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And my daughter, who s six, talks a lot about her witch s mark, which is where she thinks from, which is on her forehead.
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And she can tell if I m not telling her something.
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This is sort of my version of offering intuition.
2
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for a six-year-old.
2
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And it is also the name of Eliza Clark, who created Why the Last Man, which is very much about women s intuition.
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It s the name of her production company.
2
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So I m wondering if we just want to keep the tradition and it could have something to do with like a witch s something.
2
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Because she s got a spell in there.
2
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This is so great.
2
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Azalea s...
2
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The mark of Azalea Kaye.
2
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I love it.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s great.
2
SPEAKER_03
Do you?
2
SPEAKER_02
I do.
2
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Is it the mark or the marks?
2
SPEAKER_02
The Marks.
2
SPEAKER_02
No, The Mark, I think.
2
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The Mark of Azalea Kay.
2
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That also sounds like a young adult series novel that I would totally read.
2
SPEAKER_02
It feels like a really good title.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s perfect.
2
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I was focusing on the word witch and thinking of, like, different orientations of that.
2
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I went around the other way.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and also, like, Mark, and it hits hard on the K, which references Azalea Kay.
2
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I think that s it.
2
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I don t think we could do better.
2
SPEAKER_03
The mark of Azalea Kaye.
2
SPEAKER_02
We did it.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
Oh my gosh.
2
SPEAKER_02
Unless we should have her just name the book, Michelle.
2
SPEAKER_03
Michelle.
2
SPEAKER_03
Oh.
2
SPEAKER_02
No, we re not doing that to a 13 year old.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I feel like this is the title of this book.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s so good.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
2
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Azalea Kay, your book is now titled The Mark of Azalea Kay.
2
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Congratulations.
2
SPEAKER_02
Excellent.
2
SPEAKER_02
I cannot wait to read it.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_03
Congratulations on becoming an author.
2
SPEAKER_03
Amber, thank you so much.
2
SPEAKER_03
This is truly such a pleasure to talk to you and to see your mug, even though it was only over Zoom.
2
SPEAKER_03
Is there anything that you d like to mention before you go?
2
SPEAKER_02
No, this was a wonderful conversation and I loved seeing your face again.
2
SPEAKER_03
Nothing to direct people to?
2
SPEAKER_03
I mean, we mentioned your writing and your appearances on shows, but anything coming up?
2
SPEAKER_03
Oh, just follow your gut, everyone.
2
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You ll find me.
2
SPEAKER_03
Love it.
2
SPEAKER_03
A.K.A.
2
SPEAKER_03
Google.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_03
I hope to see you again soon.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_03
Thanks, Tig.
2
SPEAKER_03
Bye.
2
SPEAKER_03
Bye.
2
SPEAKER_03
And now that the show is over, go to DontAskTig.org slash live to sign up for our special virtual event with Mark Marin on April 24th at 6 p.m.
2
SPEAKER_03
Pacific Time, 9 p.m.
2
SPEAKER_03
Eastern and 8 p.m.
2
SPEAKER_03
Central.
2
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For more information, head to DontAskTig.org slash live and donate $15 or more to attend.
2
SPEAKER_03
Again, Don t Ask Tig Live with Marc Maron is happening April 24th at 6 p.m.
2
SPEAKER_03
Pacific Time.
2
SPEAKER_03
Head to DontAskTig.org slash live.
2
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Looking forward to seeing you all there.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s so much I want you to see.
2
SPEAKER_01
I wish that I could give you the answers.
2
SPEAKER_01
I wish that I could make you believe.
2
SPEAKER_01
I wish that I could put you on your path and set you free.
2
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That s what you ll have.
2
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Don t Ask Tig is hosted by me, Tig Notaro.
2
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It s produced by Thomas Ouellette and Shana Deloria.
2
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Our executive producer and editor is Beth Perlman.
2
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Engineering and sound mixing by Alex Simpson.
2
SPEAKER_03
Digital production by James Napoli.
2
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Talent booking by Marianne Ways.
2
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Our theme music is
2
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Friend in Tig by Edie Burkell and Kyle Krushem, and Listen to Your Heart by Edie Burkell.
2
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Special thanks to Hunter Seidman.
2
SPEAKER_03
APM Studios executives in charge are Chandra Kavati, Alex Schaffert, and Joanne Griffith.
2
SPEAKER_03
Concept developed by Tracy Mumford.
2
SPEAKER_03
Our executive consultant is Dean Capello and Gobsmack Studios.
2
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You can always ask for advice at DontAskTig.org.
2
SPEAKER_03
Just write in with your problem or send us a voice memo.
2
SPEAKER_03
Remember to follow us on social media at Don t Ask Tig.
2
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Don t Ask Tig is a production of American Public Media.
2
SPEAKER_03
And as always, thanks, Dana, and I ll tell Becky.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m Christina Cauterucci, and this season on Slow Burn.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s called Proposition 6.
2
SPEAKER_00
The Briggs Initiative.
2
SPEAKER_00
John Briggs is going to fire every gay and lesbian schoolteacher in California.
2
SPEAKER_00
With so much at stake, young people became activists.
2
SPEAKER_00
We can t let this happen in California.
2
SPEAKER_00
And activists became leaders.
2
SPEAKER_01
My name is Harvey Milk and I m here to include you.
2
SPEAKER_00
Slow Burn, Season 9.
2
SPEAKER_00
Gays Against Briggs.
2
SPEAKER_00
Out now, wherever you listen.