Wild Ideas Worth Living

Finding Humor with Brendan Leonard

Episode Summary

Brendan Leonard—outdoor adventurer, writer and illustrator—is here to bring some joy and humor to our lives.

Episode Notes

During these weird times of the COVID-19 Pandemic, one thing that can make us all feel a bit better is laughter. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your mental health is to stop reading the news and instead read or watch something that makes you smile. To help us find something to laugh at, past guest, adventurer and illustrator Brendan Leonard joins the show to share where he’s finding inspiration for his comedic work and what he’s laughing about these days.

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Episode Transcription

Shelby Stanger:

The presenting sponsor of this season of Wild Ideas Worth Living is Subaru. One thing I just learned that I thought was very cool is Subaru is donating 50 Million Meals to help feed people in need during the COVID-19 crisis. They know this pandemic is devastating our country and has left hundreds of thousands out of work and unable to feed themselves or their families. Through the Subaru Love Promise, a commitment to support their communities, Subaru and their retailers across the country are making a donation to provide 50 Million Meals to Feeding America. This action, called Subaru Loves to Help, will make meals available at 199 local food banks across the country. In addition, Subaru retailers will be doing other things to help these local food banks, including food deliveries, donations and volunteer events. Subaru knows their ongoing support will be necessary as local communities work to get back on their feet. Subaru Loves to Help, just one part of the Subaru Love Promise, -- one more reason that makes Subaru more than a car company.

Brendan Leonard:

I guess I think, "What do I need? What do people need?" So then, you have to guess what they need and you assume that some people are going to need what you need right now, which is laughter or putting these situations into a light that makes sense or just says, "Hey, we're all going through the same thing together."

Shelby Stanger:

One thing I'm finding very helpful during these strange times with the COVID-19 pandemic, is humor. We all know I have the sense of humor of a teenager and TV shows and Instagram posts that make me laugh right now are so welcome. They provide relief from the news cycle and they just make me feel connected to other people. Plus, laughter is just downright good for you. I'm Shelby Stanger and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living. To help us all dip into our laughter muscles more during the strange time, I wanted to bring on a previous guest, who's sense of humor I've always appreciated. Brendan Leonard is an author and illustrator, whose work focuses on adventure, travel and the trials and triumphs of human experience, in general. He's biked across America, runs several ultra marathons, he's camped hundreds of times in countless locations, worked at REI and written a few books including a memoir called Sixty Meters to Anywhere, that I loved reading. Brendan has been on Wild Ideas twice. Once talking about his hundred mile run, he made into a movie and another time talking about cooking in the great outdoors. His Instagram account and website, Semi-Rad, features his own comedic art. It's full of images of charts and graphs about everyday human stuff like weather, food, the internet, stuff his dog likes. It's the kind of stuff we can all relate to. The little observations about day to day life, the funny and the everyday that just makes me laugh out loud. So today I wanted to talk to Brendan about where he's finding humor these days, how he's finding inspiration for new work and how you can tap into your own sense of humor.

Shelby Stanger:

Brendan, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living in quarantine.

Brendan Leonard:

Thank you. Thanks for having me, Shelby.

Shelby Stanger:

This is our new series of episodes we're doing while we're all not opting outside but opting inside. And I just want to say, your drawings have brought me a lot of joy during this time.

Brendan Leonard:

Oh, thanks.

Shelby Stanger:

So there's one and it says, "Culinary expectations." It's a line graph, so vertically on the Y axis we have fantastic, adequate or this is dreadful. Then, horizontally on the X axis, it's February 2020 then April in 2020. And, what is fantastic in February, the bar is very high and then in April, the bar is very low for what is fantastic. And, I just feel like that is very appropriate because my cooking is pretty atrocious, with especially what we have. It's rough and other people, I'm sure, understand.

Brendan Leonard:

Oh yeah. I mean, I didn't even... I was not going to put that graph out as a single thing. I was trying to draw a very long story about frozen pizza, throughout my life. And, that symbolizes how excited I am about frozen pizza during quarantine because one of my favorite pizza places closed and we're just not really doing takeout very much. And, I'm like, "You know what? Frozen pizza is pretty, it's pretty good, when you get down to it in this situation." So there's many more things in that post, it's on my website. But, that graph sort of summed up, basically, the whole point of the thing.

Shelby Stanger:

And it's just so fitting and even the comments are funny. Anna Brones, who's been on the show before and she's a chef, she's done a book with you. She said, "I made an omelet with beans today and was so thrilled." So I think that tells you where things are at. I mean, I think we're all making pretty gnarly... I made a taco with mashed sweet potato and beans last night and I was like... Johnny made it and I was like, "That looks like baby food."

Brendan Leonard:

It's very similar to going backpacking and how far you are from the trail head, what you will eat and get excited about. And, "Hey it's day four of this trip and we're having really, really bad food." But, it's okay because we're so far from..." It's literally impossible to go get tacos somewhere good. So we're going to deal with this.

Shelby Stanger:

So true. It does feel like every day we're just cooking for a backpacking trip.

Brendan Leonard:

Yeah.

Shelby Stanger:

So humor. I mean, all of your drawings are always funny but now I especially just think they're so relevant, right now. Why you think that humor and being lighthearted is so important right now?

Brendan Leonard:

What else do we have? Twitter and news? I mean, that's not helping me. I want more information on what's going on, as everybody does. But there's literally, every day for the past 15 days, I have not looked at the news and gone, "Oh, okay. That's very helpful." So...

Shelby Stanger:

I was going to agree with you. I was like, "But, how do you even know what to...?" Yeah, the news is very confusing right now. Not that helpful.

Brendan Leonard:

No. Some day, in the next few weeks, we're going to get some glimmers of hope and it's going to... They're not going to say, "Hey, things are back to normal in six days." But, we're going to around the corner of existential dread and start looking up again. But until, then I think we need things that will make us either laugh or be able to deal with this in a way that's not making us mentally unhealthy. So, that's... I noticed I was just doing a lot of escapist stuff, the first couple weeks of it. Just okay, I've literally watched 10 spy movies just because it's great to think about something else. And maybe, I can provide a little bit of that, I don't know, on a daily basis for people by just giving them a laugh for 30 seconds. In a sea of doom, it feels like, I guess.

Shelby Stanger:

I want to talk about where you get your inspiration from because a lot of times it's been from the outdoors and activities you love doing. But, I'm curious to see how that's shifted and how or where you get your inspiration now.

Brendan Leonard:

I don't know. I guess I think, "What do I need or what do people need?" So then, you have to guess what they need and you assume that some people are going to need what you need right now, which is laughter or putting these situations into a light that makes sense. Or just says, "Hey, we're all going through this same thing together", roughly. And, my stuff isn't universal for all audiences. My neighbors, if I showed them some of these graphs, they'd be like, "What is this about?" And then, "I don't get this at all, this is not what I'm going through." But, there's a handful of people on the internet that it does make sense to, so that's nice. But yeah, I don't know. I suppose, I'm really not that big on inspiration, I just take my dog for a walk and think about stuff and then if I can make it into a drawing or a blog post, I do that. Sometimes it reaches a lot of people and a lot of people like it and sometimes it doesn't and that's fine too. I tried. So basically, that's it, that's the inspiration. Inspiration is, I want to keep doing this for a living as opposed to trying to get a real job, I guess.

Shelby Stanger:

Yeah, that sounds like you get... You're still getting your inspiration outside, when you're taking your dog for a walk.

Brendan Leonard:

Yeah, we were literally just talking about this. About how things are just zoomed in. I'm happy to sit in the backyard for a while now or you're not going to the mountains to ski or anything like that. Okay, you're definitely not going to the trails you normally run, just outside of town here. And then, even there's a park about a mile from my house that I've run, at this point, literally thousands of miles around and you go run there after work and there's hundreds of people there. So it doesn't even feel like... I'm not going there anymore. So now I'm like... Now, I'm psyched just to go out in my neighborhoods somewhere and run randomly, a bunch of streets that hopefully there are no people on. And if they are, we both cross to opposite sides of the street. So yeah, I'm psyched. I'm standing around in these little pocket parks in Denver looking up at trees, watching squirrels and going, "Okay, this is good for now. I can do this." You know? So it shows you how sort of privileged you've been for a long, long time to be doing all these really cool things in the mountains or traveling to do things and how much you should have gratitude for what is really outside, which is just outside your door, I guess.

Shelby Stanger:

That's so true. I went running today and my normal route is... Normally, I can run at 9:00 in the morning because I don't have to go to an office and I run along the beach. You can't run on the beach anymore but you can still run on Pacific Coast Highway in San Diego. And then, there's a trail that sometimes I'll run and there's never anybody on it. Today there was 10 people on it and I was like, "Oh." But, they're getting to experience this beautiful trail, as well. And yeah, we just basically jump into the bushes on the other sides to avoid people. But, it's beautiful and it's spring and you do become appreciative of what you have and it's cool to see other people trying to social distance, getting outdoors. What advice do you have to other people who love the outdoors? Pretty much anybody listening to this podcast, who's dealing with this insane cabin fever and how can we find more humor to create these more lighthearted moments in our daily lives? Just to bring levity to the situation.

Brendan Leonard:

Oh boy, my Instagram feed is mostly New Yorker cartoonists and other cartoonists and my Instagram feed is just jokes, so that helps me on a daily basis. And, I found a few accounts on Twitter that helped too. But, I mean any of this stuff is escapist, if it's not directly talking about the pandemic. So, I don't know. My dog is a comedian, as well. I think.

Shelby Stanger:

What does your dog do that's so funny?

Brendan Leonard:

A friend, who I was telling about how we just got a new dog, this is on my writing course I taught last year. She said, "My dog makes me laugh at least once a day, every day." And, just the way they act in the world or act towards you or the way they look at you. Or, most recently he was like... He has a dog bed that he fits in perfectly, but my wife and I both took a series of photos of him laying completely out of the bed but still having part of his body in it, which just is kind of a funny, funny thing. The way he looks, especially from all these different angles. And, I put that on Twitter because I thought that was worth sharing. But yeah, I don't know. I'm sure cats are the same way. You think they should think like you do and they don't because they're not humans. So when they do things that are different, you think it's funny and they don't mind if you're laughing with them or at them or whatever. So that's a really long way of saying, I don't know, he's just funny.

Shelby Stanger:

No, it's good. I mean, you get humor from watching your... I think that people look at situations and they find them either funny or they don't. The other day my mom's computer crashed and obviously it wasn't my computer but I just found it hysterical because I was like, "You rely on your computer for work, it's not like you can go into the Apple store right now. It's not like somebody can come over and fix it." It's just like, what else can go wrong?

Brendan Leonard:

Yeah, exactly. And, my heritage is Irish and I think the Irish have a history of still joking and still laughing in the darkest of situations. Much darker than I'm going through right now. So if they can laugh at those things, I can certainly laugh at what's going on in my life right now. And beyond the pandemic, I have had a chronic non-COVID cough, since February 1st, which is due to some exhaustion, other things. And so, I haven't been able to run for, I took two months off of running, which was my main thing. And then, we found out our dog had a torn ACL and you start piling all these things up and if you sit there and let them drag you down, they will. But, if you just kind of go, "Well, okay, that's what we're dealing with now, this is our new reality." And I mean, you still got to keep telling jokes and goofing off or is it going to get real dark, I guess.

Shelby Stanger:

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Shelby Stanger:

So what are your favorite resources for getting a laugh these days? You've mentioned some people you follow on Twitter. Is there anything you've watched or accounts you want to mention that we should all check out?

Brendan Leonard:

Not necessarily laughter but the best thing I have seen during the whole pandemic is an Instagram live feed between DJ Premier and RZA from Woo Tang Clan just spinning classic hip hop records and going back and forth and talking about them. They're just in a split screen talking between their two living rooms or whatever. And, it was this amazing event that happened, was that last Saturday night? It's on YouTube now but you could watch the comments come in and it was literally every big name in the history of hip hop was commenting on how great it was. And, just watching these two guys who had so much joy for this music for so long, talk about it and play the music. The audio was not good quality but that was the best thing. Gosh, other than that I have curated my Instagram feed. Nathan W Pyles, Strange Planet, is an awesome Instagram account to follow. He has this shtick that's just basically, aliens. Well, humans that are... I guess they're aliens but they're doing all these things that humans do and they have this bizarre alternative language to explain all the things that we do. And, it makes you laugh, literally every day. And then yeah, if you just go through New Yorker cartoons, their feed and pick out a bunch of the cartoonists in there, because they tag them, you can fill up your feed with some really good stuff and you never... It eliminates all these things about Instagram that people hate where you're jealous of your friend's lives because they're on the beach or on another backpacking trip or whatever. You're just looking at people's jokes. It's like, "This is great." It's pure, it's just funny.

Shelby Stanger:

Yeah, I love that. You have a lot of followers and you only follow a few people and they're all comedians. That is awesome. So how do we cultivate funny? How do people become more funny if they're not? Any advice on how to cultivate humor?

Brendan Leonard:

Gosh, I don't know. It's just a lifelong... I wrote about this at one point on my website and I was talking about being at a... Went to a jazz jam session at a place near us in Denver and I was just watching these kids who were not kids, they're 25 or late twenties, just jam together and play songs. I was just looking at them like, "Wow, this person has this trumpet that is just literally an extension of their body, it's so natural for them to do this." And, I was just, not jealous, but just wished I had kept playing an instrument and done it to that level and was thinking about all these things like, "Oh traveling would be so cool because you don't even need to speak the language, you can just jam with people because you're just playing notes and blah blah blah." And I thought, "Well yeah, you could do that if you hadn't spent the majority of your life, since age five, trying to be funny." So you're kind of studying it and I feel like I am professionally now, quasi professionally, still just lobbing jokes up from the back of the class and hoping people will laugh and that I won't get detention. And, it's just a different format at this point. You put something out there and people either react to it or they don't. And it's a fairly... The internet is a fairly friendly place to try that because you don't usually, unless you're being mean in your humor or really snarky, you don't usually get feedback that is super negative. You just usually get ignored, which is fine. You're not as brave as a standup comedian or have to deal with that sort of thing, where they stand up in front of an audience of a few dozen or hundreds of people and toss jokes out there. And, if that joke doesn't land, they've got to deal with the silence and be like, "Ooh, okay." So the internet's pretty easy, I think. You're just kind of like, "Okay, I guess nobody liked that one today. Well, we'll try again in two days or tomorrow, whatever."

Shelby Stanger:

I mean, maybe you posted at the wrong time too. You just don't know. There's these algorithms, as well, that go into it. But, I think what you said, that really resonated with me is, your jokes aren't mean or snarky. And, I appreciate that because I think humor is so great, especially when it's used for good.

Brendan Leonard:

Yeah and well, I mean, I think there's enough negativity out there and I just don't want to deal with the feedback on that sort of thing. I don't want to deal with... I don't want to have to argue with people in the comments to make my point and there's so much negative stuff out there anyway, why not just put something out that's positive? And, my number one rule is that it's okay to make fun of us, it is not okay to make fun of them.

Shelby Stanger:

That's very Jimmy Fallon of you.

Brendan Leonard:

Well...

Shelby Stanger:

It's good, I love it. I've always respected that about him.

Brendan Leonard:

Yeah. I mean and what's the point? Oh yeah, does it make you feel good for a little bit? You realize the person on the other end probably has feelings too. And they're... I've dealt with some, I don't know, just minor internet stuff. It'd be 10 times worse if I were a woman. But, where I've been like, "Oh, this person's followers are super negative because they're super negative. Oh that's why and that's why they're interacting with me in this way." And, I try not to try not to do that. I'm not like a positive person by nature, I work at it and privately I'm not that positive either but I don't feel like there's any point in putting that stuff out there, to make the world a worse place in my opinion.

Shelby Stanger:

Well, thank you because you definitely make the world a better place.

Brendan Leonard:

Thanks.

Shelby Stanger:

And, I love looking at your drawings, they make me happy and they're funny and they're quirky and they make me think sometimes. So you were funny even as a kid? You were the class clown that sometimes got detention?

Brendan Leonard:

Oh, I think that's debatable, if you're funny or not. But yeah, I got detention a lot and I was not a great kid, I would say. I did not get National Honor Society for a number of reasons, inside and outside of school. But yeah, I was getting detention, kicked out of class and stuff like that and still maybe just... I don't know, being funny just seemed like a cool thing to do. I'd seen... My family gets together, I didn't realize until I was much older, my mom's side of the family and my dad's side of the family too, they just get together and joke with each other. And, I didn't realize that wasn't what all families did until I was probably in my late twenties. I was like, "Oh yeah, they are just goofballs. This is the way to do things." As opposed to, what else were we going to do, sit around and talk about serious stuff? That's no fun.

Shelby Stanger:

That's awesome that your family is like that. So when I was a little kid, I had this problem where if someone laughed and we weren't supposed to laugh, it made me laugh harder and I got kicked out of class all the time.

Brendan Leonard:

Oh yeah, totally. Totally, this is my entire fifth grade. Yeah.

Shelby Stanger:

I'm really curious about this study of humor lately and I'm curious where you think that truth plays into comedy?

Brendan Leonard:

Truth. Oh boy, this is deep. I don't know. It's all just an exercise of being clever about the truth, right? This is a thing I'm saying, you know you think this too. Isn't it funny that we think this? Let's all laugh about it together, something like that.

Shelby Stanger:

Yeah, that's really true.

Brendan Leonard:

I don't know. I think most of the stuff I draw is basically a dad joke. If I were to just say across the room, "Hey, isn't it funny that blank?" And, it'd be like... It's not that funny. But, when you draw it and make it into this, what has usually been a serious format of charts and graphs from Microsoft Excel or whatever. And then, on top of that it's hand drawn, so it's kind of crappy.

Brendan Leonard:

I could put straight lines in my stuff, the program actually will do that but I don't because I think it gives it a little bit of a... It makes it less professional, which makes it less serious and you're like, "Oh yeah, this is not a real graph. So yeah, I don't know. I think... And, humor is totally in the eye of the beholder anyway. Some people think things are funny, some people don't think things are funny.

Shelby Stanger:

I love it. Is there a drawing that you're working on right now that you're excited about, that you can share with us?

Brendan Leonard:

Yeah. This lady emailed me a couple of weeks ago and said, "Hey, I know you're..." So I've been sober since 2000, I'm forgetting the year 2002. And, I've written about that in a book and there's a little bit of that in my Instagram. But, this lady emailed me and said, "Hey, I don't know if you have any drawings or prints that you sell in your shop that have anything to do with addiction and recovery. And, I didn't see any on your site. I was just wondering if you had something." And, I kind of dug through all my stuff. I was like, "Yeah, I don't really do that directly because of..." I don't feel like maybe it's probably not that higher percentage of my audience that would think that sort of thing was, it wouldn't be relevant to them. But, I sat down and drew her something because she wanted to give her husband a gift for his seventh sobriety. He'd been sober for seven years on April 23rd, I believe.

Shelby Stanger:

That's awesome.

Brendan Leonard:

Yeah. I was like, "Well, I can think of something." I drew this pretty large print that I then just put it on my website for her to buy, so she could have a gift for her husband. And, I was doing it, I was thinking, "This might actually work for other people too." So that'll be online April 23rd but it is just, it deals with the idea of doing things one day at a time. So hopefully it's a little more universal than just for that one guy.

Shelby Stanger:

I love it. My mom works in addiction and recovery.

Brendan Leonard:

Maybe I can send her one for her office.

Shelby Stanger:

She would love it. She will put it in her newsletters and all of that. That is so exciting Brendan, I love that.

Brendan Leonard:

The thing I thought of is, it's not going to work very well on Instagram because of how small the print is on one of the sections of it. And, I think that's good. I just want people to either... I want people to have it on their wall, not so much for it to float around the internet. So it had to be that way in order to stack up all the days in this last panel. So we'll see. We'll see if it goes anywhere. But, it was cool to just be able to... Normally people are just shooting me things like, "Hey, you should make a thing like this about this topic." And, I'm kind of like, "Well, I don't really want to take your idea because what if I want to make a t-shirt out of it. And then, I started selling a bunch of t-shirts with your idea." And also, a lot of people's ideas don't work. But, it was nice for her to just open endedly say, "Do you have anything that deals with this topic? If you do, I love to buy it." And, I was able to make it for her and it's... Got, I hope her husband likes it or I feel like a real jerk. But yeah, I hope it works for him and I hope it works for other people too.

Shelby Stanger:

I'm sure it's going to be awesome and well received. And, I know my mom will like it, for sure, and I will too. Is there anything that you're excited, that you've worked on or that you're working on, just about what we're going through right now with COVID?

Brendan Leonard:

Normally, I don't try to do topical things because I feel like they're only going to be good for the week or the month that people are thinking about those things because of the news cycle and the way our brains work nowadays. I try to make things that I think will be true in five years. But, recently I've just been doing so much more of things that are just going to work for this week because I feel like it's an urgent, emotional need for people, I guess. So I'm looking forward to that being over. But yeah, I'm always like, this week my blog will be about, it's nine adventure book titles that can be used to describe yourself quarantined." So there's all these epic adventure books and I hand trace all these book covers and then crossed out some of the subtitles and wrote my own subtitles, that are relevant to today using the title.

Shelby Stanger:

Can you give me an example?

Brendan Leonard:

Yeah, there's... Let me see here. So you might know this book, Daniel Duane, Caught Inside.

Shelby Stanger:

Yeah, of course. Caught Inside.

Brendan Leonard:

Yep.

Shelby Stanger:

He's a surfing writer and I actually interviewed him. He is married to the writer Elizabeth Weil.

Brendan Leonard:

One of the coolest things she's ever, this is totally off topic, but I think she wrote it. And then, they let her daughter edit it. Oh my God, what is this about? I forget. It was this great story. Either he wrote it and she went through and edited it and they added footnotes. It'd be like, "Mom, that's not true." It was hilarious.

Shelby Stanger:

Oh, it was about raising her kid in New York Times.

Brendan Leonard:

Yeah.

Shelby Stanger:

Yeah.

Brendan Leonard:

Okay.

Shelby Stanger:

It was so good. Okay, so one of them is Caught Inside with Daniel Duane, that's hilarious. And, you should send it to them and if you need their email, I will hook you up.

Brendan Leonard:

Well, so the original book is called Caught Inside: A Surfer's Year on the California Coast. So I just traced the cover and then crossed out A Surfer's Year on the California Coast so now it says Caught Inside: I mean, I love my kids but holy shit. And, they're all sort of like that but there's a lot of mountaineering disasters, Ascent into Hell, conquistadors of the useless, things like that. All these books were written by men too, they all have one word titles that are like Epic. And, women's adventure books tend to be a lot... They don't tend to go with that exact formula, so they're harder to... They would not fit into this. So I was like, "God, there should be some women's adventure books." I'm like, "Yeah, they just approach it so much differently and probably way smarter."

Shelby Stanger:

Well, Brendan, it's been such a pleasure to talk to you and I just so appreciate all of the humor and light you've added to the world in your funniness, in your creative graphs, in your drawings, they're great.

Shelby Stanger:

If you need a laugh these days, try one of these tips. Follow Brendan's Instagram account, Semi-Rad. You can also follow the Instagram accounts Brendan mentioned, Strange Planet and New Yorker cartoons. You can find links for both of those in the show description wherever you're listening. You can also find some funny books to read or TV shows to watch, while you're staying at home. I really enjoyed listening to Dave Chappelle, Sex Education and Fortunate Feimster. I find her really funny, all of these are not PG-13 but I enjoyed them a lot. Try to notice the small, absurd things about day to day life right now, like how Brendan laughs at his dog and maybe you can make yourself chuckle. If you found something that made you laugh, send it to a friend or family member. Chances are, they could use a little bit of that medicine too.

Shelby Stanger:

Thanks so much to Brendan Leonard for coming back and sharing some of your sources of laughter and of joy. I really can't wait to see the projects you're working on. I'm so glad you're continuing to lift people's spirits during this time. You can see more of Brennan's work on his website, Semi-Rad.com or his Instagram account, which is @semi_rad. Special shout out to everyone helping in the COVID-19 pandemic. Those on the front lines, those making sure all of us stay stocked up on food, the teachers taking on virtual teaching, to all the parents taking on homeschooling and all you kids who just want to go outside and play with your friends but you're stuck inside. I feel you on that one. Hopefully, we'll all be outside playing a little while. Thank you to everyone who's doing your part to stay home and stay safe. We're all in this together. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, written and edited by Annie Fassler and produced by Chelsea Davis. Our executive producers are Palo Mottola and Joe Crosby and our presenting sponsor is Subaru. As always, we appreciate when you subscribe, rate and review this show wherever you listen. I've really enjoyed the reviews lately. They've been personal, they've been touching and I've really enjoyed them, so keep them coming. And remember right now, the best way to live wildly is by staying safe. Sending giant, big, humongous hugs to you all. See you soon.