Ep.1723: What She Wants 1724: The Distractions

Kathryn interviews Author Kim Dower.Following the commercial and literary success of her bestselling poetry collection, I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom: Poems on Motherhood, Kim Dower delivers What She Wants: Poems on Obsession, Desire, Despair, Euphoria—turning her keen eye, vibrant imagination, trademark insight, and humor to the intensity of obsessive love. These steamy and provocative poems, combining humor and heartache, run through the four phases of Limerence, the state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person: Infatuation, Crystallization, Deterioration, and Ecstatic Release. Her work has been described as "sensual and evocative" by the Los Angeles Times. She teaches poetry workshops at UCLA and Antioch University and was previously named City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood.Kathryn also interviews Author Liza Monroy.Mischa Osborn spends her days as a ProWatcher—keeping distracted people on task and lonely ones accompanied—from her Brooklyn Mega Building, while eating Petri Meat Steax and working out with her favorite personal trainer, a straight-talking algorithm named Tory. Her carefully constructed, isolated existence is suddenly upended by a chance realspace encounter with a Highlight Reel celebrity. She takes to relentlessly watching Nic on Reel. As her Reel Watching spirals into an all-consuming obsession, and even realspace stalking, she takes increasingly desperate measures to be seen and valued, sucking others into her vortex of obsession until she completely loses control. Liza Monroy's work has appeared in The NY Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, "O" Magazine, Marie Claire, , Newsweek, Jane,  Psychology Today, and many other publications.