Bri Books

This episode of Bri Books lifts back the curtain on how I PRODUCE/MAKE THIS PODCAST. The tools I use, how I organize show content, and all of my behind-the-scenes production processes.

Dedication: This episode is dedicated to Larry Long, father of former guest Lura. Larry uses oral history, music and art to strengthen communities and foster reconciliation--and he had questions about how to start a podcast! Who am I to stand in the way of intergenerational storytelling?!

 If you’re interested in going in-depth on how I create this podcast, I'm sharing all of my tips, secrets and resources! All in the Bri Books Podcast Newsletter.

• 2:15 - Define ‘batching” - Grouping similar tasks in order to decrease likelihood of procrastination and stress.
• 2:30 - Creating “Bri Books” requires I utilize six different batching processes. Each element must be completed and delivered in order to produce a finished product (pod). Remember, every batching process is DIFFERENT! Customize it to fit YOU!
• 3:10 - Batching #1: Reading Day
• 4:10 - Batching #2: Recording Day + Myleik Teele’s podcast wisdom on requesting time on someone’s calendar (part one, part two)
• 5:10 - Batching #3: Editing Day(s)
• • Edits A: Chop and clean audio
  • Edits B: Deep edit (identify transitions, log tape, storyboard episode)
  • Edits C: Final edits and killing my darlings  
• 5:30 - I’ll share my fave editing resources resources in the Bri Books Newsletter--join at bribookspod.com/newsletter.
• 7:30 - Batching #4: Editorial Day for writing (research, book notes, building social posts, building blog posts, building show notes)
• 8:12 - Batching #5: Launch Day (episode goes live, blog goes live, first social push, listen to the response--give the episode a moment to ‘breathe’)
• 8:40 - Batching  #6 - Analysis and Experimentation Day (devote time to ideation and monitoring content performance)
• 9:40 - A great resource to get productivity on 100% and self-judgement on 0%, check out Side Hustle Pro podcast and community (“How to start your own podcast with zero experience,” “How to push past overwhelm and get things done.”
• 10:05 -The tools used to create this podcast (more in newsletter, grab @ bribookspod.com/newsletter)
• 10:40 - Editing: Adobe Audition (via Creative Cloud, access to Photoshop and InDesign). Garageband and Audacity are also editing/ recording software options.
• 11:10 - Hosting service: Libsyn. Check out the Libsyn "The Feed" Podcast, all about podcasting!
• 11:54 - Web and social: Squarespace domain. I create most of my social assets via canva.com, and WordSwag. Tweetdeck for Twitter, Facebook for native posting, Later app for Instagram posting and curation.
• 12:50 - Microphone: Yeti from Blue Microphones
• Resources: Side Hustle Pro podcast and community; Transom.org

15:15 - How do you go about batching with your processes? Tell me at @bribookspod, always send a note to [email protected], and if you want a full digest infographic. bribookspod.com/newsletter.

• @BriBooksPod - Instagram
• @BriBooksPod - Twitter
• What are you reading?! Show and tell using #bribooks

Today’s episode is a continuation of our conversation about Sarah Knight's “Get Your Shit Together,” and features guests Amanda Yepez and Lura Long, two fans of the book In this episode, it gets real. Here’s how we’re pulling it together…and what it looks like when our “shit” is in shambles.

 If you’re interested in my post-college story, I want to let you know I’m sharing all of my tips on the post-college job search, nailing informational interviews, and more on the Bri Books Podcast Newsletter.

• 1:34 – Meet Lura and Amanda, what they do for work, and what they love
• 2:50 - Where were Amanda and Lura in life when they each read “Get Your Shit Together?”  
• 5:00 – The Chipmunk Theory: How “Alvin and the Chipmunks” is a perfect analogy for our “Get Your Shit Together” styles (Spoiler: I’m Alvin, Lura’s Alvin/Theodore hybrid, and Amanda is Simon)
• 6:00 – Simon, Alvin, and Theodore.
• 11:05 – Amanda on the struggle of getting one’s own shit together in the workplace. Tl; dr: “Worry about yourself. Mind your business.”
• 13:59: How a VERY direct question from her therapist helped Amanda notice that her shit wasn’t together
• 14:32 – Lura on the cost of committing—when you decide you’re going to do something, you must also make decisions NOT to do something else.
• 14:43 – Lura’s journey to figure out what she must do to keep herself healthy in the midst of never-ending “to-do” lists
• 15:27 – Lura on the financial costs of prioritization
• 17:15 – GAME: ‘Get Your Sip Together
• 17:33 - #1: Take a sip if you’ve decided to invest instead of spend in the last month
• 17:40 – A shout out to 401(k)’s
• 18:30 - #2: Take a sip if you’ve controlled an impulse
• 20:10 – #3: Take a sip if you’ve decided to be selfish with me-time.
• 20:35 – Lura’s all about her alone time. What’s done in this magical hour?
• 21:30 – Amanda on how “me-time” can lead to splurging…gel manicures, anyone?
• 24:45 – Thank you to @bricandles for partnering on this episode of Bri Books podcast!
• @BriBooksPod - Instagram
• @BriBooksPod - Twitter
• What are you reading?! Show and tell using #bribooks

Hello and welcome to Bri Books! In today’s episode, we’re talking about “Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence” by Daniel Goleman. Meet Paulana Lamonier, a multimedia journalist who loves to tell compelling stories.

• 2:05 - How I discovered “Focus” in a bookshop in Taipei (here’s an epi I recorded about travels to Asia.)

• 2:45 - When I finished the book on the flight, I didn’t feel bad about myself. I didn’t feel like, “I suck at focusing and this book confirmed it.” It was more, here are tools and different ways to think of focus. Don’t think of it as a single moment—it’s a muscle. It takes practice. You have to build up the muscle of focusing.”
• 3:37 - Paulana’s main takeaways from “Focus”: The importance of self-awareness
• 4:04 - How P. Diddy and Beyonce epitomize focus as a driver of excellence. “Their success isn’t built on breaking anyone down, but on edifying, improving, getting better, and focusing.”
• 4:30 - What Paulana has learned about focus from studying culture makers and how Beyonce and Diddy have mastered marrying self-awareness and focus...and how we can, too.
• 5:55 - “When you break down focus, it’s determination. Hard work. Discipline. Like you mentioned earlier, focus is a muscle. Yes, you’ll keep exercising and doing it. When you’re sore or tired of doing something, the muscle is expanding and getting bigger. Soreness is weakness leaving the body. So, when you’re feeling like you’re focusing on something, there’s gonna be times when you’ll be tired, but you have to push through that.”
• 6:40 – Daniel Goleman on focus and practice: “When practice occurs while we are focusing elsewhere the brain doesn’t rewire the necessary circuitry for that routine. Those who browse online while working out will never reach the top ranks. Paying full attention seems to boost the mind’s processing speed, strengthens synaptic connections, and expands/ creates neural networks for what we are practicing.”
• 7:39 – Goleman says, “You don’t get benefits from mechanical repetition, but by adjusting execution over and over, tweaking the system by pushing and allowing for errors at first as you increase the limit.”
• 8:26 – Let’s discuss #ComplexPleaseHirePaulana. “Complex” isn’t just a magazine. It’s a media company that focuses on culture—news, pop culture, entertainment, tech. They’re all about the culture. They were looking for anchors.
• 9:45 - Paulana lets us inside the thought process that led her to create #ComplexPleaseHirePaulana--and what came next.
• 10:15 - I’d seen that “Complex” had retweeted a man who wanted to be an intern for Chance the Rapper. His name is Hopsey. He created a website called Chancehirehopsey.com.
• 11:00 -  I added a few gifs in there (I wanted website to show my creativity and abilities and what I can bring to the table) to show I’m multifaceted and can entertain people.
• 11:15 - I bought the domain—didn’t have much money left, I had $20 to my name —I went to work, and within a week’s time I got the website done. I put a link to tweet for friends to send out.
• 11:35 - Long story short I ended up not getting the job, I felt like it was to prove to myself that, whatever you do just go 100%. It got me in the doors and it got me the audition, but it is what it is. I know that what’s for me is for me.
• 11:50 – I love what you just said! It went beyond focus as an idea/ mental state, and into focus helping you create something tangible. I think everything you’re talking about is the hard work element. That focus is a DRIVER of excellence—it’s not the be-all-end-all, but it’s the fuel you have to put into your brain and body. You put in that fuel. You focused on a goal, went all out, and finished strong. You did everything that YOU could. But you produced something out of your focus.
• 12:45 – You put yourself out there, and you put your focus out there.
• 12:40 – Paulana, the last thing I want to talk to you about tonight is hard work. For two whom college and the college years are fairly close in the rearview—we were talking before that we were in school for 18 out of 22 years, there’s a reward system of hard work wired in our brains that says, “Do the hard work, get a good job, move onto the next level.” And once you enter the professional world…
• 13:15 – Let’s talk about how we learned to work hard, even if hard work doesn’t get us gold stars.
• 13:25 – With hard work, you’ve got to accept disappointments but not dwell in it. Say, I’m gonna deal with it, but make sure you move past it. As women, we dwell in rejection and beat ourselves up. That’s what happened to me with the Compel thing—I went so hard and did it publicly! I went all out, and the fact that they told me no was like a door that shut in my face publically.
• 14:14 – But this is where the discipline comes into play. Plan A didn’t work out, what for plan B, plan C, so the train is still going on and the dream is still happening.
• 14:30 – And another thing with the site, I wanted to people that even if complex didn’t hire me, I’m gonna get a job before the end of the year. God didn’t give me this idea and I didn’t create this website for me to stay broke. Someone’s got to acknowledge that. They may not do it this month, but it’s gonna happen.
• 15:00 – You’ve gotta be so good. That’s what determines who you are—after you get rejected. That shows who you are as an individual—how do you cope with rejection and loss? Are you going to let that situation change who you are as an individual? Are you going to develop it? What do you do? How will this work out, and this is what I’m gonna do to move forward.
• 15:39 – Paulana thanks for joining me in my studio/ bedroom on this Friday night! You could be anywhere, but you’ve spent the last hour with me.

Paulana’s #bribooks: “Living Well, Spending Less: 12 Secrets of the Good Life” by Ruth Soukup

Paulana on Twitter - @itspaulana

Paulana on Instagram - @itspaulana

ComplexPleaseHirePaulana.com

If you’re interested in my post-college story, I want to let you know I’m sharing all of my tips on the post-college job search, nailing informational interviews, and more on the Bri Books Podcast Newsletter.

@BriBooksPod - Instagram

@BriBooksPod - Twitter

What are you reading?! Show and tell using #bribooks

If you’re interested in my post-college story, I want to let you know I’m sharing all of my tips on the post-college job search, nailing informational interviews, and more on the Bri Books Podcast Newsletter.

@BriBooksPod - Instagram

@BriBooksPod - Twitter

What are you reading?! Show and tell using #bribooks

• 0:00-0:15 - Hello and welcome to BrI Books podcast. Today’s episode is all about “Get Your Sh*t Together: How To Stop Worrying About What You Should Do So You Can Finish What You Need to Do and Start Doing What You Want to Do” by Sarah Knight.
• 00:22 - I’m so happy to be back in front of the mic. It’s October 1. Hello,  Q4! It feels like just yesterday we were brushing off the cold and snow in January. Andhere we are staring autumn in the face.
• 00:45 - I’m thrilled to be in front of my mic today. I had a plan for an upcoming episode, but I figured we’d do a #unplugged session instead. I recently completed the book, and I’m positive Knight has slipped into our home and read our imessages, because this book is strumming my pain with its...pages.
• 1:30 - I first encountered “Get Your Sh*t Together” in early 2017. The book existed on the periphery of my reading list for most of the year. I’d heard about Knight’s bestseller, “The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving A F*ck.
• 2:20 - Finishing “Get Your Shit Together” left me motivated but also feeling internally empowered. I realized I have all the tools necessary to use the time, skills and energy I have in the most effective and vibrant way possible.
• 2:45 - Here’s the plan for this episode. First, we’re going to talk about what “getting your sh*t together” actually means. I find myself muttering it to myself under my breath when I’m shuffling through papers or search an email inbox. I think, “Gosh Brionna, pull it together. Wrangle your life up, because it’s out of control.”
• 3:10 - Reading this book helped me realize my “sh*t” didn't come undone in one day, so I can't expect to put it all back together in one day. Being an “adult” means strategizing, focusing on and committing to your goals. There’s a lot of mental clutter surrounding who we think we are, and the goals we ~think~ we should be setting.
• 4:00 - Sarah breaks down in “Get Your Sh*t Together” why it’s so important to STRATEGIZE, FOCUS, and COMMIT to goals tailor-made for YOU.
• 4:10 - Next, I’ll talk about my own struggles with getting my “sh*t” together, and how I’m applying new techniques from the book.
• 4:38 - First there’s strategizing: setting a goal and making a plan to achieve it in a series of chunks.
• 4:58 - This is where things get important. If you’re like me, you have a goal. Say the goal is to “Update my Linkedin”--a vague yet important task.  Instead, we getting paralyzed by procrastination and anxiety because of all the things swirling in your head (headshots, resume, connect with everyone, send out emails, etc.) See how it’s easy to psych yourself out? That’s why it’s so important to break goals into series of CHUNKS. Pick a chunk, and then focus.
• 5:55 - Focus is simply intentionally setting aside time to complete a chunk or task. This is an aspect of the professional world I’ve found myself struggling with--budgeting and allocating time realistically. I Tend to under budget those sorts of things can be fixed by understanding the series of chunks that go into task, and setting aside time to complete each chunk. If you’re like me, when you don't ocs you judge yourself and procrastinate and wonder why you ever set goal. Now time for third step. Commit.
• 7:00 - Reading “Get Your Shit Together” brought me back to a conversation hosted by Vinterlude. Vinterlude is a collection of women who host bespoke events for black women and black vendors as a method of modern political activism. I was invited by Depth and Candor host Hiwote Getaneh.
• 7:50 - At the end of the day, the main tenet is that practice is just practice. The point isn't mastery at the end of the session. It’s to strategize, focus, and commit on movement and improvement.
• 8:15 - I’ve shared my struggles with you, now i'm gonna tell you how i’m trying to get my shit together to finish the year strong. Let me know what you’re up to and how you’re doing the same. Use #brit books @bribookspod. Subscribe to Bri Books Podcast Newsletter.
• 8:52 - Brionna’s Q4 2017 theme:“Streamline, Strengthen, Fundamentals and Foundation.”
• 9:20 - “Strea: the theme is the streamline and strengthen fundamentals of my foundation.
• • Professionally, that means reading industry based books and finishing an online course
  • Personally, it means creating a sustainable volunteer schedule
  • As for the Bri Books community, my Q4 goal means staying disciplined and building processes into the Bri Books podcast foundation.
• 10:10 - The third stage is to COMMIT to set goals. I’ll be first to admit I struggle with discipline and telling myself, “no.” I’m Queen of #TreatYoSelf. But as part of streamlining and strengthening fundamentals and foundation, I’m learning that it’s not about how I feel. My procrastination may be a sign of discomfort, and discomfort comes with growth. So, instead of trying to return to a state of comfort (“Game of Thrones” marathon re-watches, anyone?!!) and when I find myself procrastinating, I say i'm not afraid of hard work. Also there’s no such thing as too hard, it’s just degrees of difficulty along an achievable continuum of goals.”
• 11:23 - Thank you for listening to this episode it was so fun doing this unplugged top of the dome style episode. Tell me what you're reading. If you’ve already read gyst, tag me using #bribooks. Of course we're at bribookspod on instagram, twitter, facebook. Bribookspod.com is where this stuff lives. I really am so grateful everyone here is listening. Have an amazing start to October 2017. Let’s get it!

Today’s episode took me to Harlem, NY to meet with and interview Tiffany Dufu, author of “Drop The Ball: Achieving More By Doing Less.” Tiffany is also Chief Leadership Officer @ Levo, a platform and community that helps millennials navigate and design careers they love. Enough about her resume! Here’s what’s going to be on her tombstone: “She got to as many women as she could.”

I discovered “Drop The Ball” via the Call Your Girlfriend podcast!  Ann Friedman interviewed Dufu in early 2017, and just like that, “Drop The Ball” was added to my summer 2017 reading list.

To an untrained eye, “Drop The Ball” on its face could be mistaken as a “Millennial How-To Live” book. And yes, I’ll be the first to admit that Tiffany’s life could be mistaken for looking like a fairytale--family and career in check, with a seemingly on-fire interior life. But as she says in the first pages of the book, “fairytales don’t cover logistics.”

In this episode, Tiffany and I talk through a couple of exercises on how to #DropTheBall in our own lives. Check out Levo League at levo.com, and follow Tiffany’s work online and on Twitter.

• 4:30 - Tiffany on her life mission: “My life’s work is advancing women and girls. That’s why I’m on the planet.”
• 4:45 - Inside Tiffany’s portfolio career--from serving as Chief Leadership Officer at Levo to serving on nonprofit boards, and learning to #DropTheBall in her own life--and not judge herself for it!
• 7:35 - Why it was so important for Tiffany that she let go of the insidious feeling of guilt associated with not being *good enough* to *all people* at *all times.*
• 7:55 - “It starts at looking at the roles we enter when we first come into our lives and experiences. Most of us, when we’re born our first role is ‘son,’ ‘daughter,’ ‘sibling.’ We become friends, students, citizens. Sometimes we become wife, mother, or father.”
• 8:25 - “For most of us, if we’re ambitious, it’s not enough to be just mother or daughter or sister--we want “good!” in front of those roles. Not just a daughter, a “good” daughter not just a friend, a “good” friend. All of those roles has an invisible job description.”
• 10:35 - On how the first step of “Drop The Ball” is tuning into the feeling of, “I’m not quite doing it all, I feel all this pressure,” and understanding that all of the expectations come from somewhere else, and they don’t begin with us.
• 10:50 - The first question Tiffany asks before helping someone #DropTheBall is, “In relationship to your role, what does a good [insert role] do?” From there, “How do you know that’s what a good [insert role] does?” You begin to notice, the answer is never us. It’s never, “I made that up,” you start with the people you aspired to be like when you grow up.
• 12:10: “The exploration of ‘why do I feel this way,’ and ‘where is this pressure coming from,’ is an important A-ha! Moment we all have to create for ourselves. It’s a humbling experience to recognize and reconcile the fact that what we feel and think are our choices, are pretty much default positions. And even though we feel we’re in the driver's seat of our lives, we’re actually living someone else’s story. But until we curate that story and create  a new job description for what it means to be a good X, we haven't done the work and will continue to be in the spiral of trying to meet other people’s expectations that aren’t our own.”
• 13:06 - Tiffany mentions in the book it’s important to  decide what matters to you--which ball to drop. What matters to you, and where can you not judge yourself too harshly? Is there are an area in which Tiffany thinks women and girls judge themselves too harshly?
• 14:00 - “We all have values that are for the mostpart noble. The problem is we attach behaviors to those values, that don’t have to be attached to them.
• 14:18 - Tiffany expresses how a chance meeting with her daughter’s piano teacher could’ve sent her into a spiral of guilt and self doubt...but instead, she stood behind knowing her value as her daughter’s mother.
• 16:40 - Tiffany’s “highest and best use: a combination of, what do I do well with very little effort?”
• 17:34 - How Tiffany evolves her idea of parenting, based on her highest and best use: “My highest and best use in raising conscious global citizens is engaging my kids in meaningful conversations each and every day.”
• 19:00 - “In reading the book, I came up with the mantra,“my humanity is not optional or a luxury.”
• 19:43 - Tiffany’s advice to recent grads on how to establish themselves as a priority
• 20:00 - “I’d encourage them to go to WITHIN! I think that before you can convince yourself to develop the discipline to go to events and the gym, it’s about learning to listen to yourself and your voice. The challenge is that there’s a voice in your head. It’s the voice of doubt that says, “We’re not enough,” “That’s so stupid.”
• 20:55 - How Tiffany’s learning to quiet the doubt in her head--named Cynthia.
• 21:40 - “The first step is getting intune with your own voice separate and part from the voice of doubt. That’s the voice that will guide you to the other go-to’s.”
• 22:45 - Tiffany’s #Bribooks:
• • “Insight,” by Tasha Eurich - “If I’d had this book as I was going through my #DropTheBall journey, I would've cut it down by 12 months.”
  • “The Power of Onlyness,” by Neila Merchant. “I’m always struck by books I complete and take action on as a result of reading it.”
  • “The Big Life,” by Ann Shoket. “I recommend it to my millennial colleagues!”

Many thanks to @podcastsincolor for being love!

If you’re interested in my post-college story, I want to let you know I’m sharing all of my tips on the post-college job search, nailing informational interviews, and more on the Bri Books Podcast Newsletter.

@BriBooksPod - Instagram

@BriBooksPod - Twitter

What are you reading?! Show and tell using #bribooks

Today’s episode is an interview with the women behind “The Swirl Suite,” a squad of women of color in the wine and spirit professionals from DC to Paris. We met via #PodcastLinkUp Twitter chat, traded wine book recommendations, and the rest is Internet history!

The book: “The Wine Savant: A Guide to the New Wine Culture” by Michael Steinberger. I picked the book up a couple of years ago while still working my first ~job~ post-college, at NBC News. The book focuses on the basics of wine through the lense of French wine culture (“viticulture”). A vacation to the Amalfi Coast changed everything for me when it came to tasting wine, and I read Steinberger’s work in between sips.

The voices you’ll hear are:

• Sarita, Vine Me Up - Instagram, Twitter
• Melissa, The Liquor Lady - Instagram, Twitter
• Tanisha, Girl Meets Glass - Instagram, Twitter
• Leslie, Vino 301 Wine Concierge - Instagram, website

SHOW NOTES

• Summerhill Bar in Brooklyn’s “bullet hole wall” “decor” x gentrification and artisanal drinking
• The Swirl Suite talk about their first jobs in the wine and liquor industry, and the moment they knew they had a future here.
• How did they find out their dream jobs even *existed*??
• They walk us through the different roles in the liquor industry--from the soil to the shelf.
• Misconceptions and myths about the wine and spirits industries

• 8:00 - On Summerhill Bar, craft beer, and gentrification.
• 10:00 - How Melissa got her first job, and why she LOVED the entry level phase of her career
• 11:10 - Tanisha’s life changing (and silly!) conversation with a winemaker
• 14:53 - Tanisha finds out she inspired Melissa to start teaching undergraduates about the spirits industry!
• 15:45 - Sarita’s chance trip to Napa changed EVERYTHING. Then she started running out of money.
• 17:00 - Sarita: “I sent an email to every winery in Maryland. There was one that had just opened, Black Ankle vineyards. I was there for five years.”
• 17:45 - The Swirl Suite breaks down the different roles in the industry--from soil to shelf.
• 19:30 - Why Leslie begged to do inventory at a premiere wine shop in DC, and what she learned
• 22:15 - The tasting room at a winery/ vineyard = “The Room Where It Happens!”
• 23:40 - Melissa knows that breweries, distilleries, and tasting rooms are great opportunities to go behind-the-scenes!
• 26:00 - How to get in the vines NOW (hint: It’s harvest time in Maryland and Virginia vineyards!)
• 28:30 - Melissa on why being open to EVERY experience in the beginning is key
• 29:00 - When it comes to wine, “Your learning doesn't stop with a book. You have to get out there where the vines are.”
• 29:35 - Staying current in your industry is a necessity. Read up on the industry news, read books, magazines and blogs, earn certifications, and join local clubs! Get OUT and TALK about wine! :)  
• 32:00 - Leslie wants you to know, “Don’t be afraid to fail. As long as you learn the lesson from it, it wasn’t a waste.”
• 33:00 - Oh, and don’t be intimidated by ANYONE in the wine and spirits industry + how to be comfortable not “knowing,”--”You’re not born knowing this stuff!”
• 35:50 - Wine isn’t elite!

What they’re reading - Melissa: Imbibe magazine, Chilled magazine x Leslie: “Forgotten Maryland Cocktails” x Tanisha: “Into Wine: An Invitation to Pleasure,” Sarita “It’s Always Seems Impossible Until It’s Done”

On today’s episode, we're talking about Game of Thrones season 7, episode 7. Thanks for listening! Subscribe on iTunes and SoundCloud. @bsvocalfry on Twitter!

If you’re interested in my post-college story, I want to let you know I’m sharing all of my tips on the post-college job search, nailing informational interviews, and more on the Bri Books Podcast Newsletter.

@BriBooksPod - Instagram

@BriBooksPod - Twitter

What are you reading?! Show and tell using #bribooks

Show Notes

• 0:23 – The title of this week’s episode was “The Dragon and the Wolf.” It was the season finale…allegedly. But this finalized nothing!
• 0:50 – We start the episode in King’s Landing—the Kings and Queens are Landing! The gang’s back together again! But, nobody wins when the family feuds.
• 1:40 – This week’s episode highlighted issues with the season’s plotlines. Tyrion’s plan all season has been to show Cersei a Whight, hoping it would activate humanity in her, and push her to fight with the North against the Whights.
• 2:09 – Let’s get into Cersei’s fashions! She mixes textures like nobody’s business! I have so many questions for the costumers! Cersei is giving me fall 2017 luxe plush crushed black velvet. Armor has been incorporated into her character’s wardrobe from season 1. Back then with the armored corset belt in season 1, to the intensification of it after Robert’s death. After a mother’s mercy, we see another full shift in her costuming. But post mother’s mercy, she’s like READY FOR THAT WAR READY FOR THAT WAR READY.
• 3:30 – This season felt like x-over fanfiction, and like they had too much money to spend. It was all pyrotechnics, live animals, and CGI.
• 3:45 – Family dynamics at plat across the board! The Clegane’s the Lannister’s. The most entertaining reunion was Tyrion and Bron!
• 5:30 – Daenerys and Jon are in King’s Landing calling for a truce with Cersei. Cersei’s ultimatum, after she experiences the terror of the Whights, calls for Jon Snow to remain neutral in the North.
• 6:00 - Cersei is trying to make Jon Snow the same offer she made Ned Stark--“Go die in your frozen wasteland and leave us alone.” Ned said no, got imprisoned, and we know how that worked out. We see the same thing happening now, the same offer being extended. Instead of saying “No,” Jon says, “No, because I’m with Daenerys Targaryen!”
• 8:00 – Meanwhile, while the male starks continuously ride south to fight the battles of others, WHO RUNS THE WORLD/ THE NORTH?! GIRLS!
• 8:22 – This was my favorite part of the episode. This was one part of the season that seemed to actually pay off.
• 8:30 - Brionna is shimmying in the studio
• 8:45 – Sansa’s talking over her thoughts with LIttlefinger regarding Arya. LIttlefinger discloses to Sansa how he manages to “have it all”—he assumes the worst, always.
• 9:35 – We’re back in King’s Landing, where Tyrion is preparing to talk 1-on-1 with his sister Cersei.
• 9:50 – Tyrion decides its time for a good ol’ fashioned heart-to-heart with his big sis. This, to me…I love when Cersei talks about family, because you get a glimpse into how deep her delusion is. I feel like her children masked that for a while. Now, she’s using the idea of a child and projecting herself into the future in order to harness herself in the now. that’s why she’s manipulating Jamie.
• 10:38 – I’m frustrated with the TV trope of impending pregnancy and the impending doom of a miscarriage. It’s happened over and over (see Downton Abbey). I’m sick of Thrones leaning on women’s sex and sexuality as a cliffhanger. Maybe that’s how Cersei is.
• 11:30 – Cersei meets up with Trion and they barter a deal. Later, Cersei emerges and says she’s going to partner with Daenerys and Jon to fight the Whightwalkers.
• 11:45 – Then Cersei reveals her master plan to Jamie! And Jamie delivers his greatest line of the series: “You made a promise!” Jamie’s in the exact same place he was at the end of season 6. Why does he continue to be surprised at Cersei’s secretive shenanigans?
• 13:05 – Eventually Jamie has enough, and he’s like, “Screw you guys, I’m going home!” This has been a long time coming for Jamie.
• 14:00 - …And then winter descends on King’s Landing. After we leave King’s Landing, Jon, Jorah and team Dany are at Dragonstone plotting next moves.
• 14:30 – It felt like an arranged military marriage—as a show of strength together, let’s present a united front.
• 15:08 – Dany and Jon decide to sail together, but not before Theon has a private conversation with Jon.
• 15:20 – This felt, again, like crossover fanfiction gone awry. In these two AUs that have never had any slash or interaction, it seems irresponsible for someone to hang their moral hat on someone else.
• 15:53 – Theon’s character arc is very weird. After he helps Sansa escape Ramsey at the end of season 5, you feel that he’s redeemed himself of most things. But then he abandons his sister!
• 16:59 – And we’re back in Winterfell, pouring one out for the homie LIttlefinger, who rode the car (wagon?) until the wheels fell off.
• 17:30 – Why is everyone so mean to Sansa?! A flashback to season 2 gives us a glimpse into how deep her survival instincts run.
• 18:45 – The Stark kids are back in the ‘Fell, and Sansa turns the tables like a G.
• 19:20 - “My sister asked you a question!” DRAG HIM!!!!
• 19:45 – Rush thinks the Sansa-Arya character arc is the strongest of the season. “A lot of times in shows like this, women are strong if they take up male characteristics like Arya. But they’re rarely strong if they take up feminine ones like Sansa. You see Arya abandoning her femininity (something she never really cared for to begin with) to become a warrior. But Sansa never abandons her femininity, but uses it and her experience as a survivor to beat LIttlefinger, the guy who had been manipulating things from the jump.
• 22:30 – MEANWHILE, AT THE WALL, THE NIGHT KING HAS A NEW WHIP! The ice-zombie dragon starts breathing ice fire…? A song of ice and fire?! The fire destroys the wall, and we see Tormund and the team running from the wall as a portion of the Wall at Eastwatch comes down and the dead come marching through.
• 23:35 – I feel like this season was rushed. Not only logistically (time, continuity), but also in terms of plot and suspended disbelief. It feels like what happens when you’re working with a live entity like high-budget primetime TV. It comes with the territory-you have a lot of money you need to spend quick fast in a hurry and BIG. The focus was “CGI! LIVE ANIMALS! PYROTECHNICS!” which are all expensive AF. There are big machines behind endeavors like this. It felt like the first half of season 7 suffered under the weight of that machine.
• 25:05 – Yes, everything felt rushed. It was a shorter season, which comes with the territory. This was a sprawling season with a lot of plotlines. But what’s upsetting is, if you watch earlier seasons of GoT (1-3) and compare to this season, it’s like night and day in terms of character dev. What made me fall in love with the show wasn’t that there were dragons and half naked women in every other scene. I can watch any show with that. It was the political intrigue, the writing, how it all felt like a chess game. Now it just seems like all the characters are stripped down and their plots are moving at warp speed to fastest possible conclusion. It feels like the writers are done with the show and have been done for a season and a half.

If you’re interested in my post-college story, I want to let you know I’m sharing all of my tips on the post-college job search, nailing informational interviews, and more on the Bri Books Podcast Newsletter.

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Editor’s Note: "Welcome to Bri Books podcast! I knew that reading Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery’s book “They Can’t Kill Us All:Ferguson, Baltimore and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement” would knock me off my feet, but I wasn’t expecting that on the day this episode was recorded, (8/11/17), exactly two days to the date of Michael Brown’s murder in my hometown (Ferguson, MO), that same evening hundreds of grown men and women in Charlottesville, VA would march on a college campus in the name of white supremacy and racism. That reality is hanging over this episode, and I hope the book we discuss, “They Can’t Kill Us All,” encourages and challenges you. I can’t recommend the book enough. Let’s get into it.

 Resources: Ju-Hyun Park’s essay on thefader.com, “Love Needs Fury to Defeat Hate”

DeRay McKesson’s podcast “Pod Save The People,” “BONUS: CHARLOTTESVILLE”  

@wesleylowery – Twitter, Washington Post

 SHOW NOTES

 As I prepared to read Wesley’s book, I first read “Wars of Reconstruction” by Douglas Egerton, to remind myself of the systemic obstruction of police and black self-advocacy that immediately followed Civil War, Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln’s assassination. The book talks about how the time post-Emancipation Proclamation was the most violent yet politically progressive time in America’s history for freed blacks, as literacy rates and involvement in political and social office grew exponentially. The inclusion of African-Americans in the Union Army definitively helped the Union clinch the war. I wanted to read “The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America’s Most Progressive Era,” by Douglas Egerton.

• 1:03 – Wesley’s first book is a reporter’s notebook of sorts, chronicling his work as a reporter dispatching from Ferguson, MO at the height of the shooting death of Mike Brown. From there he found himself flying to Cleveland, Baltimore, and too many cities to cover too many people who had become hashtags in the light of police violence and the death of black men and women at the hands of police
• 1:30 I knew Wesley’s book would knock me off my feet but I wasn’t expecting that on the day we recorded, 3 years and 2 days to the date of Brown’s death, hundreds of men and women would march on a college campus in the name of white supremacy and racism. That very real pall is hanging over this episode, and I hope our conversation encourages and challenges you.
• 2:00 – Resources: Ju-Hyun Park’s essay on thefader.com, “Love Needs Fury to Defeat Hate”
• DeRay McKesson’s podcast “Pod Save The People,” “BONUS: CHARLOTTESVILLE”
• 3:15 – This episode has special place in my heart because Ferguson is my family hometown. My mom grew up there at a time when her own mom was the first black person to live on the block. By the time my grandmother died when I was 18, there were no white people left in the entire neighborhood.
• 3:55 – Wesley thanks for being on this episode. Watching my hometown become a hashtag was interesting for me. Tell us about where you grew up.
• 4:10 – Thank you! It’s important to me, as someone who writes about places I’m not from to really listen and learn the context of those places. I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time in STL and Ferguson before having to write about it in a longform way. I had dozens, then hundreds, of conversations that hopefully help me portray things that are accurate and right true to the people who lived the lives I’m depicting.
• 4:45 – Wesley spent his childhood in 2 places, first in a Jersey suburb until his early teens. At 13, moved to Shaker Heights, Ohio, a suburb on the East Side of Cleveland. It used to be held to be true that the East side is where blacks lived, west is where ethnic whites, Slavic, Italian, city workers, cops and firefighters on the west side. East side was where black families lived.
• “Shaker Heights was one of 2-3 cities that began instituting public school bussing before the supreme court order. It’s a hyper-progressive community, has always ben extremely diverse. I grew up in a place where we were constantly having conversations about race, racism, prejudice, stereotyping. I was in programmers as a high schooler focused on mentorship and achievement. And having tough conversations. It prepared me for the work now.”
• 6:35 – I love that your book really humanizes protestors. It adds color and dimension to their lives outside of moment they became known as protestors with capital P. what did you learn from the act of protesting, when you were reporting in Ferguson, that you brought back to newsroom in terms of how you tell stories.
• 7:02 – “One of the things I still think of a lot, that is how those of us in the media and who haven’t protested, want to subscribe and ascribe solutions/ motives to protests. Most of us who work in media have never attended a protest we were participating in. many of our decision makers like in DC have never themselves felt like this is how they’re going to petition the government.
• 7:45 – “The reality was in Ferguson, Baltimore, charlotte, Milwaukee, this was an organic overflow of pain and anger. no one was calling the residents of Ferguson saying come outside and be upset. They were looking out their window and seeing the body of a teenager and saying this is where I draw the line I deserve better for my government.
• 8:07 – “We hear of people very often who are dismissive of protest, is why don’t they why don’t they go vote? Write a letter to congressman? That type of mindset fundamentally misunderstands protests. People who take to the street do so because their government has otherwise not listened to them when they’ve petitioned them in other spaces. Protest is in many ways, a means of voicing and demanding an audience for otherwise unheard needs. I think that’s not something that those of us who often have our needs heard that people can appreciated.
• 8:50 – “There’s this deep skepticism sometimes, and we always hear these conversations, people who say, “If you want to win me over, why did you block the highway?” It fundamentally.it fundamentally misunderstands point of disobedient protests, and why they’re taking to the streets.
• 5:29 – “People aren’t taking to street to convince you in your house they’re right about something. They don’t care about you. That’s not the point of this. They’re directly communicating what the powers that oversee their government, etc., and they’re saying, you value order.
• 9:40 – Chris Hayes’ book “A Colony in the Nation” talks about this idea of order. That we, in the majority, what we care about is traffic lights that at work, busses that run on time, no traffic jam, my street being clean. In many ways, we prioritize the order of our spaces or the rights and liberties of other people. That we care about things seems peaceful and calm, and the way you made my street orderly is by stopping and frisking every black person on my street or harassing them for their music, I don’t care about that because t’s orderly. It’s my comfort.”
• 10:30 – With conversations about highway, its people saying, why would you disrupt my order with your silly concerns about your lives? You see drastic disconnect in priority. And like I said earlier, there’s a standard misunderstanding of the point of these protests.
• 11:00 – In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr. says this isn’t about negotiating or gaining a seat at a table. It’s not about winning allies or friends. It’s about making the conditions of this political problem so untenable that it makes it impossible for the powers to be to do nothing. Not only are we upset with you, but these people who have been inconvenienced are calling your office. It’s calling you to do “something,” which means you’re gonna call and say, “what is it you really want?”
• 11:45 – “For those of us who value order, we can often underestimate the power of political disorder as a tactic.
• 11:55 – Part of the currency that helped Wesley report so deeply is that you could’ve even classmates of protestors or the young brother of any of the young boys who got killed. How did you take it from reporter’s notebook to workable manuscript?
• 12:35 – “Procedurally it started by me sitting back and looking at the first anniversary, and tracing back my previous year. Where’d I gone? Ferguson, Cleveland, New York City, Charleston, Baltimore. How did pit stops tell the story of what was going on and tell the story of what became a protest movement?
• 13:15 – “I sat down and would begin with stories I’d written from city, and grabbing.in the emails, grabbed, all the unedited feeds id sent in from protests, people I’d interviewed previously.
• 13:40 – “In one case I’d interviewed Jonathan Butler in Ferguson. I literally just man-on-the-street interviewed him. The next year, he launches hunger strike and university of Missouri. Before he was hunger strike student. I’d take all the material from take period of time, copy and paste the articles and drafts back in, and say, how do I convert this whole thing into first person? How’d I get there? I’d write it long, whittle it down, and convert it into a guide into how I did some of the reporting. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t always the most comfortable with writing in first person I’m not someone who came up writing in 1st I was always doing 3rd persons. I was hesitant to insert myself in the story that way.
• 15:00 - “In a way, especially when people don’t understand he media and literacy is low…there’s real value in showing people how we do what we do—woke up. Story happening. People don’t assume that reporting process for everything they rad anymore…I think there’s real value in walking people through these processes of how we get these stories how we see them, how we choose the story.
• 16:00 - “If I tell you how I got here, why seeing, what I was seeing, could help you understand the subjective decisions that were made. That’s part of what I was trying to do.
• 16:20 – You succeed at that. Your book knows you’re in the story but not the subject of the story. In the first chapter, you say there’s a moment when I became a thing. But you moved past it. Was that a strategic decision?
• 17:00 – “That was a purposeful decision. 2 days after arriving in Ferguson, my friend Ryan and I were arrested covering the protest. We were first of dozens of journos who would find themselves arrested. Eric holder commented on it, we became these political footballs…
• 17:35 – I knew to write this book there would be people saying you got this because fame. No, no, I helped cover Boston Marathon bombings for Boston Globe before this. Got a lot of blowback from people ho didn’t know me or work. By writing this, I wanted to dispense of my moment of fame at the very beginning. I wanted to say yes, I’m that guy, let’s deal and never talk again. This book isn’t’ about me. Its’ about all these young people and these families who lost loved ones and had been so gracious as to allow me to tell me their stories.
• 19:00 – “I really wanted to, through this book, tell the story of the young people who stepped into the streets. From someone whose covered this protest movement from close to the beginning, I find myself frustrated. I spent time talking to activist’s demonstrators, I found almost all of them to be thoughtful, intelligent, deliberate. But I’d see this caricature of many of them in the media by and large especially in conservative media….and I’d hear this from my colleagues, editors, and also my readers. And I felt frustrated. I knew all these people personally at this point, and for whatever reason, it wasn’t being communicated to a broader audience.
• 20:12 – “I’d written dozens, maybe over a hundred articles about Black Lives Matter, about protests, police shootings. And I’d still get emails from subscribers saying I don’t get this.
• 20:29 – “For me, I think that to be a reporter writer is to be a translator. I’m dispatched to a place. I’m witnessing something that’s happening. It’s my job to translate what has happened to a bunch of people who can’t be there, to explain it to them. I’m writing articles about a protest, and you send me an email saying I don’t understand what this protest is about, it means that at some point in my translation I have failed you.
• 20:52 - “So, the goal of writing a book was to say, what if I can do it in a longer form? What if I can write everything I know about this down? And if I do that someone who is genuinely interested can sit down and read all the stuff I know, see all these different people and places, and then maybe if they don’t agree with the politics of the protestors, maybe they can understand. That’s the goal of what I was doing.”
• 21:20 – I sometimes wonder, if I’d be going home…I always wonder, how would I have served that community? Would I be protestor? Organizer? Religious sense?
• 21:46 – For you, in Cleveland, do you ever wonder how, if you’d been home and been a civilian, how you would’ve voiced your frustration?
• 22:00 – “I think that’s something a lot of us think about. Is, if this happened where I live what would I do? If I’d been there what would’ve I do? There’s this feeling, every time we hear of new case, see a new video, there’s a moment where everyone simultaneously has a guttural need to do something. You watch Philando Castile video, the Eric Garner video, you say that’s wrong I want to do something about it. You hear it all the time.
• 22:40 – “I thought a lot about how if I’d made one or two different decisions in life, how I very likely would’ve been on a different side of these protests. I think of how if I’d gone student government instead of student newspaper. Or if I’d stuck with political science major instead of barely getting my journalism degree. I wonder if those would’ve changed any of these moments. And I don’t know the answer to that.
• 23:10 – “I’ve always been an inside the room at the table type. But I do wonder, had I stayed out of journalism, had I not been a writer and reporter tethered to this idea of fairness and distance (not personally involved,) if the events of the past few years would’ve been enough, for someone like me, who valued respectability politics who valued working through systems, would it have been enough for someone like me to step in the streets. I don’t completely know the answer to that, but I see a lot of people for whom it was enough, and I think I might’ve been in the same boat. I see peers and colleagues of mine. And for them, the crisis in front of them was enough to demand a new tactic.
• 24:40 – “I like to think that if I’d been in another field at another time, that would’ve been enough for me too.
• 24:50 – That said. What I like about the field I’m in is that in that moment of crisis, pain and trauma, when new names start trending and there’s a new hashtag, I have something I can do every single time. When I see Michael Brown, Jordan Edwards…I don’t have to sit in this moment of pain and trauma. I don’t have to sit here and wonder what I can do. I pick up the phone I start calling people. I start writing things down. And I start collecting the information that hopefully will allow other people to process what has happened. And empower them, to if they so desire, act and do something themselves. 25:33 - So, I think the role of the journalist and reporter is important. Especially at times when the federal government may not be so inclined to address the systemic issues that still exist in our CJS, I think it’s more important than ever for journalists to write down true things so in the future we can write down what was happening in the summer of 2014 2015 2016 2017. And that’s what I think of when I wake up wondering, I have something I can do.

On today’s episode, co-producer Rush Perez are talking about Game of Thrones season 7, episode 4. This is Bed Stuy Vocal Fry, a sister pod to Bri Books, focusing on the shows Rush and I can't stop talking about. Thanks for listening! Subscribe on iTunes and SoundCloud. @bsvocalfry on Twitter.

• 1:15 - The episode looks at 4 locations throughout kingdom, starting with King’s Landing.
• 1:30 – When we look at King’s Landing, we’ve Game of Thrones Cersei talking to a banker from Braavos. They’re the Sallie Mae of Game of Thrones. They always get their money. They’re the student loan debtors at Game of Thrones.
• 1:55 – The crown owes a lot to Iron Bank. One of the things Cersei gets to is that she’s holding on tooth and nail to the power she does possess. When she’s talking in King’s Landing to Iron Bank, she says the debt will be paid within a fortnight. She intends to pay by robbing the Tyrell's, the house she destroyed. It seems like the deal is sealed.
• 2:45 what’s up in Winterfell? Some new kids on the block in the ‘fell, aka that’s where they live.
• 3:00 – There’s constant reunions in Winterfell. Last episode we saw bran come back to Winterfell after not being there since season 2, when Theon took over.
• 3:30 – Bran last episode had a reunion with Sansa. Now it’s Arya’s turn! The scene starts with Arya on the horse, overlooking the home she hasn’t been to in six seasons. The last time she was there her entire family was still alive. Now her mom, dad, oldest brother, younger brother all dead.
• 4:00 – Arya reconnects with Sansa then Bran. It felt truly like the circle is complete they’re all back together, and so different. The scene of Arya wheeling bran as Sansa walks nearby, you realize how much life has happened to these kids. As much has changed in their short lives in the show. You get the sense things at Winterfell are closer to being better, not fixed. But everyone’s favorite creepy uncle LIttlefinger is lurking!
• 4:55 – Did you catch Bran saying “Chaos is a ladder?” it’s like, Littelfinger is SHOOK. When he realizes that Brans out of nowhere reciting this.
• 5:15 Littelfinger strikes me as a character who doesn’t’ buy into magic, White Walkers. He’s into palace intrigue, what he can manipulate. I think it’s the first time LIttlefinger realizes he’s up against something out of his control that he can’t outsmart.
• 5:45 – Bran was creeping out everyone. I think it’s because he’s become the 3-eyed-raven, he’s not Bran anymore. He’s something else, but still has bran’s memories.
• 6:00 – he’s the collective memory of the universe. He says that to Myra, in what may be the most cold-blooded scene in the series. I’m like, UGH! I was so happy the season bran was beyond the wall. Because I was like good, you’re a sour boy with a bad attitude. Like, we get it, but still! UGH! You could’ve been like, thank you…no one wanted to wheel and carry you around. It just shows you, he’s the 3-eyed-raven. I thought that he’d be like an apprentice. But now he IS the memory.
• 7:12 – it was accelerated because the original 3-eyed was killed. Whose fault? Bran’s!
• 7:25 – Cersei’s in King’s landing, the Winterfell kids have returned and they’re worse for the wear. Now in Dragonstone
• 7:30 – you have Khaleesi and Jon Snow. Daenerys is up against a wall.

• 7:55 it’s because she started the season with a strong hand. She had the Greyjoy siblings with their navy. He had the Sand Snakes. She had the Tyrells/ Highgarden, the richest house in the kingdom. She had all that, and in the course of three episodes she lost all her allies. She still has dragons and an army, but no longer any Westerosi allies.
• 8:40 the closes she has to an ally is Jon, who is only there to dig and go. He’s not trying to be anyone’s king of anyone’s kingdoms. He’s’ like, these White Walkers are in route, we should make haste.
• 9:00 Daenerys discovers a mine of dragon glass under Dragonstone. That scene felt cop-out-y, like “a world of everything we need.” Yeah, you’d think this is perfect, but what’s gonna go wrong? Everything as to this point.
• 9:30 it’s too convenient. He spent 2 episodes trying to convince Daenerys, then he shows her pictures in the cave and she’s like I believe you. Seemed too quick for a turnaround. But the plot has to move forward. Clock is ticking.
• 10:00 Daenerys decides Jon can start mining and she says she’ll fight for the north, only if Jon bends the knee.
• 10:25 – After Dany and Jon have discovery in cave and romantic tense sexual tension…it’s creepy…but Targaryen’s wed brother and sisters for centuries….
• 10:50 – after the cave discovery, Daenerys finds out from Tyrion that their plan to take Casterly Rock has failed, and the unsullied fleet has been burned by Euron Greyjoy. She finds out Yara has been taken captive, and she’s like screw y’all I Game of Thrones these dragons. I’ll go ride on them and figure things out. But her council try and talk her out of attacking king’s landing by appealing to her better nature, saying if you do this you’re just like your father who did the same.
• 11:45 – we forgot, there’s a return of a character—Theon and what remains of the Greyjoy fleet.
• 12:05 – Theon comes up on the beach, looking for Daenerys’ help to find his sister. But she’s’ gone, and he has an awkward reunion with Jon snow, which is awkward AF because Theon took Winterfell.
• 12:30 – Theon asks Jon where Daenerys is. Where is she?
• 12:45 – we circle back on the rose road, and It’s Jamie, Bron and the Tarley's, who were bannermen. Having come back from their victory in Highgarden.
• 13:00 – the Tyrrells were the richest family in the kingdom, and had the most fertile lands. They were the family that supplied the army and kingdom.
• 13:30 – an important point—Randall Tarly comes up to Jaime, says we Game of Thrones gold through city gates. What’s on the road is the food. That’s important to know because they hear something.
• 14:00 I think the noise is the sound of a thousand butterflies. AKA a Dothrak horde that they’re using as a plot device. They come out of NOWEHRE at the drop of a hat.
• 14:22 – how far is Highgarden from Dragonstone? Have they been riding horses for 2 weeks and no one knew?? Those are a ton of Dothrak. A ton of logistic questions about this show and episode.
• 15:06 – as you see the Dothrak horde—which is scary—you see the Lannister army is shook. And then…we hear a screech. And see two gigantic black wings come out.
• 15:30 – the look on Jamie’s face is the look you have when you look at your bank account and it’s low, and you see you haven’t paid your student loan payment this month. It’s like, this is gonna get much worse. Jamie looks like debt.
• 15:55 – hell breaks loose! There are flame everywhere!
• 16:00 – flames everywhere. On all surfaces—as soon as those fires come out of the dragon’s mouth, it lays waste to all the booty Cersei was literally banking on. They make a BBQ. This is a cookout now.
• 16:30 – a disturbing and interesting effect was, you saw people turn into ash. And it would like, be swept away into dust.
• 16:45 – on epis like this of Game of Thrones, I want to talk to prop masters! The horse trainer union! The guys doing pyrotechnics in the sky, it’s just so…you have to realize they’re creating a world! It’s giving me "Battle of the Bastards" vibes.
• 17:45 – my dragon sound effects! Jamie was shook.
• 17:53 –Bron runs to a caravan, and he gets the crossbow that Quiberon shows Cersei that he thinks could kill a dragon. He shoots and Daenerys dodges.
• 18:25 – Bron’s trying to hit Daenerys with crossbow. She realizes it, and goes straight towards Bron. She’s not zigging or zagging.
• 18:45 – she’s on her Rickon Stark game. Maybe they’re all related! When arrows come their way, they run towards them!
• 19:00 – he goes down but not all the way down. For a second, I’m like is this how she’s gonna die?? She gets off the dragon, tries to get arrow out of his shoulder, and then we see Jamie. And he sees the dragon down, and he sees Daenerys. all the while, Tyrion is on the sidelines watching it. Jamie is running towards Daenerys. Dany turns around, the dragon turns around and breathes a jet of fire. Bron grabs Jamie, pulls him into the river, and episode ends with Jamie drowning in the water as the screen goes to black.
• 20:20 – It’s insane. It was the craziest most intense episode I’ve watched in a long time.
• 20:30 – we haven’t seen a battle in a long time. We’ve seen a few sword-to-sword clashes, but otherwise lots of mutilations and surprise killings. But you’re seeing, this is what war looks like. As Tyrion surveys, he zeroes in on a horse on fire. It shows you war. We haven’t seen a badass war in so long. This one was so good! It gave us more dragon!
• 21:40 – we haven’t seen this much dragon action ever probably.
• 21:50 – we’ve seen it in Mereen when she was rescued and the episode where she takes out Slaver’s Bay and unleashes the dragons. But nothing like this. This was like, it was only one.
• 22:15 – wild predictions for episode 5? It’ll be near the end of first half of last season.
• 22:40 – I think that you’re gonna see Daenerys getting more assertive with Tyrion and with Varys, because they were the two telling her to be more cautious and to play it their way. She’s seeing none of Tyrion’s plans worked. It was kind of on him. The only play she did on her own worked pretty well and took out most of the Lannister army what does Cersei have? Gold but no food. What happens with Theon?
• 23:30 – I have an idea, Theon gets to king’s landing, either kills Euron or sacrifices himself for Yara. I think he’s dead before end of the season.
• 23:50 – as you were talking, I was thinking he hasn’t had his “ultimate sacrifice” redemption yet.
• 24:00 – I think what’s coming is as showdown of the Lannister kids. Once Cersei finds out Tyrion is why Jamie’s dead captured or injured…. whoa. when she finds out the role that he’s had in whatever happens to Jamie, Cersei’s gonna come after Tyrion.
• 24:55 – and Jamie just found out it wasn’t Tyrion that killed Joffrey, it was Oleanna.
• 25:10 – FMK segment!
  • Rush’s picks: Yara (MARRY), Lady Oleanna (FUCK), Myranda (KILL).
  • Brionna’s picks: Ned Stark (FUCK), Jamie (MARRY), The Mountain (pre-zombification (KILL)
• Thanks for listening! Subscribe on iTunes and SoundCloud. @bsvocalfry on Twitter.

On today’s episode, co-producer Rush Perez are talking about Game of Thrones season 7, episode 4. This is Bed Stuy Vocal Fry, a sister pod to Bri Books, focusing on the shows Rush and I can't stop talking about. Thanks for listening! Subscribe on iTunes and SoundCloud. @bsvocalfry on Twitter.

• 1:15 - The episode looks at 4 locations throughout kingdom, starting with King’s Landing.
• 1:30 – When we look at King’s Landing, we’ve Game of Thrones Cersei talking to a banker from Braavos. They’re the Sallie Mae of Game of Thrones. They always get their money. They’re the student loan debtors at Game of Thrones.
• 1:55 – The crown owes a lot to Iron Bank. One of the things Cersei gets to is that she’s holding on tooth and nail to the power she does possess. When she’s talking in King’s Landing to Iron Bank, she says the debt will be paid within a fortnight. She intends to pay by robbing the Tyrell's, the house she destroyed. It seems like the deal is sealed.
• 2:45 what’s up in Winterfell? Some new kids on the block in the ‘fell, aka that’s where they live.
• 3:00 – There’s constant reunions in Winterfell. Last episode we saw bran come back to Winterfell after not being there since season 2, when Theon took over.
• 3:30 – Bran last episode had a reunion with Sansa. Now it’s Arya’s turn! The scene starts with Arya on the horse, overlooking the home she hasn’t been to in six seasons. The last time she was there her entire family was still alive. Now her mom, dad, oldest brother, younger brother all dead.
• 4:00 – Arya reconnects with Sansa then Bran. It felt truly like the circle is complete they’re all back together, and so different. The scene of Arya wheeling bran as Sansa walks nearby, you realize how much life has happened to these kids. As much has changed in their short lives in the show. You get the sense things at Winterfell are closer to being better, not fixed. But everyone’s favorite creepy uncle LIttlefinger is lurking!
• 4:55 – Did you catch Bran saying “Chaos is a ladder?” it’s like, Littelfinger is SHOOK. When he realizes that Brans out of nowhere reciting this.
• 5:15 Littelfinger strikes me as a character who doesn’t’ buy into magic, White Walkers. He’s into palace intrigue, what he can manipulate. I think it’s the first time LIttlefinger realizes he’s up against something out of his control that he can’t outsmart.
• 5:45 – Bran was creeping out everyone. I think it’s because he’s become the 3-eyed-raven, he’s not Bran anymore. He’s something else, but still has bran’s memories.
• 6:00 – he’s the collective memory of the universe. He says that to Myra, in what may be the most cold-blooded scene in the series. I’m like, UGH! I was so happy the season bran was beyond the wall. Because I was like good, you’re a sour boy with a bad attitude. Like, we get it, but still! UGH! You could’ve been like, thank you…no one wanted to wheel and carry you around. It just shows you, he’s the 3-eyed-raven. I thought that he’d be like an apprentice. But now he IS the memory.
• 7:12 – it was accelerated because the original 3-eyed was killed. Whose fault? Bran’s!
• 7:25 – Cersei’s in King’s landing, the Winterfell kids have returned and they’re worse for the wear. Now in Dragonstone
• 7:30 – you have Khaleesi and Jon Snow. Daenerys is up against a wall.

• 7:55 it’s because she started the season with a strong hand. She had the Greyjoy siblings with their navy. He had the Sand Snakes. She had the Tyrells/ Highgarden, the richest house in the kingdom. She had all that, and in the course of three episodes she lost all her allies. She still has dragons and an army, but no longer any Westerosi allies.
• 8:40 the closes she has to an ally is Jon, who is only there to dig and go. He’s not trying to be anyone’s king of anyone’s kingdoms. He’s’ like, these White Walkers are in route, we should make haste.
• 9:00 Daenerys discovers a mine of dragon glass under Dragonstone. That scene felt cop-out-y, like “a world of everything we need.” Yeah, you’d think this is perfect, but what’s gonna go wrong? Everything as to this point.
• 9:30 it’s too convenient. He spent 2 episodes trying to convince Daenerys, then he shows her pictures in the cave and she’s like I believe you. Seemed too quick for a turnaround. But the plot has to move forward. Clock is ticking.
• 10:00 Daenerys decides Jon can start mining and she says she’ll fight for the north, only if Jon bends the knee.
• 10:25 – After Dany and Jon have discovery in cave and romantic tense sexual tension…it’s creepy…but Targaryen’s wed brother and sisters for centuries….
• 10:50 – after the cave discovery, Daenerys finds out from Tyrion that their plan to take Casterly Rock has failed, and the unsullied fleet has been burned by Euron Greyjoy. She finds out Yara has been taken captive, and she’s like screw y’all I Game of Thrones these dragons. I’ll go ride on them and figure things out. But her council try and talk her out of attacking king’s landing by appealing to her better nature, saying if you do this you’re just like your father who did the same.
• 11:45 – we forgot, there’s a return of a character—Theon and what remains of the Greyjoy fleet.
• 12:05 – Theon comes up on the beach, looking for Daenerys’ help to find his sister. But she’s’ gone, and he has an awkward reunion with Jon snow, which is awkward AF because Theon took Winterfell.
• 12:30 – Theon asks Jon where Daenerys is. Where is she?
• 12:45 – we circle back on the rose road, and It’s Jamie, Bron and the Tarley's, who were bannermen. Having come back from their victory in Highgarden.
• 13:00 – the Tyrrells were the richest family in the kingdom, and had the most fertile lands. They were the family that supplied the army and kingdom.
• 13:30 – an important point—Randall Tarly comes up to Jaime, says we Game of Thrones gold through city gates. What’s on the road is the food. That’s important to know because they hear something.
• 14:00 I think the noise is the sound of a thousand butterflies. AKA a Dothrak horde that they’re using as a plot device. They come out of NOWEHRE at the drop of a hat.
• 14:22 – how far is Highgarden from Dragonstone? Have they been riding horses for 2 weeks and no one knew?? Those are a ton of Dothrak. A ton of logistic questions about this show and episode.
• 15:06 – as you see the Dothrak horde—which is scary—you see the Lannister army is shook. And then…we hear a screech. And see two gigantic black wings come out.
• 15:30 – the look on Jamie’s face is the look you have when you look at your bank account and it’s low, and you see you haven’t paid your student loan payment this month. It’s like, this is gonna get much worse. Jamie looks like debt.
• 15:55 – hell breaks loose! There are flame everywhere!
• 16:00 – flames everywhere. On all surfaces—as soon as those fires come out of the dragon’s mouth, it lays waste to all the booty Cersei was literally banking on. They make a BBQ. This is a cookout now.
• 16:30 – a disturbing and interesting effect was, you saw people turn into ash. And it would like, be swept away into dust.
• 16:45 – on epis like this of Game of Thrones, I want to talk to prop masters! The horse trainer union! The guys doing pyrotechnics in the sky, it’s just so…you have to realize they’re creating a world! It’s giving me "Battle of the Bastards" vibes.
• 17:45 – my dragon sound effects! Jamie was shook.
• 17:53 –Bron runs to a caravan, and he gets the crossbow that Quiberon shows Cersei that he thinks could kill a dragon. He shoots and Daenerys dodges.
• 18:25 – Bron’s trying to hit Daenerys with crossbow. She realizes it, and goes straight towards Bron. She’s not zigging or zagging.
• 18:45 – she’s on her Rickon Stark game. Maybe they’re all related! When arrows come their way, they run towards them!
• 19:00 – he goes down but not all the way down. For a second, I’m like is this how she’s gonna die?? She gets off the dragon, tries to get arrow out of his shoulder, and then we see Jamie. And he sees the dragon down, and he sees Daenerys. all the while, Tyrion is on the sidelines watching it. Jamie is running towards Daenerys. Dany turns around, the dragon turns around and breathes a jet of fire. Bron grabs Jamie, pulls him into the river, and episode ends with Jamie drowning in the water as the screen goes to black.
• 20:20 – It’s insane. It was the craziest most intense episode I’ve watched in a long time.
• 20:30 – we haven’t seen a battle in a long time. We’ve seen a few sword-to-sword clashes, but otherwise lots of mutilations and surprise killings. But you’re seeing, this is what war looks like. As Tyrion surveys, he zeroes in on a horse on fire. It shows you war. We haven’t seen a badass war in so long. This one was so good! It gave us more dragon!
• 21:40 – we haven’t seen this much dragon action ever probably.
• 21:50 – we’ve seen it in Mereen when she was rescued and the episode where she takes out Slaver’s Bay and unleashes the dragons. But nothing like this. This was like, it was only one.
• 22:15 – wild predictions for episode 5? It’ll be near the end of first half of last season.
• 22:40 – I think that you’re gonna see Daenerys getting more assertive with Tyrion and with Varys, because they were the two telling her to be more cautious and to play it their way. She’s seeing none of Tyrion’s plans worked. It was kind of on him. The only play she did on her own worked pretty well and took out most of the Lannister army what does Cersei have? Gold but no food. What happens with Theon?
• 23:30 – I have an idea, Theon gets to king’s landing, either kills Euron or sacrifices himself for Yara. I think he’s dead before end of the season.
• 23:50 – as you were talking, I was thinking he hasn’t had his “ultimate sacrifice” redemption yet.
• 24:00 – I think what’s coming is as showdown of the Lannister kids. Once Cersei finds out Tyrion is why Jamie’s dead captured or injured…. whoa. when she finds out the role that he’s had in whatever happens to Jamie, Cersei’s gonna come after Tyrion.
• 24:55 – and Jamie just found out it wasn’t Tyrion that killed Joffrey, it was Oleanna.
• 25:10 – FMK segment!
  • Rush’s picks: Yara (MARRY), Lady Oleanna (FUCK), Myranda (KILL).
  • Brionna’s picks: Ned Stark (FUCK), Jamie (MARRY), The Mountain (pre-zombification (KILL)
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