In which we answer listener questions about patron saints, fictional meals, and more.

Gretchen and Julia talk character design, ambient mermaid music, and creative discipline.

Why cheap art (yes, again!), our favorite torture scenes, and which one of us is which Mantle brother.

We talk about "bad" sex writing and what people are revealing about their relationship to sex when they titter at anything more outlandish than missionary. Excerpts read from The Virgin Suicides, Smilla's Sense of Snow, Lolita, and The Name of the Rose.

On the merits of indie publishing, loved ones with terrible taste, and refusing the red pill.

On Manhunt, transmisogyny, pushing through shame, and the fallacy of "good" and "bad" ideas in making art. 

On reassessing art, the joy of shopping, Richard Nixon, television fandom, and the infinite power of Sharon Stone.

On Madonna, Tommy Wiseau's The Room, "bad" art, and where and how we work.

On gendered socialization, alien intelligences, keeping your self-loathing shit locked down, fatness on television, comparative vulnerability, and the value of weird sex writing.

On Smaug and Gollum, the care and feeding of crocodiles injured by boat collisions, rich people's bad taste, and the non-existent difference between porn and art.