LINKS

Listen to Kristen's podcast How to Be Fine, and if By the Book sounded interesting, catch up on that at the link too. And Kristen has a new podcast since this talk that we love, called The Daily Fail.

Get all the books we discussed in this episode, including How to Be Fine.

Melissa really does love the Replacements.

TRANSCRIPT

Melissa: Hello, I'm Melissa Locker. 

Courtney: And I'm Courtney E. Smith 

Melissa: And you are listening to Songs My Ex Ruined, the show where we talk about songs have been ruined by our exes. We are joined today by Kristen Meizner, host of How to Be Fine and many other podcast projects over the year, and my former coworker from The Takeaway, a public radio show that is ceasing to exist very soon. 

Kristen: Very soon.

Melissa: But Kristen, welcome to the show. 

Kristen: Thank you so much for having me. This is so exciting to be on, to talk about exes, to talk about music, just to talk with you. 

Melissa: Yeah, we are so excited to have you. We don't tend to beat around the bush much, so could you just tell us a song that an ex has ruined for you? 

Kristen: Oh, yes. You know, I love the way exes do that. They just ruin everything, don't they? 

Courtney: Absolutely.

Kristen: Well, there is one ex in particular that I don't want to say he ruined the song, so much as he made me aware of how problematic the lyrics were. Because, in a lot of ways, the lyrics kind of reflected what kind of relationship we had. And the song is slightly ruined also just because now I can't hear the song without him jumping into my mind at some point or another. Even though I still like the song. I still think it's a very enjoyable song, and I still dance to it and sing to it. But the song is called “How Deep Is Your Love” by the Bee Gees. 

Courtney: Wow, wow. Finally, some Bee Gees come up. A little disco in the pod. 

Kristen: Yes, yes. 

Courtney: A great dance song. 

Kristen: It is. And you know, it's dreamy. It's groovy. I think when I first discovered the Bee Gees as a college student, I was kind of like, “Oh, I kind of like this ironically.” But then I was like, “Maybe I don't like this ironically, maybe I actually like the Bee Gees.” And this particular ex of mine, he and I did not see eye to eye on most parts of culture. That includes food, music, movies, and a lot of other things. He had taste that I would call, in retrospect, very white male, straight, narrow…

Courtney:  Basic? 

Kristen: Basic! That's another way to put it. Yes, yes. Every greatest movie, just they were all male cast. Every great musician was all men, right? 

Courtney: And he probably never even noticed that he was naming all men when he named these things until it was pointed out to him? 

Kristen: No, he just likes good music. He just likes good movies. 

Courtney: Oh, yeah, yeah, of course! 

Kristen: And just coincidentally it, you know, men happened to, you know, be at the front of all of those things. But this is a song that I liked at that time. It was one of the songs that we agreed on was a quote-unquote good song to both of us. And I didn't really even realize, it's like, oh yeah, it's another band fronted by man. It's not, you know, Sleater-Kinney, it's not Bikini Kill, it's not all the other bands I was listening to at that time. It was, you know, something that just happened to be, you know, fronted by men, again. 

Melissa: Yeah, I want to hear more about this story and I have more questions about this, but just a quick interjection to say that I personally have never liked the Bee Gees. 

Kristen: Really? 

Melissa: Like I understand like their music, I understand the thing, but the thing that always really drove me crazy is that it's these like kind of basic white dudes from Australia coming in and taking what was originally a Black, queer, Latin music, and turning it into like…  

Kristen: …easy listening for white people. 

Melissa: Yeah, and it always just drove me crazy cause there's disco. That is not what disco was about ever. And then so suddenly disco became the Bee Gees and John Travolta, and nothing else. And also, it always just bummed me out. Even if I like the songs, like just hearing them, just the concept of the Bee Gees just always drove me crazy.

Kristen: Oh yeah, I totally get that. I totally get that. And I think that is a bigger conversation about how disco was marketed, how it was manufactured, who was allowed to have a voice in certain arenas, whose voice was being silenced, and so on. And we see that happen in culture over and over and over again. You know, we can, we can also talk about Elvis Presley if we want to. We can talk about, we can talk about “Vogue” and Madonna. And, you know, that whole scene, it's great when it's a pretty white lady doing it. What happens when it's a trans or queer person of color who's doing it right?

Melissa: Yep, absolutely. I'm actually. I'm working on a podcast about the real roots of disco, which has kind of solidified my hatred for the Bee Gees. 

Kristen: Yeah, it's, it's amazing. The people who normally were very anti-disco were mostly straight white men, right. They were the ones who ridiculed it. They're the ones who had problems with it. But they're also the ones who made the most money off of it, like the Bee Gees, right? 

Melissa: Yeah, and it's also like a pissed off, you know, white dude who started the whole disco demolition night and started the whole disco sucks chant and kind of single-handedly sparked the downfall of disco. Something he was definitely left out of. 

Kristen: And so it is kind of funny in retrospect when I think about this particular ex-boyfriend agreeing with me that this is a good song. Because I feel like this ex-boyfriend would have probably been part of that “Let's burn it all down and destroy the disco records!” in a lot of ways, based on the rest of his very basic tastes. 

Melissa: Wow. So then how long were you with this person? 

Kristen: Oh, less than a year. He was a college boyfriend and he was — I'll just say it, he was a problem. He was very possessive. He was very controlling. He was very emotionally manipulative. He was, at times, very angry. Sometimes he threw things at me. And then later on after we broke up, he repeatedly tried to get back together with me. We were apart for, I think, almost a decade when one time out of the blue — and I hadn't talked to him for many, many, many years — drove cross country from Minnesota to New York, where I live now. He found out where I lived and showed up on my doorstep. And he's done that now twice. And also on my wedding day, a box of flowers just showed up at the wedding. We're like, “Who are these from?” And he found out that I got married and he found out the venue and sent a box of flowers. 

Courtney: Oh, very toxic.

Kristen: So this has been going on for decades now. I know this sounds terrifying but, a lot of this I can actually laugh at, even though it's terrible and — I'm sorry I, the look on your faces. It's not funny at all. I know it's terrible and stalking is never okay and I highly encourage everybody else out there if you are with somebody who is in any way controlling you, hurting you, stalking you, please, you don't have to go it alone. There is help for you. So, I don't mean to make light of it, but I do feel because of all of his behavior, I feel kind of okay sort of making fun of his taste in music. 

Courtney: Absolutely.

Melissa: Yeah, for sure. No, it's interesting too because I feel like so many movies make that sound romantic. Like, “Oh, he drove across country to show up at my door.” Like I'm pretty sure that's a plot line in like four different movies. And then the whole wedding thing, like The Graduate made it seem like showing up on your wedding day could somehow be…

Courtney: …a romantic gesture?

Melissa: Yeah. 

Courtney: And it's not. It's Simon and Garfunkel. It's not necessary. 

Kristen: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And so, to get back to the song, “How Deep Is Your Love,” I'm not sure how well you all know the lyrics, but can I read some of them to you? 

Courtney: Please.

Melissa:  Please do. 

Kristen: Okay, so the song opens saying, “I know your eyes in the morning sun / I feel you touch me in the pouring rain / And the moment that you wander far from me / I want to feel you in my arms again / And you come to me on a summer breeze /  Keep me warm in your love, then you softly leave / And it's me you need to show / How deep is your love?” So, you've pretty much said this woman comforts you, loves you, gives you everything you need but the minute she walks away, you know, I don't know, to do the dishes, to go to work, to go to class, whatever she's doing, you need to prove yourself now. How deep is your love? Are you really committed to me? And later on in this song, there is actually a point when they say, “You're my savior when I fall / And you may not think I care for you / When you know down inside that I really do / And it's me you need to show / How deep is your love?” So you are my savior, you're my goddess, but I know that I'm probably sending you signals.I don't care. I know this. I, that's what you think, but you need to prove your love. It's not me, even though I'm you. Sending you signals that are are confusing and not loving, you have to prove yourself to me.

Courtney: Thematically, this fits with the Bee Gees whole thing though, like a lot of their songs are about possessive or unrealistic love, like that is the lyrics. “Inside and Out,” which is a song I never listened to until Feist covered it on her 2004 album. It's so disturbing, honestly. Like a woman's take on it is a little bit better, but it's very like, I have this all-encompassing love for you — hat's really limeraence. And like whatever needs to happen, we're going to make this happen. “More Than a Woman,” another of their songs is just like, “Here's a song about putting you on a pedestal. Good luck when you fall off of it.” Most of their stuff, people think of “How Deep Is Your Love” or like “Night Fever” as overtly sexual songs. And they're not, they're just about really toxic relationships.

Kristen: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I mean, If you just listen to the lyrics of “How Deep Is Your Love,” I think it's easy to not notice those other parts. You know, it sounds dreamy, and the way they harmonize is beautiful. And I love any song where men do things like “ba ba, ba, ladi da,” and they all do that in harmony. I I love that. And for me, it was always easy for me just to like sing along to the refrain and not really pay attention to those other parts. But, like I said, being with this guy, I started to like pay attention to those other parts of the song and think, “Hold on here just a second. Do you and I agree that this is a good song because you like the lyrics and I like the music? Cause these lyrics are kind of a problem.” 

Melissa: I feel like that happens so often where it's like if you just sort of listen to a song on the surface or you just listen to the chorus and it's all like so pretty and nice, and then this second you dive into the lyrics, oh no.

Kristen: Oh, just a second here. There is a song by Extreme that reminds me of this as well, “More Than Words,” which is kind of the same thing. Like, you know, you better prove to me how much you love me, but not with words. You know, with your other body parts.

Courtney: I never liked that song because it made like being in a relationship sound too difficult. Like this is a lot of work, dude. I don't know. 

Melissa: Yeah, like who has time for that? Like, dude, this had better be freaking worth it cause I'm busy.

Courtney: Well, I think the thing that we really want to know is what role did this song play in the relationship? Was it like a harbinger of things to come? And where did this relationship end up going? Like how did it end?

Kristen: Oh yeah. Well, the relationship had a lot of, I guess what we would call fucking and fighting. And there were fights frequently that would end in tears, and then he would want me to prove how much I loved him. At one point he is like, we're gonna get in a car right now and we're driving to Vegas and getting married this second if you really love me and no more of you going out with your friends or this or that. And I'm like… 

Courtney: Oh the emotional manipulation, geez. 

Kristen: Things like that where it was terrible at times, but you know, also, I want to give grace to my younger self also because I forgot who first said this to me, it might have been a therapist, nobody will love you like an abuser. And there's a certain level of intensity that can be very intoxicating because nobody will love you like an abuser. It really can feel all encompassing. It can feel constant in a way that normal, healthy love doesn't. It can feel euphoric because you're constantly, when you're in that kind of relationship, walking on eggshells. And that, actually, in some ways simulates what is it like when you first meet somebody, when you're first falling in love in the first few weeks or months? That walking on eggshells, like, oh, what's gonna happen next? What are they going to say? What are they going do? And yeah, I do think it was a therapist who said that nobody loves you like an abuser because an abuser's able to simulate that feeling from the first few weeks, forever, as long as they continue to abuse you, right? Where it's like, oh gosh, does he love me? Does he love me? Oh, he does. Oh my God. And the sun is suddenly shining on me. But it's like the sun is shining on you from the worst person in the world, right? 

Courtney: Mm-hmm, that's right. 

Melissa: Well, I am so sorry that you had to go through that. Like nobody deserves that. It's horrible.

Kristen: No, nobody deserves that. And fortunately, like I said, that relationship was less than a year. It's not like something that I was stuck in for years and years and years. But once in a while we would, you know, maybe be out having a meal and I will get to food in a second here. But we were out having a meal and having a fight, and then he would go to the jukebox and he would put “How Deep Is Your Love” on. And so that happened a few different times where it was a song that he would put on to like show like, look, we're still in love. This is good. Especially if I was reaching a point where I'm like, I don't know if I can do this anymore, you know? And then he would get up and put that on the jukebox. But to get to the food also, cause this is how basic he was, he only ate what he called “American food.” So, he ate pizza and hamburgers and Spaghetti-Os, and those were like, his three food groups were those things. And I remember one time he was over and I made myself an egg sandwich and I put salsa on it and he literally asked, “Can I use your phone?” This is, neither of us had cell phones at the time. I'm like, “Yeah.” And then he called up his mom and together they laughed at me for putting salsa on eggs. Cause I put salsa on my- and I was like, “Why are you laughing at me and why are you ganging up on me and why are you getting your mother to judge me? There's so much wrong here. This is super not cool.”

Courtney: So many Freudian things happening, there like… 

Melissa: Good Lord, calling your mother.

Kristen: But then you're laughing at me for doing something that's delicious as opposed to the Spaghetti-Os you eat four times a week. Really? 

Melissa: Also, I hate to tell him, but pizza? Not totally American. 

Courtney: Unless it was with Buffalo chicken or you know, Hawaiian pizza. 

Melissa: Oh yeah, some sort of fucked up thing Americans have done to pizza.

Courtney: Oh yeah, this guy sounds great. You were correct to diagnose him as the problem because he was.

Kristen: I've dated better and worse guys throughout life. I will be real with you. I've dated some guys who've been worse, some guys who've been better, many who have been head and shoulders above him who are just outstanding. I've dated some really great guys over the years too. And like I said, I was with him for less than a year. So I don't want this to be necessarily a tragic sob story so much as a this guy sounds like a terrible piece of work. I'm glad you're not with him anymore. And he is somebody you can laugh about now. That's how I see him at this point. 

Melissa: Right. And then I think for listeners who don't know you, from your various podcasts, you did end up very happy and in a nice, healthy relationship now.

Kristen: Yes, I absolutely did. I've been with my husband for, oh my gosh, nine years I think now. We've been together quite a while now, since 2014. So, yeah, and I also think it's not unusual for young people, in particular, to, as they're figuring out what a relationship is, what they want a relationship to be, what love looks like- I think it's not unusual for a lot of us to end up for a while, for hopefully like me, for a few months, not for a few years, briefly with people who help you realize like, oh, this is not healthy, this is bad. Or I actually prefer this in a relationship. And so I don't want to, like I said, I want to give my younger self grace. And anybody else listening, you know, it's not because, you're stupid if you end up for a while in this kind of relationship. 

Melissa: Oh, no definitely not. 

Courtney: Happens to us all. 

Kristen: Yeah, and I would even venture to say, you know, a very large percentage, if not most, young women I knew in college ended up with a guy at one point or another who was too possessive or who was a problem or did things that were really questionable.

Courtney: Yeah, and I mean, a lot of men get that message in society from pop culture, movies specifically, that this sort of thing is romantic or is okay, or is performing masculinity. And um, you know, I hope we're moving away from that, but it makes an impact. 

Kristen: Yeah, I mean, I, I do like to think we're moving away from it.  I think that, you know, even the things we laugh about now, like, you know, bromances and Queer Eye, all of these kinds of pop culture that weren't around when I was in college. I think they do move the needle ever so slightly. I think the fact that we talk more about mental health now, I think that moves the needle ever so slightly. And I mean, for good and for ill conversations are happening on social media now that didn't exist back then cause there wasn't social media. And so I do like to think things are shifting a little bit and things that are socially acceptable now are different, thank goodness. Certain things in certain circles.

Melissa: Yeah, nowadays, I feel like the TikTok algorithm would be aware that you're in an abusive relationship before you even were. And they'd start just feeding you content based on like red flags.

Kristen: I think so, yeah. 

Courtney: So, I had a relationship, shockingly not that long ago, with someone who turned out to have a lot of narcissistic tendencies. And it took me a minute to realize it. Sometimes you don't see what you're in until you're in it. But the one, it didn't ruin a song for me, but it made me question like, wait, what? He had pretty basic taste in music. Like most white men, he was way too into like classic rock and you know, just super obvious stuff. But also on his iTunes playlist was One Direction’s “That's What Makes You Beautiful.” 

Kristen: Oh that song makes me so mad. I hate that song. 

Courtney: Me too, me too. And I was like, first of all, how is this on here? And it looks like you bought it from the Apple store. And second of all, what? Do you like this song? He's like, yeah, it's just a really good bop. And I'm like, have you listened to it? Like, do you know what it says? And he's like, yeah, I know. It's really like my ex-girlfriend was really into this song and we listened to it on a lot of road trips and I really like it. And I'm just like, we need to break up. I don’t know what to do with this.

Melissa: Then it's like its own very weird red flag. 

Courtney: Several, several red flags in there. I think that, just what?

Kristen: I keep listening to it cause of my ex. My ex and I had good times. Let I tell you more about my ex. 

Courtney: Yeah, it's like, this is going great. 

Melissa: Also, I really love songs by 15 year old boys, can’t help it. 

Courtney: About how women's primary function is to be attractive.

Kristen: But not confident.

Courtney: Attractive, but worthless. 

Kristen:Yeah, just make sure that you have low self-esteem and you're pretty at the same time, that's all.

Courtney: Well, I really love the Bee Gees, as much as they're problematic. I don't necessarily love their lyrics, but I'm like you, Kristen, like the melodies really get me. I love when dudes harmonize together, especially in falsetto. I know it's stupid. 

Kristen: Yes, me too. I love it. 

Courtney: It's very compelling to something in my like reptile brain is like, “Yes, this is good.”

Kristen: Yes, and I think part of why I like that so much is because it seems like something that straight white men just don't do in real life. They'll do it when they are on a stage in front of a bunch of people. But how great would it be if they just did it in real life, if they just started doing that in all sorts of situations, like, you know, in West Side Story where're instead of fighting it out like you harmonize and dance.

Melissa: I mean, it didn't end there though. 

Courtney: There was a gunshot. It's true. There were things.

Kristen: There were some other things going on there. 

Melissa: Knives, there are some, you know, there was some stuff. 

Kristen: Yeah, there was definitely was some stuff there. But yeah, I'm a sucker for that. And there are so many songs where I'm like, I can't even tell you what they're singing about, but during the refrain they say “nan nanny boo boo” and that's enough for me. And they do it in harmony. You know, that's actually a song by 12 Rods where they actually do that and I'm like, “Oh, I love that. They sing ‘nan nanny boo boo’ together. Yeah, I'll take that.”

Courtney: I thought about like some teens in my life, telling them about Le Tigre’s “Deceptacon” and being like, you should be under this song and here's why. And here's all why, but then I was just like, God, but the amount of stuff I'd have to explain about like “who put the bomp in the bomp-a-lomp-a-lomp” and where that comes from and like the layers, and I was exhaust too exhausted for teens after I thought it through.

Kristen: That is such a good suggestion though. Oh, that's good.

Courtney: It's such a good dance song. But yeah, I think they would make fun of me because they wouldn't get the layers. 

Melissa: Yeah, I mean I feel like there are so many songs that your younger self could learn from or like you wish you had known. You wish, like younger kids in your life today, you're like, please listen to this music. It's so going to change your life so much more than “That's What Makes You Beautiful.”

Courtney: It's going to enrich your life, I swear. “This song will change your life” is a real moment though. 

Kristen: Yeah, I I do though just want to put in a good word for so much of the music the kids are making nowadays. I saw the Linda Linda's play last fall and I just thought, “Ah, kids today. I love you kids.” Sing those feminist songs, Linda Lindas, I love you. 

Courtney: They are great. I couldn't be cooler. 

Melissa: They are great. I know, I love the fact that people just completely adopted them into the music industry. didn't Bikini Kill play with them? And I think, yes the people were like, yes, you are one of us.

Kristen: I love it. I never want be trapped in just one era. And oh, this is another thing to bring things back to that particular ex-boyfriend who we started off talking about. He was that person who I think decided somewhere between his junior year in high school and his freshman year in college to never like any new music again after that.

Melissa: Oh, so many people are like that. Ugh. 

Kristen: Yes, yes. He had like a three, maybe a four year window of music that was really good. And he was a few years older than me, and I think that was another one of the things where I'm like, “God, you're so basic. Do you not listen to anything new?” Good music didn't stop at that one year that you know, you decided It did, and it didn't stop with Bruce Springsteen, which is who he decided was- yes, the pinnacle of great music was Bruce Springsteen and only this one album. And I'm like, “Oh, what a sad way to live life.” Like your Bruce Springsteen album and your Spaghetti-Os. Like, there's so much more out there. 

Courtney: That's just so limiting. 

Melissa: Yeah, also, so going back to the Spaghetti-Os though, does this mean he's going to either, I can't decide if it'll make him either live forever because of all the preservatives? Or die younger?

Courtney: No, die younger. 

Melissa: I mean, that's a lot of Spaghetti-Os.

Melissa: You grew up in Minnesota, right? 

Kristen: I did. I grew up in Minnesota, yes. 

Melissa: Minnesota in general. It's a great music scene. Did you ever listen to any of like the kind of iconic Minnesota bands? 

Kristen: Oh yeah, so Babes and Toyland — the drummer, Lori, she and I ran in some of the same circles, so I saw them play quite a bit. There was obviously, Soul Asylum from there, the Jayhawks, Prince is from there. 

Courtney: She really just wants to know if you listen to the Replacements or not, because she's a huge fan of the Replacements. 

Kristen: Oh, of course. The Replacements. yeah, the Suburbs. The Suburbs and the Replacements. Of course, both of those. 

Melissa: Yeah, I was actually thinking Prince, but go ahead, Courtney.

Courtney: Okay, sure, sure you were. 

Kristen: I love Prince so much. You can't see it now, but I have Prince wall art. You can only see my Dolly wall art behind me, but I also have Prince and other wall art of various musicians throughout my house. Prince is one of my biggest regrets because I always said, “Oh, he's my hometown guy. He's always gonna be around. He's young. I'll see him eventually.” And living in Minnesota, I was like, “Yeah, I'll see him eventually. He's just like a neighbor, whatever. Like no big whoop. I'll see him at some point.” And then he died so young. And I never got to see him. And that kind of was a wake up call for me, for seeing other musicians while they're still alive. So, um, I've seen Dolly Parton many times. I immediately got tickets for Beyonce, for Lizzo, for all of these musicians where in my heart I always thought, “Oh, Beyonce will always be around. She's an icon. She's never gonna stop touring.” And then I thought, you know what people can stop touring, people can die, all sorts of things can happen. So I'm going to see them now. So, that's what I've been doing is, you know, trying to see as many of these acts that I would call icons now that they're alive. The icons, like I said, I always put them on the back burner and I saw like young new hip bands. I saw, like I said, the Linda Lindas or whatever. But the icons, I always thought I can see them eventually, but now I'm trying to see the icons too.

Courtney: Prince is on my regrets list too. I didn't go see him when he relaunched his career in the mid-2000’s. And then when I lived on Wall Street, at some point he did a concert in the building right next door to the one I lived in and I didn't realize until after I was over. And I'm like, no, I could have been there to go see him.

Kristen: Oh, that sucks. Yeah, he played Celebrate Brooklyn is this series of outdoor concerts in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, close to where I live. And I usually go to a couple of concerts every year that they put on. And there was one year when Prince was still alive. I remember I was walking in the park and I knew that there was going to be some, I think, jazz ensemble playing that night. And I was like, oh, I'm probably not gonna make this concert tonight. But I heard them rehearsing in the park that day as I was on a walk in the park, and I'm like, that doesn't sound like a jazz ensemble. That sounds like a guitar thing. What was that? And later on somebody said, “Oh, Prince showed up and he rehearsed some songs and then he went on stage with him that night.” So, I guess I can say I kind of heard Prince from afar walking in the park in the lead up to that show, but I didn't know it was him at the time. Yeah, that's the closest I can say I've gotten. 

Melissa: I have such a weird Prince memory in that I was working at Time magazine and I was doing a lot of music reporting for them. And somehow my editor was like, had found out before like a lot of people that Prince had died and she calls me in, she's like, “You gotta come to the office and you gotta write this up.” And so I was on the subway, and just looking around being like, “Oh my God, none of these people know, like none of these people know that Prince has died.” And I just was so stuck just trying to be like, how are the, like I could like, do I shout this from the…? You know, do I do like a showtime in the subway and just tell everybody Prince is dead, start cranking “Purple Rain.” It was just the weirdest experience to just feel like so isolated. And then I always feel bad cause I texted my friend Fred, who I figured would know. I don't know why I thought he would know, but I, I was like, “You know, and like, did you, is it true? Do you know about this?” And he's like, “Wait, what? Prince is dead?” And so I like probably broke the news to him, which I felt very bad about. But then he and I now for some reason just texting each other whenever our celebrity dies. And it's been going on for several years now. 

Kristen: Well, it's better to hear it from someone you love, right? 

Melissa: Yeah, I'm not sure he loves me, but yes.

Kristen, so you have so many incredible projects that you've been working on, but what I really want know is how can I be fine? Have you figured this out yet?

Courtney: I'd also like to know the answer to that. Is there a specific episode I should start with, or shall we just subscribe? 

Kristen: You should subscribe, absolutely. You should buy the book of the same title. How to Be Fine grew of another podcast my friend Jolenta and I were hosting called By the Book. And By the Book ran for ten seasons, and in every episode lived by the rules of a different self-help book while we recorded ourselves so you could hear how each book affected our lives, our work, our marriages, our friendships, and so on. It was kind of like a reality show so you could eavesdrop on it. 

Courtney: Oh, I loved that podcast, and I think everyone should go back and listen to it now. If you didn't when it came out because it's really hilarious sometimes, and really like revealing other times. 

Kristen: Yes, like your show, you know. Very funny at times and very, you know, sad at others. And it is in the exact same feed as How to Be Fine. So if you subscribe to How to Be Fine, you can listen to every episode of By the Book in there. And  How to Be Fine, we just decided after ten seasons of living by self-help books, which was oftentimes fun but also totally exhausting. But over the course of the years, we realized, you know, we don't want to just talk about self-help books. We want to examine what the wellness industry is, what it's grown into. When we first started out making the show, there weren't even these things called influencers yet, because, I mean, so much has changed in the years. You know, TikTok self-help influencers are a whole industry now. life coaches. There's all these things that have popped up, these trends: ice baths, various figures that didn't exist in the beginning, like Jordan Peterson and his all-beef diet. Like, you know, all of these different things that 

Courtney: Another Gen Xer who doesn't eat vegetables, by the way. 

Kristen: To bring it full circle. By the way, Jordan Peterson is not my ex-boyfriend, if anyone's curious. 

Melissa: I was wondering. 

Courtney: Thank god!

Kristen: But they do have some things in common. But on How to Be Fine, we just try to explore all of these other things, various products, various trends, various people who have become pop culture icons, like the Duggars of 19 Kids and Counting, who have their own self-help industry and influencer career that they've all created around themselves.

Courtney: That's the episode I'm gonna download immediately. I did not know- I knew. Duggars are creepy, but I didn't know they had a whole industry. Ooh spicy. 

Kristen: Oh, yes they have a whole industry, and they are also part of a cult too. So, cults and self-help, it's a Venn diagram that overlaps for, you know, three-fourths of those circles overlap. Self-help and cults, right? People seeking answers, people wanting to live their best lives. Here's a dynamic leader who can help you do that and reach your full potential. So that's something else we're talking about on the show. So we're going way beyond books into all of these other arenas as well on How to Be Fine. And yeah, we also have a book out that is called How to Be Fine. And by fine, by the way, we don't mean like you're going to be your best, richest, you know, prettiest self. We're just like, those seem like really weird, amorphous goals, and they also seem contingent on comparing yourself to others. If you are the richest, that means somebody has to be poorer than you. If you are the prettiest, that means you're thinking of somebody as uglier than you, right? And we don't really want to look at the world that way. We just want everybody to hopefully feel a little closer to okay with themselves. Hopefully a little closer to fine, to sound a little bit like the Indigo Girls.

Melissa: Now I have that song stuck in my head. 

Courtney: I mean, it's a great song. 

Melissa: Yeah, so then for people who maybe are looking for a good place to start, was there one of the self-help books that you actually felt really helped?

Kristen: Oh gosh, so many of them are absolutely terrible. 

Melissa: And that's what I was thinking.

Kristen:  But a lot of people like to start at the beginning with either The Secret, which was the first book we lived by, or the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which I think was the third or fourth book we lived by. We did live by almost a hundred books total though, so there are a lot to go through. We lived by books by celebrities. We lived by a Dolly Parton book. We lived by Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt from The Hills? We lived by their book How to Be Famous, and I will tell you, it worked. 

Courtney: Wow, disturbing. 

Melissa: Look how famous you are. 

Kristen: Look at how famous I got because of that. So yeah, we've lived by such a wide variety of books. Books about home decorating, books about cooking, books historically through the decades. We did a whole season where we started in the 1930s and went all the way to the present, with a historian joining us along the way. So, we've done so many different books. So yeah, jump in anywhere. See a title that appeals to you, listen to that one, and then follow us along the way, all the way to the present, where we're doing How to Be Fine.

Melissa: Amazing. 

Courtney: And can people find you on social media as well?

Kristen: Yes, I'm on Twitter @KristenMeinzer. I'm on Instagram @K10Meinzer. That's K-1-0 Meinzer. And you can find everything you want to about me at my website, kristenmeiner.com. 

Melissa: Amazing. 

Courtney: And you can get Kristen's book in our show notes. We'll have a link to buy it, as well as where to find her podcast.

Kristen: Thank you so much. This has been so fun, you guys. 

Courtney: Oh my gosh, thank you so much. It's been such a treat to have you, and yeah, I'm really sorry that the Bee Gees have to bring up bad memories now. But you know, there's some acts that we can let go, and maybe the Bee Gees are one of them. Melissa frequently champions reclaiming songs. But I think in this case, you know, eh, let it burn.