The Readirect Podcast
Shifting the conversation back to books. Hosted by Abigail Freshley and Emily Rojas.
The Readirect Podcast
Book Club: Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams
We're joined by dear Friend of the Show Colleen to discuss Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. This book details Sarah's account of her time working for Facebook, and it is definitely explosive. We're recapping the highlights and horrifying revelations including: shark attacks, private planes, Settlers of Catan, Zika virus, global politics, and more.
Read the book & join along, or listen to our recap as a ;tldr version of events. Either way, we hope you'll enjoy this book club episode!
Recent Reads:
- Heated Rivalry and The Long Game by Rachel Reid
- The Wedding People by Alison Espach
- Cover Story by Celia Laskey
If you enjoyed this episode, consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and following us on Instagram and Bluesky @ReadirectPodcast.
Welcome to the ReadRug Podcast. My name is Abigail Freshley and I'm Emily.
Speaker 2:Rojas. The ReadRug Podcast is a show where we shift the conversation back to books. We discuss themes from some of our favorite books and how those themes show up in our real lived experiences.
Speaker 1:On today's episode, we are deep diving into Careless People by Sarah Wynn Williams, the explosive Facebook memoir.
Speaker 2:But first, before we get to that, we would love for you to support the show in a few simple ways. First, you can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify and let us know that you love the show.
Speaker 1:You can also follow us on Instagram or Blue Sky at Redirect Podcast and if you really really love the show, feel free to share our show with a friend. We have some really fun episodes coming up on our content calendar. Great time to share a show with a friend.
Speaker 2:It is Speaking of friends. We're joined by a friend here today.
Speaker 1:Yes, friend of the podcast, colleen. Hi, colleen, introduce yourself. Actually, we didn't tell you we're gonna do this, but you have to say like a few of your favorite books so people can understand your tastes yeah, or what genres you like, or authors, anything and who are you books?
Speaker 2:and who are you?
Speaker 3:um, I am so excited to be here. I am Abigail LA friend and I am Emily's like friend by proximity and I am also an avid redirect listener and I am in a romance book club with Abigail. That's how we met. But my primary genre I love a banger of a memoir, as we'll get into today, and I'm a big fan of thrillers and mysteries and especially like spy stories.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of my reading. Emily, did you read Red Sparrow on my recommendation? I did not. Oh okay, colleen did a bookshop with me last year and I read Red Sparrow and it was really good and that was Colleen's recommendation, because Colleen loves a Russian spy situation.
Speaker 2:I love that, colleen, do you?
Speaker 1:have situation. I do Love that. Colleen, do you have a disclaimer that?
Speaker 3:you need to give. I do so. I spent nine years working in an extremely intense corporate America job. That was not Facebook or tech, but I found a lot of similarities between my experience and some of the things the author talks about in the book. I'm out of that job now, and so I have to say that all of my opinions today are my own. They have absolutely no reflection on my current employer, and I think everything I'm going to talk about is actually completely related to not my current job.
Speaker 1:Yay, yay, love my big suit, yay good, yeah, love my pink suit. Um, okay. So that being said, let's get into it. We are coming in pretty pure, not like knowing so much about each other's reactions, but let's do like a round robin. How did we feel about the book emily? You want to kick it off?
Speaker 2:sure. So I said this a little bit before we started recording. But I found this very difficult to read because I find, sarah, I don't know what I expected from her. Like you know, you don't want to blame, like victim blaming stuff, I don't want to do that and I felt for her in a lot of the sessions, but I will okay. Like there's never a point where she's like I can't, I'm gonna draw my line here, like I'm not, she's always like which I get to, like being idolistic and we'll get into all the things that she goes through and thinking like I can change it from the inside, like I can fix this.
Speaker 2:But there are some parts where I was like girl, like I get it, you need to have health insurance, you have a family, but like maybe it's time to go, you know. So it was difficult for me to read, but I did think it was well-written and I liked it and I'm interested to see more. I think what the fallout is from this, what she continues to do, what her advocacy looks like moving forward, I don't know. So that was my initial reaction. I gave it four stars. I did like it, but it was like reading the Ball ballad of songbirds and snakes where I was, like sometimes I don't actually care or empathize with what you're going through, because it does feel like you are the problem you're part of the problem here.
Speaker 3:Okay, that was my opinion colleen go.
Speaker 3:I loved it. Five stars, absolute banger. I finished the entire thing in a weekend and then just screamed on blue sky about how crazy this book was. Um, I agree, emily, that there is. There were several moments where I was like, okay, what is the author's actual culpability in this situation and like what is her responsibility. But, as I mentioned, like from my background working in a very intense corporate job, I relate to sort of the cult situation of it all, where it's very hard to deprogram and leave, and it was very revealing especially some key executives at Facebook that are publicly known like. This is not a side that we would have gotten from anything else besides this type of tele-memoir, so that was really compelling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think part of it sorry to go back to me, but I feel like part of it for me was like I had to keep reminding myself, like we know now what Facebook becomes. But she didn't know that and, like when she started, she probably had good reason to think it could be something positive in the world, and so I understand that that, like I have the gift of reading this with the hindsight of the things I know publicly that Facebook is not great about. And then obviously there's more horrible things revealed in this memoir. But, yeah, like her starting off when the company was still like nothing, it does make sense that over time you just start to like, be like okay, well, this is fine, this is fine, and then eventually you know it gets worse and worse.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, yeah, I mean I I loved it. I thought it was extremely juicy. But I also share your feelings, emily, where I'm like, oh my God girl, like I think a little bit I would just so I will kind of like start talking about the book a little bit. Sarah is the former like director of global policy, I think was her highest title for Facebook, for Meta.
Speaker 1:Facebook first and then Meta, I think just like off, rip like she wants this job so, so bad, and so I think like while she is one of the better people in this whole system of like horrible people, careless people that run this, um, this tech corporation, like she is still one of them, I guess, in the sense that, like she's she really she really thinks that the private market will save the world and that corporation led by really rich people is ultimately going to save the world.
Speaker 1:And she does call herself out and very early in the book for being pretty naive about that. Sure, but yeah, there are moments where I'm like, oh my gosh, I just don't feel bad for you, and there are some moments where I'm like, oh my gosh, I do feel bad for you. So it's complex and I think that is probably. It is complex because she's really honest about herself, which I think she deserves recognition for that. She was really honest about the ways that she contributed and like didn't contribute and like the moment she stayed silent when she didn't in her time at Facebook. So a lot to get into, yeah.
Speaker 2:So much.
Speaker 3:I will also say in her, in her prose column nobody else from Facebook in that era has come out and written anything similar to this, and I believe she did testify in front of Congress. So as much as happened in the book. I think from this type of mindset and culture, taking this step is actually revolutionary.
Speaker 1:And I mean part of the noise around this book. To begin with, while why we read it was because she is facing litigation from Meta, because they have accused her of violating her of the book in the like rollout of the book, which actually kind of backfired on meta because people hate them. Yeah, so now people are reading the book because of the noise around it and like that's how I initially heard about it. So, yeah, I think it does take bravery to do something like that, knowing that, oh, totally, that's gonna happen to you. I think too, like that, knowing that, oh, totally, that's going to happen to you.
Speaker 2:I think, too, like that's very on brand, if you're reading this book, to come away with the fact that meta I think she says it at the very end like Mark Zuckerberg had the right idea at the right time but every single thing he's tried to do since then is like a failure or a flop and like he's not some genius, just kind of stumbled on to this massive success and has been treated as like this extremely intelligent person because of it and I think that's an example of it like any. I feel like, if you think it for about it for a second, hey, if we go after this person, that's gonna bring more attention to the book than if we just kind of let it, you know, die out or whatever.
Speaker 1:But yeah, the the critical thinking okay, so we know where it goes, but I'm gonna pull us back. Where does it start? So one thing I will say is a tick against the book is the book opens with an extremely gruesome and detailed story of a shark attack that sarah wynn williams experienced and survived growing up as a child in new zealand.
Speaker 2:Yes, I know that calling didn't do well with this.
Speaker 1:It was also emily you're like kind of famously afraid of you.
Speaker 2:Respect the ocean a lot. I respect the ocean. Yes, I have a lot of respect for the ocean.
Speaker 2:Um, this was a little bit traumatizing to read about, but at the same time, I felt like this does explain her as a person, because she gets literally bit, like a chunk of her bit out by a shark. Um, she's like bleeding out, but the shark also rips off her bathing suit. So instead of being like screaming for help, she's like oh, actually, everything's fine, which I do, kind of would like. So I and I feel like that makes sense where she's like I'm just gonna like push everything about me down, even if it kills me, and like get through this, and that is what something she does over and over. And then, after the shark attack, she's like hey, I, hey, I think I'm actually dying, and her parents are like no, you're fine, go back to bed, and then turns out she is actually dying. So that was also, I think, very relevant where she continuously throughout this book, tries to raise the red flag or sound the alarm about stuff and is constantly told no, everything's fine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's why she included the story, sure, so it's very real, but like it's a good, you know foreshadowing, but it was also extremely graphic. Like I did not need the when they're like cutting into her and I didn't need all that. Like that detail is probably too much for me too much for me.
Speaker 3:No, I was, thank god, like just laying down on my bed listening to this audiobook after finishing my little corporate job one night and I was like, oh my god, I think I'm gonna pass out like this is horrifying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say like if you haven't read the book, but you might maybe just like tldr of the shark tech story. She got attacked by a shark, it wasn't awesome, and then she told her parents that she needed to go to the hospital and they didn't believe her.
Speaker 2:Repeatedly, repeatedly, which I think does really mess you up, I mean that obviously really that really screws with you, and that's the first time the first time that your kid tells you something you're like, okay, just go back to bed. You're, you're fine. But after like two or three times, don't you think you would be like, okay, maybe we should just take her back to the doctor, just in case. But no, uh, so yeah, anyways.
Speaker 1:That's how it starts that's how her whole thing starts, and then she becomes she because her special interest is. Her special interest is like global policy for tech companies. It's specifically Facebook. Did you guys remember how she first got introduced to Facebook? She got it when she was in college, right? I don't recall that part. I think she had it as a college student maybe, but she was just obsessed with what it could be. Yeah, like super obsessed.
Speaker 2:Which I think is part of my con against her as well, because even at the end she says like it didn't have to be this way and it's kind of like it does feel like it did. Like there's no world Like. People who become billionaires in charge of Facebook are never going to be the people who are going to be like, benevolent and self-sacrificing and doing the right thing. Like they got to that point because they're trying to like. You know what I mean. Like Facebook became what it was because Mark Zuckerberg is constantly trying to like and the people around him are trying to monetize this to the maximum extent possible.
Speaker 1:It is really interesting to think about. Like. This is a website that started by, like, ranking girls on a college campus and this is the thing that's going to save us. I mean, I know we're totally looking at this with 2025 eyes, exactly, yeah.
Speaker 2:But even in the end she's like it doesn't have to be like this, you know. And then she's going on about AI and it's like no, it probably all is going to be like this, you know so and it's like no, it probably all is going to be like this, like you know.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I think, think about the optimism we all held during obama one and obama two, and like when we did believe in not me, I was a republican. Yeah, yeah, we actually thought that that like a liberal little white midwesterner from the chicago suburbs helped during obama one and obama two and it was because none of this had happened yet. Like yeah that's like just a dude somewhere in the universe, like it was. Yeah, he looked like a human, really looked possible that this would change things for good. And, to borrow, ob.
Speaker 3:Obama's phrasing the moral arc of the universe was bending toward justice at the time.
Speaker 1:Looking at this, I do get it, Because I would say like, thinking back to a version of me during that time that was optimistic about the world, could be good. It was like Hamilton, Like you know, like yeah, Nancy Pelosi will save us. You know, like Chuck Schumer Hashtag lean in.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:Lean in Right, we'll get to Cheryl We'll get to you, Cheryl.
Speaker 3:We'll get to you.
Speaker 1:I don't mean to be like a whole. The woman is really the bad person, but she is a unique.
Speaker 2:She's one of the worst. Yeah, she's one of the worst.
Speaker 1:She's a unique type of evil, but yeah, I mean very much. Sarah's whole thing is like I'm from new zealand, I'm like dipping, I'm gonna be like small fish, big pond, I'm going to the states, she's. She gets her start working in the states as like a diplomat um on the hill, uh, for for new zealand. Like she was doing global policy stuff. But what she wanted more than anything was to be a global policy manager at facebook, which is a job that did not even exist because facebook was not thinking about global policy whatsoever at all. And at that time she describes mark zuckerberg's whole shtick as being like I don't want to have anything to do with politics, I'm not interested in that. Like. It's like the scene from the social network where he's like he's wired in, like he was wired in.
Speaker 2:And what if he had just?
Speaker 1:stayed wired in.
Speaker 2:You know, mark, the way she depicts Mark Zuckerberg in this is so interesting to me, because there are several moments where she like almost softens him, like to me he comes out the best, which I mean there's a lot of horribleness in this book, so it's it's like not saying much, but like there's moments where he's like tender with her and then like he's depicted kind of just as this, like buffoon who's completely insulated from society and everyone is just constantly being a yes man too, and it's almost like, well, it's not really his fault if he's like low-key evil, because everyone's just telling him all the time how great he is and doing everything for him and he has like no touch with the outside world at all whatsoever. Um, so, anyways, I just think that's a very interesting part of this where it's like Mark Zuckerberg. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, and at the beginning of Facebook when she joins the team. So after she like basically stalks the hiring manager to get a job, she creates a job Can we talk about this Because she wrote several manifestos on what yes, what global policy at Facebook should be.
Speaker 3:And the way she initially gets connected is she.
Speaker 1:she finds this woman whose job is listed, and then on facebook.
Speaker 3:On facebook you find she has one connection with her and then reaches out to him, goes to like, meets him at his house and was like basically gives him the spiel of her manifesto. And then was like would you introduce me? I really want to pitch this to her. And he was like I will.
Speaker 3:And then it is like months, maybe even years, of periodic phone calls with this woman where she is pitching very restraining order this manifesto to her, and this woman will occasionally call her for advice that sar Sarah gives away for free to a company she does not even work with.
Speaker 1:It is a crazy process for her to get in the door and then she gets hired and I'm pretty sure she's making like really like poor. I mean, at that time they gave her stock stock which obviously in the end like ended up being really helpful for her and trying to buy a home. But, like she, she decided she's gonna go work for them for like I don't know, like 60k or something like it was not a lot always negotiate your job offers.
Speaker 3:This is a psa to everyone, anyone that's so real. Negotiate up your salary, because otherwise you end up, like sarah, selling your soul for not that much money. If you're gonna sell it because you get rich yeah.
Speaker 2:She repeatedly says like I can't afford this, that everyone else here and I would be like sarah, like you're gonna be evil and not even like and be the lowest paid person here she was so thirsty for a job.
Speaker 3:It's like crazy, right, like I don't know, stand up, so like yeah I don't know my spidey sense is first tingling because toward the end I was like how true do we think this still is like at some point her pay scale probably would have been adjusted or like, oh yeah, there would have been a salary ban for like a director level in like cheryl's organization and I'm like, okay, get, the bay area is expensive, but how much of this is you trying to write a little bit of your own pr narrative versus how much of this is true?
Speaker 1:I mean I think that she she bought like a four or five bedroom home in the Bay area. So I mean, yeah, she ended up getting paid.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Sarah, you're not right Like yeah, that was a nice little fanfic you brought on the side about yourself.
Speaker 2:I did kind of feel that way too about her at the end. Okay, we're should always just keep going to the end. But at the end she's like, well, I needed my health insurance. I was like I mean, couldn't you go back to New Zealand?
Speaker 1:You're willingly suffering through the American health care system. Do you know what I would give for a New Zealand citizenship in this moment?
Speaker 2:I know that's probably not ideal, but you do have other options. You're not even a citizen. She couldn't even get her citizenship here. Go ahead, I don't know Whatever We'll get to the end again also her husband had a job this whole time like one option. Sarah was going on your husband's health insurance let me tell you, if I was that husband, I would have divorced her a long time ago.
Speaker 3:That husband is stronger than he went through some crazy things I actually googled last night to see if they're still married because I was like how well, the book was dedicated to him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they are. They worked it out on the remix against all odds, I mean I would not if I was him. We'll get into it when we get to the pregnancies. But going back to our journey, so she comes back, she comes on at Facebook and at this time Facebook is really operates in two wings. There's Mark's side, which is all the engineers, the guys, the incels, who wear jeans and flip-flops and are wired in a quick aside. One thing that really pissed me off was that Mark worked not nine to five like he was never available during regular business hours.
Speaker 1:He would sleep all day and work all night, and that just kind of pissed me off, because I bet he has like work back to like he has like in office working mandates probably oh, I'm sure, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:Yes, no, abigail's sorry, I'm just gonna say you're right to the point that he would not meet with, like a president of a country, prior to noon. So like that's how strict we're talking with this couple.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and he was like that's reasonable, I shouldn't have to.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Obama should meet on my turn, like when I'm available. Yeah.
Speaker 3:That is crazy and represents so much of, I think, the Silicon Valley tech mindset. One thing I will say is because Mark was so adamant on being the technical side of the company and the technical person at this time is like that schedule actually does not jive very well at all with like a traditional, like corporate schedule or what Cheryl would have been doing, and I think that was his way of like getting the work done without constantly being pulled into meetings and asked to do things. So, on the one hand, like I relate, on the other hand, like mark, you are literally ceo yeah, right, like so.
Speaker 1:So then there's cheryl, cheryl samberg um who is insert the c-o and do a boo sound effect Boo. Yeah, the personification of like Mother Gothel.
Speaker 2:I think From Tangled the worst, the worst kind of woman.
Speaker 1:She steps on other women's backs and breaks their necks to like elevate herself and make money for herself. She, if this book is to be believed, she is an abuser.
Speaker 3:She is a weirdo person yes, yes, yes there are some serious sexual harassment allegations that the author raises against Cheryl Sandberg in here that literally again, if this book is to be believed involves Cheryl asking female staffers who she is in a position of power over to sleep in her bed on a private jet and then retaliating against them if they decline to do so, which is one of the craziest things I've ever heard in my life declined to do so, which is one of the craziest things I've ever heard in my life.
Speaker 1:It is insane, and especially because, like already insane, yeah. But then the context for these trips that they're going on.
Speaker 3:Are there like?
Speaker 1:lean in visits. So she if you weren't a woman in 2010,. She has this book called lean in's, like this whole movement and organization. It's about like how to be a woman in the workplace and it's kind of trash now, but one of the things that she talks about is like don't leave until you actually leave. Like like for um staff who like have a baby, okay, so like work every minute until you have that baby. Like don't, don't leave for you.
Speaker 1:Don't check out early basically yeah, yeah, and so she is requiring. So at some point in working for her, sarah becomes pregnant and she requires her pregnant employee to fly at a high risk time of her pregnancy as basically like visual candy to support Cheryl's whole thing about like pregnant women working all the way to the end and like Sarah's in a seriously like high-risk pregnancy, she almost loses both of her pregnancies. She's asked to travel to, like the, the epicenter of the zika virus, while like greatly pregnant and basically just pressure to do so.
Speaker 2:Yes, um cheryl is also pressured to work during her maternity leaves and then is given a performance review following, uh, one of her maternity leaves and it's basically like you were not available enough.
Speaker 3:Actually, legally, I'm not supposed to work at all I am actually shocked post leaving facebook or meta if she had any documentation about it all. I'm actually shocked she did not sue facebook because there is very clear law, like very clear employment law yeah that prevents employers from doing what was done to her allegedly.
Speaker 1:She was emailing while crowning yes In her first pregnancy, she was like and this is the point, if I was the husband, I would be like yeah, you got to quit your job. Hey, this is for your health and for the health of our child. You have to close the laptop.
Speaker 2:Yes, I will say should I say this? I don't know In my last job I was treated a lot not in anywhere near the scale as bad as she was in this situation but there were some things and Eric was adamant, like you have to find a new job Because, like he was, just like this is not fun, Like you're stressed. You know what I mean. And so the fact that tom's like this is I mean he probably wasn't like this was fine at a certain point he has like an excel spreadsheet or something I don't know.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, he was like tracking all which I mean ball or move.
Speaker 3:I would do the same thing yeah, respect like that's great evidence of divorce negotiation yeah, um it really is.
Speaker 2:But I just felt like yeah, like that would have been the point where I would be like we're laying down the law you cannot be working on while you're literally delivering a baby. You know, like that's crazy.
Speaker 3:I do know of someone who worked for a large tech company in the US and who was pregnant and the stress of her job did potentially cause her to miscarry, and at that point her husband laid down the law and was like you have to move to another team or you have to quit. Like yeah, we can't.
Speaker 1:Something has to change yeah, yeah, because like you may lose another pregnancy also, you could die.
Speaker 1:Yeah she, which she almost does which she almost did um they all. I mean travel. So, yes, she was forced to travel um, or really like heavily insinuated that she should travel um to the epicenter of zika while she was pregnant. But she also does a lot of other travel and a lot goes down on private jets in the facebook world. One of my favorite anecdotes from her time at facebook, from when she was on the jet, was that, like, mark would want to play settlers of katan with everyone, but then everyone would let him win. Yes, yes, I can't stop thinking about this. And she was like I'm not gonna let you win because, in honestly, mad respect, I would, absolutely, I would never, ever let anyone win as a lot of katan. Um, yeah, she was like and then, and then when she does beat him, he's like you cheated, yeah.
Speaker 2:Ick and she's like no. She like explains to him which this is another part where I was like, did this really happen? But she explains to him that, like you know, this is the ways that you could have won. Like you were just I don't know, it was a little too like after school special Cause. She's like you're just like this. You always only see like one path and you don't notice that there's other factors at play.
Speaker 2:And this is supposed to be like a meta narrative, but I do believe absolutely that everyone's letting him win and it's like it made me think so much about like. This happens all the time on micro levels. Like anytime you follow an influencer because they're relatable, and then they become wealthy because they're an influencer and then their content's not relatable anymore. And it's like in this vicious cycle and it's like, yeah, you can see how this happens all the time, where people just like he didn't ask them to let him win, but they're like well, I'm not going to be the one that beats the ceo Facebook, you know, at Settlers of Catan, so everyone's just letting him win and then, over time, that continues to inflate his ego. And it's like this vicious, evil cycle where he's like no, I am the best at Settlers of Catan.
Speaker 1:This is what makes him think I'm going to ask Obama during his trip to Peru if he would take a day off to hike Machu Picchu with me Like he obviously wants to hang out with me.
Speaker 2:I'm awesome, that was so shocking yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was quite gratifying that the outcome of that was a meeting where Obama essentially just dressed Mark Zuckerberg down for Facebook's role in the election, for the amount of disinformation that they let sort of run loose on their platform. So there are some times where Mark Zuckerberg gets a brutal reality check, but it never comes from inside Facebook, yeah, no.
Speaker 1:And this is part of Sarah's job at Facebook, too is she's getting Mark more and more involved in global policy and meeting with heads of state. One of the things that Mark is extremely obsessed with is China and getting Facebook into China, and there's a lot of really dubious ethics and questionable legality about how they end up doing that. But at one point he goes to President Xi and is like this is so cringe, he's like.
Speaker 1:I want to name my kid after you, and Xi is like no, don't do that. So embarrassing, that is so embarrassing.
Speaker 2:That's why I think this is like yeah, every anecdote about mark zuckerberg in this is embarrassing for him. Like there's nothing. Where you're like, oh, interesting, everything's. Like, oh, he's just an idiot. Like he's just, he's so full of himself and yet so stupid that it constantly leads to these incidents where it's like what are you doing, man? Like what are you doing? But he doesn't seem to like very often realize what he's doing.
Speaker 3:I think there's a tech reporter whose work I really love and she's interviewed Mark Zuckerberg several times and her take on him is essentially Mark is a very, actually like, relatively kind and thoughtful person, but he is a hardcore tech guy who, like, invented this thing that has now become a platform that has the ability to essentially rip democracies apart, and yeah, yeah, no one can sort of make that leap. And so, in so many times, mark just comes across as someone who, for this particular scenario he's trying to deal with, is really out of his depth, and I think Mark Zuckerberg is able to think critically about some things, but he's surrounded by people who don't help him do that. He's surrounded by people who just say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to his sometimes very naive impulses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think this is part of Sarah's point about the book. Is that like maybe people like to think that Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or whatever Tim Cook are like evil geniuses that are really, really smart and they've gotten to their position by being so genius and strategic and evil, when really the way that she characterizes it is like he had this good idea and then he was extremely careless about it and the the gross carelessness has led to civil wars. It has led to the falls of democracy, um, and now genocide, genocide. And then he thinks about, and then at the end he's like well, maybe I should.
Speaker 1:Basically he's like, maybe I should run for president, like he's kind of like floating within meta running for president and then like the metaverse and all like, all this stuff. That is just like the carelessness, the carelessness, the carelessness, yeah.
Speaker 3:I can't, oh, do I want to say this In defense of Mark Zuckerberg? Let's hear it, yeah, clip that.
Speaker 3:I don't know. Second book let's hear it. Yeah, clip that. So right after Trump won, within his first year or something, there was a Hollywood Award speech where Oprah gave a speech that was essentially really compelling and in defense of democratic values, and the media coverage for a week after that was Oprah should run for president. And that was truly the area where people were like, well, if Donald Trump can get elected, then that really opens the door to different types of people.
Speaker 3:So I do think that's where that was. I was so tempted to look at this through a 2025 lens, but when you look at this through a 2017 lens, you're like I see how you connected some of the dots in that way.
Speaker 1:I just hope that he gets too scared or I don't know, because people would so vote for him.
Speaker 2:It would be so bad well, it's like she says like he has acts, like he basically decides he wants to run for president low-key, after it's explained to him in detail how facebook is complicit in donald trump being elected and the kinds of campaigns they were running and how they kind of gamed the Facebook ad system to both increase voter turnout for Trump and depress voter turnout for any other candidate.
Speaker 2:And he's like, well, I could use our system that same exact way. And so it's like, yeah, I see how you make that, like with little, with no oversight, because no one could tell me what to do, because I own this and like I'm more, I'm beyond any government and any governing body of this entire world. So like why wouldn't I use that to elect myself?
Speaker 1:um, so that was uh disturbing yeah, one of the things that I often talk about in my field of work, like the, the social justice field, is thinking about things from a systemic lens and in some ways, this story about what happened at Facebook feels almost like an MLM, like this infinite growth mentality. But MLMs, their whole shtick is like this will work if there's an infinite number of people that we could recruit into the MLM Right. At some point. That doesn't work Right, and Facebook is just obsessed with like we have to get more users, more users, more users, but at some point there are not more.
Speaker 2:There are no more people. There are not more users.
Speaker 1:But the spirit behind all of this, and like the spirit that drives their desire to have more and more users, is essentially like rooted in white supremacy and colonization and just being like more, more, more money at the expense of anyone. Really that could be negative. It doesn't matter like what the casualties are, it doesn't matter if it's not safe to send our staff member to Myanmar with no access to cell service or internet and no Google Maps and ask her to have meetings with a military junta. About getting Facebook on the phones of people and like, whatever the cost, it's worth it so that we can make more money. It's worth it so that we can make more money. And all of that is like perfectly reflected in the whole Facebook, like slogan of move fast and break things. It doesn't matter what we break, let's just move fast and everything else can just get out of our way. And that feels clear. I think you're going to say something.
Speaker 3:Colleen, a really pivotal conversation in this book that happens on the private jet, like you mentioned, where a staffer is finally able to break down Mark Zuckerberg's defenses and explain Facebook's role in helping Donald Trump win the 2016 election, and that is really a moment where you kind of feel the world turn on its axis.
Speaker 3:And it's also a moment where I think it becomes clear that evolution of the tech industry has changed where, to your point, before it was grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, appease our shareholders, show we are the dominant provider of this service everywhere in the entire world.
Speaker 3:And then it kind of switches to becoming this arms race, where it's like Facebook has this unique ad targeting capability that no one else has, and if it can be used to win elections, then this is now the focus of our business. The focus of our business getting every user in the world becomes secondary to that. And then what's not covered in this book but is alluded to at the end is Facebook then does that with the metaverse, which they don't have much success at, and now they're doing that as part of this Gen AI arms race right, and Facebook is one of the front runners of that, and that's really like that conversation is so pivotal to the change of the direction and the shift of mindset of executives of Facebook in how tech has played a role in the world, and like where Facebook as a company went after that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, because when I was reading this I was like when Facebook started it was so much fun, like you had your little flare walls and you're like you know folks and there was so many fun things, and now it's like, oh, it's like a cesspool there and that doesn't matter, because it's actually not intended to be fun or it's not intended to connect people anymore. Like you're saying, it is intended to manipulate things on a global scale, to help brands make money and to, uh, get politicians indebted to facebook, like that's what the intention is and it. It's just bizarre to think about how it started, like you said, well, as a ranking women college app, but you know, by the time that we were getting on it, I feel like it was like a fun place and now it's just like accessible yeah, I will say facebook has done.
Speaker 3:There are now restrictions on the things that you can target on and, part of what was kind of surprising to me, there's a seed in the book where sarah finds this deck internally that shows that Facebook Australia had done this presentation to advertisers. That is like we are able to target 13 to 17 year olds and like hear all the different behavioral signals from our Facebook platform that we can use to target them. And it was about when teenage girls delete selfies on Instagram. They're feeling insecure, they're feeling worthless and brands can target them. I can't like. There was the whole Cambridge Analytica saga after the 2016 elections.
Speaker 3:There are now more restrictions that Facebook has put in place on what you can and cannot target Like. I don't know, at least for the purposes I've seen it used. I don't think you can target by like race there is. They've cracked down on a lot of that, but the problem is that it's that move fast and break things mentality of like well, you didn't crack down on it for like a few years and so, even though you like actually have put real safeguards in place for this core technology you have, the general public doesn't think about that and also like yeah, you didn't. You didn't admit to any of this at the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you just buried it well, and I think the whole point of the insight she gives us too, is like they can say that and that can be the, the official policies that they have. But it feels like it just takes one compelling argument to mark zuckerberg for him to be like, okay, well, this country or this company or this individual can we'll overrule it. For them, like there doesn't seem to be any consistency with the safeguards they put in place. Um, so it's like who even knows, like what's going on? You know, like I, it's. It's yeah, they did the fact checking thing for a while. Now that's gone. You know, it's like there doesn't seem to be a lot of like internal consistency with what they're doing.
Speaker 3:That's a really good point and I actually think the relationship with China is the biggest evidence of this. Of, yeah, facebook fought back really hard against the US government for any data sharing that the US government wanted privacy restrictions that they wanted to put in place, and Facebook was essentially willing to, to volunteer to do all of that for the Chinese government to get into.
Speaker 1:China Crazy. Just that part was sickening. Just like the pit in your stomach, Like we're not even carelessly breaking things At this point.
Speaker 2:It's like we're smashing them on the ground with a baseball bat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, another thing that becomes apparent over time. So she joins in, like the 20 earlier 2010s leaves shortly after the first trump presidency or the first time trump was elected and throughout her time there, her colleagues become begin to be more emboldened to be transparent about their political leanings and how they feel. And by the time she leaves it's there's a pretty strong like conservative or right wing coalition in the high ranks of Facebook, including Joel. Is it Joel Kaplan? Yep, yes, joel Kaplan, who is one of her direct colleagues.
Speaker 1:It is really because this is the other thing to the piece about careless people. Oftentimes the big dogs that are at the top of these companies are kind of just like in over their head, had a good idea and now we're being really careless. But there are people all around them who are evil geniuses, who do intentionally want to like push forward evil in the world, and joel joel caplan is as described in this book is one of them, and, um, it is frightening, it's right, yeah, yeah, he's the worst.
Speaker 2:That's all I can really say about joel in speaking of evil geniuses at facebook.
Speaker 3:Joel is hired for I mean he conservative. He has a lot of like political strategy experience. He was part of the Brooks Brothers in 2000, which is one of the lamest events in US history.
Speaker 1:He's also, I believe, the craziest. The biggest stretch of the word riot. He's Sheryl Sandberg's ex-boyfriend, isn he, yes, I forgot about that yeah, I did not even know that.
Speaker 3:That's the connection, and so many of these people in place have some sort of personal relationship to cheryl sandberg and that thread of like whatever it is cheryl sandberg's got going on runs through all of them.
Speaker 1:Sheryl Sandberg. God, she is horrible, just the worst. Yeah, the, the double standards she has for everyone, the weird sex stuff. Yeah, weirdo, she had her personal assistant by her lingerie. That was weird.
Speaker 2:That was crazy. Allegedly.
Speaker 1:Allegedly, according to the book, this book, yeah, um weird, a lot of weird stuff. Um, here's a question for you guys. Like we have all indicated that we think that sarah should have left earlier. Sure, at what point do you, if you were her, would you have left?
Speaker 2:I don't know, because I do. I, as much as I am hating on her, right, I do understand that over time you justify a lot of things to yourself and I can. It does kind of slowly escalate, I do think. At least at the point where she saw the documents that were like people may die in china because of what we're doing, that would probably be like okay, like I don't think I can be chill about death. You know, like that would be like maybe the line for me, but uh, I do understand, like this is all insane, but like I don't know, like are you? I?
Speaker 2:I wish she had maybe gone in a little more into like the justifications at the time to herself, beyond just like, oh well, maybe I can fix from the inside, because I think that's stupid. Um, respectfully, but like I do think like over time you just grow accustomed to things. Um, and I can, especially like the sexual harassment stuff is weird. But I know a lot of people are in these situations and don't feel like they can do anything about it, so that's fine. But yeah, the the death in china was like okay, all right, you're starting to lose me here a little bit, sarah. I don't know how we can be chill about this. You know, what do you think?
Speaker 3:I, I had to. I had an initial answer and I had to rethink it. Um, one of the big plot points in the book we've already talked about is how Facebook responds to Sarah almost dying during her second pregnancy and delivery and really she comes back to work the first day. She's given an unofficial negative performance review and the feedback is that she could have been more responsive and her verbatim response was well, I was in a coma and the response back was um, people felt you were unresponsive and I was unresponsive.
Speaker 3:I was in a coma. I had nowhere near this level of ethical stakes or anything, but I had a very. I had a very close family member pass away when I was at my last job and the people around me were all immediately supportive. And I came back and I found out administratively from the company that bereavement leave counted against my personal performance targets and assessment and that I had to make a case in my year-end review to not be penalized for that. And I can tell you that my response was the day that I found that out I started job searching and I knew.
Speaker 3:I was gonna leave and I don't understand why that wasn't the flip switch for her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that moment. I do feel like she was a little lazy, like she's like, yeah, I reached out to some contacts, but I would have been like I'm gonna get on LinkedIn every day, like I, to find something. I do feel like she was a little chill about the job searching thing and I agree that that was an intense moment for sure.
Speaker 1:I have my answer to this but I'm actually remembering she didn't even leave, she got fired, that's the part that I don't like.
Speaker 2:That's what killed me about her. I highlighted it and I wrote ew she is fired. She says it and I wrote ew she is fired. She says that's how it ended for me at facebook. I faced the behavior so many women at facebook and other tech firms I face.
Speaker 2:I wasn't silent enough, but if they hadn't thrown me out, I wouldn't have lasted much longer at the company anyway I had told myself I could do more on the inside, from the outside, but, realistically, being the grit in the machine wasn't working and I'm like, well, that's easy to say, but like you, were fired. So, yeah, I I don't know like how much longer she would have lasted. Because, if you're okay with like by this point, she's witnessed facebook not only treat her horribly, not only that she was on the receiving end of sexual harassment from multiple supervisors, um, not only like what you just mentioned, colleen, but also she's witnessed, again the death in china incident. I mentioned the mean margin aside. That was like pretty directly, you know, helped on by Facebook and their refusal to intervene.
Speaker 2:The Australian pitch deck about targeting teens and one teen taking her own life after, like some similar targeted ads hit her. So, like, if you're cool with all of that, like, what would it have been for you, sarah? That's what I would love to know. Like what would have been the red line for you?
Speaker 3:It's interesting because throughout the book she actually does say she has one ethical red line and it's working on anything to do with Facebook China policy, and post her maternity leave as sort of an alleged punishment. She had been handling policy for Latin America and Asia and she's told you can only do one of those, we're splitting your job. She chooses Latinica because of her red line. And then they said well, until you hire someone to take over your job in asia, you have to run asia and, by the way, you have to run china. And that was her stated consistent one red line and she was willing to cross it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she did, yeah, and that's why it's like, yeah, I don't think. Yeah, I think. Great that you wrote this book, sarah, great that you're exposing this, great that allegedly, while you were there, you were trying to like raise concerns. But you know, people have all sorts of extenuating circumstances with, like people do this and they don't have a supportive partner who also has a job, they don't have citizenship in another country with better health care than we have, they don't have, like the support that you might have had and they still quit anyways. Like there has to be a point, if you're going to paint yourself as like a good person, where maybe you would have quit.
Speaker 1:She's also in the luxury trap. You know, like, yeah, she has gotten accustomed to this lifestyle. Like now, what do you get? You can't just, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Like now, what are you? You can't, just, I don't know. And I do believe, like I do believe, that there's a part of her that was like I'm maybe I'm the only one here who's bringing up these concerns and if I go, they're going to hire someone who's just like them and there's going to be no one here who's going to say like, hey, this is wrong, and I can see that story, maybe helping you sleep at night.
Speaker 1:Y'all remember, during the first Trump presidency there was like that Wall Street Journal, like anonymous op-ed thing, and it was from like there are people and like there are grownups in the Oval Office.
Speaker 1:It's like we are here like making sure, don't worry, like girl, if you don't Like, you're still there, you're still there, you're still there, but yeah you guys are both stronger than me, because my answer to that question of when I would leave it would have been early days back when they sent her to myanmar. Babes, I wouldn't have gone to myanmar. What do you mean?
Speaker 2:well, there's a point very early on where um, she's pregnant too.
Speaker 1:When she went to, I think you're thinking, are you thinking of korea? No, I'm talking about early days. She went to myanmar. She was early in her pregnancy. She goes, she has no cell service no, yes, no money, yes, and she has to hitchhike, no that was a random to the military junta. I'm sorry, there is no job.
Speaker 3:There's no way, I'm not doing that. She walks in that meeting and she like doesn't fully know if she's going to come out of that meeting. Yeah, she's like am I die here?
Speaker 1:Oh, she doesn't speak a single word of Burmese.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:There is not.
Speaker 2:I'm not doing that.
Speaker 3:No, no uh there's also a point early on where basically there's a arrest warrant out for in korea.
Speaker 2:This is what I was thinking for mark zuckerberg and for cheryl. And they're like, okay, well, we can't send mark just straight to korea because they might arrest him. Like so we need a body. Like we need someone from facebook who's gonna go, and if they get arrested then we'll know. It's not cool for mark to go there. And everyone's like who could it be? And then everyone's just like, yeah, who could it be? And then she's. She says eventually the silence becomes awkward. I slowly realize everyone is looking at me. The least senior person in the room me I ask is if there's been a terrible case of mistaken identity. Elliot nods, I'm the body. Like yeah, no, I would be like actually I'm not going to go get arrested in.
Speaker 1:Korea. Like that's straight off of an episode of Succession, Like when they're on the end of season one. We're all, they're all sitting on the boat and they're like who's going to take? The fall. Who's going?
Speaker 3:to be the sin eater, and they're all just like looking around the table.
Speaker 1:This is like what this is from, like a scary TV show, anyway. Also, I just remembered one other thing. As we've mentioned, she was forced to go to the epicenter of Zika while pregnant. And then Mark goes to the same place and he's like in a moving mosquito net. He has like slaves, like walking around him with mosquito netting. That would actually send me into a blind rage like I would probably do a physical assault I would be.
Speaker 2:I would be doing physical assault and that's just because he's trying to conceive, like his, like his wife's not pregnant, like there's no, he's obviously not pregnant. Like there's nothing, like there's no direct threat he's just like.
Speaker 1:I don't want to hear mark zuckerberg and trying to conceive in the same sentence. Oh, that was insane.
Speaker 2:That was like actually you could have left that detail out and I would have been this is you the? Take out the shark bite? Take out the trying to conceive information about mark. I'm good, didn't need that yeah, wow, um did this.
Speaker 1:What were the final like is there any other things you guys want to talk about about this book? Or like what? What did it leave you with? Like what? What thoughts did it leave you with?
Speaker 3:did we hate on cheryl sandberg enough? I feel like we may not have I don't think we did.
Speaker 1:Cheryl is a grifter.
Speaker 2:Yes, she's the worst kind. Well, and I feel similar like. Again, I think we've been a little too benevolent about mark zuckerberg. I do feel similarly about him being I think cheryl is way more evil straight up, um, but I feel like he's like yeah, like, whatever way the wind blows, I'm gonna be that guy. And if it's like cool for me to be a social justice warrior and for facebook to have policies that are are cool with, like whatever cause is going on, or if it's cool to be right wing, I'm going to be right wing.
Speaker 2:Like I just think there's a lot of grifting going on at Facebook, even Joel. He's like not even Joel, especially him too. He's like I'm a Republican guy, blah, blah, blah. But then he's like yeah, like I don't want Donald Trump to win. I'm a Republican guy, blah, blah, blah. But then he's like yeah, like I don't want Donald Trump to win, but then Donald Trump wins. He's like well, you know he's crazy, but you know he's like going to do the stuff we need him to do, but he's not actually going far enough. I think he needs to like cut off more people off Social Security and Medicare.
Speaker 3:Yes, I love Donald Trump because Donald Trump will F poor people.
Speaker 1:but enough, yeah cheryl sandberg is a republican masquerading as someone like she is pro-women, but she's not, she said. She said she's pro-women, she's pro-cheryl, she's pro-cheryl sandberg.
Speaker 3:Hey, lucy, yeah, oh yeah, colleen's cat just walked by the screen audio medium um, she is pro what's going to be good for Cheryl.
Speaker 1:And if you really were a pro woman CEO, then you would respect things like maternity leave. You would enforce things like like family, like paid family time off, like you would ensure that your like pregnant, high risk pregnancy employee was like safe and able to live like those. That's the bare minimum of what it would mean to be like a pro woman business leader.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, she sucks what it would mean to be like a pro woman business leader. Yeah, no, she sucks. It's interesting because I've seen this happen so many times in companies with like think about mental health initiatives and companies instead of like female, like equality initiatives, where it's like it becomes this big talking point. People care, there's all these resources they'll give, but the message that's really sent is then like, if you are breaking down at work, if something is not right, if you are having to take mental health days, if you're going through something really serious, what happens is, well, you're not taking care of your mental health enough, like we told you to, and you're not using these resources that should fix it. And so sometimes I get suspicious when a company like Facebook and a woman like Cheryl is pushing all this gender equality messaging, because what that really turns into is it's actually your personal fault if you are not able to work through a high risk pregnancy or achieve these things, because we've given you the resources and the political backing to do so.
Speaker 2:Totally yeah, she sucks.
Speaker 3:My favorite Sheryl Sandberg anecdote is I think it's the last Davos visit that the author goes with Sheryl on and Sheryl is giving this speech and Sheryl's minions basically start a group chat without her just roasting her speech, and then afterwards cheryl needs all of her minions to tell her that her speech and her performance was better than christine lagarde's. Yeah, and I was dying. I was like, oh my god, this woman is so insecure and she has everybody else's concepts of feminism like yeah, she doesn't know what.
Speaker 1:Like she doesn't know really even what feminism is like she doesn't understand that.
Speaker 1:She's just doing all in her life, like what she recommends and lean in like largely and like what comes up from, like her speeches. That is like, instead of like, creating a culture where all of us like, respect everything about ourselves and like we have a full-blown life and we're all human beings. She's like women act more like men. Yeah, it's like and, and I'm gonna big dog other women and I'm the best woman. And it's like, yeah, this is crazy. And also like I'm going to me too.
Speaker 2:My employees allegedly yeah, well, that anecdote, colleen, you were talking about, I'm like. That was another time where I'm like are you dumb, sarah? Because she writes it as if she's like, oh, they're lying to her about loving everything she does. Like that just dawned on her for the first time that people are just being fake at work, like that part was like okay, yeah, yeah, no, everyone's playing a game here.
Speaker 1:I would say there is maybe a greater than zero chance, given the level of interest that sarah has in global policy for the tech world as like a teenager, and then her lack of awareness about some of these social things. That's going on, that there's some sort of neurodivergence going on. That's playing into like the amount of time she's been at facebook, not being extremely repulsed by some of these people like it. You know it wasn't clicking.
Speaker 3:I also do want to mention I just Googled this. She left Facebook this is, according to a Guardian article. She left Facebook in 2018 to work on and I quote unofficial negotiations between the US and China on AI weapons. So maybe Sarah Wynn Williams is not the bastion of like ethical tech that this book makes her out to be.
Speaker 2:No, she did a great gossip like she's doing it again, like with the like. To me, ai is the same thing.
Speaker 1:It's not going to be a good thing it's not like, no matter what you think, sarah, it's not we haven't learned the lesson from the first time, which is it doesn't matter what the tech is if you put careless people at the top of it with an unlimited budget and no laws and no checks and balances. It's like I wonder if they'll use this to kill people like yeah, humans will do that, yeah yeah, it could be, but the lesson of this book is that nothing has changed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like people at the top of tech did not learn anything. Yeah, right about this. And at the risk of, I think, misquoting taylor swift to two slip. What is it like? I think I've seen this film before film before film before, and I did it at the ending. Exactly here we are again yeah, like here you have inserted yourself. Yeah, you're still doing it.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, I want to say to my last note about sarah um, thank you for writing this book. But I will say like, to me it did feel a little bit like um, why are we spending a little bit more time, energy, stress, angst, going over again? I get this impact you directly. But the the joel sexual harassment, which was intense and horrible and bad and that deserved its own writing. But then, like the myanmar genocide, it felt like those two were too close to the same level and I was like Sarah, one of these things is objectively way worse and it feels like both of them were like well, there's this, you know, sexual harassment thing, this genocide thing, and I would have just liked maybe a little perspective on those incidents. That didn't feel totally there, but I do feel like that's honestly to people who are really into global policy and world stuff and the UN, where it's like these things just happen and there's I don't know, you know what I'm saying, I know what you're saying.
Speaker 1:I think that to stay and be as high up at Facebook for as long as she did, you got to have a little bit of that same thing that she is calling on everybody else. Yeah, like she didn't get eaten up. You know she climbed the ranks. Yeah, like she played the game for long enough that she had success and, as is laid out in the Facebook culture that she describes, it's a move fast and break things scenario. So to assume that she also did not move fast and break things while she was there right is naive of the reader.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, and ultimately she is fired because she I mean allegedly because she kind of refuses to stop raising the issue with Joel, because she was kind of it was heavily implied to her that if she kind of let it go and didn't complain, that he would get better and he would stop sexually harassing her. Which, with the naivety but it gets worse, he escalates his behavior and she's like hey, you guys kind of led me to believe that it would be okay if I didn't complain. And it's not, and then she's fired for that. So that's how share time ends.
Speaker 3:Speaking of glazing over important geopolitical events that Facebook has rolled in within careless people. There is a journalist from the Philippines named Maria Ressa who's mentioned. She came to prominence for many reasons, but she published a series after Rodrigo Tututerte, who's kind of a dictator in the Philippines, won his election, about how he weaponized misinformation on Facebook to come into power. She has been threatened by the regime. She has been fined, she won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. And she actually wrote a book that was published a month recently called how to Stand Up to a Dictator. So if this is a topic that interests anyone, or if you want to read more about this but are maybe would like a different perspective from the narrator, I would highly recommend that book. That sounds really good.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I love that. Okay, last question about this book If you were the husband, when would you have left Again? I think my answer is the same I would have left at Myanmar.
Speaker 2:I do not think I would have had a second kid with her. I would be like we will not have a second child. I will, we are. You're not getting pregnant until you quit Facebook, so I don't know if it would have been divorce at that point, but there's no way I would have had a second child after what happened with her first pregnancy.
Speaker 3:I probably would have left after pregnancy too, but I think I would have been so scared that she would have worked herself to death that I would have stayed only for like. So my kids didn't have a dead mom at ages zero and three that's valid.
Speaker 1:What's his name again? Tom tom.
Speaker 2:If you need help, there's a hotline at redirect podcast on instagram we are not equipped to help you uh and then we'll text you 988 I do think, though, after this birth of their second child, when she dies, basically like he, he's told like prepare for her to die, um, and they can't stop her bleeding and like she's, you know, dying essentially, um, I think I would have that would have been my ultimatum like this is killing you. I just watched you almost die. If you don't quit, then like I'm gonna go, because I just think, like I don't know, like that's not fair to him that he had to go through that and she doesn't. She doesn't really say like hey, my stress from Facebook caused me to almost die and obviously, like medical things happen all the time.
Speaker 2:Maternal mortalities are a real issue in the United States, which she does bring attention to but it just feels like I could have lost you. I watched you. They told me you were gonna die, you were in a coma. I can't live like this anymore. You know where you're putting yourself at risk, like, pregnancy aside. Like she's again, like we said, going to countries where she could be jailed, um, going into like very high stress situations. There's multiple like mobs that she experiences throughout the book, where, like, security is an issue, and I just don't think I would have been chill about that.
Speaker 1:What do you guys think that Priscilla Chan is getting out of this Mark's wife? I had a lot of thoughts about her through this question.
Speaker 2:Like is it just the money?
Speaker 1:I thought about her a lot.
Speaker 2:Do you think she, like, genuinely loves him?
Speaker 1:yeah, or maybe he's just, maybe he just leaves her alone. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like because he's used to not care that much because there's a point um in the book sorry, I know we were just kind of giving our final thoughts but there's a point where he's like, yeah, I might not, I might not make it to the birth of my first child and they're like, oh, really like what, really Like what's going on. He's like I don't know, but like something might come up you know and I'll see what I'm doing that day.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:See if time allows oh my God. It's like you're the CEO man. I'm pretty sure you could be like I'm not going to do whatever you guys want me to do doesn't like, like she doesn't really like him, right?
Speaker 1:maybe she does, though, but so she doesn't care if he's around. Yeah, but, I don't know she's had multiple kids with him yeah I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's fascinating to me. I would love more information on their relationship. That did not seem to be something that uh is really witnessed by sarah um and her time around mark in general is like relatively limited compared to like other characters in the story.
Speaker 1:I want Priscilla to leave. Mark and let Hugh and Mackenzie Bezos do like a I'd read the heck out of that a podcast together or something. Yeah, I need Mackenzie Bezos.
Speaker 3:I mean, I'm sure that she's so legally tangled up that she can't, or Priscilla Chan is another Usha Vance, so maybe let's be careful, exactly yeah yeah, like she could be totally fine.
Speaker 2:That's actually the impression I got is that she's like chill with her life and maybe he's nice to her and she has a lot of money and she probably can do whatever she wants in her life.
Speaker 1:So we need to. What we need to learn from cheryl sandberg is like don't always expect the best out of women don't.
Speaker 2:There's not always positive intent.
Speaker 1:No don't assume positive intent. No, sorry, she's for priscilla chanda's free will. Yeah, yeah so fascinating, all right well uh, should we talk about books we've read recently? I'd love to love to.
Speaker 2:All right, do you want me to start? Yeah, you can start. Well, I'm continuing the streak where I'm going to recommend something you DNF'd but this time reverse but I talked about it a little last time what, what?
Speaker 2:I liked is it Heated Rivalry Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reed and it's sequel, the Long Game, genuinely loved it. I see everything you said because I did text you. Yeah, heated Rivalry Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reed and its sequel, the Long Game, genuinely loved it. I see everything you've said because I did text you, because I saw on Reddit someone said I want a book with like maximum yearning and someone recommended this and I texted you. I was like I know you DNF'd it. Someone said there's good yearning and I love yearning and all the reasons you gave me are valid. I think, um, so you have to be in the right mindset for it, because it is like what is marketed as an enemy so lovers is really like a friends to benefits with lovers, and I do think that's a pretty like. You have to be in the right mentality for that trope. But I really liked it.
Speaker 2:It follows two players in the NHL and they meet like as rookies when they're little teenagers. There's like a spark between them. Nothing happens. Over time they're marketed as like these bitter rivals who hate each other but like simultaneously they develop this like kind of complicated friends with benefits type relationship and eventually they fall in love. But it's like, hey, everyone thinks we hate each other. Also, it's complicated because one of them is from Russia and it's like I can't be like an openly gay man and then possibly lose my job and then have to go back to Russia where, like I could be in face of significant consequences, anyways. So it shows them over the course of like consequences Anyways. So it shows them over the course of like eight or nine years, like it's constantly jumping time you watch how their relationship develops. I really liked it.
Speaker 2:I even more liked the sequel, which I think is extremely rare for people to write a sequel to a romance novel Like. Normally those suck, in my opinion, because either they like invent some stupid conflict for the couple to go through doesn't make any sense, and you're like, do they even like each other anymore? This is dumb. Or it's like there's no plot here. This could, this, this just could have been an email, um. But I really like the sequel because it's a couple years later and they're now like, uh, in their late 20s and both doing different things in their hockey careers and they have to like kind of deal with like, hey, we've decided to keep our relationship a secret, but we could be still playing for like 10 years, and is that something we're willing to do for that amount of time or is there going to come a point where we're going to have to like just be honest about who we are? And that's a big decision to make for the reasons I've outlined.
Speaker 2:It also deals like one of the characters struggles with their mental health, but like in a way that I thought was really nice and relatable, and I think I think Rachel Reed of all the hockey romance authors which I've read a lot recently, she does a really good job of it feels the most realistic where you're not like, well, this would never happen. She kind of deals with like the negatives as well as the positives of what that might actually be like if it was real. So yeah, I really liked it.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry that you DNF'd it, but I do understand why you did and I'm just saying I really liked the love story between these two. They were very, I don't know, like nice and there was good yearning in my opinion and I just liked how they, I liked getting to see them grow and change over like many, many years. That is always something I enjoy and so, like it's probably close to a decade by the end of the sequel that you get to see, like how their lives change and their relationships change and how their lives turn out. So I give it two thumbs up. I'm glad that you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Colleen. Have you read something recently you'd like to share?
Speaker 3:I am in the middle of reading Cover Story by Celia Lasky and it is a queer romance set in LA and the protagonist is an extremely neurotic, unchill 30-something who lives on the East side of LA, which I can deeply relate to. But she the book is set in 2005 and she is a publicist and she specializes in helping clients stay in the closet and she is tasked with keeping, like the gayest of gay, new starlets coming up in the closet during her first big movie release and the two of them fall for each other and it is oh it's delightful. It's really well written. The main character is rounded out really well. It's not just like a fluffy rom-com. You feel a lot of like depths of her emotion and anxiety and I'm also learning a lot about what like the publicity world in Hollywood is like. I can't recommend it enough.
Speaker 2:Okay, I keep seeing this one on Kindle Unlimited and I was like is this good? I don't know. So now you've inspired me to read it in my efforts to read as much as possible on my Kindle Unlimited. One month trial, Yep.
Speaker 1:I am remembering that I think in 2022, I read another book by celia lasky so happy for you which is kind of like a horror like it. It's like about a wedding weekend that spirals out of control and there's like and I think I liked it pretty well, um so, colleen and I have already coordinated me me reading her book, what she's done with it um was that her debut?
Speaker 3:romance. So this is her third book, but it's her first romance book. She's kind of genre, hopped okay yeah.
Speaker 1:I think I got the book because I went to an event at Skylight and she was there with her book. So I am nearly done with the Wedding People by Alison Espach, espach, is it Espach or Espach? I'm so sorry, I don't know. This book is like super popular and trendy right now. I feel like I see it.
Speaker 1:I was like actually really wary to read it. Um, big content warning, uh, for suicidal ideation. Um, this is literary fiction and follows the main character, whose name is phoebe, who she's had a really tough go of it. After covid, her husband left her for one of their best couple friends. Like the wife and the best couple friends, her cat dies like she can't finish writing her book.
Speaker 1:All this stuff is happening and so she decides she's given up and she is going to book a vacation to this hotel that she's always really wanted to go to and she's going to kill herself. And when she gets there she's the only guest of the hotel who's not a part or a guest or um, in this big, huge, like million dollar wedding, um that's happening at this hotel in, uh, rhode island and um, it follows the week that she's at that hotel, uh her relationship that she forms with the bride and the groom and the other wedding guests, what she learns from the wedding guests, while also intersplicing these like flashbacks of the things that led her to this moment, the relationship with her husband, the moments of her career, and it's really well told. I really really am enjoying it and I think I was pleasantly surprised, like I just saw that it was heavily promoted everywhere. I was like, oh, okay, I think it's like in the Jenna Bush book club, like whatever. This is not a hot take, but it's really good actually, so recommend.
Speaker 3:Love it when a well-marketed book turns out to actually be good. Yeah, I know, true, it's it's hard these days.
Speaker 2:It's hard to know what's the truth, so yeah, obviously huge content warning though for like depression so if you're not in this place.
Speaker 1:Place to read that, maybe don't. She does a. There is an attempt in the book so take care and choose wisely. Yeah, thank you this is so fun, I know.
Speaker 2:Colleen, thank you for being on the show I feel like you really added a lot of yes, I agree thank you for having me.
Speaker 3:I hope I didn't ramble too much, but I really did not really enjoy this at all not at all perfect guess.
Speaker 1:This was really fun. Okay, you guys, we'll see you in two weeks. Bye, bye.