Shaun Squad Society
The Shaun Squad Society Podcast is a podcast written, produced and hosted by three women who want to keep the Magic of a Midnight Sky alive!
Cindy, Dorese and Dame became friends at a Shaun Cassidy concert and immediately decided to form "The Shaun Squad." Soon after, the Shaun Squad Society Podcast was conceived to discuss and reminisce about all-things Shaun Cassidy, from his first years as a teen idol to his current career as a writer and producer.
This podcast brings together a community of Shaun's devoted fans, the ones who played his albums non-stop, and who tuned into The Hardy Boys Mysteries every Sunday evening. And now, 46 years later, Shaun's story-telling tour has delighted fans again. So, join us for the stories, fun-facts, and fascinating interviews as we take you down memory lane with our Teen Dream, Shaun Cassidy.
Shaun Squad Society
Worldwide Crush: An Interview with author Kristin Nilsen
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Do you remember the flutter in your chest when you first scribbled your heart onto a piece of paper, addressed to a crush who felt worlds away? Kristin Nilsen, celebrated author and expert in the throes of young love, joins us on the Shaun Squad Society podcast to unravel the tender yet tumultuous emotions of adolescent infatuation. We trace the emotional voyage of Millie from Kristin's novel "Worldwide Crush," as she navigates through the labyrinth of seventh-grade relationships under the watchful eyes of her family, reminding us all too vividly of our own nostalgic journeys.
Gather around fellow GenXers and pop culture enthusiasts as we rekindle the innocent flames of our first celebrity crushes and share heartfelt tales that span generations. We delve into the charm of teen idols, reminiscing about the days when the mere sight of a poster could send us reeling with joy. Kristin's narrative honors the universal experience of adoration. She, along with hosts, Cindy, Dorese, and Dame, ponder the significance of these cherished memories. They talk about their role in shaping our identities, all while offering a peek into the intriguing, hidden tributes within.
Our episode wraps up with a salute to the magic of fandom and the joys of podcasting, as we recount the origins of Kristin's very own Pop Culture Preservation Society podcast. We highlight the importance of capturing and cherishing the cultural moments that define Generation X, ensuring they aren't lost to the sands of time. Kristin's journey from a book lover to an inspired writer serves as a beacon to all aspiring creatives, proving that beneath the layers of nostalgia lies the potential for new stories, connections, and a community eager to preserve the heartbeat of its past.
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Email us at shaunsquadsociety@gmail.com
Worldwide Crush
Speaker 1Attention listeners this episode contains spoiler alerts.
Speaker 2The story's song Worldwide Crush starts climbing the charts. He admits to the world that the song is actually about his real life desire to meet someone and fall in love, and he believes that the person for him is actually in the audience. And what this tells everybody is that they all have a shot. And Millie's like why couldn't it be me? That could be me I know I'm in seventh grade, but I don't know why couldn't it be me. And so this means that all she has to do is get to one of his concerts, and if she could do that, she could be his Worldwide Crush. So the question is how far will she go to make that happen? Turns out it's kind of a lot, and it involves whales.
Speaker 3And did you mean when you wrote that book? Did you mean to make us feel like we were one of them? In other words, you were all of us, and it's like you really did that in your writing.
Speaker 2Oh, okay, number one, I appreciate that so much. Number two, I don't think I did that on purpose. I think what I thought my job was was to just do it as authentically as I knew in my own heart, and then you just cross your fingers that other people had that same feeling in their heart too, or that they at least understand what you're saying, right? And so I think what you're saying is best Hello everybody, get down, get with it. Hello, everybody, get down get with it.
Speaker 1Hello everybody, get down, get looking at the moon. Welcome to the Sean Squad Society podcast with your host myself, cindy Doris Dana, where we invite you to share in our enthusiasm and reminisce about all things Sean Cassidy.
Speaker 4From his teen idol days to his recent adventures back on the road again.
Speaker 5Please join us for the stories and memories that connected us to those happy days that helped create the Sean Squad.
Speaker 1Society podcast. Kristin Nilsen is our special guest today. She has been a children's librarian, a bookseller, a perfume seller, a horse poop shoveler, a typist unenactual typewriter, to say the least, and a storyteller, a seventh grader and a mom to both humans and dogs.
Speaker 3But today she is a self-proclaimed pro crushologist who talks about Gen X and pop culture on the Pop Culture Preservation Society podcast. Thanks you guys.
Speaker 1Welcome, Kristin, to our podcast.
Speaker 2I'm so happy to be here with you.
Speaker 1Thank you, yes, and you wrote a book recently. I think this was really last year, right, I did.
Speaker 2July, the summer, so it's a little. My baby is seven months old now. My baby is seven months old, yes.
Speaker 4What's the name of your baby?
Speaker 2The name of my baby is Worldwide Crush, and it's actually a novel that's written for middle schoolers. But the funny thing that is happening I wrote it for kids but somehow adult women, particularly women in middle age, are finding this book and they're reading it and they're enjoying it as much as the kids are. And there's a nostalgia element to that, because the book is about a seventh grade girl who is on a quest to get tickets to the concert of her dreams. This concert is by her first crush and it turns out that what moms are identifying with is number one all the women who are trying to get tickets to Taylor Swift. Yes, all of them understand this.
Speaker 2But it's also sending them back in time, because it's a rare person who didn't fall in love for the very first time with a celebrity, whether it was somebody on TV or somebody on the radio. Those are the people we tend to fall in love with first, and so they read this book and they kind of tumble back in time and they remember what a sweet time that was for them. It sure was. I relate it to most of it.
Speaker 3Kristen, I watched you opening your book for the very first time the Box and you just started crying. I did yes, and then you said, oh, she's so cute. No, mel, she's so cute.
Speaker 2I love that the main character is on the cover and the cover I'm so, so happy with because I had a little bit of input on the cover, but only so far and it mattered to me so much that I pushed a little too much and pulled into the principal's office and they're like yeah, they're like, Kristen, you got to back off, this is not your call. We're going to let the professionals take care of this. But I was definitely afraid that they would put the wrong kind of crush on the cover because I'm writing about a girl and her boyfriend.
Speaker 2I'm writing about a girl and her crush and he's described in the book and I didn't want readers to see one thing on the cover. Read about on the inside.
Speaker 3They made you proud. You were so proud.
Speaker 2Yes, I needed it to be just right, and so I was getting really, really picky about the boy that they were choosing for the cover, and in the end they knocked her out of the cover.
Speaker 1Yeah, how'd you choose him?
Speaker 2So I needed him. I didn't want people to see his face because I needed him to be somewhat anonymous. The reader is going to bring their own feelings and they're going to make their own picture in their head, and it probably has the face of the person that they fell in love with. So I needed it to just be a kid who was very casual and cool, not flashy, not sparkly. He needs to be that kind of kid who would play an acoustic guitar and wear a bracelet.
Speaker 1Yeah, he's in a.
Speaker 2T-shirt and his hair is kind of floppy. He's wearing a white T-shirt Jeans. That fit him just perfectly. Right. He might just be sitting at a bonfire on the beach watching the beat guitar. Yes, that's what I needed this kid to be, because that's the kind of kid that I was falling in love with. I wasn't falling in love with the super overtly sexual shiny quaffed. That was not who I was. Some people were falling in love with that person, With the boy next door.
Speaker 2That's it I needed it to be the boy next door Because when you're little, when you're young, you need somebody who's very safe. Yes, when you're nine, 10 years old, you're not going for the smarmy guy. Generally you want the boy next door because that's very safe. He looks pretty safe.
Speaker 4They did it, they really did. And last night I read a lot of the book again and I went to bed and somehow in my dream I had a face on this kid, but it wasn't Sean's face, it wasn't.
Speaker 1Sean's face and I remember in my dream I was like I'm going to be a baby.
Speaker 4In my dream going, wow, you don't look anything like I expected you to, Rory, and I'm like who is this kid? But obviously it's some face I've seen somewhere in my life. I don't know.
Speaker 2And it just matched your feelings and the words came together. So Rory Calhoun is the name of the crush he's really. This entire story is culled from my own experience of falling in love with Sean Cassidy in 1977. So really, this boy, this crush, is Sean Cassidy. I mean, he's all of my crushes. I had had so many crushes but I pictured Sean Cassidy the whole time Me too the whole time.
Speaker 3That hair, that sweet face.
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 3Yes, the sweet face. And in your writing you are such a descriptive writer. You make me feel like I'm right there.
Speaker 2Yes, that's such a good news for me, and that's why you cried, daryse. That's why you cried, that's exactly why I cried.
Speaker 4We were talking earlier that I read when Milly finally got up on stage and she was never going to cry. She wasn't going to cry, she was going to do her big girl thing. And then I'm like, yeah, milly, what's with this crying? I'm with you, girlfriend, and I get to the part and I'm falling like a baby. I'm falling like a baby which is backstage in her little safe room that they put around, and I'm just like every emotion that I said when I was 14, 15 years old came out and I could feel Milly feeling all of what she was telling me, that she was feeling. I'm like, oh, stop, stop telling me.
Speaker 3And then, to top it off, her crush comes in there to console us. That end is what really gets you, and that's the part that made me cry. Oh, I'm so glad you guys.
Speaker 2This is such good news for me because it means it means that we had that you see me right, because I'm really putting myself on the page and because it made you cry. That means that you understand me and how I felt and my understanding, and that's so validating. That's validating for me as a writer, but it's validating for me as a woman, as a person, that you understand it.
Speaker 3We all went through that we all went through it, yeah, but the ending is all of us. And did you mean when you wrote that book? Did you mean to make us feel like we were one of them? In other words, you were all of us and it's like you really did that in your writing.
Speaker 2Oh, okay, number one, I appreciate that so much. Number two, I don't think I did that on purpose. I think what I thought my job was was to just do it as authentically as I knew in my own heart. And then you just cross your fingers that other people had that same feeling in their heart too, or that they at least understand what you're saying. And so I think what you're saying is that when I dug deep into my heart to explain what it was I was experiencing, you all experienced the same thing right alongside me.
Speaker 2And that's why, it resonates with you.
Speaker 3In school, in my big public school, I actually liked him more than the rest of the kids and when I couldn't afford to buy a poster, my friends would show it to me and haha, look what we have. And one time they put it down on the cement there at Playground and I reached down and then I kissed it. I remember kissing it it was just a pet because all I knew. But yeah, of course I kissed that and I thought you know what I am? The biggest fan there is of Sean Cassidy. And I really believed that or believed, I should say, past hints until I started actually getting to go to his shows. And then I realized Darice, cindy, they, they are as crazy about him as I was, or they were. Yeah, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2And that's almost you would. Logic would say that that would make you feel like, oh, I'm not the only one, or he's not meant for me, or he's not going to choose me. I'm the number one fan. But the truth is the opposite takes place. We rejoice in it because you have somebody to to share your joy with. It's like joy amplified, it's joy multiplied and for some reason in our, in our 10 year old brains, when you get together with a person who is also crushing on your crush, it's a place where you guys see eye to eye. It's like you bond over it instead of getting jealous of each other. It's not like actual relationships. You're like, no, we're the same, we like the same thing. I see you, you see me.
Speaker 3Let's be friends and you know what I heard in your. Well, we're not talking about just the podcast right now. We're talking about your book. But Sean Cassidy, when he did the podcast with you, that made him emotional. What you're talking about right now, yes, yes, he got.
Speaker 2he choked up for a moment and I and my heart just leaped into my throat to watch him get emotional over over that moment, because he's so recognized, he so acknowledges and honors what it is that we felt for him as an important part of our growing up. It's not about him. He's like this is not about me, this is about you. This is about you growing up and and the role that I played in it, and he takes that honor very seriously and it made him emotional. Yes, even even though people may not have you know, the people who liked him at 12 years old are now in their fifties and so, and so, 45 years later, that is still making him emotional.
Speaker 4And I was reading the book and a lot of times I read a few sections that I thought, millie, are you sure you're only in seventh grade because she she speaks so eloquently in her wisdom Her and Shawna, when she was writing her letter, did you catch that her best friend's name is Shawna?
Speaker 2We caught it. It is on purpose, yes, and it's also. Her name is Shawna Mendez, which is so. This is a nod to not just Sean Cassidy, but Sean Mendez.
Speaker 4Millie writes her first letter cause her grandma tells her why don't you write a letter and not crack me up, cause she didn't even know where to put a stamp on her letter. She said actually write a letter. And she did and Shawna had to explain to her. That's not even coming close to what you want to say, like the wisdom of these little seven graders. Was I that smart in seventh grade that she was eloquently able to explain to her friend that you want him to know what you want and you want him to feel it and rewrite that letter. And she convinces her to do it and she writes it in the way like I'm like that looks like a ninth or 10th grader. And then you have Rory himself and you don't get to hear him speak until almost ended the book. It's like are you sure this kid is not like 25?
Speaker 4Just maturity young age and able to console and able to talk and able to get this girl back to where she needed to be. And this is where I'm crying in the book. I'm like these people are killing me. They're not, so what is really?
Speaker 2happening. Those are. Those are such good observations and I think part of that comes from all of us had a savvier friend right. We may have felt unwieldy and out of our element and uncomfortable and never knowing what we're supposed to do, and that would be the main character, millie. But a lot of us had that savvier friend who just seemed more confident and seemed to know more stuff, and that's Shawna. So she's Shawna is like pulling Millie into adolescence very grudgingly, millie's kind of holding on to her childhood and Shawna's like come on, let's go, let's be teenagers. And Rory is supposed to be 15.
Speaker 2And I kind of get his wisdom from watching the new teen idols. We don't use that word anymore, we probably call them celebrity crushes or pop stars or whatever. They are forced to grow up very quickly. If you listen to and I don't say that in a bad way, I mean the things that they're having to deal with require them to make adult decisions. And if you listen to interviews of, like Taylor Swift or Olivia Rodrigo when they were young, young, young, you can tell they're grappling with big topics and they're having to have adult conversations with grown up men in suits in boardrooms and things like that. And she was like I don't think. So I'm going to trust my own inner wisdom and I'm going to do it this way, and I think the people who are blowing up so big right now the Taylor Swift and the Olivia Rodrigo's and the Harry Styles are really foraging their own path. They have to listen to their voice, and I think that voice has to be wise beyond its years in order for them to have the confidence to do that.
Speaker 4Well, I was. I was so touched, as I said, and then there was humorous. Oh, you know, grandma, she can't be called grandma. I love the whole thing, everything about her, and she just was such a good force and she was, yeah.
Speaker 2Cheryl. Cheryl needs to be called Cheryl because she thinks grandma is an overwork.
Speaker 4She's so in tune, in tune with Millie, in tune with little belly, she's like I got you, don't worry.
Speaker 2They were a cute family, and more so than there. It's a very much a family story. Yes, and that also I didn't. I didn't intend to write that. I thought I was writing a story about a crush, but it really ended up being both a family story and a story about mothers and daughters. Yeah, I got that too, sort of accidental. I came out with that at the I didn't. I finished the book and I was like hey, did I just write a book about mothers and daughters? But I did. And so mothers and daughters, including Cheryl and her daughter who is Millie's mom, and then you have Millie's mom and Millie and, like a lot of seventh graders with their moms, they're having trouble having a meeting of the minds and sometimes that's where Cheryl, the grandma, can come in, she can see it from a distance, she's not having to parent so hard anymore and she can come in and be like I see seventh grader.
Speaker 2I understand I've been through this a couple of times Millie.
Speaker 3She actually felt shame, but Millie felt bad too, dragging her whole family to California. And there she is and she even pictures her first crush walking the beach and she thinks it might be him and so it just touches her. And then when she wakes up that morning she looks out and she sees her parents actually cuddling together and they're drinking coffee and they're listening to the waves and she just loves that moment and I love how you make us feel like we want that for our family. You know that moment.
Speaker 2Oh, thank you. Yeah, isn't that interesting that this becomes that? Millie's story becomes about her family and how she feels bad about things she said and done to her family and then, when she sees them happy, that makes her happy. She has this very push me, pull you, like you guys are driving me crazy. I hate you so much. I'm so sorry I made you do this. I love you guys and that, basically, is seventh grade.
Speaker 3True.
Speaker 2Very true, and I think that it came about this way. To have this family story embedded in this seventh grader story is because seventh grade, one of the difficulties of being seventh grade, is that you cannot have a story just about a seventh grader. You can't have a life without the grownups in your life Teachers, your parents. You need the people who have credit cards.
Speaker 1It's a unit. It's a unit. You have to tell or you got nothing.
Speaker 2Everybody involved. Yes, you have no agency without a mom who gives you permission, who pays for the ticket, who drives you to the concert. Everybody else is making your decisions for you. If it was up to me in seventh grade, I wish I could be like I want to go see Sean Cassidy. All right, I'm buying my ticket now. I'll buy myself. I'm going to drive a car. There's no seventh grader on the planet who exists like that.
Speaker 3You're depending utterly and completely on these grownups around you, and so it seems disingenuous to write a book about a seventh grader that doesn't involve the grownups, and when she writes these letters to him they're touching too, but the one that actually goes with that day when she thinks she sees him. I just adored it's on page 201. Can I read a portion of that?
Speaker 2Oh, please, I love it.
Speaker 3Before I came here, I told myself that I was coming to feel you, not find you, because really, what are the chances of running into the world's most beloved celebrity while you're walking down the street, even if it's his street? Well, I assume they keep you locked up in an unmarked cars and secret tunnels and stuff like that, so that you don't have to pose for pictures and sign autographs all day long. Instead, I only needed to see where you lived, where you breathe, where you grew up. I wanted to see that for myself. I feel like I had a truly everlasting Rory Calhoun experience.
The Innocence of Teen Idol Crushes
Speaker 3But maybe finding you and feeling you are kind of the same thing. And when I say feeling you, I mean I literally feel like the air around me contains pieces of you or something. Oh, that sounds so weird. I'm not a weirdo, I promise. Please believe me, but this feeling like your heart is beating near me, it makes me look over my shoulder constantly, with a combination of hope and disbelief, kind of like hmm, thinking, are you there? And of course he's not there. But all at the same time it's not a bad feeling, it's awesome. I'm happy feeling pieces of you around me, even if I never set eyes on you. This feeling will make the trip completely worthwhile. Oh, I feel like you should have. That was good. I love that part of it.
Speaker 1I highlighted in your book about why do we cry about them, why are we crying about this whole experience and why do we even need a teen idol crush.
Speaker 2That's such a good question and I think I addressed it in the book by Millie. Just like you, dury, being disdainful of the people who would cry in his presence. She's just like. That's not smart. You guys, you're not pretty when you cry. You need to be a grown-up about this and be like hello.
Speaker 2But then when Push comes to shove, she dissolves into tears, and so I wanted to speak to that, because that has happened to me, where I have every intention of being a grown-up and then I'm not at all, and I've seen it happen over and over again and I think that, well, I'm trying to figure out. If I tell you the story of how it happened, okay, I'll get to that. I'll get to that in a minute. But the reason that it happens is very simple it's overwhelm.
Speaker 2You have so many feelings and they're so big that you short-circuit, and that is the very definition of being a tween and a teen, of being 12, 13, 14. All of this is we're having so many new experiences when we're that age and we're on the cusp of being a teenager and we're on the cusp of being sexual beings. We're not sexual beings yet, but we're on the cusp of it, and so much is new that it overwhelms us, and that's why people everyone wants to say that the reason that they have such big feelings is because of hormones. I kind of disagree with that. Biologically that might play a role, but I think, more importantly, they're just dealing with so much for the very first time and your cup just overflows.
Speaker 1You can only hold onto so much. I don't think you're thinking about them sexually either. I think you're just thinking about this human being that you just adore.
Speaker 3Not at all yes.
Speaker 1So I don't think hormones, like you said. I don't know if they're all the way there yet, but just somebody that you really click with.
Speaker 2That's one thing that has been difficult for people to understand in the book industry in particular, because a lot of I got a lot of rejection in the beginning because they said you cannot write about quote unquote romance for this age. They said you have to make the characters older. This has to be a young adult novel, not a middle grade novel. And I said to them they said would you be willing to age up your characters? And I said absolutely not, because when this phenomenon happens, we're not 15.
Speaker 2We're 10. We're doing this for the first time and it's completely innocent, and they didn't understand that. They thought that this was going to end with a 12-year-old making out with a 15-year-old. No, that is not what this is about.
Speaker 1That's all. Innocent affection is what Sean described it as yes.
Speaker 2Completely and utterly innocent, and a lot of the reviews, like once it did get published and the reviews came out, they would say things like this is a tribute to innocent fandom, innocent teenage feelings. Just like to take their adult knowledge and put that over the top of a child's experience. And that's why you have things like you know parents saying you can't watch this, you can't do right. You can't have that poster you can't have the poster.
Speaker 2You can't have that poster because they are thinking sexually it looks like they don't know that we're not thinking sexually at all. There's not even holding hands in this book. There's no consent. That's not what the experience was. It was really just looking at them.
Speaker 4I heard David Cassidy say years ago I heard a I don't remember where I was listening to something to watch or something, and it wasn't after he died, when they had that whole thing on our A&E or whatever channel. But they played an audio tape with David Cassidy at a radio station doing an interview and outside of that station it was freezing cold in there and the girls were standing around and they were crying and everything. And the DJ asked him why do you think they cry so hard for you? And David said because they're little and they have all these emotions like they're young. They're very young people with very young emotions and they have them all in their body all at one time and they don't know what to do. And it's just like he said, they are slowed into tears. They're young.
Speaker 1Let me read what's in the book, though, because I did highlight that. I highlighted about the crying, and it says she will cry because they all cry. She will cry because his words, his song will go straight into their heart and maybe, just maybe super slim chance, but still just maybe he will fall in love with her.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, everybody thinks there's a chance. Everybody thinks there's a chance.
Speaker 1We're still waiting, you know.
Speaker 2I'm 10 and he's 19, but it's still happening.
Speaker 3No, but at the end of your book you mentioned. You know she knew at the very end that she would not have her first crush that way. And so at that point she becomes like the rest of us and she looks around to find similarities in some of these other boys. And I was telling the girls I would always look for boys with the longer hair, the feathered hair, and that meant a lot it's like.
Speaker 2So this is like, it's a. That shonkacity experience was a learning experience for you, because you were starting to learn what you liked yes, right, not just in what they looked like, but what their personality was and stuff like that. And so we're trying this out for the first time on somebody that is very safe, who can never reject us. And then we learn from that information and we start to grow up and we might turn away from our celebrity crush and we might turn toward people who are actually like in our classes, like real, in the flesh people. And now you know that you like somebody with long sandy hair. You might like somebody who's a dog lover. You might like somebody who dresses very casually in, you know, a clean white t-shirt. You learn this is all a learning experience.
Speaker 1That was the second one I highlighted. It says crushes on celebrities are real and they are intense and they serve a purpose. They are an important step in learning how to be in love. It allows them to see who they are in a relationship and stand back and let them love these people until they are ready for something else. So you're learning who you want to love in life.
Speaker 3Yeah, true yeah.
Speaker 2That was a teacher. She goes to a workshop with her mom called Yumi and Community yes, I read that which is also embarrassing and cringy, but the teacher in the workshop is schooling the moms like calm down moms. This is a really important experience for them. That was funny too.
Speaker 1Yeah, I don't want to be there, though I don't think she did. No, oh my God, no with her mom.
Speaker 3Yeah, so embarrassing, but she loved watching her parents there. I wrote this down the family was sipping coffee and watching the seals, and how. I like the part how you said that even though Millie couldn't hear much noise, it was still as much fun as going to Disneyland. She felt like she was at the prettiest little place and it smelled like happiness.
Speaker 2Part of that comes from. We just and we'll talk about my podcast later, but we just did two very important episodes on Kramer versus Kramer, which really brought up a lot of things about divorce and I think it's kids relish their parents being in love. It makes them feel secure, that their family is intact and happy and no discord will ever come to their house and make them have to go to their dad's house on the weekend and things like that. So when you see your parents happy like that, it's like a rush of security.
Speaker 3She realized her parents needed it as much as she did. She may be wanting to be in the same area where she could breathe his air, but she could also see her parents in love and she needed it.
Speaker 2That's like an imprint for her, Like isn't that what I want to? I don't. I want to be happy and in love, like that too. That's the blueprint I'm working toward.
Nostalgic Reflections on Celebrity Crushes
Speaker 1That reminds me of a story where you talk about him. She wants to be in the same air as him. And I was in middle school and I was, like in Sean Cassidy, we had to go to Hawaii to see our family but we had to lay over in LA and I said, oh my gosh, Sean lives in LA. I have to go outside and grab a rock or breathe the air or something. So I grabbed a rock outside of the airport and I thought I'm here where Sean is right now, and that was overwhelming to me.
Speaker 2That's see, that's exactly what it is Like. You just feel like he could have stood in this exact spot. You don't know, yeah.
Speaker 1Another point your dedication is still there. That's another point to make too. We liked him back then. Why are we still so dedicated now?
Speaker 2So it's not even that you're trying to meet him or want anything from him. It's just being in his presence as much as you can is what makes you happy, and I think that's important for him to know too. You're like I don't want to know from you, I just want your talent and I want your presence. I want your aura, I want your heart, I want your humanity. But why do we still have this dedication? I have a very simple answer for that. I think it's because when we revisit our crush on Sean Cassidy, we are revisiting ourselves at the age in which we loved him and we, like those little girls, that was a happy time for us, right, we were innocent and the world was a good place, and we have these happy feelings, and so at this point in time, we get to spend time with that little person that we were and that feels true.
Speaker 3It's like with your book, where he brought her up there and it just made her almost. I mean, she did she fainted, she was just like this she overwhelmed, so that part went with your book and I was just like oh, that book brings all of us back together.
Speaker 2Yeah, it does, and that's why it's being read by so many people who are in middle age, because it's allowing them to go back in time and say hello to the little people.
Speaker 1And I love the concert part that I read, because back then I went to Sean's two concerts in Chicago in 78. And my mom was going to take me, no problem at all. But then it was the end of March and the snowstorm hit in Chicago, A major snowstorm which we never have at the end of March. We hardly ever had that happen. And I'm like, oh, I'm not going to be able to go see him. So I'm reading about Millie and she didn't get the tickets. Okay, that wasn't one problem. And then she gets to go and then something else happens. So I'm like that kind of brought me back to the day because I didn't think I was going to go. I'm like I have two shows to go to and there's a snowstorm. My mom will never say yes. So I was already in my head thinking I'm not going to be able to go. I was so upset.
Speaker 1And then my life is over, I'm not going to school anymore, I'm going to hide in my room and I'm done and all this. And then my mom talks to one of her friends who said I don't mind driving in a snowstorm, I'll take you guys. And I'm like what? Like her friend? I barely even knew her. She was going to take me to my special show that I need to be at. I need to be there.
Speaker 2That neighbor. Oh my, you need to write that person a letter right now.
Speaker 3Oh, yes, yes.
Speaker 2We're going to dig, we're going to find it. We're going to find that person.
Speaker 1I just know certain people in your life that are special. She was special, yes, because she she wrote me and my mom and my friend dropped us off in Chicago, which I'm sure was close to by where Doris was Wow, but I know Doris was unfortunately able to go to those concerts.
Speaker 4Yes, so those are the concerts in the seventies. That happened right after my grandma passed away and I didn't want to ask my mom.
Speaker 2But it worked out okay.
Speaker 4Don't feel bad. I missed the amphitheater, but I had friends in school that had my back and they brought me a shirt and told me all about it.
Speaker 2Oh, for now. And that is meaningful, isn't it Right? When, when those friends bring you something from from the concert, that is meaningful because it's like what you said, dame, this shirt was in the room where he was. Yeah, that's you Like. It has his being on it, his humanity, out of the air that he breathes, is on this shirt.
Speaker 4Well, I have a question about the book. But going back to the, the characters are names Millie and Billy. Every time I read it I think Millie Vanilly and I think Billy's name some sound like an English name to me.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's Wilhelm. His name is Wilhelm, but then his parents started calling him Billy, and Millie is like you did not, don't do that to me.
Speaker 1But you do name-draft in the book, though there's more names in there. Yes, okay.
Speaker 2So this is this is a little secret, and this is especially for people our age, because I wanted this book to sort of be a tribute to the first crush experience, the first celebrity crush experience for people of all ages, and so I hid the names of first crushes throughout history in the characters of the book, but I, I hide them, I I Change the spelling, I might put a first, there might be a name that rhymes, and so if you go to my website, which is Kristen nilson books calm you can see there's basically a key to all of these crushes that are hiding in the book and a little Biography of each one of them. It's not really I, it's not a journalistic biography, it is my personal. Take each and every one of those people, so you know you'll have something I'm like. Yeah, I didn't like.
Speaker 4No wonder, was that just me in my crazy head? Oh.
Speaker 2No, yeah, millie Vanilly. We see I was too old to be. How do I explain this? When I was in college, you would think people were attractive. So I definitely thought Millie Vanilly was incredibly attractive. But now I'm dating real boys, real men. So, I don't have crushes the same way. I only objectify them, which sounds really terrible, but I'm only identifying people as cute or not cute, and Millie Vanilly was. I think they were hot right and everybody thought they were hot. But I don't know that they were served up as teen idols.
Speaker 1No, they weren't stuff like that.
Speaker 4I don't think so, so that was just the my kid. Every time I read Millie, I'm million Billy.
Speaker 3What? When did you first want to write a book? How old were you when you?
Inspiration and Meeting Shaun Cassidy
Speaker 2first. Okay, this is interesting because everyone A very, very common question that I'll get is was this a lifelong dream of yours, to write this book? No, it wasn't, but it is a very full circle moment. So I am a librarian by trade, a children's librarian by trade. I'm a children's librarian and a children's bookseller by trade because I was a big reader when I was a child and I held on to those books. I continue to love those books and I wanted to tell other people about those books.
Speaker 2When you're a person who is into children's literature, everybody says to you oh, are you gonna write a book? And I was very indignant. No, of course I'm not gonna write a book. Reading is not the same as writing. Those are two very different things. But the truth is I was the writer. No matter where I, no matter what kind of job I had, I was the person they came to. I wouldn't even have called it my passion at that point. I think I would have called it the thing that I'm good at, because people would come to me for I have to write this really important email, I have to write a press release, I have to write a flyer. Kristen was the one you went to right.
Speaker 2So then, when Liam was born, when my son was born, and I was a stay-at-home parent and I was kind of going out of my mind in a lot of ways. And I now know in retrospect, it's because I was not working and I was having. I was really struggling with that. I didn't have a you know, as you said, it was a passion. I didn't have a thing that just belonged to me. I felt like a childcare worker, which is a horrible thing to say about your own child. You love your child deeply, but childcare is a different thing altogether. And I had a therapist who said here's what I want you to do. I want you to carry a notebook around with you and I want you to just, whenever you're having feelings, just write them down, right, right, right, right, right. And these turned into little mini essays and I started really expressing myself and ranting and making Observations and putting two and two together and I would go back in my history and I would say, oh, when I was a kid, I liked this and that's similar to what this is and let's examine that feeling. And Then I started a blog and that blog started to get some attention and people started asking me to write for their like online Magazines and things like that, and I was always writing essays like personal essays, very personal, about parenting or my child or the world.
Speaker 2And then I have a friend who is a young adult author and she and she wanted to get together with me to ask me a very important question. I'm like, oh, this sounds very serious, very ominous. What is this? And she said I want you to write a novel and I immediately said, but I don't write fiction. And she said do it anyway. And I Said, okay, that's what I wanted it to. That's what it really ended up being yeah, right, it's, there's so much of me on you the game and that's how I, that's how I learned how to do fiction. And so, because, basically, my friend ordered me to do this, it's like she unlocked something in me that I didn't know. I thank you to your friend and, yes, oh, her name is Annie, annie, annie. That's forever being dead into you. And Annie is actually in the dedication, the dedicated. The book is dedicated to Sean Cassidy, andy Gibb, all of the Bee Gees, justin Bieber, justin is all of the people that I love.
Speaker 1Yeah, and to my friend, annie, who said that a really Nelson song to all the people I've loved before it pretty much.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah and it's. It's a book also to all the boys I loved before. So it it's something that was there the whole time, that I didn't know was there the whole time. She recognized it and she pushed me to on.
Speaker 3That's why you for your title and we're all happy.
Speaker 1Yeah, worldwide crush. Now you have to tell us about your trip to New York. We're dying to find out what happened with New York, okay, so this is very, this is really, really important.
Speaker 2So I have this book called worldwide crush that is inspired by my first crush on Sean Cassidy. Sean Cassidy just happens to be having a concert in New York City and I'm like I Need him to know about this book. I need him. I just need him to be aware of the fact that he's played a role in the creation of something that kids are going to read forever more, and so we. He was aware of, he was aware of it, he knew about it. He's still not responding to me, that much, you know, because I would send him emails, I would send him DMs, and so I knew that he knew who I was and what this book was.
Speaker 2We go to the concert and we're and we get a text. When I say we, I'm talking about my podcast co-host, carolyn and Michelle and me. We're sitting at the table, we're getting ready for the Sean Cassidy concert. We're, you know, baited breath. We can't wait for him to come to the stage, and we get a text saying would you like to come upstairs and meet Sean Cassidy? And we Instantly turn into the three stooges.
Speaker 1Did you get the text from somebody I knew, or was this like a prank kind of thing?
Speaker 2It was a PR person that he must have. You know he passed.
Speaker 1Person like you thought well, I don't know this person, how do you know it's real?
Speaker 2We knew we had seen her name on things, so we were aware of her.
Speaker 4Yes, I really think it was Tracy.
Speaker 1Yes, it was.
Speaker 4The wife Tracy, it was his tour manager.
Speaker 1Yeah, we, we've met her.
Speaker 4Oh the tour manager.
Speaker 2That's who it was. It was a tour manager, yes. So we, the three stooges, get taken upstairs in this cranky old elevator and you know, it's like a million years old, and you don't even know if you're gonna make it to the top. And you get out and and we walk the the doors of the elevator Open and we walk out and there's Sean Cassidy standing at a piano doing vocal exercises. And you, it's a. It's a moment, because, after all of this work, after all of the delving that I've done into my soul to create this story and these characters Inspired by him, he was and you froze.
Speaker 2Well, you know, it's really interesting. I vowed to myself that if this happened in this moment in, with my book in hand, that I would just take a breath and be in the moment. Yes, I just kept telling myself slow, okay down, do not fall over yourself, don't cry, just be in the moment, don't cry, be in the moment and appreciate every moment. So I think I was a little dopey faced. I Did not cry, I, but I was dopey faced, like just staring at him a little bit, because I was trying to drink it in.
Speaker 2I'm like this is the moment drink it in and so I have my book and I asked him to sign my book for me and he very graciously does and he opens the book and he takes the pen and I say it's, it's Kristen, and I start to spell my name and he drops the pen and he looks at me and he goes.
Speaker 1He pays attention to things like that. He does yes.
Speaker 2That's right, he pays attention. And so that was the moment when I realized he's completely aware of my presence and he's completely aware of this book. He got his own copy of the book and I am just happy. I just needed him to have it. I signed his book, yes, and it's. You know. Who knows what happens to the book with? Whether it's in its house or whether it went in the garbage? I have no idea. I just needed to have that moment, yes, to honor what he did for me and the quote-unquote relationship that we had in 1977. It really was a dream.
Speaker 2And then this is the part that I've never said publicly before, but I'm gonna tell you guys, because I think you'll appreciate it Um, oh, my god, my husband is gonna die when I tell you this story. So we have this beautiful moment where I did succeed, because I had written Millie's experience, where she gets overwhelmed and she loses it and she's paralyzed. So I had this big knowledge, like don't miss out on this experience. And so I fully embraced the moment and I we had pictures taken and I remember, like standing there with my, I put my arm around him and I'm, and I'm, we're looking at the camera and I remember thinking in this moment like this is a man, this is a father, this is a husband, this is, this is a man who goes to soccer practice with his kids. I just I felt his whole humanity in that moment and that was part of me drinking in the moment, right. So I felt so successful in the way that I managed all of that. Yeah, it really did. It really did.
Speaker 2And so we say goodbye, we say break a leg, we go back down in the elevator and we find our seats in the audience and wait for him to begin. And I turn my phone over and there's a text and it says do you want to come up and have some sex? What? And for three quarters of a second I thought Shawn Cassidy wanted to have sex with me. And and you guys, my reaction this is not what everybody is assuming my reaction was no, no, no, that's not what this is. That's you've misinterpreted. You've misinterpreted what I feel. I realized again I don't know how it felt like three hours that I had that panic. It may have been less than one second. I realized that my, when I turned my phone over, it had opened an old text thread. Oh, it was your husband, from my husband yeah.
Speaker 2You're like wait, what is this? I'm a happily married woman. Yeah, that's your husband, oh my God. And I don't want him to be that person either. That was part of it Is that when I'm learning what it's like to be in love for the first time, I am not going for the bad boy, I am going for the, like you said, cindy, the boy next door. The boy next door does not proposition married women. Yeah, so you knew better. Right when his wife is at home taking care of the children.
Speaker 4Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2That's not the person that I fell in love with, so I was like no yeah.
Speaker 1You ruined it yeah.
Speaker 3I just want your signature, not your child, not your child, just your signature, just your signature picture.
Speaker 2So then, when I finally figured it out and I got all my feelings sorted out, I loved it.
Speaker 4So that's funny. I have a quick question Minus the part about the little escapade, the tris, didn't you write this whole encounter somewhere? I read everything you just said about getting the text, getting on the elevator, showing that the piano. I read it and I was telling Cindy I read it. That's why I knew what you were about to say. Oh God.
Speaker 1Yeah, it must be somewhere.
Reflection on Meeting Shaun Cassidy
Speaker 2It was on your side. So that's a good question. We certainly had. We had a podcast episode in which we did a reflection on the entire experience, so that's possible. Did I read it or did I write it in an Instagram post?
Speaker 4That's also a possibility, you wrote it somewhere because I didn't hear it. I read it and I remember reading it.
Speaker 2I think okay, so then it is definitely an Instagram post and if people want to see that, I'm at Kristen NielsenWriter and if you scroll through it's a picture of me growing up, me with my arm around a very human shoulder.
Speaker 1I remember having my arm around him too, like that, and I just felt like I'm like this is really him.
Speaker 2Yes, it's very, and it is validating that you had really good taste when you were a kid. Right Like this is a good person. This is who we all am.
Speaker 1He didn't go in a weird direction. He didn't drink and do drugs. This man stayed the course and was a family man and did his job and he just wanted to come back and say hi.
Speaker 4You guys went there with absolutely no intent of meeting Shawn. He hadn't discussed it with you. There was no email. There was no, no we were.
Speaker 2I certainly tried. We certainly tried. We let him know that we would be there. I let him know that I would really like him, I would like to give him a copy of my book, and so there. So there was a little bit of back and forth there, but you had a podcast with him.
Speaker 1He was on your podcast. That was before.
Speaker 2Is that after?
Speaker 1Oh, that was before. Yeah, you're right. That's right he was on your podcast. That's right it was before.
Speaker 2So we had actually spoken with him. So it was as if we had established a relationship of some kind. So we had been vetted, really, that we weren't going to climb all over and we were going to climb them like a tree, yeah, and and. But there there's still that little girl in you who doesn't want to make assumptions, right? So we've spoken with him. He knows about my book, but we can't walk into the concert making an assumption that we're in right, because we're still little girls and, and we have to be happy with that.
Speaker 2We have to be happy with what we've got, and he might be too busy. Maybe he doesn't want to talk to us. Every he has every right to not want to, you know, talk with these girls who are in love with him when he was 12. And so when it did happen, it was, it was very validating for so many reasons, and one of them being that it was sort of like he's like you guys are okay, yes, yes.
Speaker 4And that's when I got out of it. Yeah, you knew you had your podcast episode. You knew he knew who you are. It's all been established and you didn't go there expecting anything and just for that to come to you. That's the most that's. I was like why?
Speaker 1But I think for us, you know, knowing that he was on your podcast, we're like well, heck, yeah, he's going to go talk to him and meet him and stuff, but we didn't know that that wasn't even planned. This just happened when you got there.
Speaker 2That's right. That's right. It was not planned.
Speaker 2We were just like we're not going to be there because of course it's it's dependent on how he's feeling, yes, right, and we thought, if it did happen we certainly didn't think it would be before the concert he's getting ready to go on stage. We thought maybe he would invite people up after the concert, and so that's what we were hoping for, right, but we hadn't gotten any kind of confirmation like that. So we're like you know what? We're here to enjoy the show. We're just here to enjoy the show and everything. Anything else is great, it's still worth it.
Speaker 1And to mention too, we do attend the concert with you guys in Chicago.
Speaker 2That's right. That was the first concert that we, the first official concert on his tour that we went to as a podcast.
Speaker 3Oh yeah, you're passing out stuff.
Speaker 2Yes, Because prior to that I had gone to that little show at a winery in Santa Barbara prior to the pandemic, when he was just like you know, what do people care, Do people want to hear this? And I saw that Facebook post in Minnesota and I was like I'm going to get on a plane. I got to go.
Speaker 1I got to go.
Speaker 2California, no question.
Speaker 1Yes.
Speaker 2And so at that time there was no tour. There was no. He had not performed at all in over 40 years, and so it was really an experiment to see if people care. I'm so, I feel so lucky that I acted on that very impulsive decision to fly to this winery in Santa Barbara, because I saw him in a room with like 50 to 100 people. It was a small, it means it was just teeny, weeny, it was a very small venue.
Speaker 2It was so great. Yeah, he really thrives in that atmosphere and it was so personal and there were family members there and man the love in that room. It was really, really great. And you got the feeling that he was so surprised that we showed up. Yeah, he showed up, man a lot to him, Even though it's yeah, mm.
Speaker 4Hmm. Well, speaking of us meeting you at the podcast, let's talk about the pop culture preservation society podcast. Man, we thought you guys were rock stars. We come outside we met Kristen, michelle and Carolyn at the city winery, chicago, and it was right after the Sean Cassidy show, and Cindy and I and we all walk outside and we're walking down the street and we're like hey, and we go over and we're thinking, oh my gosh, these girls, these women have this great thing and we were so enamored by it's not the word, that is so nice of you.
Nostalgia and Gen X Podcasting
Speaker 2We loved meeting you that night. It was. That was a great time to um again be in the same room with people who had the same feelings that you had, at the same time that you had them when you were a child and we had just started this podcast. Like Dori said, the pop culture preservation society, which is really about um celebrating and elevating all of these little Gen X pop culture moments. If you were born between the years of 1965 and 1980, we all kind of watched the same shows, we listened to the same music, we went to the same movies, we played the same games and we just sort of realized that those things were getting kind of shoved off to the side a little bit in favor of. You know, some other generations were a little noisier than Gen X was, and my son didn't even know, yeah, technology and everything.
Speaker 2My son didn't even know what Brady Bunch was, and that scared the bejesus out of me that he didn't know who Marsha Brady was. Wow. And so we start this podcast for that purpose. But Sean Cassidy is a part of that origin story because when I went to that winery to see Sean Cassidy, carolyn, one of my co-hosts, was like I need to go with you. I'm getting on a plane with you. I know this is crazy, but we have to do this together. And so we shared that experience together.
Speaker 2And our other co-host, michelle, had just joined the writing group that Carolyn and I were in and she didn't really know us yet, but she's watching us from afar and she has FOMO like crazy and she's like how do I get to go with them too? And so she's really just she's texting us the whole time because she wants so badly to be a part of it. When we get home, michelle gets a job to write an article for our ARP magazine about fangirling after 50. And she immediately thinks of Carolyn and I getting on that airplane to go see Sean Cassidy and we have a conversation. She interviews us for this article and we have this conversation that was like two and a half hours long and at the end of it Carolyn says this should be a podcast. And here we are, 160 episodes later, having talked about everything from Sean Cassidy to land of the loss, to Battle of the Network stars and Kramer versus Kramer and after school specials and we are having the time of our lives.
Speaker 2We taught ourselves, just like you guys did. We taught ourselves how to do a podcast.
Speaker 1We didn't know what a podcast was Right a lot of learning, A lot of learning involved. It's a good idea.
Speaker 2A lot of learning and we are women in midlife and it was just sort of the ultimate expression of it really gets better as you get older. Do not be afraid of turning 50, because 50 is when you start doing exactly what you want to do. You have more bandwidth, you have more time, you have your, you're probably solid in your job, you're not climbing the ladder in the same way that you were previously and you can start looking in your heart a little bit more and doing some really interesting things.
Speaker 1Maybe your kids are gone and they're doing their own thing, and that's right. You get a happy this is it Kristen?
Speaker 3I read somewhere that you said that you started this during the pandemic and we were pretty miserable during that time, but it was because you wanted to make other people feel better.
Speaker 2The timing was so impeccable because we were everyone was struggling during the pandemic and we we started meeting in the pandemic and then things shut down tremendously and we were like, uh-oh, is this over? Before we've begun? We decided to keep going. That's how we learned how to record remotely, and it turned out to be exactly what people needed in that moment in time, because what people didn't realize there was sort of like a dirty little secret in their houses is that a full 50% of people in the pandemic admitted to consuming the pop culture of their childhood during the pandemic in order to sort of soothe their hearts.
Speaker 2They were so anxious about so much that they start watching the Brady Bunch every night.
Speaker 4I bought a record player so that I could play my records. I did it. I became that person, I turned on all the old rerun channels and started watching any and everything from the seventies and yes.
Speaker 2I was because we wanted to forget about what was going on outside our door. We wanted to just sort of cocoon ourselves in something that was light and fluffy and reminded us of a time when we didn't have any worries. It's not that it was necessarily. Yeah, Sean was prevalent on his page at that point too.
Speaker 2That's right. He was becoming more active because he too was in his house. And here we are Right. So it's it's. The podcast has become our full time job. Somehow I managed to be a full time podcaster and a full time writer, and I don't know how I'm doing any of that, but when you love something, you just make it happen. Exactly Right.
Speaker 4We really appreciate the support that Kristen, carolyn and Michelle give us, because we are so welcome.
Speaker 2We're so proud of you.
Speaker 4We took this thing, and I have to go credit where credit is due.
Speaker 1Penny was like one of the first people to even bring it up Instead of a Facebook page we wanted to do a podcast and actually girls love to talk, right, so girls love stories and we want to bring it out as a story and go through everything in history and some of us know, you know a lot, but some of some things we don't. So we're learning as we're going.
Speaker 2But here we are and we're doing it, because if you set your mind to something, you can do it.
Speaker 4You can. Ladies have made women over 50 with podcasting a real thing. And yeah, let's do it Right.
Speaker 2There's so much out there and it's not ever been approached in this way before. So I think it's really important. And it's interesting because we can now look at it with a little bit of through the lens of history. We have more information that we can apply to it. If you had done this 10 years ago, you might not have the same perspective.
Speaker 4I listened to as many as your podcast as I can. I just listened to your Kramer versus Kramer podcast and that one touched me and I think it may be cause I have come from a different family or whatever. But I was like, wow, I didn't realize so many people saw that movie in the theater, isn't that interesting.
Speaker 2Children, so many children. That episode. I'm really, really proud of it and I knew that it would make a splash because it's unusually serious for us. We have a lot of fun on this podcast, but we don't shy away from the serious topics. And Kramer versus Kramer really sort of illuminated how many of us Gen Xers were affected by divorce at a time when nobody knew how to do it. Our parents didn't know what to do, they didn't know that there was a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it, and we were just the canaries in the coal mine, yeah.
Speaker 1My parents divorced when I was 10. So when this movie came out I was like, wow, they're really talking about this, Like this is a thing so many 10 year olds.
Speaker 2I cannot tell you how many people's parents divorced when they were 10. Yeah, what is that?
Speaker 3What is that? My parents had to get married.
Speaker 2They had to get married.
Speaker 3They were like okay, we can't do this anymore. It's my dad ended up on the couch and he's like, uh, this isn't happening, we're getting married, yeah 10 years. Yes, I was 10 years old when they first started going to church, yes, and my dad was kicked out to the couch. Dory's, your dad gets kicked out. He's like no, we're getting married. Oh, my God Turns on a dime.
Speaker 2So it was opposite mine, yeah, but it's really an interesting phenomenon. I'm not sure that Gen Xers ever acknowledged the role that they played in divorce culture. Should I call it divorce culture? But really, 50% of us. True, that's right. In the summer of 2025 will be the sequel to Worldwide Crush.
Speaker 4Have you put Worldwide Crush on audio? Yet? I know you were reading the book. You said you couldn't have anyone else be Millie's voice by you.
Speaker 2It is in production right now. I read, I did the audio for it. I did not want to have them hire an actor. I felt very strongly about that. It was going to be me reading it and the experience of reading it was really quite profound, because there are moments where I start to cry, and so I had to do a couple of test runs and I would send it to people and say have you ever heard an audio book where the reader is crying? Is that okay? And so far, everybody has said you know putting emotion into it. It makes it feel very real.
Speaker 2Yeah, so it's staying. The crying is staying. I mean, I'm not blubbering, but I'm, you know, I'm trying. I'm trying to get through a sentence and I'm choking up and you can hear that I'm struggling.
Speaker 2Yeah Well, I'll tell you a secret. I wrote the ending of World Wide Crush for singing, and then I had to figure out how to get them there, and I can't wait. Thank you for being on here today, kristen. I had a ball. You guys, this is a lot of fun. I was so happy to be here with you. I'm so proud of you guys. You're doing such a good job and I was just super eager to be here with you.
Speaker 1To get your copy of Kristen's book World Wide Crush, go to Pop Culture Preservation Society's website and click on Kristen's book. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you from the bottom of our Teen Dream Hearts.
Speaker 5Keep on crushing, I always believe in magic and have a peaceful shantastic week, and don't forget to follow us on Facebook Instagram thread and subscribe to our new YouTube page.
Speaker 4Make sure to keep in touch with us at our email SeanSquadSociety at gmailcom.
Speaker 1The SeanSquad Society podcast, including past, present and future versions, and its contents are owned and controlled by the SeanSquad Society. The podcast is written, produced and recorded at the Board and Studios, and the views and opinions are solely those of the SeanSquad Society podcast. We may think we are always right, but we may get things wrong from time to time, so we assume no responsibility for errors of submission of content.