Latest / Mic Drop Comedy / Ann M. Martin _ Ronny Chieng Celebrate 40 Years of _The Baby-Sitters Club_ _ The Daily Show

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Ann M. Martin _ Ronny Chieng Celebrate 40 Years of _The Baby-Sitters Club_ _ The Daily Show · Mic Drop Comedy

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: so excited to meet you. 40th anniversary of the Babysitter's Club.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: 40 years! So everything about the books when they came out,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: when you wrote the first one, Christy Thomas, Christy's Great Idea,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: number one, Babysitter's Club number one. Everything about it was
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: like perfect. The way it was written, the story, the
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: issues addressed, the little cursive writing at the top of
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: the chapters. When you were making the book, when you
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: were putting it together, were you holding the first manuscript
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: and being like, I am going to be rich? Did
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: you know you had lightning in a bottle when you
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: were holding that first thing and you're piecing it together?
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: No, but my editors and publisher, we all thought that
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: it was very exciting. We had had fun working together.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: You all bought yachts. Immediately you bought boats. You were like,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: we can finance all of this. It's happening, guys.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: Well, there were going to be four books originally. That
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: was it. And then I think after the.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: After the fourth book was published, the books hit a
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: spot on what was then the Walden bestseller list. And
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: so Scholastic decided they would sign up two more books.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Right. And then the money just kept falling. And then
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: the money came. The money just started raining down. It
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: was ridiculous. Were you trying to fill a hole? in
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: the book industry at the time? Did you feel like
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: you were trying to make a book that wasn't made,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: or were you just trying to make as much money
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: as you could? Were you just like, let me just
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: kill the game right now. I'm gonna release four epic
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: books and just.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: No, but I wanted.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: To create stories about young women, mostly, who were very
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: strong and independent and worked well together, entrepreneurial.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: I don't think anybody, including me, knew.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Where it was all going to go, but it was
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: a lot of fun to create it.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Right, and so there was obviously books about girls and whatever,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: not to hop on the topic, but were you feeling
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: something was missing or was this book based on your life?
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I felt something was missing, but
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: I felt that I wanted to create stories that would
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: appeal to all kinds of readers. I wanted a diverse
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: group of friends, friends who worked.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: Well together but had fights.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: I wanted them to seem realistic, but I also wanted
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: any reader who came across the books to find themselves
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: represented somehow in the pages.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Right. You wanted to be woke. You were trying to
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: be woke.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: I was trying to be woke.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you were trying to be woke. And then it
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: was like... And when you were making this at the time,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: was there, like, some... Was there any backlash to this? Like,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: were people like, this woke crap needs to, you know,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: burn these books off our shelves, these babysitters? Uh, no. No,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: but no one pushed back on it. Because you had
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: some stuff in this stuff that was, I mean, back
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: in the day, controversial. You had a black person in it,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: which was frowned upon in the late 80s. You had
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: an Asian person who probably not much more of a
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: smile given to, you know. So you had all these.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: And one of the things in each of the books, which,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: by the way, you guys don't even know, okay? I
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: am such a huge fan of this book series. When
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: I was a kid, my sister would, when I was
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: four years old, my sister, who's three years older than me,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: she would read the books to me so that I would...
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: She would read it to me at night. She's holding
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: the super special We Love New York book. Oh, yeah.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: In case for those of you who don't know your
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: babysitter's club. You can tell by the back cover.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: My dad illustrated that book.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, your dad illustrated that one? Man, it was... Yeah,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: it was... She would read it to me, and because
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: it was at night, she would read it to me
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: at night, I would fall asleep to her reading it
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: to me. And she was so angry that I fell
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: asleep to it. She was like, I'm not going to
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: read it to you anymore because you keep falling asleep.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: So I just said, f * * * this, I'm
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: going to read it myself. So that's how I started reading.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I read all the books myself. Yeah, so... I learned
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: to read from all the Babysitter's Club books, so I
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: know all the ins and outs of all of these people.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that was in the books
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: at the time, these were essentially the first books I read,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: so I didn't know it was weird. But in the books,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: there was like, you know, Stacey had diabetes, Mallory got mono,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Marianne's father, like, Christie's father left her. Her biological father
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: left her, and they didn't really stay in touch. And
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: then Marianne's parents got divorced and then remarried, mixed families.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: And Claudia was bad at school, and Jessie was black.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: And there was all these real world issues in them
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: that you kind of, it wasn't even that you snuck in,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: you just put it in there. Like Stacey had diabetes,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: and it was like a huge thing In the story,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: everyone had to figure out what it was and learn
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: to manage it. So you were really addressing these real-world issues,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: which I don't know if any other book was doing
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: at the time.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure either. I think in the.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: When the series first began, it was just, it was
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: a little bit kinder, a little bit gentler.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: You mean the world or? Everything.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Right, the world, the real world. The real world.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: And I don't know that I necessarily felt like I
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: was filling a gap. I just wanted to write maybe
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: the kinds of books that I wished I could have
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: read when I was a kid. I mean, I was
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: an avid reader, and I liked fantasy. But I think
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: if there had been a book about a kid, a
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: shy kid, You know, I think I would have felt
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: a little bit more seen, and that's what I was
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: hoping that this diverse group of characters would do for
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: the readers.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Right. And you're saying you didn't... You weren't really trying
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: to address real-world issues. You were just trying to make
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: a story that everyone could relate to. But you addressed
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: the most real-world issues. Every book had a real-world issue, almost. So, like...
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Stop lying. I guess your background was like as a
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: child psychologist?
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: What?
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Was your background like in a... Were you like... Because
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: you were putting in stuff that I guess kids needed
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: to learn about.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: Right. I mean, I did study psychology in college and
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: I was a teacher for a year.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: This is an easy crowd. So that kind of informed. Anyway,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: I'm just trying to. say that you talked about real-world issues.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: I did talk about real-world issues. Yes. And when you
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: did do it, you were talking about the late 80s.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: And I feel like maybe I have nostalgia bias, but
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: I do feel that late 80s in America was, I
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: was lucky to be in America like 89 to 93.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: And then my family, we went back to, we were
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: like good immigrants. We came and then we left. We
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: were like, we're leaving now. We didn't take anyone's jobs.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: We didn't eat anyone's cats or dogs. We just threw
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: everything and we left. So I was there during this
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: 89 to 93 period. And it was like, I don't know,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: it was like the golden age of being a kid
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: in America almost because you had Ninja Turtles, you had Mr. Rogers,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: you had Sesame Street, you had 321 Contact, you had
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Lamb Chops Play Along, you had Barney, and you had
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Babysitter's Club. And it was... Yeah, and my point is
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: that the books kind of reflect that a little bit.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: There's this, I don't know, there's this kind of warm
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: feeling in it. I don't know whether that's my nostalgia bias,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: or do you feel with the benefit of your kind
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: of decades of hindsight? Was it better in the late 80s,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: or am I just.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it was actually better, but I
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: certainly wanted readers to to find something comforting in these
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: books at the same time that they were reading about
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: real life problems.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: And yeah. Yeah. And do you feel like that age
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: is lost now? All these kids seem so dumb now.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Do they even read? These dumb kids don't even read anymore.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: So are we beyond that period? Are these kids dumb now?
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: these stupid-ass kids who don't read? Are kids stupider now?
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's too much for you to say. How do
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: we get kids to read more? It's like a reverse cross-examination.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: I have to phrase it in a better way so
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: that you don't incriminate yourself. How do we get these
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: smart kids to read more?
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I think there are a lot
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: of different kinds of books being published now. When I
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: was growing up, there were There was fantasy, there was
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Roald Dahl, and there was Dr.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: Doolittle and that sort of thing, but there's.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: More real hardcore fantasy being published at the middle grade
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: level as well as young adult level, and I think
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: that's really appealing to kids. And I think graphic novels
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: are a great way to pull kids into reading other
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: kinds of.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: But I get.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Lots of letters from parents saying that their kids started
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: off reading the graphic novels and then went on to
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: read not only the original Babysitter's Club books but other
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: kinds of books as well.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Right. So you're saying the way to get kids to
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: read more is to make all these books into comics?
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: Well, I think you have to find something that pulls
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: kids in.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Right. But do you feel it's harder now? Is that
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: fair to say?
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't know, honestly. But I think that there
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: are certainly more distractions. There is social media. Kids are
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: on their phones.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: But I have.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: A project which is near and dear to my heart,
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: which is a not-for-profit organization called the Lisa Libraries that
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: I started. And it's to bring brand new books to
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: kids in underserved areas to kids in the foster care system.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: And I really think that the best way to get
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: kids reading is to get good books into their hands.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no duh. Yeah, we need good books. I mean,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: that's what I really, again, what I really love about
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: the Babysitter's Club, it was like lightning in a bottle.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know if anything captures that. It was like,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: there was these kids, they were babysitting, so they were
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: helping the community, but they were making money doing it.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: And then they were organized, and they all had different personalities.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: It's just something that, I don't know if anything has
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: ever been the equivalent for me. None of these raw, dull, dumb, dumbass,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: you know? ever hit that, so I don't know. I
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: just feel like it's, I don't know if anything is
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: like that anymore. I don't know if we can have
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: these books in present day is what I'm trying to say.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Like would you, could you have seen these books if
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: you had to, don't ever do this, but if you
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: had to reboot it, do not do this. But if
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: you had to reboot it, could you introduce these social
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: issues that we're facing now into these kind of books?
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: I think that people can find a way to do that, absolutely.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: You said people.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Could you do it? Because it's gotten worse now, I
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: feel like.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: It has, and I think it would be difficult, but necessary,
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: first of all. I think that, yeah, I don't know.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: I hadn't thought about writing about the kids now, but
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: I think it would be an important thing to do.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, I took the liberty of coming up with
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: some book ideas. Yes. So this is if the Babysitter's
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Club was rebooted to 2026. And then you just have to,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: you can elaborate, but you can also just give me
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: a thumbs down. So this is me pitching to you,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Scholastic editor, legendary Ann M.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: Munn.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Here's some books. So the first book I have is
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Stacy's Mom is MAGA. So... So the premise is after
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: her mom goes down a right-wing Twitter rabbit hole, Stacey
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: must learn how to deal with her mom's new political brainwashing.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Hashtag so cringe. Is this a.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: We don't need to hear about MAGA.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. No, you guys are cheering the wrong thing here.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: She's like, we need to address these issues. This is real. Okay,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: second book idea is COVID Claudia. So, Claudia gets blamed
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: for COVID pandemic and her real friends are unmasked. This
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: is- Too sad. Yeah, you think Mallory Pike getting mono
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: wasn't sad? That's sad too. Okay, you think Dawn moving
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: to California was not sad? That's also sad, okay? Sometimes
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the world is sad. And we need to deal with it. Okay,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: so this... Yes, no, for... It's too sad. What?
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: Because she's getting blamed for it.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, then you write the happy ending where everyone comes
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: together and be like, you know, we're not blaming Claudia
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: for COVID, yeah. Okay, all right. And then everyone stops
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Asian hate and then it pretends like they're not racist
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: in Connecticut and then we can, yeah. Maybe, that's a maybe.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: I got maybe on the COVID Claudia, okay. Okay, next
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: one is D.I. Jessie. So. So Jessie, guys, come on.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: These kids need to talk about these things. Jessie is
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: number one in her class, but is told she only
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: got into ballet school because she's black. OK, that's a.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: Thumbs up, because we'll address that. And yeah.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, so thumbs up on D.I. Jessie discussing, okay. Right.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Because she was like a world-class, on her way to
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: becoming a world-class ballerina in the stories. I know. I
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: actually read the books, you guys. I don't know what
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: you guys are doing. Okay, so that's a relevant issue
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: we should discuss. D.I. and who better than Jessie. Okay,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: this might be cut from the whole program depending on
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: your reaction.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: This is Christy Comes Out. So at softball practice, Christy
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: doesn't have her eye on the ball. She's got it
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: on something else. Obvious social issues to discuss in this. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I noticed you thumbs up every race except for Asians.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: You know, work on that. Maybe you should write a
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: little newsletter about that. Okay, last one, last one. This
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: is a little sister book. It's called Karen's Screen Time.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Karen develops a parasocial relationship with an AI chat bot
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: and her friends have to get her back to reality
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: before she fully disassociates. Um, I don't know. You don't know?
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: You're too kind for this world. You got to... That's
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: a thumbs up. That's a kick... Yeah, that's a thumbs up. Yeah.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: The people want it. The people want it. Give the
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: people what they want. I know you're beyond money now, but,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: you know... Okay, so as an actual fan of Babysitter's Club,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: I have the Tolkien of the Babysitter's Club in front
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: of me right now. I'd love to give us some,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: if you could give us some canonical endings, or at
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: least canonical answers to some of the questions I have
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: in this series. Unanswered, they're not even like loose plot holes,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: I just wondered what happened here.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, so first of all, why is Christy Thomas' dad
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: so rich? What does he do?
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know what he does, but I wanted Christie
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: to face some challenges in her life.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, so her dad is rich? Her stepdad is rich? Okay.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: The stepdad is rich.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: What a challenge, whoa.
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: That she had to move from her old neighborhood and
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: her old friends.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: To her mansion.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: To a mansion where her friends were not present.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Where her friends were not in her mansion? So sorry
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: for her. Her friends are around the block, yeah. So
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: no answer on what her dad does. Corporate raider, late 80s,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: probably Wall Street raider.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Corporate loyal raider. Okay, he's a raider? Okay, you heard
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: it here first. I kind of need you to say
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: it for the internet to make this canonical. So can
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: you say Christy Thomas' dad was a corporate raider?
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Christy Thomas' dad was a corporate raider.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, great. Okay, so Marianne and Logan, everyone's favorite couple.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: They broke up just before high school. Did they get
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: back together?
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: I don't believe they did. I think that was maybe
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: the end of it.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: That's the end of it?
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: I think maybe.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Right. Any reason why?
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: They were too young.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: They're too young, you know, but later, like when they.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: Okay, well.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: You know, they meet after college at a reunion and
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: then get it going in the car park.
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: Okay, they can do that.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: They can do that? Okay, so the canonical answer is
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: they met up at a reunion like 20 years later
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: and got it on in the car park. Yes.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: OK. Good. Good. OK. This was switching to the Babysitter's
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Club mystery series, which I don't know if you unread
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: villagers know. There was a mystery series of the Babysitter's
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Club where they discovered mystery. I feel like the kind
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: of unofficial spin-off was the Dawn's Ghost book. I feel
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: like even though that was in the main series, I
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: read that, and I felt like, oh, this is kind
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: of became like a, and that's what spawned the mystery thing?
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, cool, so I'm right.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Okay. By the way, in Dawn's Ghost, they discover like
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: a back passage, right? So Dawn thinks she has a
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: ghost because she hears these knocks at night because they
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: move into the stupid farmhouse that's like Richard Spear, Marianne's
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: dad's house, was it?
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: It was, no, they moved into Dawn's house.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, Dawn's, yeah, okay. So they moved into Dawn's house.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: And Dawn thought she had a ghost because it's like
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: an old Connecticut house. Yes, right. And then they find
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: out that there was a passage behind that was part
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: of the Underground Railroad.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: And you put that in a kid's book. Yes. I
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: didn't know what an underground, I had to find out
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: what an underground railroad was.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: Well, I think that's important.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, well. To find it out. In a kid's book. Sure. Okay. Yes.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Because I thought it was like a. And you don't like,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: you don't dance around it either. You say underground railroad.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: You don't go like, there was a place where, you know,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: it was like, underground railroad stop. First time I read it,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: I thought it was like a subway stop. Like, there
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: was an actual railway. I had to go find out
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: what that was. So thank you for that. Anyway, the
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: mystery series of books.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Lots of mysteries. There was real estate fraud. The babysitters discovered,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: uncovered lots of crime. Was Stony Brook, Connecticut a hotbed
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: of white collar crime?
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: It was?
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Oh my god. OK. Wow, as an adult reading it,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: it really puts a twist on it. So in Keep
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Out Claudia, number 56, where surprise, surprise, people are racist
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: to Claudia and Jesse, the family that was racist to
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: them was called the Lowells. What happened to this racist family?
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: I don't even really want to think about it. I
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: just was hoping that the... girls, the characters, would learn
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: some lessons about kindness and acceptance, that sort of thing.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: And I didn't even want to think about the Lowells anymore.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: About the racist family that caused so much division. They're
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: probably Secretary of Health right now. Yeah. The Lowells became
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: the Secretary of... Yes. Secretary of Labor. We'll give them
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Secretary of Labor. Secretary of Labor. Harmless, but important. Janine Kishi,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Claudia Kishi's older sister, was into computers. She was coding.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: She was pretty advanced with computers for her age at
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: that time in the late 80s. Her age and what
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: she was interested in in the late 80s, which was computers,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: makes me feel like she was primed to take advantage
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: of that 90s dot-com boom. So Claudia's older sister became
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: a Silicon Valley billionaire and then subsequently in 2026 became
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: a mega woman.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: She became a tech billionaire and used her money for.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: Good things.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Good things like stopping vaccines and influencing elections. So she
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: did become a billionaire?
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: Yes, she did.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Why did alternate officer Shannon Kilbourne only get one book?
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: She's like one of the most interesting characters. She was
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: super rich and she was an overachiever. And she only
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: got one book. So all these super rich, overachieving kids...
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Did not feel seen in this series. Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Why didn't you, you know, it was... I don't know.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: She was introduced too late in this series. I didn't
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: have a great affinity for her, I guess.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay. So you just don't care about these rich,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: overachieving kids. It's not very nice. And you were writing
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: all these books, and at any point were you like,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: these kids, I'm sick of this? It's a lot of books.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: There was like a ton of them. It was a
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: lot of books.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: They only aged one year in the 15 years that
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: the books came out.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: I got a little tired of that.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: So I was the one who suggested that it might
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: be time to bring the series to an end.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: You felt it. You felt it when you were... One
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: of my last questions here is like, Well, you can't answer.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: I was going to ask you, when did you know
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: it's the time to end it? But I also feel
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: like the ending was almost written, it was almost faded
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: from the first book, Chrissy's Good Idea, because of Chrissy
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Thomas's personality type. She was so kind of domineering and
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: so rule-based, almost to a, in some instances, almost like cult-like,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: I would say, because she would go after, remember when
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Stacey came back and, thought they were all immature, and
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: then Christy Thomas followed her around, organized people to follow
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: her around, to find out why was Stacey acting so weird,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: but really Stacey had just outgrown the rest of the
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Babysitter's Club. So like, do you feel like that personality
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: type of Christy Thomas was like, it was always fated
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: that she was gonna impose too much rules on the
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: rest of the gang and break up the club?
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: I don't know. You've thought about this way more than
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: I did.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: This? Lady, this is all I've thought about for 40
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: years now. This is all I remember from America. I
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: was reading. But yeah, it was sad. When you made them,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: the ending, the official ending was you had them get together,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: decide to end it, and they made a time capsule.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: And they put all this stuff inside. One of it
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: was a letter from Charlotte who wrote about what a
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: good person Stacey was and how much she affected her life.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: And she put the essay in there, and then there
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: was some other bullshit in the capsule. It's probably like
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: a Game Boy. It's probably like a wad of money.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: And then in the book, it says that we agreed
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: to meet again in 12 years. And obviously, that's where
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: the book ended. So in your head, in the last
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: 40 years, have you thought of what happened when they
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: met up 12 years later? And hopefully, what would happen
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: when they met up in 2026? But let's do with
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: the 12 years first.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, with the 12.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: OK.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: I think that they meet up. They are 12 years wiser.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: I think that they're still friends, but perhaps different kinds
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: of friends. I don't know how much they stayed in touch,
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: just because that's.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: What tends to happen.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: But I think that they all sort of fall back
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: into their roles and their friendships.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: As they had been 12 years earlier.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: And I think there's a musical coming out.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: There is.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like to break some news.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: Yes, yep.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: There's going to be a musical produced by TheatreWorks that's
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: coming out next year.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: Don't have any hard date yet.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: And it actually, or the last version of the script
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: that I read, it starts with the time capsule and
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: the characters coming together to, yeah.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: And then....
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Can you say, does it shift into a gritty reimagining
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: of Babysitter's Club? Euphoria? It becomes euphoria. Can you say
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: where it goes?
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: I don't know, honestly, at this point. The script is still,
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: I've only seen one version of it.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, but the musical picks up at the after lesson.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: As far as I know, it starts out with the
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: opening of the time capsule.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, when that musical comes out, I'm going to be
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: the first one in that theater.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: The songs are by Mark Sonnenblick of K-Pop Demon Hunters.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: So that's very exciting.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, great. No, I'm super excited for it. I could
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: talk to you forever. Everyone is getting annoyed at me
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: because I won't stop talking to you. But you're the best.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: I used to read your book. I used to see
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: your photo at the end of every book. This isn't
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the real one I read, but the actual books, your
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: photos at the last page of every book. So every
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: time I read the book, it'd be your face at
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: the end. And I get to see you in person.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: You're the best. Thanks for writing those books. Thanks for
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: being here. The Babysitter's Club fan edition, Babysitter Summer is
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: out now. Annemarne, everybody!