This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hello and welcome to The Drama Book Show.

[0:21] David Rigano: My name is David Rigano.

[0:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: My name is Mark-Eugene Garcia.

[0:24] David Rigano: And this is season three of The Drama Book Show.

[0:26] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Welcome to season three.

[0:28] David Rigano: We did it.

[0:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We made two full seasons and we're on to our third.

[0:32] David Rigano: Yeah.

[0:33] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And we're starting off with the future of our show, talking a little bit about the future, maybe.

[0:39] David Rigano: Our future.

[0:40] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Possibly your future.

[0:41] David Rigano: Everyone's future.

[0:44] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, we're talking about the Hirschfeld Broadway Tarot Deck.

[0:49] David Rigano: And guidebook by Emily McGill.

[0:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We had Emily in, and not only did she talk about the creation of this, but also did a reading for one of our staff members for Sloth.

[1:00] David Rigano: And yeah, she had Sloth come up and they did a reading.

[1:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And then she did a group reading for the whole store, which I guess you can participate in when you're listening.

[1:13] David Rigano: I don't know how that works with tarot.

[1:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: If you're listening to it later, if you can still put any credence into it, but for the fun of it.

[1:15] David Rigano: For the fun of it and for the connection to the universe, I think that definitely you should take part.

[1:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And we she, I'm not gonna I don't want to give anything away, but she was like, so does this card speak to you? And it because I was interviewing.

[1:34] David Rigano: She was like, does this card speak? I was like, I don't know.

[1:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So has there been any blah blah? I was like, oh man.

[1:40] David Rigano: It's so interesting because I grew up in that world that my aunt had a new age bookstore.

[1:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I, as a kid, I would go back and forth between houses, but when I was at my dad's house, he had an office for his business, an air conditioning cleaning business in that same building, and so I spent a lot of time in that bookstore and learning to read really in there.

[2:01] David Rigano: Like when I was a kid, I used to try to if I would get in trouble, I would go to my room and try to astral project back to the front yard so I can go play somewhere.

[2:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So I grew up in that world. Didn't do that great, but it was a good try for a seven-year-old.

[2:15] David Rigano: But I grew up in that world, so this was always intriguing to me.

[2:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And when I saw these first appear here, I was like, this is awesome.

[2:23] David Rigano: Yeah, it's so gorgeous.

[2:25] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's so much fun.

[2:26] David Rigano: Yeah, we used to have these psychic fairs too, and I would get like read, not to filth, but just read.

[2:33] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it was always interesting to feel that connection to something beyond who you are.

[2:40] David Rigano: I think we all have our connection with the universe in different ways and different.

[2:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We talked about that a little with God Sex and Musical Theater.

[2:46] David Rigano: But this is just another way to connect to the universe, the theatrical universe, all of the universes.

[2:52] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[2:53] David Rigano: And over the pandemic, our friend Jody Smith Harper would get on Instagram live and do tarot readings.

[3:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Interesting.

[3:03] David Rigano: Yeah.

[3:04] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And so I got I got on a few of those and I asked some questions.

[3:09] David Rigano: Um and she would just be like, put your questions in the comments.

[3:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I love that.

[3:14] David Rigano: She would do a live, and then she would talk to, and I never fully I never learned like the deck.

[3:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Right.

[3:23] David Rigano: So like I would never the seven of cups, you say that it means nothing to me.

[3:27] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But it was fun, you know, when you have the reading and someone then says, This is what, or they say, okay, what I'm seeing it in this is this.

[3:36] David Rigano: Do you and then they ask you a question, and you're like there was once in my life where I almost became a tarot card reader professionally.

[3:44] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Really?

[3:44] David Rigano: Professionally.

[3:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Professionally.

[3:46] David Rigano: It was one of those like there's always those choices where your life could have gone one way or something.

[3:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Sliding doors.

[3:51] David Rigano: Yeah, exactly.

[3:52] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So I had just you could have blonde hair right now.

[3:55] David Rigano: I could, right?

[3:56] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Instead of I could.

[3:57] David Rigano: I did.

[3:58] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We need to know which is the Liz with glasses and which is the Elizabeth without glasses.

[4:02] David Rigano: Truly.

[4:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We'll have to ask Milanovich.

[4:04] David Rigano: Yeah.

[4:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So I was looking for a new job, and Backstage back then was Backstage West, because I was in California.

[4:11] David Rigano: And they had like job listings as well as listings for acting.

[4:16] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh, sure.

[4:16] David Rigano: Yeah.

[4:16] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And one of them was for the phone phone psychics.

[4:22] David Rigano: And I was like, you know what? I do need a job.

[4:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And so I called them up and they were like, we will teach you how to read tarot decks if you can if you can do this phone psychic service.

[4:32] David Rigano: And I was like, totally, that's I can totally try that.

[4:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: The same day I did that was the same day I auditioned for Disney.

[4:39] David Rigano: And I got the Disney gig.

[4:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But I was so close.

[4:42] David Rigano: Like I bought a tarot deck from Barnes and Noble like that day.

[4:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Before I went to my audition for Disney.

[4:48] David Rigano: And so had I not made it, I could then tell you your future for 800, hopefully.

[4:56] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Number.

[4:57] David Rigano: Yeah.

[4:59] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Not mine.

[5:00] David Rigano: Not yours.

[5:01] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Who knows?

[5:02] David Rigano: But who knows who was listening?

[5:04] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Maybe one of our listeners was like, oh could have I could have been advised.

[5:08] David Rigano: Yeah.

[5:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But it was not to be.

[5:11] David Rigano: And luckily I got to experience tarot decks here.

[5:13] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[5:14] David Rigano: So since you never officially learned, I have had my tarot read a couple times, but I've never learned.

[5:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We should hear it from Emily.

[5:22] David Rigano: I think so.

[5:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: What her what the whole process is.

[5:24] David Rigano: Let's do that.

[5:26] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Thanks for being here.

[5:29] Emily McGill: Hello. Thank you for coming and bringing your exciting tarot deck.

[5:33] David Rigano: Thanks for having me, David.

[5:35] Emily McGill: To the Drama Book Shop. What I wanted to know first was where did your interest in tarot start?

[5:36] David Rigano: Where did your interest in Broadway start?

[5:43] Emily McGill: And then where did the intersection happen?

[5:45] For sure. So uh lifelong theater kid grew up in Pittsburgh, Yen's North, and started taking dance classes when I was three, began voice lessons and acting when I was like 12, and then it was the bug bit. I was like super hooked. Moved to New York to work on Broadway. That was literally the only thing that I cared about. And so found a role in PR offices. I interned a lot when I first got here. Company managers, general managers, producers, worked with Valerie Harper on Looped, her Broadway show where she played Tallulah Bankhead. I was like her social media manager and content manager before that was it was like 2010. So there that didn't exist yet. But yeah, so had this great experience.

And when I was actually working on A Raisin in the Sun shortly after A Raisin in the Sun closed, my grandmother passed away, and that sent me to therapy for the first time, which thank goodness it did. And my therapist is actually who introduced me to tarot cards. She would have me pull a card during a session if I like didn't know what to do or had a question about something or was like confused. She was like, let's pull a card, see what they say. That was like my introduction to tarot. And then during COVID, we had so much time to slow down and reconsider things, and that's when I got inspired to go back to school. But I also at that time, really felt like I wanted a Broadway themed tarot deck.

[7:05] Yeah. It was totally selfish. I didn't see anything on the market that like fit the niche for me in a way that I really wanted it to. And so I started playing around. I worked with a dramaturg, Jenna Clark Embry, who's now at Lincoln Center Theater, and we just played. We were like, oh, what about this archetype in this tarot card? Do we see in like characters and shows that we love? And so we started like playing around with casting. And then it fell by the wayside for a while. And I was approached by Running Press, which is an imprint of Hachette in the winter of 2023. And they were like, where's this project going? What do you got going on here? Ended up connecting with the Al Hirschfeld Foundation through Julie Boardman at the Museum of Broadway because they opened the museum with a Hirschfeld exhibit.

And nobody's more ubiquitous with Broadway imagery than Hirschfeld, right? Like 75 years drawing for the New York Times, the New Yorker, New York magazine, movie posters, record covers, you know, true for everything. And so I connected with David Leopold at the Hirschfeld Foundation, and he was like, this is insane. Let's have a conversation. And he was like smitten with the idea. So we started having casting sessions at the Algonquin Hotel. We sat in the lobby.

[8:25] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Um, because at the round table?

[8:29] Emily McGill: We were feet from the round table. I have actually had the opportunity to read these tarot cards at the round table. We did a really awesome press event. Keith Sherman and Associates helped put it together with us last fall when the deck was first released, and it was so much fun. We had it was like a little bit of like a seance vibe. We had the original typewriter that they like wrote their missives on at lunch from the round table, was there with Dorothy Parker. What do you have to say to be? I mean, we had a gin martini on the table for Dorothy Conker. I lit a candle. I was like, please come be with us right now while we're doing this. Tonight is the kind of night where you want to come into the dark story night get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.

[9:10] David Rigano: Absolutely.

[9:11] Emily McGill: Yeah, she was just the best. So we had this great event, and but we cast the deck sitting in that lobby. And there's so many archetypes that we see in the theater, right? They exist in the tarot too. Curious, how many of us have experience with tarot cards?

[9:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Amazing.

[9:29] Emily McGill: Oh, I love it.

[9:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Fantastic.

[9:31] Emily McGill: You and me are the ones who are like, great.

[9:33] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No, no.

[9:33] Emily McGill: So Crash Course. Right?

[9:35] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[9:36] Emily McGill: Crash Course. Two parts of the tarot deck. We have our major arcana and our minor arcana. Arcana just means part. Uh-huh. Our major arcana are like our magic cards. So when we use when we see those, we pay special attention to them. There are 22 of them, and they correspond to the hero's journey. So we start with the fool, the zero, the numberless number, and that's the character that goes on that hero's journey. I really wanted Pippin to be the fool because I was like, hello, nothing is more aligned than that. But we found that when we looked at the drawing that Michelle Hirschwell had done, Pippin is actually on his knees, which doesn't really evoke the essence of starting a journey, and away we go.

We're off to see the wizards. We actually thought about using Dorothy. We looked at both The Wizard of Oz and The Wiz for that. And like we were like, okay, it's gonna be Dorothy. And then towards the end of the process, this deck is based on the Ryder Waite Smith Tarot, which is the most sort of famous tarot deck. The majority of contemporary tarot decks are based on that. It was created in, I think it was 1909 by Pamela Coleman Smith, did all of the drawings. Arthur Waite was the one who asked her to do that, but she was the one that like brought the essence of these cards to life through the imagery.

[10:56] David Rigano: And the fool has this like knapsack, right? It's like the kerchief tied around the stick over his shoulder.

[11:02] Emily McGill: And for some reason, I looked at Candide. I was just about and I was like, oh my god, he's holding the knapsack. So it in some ways, some of the cards told us what they would be. Like it was like it channeled through.

[11:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That's my favorite musical. So as soon as you said knapsack, I was like, Candide goes on his little journey with it.

[11:23] Emily McGill: Yeah, and it's so true, right? Like it's still we see the hero's journey in Candide's experience. So we had this like amazing time sitting at the Algonquin casting, and the way that the archetypes intersect, sort of Venn diagram with the theater and the tarot was really fun to play with.

[11:42] David Rigano: So the easiest way I think to look at it is if I'm talking about someone who knows right from wrong, knows, has a really like deep personal moral compass, knows what that means for them, is willing to do what it takes to stay in integrity with that compass, and is willing to take on whatever the consequences of their actions based on that compass is.

[12:15] Emily McGill: Right? Like it's this, it's the same. We see these archetypes across the theater. It was like obviously we couldn't have Alphabet. Mr. Hirschfeld died before Wicked came to Broadway, so he never drew the show. So unfortunately, that wasn't it. We ended up going with Joan of Arc, St. Joan. A reproduction that the Public Theater did. I think it was in like the 60s or 70s. I can't remember exactly the year. It's in the guidebook. We had this this really exciting time, like deciding which characters most embodied each of the archetypes in the tarot.

[12:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: If I can if I can back up just a little bit, what brought you to Hirschfeld instead of say like Martha Swope and doing imagery? What brought you to these images for Broadway specifically when you wanted a Broadway deck?

[13:02] Emily McGill: When you think about Broadway imagery, who do you think of?

[13:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, that's honestly there is no one else that you think of.

[13:09] Emily McGill: Of course, Squiggs is doing amazing things these days, but Mr. Hirschfeld did this for 75 years. His first drawing. Actually, we're about to come up on the centennial of his very first drawing in 2026. It will be a hundred years since his first drawing appeared in print anywhere. And I think his New York Times debut is like 1928, maybe.

[13:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[13:29] Emily McGill: We're coming up on a hundred years in the Times, which is like bonkers. I'm sure we have, I'm sure it's a reproduction and not an original, but we have one right directly at the back of the store.

[13:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'll have to check it out when we're done with that.

[13:40] Emily McGill: Opening night of South Pacific.

[13:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh, that's in the tarot.

[13:43] Emily McGill: Oh, it's the inside cover.

[13:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes, yep, that's it. It's literally the when you open the deck, like the pretty box, it's the opening night of South Pacific.

[13:53] Emily McGill: Amazing. Yeah, I love that. It's a great image. Look at how the stars align. Right? The synchronicity is just there. I do want to rewind really quickly because we only talked about the major arcana. We didn't touch on our minor arcana, which is the other half of the tarot deck. And those are set up more like a deck of playing cards. We have our four suits, they represent four elements. Ace through ten, we call those Pip cards. The biggest difference is that we have four court cards instead of three, right? So we're used to a king, a queen, and a jack. Um, at some point, the knight fell out of this. Uh-huh. And so we have a king, a queen, a knight, and a page in our minor arcana. And the page became the jack.

Uh-huh. So our four suits, four elements, right? So our wands are our fire, passion, drive, creativity, the stuff that lights you up that gets you out of bed. Our cups are water, feelings, emotions, intuition, relationships. The swords are air. So that's everything to do with the mind, communication, technology, education, wisdom, information, perspective, speaking, and then our coins, pentacles, or discs, depending on the deck that you see, they have different names. That's our earth element. So that has everything to do with work and money, resources, everything we need in this 3D world that we move through. I also think about time as a resource. So I think of that as well in our earth element. So that minor arcana, they more correspond to like our day-to-day life, and then the major arcana are like the larger themes that we experience.

[15:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Okay. And so obviously when you were casting, and I love that's the term that you use. There were two elements. There was the how does this, how does the archetype of this character in the show, and then what does the image tell us? What does it evoke? Because if it doesn't evoke the same thing that we're trying to evoke on the card, then or like with the card's meaning, then we haven't done a very good job at picking the perfect person, character drawing to play that role. So it was really important to me that, and granted, some of these are not going to perfectly align, right? And you're not gonna see Ten Cups on the Ten of Cups. You're gonna see the Adams family, which is a very loving family, right?

They love each other. Doesn't matter what their quirks are, they love each other because of their quirks, right? So it's very much and we did fudge a few things, right? Obviously, Mr. Hirschfeld did not draw the Addams Family musical, it is from the film. You'll see Ariel in here as the pay, I think the page of cups. That was like a 1960s or 70s drawing that Mr. Hirschfeld did of a mermaid for 17 magazine, and I was like, yeah, that works.

[16:34] Emily McGill: Yeah. The Four of Swords is Winifred from Once Upon a Mattress, but the drawing of Sarah Jessica Parker didn't really land, and any of the other drawings weren't like the right one. We found one that was like princess and sleeping villain or sleeping princess and villain. And so we had the villain airbrushed out. And I was like, yeah, that that works. Yeah. So, you know, it was very important to me that we gathered the essence of the card's meaning in the imagery that you saw as well. Because I do think tarot is as much as you can pick up a guidebook and read about what the creator of that deck intended, it's a very personal intuitive experience. You know, yes, it's great to check in and be like, what does this one mean? But as you play with the deck yourself, and this goes with any deck, you really have an opportunity to like what does this card mean to me?

[17:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah was my expression and interpretation of the card.

[17:23] Emily McGill: Yeah. And what musical should I listen to today? Hey, it could be. That's what I'm thinking. I'm like, oh, I know nothing about tarot, but I would absolutely flip through this deck and be like, oh, okay, I'm gonna learn this musical that I don't know. Or I guess it's time for me to listen to Once Upon a Mattress. There is a Spotify playlist. I did create a Spotify playlist because I am that nerd. Yes. Um, but yeah, seeing how we have all of this overlap, it was really important for me that we have like alignment and integrity in the cards and putting them together because I see tarot as a psychological tool, even more so than a tool for divination or fortune telling or future telling, which I know is usually what we hear about when we're talking about tarot, like culture and in society.

There's like always been a bit of a taboo around this. But I see it like a Rorschach test. It's what do you see when you pull this card? What do you ex what does it evoke in you? What does it what is coming up for you emotionally? What is coming up in your history? Like, where did those things come from? The collective unconscious. That's where they come from. And like, even looking back, I did my thesis on tarot as an effective tool for self-reflection. And Jung did tarot, and he talked about it in some of his his lectures and things too. And then there's a pretty deep bench of people in psychology who have looked at esoteric and occult practices, including the tarot, to see how they impact psychological experiences and things like that.

[18:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, that all again, I don't what the hell do I know? But that all makes sense.

[18:51] Emily McGill: Yeah, right. Yeah, it's it's definitely a tool. And like I pull a card every single day and write a few lines in my journal about what that card means, what it's coming up for me in that moment. And it could be I did have a friend over the pandemic because I when you said, Oh, I did this, I was like, Oh, yes, when all of us like pulled out an art project that we didn't know if we'd ever finished, but like, why the hell not? We have all the time in the world. I had a friend over who over the pandemic would do nightly tarot readings. So that is my it wasn't obviously the Broadway deck, but that's the most of my experience. And I didn't know what any of the cards that she pulled for me, but she would just have people join her like Instagram live.

[19:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[19:30] Emily McGill: And people could they could text her questions separately so that you were a little bit more anonymous, or you could text them right into the chat, and then she would pull your cards. And I never remembered or really understood what the cards meant, but she was like out there giving good advice.

[19:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[19:45] Emily McGill: And it's like, hey, I think that this is what what you need right now. It's really helpful to have an external tool to help us reflect things back to ourselves. The way that like the people in our lives, our relationships help us mirror parts of ourselves, and we have these experiences where it's I don't really know what that means. And then on hindsight, we have more perspective. And so sometimes I think tarot is a good sort of of the moment way to get that perspective rather than having to call your best friend and be like, what's going on? Or call your therapist or just stew in it for a while. That's we don't want to do that. So it's a way to help us move through things as well.

[20:23] David Rigano: So you we we got that most people here, myself and our one guest excluded, are familiar with tarot. Is who here is like a tarot practitioner, or maybe looking to get into it, starting to, or just just thinks it's cool as shit and interested in it.

[20:45] Emily McGill: Cool, yeah. All of the great, all of the above. Cause did you want to Yeah?

[20:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So we are doing a live reading tonight. So if there is someone that wants to have their cards read, we're gonna pull two cards if someone wants to volunteer for that.

[21:00] Emily McGill: Yeah, great. Excellent. All right, I'm gonna come up, take my stuff. And then don't worry, we're all gonna get to play along after this. What's your name?

[21:11] Sloth: My name is Sloth.

[21:12] Emily McGill: Sloth. Yeah. Nice to meet you. Thanks for volunteering. Thank you for so we're gonna pull two cards for you today. We're gonna do where you're coming from and where you're headed.

[21:22] Sloth: Oh, when I'm done.

[21:23] Emily McGill: Oh, look, there's our sleeping villain or sleeping princess and villain. Popped out for me. Okay. Let me just give these one more shuffle and then you are gonna cut the deck for us.

[21:37] Sloth: Thank you.

[21:39] Emily McGill: Perfect. Okay. So where are you coming from? Oh, we have the eight of wands. So our wands remember fire, passion, drive, creativity, everything that lights you up that gets you out of bed. And we cast the lady of the lake from Spamalot as our Eight of Wands because she's like in the middle of it when those fools are running around in circles trying to find their grail. But we actually used an image that is from Titanic sails into New York. And it's the Statue of Liberty coming out of an iceberg. Is what this image actually is supposed to be. But I was like, no, that looks like the Lady of the Lake. We're gonna go with it. And so the Eight of Wands, I always think of this card as like incoming, right?

It's like all the arrows and the stuff that excites stuff just starts coming your way. These wands start flying at you. And just because that's happening doesn't mean you have to catch them all. This isn't Pokemon. I'm curious if like you've been coming from a place where a lot's been happening for you around things that excite you or that interest you, and it's I don't know what to grab, I don't know where to turn.

[22:45] Sloth: Yeah, definitely. I've I'm seeing this just in the past 48 hours.

[22:49] Emily McGill: Yeah.

[22:50] Sloth: Like there's just a lot of deadlines coming up, a lot of road bumps in each of those projects. I think today has been about trying to figure out which one I have to follow to prioritize.

[23:02] Emily McGill: Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot happening to fix which one.

[23:05] Sloth: The juggle is real.

[23:06] Emily McGill: Yeah. Okay. Eight of wands. Let's see where you're headed. Oh, we've got the Ten of Swords. So our swords being that air element, of course. And this one isn't actually another fudge. This is Papa Gay from Once on This Island, because he is, of course, our sly demon of death, our god of death. And the Ten of Swords is all about releasing the thing that needs to end. So it's interesting coming with that Eight of Wands where it's like you're not trying to pick it all up, finding these road bumps that you're finding, and seeing that you have a bunch of deadlines coming up so apt. This drawing is actually from a world tour that Mr. Hirschfeld did in the 1930s of an indigenous tribe that he was like experiencing all of these different places around the world.

And so this was his interpretation of one of those communities. And we'll leave these up here so everybody can take a look at these when we're done with the recording of the podcast. But yeah, so curious how this sort of ending, like it's not the end, it's like killing the things that don't need to go with you into the next chapter or the next phase.

[24:10] Sloth: Yeah.

[24:11] Emily McGill: Yeah, no, it definitely is, it's one of those like hard cards that I feel like it pops up and I resist it. Because my brain immediately goes, you can't drop any of these things. But it doesn't mean you're dropping it, it just means that it's coming to the end of its cycle. And if you have deadlines coming up, that's the end of that phase of a cycle. You meet the deadline, and then you move on to the next phase or the next chapter or the next experience around whatever that project may be.

[24:37] Sloth: Yeah.

[24:37] Emily McGill: How is this feeling for you?

[24:39] Sloth: Yeah, it feels good. That feels like a like a uh fortifying feeling of it's gonna be over. Like I'm gonna get there. And once it is, I can let it I can let go of it.

[24:50] Emily McGill: Yeah, totally. The thing is, right? Like the life cycle, everything comes to an end. It's inevitable. And we all turn to dust at some point. And you know, in our major arcana, when we have our death card pop up, a lot of people get really freaked out by that card. They're like, oh my god, it means like literal loss of life. But what it actually means is transformation. I chose to cast Louise from Gypsy as the death card because Louise has to die for Gypsy Rosalie to be born. Like for her to become the person she is meant to be, she literally has her old identity has to die. There, this is the same thing like Marie Kondo, right? Clean the thing out so there's space for whatever's coming in. Full moon essence, right? Let's empty out the space and clear the space so that we have the opportunity to welcome in whatever it is coming our way.

[25:37] Sloth: Thank you.

[25:38] Emily McGill: Yeah, of course. Thank you. Thank you for volunteering.

[25:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Okay, so now we're all gonna get to play along.

[25:45] Emily McGill: Yes. Uh-huh. I'm gonna try and remember to play along too and not look at them. I always forget. All right, everybody, close your eyes, both feet on the ground. Let all the air out of your lungs. Take a really deep breath in. When you think you can't, take one more sip. Hold it, two, three, let it all out. And I hope everyone listening is doing this with us too. Take another deep breath in. One more sip. One, two, three, let it all out. All right, settle into that for a second. Feel into it. Do you feel like number one or number two is for you? You can open your eyes whenever you're ready. It might not be one or two. It might be both. It might be neither. You might be like, yeah, I'm not playing along with this crazy lady, right? Like it can be whatever you want it to be.

[26:40] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So who are my number ones?

[26:43] Emily McGill: Excellent. And my number twos?

[26:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Fantastic.

[26:45] Emily McGill: Wow, we got like an even split. That's really cool. That never happens. I always pick number two. I don't know why. If you ever see a pick a pile on Instagram or TikTok, if it's more than one, oh, it's either two or three usually. I always go with number two. I don't know why. I just do. So for my number ones, we've got this one. And for my number twos, we're over here. So my number ones, we have our page of wands, which is Nellie from South Pacific. Yes. So remember again, those wands, fire, passion, drive, creativity. And the page is very young, childlike energy. It's very curious, very playful, looking to learn. Lifelong student, like eager to soak up information and education. And Nellie just really felt like a very appropriate character for that. She's like finally meeting the rest of the world, and her sort of brain is being blown wide open that there is so much more to life and to the world than she grew up knowing.

[27:48] Emily McGill: She's flip-flopping about how she feels about things, right? Like it'd be very young and playful. And one thing I should say about our court cards, right? The King, Queen, Knight, and Page. We see cycles throughout the tarot constantly. Ace through 10, page through king, ace through king, our major arcana, right? Like we see these cycles pop up again and again. And so the page is that very young, childlike. The knight is, I think, always like adolescent boys. Leap before they look. Their brains haven't caught up to their bodies, so they're not making the best decisions, but adolescents in general, right? We shouldn't gender shame anyone. There is this essence of figuring it out, pushing boundaries, discovering what boundaries are.

The queen is always very nurturing, nourishing, maternal energy, and the king is like very grounded, stable sort of energy. So yeah, curious with my number ones if anyone feels like this card is resonating for them today and would want to maybe share a word or two about that. Anyone?

[28:47] Emily McGill: None of my number ones. I'm still processing, and that's for yeah, for those of you listening who couldn't see who raised their hand. I am a number one, but I am I'm still processing all of that. Also, because again, as we've established, I'm learning about this for the first time. Yeah. But again, when we come to favorites, South Pacific is my favorite Rogers and Hammerstein music. There you go. I mean, we were talking upstairs. You were saying that like you're working on like a reading of a project this weekend, right? New project. Uh-huh. Yes. So you're learning a lot about this particular project. It's in your zone of genius. And like the thing that you love to do, which is like directing, right?

So that actually feels really aligned based on the conversation we had previous to this, that nobody else was privy to. There you go. So yeah, that makes that does yeah, like starting new processes, having a discovery process about something that like really lights you up that is your passion.

[29:45] Emily McGill: Yeah. Amazing. Oh, thank you. All right. My number twos. Woo! We have our five of coins. Coins being that earth element, right? Our five of coins in this deck is Judd Fry from Oklahoma. Because the five of coins is oftentimes about feeling like you're stuck out in the cold. That you are somehow not feeling welcomed, or there's something that is preventing you from feeling like you are part of whatever is happening. And that can have a variety of reasons. It can have a variety of experiences, right? There's so many different ways that this can present itself. And so this is actually another one that we fudged. This is from a movie that I can't remember the title of, but I think starred Audrey Hepburn.

It's like some Western movie from the 1960s. And again, like just this character is like holding what looks like a dagger. He's got a hat on. Like it's giving me very Judd Fry energy. So again, we're like, we're going with it. But yeah, so curious if any of my number twos have been feeling this sort of experience of maybe something isn't quite landing for you, or maybe you're feeling like under-resourced in some way, shape, or form with a project or a group of people, or anything like that. So I'm curious if any of my number twos want to share a word or two about if this is resonating.

[31:08] Audience Member: Yes, please. I'm just gonna say that. Oh, before you do, I'm gonna pass this over to you. Yes, let's mic you up.

[31:15] Audience Member: Okay. I was just gonna say I used to feel like I'm on the cusp of something. Like I'm like almost at the doorway, but I'm not, you know, I have a few more steps to go before I open that door.

[31:25] Emily McGill: Yeah.

[31:26] Audience Member: But the door is right in front of me, it's door for me, and everything I want is at that door. I'm just like a few more steps. So I'll just feel like I'm the cusp of something.

[31:35] Emily McGill: That's my business. That in-between, okay. I'm not, I can't go backwards, but I still haven't gotten there just yet.

[31:42] Emily McGill: So yeah, yeah, and it makes sense, right? The five is halfway through that ace through ten cycle. You've only gotten so far. There's still more space to go to get to the next step.

[31:52] Audience Member: Yes.

[31:53] Emily McGill: I love that. Thank you. What was your name?

[31:54] Audience Member: Nahara.

[31:55] Emily McGill: Nahara, thank you so much for sharing.

[31:57] Emily McGill: Yeah. Anyone else as I throw tarot cards on the floor?

[32:02] Emily McGill: No? Or does anyone have any questions in general about any questions in general about this deck about how it was put together about tarot, about your personal tarot journey if you're about to begin one with your brand new deck.

[32:24] Sloth: Yeah. Hello again, it's Sloth. I'm curious, as you were making this deck, how I feel like a lot of decks end up feeling aimed at or geared towards certain kinds of questioning. What do you think this Hirschfeld deck is like particularly good at or angled towards in using it?

[32:50] Emily McGill: Honestly, I just wanted a deck that reflected the two things that I love meeting in a Venn diagram. And I thought that if it was something that I cared about as like a lifelong theater kid, if this was a way to introduce tarot to the theater people who were like maybe tarot curious, that it would be a really great way in because it felt accessible. I have a lot of friends who favorite shows over the years. And when I started this process, I was looking at contemporary musicals a year and a half before I had even thought about Mr. Hirschfeld for the and not that I hadn't thought about it. That's in that is a false city, but that I had really dived into the idea of having Mr. Hirschfeld represent this.

I was looking at Jenna from Waitress. I wanted the Eight of Cups to be Ilse from Spring Awakening because she walks away from everything she's ever known towards the unknown, which is scary AF, and then doesn't know if that's gonna work for her or not. I was looking at Alpha Buffer Our High Priestess. So there were a lot of like contemporary shows that I was thinking about and how we could maybe like include those, but ultimately in choosing to go with Hirschfeld, we had to reconsider a lot of that casting.

[34:03] Emily McGill: So when I sat down with David Leopold from the Hirschfeld Foundation, I was like, okay, this one was like maybe gonna be El Woods. This one was maybe gonna be, I don't know, insert your favorite contemporary show here. So there are a lot of options that we could have had, and so it was like, how do these, how do we take what that character, the essence of that character, and match it with the essence of one of the 10,000 images in Mr. Hirschfeld's archive? He had a really interesting way of working. He was always nervous to bother the theater goers next to him. So as to not disturb anyone and their performance and like their enjoyment of the performance, he would sketch inside of his pocket and he practiced it on the subway.

He would ride the subway and like sketch in his pocket and then go back to his studio and see what he got and see if he could come up with the image of what he was trying to capture. And so he did that. And I, in my opinion, that makes him a channel. He's channeling the essence of the character, the person that he's seeing. Because he also didn't call himself a caricaturist, he called himself a characterist, right? Capturing the essence of the character. And so that was really important to me that we captured the essence of the character, the essence of the card, the essence of the archetype, all in one moment. So it was less about like the cards answering a specific kind of question and more about them really encapsulating like my love of theater and knowing that there's a lot of theater people in the world where even if it's not the tarot you're interested in, there are images in this deck that you won't see anywhere else because they are these little snippets and like details basically of larger drawings.

The way this like eight of wands, this isn't the whole thing. And a really easy way to guess if that's the case or not is if you see a Hirschfeld signature on the card. Because if there's not a Hirschfeld signature on the card, then it's probably a detail of a larger image. And the guidebook will tell you if it's detail or if it's just the title of the name of the work. But yeah, so it was less about like how do we answer specific questions and more about capturing that overall essence of it.

[36:17] Sloth: Yeah, thanks. As you were doing the casting process, were there any that were a lot more difficult? And were there any where like immediately everyone was like, oh, it's this? I'm sure there were many cases of both of those things.

[36:35] Emily McGill: I remember at the very beginning, David and I, our goal was roughly 10 cards per work session. There's 72 cards in the tarot. It takes a minute to get there. And we did the first few, and I was like, oh my God, this is gonna be so easy. He was like, wait till we get to the last five, and then talk to me again. Because we had this moment, the Pippin example is a good one where we were like, Oh my gosh, this is what I know I want for this card. And then seeing that the image did not do that, and then having the oh, we're gonna go with Dorothy until Candide popped up and was like, hi, no, it's me. So there were some instances of that. We do have a few like real humans mixed in with the characters.

The hanged person, which is all about having a different perspective, a practice in patience, waiting for the right timing, is Bob Fosse. Because while he may not be the most patient in the rehearsal room, his work is very right, very patient, very based on timing, very based on detail work, very based on a different perspective. Another fun one is the Empress. I think originally I had Dot from Sunday in the Park with George as the Empress, and I think we ultimately moved her to the Queen of Cups because of how she makes the sacrifices that she does so that her child can have the life that they need to have, despite the fact that it breaks her heart to leave George. But for the Empress, we ended up going with Eva Le Gallienne, who most people don't know, but is the mother of Off-Broadway and repertory theater.

She invented it in America in like the 1920s. She had a theater company and they were doing repertory shows and they were doing them in smaller theaters. And so she's like the mother of Off-Broadway. And I was like, that seems like a perfect fit for the Empress who is the mother of the deck.

[38:23] Emily McGill: Yeah. Another one that was like, duh is our hierophant, which is oftentimes also seen as like the Pope card or the tradition card. It's there tends to be some rigidity there, very based in the way things have always been done, the traditions, and obviously.

[38:38] Sloth: I feel like I know where you're going with where am I going.

[38:40] Emily McGill: This feels like Tevye.

[38:42] Sloth: Dang!

[38:43] Emily McGill: So there were some that were just so obvious, couldn't not use them. And then there were, of course, some towards the end where we were like, Oh, what are we gonna do with this one? When David would be like, that sounds like insert very obscure show from like 1947, and I'm googling it as quickly as possible to be like, what is this about? But like another one that I really like, I think it's the five of cups, is Linda Lohman. Because Five of Cups is about like really facing some challenges and some devastation that is coming in, but not all your cups get knocked over. There is still a silver lining, and despite the fact that the play ends the way it does, and Willie has chosen to make this very strong choice and leave this plane.

We don't know what she does next. But what we do know is that she no longer has that specific burden to carry as his wife. She who knows what she's gonna do. Maybe we'll get Adult's House part two, maybe we'll get Death of South Part 2. Who knows? But there is that idea of we don't know what happens after the curtain comes down, and so there is some room to play with some of that stuff.

[39:53] Emily McGill: Yeah, what I'm loving about this as a Broadway person who again, you can start talking about the card that is traditional, and I and yeah, Tevye comes to mind. But the other thing is when you say the character first, and then you describe what I have a frame of reference to everything that you're whereas I have had, and like I mentioned, my friend was doing tarot on TikTok or Instagram, and uh would pull the cards and then explain to you, and I don't remember. I don't like I was like, okay, I guess that makes sense, but what do I do with it? That's what I remember. Is like, how do we move forward with this? But these give us a point of reference that is familiar to us already.

[40:38] Emily McGill: So then understanding the stuff that you're taught as gore, like you were talking about the artist who created those images that we've all seen that are so gorgeous, and they are very evocative, but you do have to learn that from scratch.

[40:52] Emily McGill: And this is giving us a jumping off point, especially when you're a theater kid or a person who loves the theater, and this is a big part of your life.

[41:01] Emily McGill: Sometimes if like Hirschfeld collectors might just want to see images that they wouldn't otherwise get their hands on. Some of these are like these are beautiful. Like we've got these on the table, and we'll have to put some of them on our Instagram so that people can see because these they are absolutely gorgeous.

[41:18] Sloth: I was also wondering, is Mr. Hirschfeld himself a card?

[41:21] Emily McGill: He is indeed. Uh-huh. So there are a couple of cards in this deck that were extra special to me. One of them is the Wheel of Fortune card, which I cast as Velma Kelly, because the Wheel of Fortune is all about and look, Sloth literally just pulled it right out as I'm talking about it.

[41:41] Emily McGill: Talk about that synchronicity. Hello, Mr. Hirschfeld, how are you tonight? So that's one of my favorites because not only does our Wheel of Fortune, it's like the more you can hold your center as you're spinning from being on top of the world to feeling like you're crushed under the wheel, the less likely you are to have the huge ups and downs of when those big experiences happen for you. And we see Velma at the top of the show. She's at the top of her game. She's the star. Roxy comes in, she falls to the bottom. All of a sudden, go to hell. Kitty comes in, Roxy meets her at the bottom. And then by the end of the show, we see them at the top again. They're doing their duo. But the image that we used of Velma Kelly is actually my auntie Lenora Nemetz, who replaced Chita Rivera as Velma Kelly in the original production.

She covered both Chita and Gwen Verdon and tells this great story about how she went on once at the matinee for Chita and in the evening for Gwen and did both shows like as the two different characters. So that one is very special to me. The Three of Coins is another one that's very special because it's also Lenora. She originated Dolores Dante in Working. So it's an art. It's an art to be a great waitress. And the Three of Coins is all about exalting work that others may see as menial. And so that felt like a, again, one of those no-brainer cards. But Mr. Hirschfeld does appear in the deck. He is the World card. So our Major Arcana culminates in the World card. And oftentimes people think that's the last card in the Major Arcana, is my air quotes.

But I really see it as a liminal space between the Judgment card, which is the one that comes before that, and is that reflective card looking back at everything you've learned on this hero's journey that you've just completed. And it's right before the Fool goes off on the next journey. And so because he was the one that sort of it sprung from his brain all of these beautiful images, it felt like it was only appropriate to make him the World because this was his world. Yeah. And he gave us so many beautiful things in this world. We also have Joe Papp is in there, Stephen Sondheim is in there. I feel like there's somebody else who's like a real person and not just a character. So we have a couple of it, but the majority of the cards are characters from shows. Yeah. Do we have any other questions from those assembled?

[44:03] Audience Member: Yeah. Let me. I might not be able to get this to you. We're gonna see. They can project. While casting, did anything genuinely surprise you through the process?

[44:14] Emily McGill: Did anything genuinely surprise me in the process of casting? The Candide one was definitely a shocker because I was like really ready for Dorothy. And because also the Fool has a dog. So I was like, Toto, it makes perfect sense. Like it really worked. But then Candide just like leapt at us and was like, no, it's me. So that was like one that is really jumping for me in the moment. I don't know. I think the whole thing was a surprise, and like how well it all came together. I, this like truly, like I said, was a super selfish project. It was like I saw I had found a few on the internet. John Cameron Mitchell created a tarot deck for his Junction City Mercantile that was the Major Arcana, I believe, were all playbill covers and they were shows.

And then the Minor Arcana were characters, they were like Joan Marcus production photos. And that it was great, but it just wasn't what I was looking for. And I found a couple on Etsy that like people had just made their own and printed their own. One that I don't even know the name of that was like really bad, and another one that was like good. I think it's called the Ghost Light Tarot, which was pretty cool, but it was an artist, so like she was doing it because she was creating the images herself, and like art, I took ceramics, right? Like art drawing is not my zone of genius. That is not where my talents lie. So it made perfect sense for me to be like, who is the most ubiquitous artist that you know is doing it for Broadway and like Mr. Hirschfeld was it.

Yeah, I don't know. I guess like the, at seeing it all come together, it like it came together even more beautifully than I could have imagined. And I'm very proud of this deck, but I have to say, I think the packaging really makes it sing. Like we were saying at the very beginning of this, I like the box a lot, right? The cover we have, it's an image called Opening Night that Mr. Hirschfeld did. It's actually blown up across the whole wall in the Museum of Broadway. They have this, it's huge in there. And there's a little gal on stage. She is a treble clef, and she's holding a martini and a cigarette, and she's actually our Three of Cups in the deck. And we've cast her, again, another fudge, as the secretaries from Promises.

Because our Three of Cups being about gathering with your community and like celebrating and having a good time and being with your inner circle. And I was like, yeah, Donna McKechnie Byergly and the woman whose name I never remember, who I'm so sorry to that woman. That's perfect for this. So like that, and then when you open it up and you see this Opening Night of South Pacific image across the inside front cover, like to me, it's just, it's magical to see how that came together. And then fortunately, we see the sort of outside Opening Night, and then right next to it, you see the guidebook, and it's an audience on the cover of the guidebook. So I feel like there's also a bit of a story in the packaging.

So that was also a surprise that really delighted me because I didn't know how that was gonna turn out. I had never had done anything like this before. It's like when you hear about people who are creating musicals, they're for the very first time and they're from some other world and not haven't come up in this theater world, it's like you don't know what you don't know. And that can be a gift sometimes. And so I will say that with the tarot too. Like, you don't know what you don't know. So you don't have to make it mean something. It can be whatever it is to you. It doesn't have to be so rigid and specific to like what I wrote in a guidebook. Also, I just checked, and it's Margot Sappington if you want to see it.

Thank you, Margot Sappington. I'm sorry, Margot Sappington. Like you are also an icon, and just you know, I got to give Donna McKechnie a copy of this when she was doing Madame Morrible, not physically in person. I dropped it off at the theater for her. Still, you know. She has a copy. I gave Patti LuPone a copy. I've given Bernadette Peters a copy. If you have been on Broadway since August and you're in this deck, you should have a copy. If you don't, we'll drop one off for you. Yeah, so it's been really fun getting to share this with the Broadway community. And what is obviously you said that this was created for very selfish reasons, but also obviously there is an audience that shares that.

[48:31] Emily McGill: Totally, totally. We've been selling them here regularly. I see them come across the register regularly. What is like now that it is something that you have for you and it is available wider? What is your hope for, you've talked a little bit about like maybe someone's a Broadway fan is tarot curious and this could, but what do you hope that this, how would you like this to be used?

[48:59] Emily McGill: I hope it, the Hirschfeld Broadway Tarot invites theater people to have some self-reflection in a way that feels really accessible and doesn't necessarily require another person for them to have that experience. The way that, like I said earlier about you go to your best friend or you go to your therapist or you go to your partner or whoever it is that you are talking to about the things that you're talking about. Or you go to someone else to read your tarot because you don't know what the hell you're doing. You know, and even tarot readers and practitioners get readings from other people because it's hard to not get out of it, it's hard to get out of your own perspective and not get locked into this is how I see this card.

So I think that it's really helpful and beneficial to have someone else help you navigate that for sure. But like I, Jasmine Forsberg, who is doing Old Friends right now, but was in Six for a while. She has a copy, and I saw that when they started when they were in tech for Old Friends, she was like posted on Instagram that they were pulling cards in the theater. And that's what I want for this to be. But like you pull a card if you're playing, I don't know, if you're playing Nellie Forbush in South Pacific, you pull a card for first rehearsal where you're like, what is it that what's the theme I want to work on, or this rehearsal, or you do it during tech when you're like waiting around for whatever lighting cue to be adjusted for eight hours, and maybe you're pulling cards to be like, what can we be focusing on while we're having to be in this sort of limbo liminal?

And then maybe it's, oh no, you do an opening night pool, or maybe you do a closing night pool, or maybe it's two show day. How am I gonna get through this? So those kind of things. I'm also now imagining this like backstage at high school theaters.

[50:41] Emily McGill: Absolutely, absolutely. This is what I'm talking about. And then we also see that tarot is not this scary, weird, like demonic thing that we have been taught that it is. Like it's really just a deck of cards. And I am also remembering the first time I ever had my tarot read was at theater camp. Shout out French Woods Festival for the Performing Arts. Yeah. And I bet that those little French Woods kids would eat this up.

[51:08] Emily McGill: Totally. I got to give one to, speaking of that, like Camp was one of my favorite films, of course. Got to give one to Robin de Jesús, and I was like, have fun with this, babe. So it's just been really fun to share it with the people in my life as well, my friends in the business and people I don't know, legends. Like I mentioned having dropped them off at some of their theaters. And we're actually starting a dressing room reading series on Instagram.

[51:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: What's the handle? We will all follow it.

[51:33] Emily McGill: It's at the Broadway Tarot. Great. It used to be at the Hirschfeld Broadway Tarot. It's long. And also I just want to own Broadway and Tarot together. So it is the Hirschfeld Broadway Tarot's Instagram account, but the handle is the Broadway Tarot. Yeah. And it's the same on TikTok, although my TikTok skills are still very limited. But yeah, we're starting it with one of the gals at Gatsby. So we're gonna do a Great Gatsby dressing room reading. I'm really excited about actually a week from today. We're gonna do it in the dressing room and pull some cards and do a little two-card reading like we did today. Because I think the other thing about tarot is it can be intimidating until you watch someone else experience, and then it feels like you have a little more of a way in.

[52:16] Mark-Eugene Garcia: All right. Thank you for sharing it with all of the people that you've shared it with, and thank you for sharing it with us assembled tonight and our...

[52:24] Emily McGill: Thank you all for being here in the rain. Y'all are troopers.

[52:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Should have done this one for a Halloween episode.

[52:34] Emily McGill: Oh no, we totally should have.

[52:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But it was, oh, it was so much fun. It really was. All of our events are fun, and all of them are unique in their own way. And this is the first that was ever like this that was ever like it was more of a conversation, but it also really was about how to use these cards, how to, how do you connect? Yeah, and like there was so much about the philosophy behind tarot in general, and then making it specific to this Broadway deck. It's not even delving into the Hirschfeld side of it yet, which, yeah, which is its own the whole thing. And I love that she called it casting.

[53:09] Emily McGill: Yeah. I loved that so much.

[53:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But yeah, we've had events that are specifically interactive, like when we all wrote our radio plays and I could the trivia one, which I made sure was interactive. We got to do more of those.

[53:26] Emily McGill: Oh, totally. Even Gabriel's singing one where we all were singing.

[53:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. But this was just a different, what I usually say to people when we're prepping, when we're like in the 45 minutes beforehand and we're often meeting for the first time, is that all of these events really have their own personality.

[53:46] Emily McGill: Truly.

[53:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But this one really, it really did. It really was unlike any. It just made me joyous. I just, I was so happy. It was fun watching the readings happen. It was fun being part of all of that. And it just, it was a really great experience. We're happy to have Emily here.

[54:02] David Rigano: Yeah. We're gonna jump a little from tarot and go a little into the past.

[54:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes, yes. With this next one. We were so lucky to have David Asmi come in and talk about Stereophonic. Now I got to see that show, and I'll delve into that in the next episode. But I'm so excited to be bringing this to you next.

[54:24] David Rigano: Uh-huh. Especially since it took so long to get to us.

[54:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: For a long time, the publication of this book was in the future.

[54:33] David Rigano: It really was. It really was.

[54:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And we didn't even see it in the tarot.

[54:36] David Rigano: Yeah. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram at Drama Book Show Podcast. Please subscribe to the Drama Book Shop on Eventbrite so that we can see your smiling faces at all of our upcoming events. And give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or a comment on Spotify. I did not know that was a thing until I was looking at our Spotify rap. And I saw that people have left comments and that made me very happy.

[54:59] Emily McGill: Oh, yay.

[54:59] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But please do. It helps us on all the algorithm things that are really things. And remember, all of the books we talk about can be found here. And so can we. And we will see you at the bookshop.