Number Nine… Number Nine… Nimber Nune

(episode 9)

[sustained & building ukulele strums]

GIANA: Iiiiiit's The Broadly Entertaining Podcast! [ukulele stops] No, I’m just kidding.

[Giana and Jamie laugh]

JAMIE: Hey, go with what moves ya.

[ukulele underscore returns, transitioning into jaunty theme music during the next lines]

GIANA: It's The Broadly Entertaining Podcast for all you Femme Broads, Them Broads and Dude Broads out there. Have y’all started planning for your holiday hangs or your parties yet?

JAMIE: We've got fun, games, and feminism coming at you. Thanks for letting us entertain you. Let's party!

[party noisemaker sound effect / ukulele music continues]

GIANA: Hello, friends! I am Giana and I misunderstood the assignment.

JAMIE: [laughs] I am Jamie and I am ready for the holiday hustle.

[ukulele theme music concludes with a whistled coda]

JAMIE: Giana, thank you for being your friend.

GIANA: Travel down the road and back again?

JAMIE: Your heart is true! You're a pal, and a confidant.

GIANA: [breaking into song] And if you threw a party, invited everyone you knew… [starts to trail off] You would see, I probably forgot to get you a gift…

[both laugh]

JAMIE: That’s right, we’re both not actually gift givers—

GIANA: Yeah.

JAMIE: So we can drop that line off, but that song is forever a classic. Thank you for taking that ride with me.

GIANA: Sure, anytime.

JAMIE: Yeah! Seriously, though, you know, ‘tis the season for gratitude and reflection, and I appreciate you.

GIANA: Aww…

JAMIE: And I am so grateful for what we have been able to do and build together, even, or especially, as we are not the most conventional CEOs?

GIANA: [laughs] Nah dude. [both laughing together] No we are not. That is accurate. All of what you just said was accurate. But I think that we should take a minute and share some things that we're both thankful for. I like that vibe.

JAMIE: Oh yeah, let's do it! I sort of started, so, you go now.

GIANA: Okay. We just closed out October, which happened to be a very very busy month for me, socially and business-wise. We were finishing out the wedding season. I called my first parade, which was awesome but also I was, I'll admit, not that super good at it. But it was my first time! But parades are fun, and hard and—

JAMIE: Yeah, I don't think you become an expert at calling a parade just from doing it once.

GIANA: No, definitely not, definitely not, but there's always room for improvement and boy, do I have room for improvement in that sector. But it was great fun loving stuff. I had you here, we had our friend Nova here, I had so many guests. People that I never thought I would see again and people that I very possibly won't see again for a very long time, and so it was just— I'm really thankful for all the love that people are showing and coming out to this cabin in the woods, like in the middle of nowhere seemingly, and just like taking the adventure and hanging out with us up here. If we didn't— as my buddy Todd Perlmutter said, we would be awfully sad if people didn't want to come visit us, so that is so true. I'm really thankful for everyone, but, now that our last guest has left, since the beginning of October, I am also very thankful to have my house back with my husband. I fed the chickens in a robe not wearing anything underneath it, I was just naked, and it was beautiful out. It's warm for the first time in a while and it was just great. So I'm thankful for both.

JAMIE: Yeah, absolutely! I am thankful for side hustles.

GIANA: Ooh!

JAMIE: So as a small business one of the first, kind of, hot tips you get from everyone who is an expert on small business things, tells you that you need to be prepared to not pay yourself as the owner of a business for several years potentially. We've been in business for several years and we've been able to pay ourselves for most of it, which is great and I am very thankful for that. Currently we're in a bit of a transition period. We have been through some transitions before, so, I feel pretty confident that we will come out of this one alright, but for the first time in a few years I really feel pressed to look for something outside of Broadly Entertaining. I have not yet applied for a table waiting job but I have definitely considered it when I'm up late at night, but I put together a writing resume and I updated my personal website and I am sort of putting feelers out into the world to bring some extra cash in while continuing to allow me do this amazing Broadly Entertaining work that we do and that we are so lucky and that I'm very grateful to have been able to do.

GIANA: Yeah! Hear, hear! Hear, hear to that, and thankful for our past lives in creating a way to know how to side hustle. I did nothing but hustle for many years and this knowing how to gig and network and just sell yourself for like, what you want to do and bits and pieces and work on making your life, your schedule, all those skills, I'm glad we picked them up when we did.

JAMIE: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

GIANA: Yeah.

So, we've been in business for five years, and I also think it's kind of interesting to note that within those five years, two or three of them have been during a pandemic where entertainment and events have been real wonky, and we have had to shift into, sort of morph into three different— I said this earlier, maybe this wasn't quite right, but like, morph into three different phases of our business. Like, we had our bar phase, where we were just hitting the bar scene and doing that, and our private events and fundraising and all that stuff, and then weddings. Even though all of these were a common thread, it still has been three major shifts during a major global shift, which is interesting.

JAMIE: Yeah, “virtual events” was definitely not on our list of— When we started this business and we were like, well we can do weddings and we can do game nights and then we can do our own events, all of those seeds existed—

GIANA: Yeah.

JAMIE: —but we never thought that we were gonna have a Zoom account, and you know, that was just not on the list. So, grateful for being able to be flexible!

GIANA: Yeah. Yeah yeah. Grateful for that, indeed. So we have been in business five years, but you and I have known each other for 11 years, and while there's a lot that we do know about each other I'm sure that there is still a lot yet to be known about each other, and I think that we should play a little game called Two Truths and a Lie to put ourselves to the test.

JAMIE: Oh I accept! Is that a challenge?

GIANA: It is a challenge!

JAMIE: I accept it. I love Two Truths and a Lie. It's fun as an ice breaker when you're just meeting new people and it's fun to play with people that you have known, for almost 12 years now, and see how much we actually know about each other. Or don't know, and learn new things!

GIANA: Yeah!

JAMIE: Yeah, I was just gonna say, luckily I walk around with two truths and a lie in my back pocket just in case anyone ever challenges me to the game.

GIANA: [laughing] Oh great. Perfect. That is perfect. So you wouldn't mind going first then, since you're prepared.

JAMIE: Oh, no. I am über-prepared. Alright, here we go. So, my three facts—I put them in air quotes—are: I have no notable allergies (that's fact number one); I broke my first bone as a teenager (that's fact number two); and I have had two migraines in my lifetime (that's fact number three).

I kept them all in a sort of medical, physiological arena.

GIANA: I did the same thing. Not medical, but I did the same thing, I kept them all one arena.

Okay, fact one…

JAMIE: I have no notable allergies.

GIANA: Allergies. Broken bone in high school, first broken bone was in high school?

JAMIE: Yeah, as a teenager.

GIANA: As a teenager, and…

JAMIE: And I have had two migraines in my lifetime.

GIANA: I’m gonna take that one out. I feel like maybe you've had more? Oh maybe that is the truth and that's all they've been but it's just they were gnarly. I know you— I know you got a bum elbow, I know that, and I feel like that's the only broken bone story I know, and I think that you were in your 20s when that happened.

JAMIE: I’m trying to keep the straightest of faces—

GIANA: I bet you are! [they laugh] And, um, I don't think I've ever heard you talk about allergies. I'm going to go with allergies.

GIANA: Is the truth. / JAMIE: Is the lie?

JAMIE: Oh, it's Two Truths and a Lie, is the game, Giana. [laughs]

GIANA: Oh shit.

JAMIE: Do you have two lies and a truth prepared?

GIANA: I do.

JAMIE: Alright, well that's fine, as long as I know that. That’s the rule for you.

GIANA: I have two lies and a truth. [laughs] Flexibility!

JAMIE: But, I have two truths and a lie.

GIANA: This is flexibility.

JAMIE: One hundred percent. / GIANA: So sorry.

GIANA: Okay, so I think, yeah, I think that is one of the truths, and then I think the other truth is… Oh man, this is tough. The bone, the broken bone, is the other truth.

No, that's a lie. Sorry, sorry. The broken bone is a lie, and the other one is the truth. Sorry.

JAMIE: Are we settled on that?

GIANA: Yes.

JAMIE: Alright, you got it!

GIANA: Yaaaay!

JAMIE: You got it. Yes! I have broken a few bones, only in my 20s, all in my 20s. I broke a toe, I broke a rib, I broke an elbow, in that order.

GIANA: Okay. I remembered the elbow, and there was a tinkle in my head about a toe, but then I was like everyone's broken a toe.

JAMIE: There was a tinkle about a toe. [they laugh]

GIANA: Yeah, in my memory brain.

JAMIE: Okay.

[ukulele transition]

JAMIE (cont’d): Okay, so now we have your two lies and a truth?

GIANA: [laughs] Yep! I have two lies and a truth.

JAMIE: Okay.

GIANA: I never took a drama class in high school. I was a background extra in the movie Kingpin in the third grade. I only performed in musicals until I went to college.

JAMIE: Hmm… Well I feel like only performing in musicals before college and never taking a drama class in high school could not— Like there's something about them that has to exist in the same universe, that like, either they both have to be true or they both have to be false. Which may not be true because you could have taken a drama class and still only performed in musicals. The timeline for Kingpin, that you specify third grade, like, that is a detail. It's a specificity that makes me think that one is true? Also I don't think I've ever seen that movie but if I remember correctly it has something to do— there are Mormons and I know there are Mormons in Nevada. Is that accurate? I am going to just go with my gut here, and say that you were an extra in Kingpin and that somehow I have never heard this fact.

GIANA: Do you want to do all of them first or do you want me to tell you one by one as you guessed them what it was? So you think that the background extra is the truth… and the other two are lies!

JAMIE: And the other two are lies.

GIANA: Oh I see, sorry sorry, right.

[they laugh]

JAMIE: I was like, What else am I supposed to do?

GIANA: Okay! So, I only performed in musicals until I went to college is indeed a lie, good job! The very second thing I ever was in was Inherit the Wind and I got to eat a bunch of hot dogs and it was still to this day like the best gig I've ever had. [laughs] But, it was a long time, I'd only done very few plays, straight plays. It was mostly musicals. Umm, but unfortunately, I was not in Kingpin.

JAMIE: Ohh!

GIANA: My sister's best friend was an extra in Kingpin, at the bowling alley, and she actually didn't make the final cut, but I took I took a truth from her and made it my lie. And then the truth is, I never did take a drama class in high school. I did a lot of community theater, I was always in something. I was always in a production of some kind, back to back to back to back, and so was my dad, but it was just always in the theater, community theater, so I never— In my head at the time it's like why would I waste it an elective during the day on a theater thing when I go to rehearsal after school every day all the time? I'm getting my theater in community theater. So I was able to take auto, and speech and debate, and all these, public speaking and all these other electives that I wouldn't have had the space for if I had taken drama. However, I did audition to be in the advanced drama class, thinking, hey all of my friends are in this class they all convinced me that I should be in this class and that there's no reason I am not at the same level that they are with the experience that I had. And I crushed that audition, I crushed it. I did a monologue that was twin men, and I like fucking did this— I was so good, I fucking crushed it. [Jamie laughs]

I fucking crushed it, and he didn't let me in and so I was like fuck this.

JAMIE: Mm. Bureaucracy, man.

GIANA: May Mr. McBride rest in peace.

JAMIE: Aw. Meh, we all die.

GIANA: He was in the community theater, though. He knew. He knew!

JAMIE: Well… eh. I can neither defend nor prosecute the man. But you got me with the nuance.

GIANA: Thank you.

JAMIE: Look at you! Tricky tricky. With your two lies and a truth. [they laugh]

GIANA: Up next, a word from our sponsor: Broadly Entertaining’s 5th anniversary discount offer.

[ukulele melody underscores the ad copy]

GIANA: Broadly Entertaining turns 5 this year, and we want to celebrate with you no matter where you are.

JAMIE: In honor of this milestone, we're offering 5% off every virtual event for the rest of 2022! Use code BE5 (that's B, E and the number 5) to save on your next booking today.

GIANA: Choose from a list of uniquely fun games and workshop options perfect for everything from company team building to Nana’s 90th. We plan and customize everything so you can party and connect with your crew.

JAMIE: When Broadly Entertaining started five years ago we had no idea we'd have to get great at planning and hosting virtual events. Now you can hire us from anywhere and join the dozens of happy customers leaving five star reviews!

GIANA: Contact Broadly Entertaining today with the code BE5 (that's B, E and the number 5) to save on your next virtual booking today!

[pause]

GIANA: We are back, and ready to celebrate admirable and impressive women in our BE a Feminist shout out!

[BE a Feminist jingle]

GIANA: [fading up to full volume] Whatever man, fuck it! I'm going to kick it off this month because I got a little pissed off when I was doing my research for a BE a Feminist thing. I, as you know, am a fan of TikTok, and so I was like, Oh this might be cool, I can give folks just like a list of content creators. ‘Cause I have really great list of content creators on my FYP and I am always getting great content, so I figured somebody must have made a feminist list of TikTok creators. And so I Googled “feminist TikTok’rs”, and it was such a bummer! The first thing that came up is tikTok.com, it's their discover section, and when you go to it the first video on top is this young lady talking about Andrew Tate and comparing Andrew Tate inciting violence in men being just as bad as women on this app saying that all men should— we should kill all men and inciting violence, that it's just as bad. She's trying to draw parallels that don't exist, basically.

JAMIE: Sure. With zero proof of anyone ever having said that.

GIANA: Yeah, and it's actually, it's not a very good video and it's just really… dumb. But like, all these hash— She hashtags feminist, feminism, lefty, rightwing, Tate and all of those fucking pieces of shit, anti-woke, truth speaker… Fucking idiot is what it is [Jamie laughs]. But that's the first video. First video! And then the second one is The Female Lead and it's, I know this [at] Claire [underscore] Training. She's great, like, funny funny videos, but it doesn't— It's not super great from there. I was just kind of bummed that that's how that came about and I was like, well maybe it's the word feminist. It's a buzzword, so I chose “women of TikTok” seeing that maybe somebody has created a list of great women TikTok creators. But the first three videos that come up on the search are Top 21 Women of TikTok Who Expose Themselves as Thots, which is basically, you could look it up, what it means. Jamie and I had to look it up earlier, but it's not nice.

JAMIE: We’re old.

GIANA: But also like, if they want to expose themselves, whatever that's fine. I don't give a shit. Like, do whatever you want. That's not the issue I'm trying to take, just let me clarify and make sure that you know I don't give a shit how people live their sex lives or how they talk about it. I think it's great. However, that just being the first thing is like, alright, sensationalized much? And then the next one, 22 Hot Women on TikTok Destroying Feminism, Top 22 Hot Rightwing Women on TikTok, and it's like, wow what? And I'm on the Broadly Entertaining Google Chrome browser and I find that very interesting so I got fucking pissed off.

JAMIE: Ugh, we do need your list!

GIANA: Yeah. Thank you. So maybe I should make a list and just be really thoughtful about it and maybe I will, maybe I fucking will, because that is annoying.

So, I was texting with my sister and she just told me that she's starting yet another new job today, and I thought that's a better way to go: my sister. She's Kathleen DeGeiso and she started as a nurse. She went to nursing school when I was a senior in high school; I remember coming home from school and watching her first born and she would practice drawing blood on me. I was a lot more fearless then; now I'm like, I can't look. [laughing] I’m such a different patient now. But she has been in it since 2004, and she's worked her way up the chain. In the past five, or you know five to seven years especially. And now she's the System Director of Surgical Services for Northern Nevada Health System, and that is basically everywhere north of Las Vegas. For friends who don't know, Las Vegas is all the way on the southern part of the state and Reno is all the way in the northern part of the state right when it does that little angled turn with California. Anyway, she's basically in charge of everything north of Las Vegas, which is the whole fucking state, basically. So, I'm just so proud of my sister and I wanted to— Sorry I did a twofer on my BE a Feminist, but I just wanted to do that. Anyway, go Kat, I'm very proud of you!

JAMIE: Yeah, go Kat! Absolutely. And that was a good twofer! Celebrate Kat, absolutely. Well done, congratulations, crushing it. Totally agree. Good to have smart, caring, confident, capable people in the healthcare system.

GIANA: Compassionate.

JAMIE: Absolutely. More C words!

JAMIE: Yes! / GIANA: Yeah!

JAMIE: And I look forward to your list of TikTok creators that people should be following, so don't apologize; you gave yourself extra work. [laughs]

GIANA: [laughs] Yeah, exactly. So how about you Jamie?

JAMIE: Yeah! I don't have a great segue into this and I don't think I would regardless of what your BE a Feminist segment was, but mine is about the clitoris.

GIANA: Yaay! / JAMIE: Yaay!

JAMIE: I was reading a couple weeks ago about how little is known, how little is studied, and how little is taught in med school about the clitoris. Like, it is just sort of, you know, it has continued to be this like mysterious part of the body of half the people in the world, that is known for having one purpose and that purpose is pleasure, and of course the sexual pleasure of women and anyone who's not a cis man is not really taken into account by our American culture. Perhaps the western world at large but I'm just going to speak to our nation. I'm speaking to our nation about the clitoris!

You know, you may have heard this quote-unquote fun fact that the clitoris has 8,000 nerve endings, which is twice as much as the penis. Turns out, we didn't actually know if that was true until very recently. There's a study that came out, it still needs to be peer reviewed, but it points toward a number much closer to 10,000 nerve fibers being concentrated in the clitoris, in something as small as the clitoris. For comparison, the hand has about 18,000 nerve fibers, is how many times bigger than the clitoris?, and it has not even double the amount of nerve fibers, nerve endings, you know, sensitivity touch feeling parts of the body. I won't get into this more deeply because I am not a gynecologist or urologist or a medical expert of any kind. I am just someone who has a body with a clitoris and it's exciting to see that people are finally starting to talk about the need to study it, the need to teach about it in med school.

I'm going to share— the first article that I read was in the New York Times and there are multiple women who talk about having gone through procedures that completely removed the sensitivity in their clitoris and the best their doctors could offer them was like, Oh that's just post-surgical or post procedural, it'll come back, you'll be fine. And it didn't come back and they're not fine and— I mean, they may be fine, I don't know, I don't want to speak for these women, but as far as the physical adjustments that they've had to make, the changes in their body, the complete lack of sexual pleasure sensitivity that they have had to go through because people just don't fucking know and they don't study it and they don't think about it as something important for a person's well-being physically, mentally…

GIANA: Yeah, I was gonna say, not to mention like, the mental shit that you go through, not just like because of the damage that's been done, but the mental shit you go through with your relationship with your healthcare providers. Like, when you have been wronged or when you've been failed in some way and I understand that like— I know we put a lot on our healthcare providers to provide a lot of answers to things that they perhaps shouldn't be expected to know. I get that. But like, like in this case, sure they don't have it— it's not in the books, why would they know? But it's still like a process that you have to go through to trust your healthcare providers that they're giving you the care that you deserve and need.

JAMIE: Mm hmm. And you know what? For not being in the books, it's taken a really long time for someone to say it should be in the books, you know?

GIANA: It's the best body part!

JAMIE: [laughs] Right! And it's just, it points to our American Christian hypocrisy that there are people who will put down other nations and cultures— and to be clear, I am not about to support female genital mutilation. That is its own terrible thing, but in a lot of ways this medical practice is our westernized version of that. But because it's not for religious reasons or it's not explicitly and outwardly misogynistic in reason and explanation people think that it is somehow better and that our culture is better than.

And then meanwhile we have— I just, we're gonna mention abortions in every fucking episode until they're legal again. I was just listening to a podcast episode about how doctors now need lawyers and how doctors can't treat patients without first going to legal experts who are not medical experts because every fucking state has all these bullshit laws, so just a lot of angry hypocrisy for me over here. But, bright side, we are about to learn a whole lot more about the clitoris. [party noisemaker sound effect]

GIANA: Yay! Thanks for the fun time, Jamie. Thank you listeners, for joining us. Check the show notes for links, a transcript of this episode, or more information on Broadly Entertaining events and offerings mentioned in today's show.

JAMIE: The Broadly Entertaining Podcast is produced and hosted by Giana DeGeiso and Jamie Rosler of Broadly Entertaining.

GIANA: I compose and perform all the theme music and segue songs, plus I handle sound mixing and audio editing.

[bright ukulele underscore fades up in the background]

JAMIE: I put together the episode outline and transcript, plus a video version for YouTube.

GIANA: If you like what we do please rate, review, and follow us in your podcast feed. Tell a friend. Word of mouth is priceless, especially for small business like ours.

JAMIE: If you love what we do and want to help us keep doing it, Venmo a tip to Broadly [dash] Entertaining or click the support button at anchor [dot] FM [slash] Broadly Entertaining. And of course, you can hire us to host or plan your next celebration or casual get-together!

[ukulele plays to a close]

GIANA: [musical reprise] And if you threw a party…