Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Be There in Five podcast. I'm Kate Kennedy, your host. Every year I have a friend of mine, Caroline Moss on the podcast, to attempt to go over gift guides given her vocation at G. Thanks

just bought it. She's kind of a professional shopper. And we absolutely never get to gift guides.

Because there's always better things to talk about, whether it's Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn

quotes on canvas is it at a T.J. Max or Mama Sle of the Lake inexplicably printed on Driftwood at a lake gift shop in a landlock state, which you'll find this episode title is in reference to. I do assure you if you're new here, this is not speech I regularly use, although I'm sure it would be really likable, if I referred to myself constantly

in the third person and said Mama Slade stuff.

This year, the morning of, I decided, I'd rather talk about Broadway musicals because

Wicked's coming out this week, and I think Broadway is a really

fascinating pocket of popular culture that I'm not a snob or well-versed by any means, so this is

an accessible conversation just even for fans of like prison, goosebumps music, live singing,

or even just like shows that are pretty ubiquitous in the cultural zeitgeist and not like niche at all.

As much as I'd love to have super refined taste, like I don't know the deep cuts.

I mean, I grew up in Short Pump, Virginia, and this is what I think is interesting about Broadway is,

and kind of feeds into the lore and fascination is, with the exception of the big hits that go on tours,

if you can go or if it comes to your town and you can get tickets, there's a level of inaccessibility and wonder that comes along with it where young people like me are just relegated to the cast album and imagining the plot and how everything fits in and filling in the scenes with your imagination, especially before the internet.

So something like Wicked that came out in 2003, you know, used to march around campus and main character to defying gravity and the wizard and I. And it really fits in the, perfectly in the

category of that kind of goosebumps-inducing frisin music I like that motivates you and makes you

want to find your corner of the sky. To this day, I've never seen Wicked.

And I would consider myself a pretty big fan.

But I don't really know a lot about like what goes on, the set, the plot, this side or the other.

It's kind of funny when you think about how frustrating, like the resale market markup and like exclusivity of like the air is tour so frustrating given it's a musical event

of something you really care about and consume from a distance that you can't see in person

that often that has a finite run of shows. It's kind of a similar sensation to a lesser

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