I Read That: “The Woman In Me” by Britney Spears

Everyone knows who Britney Spears is … or do we? For many people, Britney is frozen in time circa 2002. For others, she faded away after 2008 until her gut-wrenching testimony about her 13-year conservatorship in 2021. Much of Britney’s life story has been told to us by others: Us Weekly, Perez Hilton, her father, the speculating crowds of the internet. But for the first time in a very, very long time, Britney is telling her own story in her new memoir, The Woman in Me. 

Today on Terrible Reading Club’s first-ever EMERGENCY EPISODE, Nora and fellow Britney superfan Kara Nesvig (who also created The Britney Spears Oracle Deck) do a deep dive on The Woman in Me, Britney’s legacy and the many, many people who owe Britney a public apology. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

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Nora: Hello and welcome to The Terrible Reading Club. This is an emergency episode, the very first emergency episode of The Terrible Reading Club, where we threw away our publishing schedule, where I personally stood outside of a bookstore. Until they opened their doors, where I actually went to the bookstore a day early, tried to convince them to give me the Britney Spears book a day in advance, and was told, no, no exceptions, you'll get the book tomorrow, like everybody else.

It's an emergency episode because this is, this is a big book, guys. This is not only the number one best selling celebrity memoir within 24 hours, it's According to Britney Spears Instagram, I did not bother to fact check her facts. But because there is truly nobody who embodies the experience of millennial womanhood quite like Britney Spears.

And that's a broad range. of humanity. But if you were in high school, like I was, if you were in middle school, or grade school, or even in college, if you were at some sort of tender age when you first saw Britney Spears burst onto your television set, dressed like a sexy school girl, if you too wondered what you were supposed to do at the crossroads of your life when you are not a girl, but not yet a woman, If you ever had the boyfriend of your dreams.

and then had it all fall apart. Brittany was an avatar for the female experience. When she pierced her belly button, so did my friends and I. When she wore low rise jeans laced up the sides with strips of leather, I found the next best thing at the outlet mall. When she declared that she was not, in fact, all that innocent, I felt something inside of me agree, even though I was, at the time, a virgin taking pregnancy tests.

The power of Britney Spears cannot be understated, and also, her power was just an illusion. She was a product, and that product was not just her talent, but her looks. Her boobs, everyone wanted to know, were they real? Um, her virginity, her smile, her body, the way she moved her body. I have written a lot of sad books, I have read a lot of sad books, and reading this yesterday, I had a rock in my throat the entire time.

I told somebody it was the saddest book I had ever read, because Brittany's story, in her words or anyone else's, is just a tragic one, and it is one that all of us played a part in, however passively. She was a bird in a gilded cage, and sometimes we watched her sing and gave her little treats, and sometimes we shook the cage, we beat it like a piñata, and we wondered why she was being so crazy.

So today, the day after this book came out, I am processing this book out loud with a guest, with Kara Nesvig, who is a producer here at Terrible Reading Club and is also the author of the Britney Spears Oracle Deck, a deck and guidebook to be stronger than yesterday, which I'm holding in my hands and which none of you can see, but we will link in the show notes.

Kara is a true scholar of Spears. And I am so happy to have her with us today. Carol, welcome. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I'm going to pull a card for this conversation I just decided. I'm going to pull a Brittany card to guide us today.

I got the dancer. So funny. I got that one yesterday. Let's look this up. Okay. 

Okay. 

Kara: I made a point to ensure that there were black sneakers featured on that card because Brittany likes to dance in black sneakers, not high heels. Not high heels. Dance is central to Brittany's entire being, both on stage and off.

She trained as a dancer from childhood and her sheer talent is undeniable. We've seen her kill it on tour in complicated combos and groove along to her favorite songs of the moment via Instagram videos, and it's impossible to look away when she dances. Whether she's flawlessly executing the slave for you choreography or trying something more modern on social media, the dancer typifies expression in its most kinetic, sensual, and self assured form.

Put some music on. We recommend Greatest Hits, My Prerogative, or Femme Fatale. My prerogative is, side note, an unappreciated hit. And let your body lead the way, even if you can't match Britney's moves. Keep on dancing. Tell the World Ends. And that's what we're here to do today.

We are here to dance and tell the world ends. Cara, first I'm going to ask you. Mm hmm. What is, do you remember the first time you saw Britney Spears? I'm a couple years younger than you, so I was in late elementary school, I believe. I was in the sixth grade and what I really remember about Britney is my male classmates were obsessed.

They had the posters of her in her little pink sweater, and they couldn't stop talking about Britney Spears, Britney Spears, Britney Spears. And to be entirely honest with you, full confession, I was kind of a Christina girl when I was young. I wasn't really a Britney girl. Wow. I know. I, I remember thinking she was fine, but I like Tristina's music better, so.

There was, there was a big sea change a couple years later, where I switched sides. Um, but I absolutely, it was all, overnight, I think, honestly, she was everywhere. obviously we lived in a different time where we didn't get our news from the internet. Like, we got it on MTV, if you had cable, which I did not, or you got it in your grandma's people magazines.

or YM or Seventeen. So it was just a slower news cycle, but with Britney it felt like all of a sudden she was everywhere. There was no slow build, it was just an explosion. It really was. And I remember, like, picking up magazines, hoping to see her. Oh, yeah. If she was on the cover, we bought it. Oh, a hundred percent.

I remember going to get my nails done and, like, flipping through and hoping to see just anything about her. And I don't know. that there will ever be that kind of phenomenon. No, I don't think so. I think Britney was kind of the last... I don't want to say true star because there are obviously still major celebrities, but I think social media access just changes the way that we perceive people.

I mean, I stole... her wedding issue of people from my dentist's office when I was in high school because I was like, I just need to have this. I need to read it a hundred times. I remember, , so vividly that episode and that their first song was, when the lights go down. Wow. I didn't know that. And I was like, I was like, what?

I just remember being like, okay. The way that, you know, music media at the time kind of built her, so I watched a lot of VH1 when we did eventually get Cable and a lot of MTV and there were shows like Becoming or Behind the Music, Making the Video, The Fabulous Life, where you could like, see where she shopped.

Yeah, and she for some reason was just the center of this big storm. Yeah. She also seemed, I think one thing that made her appealing Mm-Hmm. to me. And I was more of a Britney girl than a Christina girl. I see that. Awesome. Was Christina scared me a little . Um, Christina scared Christina came out with like a different brand of sexiness.

That was not meant to have. any innocence to it and really was about, you know, more of like the ownership of your sexuality where I think Britney's was. More of the gamification and the currency of your sexuality, which we will get into. And I, even watching interviews of her in the early days and watching those things like Becoming, Behind the Music, all the various MTV specials that she mentions in this book that you know, are in the dusty recesses of my brain.

I have this vision of her smacking her gum. Yep. And just being so excited to be there, you could just tell that she really did love it. And I think that there is something, the true tragedy to me of this story is the numerous times she could have exited. And lived a healthier life. Yep. And either didn't or couldn't.

I think that's a really great segue into the beginning of the book. Oh, God. We dive in. So, yes, let's dive in. I, the, the dedication immediately, you've, you've got a, you've got a boy. I sure do. How'd that dedication feel to you? I, I think we'll talk about this more later, but to me the saddest part of the book is it's, the children.

And I think we can go into more detail about that when it happens, kind of in the scope of the book. But, um, I hope they read 

it. 

Kara: I hope they do, too. I hope they do, too. And I hope they don't listen to it on audio, even though I've heard The snippets are great. Some of the snippets, too, are things that I highlighted.

Okay, so I'm going to read the prologue just because reading this, I was like, where are we going? Go for it. As a little girl, I walked for hours alone in the silent woods behind my house in Louisiana singing songs. Being outside gave me a sense of aliveness and danger. When I was growing up, my mother and father fought constantly.

He was an alcoholic. I was usually scared in my home. Outside wasn't necessarily heaven either, but it was my world. Call it heaven or hell, it was mine. Before going home, I would follow a path to our neighbor's house, through a landscaped yard and past a swimming pool. They had a rock garden full of small, soft pebbles that would trap the heat.

and stay warm in a way that felt so good against my skin. I would lie down on those rocks and look up at the sky, feeling the warmth from below and above, thinking, I can make my own way of life. I can make my dreams come true. Lying quietly on those rocks, I felt God.

To me, this feels like a Southern Gothic novel. Like, we are in Flannery O'Connor territory. We really could be. Or like a Truman Capote childhood story. And I think the first third of the book is like that. Yeah, it could have been, it could have been Carson McCullers, baby. There you go. That's what I was thinking about.

 If you had never encountered Instagram, your first thought wouldn't be this is an Instagram. These are a series of Instagram captions from the era of the confessional Instagram caption. It would be, we are reading a stream of consciousness novel by a borderline genius. I mean, I will go to that for Brittany as a genius any day of the week, so.

I really will. 

The first thing I highlighted was in the Bible it says your tongue is your sword. My tongue and my sword were me singing.

 We start with her childhood, but we transition really, really quickly to the way that her parents grew up and the revelation that her dad's father, June, was Abusive, and that her father's mother, lost a baby when I think the baby was three days old, never recovered emotionally, and shot herself on his grave eight years later.

After the baby had died when Brittany's father was 13 years old and this grandmother had also been not just abused by her husband, but sent to an asylum and given, and this is foreshadowing, lithium. Yes. There's a great story about this in New York Magazine from a couple months ago, so I highly recommend that as like additional reading.

It kind of dives into that story and J. B. Spears childhood. And I think this was done pretty intentionally to give us a little bit of empathy for Jamie, despite how things change. But it does, I mean, shockingly sets it up right away. It's the first thing in the book, where we're at in the Spears family.

You instantly know this family is dealing with heavy, heavy stuff. Yeah, heavy trauma that's never processed and that the children... Runs through generations. Runs through generations that the children are aware of and I think I've said this numerous times in numerous places, you know, the unconditional love always flows up from children to their parents.

 It's... Peppered through almost every story I've ever told of somebody else's, which is we are just built to love the people who made us, no matter what, and no matter what they have put you through, and Brittany wrote this After her, you know, conservatorship ended. She's reaching for empathy for the person who like unequivocally abused her.

Yeah. And she says it multiple times in the book that all she ever wanted from her father was unconditional love. She says, I know that trauma is part of why my father was how he was with my siblings and me, why nothing was ever good enough. He pushed my brother to excel in sports, which is what his father had done to him.

He drank until he couldn't think, he'd disappear for days at a time, and he was mean. And then she talks about how she didn't see that side from her grandfather, like he softened as he got older. And I think it's interesting because then she puts it in parallel to her mother's upbringing, where her mother's childhood was also not ideal in that her mother was like a British nurse from World War II who met her grandfather and he moved her to Louisiana and was like, oh you lived in London, it was glamorous, now you live here in the States.

And so, Lynn grew up with a mother who was bitter and resentful, and you can see why that made her gravitate towards Jamie Spears, who is , a superstar athlete, and handsome, and popular in their town, and then as soon as they get married, he starts drinking, and she starts hating her life. And she just becomes super passive towards him when she's not raging at him for, being out until four.

 Yesterday after I read this book, I also went back into my bookshelf to reread the book Heart to Heart by Brittany and Lynn Spears, which was published With the second album as like a little sort of like behind the scenes biography, book, first of all, it's, it's unreadable. I gotta say, it's literally just a series of listicles.

It's a small paperback square book. The layout is so millennium, so many fonts, Kara. There's so many fonts. 

 And it's a quote unquote book, like, from... Lynn and Brittany's perspectives. And after reading this book, I was like, why was Lynn co writing anything? Like, why was Lynn trying to be a thing? They also wrote a novel together called A Mother's Gift.

Do you remember that? Yes! Oh my god! And so, in the early, like, stages of Brittany's career, she and her mother were framed as Best friends. We do everything together. I love my mom. She's my best friend. I admire her so much. And I think that's true, and I think that was probably also some savvy marketing to kind of offset the controversies that she created by, people thinking she was so sexual or she was a bad role model for little girls.

 I think it makes it all the more disappointing when you realize Jamie gets a lot of the flack for being the shittiest parent, but I think Lynn is equally guilty. You kind of discover that more and more as you read the book. And Brittany says it right away at the beginning, my mother learned passiveness, and I learned it from her.

And that impacts her entire life. Her entire life is colored by trying to make her dad love and respect her. Mm hmm. and also watching her father's mistreatment of her mother. And every time somebody talks about child stardom, we know, and we've known for decades, right, that child stardom is unhealthy at best, and a form of public abuse.

at its very worst. It is just inherently dehumanizing to become a product. It just is. And to do that before you have a prefrontal cortex and to have so much of your family and their happiness or their safety or their security tied up in your success is bananas. That's too much pressure for Many adults, right?

So here's where I'm going with this, which is also every story of a child star, and this is in the Heart to Heart book, it is in the Lynn Spears memoir, Through the Storm, which I hate read years ago, and I skimmed through it yesterday, just to stoke my rage a little bit more.

They act as though they had no choice but to put their child through this, right? She chose it. She chose it. She wanted it. She loved attention. Every person loves attention. We need attention. You know, many people enjoy performing, many kids enjoy that, and also, like, they do not know when they're signing. a deal with the devil.

They really don't. They don't. And part of it too is like she said, oh, hold on, I have a highlighted part. 

I wanted to hide, but I also wanted to be seen. Both things could be true. Same quote. Yeah. Crouched in the cool darkness of a cabinet, I felt so small I could disappear. Both everyone's eyes on me, I became something else. Someone who could command a room. In white tights, belting out a song, it felt like anything was possible.

And she's describing being a child and hiding until people would notice she was missing and look for her, and also sort of disassociating on stage giving these performances and all it is It's all the same thing, which is like wanting so badly to be seen. And just a few pages later, she said the part that you said too, which is the saddest part to me was that I all, what I always wanted was a dad who would love me as I was.

Somebody who would say, I just love you. You could do anything right now. I'd still love you with unconditional love. My dad was reckless, cold, and mean with me. But he was even harder on Brian. I think Like, reckless, cold, and mean. I think the hiding statement is a really good thesis statement for Brittany's entire attitude about being famous, especially as a child, because.

In my reading, I read it as, she was driven and she wanted this, but she also wanted to be normal, and that's the struggle that Britney Spears has always fought with more than any other celebrity. She wants to be on stage, she wants to be a performer, but she also wants to go to Target, and no one takes her picture.

And people always say, you know, I think Britney would be happier if she just quit and moved back to Louisiana and ran a dance studio. And I've said this millions of times, because I think that's probably true, but she can't do that. She's too famous. She's always going to be too famous. And something that I noted in, when she's talking about being a child star, So she goes to Broadway, she gets a job as an understudy, , and eventually does take over the role.

And Natalie Portman is the co understudy, which is funny. And then she realizes that she's going to have to perform on Christmas. And she's like, I don't want to do this. So she quits. She wants to go home. She wants to be a normal little girl. And then she tries out for Mickey Mouse Club. And she's told she's too young to come back.

So she comes back, she makes it, she films, she has an amazing time. The show ends and she's like, I just want to go back to high school. I don't want to go to Los Angeles and keep trying to be famous. I want to go play basketball. So she's always had this yes and no. attitude towards being famous. It's like she's cursed by being so talented when all she really wants is to just be a normal person, but like she can't be because she's super talented.

Yeah, she can't be. There's a few sliding doors moments like that, that I highlighted. There's that one and she like joins the basketball team and that's a whole nother kind of performance for her that gives her kind of that same feeling. And then there's, the high school years where, you know, she's, she's been in the Mickey Mouse Club, and she, uh, spends like a few years just Being normal and going to dances and dating her brother's friend and losing her virginity when she's 14 into a 19 year old and You know, I grew up in a small town.

I Yeah, that wasn't all that shocking to me. , the parenting that Brittany gets is extremely unhealthy. There's another thing that I underlined when she's talking about her childhood where she was always looking to make sure her mom was there at whatever class she was at and her mom was gone one day and she'd start sobbing and panicking.

And she had just gotten to Walmart, but Brittany was losing her mind, and Lynn never left the window again, is what she says. She never left my side. Until when Brittany is about to get super famous, she does. And she leaves her with Felicia. She leaves her with Felicia! I think we need to give some background for people who don't know who Felicia is. So if you are a longtime Britney fan, you know who Felicia is. She also goes by Fee. And she was, I believe, like a dental assistant in Kentwood who Lynn was friends with, who became Brittany's chaperone because Lynn couldn't be with her because she had baby Jamie Lynn, who I believe was another Band Aid baby.

Brittany herself was a Band Aid baby for her parents marriage. She says it. And Jamie Lynn was born when Brittany was, I think, like, seven or eight, maybe a little older. Anyway, so she leaves her with Felicia and she becomes Brittany's chaperone and she's with her in Sweden when she's recording with Max Martin.

She's with her in New York, not Lynn. So Brittany as a child is dealing with these abandonment issues and then it just presents itself again when her mother's like, okay, well, you're going to be with this person. And Felicia eventually becomes Brittany's assistant and she's with her 24 7 until basically Brittany gets married.

 She becomes Brittany's mother figure and her friend. She's also in the Baby One More Time video. She's the teacher. She's the teacher and she is also in Heart to Heart with Lynn and Brittany. Of course.

She is also in Through the Storm. She is also in Behind the Music. I understand part of Lynn's conundrum. Here. Sure, totally. You have a, right, you have a kid who has Just two other children. Right, you have, yeah, you have a kid who just truly, like, is undeniably talented and a star who's getting this once in a lifetime opportunity.

You think, as a parent, that you're making the right choices and it's always too late to know when you've made the wrong one. It's never, you just never have. all of the information that you need. You have the information that you have, and that's it. And she's got a little kid. And she doesn't want to uproot Jamie Lynn, so she just says go forth with a group of adults and bring Felicia.

Bring Fee. Bring Fee. Fee will be your mom. There's several passages in Hard to Heart by Lynn and Brittany Spears where Fee pops up and is like, Lynn is like, is it hard for me to be away from Brittany? Sure. But Fee will call me and say, don't worry about her. She's doing great. She's in the studio working so hard.

It's like, what? An absolutely bizarre world. And also. This is how the entertainment industry has worked forever, right? Leave your old world behind. Come trust us, we'll build this new version of your life and, and, and build this sort of facsimile of yourself and, and sell it and everything will be fine.

And if it's not, well, whoops, that wasn't our fault. Lynn does not know that she is sort of setting into motion everything that we now know will unfold, but reading that part, I just thought, Oh, God. Like,

make her stay in high school. Yeah. Make her finish high school and, and, and just tell Larry Rudolph it can wait. So, Brittany is 16 years old when Baby One More Time The Single comes out. Then all of a sudden she's catapulted to this world in New York City and then to Sweden where she talks about how she would stay up all night in this, in this studio. underground and just sing and sing and sing and sing and she wouldn't leave until she felt it was perfect and I think Something with Brittany that has always prickled me is that people have always said she's a studio plant Everything in her career was planned for her.

She doesn't write her own songs. She lip syncs. She's just like a doll but the more you know about Brittany the more you realize like she Really built her own initial image and she doesn't really talk about this in the book But when they were filming the video for baby one more time, actually she does talk about it.

The initial treatment was Like a superhero, she calls it Power Rangers, and she's like, no, that's stupid. Nobody my age is going to think this is cool. And she was the one who came up with the whole high school treatment for the video, and the way she dressed, and also in the oops video where she's wearing the catsuit.

All of these decisions that led to her becoming so iconic were her. She was the one who stayed up all night listening to Tainted Love. Yes. And then getting her voice. So she was tired, so her voice was gravelly, to give her that edge sound. Because Britney as a child, as a singer, was more what you would think of as like a talent show singer, where she would belt.

Yes. But she strategically developed, and in partnership with Max Martin, who is like a genius producer, she changed her sound and she told him, I want to be a little more R& B than pop, like I still want this album to feel true to the music I listen to, which is Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston.

So she was really the architect of her early fame and her sound and her love in a way that people don't give her credit for. That's a really good point. It's a really good point. And that's like the version of her. That is what, how I still perceive her to is like so excited in interviews, smacking that gum.

Bubbly. So bubbly. Yes. The Pepsi commercials. She is just like in her element and Even when she's describing those first tours, too, she's like, this is heaven, right? Like this is exactly what I want to be doing and I'm, you know, gonna, I buy my parents a house. I settle my father's debts. Yeah. Like she's trying to break this cycle of suffering and And yet, she's just, teetering closer and closer to an edge that she doesn't even know is there.

 At this same time where she's being, like, do you remember the Rolling Stone spread and the Rolling Stone cover? Of course. And she's, yeah, and she's like, 15, 16, and they are the sexiest photos.

Like, In a way that, you know, really I think you can only do that when you're so, like, you, she's not perceiving herself that way, but she also is, I don't know how to explain it, like she is surprised at one point when she looks out into the crowd and sees older men. Yep. She's like, oh, this is different.

 When you're doing that for yourself, I think she probably had the time of her life at that photo shoot. She says. I know I would have, right? It's like My mother seemed concerned, but I knew I wanted to work with David LaChapelle again. Yeah! For me, that's like, okay, well, you're an artist, he's an artist, obviously you, you know, looking at the pictures now, maybe I think of them a little differently than I did.

When I was young, but like, there's no denying that those are very impactful photos. Yes. Yes. That are now instrumental in the Britney lore. Yes. And in, and, and also like this backlash that happens almost immediately, which is this girl's too sexy, right? There is no, there's no good way to be a woman.

You You simply cannot do it. You simply cannot do it. The best way to be a woman is to, frankly, die so people can then praise the parts of you they liked and tell everybody how wrong they were about the parts that they didn't like. Because she's 16, she's 17, and this is also, I don't know, in some ways sometimes I've thought like, Okay, the internet has made us meaner, but then you watch old media, and you're like, No!

Honestly, sometimes I think it was worse. 2000

VMA, so that's the one where she rips off the suit. And she's in the naked bodysuit, which I think is her best VMA performance. And she choreographed it with Wade Robson, who was like another one of her trusted collaborators, who really brought her energy to life in an amazing way. Then MTV makes her sit in front of a monitor and watch people's reactions, where people are being like, she's too sexy, she's setting a bad example for kids.

Nobody would do that now. That's something that would just never happen. And obviously that's because Brittany was kind of the linchpin for this. Like, the way that we treat pop stars now, we would have, like, we would have never treated a pop star today. The way that we treat Britney Spears. I think Justin Bieber was maybe the last one who got a little bit of that, but our attitude towards pop stars being actual people has changed, not completely, but significantly.

It was just, it was such a mean, mean era. This is like who wore it best, which people still do, but now the bite is totally out of it. And people are like, wow, both are so beautiful. However, I like this open toed shoe where it used to be like, she looks like somebody chewed her up.

And again, this is a teenage girl who's basically being confronted with. other people's opinions of her before we used to drink from a fire hose of that, when you would be like, I think all the time about stardom as it used to exist. And she's kind of at the cusp of this changing where she's not at the point.

where people can DM her. Correct. Where she'll get notifications about things. You've still got fan mail as a letter. Right, yeah, you still get fan mail as a letter. You could join the Britney Spears fan club and it was coordinated via mail. She talks about updating her website herself later in this book and she's like basically having this stuff brought to her so that it can be Entertainment for other people, and, I loved this quote, I was never quite sure what all these critics thought I was supposed to be doing.

A Bob Dylan impression? I was a teenage girl from the South. I signed my name with a heart. I liked looking cute. Why did everyone treat me, even when I was a teenager, like I was dangerous? Yeah, I think this is my, one of my favorite quotes from the book. And, actually, in a recent episode of You Must Remember This, In the erotic 90s, series, she's talking about Britney.

And she talks about the People magazine, and I remember this cover that's like, Too Sexy Too Soon. I remember that! It's a picture of Britney on the cover, she's wearing a blue top, with her little cute bob and smiling. And it's all about her not being a good role model for children. And, even when I was a child, I remember thinking, it's really unfair.

that people expect celebrities to be a role model I never thought that Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears were like, My role models. I thought I wanted to dress like them and I wanted to look like them and I liked their music But I wasn't like I need to do exactly what they're doing.

No, and Brittany really really got held to that in a way and in part because of the purity culture of the time I love that she talks about it later after she breaks up with Justin where she's like I was glad he was talking about us having sex because it was so stupid to me that I had to pretend to be a virgin Yeah, and people asked her constantly.

There are so many video clips that go viral every once in a while of Brittany who's probably like 18 or 19 at the time and people are like, are you a virgin? Are your breasts real? Yeah, absolutely. And she's like Why are you asking me to pass? Antisocial behavior. Yeah. Antisocial, bizarre behavior. Like, who on earth is going to, like, and if you're an adult man asking a teenage girl that, you're a pervert and a freak.

, I'm keeping a running list of all the people who owe Brittany a public apology. And Ryan Seacrest is on it. And Ed McMahon, even though he's dead. Ed McMahon, I want you to Ten years old. Absolutely bizarre behavior. Absolutely bizarre behavior. This is, uh, my favorite. It wasn't the end of a chapter, but it was like, you know, the end of a little section of a chapter.

This is just, this is perfect writing. Okay. Trying to find ways to protect my heart from criticism and to keep the focus on what was important, I started reading religious books like the Conversations with God series by Neal Donald Walsh. I also started taking Prozac. Yeah, she does this a couple of times in the book where it's kind of like an aside.

She just drops it in and then leaves it. Yes. And that is something that I did want a little bit more of from this book, but I also know that, maybe that's not where she's at in her current journey, and she's kind of, she's talked about this a lot on Instagram, like her attitude about therapy, because she was forced to undergo so much therapy later on.

But she will kind of hint at it earlier in the beginning, like early in her career, she'll say, I started taking Prozac. And then move on. Yeah. Here's what this book doesn't have. It does not have a lot of scenes with details.

Correct. You will not hear, there will not be a sight, a sound, an atmosphere. Whatsoever. No. This book is a recounting of events in their most bullet pointed form possible. Yep. The only time she creates an atmosphere is her childhood in their little house. She talks about that a little bit. And she does talk about her New York apartment.

And being in New York, which as any long time Britney fan knows, Britney loved living in New York. And I think probably wanted to stay there and would have stayed there had she not gotten married. And she had an apartment and she could just disappear. That's why she liked it. So I thought that was interesting.

That's really the only place she ever really talks about. Otherwise, she's just being like this is what happened. And this is what happened and that's I mean, that's pretty common in a celebrity memoir, too Yeah, I think too You're sort of counting on people coming to these books with some sort of memory of these things.

, I don't think anyone's writing for an alien who's never heard of Britney Spears and being like, what? You're going to have to tell me what Justin looks like. Everybody knows. When you say denim, you know. We know. And yes, she talks about the denim.

I loved that. I thought that was adorable. The first DVD that I ever owned was Crossroads by Britney Spears. By Britney Spears. She wrote it. I'm just kidding. Shonda Rhimes wrote it. Yeah. Shonda Rhimes wrote it. And it's Britney and The girl from Avatar, and the girl from Orange is the New Black.

Taron Manning. That's it. Okay. I loved this movie so much. It's such a perfect girl movie, a road trip movie. And in it, she says, she lost herself in the character? Loved this. This was, this was a moment that I thought, this is Britney Spears talking.

This is. Obviously, you know, everybody knows she's working with a ghostwriter and I think there's been some speculation who it was. We don't have to get into that, but every celebrity works with a ghostwriter. Like, it's just how it works. So that was a moment that I was like, oh, this is her. This is really her talking.

There's this huge buildup, right? By chapter 12, we're really still in like the beginning of her career. It's 2001. It's 2002. Everything's going great. And she's very casual about how famous she is. She's like, oh yeah, Madonna. I was running into Madonna everywhere.

That was weird. It's like, no, you were extremely famous. You were equally as famous as Michael Jackson and Madonna. Yes, and, and Mariah Carey. Mariah Carey. She talks about lovely. Lovely. Yes. Exactly. I love the heroes. The unsung heroes of this book are Madonna. Paris Hilton. Paris Hilton, which we knew. I think real ones knew.

Yep. And, um. Mariah Carey. And Mariah Carey. And Mariah Carey. Um, who, you know, went through her own thing. I think that this book and so many others does is urge the world to rethink every story you've heard. About any woman. Yeah. Was she really difficult? Was she really crazy? Was she really just such a bitch?

Was she so out of control? Or in the words of Taylor Swift, is it true that every time you call her crazy, she gets more crazy? What about that? You know? In the words of Britney Spears. Okay. 

Here's where I was going with the, with the whole Crossroads thing. This is another sliding doors moment. A hundred percent. She's offered Chicago. Chicago. Chicago. Chicago. I was, that I had never heard, and I thought, is she, would she have been Roxy, I guess? She She would have been Roxy, and she would have been such a good Roxy.

She would have been a good Roxy, I agree. Did you watch the notebook audition that's been going viral now that someone dug up the full video? Like, she's great. She's, she is great. She's great. Okay, so this is... This is a sentence that haunts me. I had power back then. I wish I'd used it more thoughtfully, been more rebellious.

Chicago would have been fun. It's all dance pieces, my favorite kind. Prissy, girly, follies, pussycat doll like, serve off your corset moves. I wish I'd taken that offer. I wish I would have gotten to play a villain who kills a man and sings and dances while doing it too. That's Britney. That's Britney. Yep.

And talking about power, she talks about this a little bit later, about Madonna, and how she wishes she had She says Madonna walks in the room and it's Madonna's room. You run on Madonna's time, she runs the show. And for Britney, she was like, I would have never kept a music video delayed because my suit needed a seam fixed.

Yeah, but Madonna didn't apologize for that. Yeah, and The Britney and Madonna relationship is obviously something that people have kind of talked to death But it's so interesting to see how that relationship has continued and how Madonna clearly noticed like hey, she needs I'm gonna take her under my wing.

And Brittany portrays herself as like a timid little mouse through a lot of this. Like, she's just kind of going, accepting things because she wants people to like her. And when she's talking about collaborating with Madonna, she brings it up. She's like, we should do a duet.

And she just walks over to Madonna and is like, hey, do you want to do this with me? Versus going through teams. And that's like one time that she points out that she was like, no, I'm just gonna do it. I know that I have the power to do this. Oh, God. It's really, it's sad. Yeah, it is. It really is. 

. I think we're kind of in the timeline where we should probably talk about Justin. We should talk about Justin. I'm going to say that I think a lot of the headlines that came out before the book was released were really overblown. Yeah, they were. I have always had a complicated relationship with the way that Justin, and I'm not saying this as an apologist, like I'm a Backstreet Boys girl.

Um, Backstreet Boys are the better band. Same. I agree. You can come for me if you want. I agree. I'll say it. I'll say it. I'll say it till the day I die. Okay. And on the day I die, that's, that, those will be my final breath. 

It's very fun. Anyway, I've always thought or I have been thinking that Justin has gotten a lot of flack for some stuff that I'm like, they were 19 years old. He was a shitty boyfriend. . She gives him a lot more empathy than you would have thought reading those stories.

And I think that's why she popped on her Instagram to be like, I'm not angry. I'm not trying to like hurt people with this book. Like this is just how it was. Yeah. She's like, she's not holding a grudge about this. And you know, the scene with the abortion was really sad. And I didn't know that that had happened.

I don't think anybody knew, really. And like, him coming in to strum his guitar, I was like, Jesus Christ. Of course, this is the worst. Of course. Of course. Great. Great. To every woman once. That's wonderful. Thank you. 

Something I thought was really hurtful was that When she talks about him getting ready to release his solo album, she feels like he's pushing her away for material. And then she points out, she's watching him talk to Barbara Walters or somebody, and he's doing a piece of the song, this is after their breakup, that she's like, this is about me.

Yeah, and she didn't want to break up and when he breaks up with her, she's devastated. She says she's comatose in Louisiana and he comes to see her with a letter that he wrote and framed that she says she still has under her bed, which is another thing that I was like, Show us the letter. Release the letter.

I was like, is it under your bed in your current home or in like Serenity, that's the Kentwood house. I was like, is it there? But he framed it and brought it and she said it's like she couldn't talk. Yeah. To him. She was just devastated and I feel like Justin was kind of her stability and she says that too, like his family became her family.

She loved his grandparents because her family was so shitty she clung to his family and so when they broke up she lost all of that. But I also don't blame Justin for like You know, some people will blame the events of 2007 on Justin, and I don't. And I don't think Britney does either. Yeah, I think, like, The first cut is the deepest, , they were 19 years old, and it's a truly shitty thing that he did. It's a shitty way to be, and I do think she deserves to have, this side. told. Let's step on this woman's neck to launch your solo career. To launch his career. Because I will always remember. watching that video for the first time being like, I want to throw up. Cry me a river. And then when she makes, her song, and now why am I singing?

Every time. Notice me. Yeah. And she, the, she kills herself in a bathtub. The saddest part to me Of this book is every part of it and also where she just describes, it's like, Wade was just a guy that she trusted.

They just made out at a club! Who amongst us at 19 did not make out with the wrong person when, yeah, you had a boyfriend, okay? That is different, but, you know, I will say, like, the American culture will never Miss an opportunity to hate a woman. To hate a woman. Oh, yeah. I mean, that was the entire conversation for months with Britney, Britney, Britney cheated, Britney cheated, Britney cheated.

When she's like, no, it was he, I know he cheated on me several times, but I loved him so much. I just didn't care. I turned a blind eye. 

 He was NSYNC's choreographer, too. This is the stuff I know. I don't know about... Math, or Geography, but this I can't talk about. Me neither. No, this is This is what I know. This is the version of American history that I know. Same. Oh, God. I think Brittany treats the Justin relationship with the Latin, so, you know, 20 years.

 So after Brittany and Justin break up is when she kind of starts thinking, I need a break.

And nobody lets her take a break. Nobody lets her take a break. They just push her. By the way, she's being publicly humiliated. Diane Sawyer also owes Brittany an apology. If we're counting apologies, add Diane Sawyer to that list. No one lets her take a break. She just goes right back out onto the road.

Right back onto the road and she says, I've begun fantasizing about opening a little shop in Venice beach with fee and quitting show business completely. And this is where I think kind of the cracks start because, and her team's like, no, we're going to send a reporter from People to Louisiana and they're going to check in your purse to see if there's drugs.

And she's like, there's vanilla perfume, which tracks. Yep. Juicy fruit gum. And some St. John's Wort, which I was like, she was probably taking that for her mood. Cause she was sad. And she has to, like, pose for photos with the dogs and her mom has to be like, she's not having a breakdown. My favorite. Okay, that's a line I highlighted that it was like, this is, was this written by Lynn Spears or me?

I know. It, which, can you imagine if you had to do several extremely high profile interviews after your worst breakup? Yeah. Like, uh. That the whole world was watching your breakup. Like, you were like America's sweetheart. She's so insane. Oh, and her parents get divorced. So she's also dealing with that.

Yeah, her parents get divorced. She's still supporting her entire family. This is one of my favorite quotes, there are so many different ways to be a woman in the industry. You could get a reputation for being a diva, you could be professional, or you could be nice. That's three ways. Yeah.

That's three ways to be a woman.

 Something that I underlined in this part of the book is when she said it felt like I was a ghost child. I remember walking into the room, and it was like no one, or feeling like no one even saw me. Jamie Lynn only saw the TV. My mother, who at one time had been the only person I was closest to in the world, was on another planet.

 To tie it back to Taylor, too, like this is, you know, too big to hang out, slowly lurching towards your favorite city, pierced through the heart but never killed. You are too big for the world you used to live in. Yep. And you are the elephant in the room.

Yeah, she says, I felt like I had no one to talk to, I didn't fit in anywhere, I was technically growing up, but I went backward in time and became younger. And that's something she talks about several times, is like, Brittany seems to be stuck in an endless cycle of arrested development, where she's either forced to grow up super fast.

Like, did she ever finish high school? I don't think she did. No. And she's forced to grow up, but then she, you know, she's living with her boyfriend. They're 17 years old or whatever. They have their own house. They're essentially adults. And then they break up and she backslides. And she's like, I just want someone to take care of me.

And nobody's there to take care of her. And she talks about this again after she has children. Timely place in the book, I think, to talk about Jamie Lynn. When Jamie Lynn is really little, Brittany's like, she was so cute, we went to the beach, it was like she was her baby, and in the media at that time, like, they looked like they were best friends, devoted sisters, Brittany was like the best big sister ever, but she talks about what a brat Jamie Lynn was, and how spoiled she was, and how she was like, why did Brittany buy us a house?

I don't want a house. I know. She has like a red Mercedes toy convertible that she's driving around and Britney calls her a little bitch in italics, which I loved. I was like, that's, that's Britney. That's Britney. That's Britney right there. I also, there's, I have this memory of, I can't remember which show it was on MTV.

I don't know if it was before or after she had kids where it showed like the loneliness of her fame. That's for the record, I bet. It's a documentary. For the record. And she's, yeah. Yeah, she's alone. Mm hmm. She's just alone. Yeah. And then, they pull out from under, like, you know, undercover parking and it's a wall of photographers.

And that's all it is. It's for the record. And it's like, all, like, you, she has no human interaction. No. At all. It's like that will make you, there are a few things that will make you crazy and one is being constantly observed and having no close relationships. You need that. Fi at some point just like disappears from this book, by the way, or she's just not a character anymore.

 As we sort of enter, the Britney Spears wild years, or whatever, they're so tame. She does confess to taking Adderall, which was, okay, all right. And she also said it alleviated some of her depression symptoms, which I also experienced when I started taking Adderall and I don't, you know, get high off of it because I have ADHD.

And so it just sort of 

Nora: cools me down. But it did make me a lot less depressed because my brain was functioning like I imagine a brain is supposed to where, you know, it's not like a game of ping pong all the time. But I really loved You know, the, the media portrayal of Britney, Paris, Lindsay, this whole era was like, they were so out of control.

What? So lots. Party girls. It's like, and it's so, they were not doing anything that I was not doing. I know. 

Kara: Same. A hundred percent. This is after her breakup, but this was, I think one of my favorite parts in the book is. She talks a little bit about like rebellion and freedom and she says as a child I'd always had a guilty conscience a lot of shame a sense that my family thought I was just playing bad the sadness and the loneliness that would hit me felt like my fault like I deserved unhappiness and bad luck and She talks about how she went to Arizona With one of her friends and they go on a drive at night Through the desert and they don't have the radio on it's just like the wind and the convertible and she gets this eerie feeling She says I've been moving so fast for so long It was like I couldn't catch my breath and in this moment something filled me a profound beauty otherworldly and humbling and she Wants to talk about it with her friend, but then she's like is she gonna think I'm crazy She gonna think I'm weird and they like feel this feeling And they both feel it and then they hold hands and she says, The poet Rumi says, The wound is the place where the light enters you.

And I've always believed that. The thing we felt that night in Arizona, we felt it because we needed it. And I love that. And she's like, Sorry, I'm going to get a little new agey on you. Just for 

Nora: a minute. We can handle it, babe. We can handle it. That's okay. It's okay to feel God in Arizona. We, we approve of that.

Yeah. And, and. Like, those moments, too. She probably could have had that anywhere. I do think the desert has magical properties to it. And also it's the companionship. It's being that close to somebody and like having somebody who cares about you and understands you. That just cannot be underestimated.

Yep. 

Kara: And she talks about that after the breakup. She starts, like, she gets together with Colin Farrell, which I loved. 

Nora: I love that she called it a brawl. I mean, if you see those photos, you're like, yeah, that's, that is 100 percent what it was. She put that man on the map. He was always going to be a hottie, but she was like, that was a big deal. Really? It was a big deal. It was a big deal. They were also so hot together. 

Kara: They were extremely hot together. 

Nora: Those pictures are hot. All this like loneliness, all these, like, Again, like just, you're too big, right?

You're too big for the world around you and you're too big kind of for any world. , to be seen as like a human, it like sets her up perfectly for Kevin Federline. 

Kara: Yes, it does. She goes from being like, I have had extreme social anxiety, joy around groups of people was rare.

She doesn't want to do anything. She's seeing Justin and Christina on the cover of a magazine and she's really sad. Oh, this is another incredible part that I was like, this is Britney. One night, I went out, I put on a 129 Bebe dress, and I was like, that's 

Nora: my girl. She probably still has it.

 She 

Kara: never, she's like, I just wanted to be at home. And at that point, it was New York, and then she meets 

Nora: Kevin.

Then she meets Kevin and he just 

Kara: holds her, holds her. 

Nora: I was so sad at that part. Just so sad that all she wanted was to be held. How could I explain that? I just want to be held for an hour by a man in a swimming pool. Yeah. 

Kara: And so, like I said at the beginning, I didn't really start loving Britney Spears.

I liked her, but I didn't love her. I never bought her CDs. One of our friends would rip one. This is a shotgun confession. One of them would rip one, you know, like on the olden days. Double CD burner thing. Until Chaotic. 

Nora: The show. Oh, yes. I used to have that on DVD. 

Kara: Well, you better find it. These sacred texts are disappearing with streaming.

They 

Nora: really are. And 

Kara: I remember watching it. It was on UPN, which I don't think exists anymore. She was like on tour with her little video camera just you know asking her team do you believe in love just being Young and funny, and then she meets Kevin and I was like oh Britney Spears is like a real person.

She's just like kind of a nerd And the word that we loved in the 2000s, she's very random. 

Nora: She's so random. She is so random. She's goofy, 

Kara: and you know, people, a lot of people are like, I hate chaotic, I hate Kevin. But to me, it's such a good 

Nora: depiction of who Britney 

Kara: Spears really is. Yeah. There's a part in it where it's like night vision, and she's 

Nora: clearly high.

And she's just talking about 

Kara: weird shit, and I was like, this is a real person. I love her. This is a real person. Like, I 

Nora: want to like, look at that baby, look, look. Yes, 

Kara: exactly. And I was like, you 

Nora: know. 

Kara: This might not be the partner I would have chosen for her, but , she's clearly 

Nora: very in love with this guy.

Yeah, she really did like him a lot. And she really liked him a lot. 

Kara: She talks about it, and she says that he kind of bait and switched her a little bit, that she didn't know he had a baby and a pregnant girlfriend. Oh, whoops. Until they were kind of together together, But she said my relationship with him was playful, he liked me the way I was, and if you see pictures from that time, I follow a lot of these, chronological Britney Instagram accounts where they just show, , paparazzi photos from a day.

And , she's wearing, maybe a couple days old makeup, and... Weird outfits, which is a Britney 

Nora: signature. My favorite thing is when she goes, I've always been a bad dresser. Love that. It's like you have. You know what? Here's something that I agree with. I can't dress. Yeah. Okay. I've always been bad at it.

I'll admit it. I'm willing to work on that. You know what? Say, I don't know how to get dressed either. I am not mad at you. , all these things are kind of converging, right? This is a perfect storm waiting to happen. She is hates her tour. She hates her tour. There's this part I highlighted where I was like, wow, this is, my life, a year and a half ago, right?

God, just make my arm break, make my leg break. Can you make something break? You are burned out. You are depressed, babe. That's some depression talking when you're fantasizing about getting hit by a car, you know. It's time to maybe take a break. Like, no one cares about her. No. At this point, her sister's already started her 

zoey 101, her little, Disney career. Brittany's pining for what she calls The cozy television lifestyle, like when she was on the Mickey Mouse Club and you would just hang out with the same people and film and you'd stay in the same place , I've done podcast tours for one month and I had a mental breakdown.

That's not going from, you know, city to city to city to city with. 000 people in an arena to see you, for years doing the same thing over and over and over. Of course she's exhausted. , I thought 

Kara: it was funny that she hated the Onyx Hotel because to me, that's an incredible tour.

It's so good. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube. She messes up her knee, and for a lot of big Britney fans, that's the end of a big chapter. On the set of the outrageous music video with Snoop Dogg, which would have been an amazing music video. I'm sad we never got 

Nora: it, but...

Yeah, where is it? It's somewhere. You know it's 

Kara: somewhere. Another deep fanlore moment that is happening at the same time is she recorded an album on her own. called Original Doll and she showed up at a record or at a radio station with it like a demo and I'm pretty sure she was like Barefoot rolls in and plays Mona Lisa the song and like her record label didn't want her to do this and this album is...

It's gone. It's never resurfaced. And it's one of those Brittany Lore things that someone has it. She 

Nora: probably has it. Where are the messages? It's on a CD somewhere. And she, we will find it. I would 

Kara: love to find it and she has this song, sorry, this is me getting in the weeds. She has a song called Rebellion that she plays in her car in 2007.

You can hear little bits of it in paparazzi videos. It's all about her relationship with her dad. And it's another piece. This wasn't on the same album. This was supposed to maybe be in like Blackout. And that's another piece of fan lore that's always been like, release it, release it. People were like, maybe she'll release it with the book.

Nora: The perfect storm is happening, and it's capped off as postpartum, I would even say like perinatal depression or whatever is before, which I had pretty, intensely Yeah.

 With my third pregnancy, and she describes herself as America's sweetheart and the meanest woman alive. She has like these babies like back to back. Quick, big session. Three months. And like truly crazy. Yeah. Who 

Kara: is... Well, she's young. She's, I think she's 24. When Sean pressed.

So she gets married. They get married really fast. 

Nora: So fast. They get she basically quits 

Kara: working. She like lets her management team go. Yeah. And she used to write these things on her website called Letters of Truth, which was her way of... Snapping back at Us Weekly and People and all the magazines and she'd be like, no, you can hear it from me.

And she talks about it a little bit at the end of one chapter where she says, she just wants to be married and, make a house. 

Nora: Yeah, that's all. She just wants to be cozy. She just wants a cozy life and that's all. I want for her. They get married and then bam! Yes. Two kids. And you get married. Two kids immediately and he's trying to get famous.

He's trying to get famous because guess what? He was sort of plucked from obscurity. Yeah. Literally met him at a club. Literally met him at a club. You know, I don't know. I can kind of see the appeal. I get it. Totally. I think it's really hard for there to be such a big mismatch in income and fame levels.

Yeah. No matter who you are, right? And she 

Kara: talked about it in Chaotic, I, before they meet. In one of her little video diaries, she's like, I'm looking for somebody who hasn't seen a lot of the world, because I have, and I want to see it through their eyes. And that's what she finds with Kevin. So, it makes total sense why this is, you know, who she married.

It, it's a very linear path. So, yeah, and then they, I mean, he was the butt of the joke forever, and she was too, and she says it when they're getting divorced, and people are making jokes about him. She's like, well, this is the father of my children. Yeah. These jokes blindside me. 

Nora: Yeah. And then I have to step on stage after.

Yeah. Sarah Silverman, I remember calls my kids the two cutest mistakes and then says, I've already done every, like, he basically tells me to kill myself at age 25. Yeah. You know, and is like, she's done everything, comedy was mean. Media was mean. Regular 

Kara: people were mean. Regular people were 

Nora: mean.

I was guilty of that. She doesn't talk at all about Perez Hilton. No, she doesn't. Not at all. She does not mention blogs at all. No. That was horrible. The rise of that, that fed, I was, I think that fed paparazzi more than magazines because blogs were daily.

They were coming out minute by minute. They were buying these photos. And 

Kara: Perez was, he built his whole brand on her and Paris and Lindsay. Yes. And Lindsay. But especially Brittany. And I remember reading something at the time. So, I mean, we kind of fast forwarded to, 2007, which I think is fine. That's what people are most curious about.

But, I remember reading something after she'd shaved her head, where it was the New York Times, and they said, We have her obit ready. And, there is a truly heinous article in Rolling Stone from this time. And it's, it's something that I've read multiple times. I come back to it every couple years. And it's, like, the tragedy of Britney Spears.

And it's all about this period in her life. And she's not quoted in it. They don't talk to her because they can't. She's driving around with the Adnan Ghalib, the paparazzo, whose name I will, never forget. I know. Me neither. Me neither. That name is going to be on my dying breath. 

Nora: Yes.

Kara: Um, but they can't talk to her, but she's observing, you know, and she calls her a swamp thing. An inbred swamp thing. And that's when Brittany is like, acting out and she talks about it. , I was deeply depressed. Yeah. Heaven took my kids away and wouldn't let me see my kids. I was taking Adderall. I was just spiraling.

I was acting like a child. She says that. She's like, I am willing to confess that I had begun thinking like a child. Yeah. And she's kind of just freewheeling out of control because she has... She's always been so fenced in by this is what you're doing. You're going on tour. You're doing this. And like, she doesn't have any of that now.

So 

Nora: she doesn't know what to do. Yeah. She does not know how to be a person. She's just running. She has no real people around her. She makes several Benjamin Button references and one of them is that, honestly, As a new mother, it was as if some part of me became the baby. Yeah. One part of me was a very demanding grown woman yelling about white marble when she rips out the wood floors and puts in white marble everywhere.

While another part of me was suddenly very childlike. Oh. 

Kara: Oh. Yeah. So she's dealing with all this, but she's also making an album and Obviously, for Britney fans, Blackout is number one greatest album that she's ever done, and she talks about it like it was so effortless, she just rolls up to the studio, lays down her vocal in 30 minutes, and it's amazing.

And I thought that was so interesting. There have been some oral histories of this album before where they say that. Like, she rolls in with a million paparazzi around her, and just goes in, lays down her vocals, and is like, great, that was good. 

Nora: Great, let's do it.

She feels creatively 

Kara: fulfilled by that in a way that she doesn't, when she's starting to be under the conservatorship. Like, her artistry comes alive in the most interesting moments and kind of fuels her when she's spiraling. And Blackout is obviously the perfect example of this. So if you're listening to this and you've never heard Blackout outside of Gimme More, I would behoove you to listen to it and remember that, this album was created in the middle of all of that, and also set the tone for how pop music would sound for the next ten years.

Nora: It really did. And 

Kara: that was completely, you know, buried under all the headlines about her, stealing a lighter or being barefoot in a gas station. Yeah. 

Nora: , we're getting into the dark ages and, you know, by the time she shaves her head, which is, 

Kara: Right after she's been trying to see the kids.

Nora: , she says she feels like completely alone. Yeah. She has no, allies whatsoever. Her mom, where the hell, where the hell is Lynn now for this heart to heart? Writing a book. Even Jamie is nowhere. Nowhere. To be seen. And she has nobody. And. 

Kara: But 

Nora: everyone's watching her.

Everyone's watching. I think like this is, it truly is like the beginning of the end when she describes, you know, the moment that was like all of her headlines too, where she locks herself in the bathroom with one of the babies.

Just because she wants to hold him for a week. Because she wants to hold him. Yep. I remember this. She's little. My boobs hurt when she said that. 

Kara: Yeah, I mean, they're just toddlers, and I think the way that she talks about the boys is so sad, especially now, seeing it, I have an almost three year old boy, and she talks about it multiple times, where all she wants to do is take a nap with them.

Just smelling them, holding their hands, that's the thing that gave her purpose. And they use the children as a pawn, which happens all the time, but it's so blatant to see it now, how they use them, and how they were used at the time.

Their divorce is handled in a way that was kind of similar to Justin, where she's like, he was pushing me away. Yeah. To make an album, and I felt like I didn't belong, and then my lawyer was saying, well he's going to file, so you should file first, so it's not embarrassing. Like, there's not a lot about the dissolution of that marriage in a way that feels like it just 

Nora: happened to her.

Kara: And so she shaves her head and she's like, fuck you.

Yeah. Which I knew at the time, I was 

Nora: like, this is, I loved it. I was like, that's so punk 

Kara: rock. I 

Nora: know. Pretty punk as hell. Yeah. 

Kara: Like, fuck you. You want me to be good? Fuck you. You want me to be a dream girl? Fuck you. Everyone's touching me. I don't want to be touched. 

Nora: And shaves her head.

Shaves her head. And people shave their heads all the time. That's what she says. I know. She's like, now my husband tells me it's actually what hot girls do. It's actually a sign of hotness. If you shave your head, only a certain level of hot girls ever unlock this level of hotness. Yeah. She looks beautiful.

I have to agree. She has a perfectly 

Kara: symmetrical face, 

Nora: so she's good. She's got a well shaped head. My head is so lumpy. It would be so upsetting to everyone. It would be upsetting to me. It would be upsetting to you. I can't shave my head, unfortunately. And I would love to. I would love to just go to a Great Clips and...

Let it all go. Yeah, she literally just 

Kara: asks them for a clipper and Zoops it 

Nora: off. Zoop, zoop, zoop, zoop. And here we go into The conservatorship. 

Kara: Well, and also Jamie Lynn is pregnant at 16, which Brittany finds out in a tabloid. Yeah. Her family doesn't tell her. 

Nora: Oh, God. This is also, as you mentioned, Lynn is writing a book.

Lynn is writing a book. This is when Through the Storm comes out, this book bothers me on so many levels and one is that she's on the cover of it and it's Lynn Spears, mother of Brian, Brittany, and Jamie Lynn Spears. I'm like, okay. 

Kara: She's positioning herself as the 

Nora: best mother. As the best mom.

I'm also like, you're just Britney Spears mom. I don't know how to explain it. It's like, publicly, I'm so sorry that nobody cares about Britney. Well, and Brian is 

Kara: kind of an enigma throughout the book because he and Britney were close and, you know, in, I think, maybe 2011 ish, he lived with her, or close with her, because she was always with his daughter, Lexi, who now I know is named after their great grandmother, but, and then he disappears again, and like, he kind of is...

There, but also not there. 

Nora: She's also like the conduit for so many people from Kentwood, Louisiana to end up in 

Kara: Hollywood. Hundred percent. 100 percent so my honestly, I think this is my favorite quote was when she says the if her children were suffering She was like the last thing I would do would be to cut my hair in a bob Put on a tasteful pantsuit and sit down on a morning show set across from Meredith's fucking Vieira and make money off my child's 

Nora: misfortune

Kara: That is true like yes in hindsight, I cannot believe that people accepted this 

Nora: I can't either. I can't either. I would have been like, get in the car and go get her. Yeah. Get in the car and go get her. What are you doing? Yeah. Ugh. And 

Kara: then they do go get her in a horrible way.

Nora: And go get her. And there we go, right into the

conservatorship. And she does it for her kids. And she 

Kara: does it to take naps with her kids. That's what she says. That was the saddest line in the whole thing for me. And so I kind of think some of the stuff about Kevin may just be because, so Sean Preston, the older child is 18 now and Jaden is 17. So she's still got another year of paying Kevin.

And they've all moved to Maui. Randomly, so she has no contact with the children right now and for people who aren't following this as closely You know, they have at one point she had 50 50 custody and it changed a couple times But they were always on her Instagram playing pranks on her She's always posting them playing the piano or their art Going places together always went on vacations and then Jamie broke the door down on Sean Preston's bedroom door, and Kevin filed a restraining order, and then it all spiraled from there.

And there's been a lot of messy back and forth about it, but Brittany currently does not have a relationship with her sons. Which makes this all the sadder. 

Nora: It really is. It really is. And... Because they had 

Kara: two forms of her person and her estate. Yeah. Not just her money, 

Nora: There's, like, the, the years of this, of the conservatorship, starts in 2008, as Lynn's book is coming out, and after Ryan Seacrest asks her, do you think you're a good mother? So Ryan Seacrest, you, you are literally being I call him out, okay? Apology, public apology. Public apology about that. She's signing over 

Kara: everything.

Her, she has parental controls on her phone. She has, a guardian who's with her all the time. She says, There were times when I needed my father over the years, and I reached out, and he wasn't there. But when it came time for him to be the conservator, of course he was on the case. And I can't say my mom was that much better.

She'd known the whole time they were going to take me away. I'm convinced it was all planned. My dad, my mom, and Blue Taylor were all involved. Her dad owed some money to this woman. And that was another part of this whole thing. And Brittany talks about how, even when she was... in her darkest places. She was saving her receipts for her tax deductions in a bowl.

So how could she have needed someone to run all of her finances in her life when she was still thinking, Oh, I should probably keep this. And he throws the bowl off the table. 

Nora: Yeah. And tells her I'm Britney Spears 

Kara: now. And at the time, and I'm guilty of this as well, this was framed as something that saved her life.

Like this was a good thing. Everyone was happy that Jamie was in control and turn, and it really did appear like it turned around overnight. 'cause then it was like she's on tv, she's back on tour. But yeah. If so, at this time, 2008, MTV aired, this documentary called For the record that we mentioned earlier.

This documentary has basically been scrubbed from the internet. You can sometimes find it on, like, random Vimeos, or some people have it on DVD. And it is so sad, so lonely, and she is so honest about everything. Like, if you can find it, I highly recommend watching it, because it was the precursor to this book.

 She's like, I'm on TV. I'm winning VMAs. I'm on a global tour. Why can't I be trusted to live my life? 

Nora: If I'm truly so incapacitated, why am I in a different country every night?

Kara: Why? And if she wants to go out to a friend's house, security has to go first to make sure there's no alcohol, there's no drugs. If she wants to date somebody, they have like a background check, NDA, she said a blood 

Nora: test. So bizarre. Bizarre. Also, like, I did uh, TV producer she dated, Charlie Ebersol, who's now married to, the founder of StyleSeat, which is, the app that you can use to, like, book haircuts and things.

And he is a cu u tie. He's a cu u tie guy. He's had a couple boyfriends, yeah, 

Kara: at this time. Something that I found was interesting. So she talks about Jason Trawick, who she was engaged to. And people have always wondered, like, what happened to him because he's in a music video with her. They were engaged, 

Nora: and she, she talks about it 

Kara: pretty fondly.

She was like, At the beginning of when stuff was going on, he was the only one who asked her, how are you? Yeah. 

Nora: And there's also, okay, there's also, do I, do I have this right? Hold on. , when she was in the conservatorship, he was one of the conservators. Yeah. 

Kara: After they got engaged. And that's when she said she started to feel differently 

Nora: about him.

Yeah, that feels... 

Kara: And that's where it ended, and so... Yeah. And that's kind of always what I had thought, but then she said, like, now he, like, rides motorcycles 

Nora: with a bunch of guys. Thanks, Brittany. I was like, oh, okay. 

Kara: And she tries to get, free a couple of times. She gets burner phones and stuff, and it just never works.

She's trapped. And Felicia was supposed to come back for a circus, that's what it is. And her dad told her that Brittany doesn't want her. Her dad is keeping these people that she trusts away from her. 

Nora: , the last 20 percent of the book is the conservatorship and, you know, bringing us up to date.

And it's.

Really?

It's nothing you didn't know? If that makes sense. There was no sort of, like, big reveal where I was like, oh, wow, I didn't know this about her conservatorship because I was, you know, tuning in when she called into court. I was, like, on the edge of my seat, for all of that, but, reading it in her words.

Her world is so small. Yeah, she has no friends. is so sad. It was, 

Kara: she says it's like Groundhog Day. She goes to bed early, she wakes up early, she asks somebody, what are we doing today? And she does it for 13 years. Yeah. And she 

Nora: says that she 13 years. 13 years. Yeah. With no like real connection to the world , I love therapy. I go all the time. I also think it can be weaponized and it absolutely was her. And we were seeing in this book, like we're seeing the aftermath of fame, the abuse of fame, which is public abuse and.

 Being overly medicated and by being emotionally and physically neglected by your family. These are the effects of isolation and she. doesn't draw a very hard parallel between herself and her grandmother. Right. No, she doesn't. She's like, oh, funny enough, I was also given lithium just like her.

And I was also carted off to a a facility where people watched me every minute of the day. I'm not a mental health professional, but I think to further isolate a person who's greatest crime was that she spent money, like she was kind of a regular person.

I don't know. People do this stuff like 20 

Kara: something and fucking around. That's what we 

Nora: all did. That part is really hard. That was really hard to read. 

Kara: The hardest thing for me was she talks about becoming a child robot. She's infantilized, so she's bringing back this Benjamin Button kind of thing, but she just talks about how she has no creativity.

Her Vegas residency starts, she's recorded a couple albums and Britney Jean is the album that fans always point to that they're like, she didn't even sing on it. That's not her. And I kind of sometimes believe it, cause she just didn't care and people would criticize her stage performance in the initial Vegas shows.

Because it's very obvious, she didn't want to do it. At all. And fans always talk about the fire. The fire in her eyes comes back. And it does start to in 2016. Because she's working on her album Glory, which is her most recent studio album. It's so good. And she wrote a lot of it. And she talks about how her creativity was starting to come back.

And she wanted to mix up her stage show and they wouldn't let her. She's so bored, she's doing the same dances every night. She just wants to change up a couple of things, and they're like, no. And she goes to some awards show where she's honored, and Jamie Lynn dances to remixes of her songs. And she's so upset, because she's like, I've been begging for this, and no one will let me change up my show.

And she's teaching dance to little girls in Las Vegas, and she's like, this is the best thing I've ever done. It's like she has moments where she's feeling like her old self is coming back, but it just keeps getting squashed down And she's she brings up that she mentions the conservatorship on TV and she does it's on the Graham Norton show I've seen it.

It's in 2016 when she's promoting glory and They cut all of it. She says this thing I'm under so she talks about it. Yeah, and That was the saddest thing to me was her creativity Her artistry , it would come back to the surface, and then they would just find a way to squash her while still forcing her to, record albums and do shows to make money.

Nora: She had no access to her money by the way. No, she had 2, 000 a week. Or a month 

Kara: or something. It was 

Nora: crazy. Oh, God. And... Okay, so here's the part, the last part of the book, it just surface too. So I'm like, I'm like, how did Sam get through the cancer vettership?

Yeah. I have questions about Sam. 

Kara: Sam is her now ex husband for anybody who maybe isn't. How did he get through? Because, you know, she had a couple of boyfriends throughout this, but it apparently was quite a process and he. You know, I gave him the benefit of the doubt through a lot of their relationship because he seemed to actually like stand up for her and want her to be a free person.

There's just so much about that relationship that I don't know. And you know, she didn't edit this before they got divorced. So I don't know what an updated book would look like, but yeah, it's definitely all very surface level. She doesn't talk about things like what happened with her children, which she doesn't need to.

 She doesn't even really talk about her relationship with her mother all that much. She talks about Jamie Lynn a little bit. Jamie Lynn being like, stop fighting. You're in this. You have to do it. Or like, her family kind of flaunting it and that's how she felt. They'd go to the beach condo that she purchased or they would go out and drink champagne and she couldn't 

Nora: do anything.

Yeah, without her. 

Kara: And she's starting to feel stronger throughout 2016. I think it just builds and But she is, it's pretty surface level about what's going on. 

Nora: It really is. , like there's like the scene of her, calling 9 1 1. Yeah. And that's how she does it. Yeah. I didn't realize that.

Yeah. And then that she calls in to... Court. And Sam is next to her holding her hand. How did Sam get through? She thanks everybody who was a part of the free Britney movement and the nurse at her rehab facility, quote unquote, where she had to go detox from energy supplements, and yeah, nurse shows her.

The nurse shows her, whoever that nurse is. That person is on, I think, the same level as Paris Hilton. Yeah. Paris is As far as heroicism. 

Kara: Yeah. Um, you know, to make a confession. When the Free Britney movement started, I kind of was like, I don't know, this, I wish people would just leave her alone.

 I thought it was a little intense and I would like to apologize and say, you know, you were really on to 

Nora: something and you did something amazing, but. Guys, you were on to something, but honestly, you know, like, internet fandoms do a lot of crazy stuff. Yeah. 

Kara: And that fandom has been, you know, they'll call 9 1 1 on her for a wellness check.

She has said many times, which leave her alone, leave her alone. So that always put a bad taste in my mouth, but obviously, you know, there was truth there that had been very well buried by a lot of bad, corrupt people. 

Nora: I have some juice for you. I'm gonna read to you the acknowledgements. From Lynn Spears memoir. Please do okay to Lou Taylor Yeah, the conservatorship of the conservatorship. Thank you for believing I had a story to tell and for the faithfulness and making it happen It is a blessing to see that God uses all things for the good of those who love him 

Kara: For people who don't know Lou Taylor's company is called TriStar and it is there's some weird faith based arm of it And she has been kind of framed as the architect of this in partnership with Jamie in part because he owed her 40, 000.

Nora: From what, we don't know, but... From what, we'll never know. 

Kara: Yeah, that doesn't shock me entirely. Everyone was complicit in this and Brittany says, I felt like my family wanted to kill me. And another thing that made me really sad was when she says, I shouldn't have to be this strong. Everybody says I'm so strong, but I shouldn't have to be this strong.

 Like you said, it does go pretty quickly through the things where she's in this facility and she does talk about that at length in her court testimony, which you can and should listen to if you haven't. What did you think of how the way this book ends?

Nora: Oh. Truly, yesterday was ruined for me. I had a horrible day yesterday because it just made me so sad. The whole book made me so sad. I think that's the last thing I texted you. I was like, I'm just so sad. Yes. 

Kara: She talks about COVID and that makes her even more lonely. She even misses her family and wants to go be with them and they say, we'll call you later and they don't.

 They treat her this way and it's I think it was on Celebrity Memoir Book Club that I listened to. They say, like, she would have kept giving them money regardless. They didn't need to tap her. 

Nora: She would have supported them. Yes. Yes. And there would have been just as much money, if not more, because she would have had the time and the space.

To create something that she was proud of and honestly, maybe if you would have like been around more She could have met somebody who wasn't Kevin Federline. 

Kara: I think that was gonna always 

Nora: happen Right, and it's like they did have a they did have a prenup. 

Kara: It's June 22nd, 2021 that she calls 911 to report her father. And this is 90 percent into the book. Yes, exactly. So it goes pretty 

Nora: quickly. It goes real fast. It's like, okay. Okay, um, okay, where is this, this, this, this, this?

Kara: While 

Nora: you're looking. She calls herself, a woman of, like, trying to enjoy her riches. Like, she says the word riches and I just was so Humble icon. A humble 

Kara: icon. At one point she says she's in New York sitting on a sofa and then she goes, that I now have in my bedroom. And I was like, yes, that's 

Nora: right.

That's about right. I would like to end this with a few of my favorite lines. When it comes to fans, people sometimes ask me about my special relationship with the gay community.

Loved this.

This is a 

Kara: great quote. 

Nora: This is my other favorite line, page 83. My daughter is doing beautifully, my mom told the reporter confidently. She's never ever been close to a breakdown. That's, was that, is that, now was that Lynn Spears or Margaret McInerny?

 Then right when her, okay, so her brother has, you know, a horrible accident when he's little. Yeah, yeah. A 

Kara: precursor to the one that, Jamie Lynn's daughter, do you remember she almost died out on ATV? Yeah, it's like the generational 

Nora: things. Yeah. 

Kara: I really enjoyed in that moment I made peace with my family by which I mean, I realized I never wanted to see them again and I Do and something else I liked is that she said she you know She does give them a lot of empathy and she talks about how empathetic she is a couple of times and you know She says I love Jamie Lynn.

I wish the best for her, but she's she's very angry But she does say, I've had dreams in which June, so that's Jamie's father, tells me he knows he hurt my father, who then hurt me. I felt his love, and that he changed on the other side. I hope that one day I'll be able to feel better about the rest of my family, too.

 She gives people so much grace that they don't always deserve. But there is, and I mean, if you've watched any of her videos on Instagram or read her captions, like, she's still extremely 

Nora: angry. She is, and honestly, she should be. Yeah, she should be. There's so much rage 

Kara: that she There's so much rage, yes.

She says she gets migraines. Yeah. From her trauma. 

Nora: Okay, this one, Brian has the accident where they flip a four wheeler. They had been trying to mow down some tall grass with their full four wheelers. This seemed like a fantastic idea to them because they were idiots. Then he's in a full body cast and she writes, and the detail that drove it all home for me as a kid was that he had to pee through a hole in the cast.

Pee through a hole. 

Kara: Like we said, this is definitely written in partnership with a ghost writer, right? Whoever it was. did a really good job. But there are little tidbits like that where the real Brittany comes out. Or when she talks about how her mom smoked Virginia Slims. So that's what she smokes.

Nora: I was like Oh my god. Also, I also highlighted, and so I smoked my first Capri cigarette with her and some other girls when she's at an AA meeting. I love it. I loved it when she talked about AA. Get some skinny cigarettes. 

Kara: What do you think Britney's legacy is and what do you think it will be?

Nora: This is what could have been What could have been? Marilyn Monroe's. Yeah, a 

Kara: lot of similarities 

Nora: Yeah. Between the two. And, um, and, you know, those, she even, you know, created some of the, like, recreated some of that imagery. I think, every young girl is forced to do. They have a very similar look.

And, I think it could have ended that way. Yeah. I truly thought, she would be dead by 2010. I mean, 

Kara: that's the way they framed it in Sesame at that time.

Nora: So I don't even know if it's like really it's the red Demption. Yeah. Of it all. But I think her legacy is sort of this sacrificial lamb. Yeah. I agree. And she's not the first woman that's been through this and she, by the way, won't be the last. Won't be the last. We will simply find another woman to do this to.

And I mean, people are sort of doing that to Ariana Grande right now, you know, who again has been famous and she was a child who has been through a lot of very public relationships. And trauma. and trauma. We just always find yet another person to do this. What do you think her legacy is?

I think 

Kara: that's a super important part of it is, , Brittany is an instrumental figure in the way that we treat celebrities now because of how mistreated she was. That being said, I do. Also hope that, you know, people will read this who maybe aren't as familiar with her as we are and, you know, a lot of people their knowledge of Britney kind of stops after 2007.

 People don't know that she continued to release albums. And... Even amidst, you know, being in this cage, she still managed to create. I'm not just saying this as a fan, like, Glory is a really good album. And you can tell that she was very passionate about it. And... 

Nora: Go stream Glory. You should. 

Kara: But I think what I hope her legacy actually is, and I've actually seen this conversation turning around quite a bit on Twitter, is this is a once in a generation, once in a lifetime pop star.

Nobody moves like Britney moved. Nobody was as magnetic as Britney. I think Christina is, vocally much more talented, but just didn't have that same grit magnetism that Britney had. And I like Christina too. I'm just using her as an example, but if you think about, you know, today's pop girls, it's not the same.

No. 

Nora: No, it's not. There's no, you know, 

Kara: we were really lucky we had Beyonce and we had Britney. At the same time, they're the same age, and that's so rare, and so what I would urge people who are listening to this, who are curious about the book, I would say read the book. Um, I think it's really essential for people who have always kind of had like a eh, cockeyed view of Brittany, or you know, the people who text me being like, what is going on with her Instagram?

And I get it, you know, sometimes her Instagram can make you a little uncomfortable, I feel uncomfortable by it sometimes. That's how she's expressing herself at this moment. The least we can do is let her do that and not call the police on her. What I would urge people to do is go back and watch some of her performances, listen to the music, and remember that. Britney Spears is a genius. And I think a lot of her genius is like in her body and in how she moves. And it's a talent that we don't often see. So I hope that's also part of her legacy.

I hope that, you know, that conservatorship is a smaller 

Nora: part in the long run. I hope so too. 

To recontextualize yourself with the era too, this is the rise of reality TV, which was also really mean. This is the Swan. This is American Idol, which was, mostly just making fun of people, and then sort of at the end, you God bless Kelly Clarkson. This is like. There's just so much that happened that she was like the crest of this wave and the convergence of all of these, cultural moments.

I don't know. It really is wild when you look back and there is just no way that this That she could happen today, period. Nope. I agree. Any of this story could kick off today and have the same ending. Mm mm. At all. Like, she, it would be so normal if it was 2023 and Brittany and Justin just broke up.

It would be so normal for her to say, Sorry, I have to cancel this tour. I'm actually not doing very well. 

Kara: Right. I think Justin Bieber is a good parallel to that, where, Justin went through something pretty intense. I saw him on tour when you could tell he was going through it. And he cancelled, and he basically isn't a musician anymore.

And people give him a lot more grace than... Britney was ever given. Granted, he is a man, 

Nora: but yes, yes, you 

Kara: know, Selena Gomez, I think has been pretty honest about struggling and Britney and Selena, she was at her wedding. So, you know, maybe they've bonded about that privately. We don't know, but I don't know.

There's 

Nora: Selena is a great example too , the amount of attention that was on two teenagers relationship and whether or not they were having sex. What is wrong with you perverts. What is wrong with you perverts? There was like a countdown to. The Olsen twins turning 18.

 That was the cultural backdrop, which is like, women are objects, girls are objects. Play the game and be a good sport about it and be hot, but maintain and maintain your hotness, but don't enjoy it too much because then it's a problem. It's just. Oh, God, there's just so much to say, which is we are at two hours, but guess what?

That's great. That's what we promised people. 

Okay. Apologies. On the list. Here's people who owe Britney Spears a public, lengthy apology. Let's take turns. Okay, you go first. Obviously at the very top of the list is Jamie and Lynn Spears and that goes without saying.

And Jamie Lynn. And Jamie Lynn. The whole Spears family and extended family lined up in a row. in front of a microphone. All of them, of course, of course, of course. And also, Ryan Seacrest. 

Kara: Yeah, you can go back and listen to that interview and it's, it would not happen today. It's a very odd interview from all sides.

I've listened to it a couple times. Ryan,

father of Hollywood. You gotta apologize. 

Nora: Get up there. Perez Hilton. Perez Hilton. To every woman. Yeah. That's To every woman. Yeah. Because the way that he talked about Brittany and Paris and Lindsay 

Kara: And drew on them with paint. Like Yes. Yeah. 

Nora: Yeah. Yeah. That was fucked up. That was weird. That was weird and bad.

It really, really, I think, affected the ways that Yeah. A lot of us treated people A hundred percent. In general, too, because we thought that was I mean. A normal and okay thing to do in a way to act. 

Kara: I will say Justin Timberlake did apologize to Britney and Janet not that long ago.

Nora: So. Was it good enough though? Did we like it? I thought it was 

Kara: okay. To be honest with you, I don't really think about Justin Timberlake that much. I really 

Nora: don't either. 

Kara: I really do. I like when he makes records with Timbaland, but other than that, I don't really care 

Nora: about him. Kevin Federline, of course, which she'll never get.

No. She'll never get that apology. Um, every single person who ever took a photo of her. 

Kara: Yeah. , the upskirt era, especially. 

Nora: The upskirt era. God. Diane Sawyer. Yeah, that interview. Absolutely bizarre. And every producer who worked on that, by the way. Diane Sawyer doesn't work in a vacuum. No. 

Kara: No. And you can, there's a similar interview that she does with Oprah, kind of around the same time, and Oprah is so much more thoughtful and kind and Diane's really going there.

And Matt Lauer for that part. Oh, Matt Lauer. 

Nora: I underline that too. Much worse. Yep, yep, yep, yep. That never should have aired. No, that never should have aired. Then you look back at everything that people knew about Matt Lauer and you're like, cool. Yeah, 

Kara: that interview never should have aired.

That was completely 

Nora: informative. Great, great, great, great, great. The California legal system. Yep. A whole court 

Kara: system. Any of those judges who are like, no, you're fine. 

Nora: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. They've got a lineup and I want a public apology from all of them. Every, lawyer, agent, manager, etc.

Wallet. Yeah. Mr. Wallet. What a name. What a name. What a fake name that he probably made up. , I need his apology. Yeah, he 

Kara: made, what was it, 450, 000 a year off of her. 

Nora: Yeah. Minimum. Base salary. Base salary. Sarah Silverman, every comedian, Jimmy Kimmel, everybody who made a joke about Britney Spears.

And her kids. And her kids. Like, apologize. Apologize. Just say you were wrong. Yeah. Say you were wrong. Yep. Those are the big ones. Okay, villain ranking. How many are we doing? Number, number one is, let's just go to ten. Number one is... Jamie Spears.

It's Jamie Spears. It all spirals from him. It all spirals from him. And then number two is Lynn Spears because also she remarried him. She 

Kara: did remarry him and they watched Criminal Minds together. She remarried him when, when he re got a job and it was, the job was being Britney's captor. 

Nora: Right.

That's fucked up. Then she remarried him. And then, imagine, like, as Britney Spears says. Go ahead. As she says, they sat and watched Criminal Minds. And then she goes, who does that?

Kara: Lynn also sells rodentic fields. 

Nora: Just. Oh my god. That does not shock 

Kara: me. Okay. I'm gonna say number three is Jamie Lynn because Britney points out that she asked her for help and she was like, stop fighting it. And has basically piggybacked on Brittany her whole 

Nora: life, like her whole life. Then it's going to be Kevin.

Yeah, I 

Kara: agree. Kevin 

Nora: is legal team, any single person who benefited from that divorce financially and 

Kara: use the children as pawns. Yes. Anybody 

Nora: like that. Um, yeah. You owe. A huge apology. Then, I think, we have anyone involved in 

Kara: the 

Nora: cons, in the whole, in the Vegas show. Yeah. you know, security people.

 All the people who are there who could see this. I'll grant some leeway. You sign a bunch of stuff, like, you know, it's, going to affect your income. There's probably ways that you can quietly sound the alarm. Call TMZ and give them.

 Leverage TMZ for good, which, you know, you could do, okay? And, I don't know what number we're at, but I also want to just like, that's six? That's only six? That's six. Oh my god, I felt like everyone in here was. Well, you know, we, a lot of these, a lot of these numbers were also 10 or 12 people at once.

So the point is almost everyone's a villain and the best part of this book is that Brittany is the hero of her own story. Yep. It is Brittany. Who delivers herself from evil. Yeah. It is Britney who comes back at the end and says, your tongue is your sword. And she made a phone call and we're proud of her for that.

I want to say what this is now, this really will be the end. How interesting is it to you that the cover photo is A Her Brits photo from her heyday. 

Kara: 2001. I'm not surprised. That didn't shock me one bit. I knew it would be an old photo because I think that's, for many people, that's Britney Spears forever.

That's who she is. Yeah. Is that person. That era. 

Nora: Did it make you want to get chunky layers? I do have them right now actually, Nora. God. Okay. I want to. Um, I was re watching videos of her from, like, the long Bob days. Oh, great. Great Bob. I'm thinking about it, baby. 

Kara: The pretty Bob was so 

Nora: good. I'm thinking about it.

I'm thinking about it. This book is, it is a true masterpiece. I love that you described it as a southern gothic, I read a lot of celebrity memoirs. This one is taking the cake for me. It's taking the cake. 

Kara: I just want to manifest. I love Britney. I think it's worth a read in the celebrity memoir 

Nora: canon.

Yes. I think so too. I also just want to put out there that this is the kind of celebrity memoir that I want to write. So if you are a celebrity, um, you know, I do have some experience in that realm and I, , I am. Ready, willing, and able to leave my entire family. She's ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. God, like, if you saw Britney, I would just say, let's get in a pool and I'll hold you.

Yeah. That's what I would say. What would you say? 

Kara: People ask me this a lot, actually. Like, what would I say if I met Britney Spears? And I would, I think the key with Britney is just treat her like a normal person. You know what I'd like to do with Britney Spears? I'd like to go to Target. Oh, yeah. But Target in like, Woodbury, Minnesota.

Where people are just going to be like, oh, that looks like Britney 

Nora: Spears, or like, 

Kara: take her somewhere, like to the Mall of America, where people aren't really paying 

Nora: attention. I'd get in the pool. Yeah, I like it. You have 

Kara: a pool, just invite her over. 

Nora: I have, if Britney hears this, come on over.

You love Arizona. I live in Arizona. My husband will cook a meal for you. Yeah, we can just hang out. We can go to Target. We're in the darkest timeline.

And Britney Spears is the light that is getting us through. Cara, thank you for recording this emergency episode. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being a part of our team. Terrible Reading Club is a production of Feelings Co.

Literally the only place that you are allowed to have feelings, whether or not you are in a conservatorship. We will allow your feelings, okay? We are here to advocate for you having your feelings, even and especially if those feelings are... Very complicated, like Britney Spears are. The team at Terrible Reading Club is me, Karen Nesvig, Megan Palmer, Claire McInerny, and Marcel Malikibu.