Chicago writers and performers Elizabeth Gomez and Adrienne Gunn began their podcast journey during the 2020 lockdown with Wokefield. The duo revisited a shared childhood obsession with the teen drama anthology Sweet Valley High, exploring how the novels’ problematic elements informed their adulthood. They’ve since graduated (but not to Sweet Valley University, which is covered in episode 11 of Wokefield) by expanding the podcast’s scope to include formative movies, television, and literature from the 1980s and 90s. The renamed Don’t Ruin This For Me, part of a podcast network run by local stand-up venue The Lincoln Lodge, kicked off in June with episodes on Pamela Anderson and Legends of the Fall.

The hosts exhibit a breeziness and warmth to each other that can only be forged in a deep friendship. Despite different upbringings, Gomez and Gunn grew up equally fluent in pop culture and have been both elated and disappointed by how the flawed entertainment of their past has reared its head in the (relatively) enlightened times of today. They admit it can be kind of a mindfuck.

Was there a moment in recording Wokefield when either of you realized you wanted to expand the scope of the podcast?

EG: Adrienne, do you wanna take that one?

AG: No, I’ll let you take it because I probably would have Wokefield-ed forever.

EG: Adrienne had me reading these books, which I had read as a young person but I’m an old person now. And what I was gleaning from our conversations, even about these very terribly written books and terrible characters, was that our conversations were never really about the books. They were more about who we were, how we developed, and how these things shaped our lives. I felt like those conversations were more of the meat of what we needed to talk about. As a team, I think our voices are in our trauma and in reevaluating the things we learned and the mistakes that we feel like we’ve made.

AG: People seem to respond to the vibe between us — we laugh a lot, we make each other laugh a lot — but because we know each other so well, we are able to get kind of deep. The thing we keep coming back to is, “How did this piece of art create the way I think about the world?” And usually it fucked us up. 

EG: One of the things we’ve really come to understand is that once you tell your story, you’ll find other people who hear those stories, and you’re not feeling so alone — not some kind of weird freak who doesn’t belong in the world. One of the things that I value with my friendship with Adrienne is finally finding someone who understands my story. And that made a world of difference. We’re two friends who clearly very, very much love and enjoy each other. And we’re telling these stories that can be very, very similar in style from the outside, but when we start digging deeper, you can see how they affected us vastly differently. There’s a commonality between two very opposite-appearing people. 

Adrienne, in an article on your Substack page, you address recent news that the showrunners of The Other Two were the subject of numerous HR complaints and were apparently tyrannical in their practices. You ask, “Is it impossible to be successful and still be a decent person?” What do you think is the answer?

AG: I think it depends on how successful you are. I would say for both Elizabeth and I, being a decent person is always going to be the paramount goal. But in the world of trying to be an artist and trying to get a book published, there are definitely people that won’t stop at anything to get exactly what they want. It’s a real bummer about The Other Two that even after all this stuff — all the #MeToo, all the reckonings and #TimesUp stuff — that we’re still running writers’ rooms in this way. Especially when the content is good! I love that show, and it really bums you out to hear the people who were working on writing these jokes were being terrorized while writing them. I don’t know that I have a good answer to it, but you should be a good person and then try to be successful.

EG: One of the problems that we face when we think about celebrity culture, or, generally, people we don’t really know, is that their story is not that simple. It’s not like you’re successful and not a decent person, or you’re successful and a decent person. There are a lot of levels in between. People can be terrible, for sure, but even when we say that, we’re not considering a whole person, we’re considering an act.

AG: I’m just gonna say the thing that I know to be definitely true, which is that there are enough decent people that can be elevated that we don’t have to fight for the Woody Allens and the Bill Cosbys of the world.

On a lighter note, how do you both feel about the phrase, “It’s so bad, it’s good” when referring to a piece of pop culture?

EG: I only love bad-good things. For example, I love The Witcher, but it’s absolutely terrible. And I will watch every single one. I bought merch. I bought Witcher merch!

If you’re watching every episode and ostensibly enjoying the experience, can the show still be considered bad if it brings you joy?

EG: I think it’s because there is such a huge range. When we were all growing up, we all watched the same TV, right? We had four channels and all the TV shows were the same — same style, the same kind of writing, the same kind of studio laughs. In 2023, the range of entertainment is ridiculous. You can watch a 30-second TikTok and get a whole story, then there’s shows like Succession. I think what we’re really talking about are things like style and production. The Witcher is not going to be at the production level of Game of Thrones. So I think it’s okay to be like, “This is not the greatest show ever.” But it’s also so good. It’s worth watching. [Laughs] Adrienne is like, “No, that’s not true.” 

AG: No! You know I watch shit tons of reality TV, which is all terrible and bad. I like it to turn my brain off. I would say generally that I don’t like to watch scripted things that I don’t think are good because I primarily think of myself as a writer. So I’m watching and thinking about how an episode is put together [and] the storytelling. But that takes a lot of mental energy. So sometimes, like currently — I will not lie to you — I am watching Temptation Island, a very terrible show. I love to get caught up in a reality TV moment because it feels like diving headfirst into pop culture without having to think too hard about it.