Stuck in Stoneybrook: A Baby-Sitters Club Podcast

Dawn loses her mind over meeting and impressing Lewis (Logan’s cuz) and decides to give herself a makeover supplemented by Mary Anne’s bad advice and cringey teen mag articles that lead her astray to a disastrous date but everyone learns an important lesson because this is the BSC after all and if reading this really bad run-on sentence is making you feel crazy its pretty much how we felt while re...

A blizzard hits Stoneybrook and there is actual peril again. We love it. Emily explores the climate change claims and message, Esme talks about how little we like probabilities and statistics as a society, and Anne calls out the Main Ann for all of her Boomer references. Doo-dee, doo-doo, doo-dee, doo-doo, it’s time to get snowed in!

Beware, Dawn!!! We said: BEWARE!!! There’s a ” best sitter“ contest and, obviously, everyone gets weirdly competitively and wants to win that damn title. However, would Kristy sabotage the other girls on her path to glory—with baked beans?! (Maybe.) We discuss justice for Alan Gray, some discussion of childhood depression, and what is California Casual, actually? It’s a MYSTERY…

Claudia gets a job for Mary Rose Wilder, the multitalented and super smart cash cow of Stoneybrook! Emily discusses conservatorship and talented young women, Esme expounds on the societal worry over “overprogrammed” children, and Anne regales us with ANOTHER tale of a white “inventrapreneur” who stole his idea from —shocker— a brown guy. There’s lots of baby-sitting!!!

Being a boy is really, really hard. 

Volunteerism and cancer take center stage in this very earnest treatise on the Make A Wish foundation. Emily ruins it a bit, of course, and we also learn some fun pop culture stuff about it while Jessi continues to be unbelievably mature. Most importantly, where was Mr. Simon going?!?

Is this a strike? Find out Emily’s take along with a brief history of the labor movement in Connecticut. There are lots of puppets in this book, and Esme wants Mallory to communicate her needs more directly (while acknowledging that she is only 11). We also hear about Anne’s harrowing middle school experience with a hamster. And is the plot the same as Mary Anne Misses Logan? A little!

Logan is back, so is Cokie Mason, but there are OTHER monsters to be discussed! Esme breaks down worry, exposure, and kids’ monster fears, whereas Em dives in to queer and feminist theory and the role of the monster in each and makes Anne and Esme play a game about it! Anne regails us with tales of the “Monster Book” her brother used to torture her with and also tells us a bit about Parcheesi (suc...

Babies in costumes. Infant care classes. And, duh, lots of baby-sitting. We’ve got babies up the wazoo, folks! (At least some dads are taking care of some kids?) We discuss updates in colic research, what the heck a baby parade is, and travel down memory lane with Crystal Light. I know, this whole thing is weird. We are along for the (very slow, parade-route-paced) ride.

We were honored to have activist and actress Malia Baker join Emily and Esme in the “studio” (ok fine, Esme’s closet, Emily’s office, and a random business center in an LA hotel). We discuss social media and activism, reducing mental health stigma, representation, and her negotiations with her mom for her acting career. Also junk food and boys and her friendships with all those amazing girls! She’...

Our parade of AMAZING guests continues with Stacey McGill herself, Shay Rudolph! Shay and Esme chatted between all of her tres cool actor commitments– about Girl Scouting, protecting your energy, the accuracy of Dawn’s California nature, and all sorts of behind-the-scenes details about her character and process. She’s passionate and charming and super kind and we had a blast getting to know her.

People! It’s Mo-freaking-mona Ta-freaking-mada!!! We know!! We are also freaking out! No surprise she was a darn delight. We discussed the responsibility of playing such an influential Asian character, behind the scenes fun, why Anne should really have a tap dancing career, and OF COURSE junk food. We loved her and you will too! Enjoy! 

We continue our series of super duper cool interviews this week with executive producers Naia Cucukov and Lucy Kitada of the Baby-Sitters Club on Netflix! More behind the scenes content, great discussion of women and girls in film and confirmation that Dawn’s blonde hair is not a personality trait, as well as BSC trivia and other fun! Join us and learn a thing or two about the movie/TV biz and how...

Stoneybrookers!!! This! Is! Not! A! Drill! We are honored and excited to present our interview with Rachel Shukert, executive producer and Showrunner of “The Baby-sitters Club” on Netflix! Anne and Esme asked hard hitting questions about periods, Watson, which moms in the ‘Brook she would avoid on the playground, you know, the big stuff. Plus lots more about both the books and the show. We hope yo...

It’s the first mystery! Is there a new client ? Is the client rich but still nice but also weird? Does Stacey need a diamond? Yes, yes, and… questionable? Join us as we wade into mysterious territory and also, weirdly, learn the history of SmartFood (which is FASCINATING).

Baby-sitters Club on Netflix Season 2, Stoneybrookers! You KNOW that we binged the whole thing on Monday! This is a freeform episode describing our initial thoughts. The summary: A++! And… we have questions. Hopefully we will get to ask them someday! In the meantime, we love all of YOU in an almost "concerningly aggressive" fashion (to quote Richard Spier, the surprising mental health MVP of this...

START SPREADING THE NEWS…. It’s the guest you’ve all been waiting for! Our childhood friend Michele Fletcher, Sacramento’s answer to Stacey McGill, joins us to discuss SS6! There are random dogs, British children, art classes, lots of shopping, boy ballerinas, and, of course, no vacation is complete without babysitting. We’ve all lived in NYC, but  Michele was the first of any of us to move to the...

We are so excited to welcome Jody Worthington, of The Blume Saloon (a Judy Blume Book Club!) to discuss Book 44 with us! The kids at Stoneybrook Elementary School have penpals in the Zuni tribe and—yikes!—their school and many of their homes burn down! We discuss the psychological benefits of altruism, the white savior-dom of this whole enterprise, and whether Ann M. Martin continued to be influen...

It’s finally here! Stacey’s brittle diabetes breakdown, foreshadowed in so many books, comes to a head. Also, the McGills are being TERRIBLE. We discuss illness anxiety disorder, diabetes noncompliance, self-esteem, the environmental impact of hospitals… oh, and cootie catchers.

More mysterious things are happening in Stoneybrook and something is out to sabotage Jessi’s starring role in Sleeping Beauty! But it’s not the spooky, Casper the Friendly Ghost kind of mystery—this is just... straight-up malicious? Yikes. Then add in a lot of envy and you’ve got yourself a dangerous mix of ballerinas behaving badly. Thankfully, Esme teaches us how to be less envious (when we want...

THE TIME HAS COME FOR LOGAN’S COMEUPPANCE. Okay. So it wasn’t THAT dramatic, but Mary Anne dumps Logan! A mix of emotions washes over Emily—is she happy, is she sad?—and she doesn’t even know what to make of it, y’all. We have some fun, though. We talk a lot about the oppression of manufactured “Romance” from Logan and MA all the way down to elementary school valentines. Also, does anyone like cho...

Annnnnd we’re back with another Ellen Miles mystery and a new popular girl nemesis, Shawna Riverson (Cokie Mason, who?). Poor Claudia gets caught “cheating” and Janine has to slip into Mary Anne’s shoes to Save The Day. Emily ponders: “What is cheating, really?” We also read some fantastic reader letters and discuss Claud’s fight, flight or freeze response and the wisdom behind Mrs. Pike’s punishm...

We are happy to be joined by guests Marisa Crawford and Megan Milks, the editors of the fantastic new anthology We are the Baby-sitters Club! We dish on 1990s girl culture, Logan makes a comeback thanks to Megan’s thoughtful insights, and we try to decide what the heck IS a California girl (other than all three of your hosts)? Mikhail Gorbachev also makes an appearance. Obviously. Because anything...

Mallory is newly “poor” and the mean girls of Stoneybrook aren’t having it. Emily teaches us some important stuff about the welfare state (or the one we SHOULD have) and Esme is tired of Mr. Pike’s bullshit almost before it starts. Anne dishes EVEN MORE on “I Love Lucy” and we discuss beef between Hall and Oates vis-a-vis “We are the World.”

It’s been ONE YEAR since our debut Stuck in Stoneybrook episode! You guys have stuck—see what we did there?—with us through arguably one of the toughest years in recent history. But now we have many vaccines, a new president, AND a second season of The Baby-Sitters Club on Netflix is on the way. So this episode is dedicated to you, dear listener. We’re answering all the burning questions you’ve be...