Natalism and The New York Times: The B-Side (PREVIEW)

**June Sternbach** (0:01)
This is my final day. Before we started recording, you were still stunned that I'm in this apartment.

**Josh Boerman** (0:07)
It's true.

**June Sternbach** (0:08)
Yeah, and this is the final time I'm recording in this apartment. But now that I'm leaving, I want to tell this story on a podcast. I had refrained from telling it just because I live here still, and I don't want any particular way for me to get doxxed at all. And if I describe anything about my home or wherever, I'm sure some freak would find that, like whoever tracks me. But I need, I've been wanting to talk about this for over a year now.

**Josh Boerman** (0:33)
Let's hear it.

**June Sternbach** (0:34)
And I've exhibited so much.

**Josh Boerman** (0:36)
So this is not just about the stair that kills you instantly. There's other stuff coming up here.

**June Sternbach** (0:41)
No, there's so much more about this apartment.
So basically, when I first got this place, you know, you go through, you do a tour, you look at it, it's like, wow, this is a good place. I'm gonna live here. I'm gonna pay rent to a landlord and live here. This is, you know, don't love having to pay rent to a landlord, but it was a nice place, decided to live here. We got the keys, moved in, and it's like, oh, we opened the door to the mud room. We have like one of those just like little, little, you step in, it's a small little room before you get to the living room.

**Josh Boerman** (1:13)
Yeah, you can put your bikes there. You can put other things that are sort of too dirty for an actual home. I don't know why I really enunciated my T there on dirty, but I just really wanted to.

**June Sternbach** (1:24)
It felt nice, but it's the dirty room, right?

**Josh Boerman** (1:26)
The mud room, the dirty room.

**June Sternbach** (1:28)
The dirty. And so the day we get our keys and walk in, there's a hole in the mud room.

**Josh Boerman** (1:37)
You never told me about this.

**June Sternbach** (1:39)
Yeah.
No, this has been a major. No, in the wall. So there was a hole in the wall and it was a rather small hole. And we were like, okay, we just toured this place two weeks ago. Why was there no hole before? But now there's a hole. What happened in here? What happened in that two week period?

**Josh Boerman** (1:58)
Well, you see, the only place in France where the naked ladies dance and there's a hole in the wall so the men can watch it all. I don't know if you knew about that, but.

**June Sternbach** (2:07)
I didn't, but it's, you know, I just, I'm glad that everyone has a home, even if it's in my wall.

**Josh Boerman** (2:14)
The naked ladies, the men, the voyeuristic men.

**June Sternbach** (2:18)
And so there was this hole and we're like, well, that's odd. We should get that fixed. And time goes on. Don't hear anything from the landlord about this. About a month later, she's like, okay, I'll send someone out to fix that soon. And we're like, okay, great.
Another month passes and we noticed like, the hole's getting bigger. The hole is expanding.

**Josh Boerman** (2:40)
That's, is this the plot of Silent Hill, The Room? Did you ever?

**June Sternbach** (2:45)
I have played the game, like I'm gonna step through it and get into Silent Hill.
It felt like it started genuinely size of like a quarter. At like three months in, it gets the size of like a baseball. There's rubble starting to like fall into the, like Mount Rushmore just on the ground underneath it.
Teddy Roosevelt's head comes out of the hole. Yeah. Donald Trump, eventually, maybe. But no, so this was a year. This hole was not fixed for a fucking year. And it grew so massive. Like you could actually, if it was, if there was something other than rock behind it, you probably could have gone through it. But then eventually, you know, anticlimactic ending, eventually a year and a half later, basically, the landlord finally sends a crew to fix it up and this hole is gone. But I've been just, just like, just imagine waking up every day, walking out your home and being like, hole got larger and not being able to talk about it. Like imagine not being able to talk about that online in any capacity, because if you described any of it or posted a photo of it, it's over.

**Josh Boerman** (3:52)
Yeah, you can't post a photo. You know, there've been some nights where I've come away from the experience of the evening thinking hole got larger, if you know what I'm saying. Folks, folks.