Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the guest. Her new memoir, The End of San Francisco, is now available from City Lights Books. Kirkus calls it "A blisteringly honest portrait of a young, fast and greatly misunderstood life. . . . An outspoken, gender-ambiguous author and activist reflects on her halcyon days as a wild child in San Francisco." And The San Francisco Chronicle says "It would be easy to describe The End of San Francisco as a Joycean 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Queer' (although the book's intense stream of consciousness is reminiscent of the later, more experimental, Joyce) . . . but this is misleading. This journey of a life that begins in the professional upper-middle class (both parents are therapists) and the Ivy League and moves to hustling, drugs, activism -- Sycamore was active in ACT UP and Queer Nation -- and queer bohemian grunge, is profoundly American. At heart, Sycamore is writing about the need to escape control through flight or obliteration." Monologue topics: my awkwardness, the over-analysis of my awkwardness, preemptive crucifixion, Pontius Pilate-ing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.