[laughs] Is, um, what, what brought you to write this book in the first place?

Um, gosh, what, what brought me to it? I mean, I think I had this chance encounter, which I talk about in the introduction, when I was essentially a kid.

I was about 22 years old, and I met this 90-year-old blind woman, and she kind of let me in on her own secret, which is that she was one of the last living custodians of this insanely difficult type of lace making.

And that, that really opened my world and kind of set me on this path towards honoring final custodians that I think still guides me.

Um, in terms of the book itself-Um, so I created a column here at the BBC where I work that was very much in this vein and kind of inspired the book.

But one of the stories that was in it, in my column, which did not make it into the book, won this big award, and as part of this award you get to go to New York and meet with a bunch of agents and basically pitch a book if you have a book idea.

And so when I was creating this column for the BBC, I always thought in the back of my mind it would be cool to one day compile something in this vein, and I had a wonderful agent who liked the idea, and she shopped it around.

[laughs] So, you know, what, what was that like? I mean, uh, you wanna give us a little, in case anybody hasn't read the book yet, a little precis of what that was about?