In the debut essay collection from the hosts of the hit podcast Podcrushed Penn Badgley
Sophie Ansari and Nava Kavelin explore what it means to come of age at every stage of our
lives. Known for spotlighting your favorite artists’ tween stories of self-discovery on their
podcast Penn Sophie and Nava turn inward to share their own experiences for the first time.
Penn a twelve-year-old Discman-toting introvert starts in the solitude of his only-child
household where he danced like no one was watching (because no one was watching) before
embarking on a neon-lit journey to Hollywood. Sophie takes us to her middle school in Beijing
where she had to ward off rumors of a boob job and to the moment loosening her chokehold on
love brought her husband straight into her living room. Nava traces the emotional aftershocks
of losing her mother and guides us through the whimsical world of an imaginationship where
nothing is ever as it seems. With compassion humor and insight Crushmore charts the often
cringey sometimes luminous path from adolescence to adulthood. Together these essays remind
us that we can find healing—and even inspiration—from our awkward adolescent selves long after
we thought we left them behind.
