Shows
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 61: Charlie Jane Anders - LESSONS IN MAGIC AND DISASTERCharlie Jane Anders is an award-winning, best-selling author of speculative fiction based in the Bay Area. She is the winner of the 2017 Nebula, Locus, and Crawford awards; winner of the 2020 Locus Award; a co-creator of the transgender Marvel Comics superhero, Escapade; a founding editor of the science fiction website io9; a co-host, with Annalee Newitz, of the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct; and the current science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for The Washington Post.
In this episode, I talk to Charlie Jane about her latest and most personal novel yet. Written during the pandemic, partly as...
2025-10-0656 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 60: Christopher Blackwell and Deborah Zalesne - ENDING ISOLATION: THE CASE AGAINST SOLITARY CONFINEMENTChristopher Blackwell is an award-winning journalist currently incarcerated at the Washington Corrections Center, where he is serving a 45-year prison sentence for taking another human’s life during a drug robbery (something he takes full accountability for).
Deborah Zalesne is a legal expert and law professor at the City University of New York School of Law, where she teaches contracts, corporate law, and commercial law.
Together with Dr. Terry Kupers and Kwaneta Harris, they wrote Ending Isolation: The Case Against Solitary Confinement, which weaves together first-hand accounts of incarceration and solitary confinement with legal and me...
2025-09-0656 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 59: Alka Joshi - SIX DAYS IN BOMBAYAlka Joshi spent 10 years working on her debut novel, The Henna Artist, before it was published in March 2020, just before the world locked down as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, a few months later, Reese Witherspoon selected it as a Reese's book club, changing the trajectory of Joshi's life and writing career forever. At a time when many debut artists were struggling to connect with their audiences, Joshi was zooming into libraries, bookstores, and book clubs big and small, and finding her people in the process.
Five years later, Joshi has published two sequels to...
2025-08-0256 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 58: Kirsty Capes - DAUGHTERSIn this episode of Story Behind the Story, host Clara Sherley-Appel talks to British novelist Kirsty Capes about her latest book, Daughters, which was recently released in the US following its debut in the UK in 2024 (under the title Girls). Daughters follows Mattie and Nora, whose neglectful and abusive mother was the acclaimed artist Ingrid Olssen. On her deathbed, Olssen asks them to destroy her work, so when Olssen’s sister arranges an exhibition of her art in San Francisco, her daughters feel compelled to put a stop to it — despite their difficult and complicated feelings about their mother.
2025-07-0555 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 57: John Gibler - TORN FROM THE WORLDIn this episode of Story Behind the Story, host Clara Sherley-Appel talks to journalist John Gibler about his 2014 book, Torn from the World: A Guerrilla's Escape from a Secret Prison in Mexico. Torn from the World tells the story of Andrés Tzompaxtle Tecpile, a member of an armed resistance group who was forcibly disappeared and tortured by the Mexican military long after the government claimed it had stopped using these tactics.
Gibler has been reporting on social movements in Mexico since 2006, when he accompanied members of the Zapatista movement on The Other Campaign. That experience shaped h...
2025-05-0354 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 56: Laura Spinney - PROTOLaura Spinney is the author of two novels and three non-fiction books, including Pale Rider, a historical exploration of the 1918 flu epidemic, which came out in 2017. In this interview, we discuss her latest book, Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, which traces the evolution of Proto-Indo-European — the hypothetical, reconstructed common ancestor of all languages in the Indo-European language family — from its purported origins with the Yamnaya people of the Pontic steppe through migrations and metamorphoses into nearly 450 languages spoken by 3.4 billion people worldwide today.
2025-04-2254 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 55: Holly Goddard Jones - THE SALT LINEHolly Goddard Jones is an author and educator best known for literary fiction. She was a recipient of The Fellowship of Southern Writers’ Hillsdale Prize for Excellence in Fiction and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and her work has appeared in several literary publications, including The Best American Mystery Stories, New Stories from the South, and Tin House magazine, in addition to two of her own short story collections and two novels.
In the 2010s, while teaching at a residency in a highly wooded part of Tenessee, Jones was inspired to write a horror story about an i...
2025-04-0654 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 54: Muriel Leung - HOW TO FALL IN LOVE IN A TIME OF UNNAMEABLE DISASTERMuriel Leung is a recipient of fellowships to Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop and the Community of Writers, and she has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her writing can be found in The Baffler, Cream City Review, Gulf Coast, The Collagist, and the Fairy Tale Review, among others. Her first book of poetry, Bone Confetti, won the 2015 Noemi Press Book Award. Of it, one reviewer said, “It made the words into a bell, and the bell made me stop what I was doing.” I spoke to Muriel in 2021 about her poetry collection, Imagine Us, the Swarm, in which she expl...
2025-04-0454 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 53: Hilary Leichter - TERRACE STORYHilary Leicther's particular brand of surrealist fiction takes metaphors and makes them tangible. Her debut novel, Temporary, followed a nameless, archetypal temp worker from one gig to the next. As the jobs grow progressively stranger, their strangeness bleeds into her personal life. In this episode, I talk to Leichter about her new novel, Terrace Story, in which a struggling family find a spacious terrace — one that seems to defy the laws of physics — behind the linen closet of their tiny, New York apartment. It is a novel about the impact each of us has on the world around us, and...
2025-04-0255 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 52: Hanna Pylväinen - THE END OF DRUM-TIMEHanna Pylväinen has been writing fiction about the small Finnish fundamentalist sect she was raised in for years. In her 2012 debut novel, We Sinners, she follows a large, Midwestern family as they navigate their relationships to each other and to the church at the heart of their lives. Over the years since she wrote that novel, Pylväinen has learned more about the origins of that religious order, called Laestadianism after the pastor who founded it, and its relationship to the colonization of Finland and displacement of the Sami people and their traditions. Her new novel, The End of...
2024-12-0754 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 51: Lev Grossman - THE BRIGHT SWORDIn 2014, hot on the heels of the success of his Magicians trilogy, Lev Grossman announced that he was writing a Arthurian epic. As the project took shape, world events kept intruding: Donald Trump ascended to the presidency, a novel respiratory virus launched a pandemic, and Britain exited the European Union. Admist all this, Grossman realized that the question that had driven him to write this novel in the first place — What happens after Arthur dies? — was a question about the collapse of empires. And so The Bright Sword was reborn.
In this interview, I talk to Lev abou...
2024-12-0755 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 50: Tanzila Ahmed - GRASPING AT THIS PLANET JUST TO BELIEVEFor ten years, Tanzila "Taz" Ahmed organized an annual poem-a-day project during the month of Ramadan. She began the project as an alternative form of reflection to prayer, which she had struggled to connect with, shortly after the death of her mother. In the decade that followed, the project turned into a community, and Taz's poetry turned into a collection, Grasping at This Planet Just to Believe.
In this interview, Taz talks about the impetus behind and inspiration for the original project and the ways participating in it for a decade changed her relationship to Ramadan — and to...
2024-12-0656 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 49: Tedd Siegel - SIGNS OF THE GREAT REFUSALTedd Siegel retired from his career as an academic administrator in late 2019 after wrestling with extreme stress, burnout, and PTSD — caused, in part, by the conditions of work as it is formulated today. He wrote Signs of the Great Refusal: The Coming Struggle for a Postwork Society in part to work through his own experiences and, more broadly, to understand what it was about contemporary work that felt so untenable and unsustainable. Throughout the book, Tedd leans into his background as a political philosopher (he attended the Ph.D. program in philosophy at the New School), grounding his understanding of...
2024-04-0946 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 48: Katya Apekina - MOTHER DOLLNovelist, screenwriter, and translator Katya Apekina returns to Story Behind the Story to talk about her latest novel, Mother Doll — an intergenerational ghost story, tying together a Russian revolutionary and her great-granddaughter, adrift in her 20s in LA.Special Guest: Katya Apekina.
2024-03-0358 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 47: Marcus Gazaway - BRIDGEWATERMarcus Gazaway got his start as a writer right here on the central coast, when he joined the staff of CSU Monterey Bay’s student newspaper, The Otter Realm. Today, he works as a full-time author in Sarasota, Florida, where he can be seen reading and writing in coffee shops across the Gulf Coast. His first novel, the sci-fi thriller Bridgewater, follows a neurologist whose desperation to give his Deaf daughter a voice leads him down a dark and destructive path. It is the topic of our conversation today.
2024-02-0452 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 46: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo - INCANTATIONThis month, host Clara Sherley-Appel talks to poet and educator Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo. A former Steinbeck Fellow and Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner, Xochitl’s writing has been featured in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, On Being’s Poetry Unbound, and Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World. She has received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, Yefe Nof, and the National Parks Arts Foundation in partnership with the Getty National Military Park and Poetry Foundation. In 2011, she co-founded Women Who Submit, a literary organization that uses social media and community events to empower women and non-binary authors to submit work f...
2023-12-0354 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 45: Sam Sax - PIGSam Sax is a queer Jewish poet, writer, and educator. Their debut poetry collection, madness, won the National Poetry Series Competition when it came out, and their second collection, bury it, won the 2017 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. They are the two time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion with poems published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, and Granta, to give just a few highlights. Sam has received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Poetry Foundation, Yaddo, Lambda Literary, and MacDowell, and they are currently serving as an ITALIC...
2023-11-0454 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 44: Jenn Shapland - THIN SKINJenn Shapland's first book, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award and the Southern Book Prize, and it won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award, the Judy Grahn Award, and the Christian Gauss Award. In her new essay collection, Thin Skin, Shapland explores the porousness of boundaries between humans and the environments we inhabit, between us and other people, and between us and the social constructs we create.
What does it mean to be sensitive when we live in a toxic environment? How do we navigate the difference between taking responsibility and assuaging...
2023-10-0855 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 43: Brett Christophers - RENTIER CAPITALISMHost Clara Sherley Appel speaks with Brett Christophers, author of Rentier Capitalism.
A geographer based out of the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University, Brett's work focuses on various aspects of Western capitalism, both historically and in the present day. In 2018, he wrote The New Enclosure, about Margaret Thatcher’s immensely successful program to privatize land in the UK, for which he won the 2019 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize. In 2020 he published Rentier Capitalism, which provides a framework for understanding the political economy of the 20th and 21st centuries in terms of the ex...
2023-09-0353 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 42: Cheryl Harawitz - WHEN THE MAGPIE CALLSCheryl Harawitz is an artist and retired social worker living in Alameda. A few years ago, she published her debut middle-grade novel, When the Magpie Calls, the story of a nine year old girl named Morgwyth with special abilities and a remarkable connection to animals, for which she is bullied by her peers and targeted by supernatural forces who see her as a threat. But as Morgwyth begins to accept herself and her differences, she discovers a wellspring of internal strength that serves her well in her adventures.
This month's conversation covers a range of topics, from...
2023-06-0254 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 41: Joss Lake - FUTURE FEELINGThis month, Clara talks to author Joss Lake. A trans writer and educator based in New York, Joss teaches critical and creative writing throughout the city and runs a literary sauna series called Trans at Rest. His work has been supported by the Queens Council of the Arts, the Women and Performance Studies Collective, the Watermill Center, and Columbia University. Joss's debut novel, Future Feeling, tells a story about an embittered dog-walker who accidentally puts a curse on a young trans man and has to embark on an adventure with his social media frenemy in order to save him...
2023-05-0742 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 40: Elaine Hsieh Chou - DISORIENTATIONIn Elaine Hsieh Chou's 2022 debut novel, Disorientation, a Taiwanese-American graduate student named Ingrid Yang discovers that the subject of her dissertation is a fraud: Xiao-Wen Chou is not a Chinese-American poet, but is in fact a white man who built his career on stereotypes and yellowface. This discovery launches her own awakening to the racism she has faced her entire life and the many ways she's built her identity around what white people expect of her.
In our conversation, we talk about the real-life inspirations for Disorientation and the strangeness of the label "absurd" to describe a...
2023-04-0755 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 39: Ruthanna Emrys - A HALF-BUILT GARDENHost Clara Sherley-Appel talks to author Ruthanna Emrys about her hopepunk novel, A HALF-BUILT GARDEN.
2022-09-0154 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 38: Isaac Fellman - DEAD COLLECTIONSIsaac Fellman is an author and archivist living in San Francisco. His debut novel, The Breath of the Sun, won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. In this episode, we discuss about his second novel, Dead Collections, which was published by Penguin Random House in 2022. It follows Sol, who works – like Isaac – as an archivist at a queer historical society in San Francisco, and who – presumably unlike Isaac – is a vampire. It’s a delightful story about love, grief, and the ways we hide our truest selves from the world to fit in.Special...
2022-07-0154 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 37: Gretchen Felker-Martin - MANHUNTGretchen Felker-Martin is a writer, film critic, and self-described professional cenobite who writes about sexual revulsion, body horror, and how violence forms and fits into our lives. In addition to her fiction and essays available on Patreon, she has written criticism for outlets like Polygon, FanByte, The Outline, and Nylon.
Her 2022 novel, Manhunt, follows two trans women trying to survive in a world ravaged by a testosterone-targeting plague. It is a brutal, gruesome exploration of gender, power, and violence at the end of the world, and it is the topic of this episode's conversation.Special...
2022-05-0652 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 36: Stephanie Foo - WHAT MY BONES KNOWIf you listen to the radio, you have almost certainly encountered Stephanie Foo's work. After graduating from UC Santa Cruz in just 3 years, she joined the staff of Snap Judgment, first as an intern and then as a full-time producer, before she moved to New York to work on This American Life. But Stephanie’s numerous accomplishments and accolades hid an intense internal struggle that ultimately led her to leave her dream job: in 2018, she was diagnosed with C-PTSD. In March 2022, she published What My Bones Know – a memoir that chronicles her journey to understand and heal from C-PTSD foll...
2022-04-0154 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 35: Calvin Kasulke - SEVERAL PEOPLE ARE TYPINGI talk to author and playwright Calvin Kasulke about his debut novel, Several People Are Typing.
2022-03-0654 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 34: Kent Leatham - MONTEREY POETRY FESTIVALI talk to Monterey Bay Area poet, translator, and educator Kent Leatham about his writing.
2022-02-0756 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 33: Jamey Williams - BREATHING UNDER WATER and TO BE BLACK IS TO LOVEI talk to Bay Area poet and educator Jamey Williams about his poetry collections BREATHING UNDER WATER and TO BE BLACK IS TO LOVE.
2021-12-0455 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 32: Kenny Garcia - MONTEREY POETRY FESTIVALI talk to Monterey Bay Area writer Kenny Garcia about his poetry, the Monterey Poetry Festival, and his involvement with Boukra Press.
2021-11-0655 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 31: Rémy Ngamije - THE ETERNAL AUDIENCE OF ONEI talk to Namibian author Rémy Ngamije about his debut novel, THE ETERNAL AUDIENCE OF ONE.
2021-09-0556 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 30: Alice Sparkly Kat - POSTCOLONIAL ASTROLOGYI talk to astrologer and writer Alice Sparkly Kat, author of POSTCOLONIAL ASTROLOGY.
2021-08-0855 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 29: Stephen Granade - LOSING YOUR GRIPI talk to writer / game designer Stephen Granade about the differences between interactive and traditional fiction.
2021-07-0756 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 28: Ethel Rohan - IN THE EVENT OF CONTACTI talk to Bay Area local Ethel Rohan, author of IN THE EVENT OF CONTACT.
2021-06-0556 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 27: Muriel Leung - IMAGINE US, THE SWARMMuriel Leung is a recipient of fellowships to Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop and the Community of Writers, and she has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her writing can be found in The Baffler, Cream City Review, Gulf Coast, The Collagist, and the Fairy Tale Review, among others. Her first book of poetry, Bone Confetti, won the 2015 Noemi Press Book Award. Of it, one reviewer said, “It made the words into a bell, and the bell made me stop what I was doing.”
In this episode, I talk to Muriel about her newest collection, Imagine Us, The Swar...
2021-05-0954 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 26: Jeff VanderMeer - HUMMINGBIRD SALAMANDEROver his 35 year career, Jeff VanderMeer has published more than a dozen novels, and his non-fiction writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, Slate, Salon, and the Washington Post. His genre-defying novels and short stories frequently engage with ecological themes, including climate change, causing the New Yorker to dub him “weird Thoreau.” In 2014, Annihilation, the first book in his New York Times-bestselling Southern Reach trilogy, won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards for Best Novel; it was adapted into a movie in 2018.
In this episode, I talk to Jeff about his...
2021-04-0352 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 25: Finola Austin - BRONTË'S MISTRESSFinola Austin was born in England and moved to Northern Ireland when she was five; she is now based in Brooklyn, New York. Her debut novel Brontë’s Mistress, is a retelling of the infamous affair between Anne, Charlotte, and Emily’s brother Branwell and a long-maligned married woman, Lydia Robinson, from Lydia’s perspective. Using themes from the Brontë sisters’ novels and weaving in original and secondary sources on the affair, Austin gives voice to a woman torn between her desires and what was expected of her.
I talk to Austin about the enduring appeal of the Brontë...
2021-03-1156 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 24: Kamala Puligandla - YOU CAN VIBE ME ON MY FEMMEPHONEIn this episode, I talk to author Kamala Puligandla about her new novella, You Can Vibe Me on My FemmePhone, queer coming of age stories, and the function of humor in her writing. Puligandla lives in Los Angeles, where she also eats, snobs, wears elastic-waisted pants, skulks around the farmer's market, attempts to go to the Y, swipes on Tinder, and thrifts for flair that makes style pop. She is from Oakland, CA and has previously lived there, Portland, OR, and Chicago, IL. She is currently the Communications & Marketing Director at the Women’s Center for Creative Work.
2021-02-2155 min
Never Have I Ever... Hosted a PodcastOur Extraordinary Podcast TrailerOne podcast at a time just wasn't enough for us, so we started a second. In "Our Extraordinary Podcast," we break down episodes of the NBC show "Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist" with our signature style. Check out this trailer to learn what we love about the show and get a sense for what the podcast is about. P.S. We changed our IG name after we recorded this trailer. We're now on Twitter and Instagram @ourextrapod, and you can find the podcast itself at ourextrapod.fireside.fm.
2021-01-2919 minStory Behind the StoryEpisode 21: Elisa Gabbert - THE UNREALITY OF MEMORYElisa Gabbert is obsessed with disasters and how we perceive them. In The Unreality of Memory, which was released last year in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Gabbert tackles pandemics, environmental disasters, the nature of pain and its perception, nostalgia and more.
We talk about Gabbert's interest in these topics, the relationship between her poetry and her essays, and getting burned out on empathy.
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Elisa Gabbert is the author of five collections of poetry, essays, and criticism: The Unreality of Memory & Other Essays, out now from FSG Originals and Atlantic UK; The...
2020-11-0653 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 20: Lev Grossman - THE SILVER ARROWIn this month's episode, I talk to New York Times-bestselling author Lev Grossman about his new middle-grade fantasy novel, The Silver Arrow, which follows 11-year-old Kate and her younger brother Tom on a magical ecological adventure. It's a classic children's adventure novel in the style of The Phantom Tollbooth or The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler with an important modern message.
In this live online event, produced for Kepler's Literary Foundation, we discuss the difference between writing for adults and writing for children, the joy of creating voices and personalities for each of the talking...
2020-10-0754 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 19: Adam Sass - SURRENDER YOUR SONSIn this month's episode, I talk to author Adam Sass about his debut novel, Surrender Your Sons, a queer YA thriller set in a conversion therapy center in Costa Rica. Sass is a gay man himself, and he says he wrote Surrender Your Sons not as a story about queer pain, but as one of queer triumph.
Over the course of this hour, we talk about depictions of coming out and conversion therapy in media, the importance of solidarity, and the difficulty of talking honestly about conversion therapy when so many people believe it to be a...
2020-09-0559 min
Never Have I Ever... Hosted a PodcastEpisode 110: ...Said I Was SorryWe're not going to throw our lives away for you, but we WILL bring you a breakdown of the NHIE Season 1 finale, aka the episode where Devi finally learns to admit when she's wrong and apologize. We talk about how Devi and her mom have both grown this season, what we want to see in Season 2, and of course, THE BEVIDENCE. Oh, and John McEnroe shows up at the end to say hi! (Okay, not really, but wouldn't it be cool if he had?)
2020-09-011h 15Never Have I Ever... Hosted a PodcastEpisode 109: ...Had to Be on My Best BehaviorThis week, Dani and Clara break down episode 1x09, "Never Have I Ever...Had to Be on My Best Behavior." We talk about arranged marriages, complicated mother-daughter relationships, and Kamala's cadre of hotties. Plus, a little bit of Daxton and our usual fashion, one-liners, and MVPs. Thanks for not thinking we're uggos!
2020-08-181h 00Never Have I Ever... Hosted a PodcastEpisode 108: ...Pissed Off Everyone I Know (with Ben Norris)Can we invite Trent? Too late, already did. This week, we're joined by Ben Norris (Trent), who shares his favorite onscreen and offscreen moments, regales us with his audition story, gets really into ships #TRELEANOR, and confirms that Trent is indeed a stoner. Eleanor may be really into beige, but we had a blast talking about friendship, awkward love triangles, and Ben's terrifying face cake.
2020-08-131h 48
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 18: Zaina Arafat - YOU EXIST TOO MUCHZaina Arafat grew up in two very different worlds with different sets of expectations. It left her with a profound sense of alienation and the feeling of being caught between two identities. As a queer woman who identifies as bisexual, she felt similarly torn.
In her debut novel, You Exist Too Much, Arafat explores that feeling of unbelonging through an unnamed narrator who disappears into romantic relationships and leaves when her partners begin to see her. We talk in this interview about the ways she explored those themes in her novel, her own experiences of growing up...
2020-08-0854 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 17: Kawai Strong Washburn - SHARKS IN THE TIME OF SAVIORSKawai Strong Washburn grew up on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi. Life on the Hāmākua coast gave him an appreciation for the natural landscape, as well as the stories and myths he learned in school and from his peers.
In his debut novel, Sharks in the Time of Saviors, Washburn follows the Hawai'ian-Filipino Flores family as they navigate the changing physical and socioeconomic landscape in Hawai'i. The story of the Flores family is set against the backdrop of Hawai'ian myth: when the youngest child is saved from drowning by sharks, his parents come to bel...
2020-08-0755 minNever Have I Ever... Hosted a PodcastEpisode 107: ...Been a Big, Fat Liar (with Ramona Young and Lee Rodriguez)Hey, baby Buttigieges! It's time to strap in for another episode of "Never Have I Ever...Hosted a Podcast." This week, Lee Rodriguez (Fabiola) and Ramona Young (Eleanor) join us to talk high school, parents, and musicals. There's even some singing! Oh, and we eventually talk about the episode.
Since Fabiola comes out to her mom in this episode, we're sharing the resources we compiled for episode 1x05 again. If you're coming out or if someone close to you has come out, these resources can help you navigate those waters:
The Trevor Project's resources for LGBTQ+...
2020-08-042h 10Never Have I Ever... Hosted a PodcastEpisode 106: ...Been the Loneliest Boy in the WorldThis week, Dani and Clara break down episode 1x06, "Never Have I Ever...Been the Loneliest Boy in the World." We cover Ben's burgeoning affection for Devi (and Paxton??), his bisexual wardrobe, and Jewish stereotypes in media. Plus, magic houses for all our NHIE babes. And don't worry, Ben -- we say weird things when we're drunk on grigio, too.
2020-07-271h 07Never Have I Ever... Hosted a PodcastEpisode 105: ...Started a Nuclear War (with Alex Skinner)Bad morning, enemy! This week, Alex Skinner (Dudley) joins us to try to introduce some decorum into our discussuion of episode 1x05, "Never Have I Ever...Started a Nuclear War." We talk out-of-control Model UN sessions, the trash heap that is Davis, ships (omg Dani, enough with the Benvi obsession already!! -- jk love you), and of course, Fabiola coming out to her best friend.
Coming out can be a scary process, especially the first time. If you're considering coming out to your friends or loved ones, or if you want to know how you can make...
2020-07-131h 38Never Have I Ever... Hosted a PodcastEpisode 104: ...Felt Super IndianPut on your ripped jeans and your fries before guys shirt -- Dani and Clara are breaking down episode 1x04, "Never Have I Ever...Felt Super Indian." We talk about Ganesh Puja, gossiping aunties, growing up bicultural, and the feeling of rejecting and feeling rejected by your community. Plus, we share some feedback on this episode from Indian and Indian-American viewers.
2020-07-0652 minNever Have I Ever... Hosted a PodcastEpisode 103: ...Gotten Drunk with the Popular Kids (with Dylan Thai)Grab your uncrustables and your bread soda! It's time for another episode of "Never Have I Ever...Hosted a Podcast." This week, we delve into the hot pocket with Dylan Thai (Eddie Tan) to unpack our collective high school trauma and break down episode 1x03.Special Guest: Dylan Thai.
2020-06-301h 41Never Have I Ever... Hosted a PodcastEpisode 102: ...Had Sex with Paxton Hall-YoshidaLater skaters! Dani and Clara break down episode 1x02, "Never Have I Ever...Had Sex with Paxton Hall-Yoshida" and dive into Benvi banter, processing grief as a parent or a child, and the awkward process of discovering your sexuality in high school.
2020-06-2252 minNever Have I Ever... Hosted a PodcastEpisode 101: PilotDayyyyyyuuuuuuum! In the first episode of "Never Have I Ever... Hosted a Podcast," Dani and Clara break down the pilot, analyze Devi as a protagonist, and take a trip down memory lane to share some of their own high school experiences.
2020-06-1554 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 16: Jillian Christmas - THE GOSPEL OF BREAKINGBorn and raised in Markham, Ontario, Jillian Christmas is a poet, enthusiastic organizer, and activist in the Canadian arts community with a focus on increasing anti-oppression initiatives in spoken word. Her work has been featured in The Huffington Post and many other publications, including collections such as Matrix New Queer Writing (Issue 98), The Post Feminist Post, and the celebrated anthology, The Great Black North.
In March, Christmas published a collection of her poetry. The Gospel of Breaking explores love, family, queerness, and identity in poetry that is sometimes narrative, sometimes lyrical, and always compelling. In this episode...
2020-06-0756 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 15: Rishi Reddi - PASSAGE WESTEnvironmental lawyer Rishi Reddi came to prominence as a writer in the early 2000s. Her short fiction has earned her a PEN Award as well as a nomination for the Pushcart Prize, and her story "Justice Shiva Ram Murthy" appeared in the 2005 edition of The Best American Short Stories. It was also featured on NPR’s “Selected Shorts.”
In April 2020, she published her first novel. Passage West explores the lives of Indian-American immigrants in California's Imperial Valley near the turn of the twentieth century. Taking World War I and a series of laws and legal precedents targeting Asian...
2020-05-0250 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 13: Alka Joshi - THE HENNA ARTISTAlka Joshi had a complicated relationship to her Indian heritage as a young girl. After immigrating from Rajasthan to the American midwest when she was 9, she was frequently bullied because of her race. It wasn't until she started writing The Henna Artist as an adult that she began to reclaim her cultural heritage.
In our conversation, Joshi tells me that writing The Henna Artist allowed her to imagine a different kind of life for her mother, who entered into an arranged marriage at the age of 18. It also gave her an opportunity to explore India, Indian culture...
2020-03-0755 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 12: Carmen Maria Machado - IN THE DREAM HOUSECARMEN MARIA MACHADO is the author of the sparklingly surreal short story collection Her Body and Other Parties, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and a winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. Her memoir, In the Dream House, was named “Best Book of the Year” in 2019 by just about every major media outlet, including The New Yorker, TIME Magazine, The New York Times, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and Vogue. It is a bold, captivating account of the violence and abuse Machado endured in her first relationship with anothe...
2020-02-081h 00
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 11: Daniel Summerhill - DIVINE, DIVINE, DIVINEDaniel Summerhill is a poet, a professor of Poetry and Social Action and Composition Studies at CSU Monterey Bay, and an Oakland native. He has performed his poetry on stages around the world, including at the Kwamashu Center in South Africa as part of a workshop sponsored by the US Embassy. He is the 2015 New York Empire State Grand Slam Champion, a 2015 Nitty Gritty Grand Slam Champion, and a recipient of the Sharon Olds Fellowship for Poetry. His poems have been published in the Lilly Review, Califragle, Button, and Blavity, to name just a few, and he edited the...
2020-02-0755 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 9: Lilah Sturges - LUMBERJANES: THE SHAPE OF FRIENDSHIPIn this episode, I talk to comic writer Lilah Sturges about her work on Lumberjanes: The Shape of Friendship. Lumberjanes is a youth-oriented series that follows the adventures of a group of girls at a summer camp. It's known for its positive outlook and inclusivity, as well as its creative introduction of educational content.
My conversation with Lilah touches on writing for a younger audience, including educational content in ways that feel organic and entertaining, and how stories can help kids develop and solve problems they encounter in their lives.Special Guest: Lilah Sturges.
2020-01-0354 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 8: Adam Becker - WHAT IS REAL?In What is real?, Adam Becker details the century-long fight over the interpretation of quantum physics -- what this enormously successful theory, which has given us so much of the technology we use today, is actually saying about the world. Becker first encountered this controversy when, as an undergraduate student of physics at Cornell, a professor pooh-poohed his concerns over the implications of the standard model of quantum theory, developed by Bohr and others in the early 20th century, writing them off as philosophical questions, irrelevant to the study of science. But as Becker soon discovered, those questions were...
2019-10-2500 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 7: Lauren Eggert-Crowe - BITCHES OF THE DROUGHTIn her 2017 chapbook, Bitches of the Drought, poet and former Santa Cruz resident Lauren Eggert-Crowe explores what it's like when a woman's anger comes to the surface years after the object of her anger has left her life. Lauren's writing process in many ways mirrors those themes: while she wrote many of the poems in Bitches of the Drought over a single summer, it wasn't until years later that she thought to combine them into a single book.
In our conversation, we touch on the emotional impact of poetry, why so many people move away from poetry...
2019-09-0759 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 6: Andy Couturier - THE ABUNDANCE OF LESSWhen Andy Couturier was in his 20s, he and his wife Cynthia traveled to Japan to teach English and raise money to buy their own home. While there, he became friends with a group of people who organize their lives differently from the way most of us are used to. Instead of working full-time for a corporation, they grow their own food and work just enough to get by, spending their abundant free time on subsistance farming, environmental activism, art, music, and time spent with family and friends.
In this interview, I talk to Andy about his...
2019-08-0458 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 5: Xago Juarez - REALISAL: STORIES FROM EAST SALINASDrawing inspiration for documentary theater practitioners like Anna Deveare Smith and Culture Clash, Luis 'xago' Juarez interviewed nearly 40 residents of East Salinas before writing reAlisal: Stories of East Salinas and the two other reAlisal plays that came before it. He wanted to tell the history of the Alisal using the words of the people who lived there, using their voices, and reshape the narrative of the region in the process.
In this interview, I talk to xago about the reAlisal plays, his theatrical education, and what it means to residents to hear stories about the region told...
2019-07-0658 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 4: Charlie Jane Anders - THE CITY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHTTHE CITY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT is the latest novel from Bay Area author giant Charlie Jane Anders. This critically acclaimed novel has led some to label Anders the successor to the queen of science fiction herself, Ursula K. Leguin. But Anders is a giant in the sci-fi and fantasy community in her own right. Her 2016 novel, ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY, won the 2017 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, and the Crawford Award. It was also a finalist for the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novel.Special Guest...
2019-06-0950 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 3: M.K. England - THE DISASTERSThe Disasters is M.K. England's debut young adult novel about a group of space academy washouts who are forced to step up and save the world after escaping a terrorist attack. It's a wildly entertaining romp through space that has been lauded for its nuanced representation of LGBTQIA characters and the way it handles mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.
In this episode, I talk to England about these issues and more, including what it's like to write action scenes, how publishing a novel has changed the way England reads books, and how their...
2019-02-0200 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 2: Katya Apekina - THE DEEPER THE WATER THE UGLIER THE FISHKatya Apekina's debut novel, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish, tells the story of Edie and Mae, two sisters who go to live with their estranged father in New York after their mother’s suicide attempt. It has received a great deal of attention for its unique form: the book is structured like an oral history, with a different narrator from one chapter to the next, interspersed with archival content, including poetry, letters, and interviews.
In this episode, I talk to Katya about The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish and writing as an ac...
2019-01-0559 min
Story Behind the StoryEpisode 1: Carly Gelsinger - ONCE YOU GO INWhen Carly Gelsinger was thirteen, she joined Pine Canyon Assemblies of God, a radical evangelical church in rural Monterey County. For years, she was “on fire for God,” speaking in tongues, slaying demons, and following her angry and abusive pastor’s every word. Only when her life literally burned to the ground did she start to make the choices that would lead her to leave the church several years later. In Once You Go In: A Memoir of Radical Faith, Gelsinger tells the story of the lengths she was willing to go to in order to belong with candor and vu...
2018-11-2547 min