Happy To Be Here

Bill Nye says that when he was in high school, the big skill that students had to learn was how to find information. “But the challenge now is to sort out the information that may not be true.” Greta talks to Bill from the stage at The Collider’s Climate City Expo in Asheville, N.C. Their conversation focuses on climate change, Bill's new Netflix series (called "Bill Nye Saves the World") and comb...

With the Battle of Winterfell over, the Stark clan needs to talk. What do we do about this Dany lady? And who’s making dinner Tuesday night? There are only two episodes left before Game of Thrones concludes, and Peter, Tricia and Greta have convened to discuss this episode's curious events. Consider: Jon decided to play telephone with his bombshell of a secret, Varys openly discussed treason again...

Lizzo recently landed on the Billboard 200 chart for the first time with her new album ‘Cuz I Love You,’ making now the perfect time to revisit her 2016 conversation with Nerdette's Greta Johnsen.  Lizzo and Greta talk about what inspired her 2016 EP 'Coconut Oil' and how Lizzo became Lizzo. And your homework after listening to this episode is, of course, to play ‘Cuz I Love You’ on repeat, foreve...

Don’t worry, if you couldn’t tell what exactly was going on last night, we’ve got your back. And a lot of feelings to process. The army of the undead finally descended on Winterfell, and it turns out the crypt really was one of the safest places to hide. (At least, compared to the carnage upstairs.) Tricia, Greta and Peter consider the undead, the newly dead and where we go from here on the latest...

It sure seems like the crypt is the safest place in Winterfell. Anyone want to check it out?  But wait ... considering these folks are about to fight, you know, AN ARMY OF THE UNDEAD, perhaps taking refuge in a crypt of their enemy’s potential allies is a bad idea? To answer just this type of pressing question, Nerdette has once again joined up with our pal Peter Sagal to recap the latest episode...

Scientists around the world are trying to figure out how to mitigate the potentially disastrous impacts of climate change. Among the innovative ideas? De-extinction. “De-extinction is a scientific movement that’s aiming to recreate close versions of extinct species,” said Britt Wray, the author of Rise of the Necrofauna: The Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-Extinction . Wray says the idea is to cr...

Game of Thrones has returned with reckless abandon!  Well, maybe not reckless abandon … nobody you know and love died. (Yet.) But whew! A ton of stuff went down: Sansa and Dany exchanged neverending side-eye, Jon got some insight into his family tree and — in what will certainly lead to endless nightmares amongst the wider populace — the piercing scream of a spiralized child-zombie-demon scared th...

What’s the Night King doing with his ice dragon? Will Tyrion tell Daenerys that Cersei is pregnant? Is everyone on their way to Winterfell? And Hot Pie! Why is no one talking about Hot Pie?! A lot went down in the last season of HBO’s Game of Thrones . To help refresh your memory, Nerdette ’s Tricia Bobeda and Greta Johnsen rejoin Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me! ’s Peter Sagal to recap Season 7. They al...

Sahana Srinivasan is the host of the Netflix kids’ science show Brainchild , a series that’s all about exploring interesting questions about the world in which we live. On Nerdette , Sahana talks about what makes her show different from the kids’ science shows of the ‘90s, why it’s so important for kids to see a woman of color talk about science and what she’s going to do after she graduates from...

Oh hey it's Lindy West! Lindy's the the executive producer of Shrill , a new Hulu series starring SNL's Aidy Bryant that's based on Lindy's 2016 novel of the same name. And we talk with Lindy about a few of the delightful scenes from the series (including an epic pool party), why Lindy left Twitter, and her forthcoming new book called The Witches Are Coming . She also tells us about how her new Hu...

At WBEZ (and maybe at your office too?) it seems like a lot of folks get sick at almost exactly the same time. But why?! Simple: People in our office are sick because sick people are in our office. “I think that is probably the single biggest thing that we could do to reduce the incidence of a lot of diseases,” says Sarah Cobey, an evolutionary microbiologist from the University of Chicago. "Just...

Yep. Podcats. Not a typo. This week we take a journey back to 1994, just after an astronomer named Heidi Hammel — as well as the entire scientific community at large — learned that a fragmented comet named Shoemaker-Levy 9 was going to crash into Jupiter at a speed of more than 130,000 miles per hour. "We have witnessed other impacts,” Heidi tells us. “What was really special about the Jupiter one...

Winter is still here! (At least in the nation’s midsection.) And that means you’re looking for stuff to do when you’re stuck inside. And who better to recommend some good nerdy activities than Nerdette co-creator Tricia Bobeda?!? She did just that on WBEZ’s Morning Shift last month and we’re bringing it to you now because we love you.  So please enjoy this binge-watchers guide to navigating the wi...

Dana Czapnik has always been drawn to wanderers and wonderers, the kind of fictional characters who are always contemplating who they are and the world around them. But aside from the work of Virginia Woolf, Czapnik said she hasn’t come across many female characters who get those kind of opportunities. “That was one of the things that I was thinking of when I was working on this,” Czapnik says of...

The Nerdette team recently moved next to the crew at Sound Opinions , WBEZ’s long-running rock n’ roll talk show. We bring that up because last year that team reviewed Dessa’s latest album, “Chime,” and not only did they call it “brilliant,” they called Dessa “a renaissance woman in the truest sense.” That’s because Dessa is a rapper, singer, author, poet, and whiskey co-creator. And she even part...

How does one ask their employer for more money? The short answer, according to Refinery29's Lindsey Stanberry, is just do it. "It’s hard. And it’s not fun," Stanberry tells Greta this week. "I mean, you just have to ask." It's a new year. And now — RIGHT NOW — is the time to get your finances in order. So we're talking with a financial expert who's going to tell you to know your numbers, to know y...

The year is at its end. And in 2018’s honor, Greta talked to four people who’ve made some amazing things about their favorite thing of the year.  Make sense? It’s kind of like a miniature phone tree but for books, music, and TV. Or like a binder’s worth of homework dumped on you hours before the end of the semester. (You're welcome!)  Here are our guest professors: Celeste Ng , author of the 2017...

Nerdette host Greta Johnsen has a rare genetic disease that CRISPR might be able to fix. As a four-year old in Juneau, Alaska, Greta was diagnosed with an eye condition known as "Best disease." That name is somewhat of a misnomer in that "Best disease" causes premature macular degeneration — but curiously it happens to be among the best diseases for experimenting with CRISPR, a genetic engineering...

In a curious twist, venomous, killer sea snails are helping scientists make some incredible biomedical advances. Dr. Mandë Holford is the head of the Holford Lab in New York City, but her line of research often means she’s taking nighttime scuba dives in seas and oceans across the globe. “Yes, a snail can kill you,” Holford tells Greta. “But a snail can also help you! In various, various ways. And...

A little while after Glory Edim created an Instagram account under the name Well-Read Black Girl, she said she started getting a lot of messages from young women thanking her for creating a space that offered reflections of themselves.  “It’s not only just an Instagram account, but people don’t see themselves reflected in their libraries, in their bookstores, in everyday conversation,” Edim says o...

Barbara Kingsolver says her new novel, ‘Unsheltered,’ is “my love letter to millennials.”  “Today’s problems can’t be fixed by yesterday’s people,” she tells Greta. “They’re going to be fixed by tomorrow’s people.” Kingsolver is the author of several award-winning books, including ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ and ‘The Bean Trees.’  ‘ Unsheltered ’ is set both in the run up to the 2016 presidential elect...

Samin Nosrat is the chef behind ‘Salt Fat Acid Heat,’ a book and a new Netflix series of the same name. She’s also a proponent of articulating your dreams. "I do think taking a little bit of time, a couple times a year, to articulate your goals and your dreams and your desires is helpful because it helps orient you toward them," Nosrat says. She also tells Greta about the culinary value of those f...

Hey! Today we're talking with Jodie Whittaker! She is the first woman to play the lead role in the long-running, time-travel-based BBC television series Doctor Who . You'll hear her tell Greta the story of how she got the role, how so many lovely Doctor Who  fans have reacted to her casting, and why she thinks her character’s gender, “more so than probably any other role I’ve ever played, is irrel...

If you were bored by Homeric epics and Greek mythology in high school and college, Nerdette highly encourages you to reconsider. “There is a reason these stories have lasted for 3,000 years,” said Madeline Miller, author of Greta’s favorite book of 2018, a novelization of The Odyssey called Circe .  “[These stories] are incredibly insightful about human nature,” Miller said. “Culture has changed a...

Aileen Rizo was working as a math consultant at the Fresno County Office of Education when she discovered a recently-hired male colleague was being paid significantly more than her for the same work. Aileen had more experience and education than this colleague. What then began as a fight for herself quickly turned into a fight for equality for women everywhere.  Aileen talked about the tough decis...