Happy To Be Here

Say what now?  We made it to another weekend! Now let us get you ready for it. First, we talk about the “news” of the week with Hari Kondabolu and W. Kamau Bell, comedians and hosts of the Politically Re-Active podcast .  Then we have a conversation you’ve all been waiting for: Emily Willingham tells us about her new book titled Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis . It’s wild! And last bu...

First thing we’re doing after this pandemic? Paintballing in Washington State, of course! Welcome back to Nerdette Recaps with Peter Sagal ! It’s the podcast where we rewatch movies from 1999 and dissect them like the intense nerds we are. Today, it’s all about 10 Things I Hate About You , a far more benign reimagining of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew with Julia Stiles, Heath Ledge...

Wilco singer/guitarist Jeff Tweedy has been busy. He has a new solo album out called Love is the King . And his new book How to Write One Song has a lot of advice for aspiring songwriters. But it’s also about a lot more than that. Nerdette host Greta Johnsen spoke with Tweedy from his recording studio in Chicago. What’s your definition of a song? Jeff Tweedy: I think of a song as a moment that you...

Fair warning: This movie can be really tough to watch.  Boys Don’t Cry is a heart-wrenching biopic based on the true story of Brandon Teena, a transgender man who was raped and murdered in Nebraska in 1993. The film stars Hilary Swank, who won an Oscar for her performance, with a stellar supporting performance from Chloë Sevigny and a haunting one from Peter Sarsgaard.  Listen as Peter, Tricia and...

Would you take a deal with the devil? In The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue , a new novel from renowned fantasy author V.E. Schwab, a young woman bargains with her soul to live forever. The catch? She’s cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. The novel is Nerdette ’s November book club pick. Today, we host a spoiler-free chat with the author about the book, the many years it took her to write...

Let Nerdette podcast get you ready for the weekend with a quick gut check after a long election week. Plus an interview with a great author and a new strategy for organizing your thoughts. First, we talk election distractions with Negin Farsad, comedian and host of the Fake The Nation podcast , and Clay Masters, lead political reporter for Iowa Public Radio. Then we talk with author Nick Hornby, a...

There’s an election going on! This podcast has absolutely nothing to do with it! Welcome back to Nerdette Recaps with Peter Sagal ! It’s the podcast where we rewatch movies from 1999 and dissect them like the intense nerds we are. Today, it’s all about Election , a very dark comedy featuring Reese Witherspoon, Matthew Broderick and about 15 servings worth of cringe. Listen as Peter, Tricia and Gre...

Welcome to the Nerdette Book Club! Each month, we read a book and chat about it with a rotating group of panelists. This month’s pick is Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation from author Anne Helen Petersen. In Can’t Even, Petersen argues that societal conditions and poor timing primed the millennial generation for burnout. Petersen points to the 2008 recession, the rise of the...

Today's episode is all about The Blair Witch Project , a 1999 film with a $60,000 budget and three unknown actors that made over $240 million. Listen as Peter, Tricia and Greta break it down, and then join us next week for Election ... just in time for the election . And don’t forget, we want to hear from you! Join the party and send us a voice recording about any of the movies we’re featuring. Ju...

Election Day is nearly upon us. And instead of cold-calling you and everyone you know, we’d rather invite you to consider a few important (and non-partisan!) election-related questions. Like how did we get such a strange voting system? Why do more than 40% of eligible voters stay home? And why should we care? For some answers we turned to Erin Geiger Smith, author of the new book Thank You For Vot...

We get you ready for the weekend with movies, books and everyone’s favorite thing: a new way to categorize life experiences. Trust us! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

What is The Matrix ? Why, it’s a film that the matrix would make about the matrix, of course! Welcome back to Nerdette Recaps with Peter Sagal ! It’s the podcast where we rewatch movies and dissect them like the intense nerds we are. This time around, it’s all about the films of 1999. And today, we’re breaking down The Matrix , a seminal film from the Wachowski siblings starring Keanu Reeves, Laur...

The millennial generation came into adulthood during an American recession, an era of crushing student loan debt and the rise of temporary workers and independent contractors. Add a global pandemic to that precariousness and you’ve got a perfect recipe for burnout. Today, Greta talks with author Anne Helen Petersen about  Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation . It's our October...

Quick! Name six iconic movies that hit theaters in the year 1999. Nothing?! Ok. We'll do it for you: The Matrix The Blair Witch Project Election Boys Don't Cry 10 Things I Hate About You Office Space And the craziest thing is? That's not even the half of it ! In honor of that crazy year in movies, Nerdette Recaps with Peter Sagal  is back again, featuring recaps and analysis of the six films liste...

You didn’t already know? Nerdette talked with two brand new MacArthur Fellows — also known as MacArthur “geniuses” — about the important work they’re doing and what it’s like to get that phone call. Mary L. Gray is an anthropologist and a media scholar honored for her work investigating how “labor, identity, and human rights are transformed by the digital economy.” And Damien Fair is a cognitive n...

What a wild week! And to celebrate the return of another weekend, we   assembled a bunch of fun people to take a look back … in a merry, pop culture kind of way, not a CAPS LOCK newsy way. To talk about the big week for movies, we called up Eliana Dockterman, who writes about movies, pop culture and feminism for  Time .  Then, to break down the gloriousness that is Fat Bear Week, we talked with Mi...

The seasons are changing but the novel coronavirus is still with us. And that’s left us with a lot of questions about how to safely socialize with friends and family when the weather makes small outdoor gatherings less viable. So we called up Dr. Emily Landon, an epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist at the  University of Chicago . (She also gave  Nerdette  listeners some  therapeutic a...

Either Peter really hates the 1991 film Hook or he’s suffering from some serious Peter Pan envy … or maybe both! Welcome to a special bonus episode of Nerdette Recaps with Peter Sagal ! his week it’s all about Steven Spielberg’s Peter Pan sequel , starring Dustin Hoffman as the titular captain, Robin Williams as an adult Peter Pan and Julia Roberts as Tinker Bell. Listen as Peter explains why he t...

You know Gillian Flynn as the genre-redefining writer behind Gone Girl , both the 2012 novel and the 2014 movie adaptation starring Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck. Since the success of Gone Girl , Flynn has written only for the screen, including the 2018 movie Widows and the HBO series Sharp Objects.  Out now on Amazon Prime, Utopia is Flynn’s latest work, based on a 2013 BBC show of the same name....

Welcome to the Nerdette Book Club! Each month, we read a book and chat about it with a rotating group of panelists. This month’s pick is Maaza Mengiste’s historical novel The Shadow King . It’s based on the true story of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in the mid-1930s. Against Italian Prime Minister Benito Musolinni’s technologically-advanced army, the citizens of feudal Ethiopia didn’t seem to...

“I’m not woke. I’m aware.” That’s the answer Chicago comedian T. Murph gives when he’s asked about his relationship to the title of Woke , a new series that dropped on Hulu earlier this month. T. Murph plays the role of Clovis, friend and roommate of Keef, the show’s protagonist (played by Lamorne Morris), who tries to avoid controversy in his work until the world forces him to do otherwise. Greta...

The Bechdel test asks a simple question: Does a work of fiction have two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man? Today we talk with Sarah Kozloff, who was a film professor at Vassar College when she learned that  The Lord of The Rings  movies fail the Bechdel test. That inspired her to write  The Nine Realms , a series of fantasy novels about a young prince...

Six weeks of movie recaps and there still seems to be no sign of intelligent life anywhere. This week it’s all about the 1995 Pixar classic Toy Story, starring Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and all of our collective childhood memories. Listen as Peter, Tricia and Greta recall the moments that made them weep, search for hidden religious analogs and consider the system of ethics in the 'Toy Story' universe ....

Like it or not these seasons are a changing! And that means right now is a great opportunity to embrace flavors from late summer and early fall, and to make a chocolate zucchini cake! We talk with baker and cookbook author Shauna Sever — all about all the spices you should have, sourdoughs you should start, and pies you should scarf down immediately. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy...

While researching for her novel, author Maaza Mengiste says she came across a New York Times article from 1935 that described a woman leading an army of 2,000 men into victory. She was shocked. Why had she never heard about this female wartime hero? “It struck me,” Mengiste tells  Nerdette. “If there’s one, there’s two. If there’s two, there’s five.” We talk to Mengiste about her novel, The Shadow...