Happy To Be Here

Our reading of Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments has commenced! This week, we’re talking about book chapters 1 through 23. So … spoilers abound. Join Nerdette host Greta Johnsen, New York Magazine’s Heather Havrilesky and Vocalo’s Jill Hopkins as they contemplate the motives of Aunt Lydia, wonder what’s in that darn safe and talk smack about the mean girls of Gilead. To follow along with us, read T...

Welcome to the Nerdette Book Club! It’s just like a normal book club but in podcast form, and you provide your own booze. In this episode, we're taking a look back at Margaret Atwood's 1985 dystopian novel 'The Handmaid's Tale' before sending you out to read Atwood's brand new sequel, ' The Testaments .'   What are the rules of a book club podcast, you ask?  Well, after this ' Handmaid’s Tale'  re...

September is right around the corner, which means fall is coming . To celebrate, Nerdette host Greta Johnsen talks with Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks, author and illustrator of the new graphic novel Pumpkinheads . It’s about Deja and Josiah, two high schoolers who love working at an amazing pumpkin patch every autumn. But the story starts on their last day of work as they try to enjoy everyt...

Abra Berens is a Midwest born-and-bred farmer-turned-chef. And her cookbook, Ruffage , is a gorgeous A-to-Z guide to vegetables. The idea, she tells us, is this: You go to the grocery store, buy what inspires you and then you go home to look up meal ideas in her cookbook. Abra’s not a pretentious chef who poo-poos comfort food. Instead, she’s all about meeting people where they are (and encouragin...

Chicago Magazine called this novel "a Midwestern Big Little Lies — an intimate character study of a group of affluent, secretive women." In this bonus interview, Greta talks with author Claire Lombardo about her debut novel, ‘The Most Fun We Ever Had.’ It’s the story of four radically different daughters from suburban Chicago. And it’s about love, family, forgiveness and the importance of showing...

These days there are more and more celebrations of women who might have otherwise been relegated to the footnotes of history. As you can imagine, here at Nerdette we’re all about that. Totally into it. Zero complaints. But what is equally as wonderful is when the spotlight also lands on accomplished young girls. And that’s what author Kate Schatz and illustrator Miriam Klein Stahl have done with t...

Is summer a great time for watching TV? Heck yeah it is. So we caught up with  New York Times  TV critic Margaret Lyons to get recommendations for the best of the best summer TV, including shows that are dark and mysterious, bright and fun, and also the throwbackiest throwback binges. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-...

When anyone at WBEZ needs book recommendations, they go to Greta Johnsen, the station’s resident bookworm. So please enjoy Greta talking about some fantastic reads that you might want to pick up this summer. Contemporary Romantic Fiction Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren Fantasy Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey Mystery/Thriller Searching for Sylvie Lee b...

If you know NPR’s Linda Holmes, it’s probably not as a novelist. She’s a pop culture correspondent, she co-hosts NPR's  Pop Culture Happy Hour  podcast, and her recalcitrant dog Brian is  mildly famous  on Twitter. But she always wanted to write a novel. And at 48, she did. It's called Evvie Drake Starts Over and it is excellent.  “This is what I think my story does actually prove,” Holmes tells G...

What’s it like to give people hallucinogenic drugs and study what happens? How might these drugs be used for therapy? And what causes people to take drugs in the first place?  That’s what we asked Harriet de Wit, who runs the University of Chicago’s Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory , where she administers drugs like LSD, ecstacy and psilocybin to volunteers in an effort to learn more about...

It’s the end of an era. After more than 70 hours of television and nearly ten years of worrying about the Stark children, Game of Thrones is finally over. Tricia, Greta and Peter got together one last time to reflect on the series.. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Greta gives 'Booksmart' four out of four Gretas, a new rating system we've devised specifically for this wonderful new movie.  Why's it so good? Well, it’s smart, funny, a little raunchy, and it embraces so many gorgeous, gut-wrenching elements of what it means to be a smart, funny teenage girl. This week on Nerdette, we talk with the wonderful Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein (the stars of the...

Game of Thrones is over, and there is a *lot* to process. In this recap of the series finale, Tricia realizes she doesn’t like endings, Peter wants Jon Snow’s head and Greta observes the Valyrian word for Dorne appears to be Dornut . Listen to this recap of Game of Thrones Season 8, episode 6, titled “The Iron Throne.” Then be sure to come back next week for our final recap of the entire series ,...

That was pretty messed up! The penultimate episode of Game of Thrones has come and gone, and we all just witnessed Dany commit a few thousand war crimes. What just happened? Madness! How are we feeling? Conflicted! But there was some good news if you're a land speculator: Now might just be a great time to buy real estate in King’s Landing. Join Nerdette and Peter Sagal as we consider the super low...

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...