Head On Fire

2025 has been the most decade-iest of years. The highs, the lows, the tech innovations, the stories that both captured our hearts and the stories that made us step outside and seek grass expeditiously. It's a lot for one person to remember. Thankfully, I don't have to do it alone! V Spehar of Under the Desk New s stopped by to remember 2025...just in time to toss it in the bin. Buy Where Did Every...

Abby Cox joins me as my conversation partner for the digital launch party celebrating the release of my new audiobook  Where Did Everybody Go? Why we're lonely, but not alone . We dive into the subjects of loneliness, underwater basket weaving, and my favorite abandoned malls. Get more of Abby Cox here . Buy Where Did Everybody Go? here: https://bydonmartin.com/where-did-everybody-go%3F Buy Verity...

Carolyn, the creator behind  Epicurious Expeditions , makes cooking accessible to everyone. Motivated by her own recovery from an injury, she develops inclusive, disability-friendly recipes that minimize standing and chopping, often using simple appliances like air fryers and crockpots. Join us as she shares her inspiring journey to make the kitchen a safe and welcoming space for people of all abi...

Nadira Goffe is a very serious journalist. She's a staff culture writer at Slate who does Real Journalism™️ about Serious Subjects™️. But every now and then she does very silly stuff like talk to me about witches and Appalachia and witches in Appalachia. Nadira turned the tables on me in an interview all about the making of my bestselling debut novel, the importance of young adult literature, and...

In my continuing quest to highlight professions that are overlooked or misunderstood, I'd like to introduce you to Shari Phippen. She has decades of experience as a city planner, which is one of the most important roles in determining where we live, how we live, and what we can do while we live there...but nobody seems to know what they do or how they do it. This also serves as the first teaser fo...

Jennifer Hale stopped back by the podcast to discuss the nearly yearlong Voice Actors’ strike, forging your own  creative career, and becoming Verity Vox. Verity Vox and the Curse of Foxfire is available now from your library or  favorite bookseller. https://bydonmartin.com/verity-vox-1 Pre-order Where Did Everybody Go? Here: https://bydonmartin.com/where-did-everybody-go%3F Find Jennifer here: ht...

Superheroes dominate cinema and pop culture, and they have for a while now. Sure, there's been a shift in movie theater attendance post-COVID pandemic, but people still show up for superheroes. I wondered why, so I asked an expert on the subject why he thinks caped crusaders and teams of mutant misfits capture our imagination. Find  @BlerdWithoutFear over on his YT channel! Social links: https://b...

The internet has become a place where we all perform for one another, where authenticity is both something to aspire to and something to be wary of. I sat down with Franchesca "Chescaleigh" Ramsey to discuss the role of the content creator, how it differs from an influencer, and what it means to exist on social media these days. Find Franchesca on her website at: https://www.franchesca.net/ Pre-or...

If you are someone who has complained that every new piece of media is a sequel, prequel, remake, reboot, or a studio banking on pre-existing IP (intellectual property) to bring in audiences, this is the episode for you. We are kicking off 2025 with Nadira Goffe, a staff writer at Slate, who helps us contextualize this moment in pop culture as well as looking back at a time when media felt like "h...

Grab your wieners, your marshmallows, your bad haircuts, and toss them all on the funeral pyre of 2024. Robyn Valentine , co-host of the Coffee & Cauldrons podcast and author of Magickal Tarot & The Apprentice Witch, joins me to review the highs, lows, personal triumphs, and things we'd love to leave behind as we BURN 2024 DOWN to prepare for a bright new year ahead. Hopefully. Email: cont...

Ella Harrison is the author of The Book of Spells . She has a degree in anthropology and uses her social media platform to educate and entertain audiences on the topics of folklore, folk magic, and the history of holiday traditions. If you've ever wondered about figures like Krampus or Perchta, this is the show for you. Email: contact@headonfirepod.com Social links: Instagram: https://www.instagra...

They say all politics is local, but that's difficult to believe when every single topic of conversation at our dinner table seems to have national stakes. From the books on our kids' shelves to who reads those books to them to the statues in our parks to who is allowed in our parks, every issue large and small feels like it's operating on some grand scale. It's hard to gain perspective, hard to kn...

Thanks to the Make America Healthy Again movement, there is a lot of misinformation and disinformation on the rise about food, "chemicals", and whether what we eat is safe. Thankfully, Erin the Food Science Babe is here to help. Subscribe to Erin's channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/FoodScienceBabe Email: contact@headonfirepod.com Social links: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/headonfirep...

The mantel of the witch is one that has been worn by people for all sorts of reasons.  There are those who don the black hat for political purposes, as a feminist symbol, or a way for those who find themselves on the margins of society in one way or another to reach for the power they otherwise could never hope to have.  Then there are the people call themselves witches because they cast spells an...

Dr. Sam Montano is no stranger to combating conspiracy theories regarding emergency management. She’s been doing it since Hurricane Katrina. She holds a BS in Psychology, as well as Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Emergency Management and teaches the subject at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Her book Disaster-ology came out in 2021. I sat down with her to help parse fact from fiction on what FEM...

A.J. Jacobs is a New York Times bestselling author known for his immersive, year-long experiments, including The Year of Living Biblically , The Know-It-All , and his latest book, The Year of Living Constitutionally . Email: contact@headonfirepod.com Social links: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/headonfirepod/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/headonfirepod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headonfi...

By all accounts Victoria Aveyard is both an outlier and also as close to the Hollywood version of becoming an author as it gets.  While the average age for a debut novelist is around 36, Victoria’s debut novel—Red Queen—was published shortly after graduating from college and went on to become a massive, runaway success. And so did all of the rest of her novels. In fact, every one of Victoria’s nov...

Charlie Sprinkman developed the app Everywhere Is Queer , which is quickly becoming one of the best, most comprehensive lists of queer owned and operated businesses.  Whether you’re looking for a travel agent, a craft store, a bakery, or a horse ranch, the Everywhere is Queer app is helping people realize that supporting queer owned and operated businesses in person and online might be easier and...

Danny Hieber earned his M.A. and Ph. D. in linguistics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his B.A. in linguistics and philosophy from the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Prior to and during graduate school he worked for Rosetta Stone ’s Endangered Language Program to create language-learning software with Native American communities. Email: contact@headonfirepod.com S...

Chris Copeland has worked on some of your favorite things. Invincible, The Witcher, Young Justice, and he made his directorial debut for Dreamworks on the series Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. He’s had a long career that began here in Chicago as a nerd who loved superheroes and now gets to help bring them to life. We talked about how a storyboard artist is one of the first people to visualize w...

Roberta Blevins left the MLM world in 2017 and spent all of her time since then educating the public on the dangers involved in joining these barely legal pyramid schemes. She was a key witness in the case against Lularoe and was featured in the documentary LuLaRich which showcased how the billion dollar clothing company misled thousands of women. These days Roberta educates people via her podcast...

Clare Brown is a satirist and author of the new audiobook New Nigeria County.  Her social media platform is famous for flipping gender and racial stereotypes while both educating and inviting her audience to laugh.  Email: contact@headonfirepod.com Social links: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/headonfirepod/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/headonfirepod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headonfire...

Even if you don’t play video games, Jennifer Hale is still probably one of your favorite actors…you just didn’t know it. As of this recording she is just shy of 500 acting credits on IMDb including numerous roles in the Star Wars universe, Mortal Kombat, DC, Marvel, Disney. Even Biker Mice from Mars…remember that? She’s been in DuckTales and Rick and Morty and The Little Mermaid and the Big Bang T...

Maggie Tokuda-Hall is a children’s and young adult author who writes stories that help kids of all types see themselves on the page as the main character. She also writes books that help parents and kids have age appropriate conversations about the world we live in. One of those books, Love In The Library, became the centerpoint for exposing a longtime issue with a major children’s publisher and b...

Dr. Althea Need Kaminske is a cognitive psychologist who teaches at the Indiana University school of medicine interested in the application of human memory research to educational settings. She also helps run The Learning Scientists, an international group of cognitive psychologists who engage in science communication about the science of learning. Her new book, The Psychology of Memory, came out...