The Functional Nerds Podcast

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Catriona Silvey , author of VERVAIN HOLLOW . About VERVAIN HOLLOW : Two years ago, Laura was in a cult. But when the sprawling house in the hollow burned down with Vervain, their strikingly handsome and magnetic leader, trapped inside, Laura had nowhere to go but home. Brokenhearted, she finds herself longing for their lost leader—despite the tra...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Sam J. Miller , author of Red Star Hustle . About Red Star Hustle : Aran, a happy-go-lucky high-class escort, is on the run after he’s framed for the assassination of his famous filmmaker client. The last thing he needs is to fall for the studly and noble clone of a murderous puppet monarch while he’s trying to stay one step ahead of an ace bount...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome William Bernhardt , author of The Superman Wars . About The Superman Wars : Almost everyone knows about the man from Krypton who, disguised as mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent working with the fearless Lois Lane, fights for the vulnerable and the oppressed. But few know the truth about this indelible character’s creation. From mobster tactics to...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Peter Orullian , author of SONGS OF THE DEAD . About SONGS OF THE DEAD : When Jack Solomon, a struggling musician who works in London’s West End, is killed, he awakens to a new reality in which light and music are used to create magic and where living eras of the past sprawl beneath modern London, layer upon layer, all the way back to recorded hi...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome J.P. Lacrampe , author of Valet . About Valet : Cy wants nothing more than to be useful, raise his utility score, and receive the next update for his operating system. But that’s easier said than done when he’s tasked with helping his owner’s thirty-five-year-old son “get out of his funk.” Grayson is nothing like his go-getter, CEO sister C...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Seanan McGuire , author of STRIXHAVEN: OMENS OF CHAOS . About STRIXHAVEN: OMENS OF CHAOS : Eula Blue was supposed to be a mage. That was before the war came—before the fight for the Multiverse devastated Eula’s home, and with it her hopes for a magical education. But the destruction of the war also brought something new: the ability to travel to...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Naomi Kritzer , author of Obstetrix . About Obstetrix : Doctor Liz has just been acquitted for performing the last abortion in North Dakota when she’s kidnapped. They’re not just any kidnappers, but a fundamentalist cult, deep in the rural west, without respect for law or decency, and in desperate need of an OB/GYN. Guarded, isolated,...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Amal El-Mohtar , author of Seasons of Glass and Iron . About Seasons of Glass and Iron : Full of glimpses into gleaming worlds and fairy tales with teeth, Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories is a collection of acclaimed and awarded work from Amal El-Mohtar. With confidence and style, El-Mohtar guides us through exquisitely told and sharply observe...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Anton Hur , translator of If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light by Kim Cho-yeop . About If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light by Kim Cho-yeop : An elderly woman stranded in a defunct space station recounts her life story to a visitor as she waits for a vessel that may never arrive. A man comes across a company called Emotional Solids that sells e...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Jeremy Szal , author of WOLFSKIN . About WOLFSKIN : Vakov Fukasawa is a Reaper. An elite soldier injected with a dangerous drug called stormtech: the DNA of a genocidal alien race, the Shenoi. It makes him stronger, faster, more aggressive. At a price. A price that, if the House of Suns cult and the dangerous Shenoi alien race behind it, isn&#821...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Molly Tanzer , author of And Side by Side They Wander . About And Side by Side They Wander : For three hundred years, humanity’s greatest works of art have been on loan at the Greenwood Museum. It was finally time for them to come home…but the alien curators were disinclined to return them. Force was out of the question. Earth’s government...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Tao Wong , author of The First Step . About The First Step : It is said that a journey of a thousand li begins with a single step… Long Wu Ying never expected to become a real cultivator, never dreamed of having the chance to train and develop wondrous martial arts skills and magic of his own. As a farmer’s son in a rural village, his days...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome John Chu , author of The Subtle Art of Folding Space . About The Subtle Art of Folding Space : Ellie’s universe?and this one?is falling apart. Her ailing mother is in a coma; her sister, Chris, accuses her of being insufficiently Chinese between assassination attempts; and a shadowy cabal of engineers is trying to hijack the skunkworks, the machi...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Michael R. Underwood , author of Menagerie of Mayhem: Volume 1 . About Menagerie of Mayhem: Volume 1 : Menagerie of Mayhem: Volume 1 introduces 35 new adversaries for the Daggerheart fantasy tabletop roleplaying game, including multi-phase foes like the Blood Mage and adversary groups such as the ferocious Umbral Hunting Pack and the nihilistic C...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Damien Ober , author of Voidverse . About Voidverse : When the Sinker was a child, all she knew was violence. To survive, she fled into the Void—a seemingly infinite nothingness where people live on “rocks,” individual lands spread out in all directions, floating in the vast empty space. Some rocks are giant magnets, others burn with eternal flam...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Aubrey Sitterson , author of Free Planet Volume 1 . About Free Planet Volume 1 : In the wake of a grueling war of independence, a team of revolutionary heroes is tasked with defending their home and its uniquely potent energy source from multiple intergalactic superpowers intent on domination. But though they are each deeply committed to the drea...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Laura K. Maurer , author of THE RENEGADE AND THE LODESTAR . About THE RENEGADE AND THE LODESTAR : Persephone is living a nightmare. Waking up on a cold, hard ground with air that smells like rot, the young goddess fills with horror as she remembers her sudden and unexpected demise. And now trapped in the realm of the dead, she clings to the dwind...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Seamus Sullivan , author of Daedalus Is Dead . About Daedalus Is Dead : Daedalus of Crete is many things: The greatest architect in the world. The constructor of the Labyrinth that imprisoned the Minotaur. And the grieving father of Icarus, who plunged into the sea as father and son flew from the grasp of the tyrannical King Minos. Now, Daedalus...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Katie Cook , author of NOTHING SPECIAL . About NOTHING SPECIAL : In the grand scheme of the worlds at large, Callie thinks she’s nothing special. Sure, she’s friends with the ghost of a radish and her dad owns a magical antique shop–but she’s spent her life in the human world. Her dad won’t let her join him on his collection trips in the magical...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy look back on 2025 and towards 2026 in a rare and very special Just Us episode. We chat about our favorite episodes from 2025, our favorite authors and more! If you like what we do, and enjoyed this very special Just Us episode, consider joining The Functional Nerds Patreon Page ! We put out a Patron’s Only Just Us episode very month. Thanks for lis...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Emily Mitchell to talk about her new short story collection The Church of Divine Electricity . About The Church of Divine Electricity : Delightfully blending literary fiction with speculative genres, the stories in The Church of Divine Electricity somehow manage to feel as though they could take place today. In Emily Mitchell’s created worlds, as...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Jordan Marshall , who backed the Uncanny Magazine Year 12: Fly Forever, Space Unicorns Kickstarter at the THIRD NERD level! Jordan is working with a group of game developers on a new TTRPG: WE BEGIN AT MIDNIGHT! This week’s picks: Jordan: London Fog Tracy: G-shaft candy Patrick: Southern Comfort Eggnog Links: Jordan Marshall on Instagram Tracy To...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Marie Lu , author of RED CITY . About RED CITY : Alchemy is the hidden art of transformation. An exclusive power wielded by crime syndicates that market it to the world’s elites in the form of sand, a drug that enhances those who take it into a more perfect version of themselves: more beautiful, more charismatic, simply more. Among the gleaming s...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Daniel H. Wilson , author of Hole in the Sky . About Hole in the Sky : On the Great Plains of Oklahoma, in the heart of the Cherokee Nation, a strange atmospheric disturbance is noticed by Jim Hardgray, a down-on-his-luck single father trying to reconnect with his teenage daughter, Tawny. At NASA’s headquarters in Houston, Texas, astrophysicist D...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Sara Raasch , author of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards . About The Entanglement of Rival Wizards : Sebastian Walsh: Evocation Department. Human. The first of his family to pick college over the military. Elethior Tourael: Conjuration Department. Half-elf. Pretentious asshole. The latest legacy Tourael at Lesiara U. Both: Mageus Research Grant...