The Functional Nerds Podcast

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome back Beth Cato , author of A House Between Sea and Sky . About A House Between Sea and Sky : Grieving Hollywood writer Fayette Wynne arrives in Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1926 to finish her latest project in peace. All alone, save for the preternatural sourdough starter her family has nurtured for years, Fayette is also resentful. The proven healing po...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Lyndsay Ely , author of The Lost Reliquary . About The Lost Reliquary : The Devoted Lands was once home to many gods. Now, after centuries of brutal wars, only Tempestra-Innara, the Enduring Flame, remains. As a divine warrior, Lys is outwardly loyal to her goddess. If she dreams of deicide, that’s her business. When a routine heretical execution...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Auston Habershaw , author of Faceless Galaxy . About Faceless Galaxy : Throughout the gutters and sanitation systems of the civilized galaxy, amorphous, nameless blobs called Torrhoids digest other species’ trash to clean air and water. The Great Races don’ t consider Torrhoids intelligent. But when one Torrhoid receives a baffling kindness, its...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Mark Waddell , author of Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World . About Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World : Colin is a low-level employee at Dark Enterprises, a Hell-like multinational corporation solving the world’s most difficult problems in deeply questionable ways. After years of toiling away in a cubicle, he’s ready to climb the corpo...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Louis Sachar , author of The Magician of Tiger Castle . About The Magician of Tiger Castle : Long ago and far away (and somewhere south of France) lies the kingdom of Esquaveta. There, Princess Tullia is in nearly as much peril as her struggling kingdom. Esquaveta desperately needs to forge an alliance, and to that end, Tullia’s father has arrang...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome John Wiswell , author of Wearing the Lion . About Wearing the Lion : Sometimes a goddess’s worst enemy is her biggest fan. Heracles, hero of Greece, dedicates all his feats to the goddess Hera. If only he knew that his very face is an insult to her…as he is yet another child that Hera’s dipshit husband, Zeus, had out of wedlock. “Aunt...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Jakub Szamalek , author of Inner Space . About Inner Space : When an ammonia leak threatens the astronauts on the International Space Station, NASA directs Lucy Poplasky, one of the ISS’s first female commanders, to investigate the cause. Russia has just invaded Ukraine and tensions are running high—could the leak be a brazen act of sabotage? The...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Daphne Fama , author of House of Monstrous Women . About House of Monstrous Women : In this game, there’s one rule: survive. Orphaned after her father’s political campaign ended in tragedy, Josephine is alone taking care of the family home while her older brother is off in Manila, where revolution brews. But an unexpected invitation from her chil...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Jenna “Dingo” Woldenga and Avery Howett , part of the team behind the Fool’s Gold: Death by Karaoke Graphic Novel . About Fool’s Gold: Death by Karaoke Graphic Novel : Have you ever sung karaoke so badly that you unleashed the apocalypse? Well, that’s an average day for the Fool’s Gold crew: a group of traveling magical re...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Delilah S. Dawson , author of Dungeons & Dragons: Ravenloft: Heir of Strahd . About Dungeons & Dragons: Ravenloft: Heir of Strahd : Five strangers armed with steel and magic awaken in a mist-shrouded land, with no memory of how they arrived: Rotrog, a prideful orcish wizard; Chivarion, a sardonic drow barbarian; Alishai, an embittered tie...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Sam Kelly , author of Human History on Drugs . About Human History on Drugs : Did you know that Alexander the Great was a sloppy drunk and William Shakespeare was a stoner? Or how about the fact that Steve Jobs believed taking LSD helped him create the Apple computer, or that Sigmund Freud loved cocaine so much he took it all the time and prescri...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Margaret Stohl , Jeanine Schaefer , and Judith Stephens to talk about their new book, Super Visible: The Story of the Women of Marvel Comics . About Super Visible: The Story of the Women of Marvel Comics : Inspired by the hit podcast The Women of Marvel and cowritten by the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Beautiful Creatures, this eye-o...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Paul Bradley Carr , author of THE CONFESSIONS . About THE CONFESSIONS : LLIAM is the world’s most powerful supercomputer, built to make the toughest decisions for its users. Where to work, who to marry, and even who should live or die. But when LLIAM suddenly goes offline with no explanation, the world is thrust into chaos, paralyzed by indecisio...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Joan Slonczewski , author of Minds in Transit . About Minds in Transit : In the hundred-level city of Iridis, human lords recycle diamonds and emeralds down to the Underworld while sentient machines pilot lightcraft and perform surgeries. Microbial minds expand the brains of scientists and artists. The artist Chrys directs her microbes to paint s...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Morgan Ryan , author of A RESISTANCE OF WITCHES . About A RESISTANCE OF WITCHES : Stubborn, plain-spoken and from an unimpressive family, Lydia Polk never expected to be accepted into the Royal Academy of Witches. Now, with Hitler’s army rampaging across Europe, the witches of Britain have joined the war effort, and Lydia is key to the cause: she...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Michael Damian Thomas , to talk about Uncanny Magazine Year 12: Fly Forever, Space Unicorns! . About Uncanny Magazine Year 12: Fly Forever, Space Unicorns! : Editor-in-Chief/Publisher Michael Damian Thomas and Team Uncanny Magazine have run successful Kickstarters for the seven-time Hugo Award-winning, 2024 World Fantasy Award-winning, and 2024 L...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Matthew Kressel , author of SPACE TRUCKER JESS . About SPACE TRUCKER JESS : Jessian Urania Darger is a kick-ass take-no-shit foul-mouthed too-smart-for-her-own-good sixteen-year-old girl with a chip on her shoulder. She and her daddy have been grifting their way across the verse for years. But when her daddy gets arrested for running crypto-credi...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Antony Johnston , author of Can You Solve the Murder? About Can You Solve the Murder? : One murder. Six suspects. One truth for YOU to uncover. YOU are the lead detective and it’s your job to investigate the most mysterious crime of your career. There’s been a murder at Elysium, a wellness retreat set in an English country manor. You arrive...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Auston Habershaw , author of If Wishes Were Retail . About If Wishes Were Retail : Alex Delmore needs a miracle. She wants out of her dead-end suburban town, but her parents are broke and NYU seems like a distant dream. Good thing there’s a genie in town?and he’s hiring at the Wellspring Mall. It’d help if the Jinn-formerly-of-the-Ring-of-Khorad...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome back Randee Dawn , author of The Only Song Worth Singing . About The Only Song Worth Singing : Childhood friends Patrick, Ciaran, and Malachi would’ve been happy to play music for coins on the streets of Dublin, but when their sound – a blend of traditional tunes and rock styling – lands them a record deal, they also get their first tour of...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Mark Stevens , author of No Lie Lasts Forever . About No Lie Lasts Forever : When a reporter dies in a shockingly familiar way, the media rushes to announce the return of the PDQ Killer. The city of Denver reels, but no one more than Harry Kugel. After all, he is the PDQ Killer – or was fifteen years ago. And he didn’t do this. Still workin...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Victoria Helen Stone , author of Bald-Faced Liar . About Bald-Faced Liar : Traveling nurse Elizabeth May has a promising new home in Santa Cruz. And another new identity. It’s a pattern of reinvention for a woman escaping her traumatic childhood?and hiding from the decades of notoriety and destruction that followed. Invisibility has kept Elizabet...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome S.A. Barnes , author of Cold Eternity . About Cold Eternity : Halley is on the run from an interplanetary political scandal that has put a huge target on her back. She heads for what seems like the perfect place to lay low: a gigantic space barge storing the cryogenically frozen bodies of Earth’s most fortunate citizens from more than a century a...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Maura Jortner , author of Keepers of the Marsh . About Keepers of the Marsh : Twelve-year-old Lana isn’t looking for trouble when she ventures into the swampy marsh behind her family’s home in Galveston Bay. She’s just sweaty and bored and lonely, sick of sitting around doing nothing. Her family never goes anywhere. Her mom and her sisters want n...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Chuck Wendig , author of The Staircase in the Woods . About The Staircase in the Woods : Five high school friends are bonded by an oath to protect one another no matter what. Then, on a camping trip in the middle of the forest, they find something extraordinary: a mysterious staircase to nowhere. One friend walks up—and never comes back down. The...