Before the Fern Dies

We are kicking off this spooky season with a mini (not so mini) episode on the harvest moon. Traditionally, the harvest moon lit up the night for the arrival of Autumn and illuminated the fields for farmers to begin to harvest this year's crops. We would say our gardens are pretty full, but we tried to limit it to a 25 minute conversation. We hope you will join us in thinking about what we want to shed and what we want to harvest this season.  

Gods and people dragons and fire guy, oh my! This week we recount our favorite myths and folklore discussing what we like about them and what lessons they might offer us. From Greek to Vietnamese, your going to want to listen to us venture through a retelling of these stories. 

Bonus myth busting- ostriches do not actually put their head in the sand....like ever. 

We want to be the best allies to the Black Lives Matter movement that we can possibly be, and that takes learning, unlearning, and lots of discomfort and mistakes. In this episode, we share some of the biggest lessons we've learned along the way. 

While we believe it's important for everyone to have meaningful conversations about systemic racism, Black voices are the most important, and it's their lead that we need to follow. Here are the people we mention in this particular episode:

Ayana Gabrielle Lage - @ayanagabriellelage

Brandon Kyle Goodman - @brandonkgood

Rachel Elizabeth Cargle - @rachel.cargle

Here's a worksheet with 10 reflection questions that we hope will help you reflect and start good conversations, as they've helped us!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13c-5D53ZmBhOtdcu33ZLb9tZe3JUphGbDfnzCwmzNCI/edit?usp=sharing 

Listen... we are some chatty gorls and 22 minutes is about as "mini" of a mini episode as we're gonna get! Misnomer aside, in this episode we introduce you to some of the important people in our lives, and discuss the ways that we're trying to be more like them. Ashlyn and Wendy gushing about other people, plus roasting themselves, equals one very on brand episode of BTFD!

WITCHCRAFT. Yup, you heard us right. In this episode, we invite special guest, friend, and coven sister, Ava Lee, to chat with us about our experiences with magic and witchcraft. We focus on what witchcraft looks like for us (as baby witches) and the ways in which it has helped us shape our worldview.

In this episode of Before the Fern Dies, we get artsy doing some self-portraits and dig into our experiences with body image. Hear us dote on whether or not we are artists for too long, rag on Picasso’s work, and chat loquaciously about our changing bodies.

To anyone who has written an angry letter just to set it on fire - this one's for you (and we seriously rock with your chAoTic energy)! In this episode, Ashlyn and Wendy share open letters to their past and future selves. They discuss who they were and hope to be, as well as one very awk family birthday party, the importance of sitting down and being HUMBLE, and a bonus letter from a personal hero...

In this episode, Ashlyn and Wendy reflect on their time as Literature/Creative Writing majors at UCSD - a time of all-nighters, questionable roommate wanted ads, and existential crises. They read the thesis statements from some of their old papers and ask themselves the age-old question: Do I regret my major?

Hello everyone! Here's a sneaky peek of our podcast-more to come soon.