On this episode, we have prose, screen, and television writer Josh Parkinson stop by the studio to share a story he wrote in high school called "The Man and the Fly." This absolute banger involves a fly, a car crash, and a response from the local authorities that you won't see coming. Is it worth an hour of your time? We think so. It did win 3rd place in 1991.

We also talk about his journey from QB1 of the Needville Texas Fighting Bluejays to his work writing scripts in the big city of Los Angeles, and how Iowa City has impacted his current and future work. We discuss the books that got Josh interested in writing, whether or not he actually likes Billy Joel, and if (as Stephen suggests) his writing is in fact Stienbeckian.

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Josh Parkinson is a writer from Texas who received an MA in Fiction from Johns Hopkins University. Over the last dozen years he has written feature originals or rewrites for Warner Bros., Sony, Universal, Paramount, and Media Rights Capital, as well as held TV staff-writing positions on the HBO comedy Eastbound and Down and the AMC horror series The Terror. He has also during that time sold both hour-long drama and half-hour comedy pilots to NBC, CBS, AMC, USA, Showtime, and most recently, Peacock. He lives in Iowa City and teaches screenwriting at the University of Iowa for the Magid Center for Writing.