Happy To Be Here

Game of Thrones has returned with reckless abandon! 

Well, maybe not reckless abandon … nobody you know and love died. (Yet.)

But whew! A ton of stuff went down: Sansa and Dany exchanged neverending side-eye, Jon got some insight into his family tree and — in what will certainly lead to endless nightmares amongst the wider populace — the piercing scream of a spiralized child-zombie-demon scared the ever-loving hot pie out of everyone. 

The Nerdette crew of Greta Johnsen and Tricia Bobeda joined Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!’s Peter Sagal to recap the Season 8 premiere. 

Have a listen, and remember that we also want to hear from you! Join the conversation and share your own theories with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram using the hashtag #NerdetteRecaps. 

You can also send us a voice recording! Just record it on your smartphone and send the audio file to [email protected], preferably late Sunday night just after the latest episode.

And thanks to the kind folks at HBO and Chicago’s Music Box Theatre, who helped the Nerdette crew watch the premiere live with hundreds of our fellow nerds. We salute you!

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What’s the Night King doing with his ice dragon? Will Tyrion tell Daenerys that Cersei is pregnant? Is everyone on their way to Winterfell? And Hot Pie! Why is no one talking about Hot Pie?!

A lot went down in the last season of HBO’s Game of Thrones. To help refresh your memory, Nerdette’s Tricia Bobeda and Greta Johnsen rejoin Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!’s Peter Sagal to recap Season 7. They also take a stab at making their own predictions for the next season, which premieres April 14. 

The gang will recap each episode of Season 8 every Monday, and we want to hear from you. Join the conversation and share your own theories with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram using the hashtag #GOTnerdcaps. 

You can also send us a voice recording! Just record it on your smartphone and send the audio file to [email protected], preferably late Sunday night just after the latest episode.

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Sahana Srinivasan is the host of the Netflix kids’ science show Brainchild, a series that’s all about exploring interesting questions about the world in which we live. On Nerdette, Sahana talks about what makes her show different from the kids’ science shows of the ‘90s, why it’s so important for kids to see a woman of color talk about science and what she’s going to do after she graduates from college.

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Oh hey it's Lindy West!

Lindy's the the executive producer of Shrill, a new Hulu series starring SNL's Aidy Bryant that's based on Lindy's 2016 novel of the same name. And we talk with Lindy about a few of the delightful scenes from the series (including an epic pool party), why Lindy left Twitter, and her forthcoming new book called The Witches Are Coming. She also tells us about how her new Hulu series subverts a common TV trope.

“Usually what we get are weight loss narratives and makeover narratives. And these sort of sad sack stories about either people trying to lose weight and succeeding or trying to lose weight and failing and being sad,” Lindy says.“The whole idea is that there are other ways to live and that you deserve a life that is bigger than that — and that has a scope beyond your body and what it weighs.”

Lindy West y'all!

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At WBEZ (and maybe at your office too?) it seems like a lot of folks get sick at almost exactly the same time.

But why?! Simple: People in our office are sick because sick people are in our office.

“I think that is probably the single biggest thing that we could do to reduce the incidence of a lot of diseases,” says Sarah Cobey, an evolutionary microbiologist from the University of Chicago. "Just self-quarantine." 

On this episode of Nerdette, Sarah takes a walk through our open office and guesses why people might be ill — and what we can do to stop the colds from spreading. She also talks about sneezes, vaccines and all the real heroes out there: people with good hygiene. 

Wash your hands, people! Sheesh!

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Yep. Podcats. Not a typo.

This week we take a journey back to 1994, just after an astronomer named Heidi Hammel — as well as the entire scientific community at large — learned that a fragmented comet named Shoemaker-Levy 9 was going to crash into Jupiter at a speed of more than 130,000 miles per hour.

"We have witnessed other impacts,” Heidi tells us. “What was really special about the Jupiter one was we had warning that it was going to happen.” 

This moment was huge for Heidi, who was just a young astronomer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the time. She was asked to lead the team that would analyze photos of the impacts taken by the still-relatively-new Hubble Space Telescope. 

Oh yeah, in this podcast episode Heidi also compares planets to cats and herself to a veterinarian so PODCATS!

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Winter is still here! (At least in the nation’s midsection.) And that means you’re looking for stuff to do when you’re stuck inside.

And who better to recommend some good nerdy activities than Nerdette co-creator Tricia Bobeda?!?

She did just that on WBEZ’s Morning Shift last month and we’re bringing it to you now because we love you. 

So please enjoy this binge-watchers guide to navigating the winter cold, featuring excellent TV, movie and book recommendations.

Bonus: This interview was conducted by Morning Shift host (and former all-star Nerdette guest host) Jenn White. Need more Jenn White in your life? Subscribe to her daily local news podcast, Morning Shift Podcast. (And check out Making Oprah and Making Obama if you haven’t already.)

Extra Bonus: Use this as a reminder to re-subscribe to Nerdette Recaps Game of Thrones with Peter Sagal which is returning to your ears in two short months.

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Dana Czapnik has always been drawn to wanderers and wonderers, the kind of fictional characters who are always contemplating who they are and the world around them. But aside from the work of Virginia Woolf, Czapnik said she hasn’t come across many female characters who get those kind of opportunities.

“That was one of the things that I was thinking of when I was working on this,” Czapnik says of her new novel, The Falconer. “That I wanted to write a female character who has the space to just be and wonder.”

Salman Rushdie called The Falconer "a deeply affecting tale of a young woman coming of age in a man’s world." The book has been favorably compared to The Catcher in the Rye.  And the main character, 17-year-old Lucy Adler, is "a much better person than Holden Caulfield," according to Nerdette's own Greta Johnsen.

Czapnik talks with Greta all about the book, the nuances of feminism, and nostalgia for the 1990s.

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The Nerdette team recently moved next to the crew at Sound Opinions, WBEZ’s long-running rock n’ roll talk show. We bring that up because last year that team reviewed Dessa’s latest album, “Chime,” and not only did they call it “brilliant,” they called Dessa “a renaissance woman in the truest sense.”

That’s because Dessa is a rapper, singer, author, poet, and whiskey co-creator. And she even participated in an “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”-type procedure in an attempt to remove memories from a painful relationship.

Greta talks to Dessa about all of that. And we listen to some of the amazing tracks on “Chime.”

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How does one ask their employer for more money? The short answer, according to Refinery29's Lindsey Stanberry, is just do it.

"It’s hard. And it’s not fun," Stanberry tells Greta this week. "I mean, you just have to ask."

It's a new year. And now — RIGHT NOW — is the time to get your finances in order. So we're talking with a financial expert who's going to tell you to know your numbers, to know your worth, and — most importantly — to get out there and get that money.

Stanberry is the author of "Money Diaries: Everything You've Ever Wanted To Know About Your Finances... And Everyone Else's." She's also the work and money director at Refinery29, an online magazine. 

She's full of invaluable tips for taking charge of your money situation. So get excited: You're about to be the boss of your bank account. 

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