Happy To Be Here

This week, professional pastry chef Faith Fedash stops by host Greta Johnsen's kitchen to make pumpkin pie cookies. (Find the full recipe for the cookies here!)

SHOW CREDITS

Creator and host: Greta Johnsen

Senior Producer: Ben Goldberg

Composers: Ross Bellenoit and Jeremy Thal

Show art: Mac Maclean

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Welcome to Happy To Be Here, the show for the perpetually curious!

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As y’all probably know, we’re calling this the “goodbye for now” episode of Nerdette because it’s our last episode while we’re employees at WBEZ. So, we thought it was the perfect time to call up Nerdette co-creator Tricia Bobeda and Nerdette Recaps co-host Peter Sagal to play our favorite game, Burden or Delight.

Then, we hear from YOU about what Nerdette has meant to you for the past 11 years.

We ultimately hope to find a new home for Nerdette! You can keep in touch with the team by joining our Facebook group, following Anna (@annabaumanation) and Greta (@gretamjohnsen) on Instagram, and subscribing to Greta’s newsletter.

Thank you for 11 amazing years. We love you!

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May’s Book Club selection is the fabulous short story collection ‘Table for Two’ by Amor Towles. It was amazing to get to talk to Amor in front of a LIVE audience in Chicago a few weeks ago. Since we were only able to share about half of that conversation in the podcast feed, we decided to bring you more from our chat and dive even deeper into the book!

A programming note – this is our second to last episode as a production at WBEZ. We are ultimately looking for a new home for the show. But until we figure that out, we’ll have one more episode on Tuesday.

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This week, we ask voracious reader Liberty Hardy to rave about the best books coming out this summer. Liberty is the host of the Book Riot podcast ‘All the Books!’ She and Greta trade their top picks.

Here are the titles in the order that they’re mentioned in the episode:

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This week, cookbook author and leftovers lover Tamar Adler joins us to answer YOUR questions on cooking, hosting and eating. Tamar is the author of 'The Everlasting Meal' and 'The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z.' She also writes the newsletter “The Kitchen Shrink,” where she regularly gives out culinary advice.

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This week, we are bringing you a special LIVE edition of Nerdette Book Club!!! The great Amor Towles, author of 'A Gentleman in Moscow' and 'The Lincoln Highway,' joined us in front of a live audience at the Athenaeum Theater in Chicago to discuss our May Book Club selection, his most recent book 'Table for Two!' It’s a collection of six different short stories set in New York City and a novella based on characters from his first novel, 'Rules of Civility,' set in Los Angeles during the Golden Age of Hollywood. This is a spoiler-free conversation! We’ll be back at the end of the month with more.

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This week, we’re sharing some of the best new music out this summer! Our friend Kristen Kurtis is the assistant music director and Morning Show host at WXPN in Philadelphia. We asked her to bring us some fun and maybe even a little angry songs to rock out to this summer. You can find this collection of “joyfully defiant” songs below or listen along on our Spotify playlist.

Want to add to the playlist? Send us an email at [email protected] or a dm on Instagram!

“Hater’s Anthem” by Infinity Song

“Change Shapes” by Lauren Mayberry

“Sometimes” by Mannequin Pussy

“Suffer” by Pillow Queens.

“Cartagena” by Reyna Tropical

“Broken Man” by St. Vincent

“The Feminine Urge” by The Last Dinner Party

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Our April Book Club pick is Marie-Helene Bertino’s second novel 'Beautyland.' It tells the story of Adina, a girl born in Philadelphia in 1977, just as the Voyager I spacecraft launches from Earth in search of extraterrestrial life. As a child, Adina learns she herself is an alien, and her mission is to send her observations about humanity to her supervisors via fax machine (it is the ‘80s, after all). With that conceit, Bertino paints a gorgeous tapestry of what it means to be human, filled with poetic descriptions of the utterly mundane. This book is full of love, longing, and curiosity.

We are joined by two expert readers: Mira Jacob, the author of the novel ‘The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing’ and the graphic memoir ‘Good Talk,’ and Molly McGhee, whose novel ‘Jonathan Abernathy You are Kind’ was our January Book Club selection! We discuss the book in detail, including spoilers! So if you have not read the book yet, go back and listen to our spoiler-free chat with author Marie-Helene Bertino in the feed first.

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This week, we are taking some time to reflect on the past *11 years* of Nerdette by listening to two of our all-time favorite interviews. First, Greta and Stephen King (yes, that Stephen King) bond over their shared love of corgis. Then, poet Ross Gay tells us about 'The Book of Delights,' a collection of essays about finding delight everyday.

We also want to let you know that Nerdette’s last episode at WBEZ will be May 28. Thank you for all of the love and support!

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