Texas native and award-winning Austin songwriter and performer Natalie Price doesn't write, play, or sing like anyone else. She was encouraged by her parents to abandon her dreams of becoming a professional musician and not much in her "strict, religious, less-than-musical household" prepared her for the life she's now living. The result of that background is a sort of otherworldly and somehow also organic voice that's completely her own. Her songs range from the abstract to the deeply intimate. Her latest release, Through the Fog (produced by Brian Douglas Phillips), garnered praise from Texas Music Monthly, who proclaimed her “one of Austin's most dynamic new singer-songwriters." Her music has been featured by NPR and she’s performed in songwriting festivals and contests across the globe, including in Ireland, where we recorded this episode.

Natalie's been busy during the pandemic, hosting a weekly talk show on Instagram Live, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch called "20 @ 10 with Nat," working steadily on her highly anticipated sophomore album with producer Mary Bragg, and contributing several songs to a new compilation album, to be released soon by the Austin Music Foundation.

We review Star Trek (the Original Series), Season 1, Episode 14, “Balance of Terror." Topics include: Natalie’s first visit to Ireland, visiting Grace in Ireland, Natalie’s penchant for making interesting and weird friends and her pandemic-era talk show, hot tips and lessons learned from being a podcast/webcast host, Star Trek’s cultural permeation, Spock and Uhura’s uncomfortable bluetooth earbuds, the Captain’s privilege: dramatic lighting, the elaborate hairdos of the future, the myth of Ship’s Captains being able to officiate weddings, Romulans, the Roman foundational myth of Romulus and Remus, space politics in the Star Trek universe, Paul Schneider and battleship films, “Balance of Terror” as another WWII-inspired episode, Stiles and his family history, the younger and older officers on each bridge and their judgement and motivation, bigotry of the future, George Takei’s unique position as the only Japanese-American cast member in this episode, the bigotry and discrimination directed at Asian-Americans following WWII and continuing to today, the problematic “othering” of Japanese people in this episode, the simultaneous work that this episode does to dismantle that “othering” and bigotry in general, a core Star Trek ethic: not that humans are perfect but that humans are growing and getting better at recognizing and defeating their own darkness, the Bird of Prey, McCoy’s weird, convoluted pep talk with Kirk, "Be vewwy quiet! I’m hunting Womulans!", why Romulans don't have windows, why Spock saved Stiles and not Tomlinson, why Kirk is such a great Captain in this episode, and Mark Lenard, the only Star Trek actor to play a Romulan, Vulcan, and Klingon.