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From WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdette, I'm Greta Johnson, we did it, we made it to another

weekend. Coming up, some of our favorite readers are going to give you 1 million recommendations

for what to read this fall. Okay, it's not a million, but it's like at least a dozen,

which is pretty exciting. But first, it's our chance to sit back and unwind from the week

that was with us this week. We have Alex Abad Santos, Senior Correspondent at Vox. Alex, hello.

Hey, thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. Also here is our Eric Thomas, who wrote the essay

collection. Congratulations. The best is over. Eric, hello. Hello. Okay, so let's start with

the writer's strike. After 146 days, the writer's guild of America says it's come to an agreement

with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television producers. Eric, you've written for TV. You are

in the guild, right? Yeah, I am. I am technically back to work, although currently without a gig,

but I'm very excited to be off of strike. Yeah. So yeah, I can't imagine how difficult that

that time period must have been. It sounds like it. I mean, it must have just been such a

frustrating process. Yeah, I mean, not only to sort of not have any idea when things were going to

begin again and not have any idea how to move forward. A lot of my people I know, a lot of my colleagues

were having to get sort of supplementary gigs to kind of bridge the gaps. A lot of people

went to a lot of debt, but on top of all that to be dragged around by the studios to play these

games and try to be starved out was just really demoralizing. And you know, one of the anonymous

studio executives had said that something about like I want them to be homeless by Christmas.

I remember that, which is just, you know, it's like we're like, I'm like, do you

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