I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still

watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,

soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,

Stories Without End from WBEZ Chicago.

Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.

Listen, wherever you get your podcast.

From WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdette.

I'm Greta Johnson.

We made it to another Friday. Today on the show,

a neuroscientist who studies drugs explains why sometimes he does the drugs.

That's like saying, so you are a person, you have sex. Yep, that's right. And then author Martha Wells helps me explain why if you haven't read the Murder Bot Diaries series, you are definitely missing out.

Anything that makes you feel different or other in society, people who feel that way have been able to identify with this character.

But first, it's our panel on the week that was with us this week is Heather Haverleski.

She's written several books and writes an

advice newsletter on Substack called Ask Molly. Heather, hey. Hello. And Danny Lavery is the author of

something that may shock and discredit you. He writes to The Chatner, a weekly humor newsletter

about literature and pop culture and was Dear Prudence at Slate from 2016 until earlier this year. Danny, hey.

Hey, back at you. It's so good to be here. Yay. Thanks for coming. So I'm really curious to talk to you,

too, about the idea of reentry because I don't know about y'all, but I'm actually feeling a little

disgruntled about the whole thing, like pants and whatever. It's been almost a month now since

the CDC kind of said vaccinated people can do pretty much whatever they want, which means a lot

of us are being more social than we have in literally more than a year. The cut recently came out

...