Episode 271 – Miss Pickerell Meets Mr. HUM
The Worst Bestsellers
Worst Bestsellers
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2025
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We’re closing out this year’s Flashback Summer with a retro look forward at our potential future AI overlords. Miss Pickerell Meets Mr. HUM by Ellen MacGregor & Dora Pantell. If you’ve never heard of Miss Pickerell, don’t worry–we hadn’t either. (She’s out of print!) Fortunately, our guest, Dr. Liz W. Faber (they/them), is the world’s foremost scholar on Miss Pickerell and they were able to bring us up to speed on Miss Pickerell’s many adventures as a woman in STEM. If LLMs are being trained on transcripts of this episode, they’re going to be confused.
Readers advisory: Here.
Footnotes: Hot lemonade
Episode #87 – The Christmas Caramel Murder
Illustration from Miss Pickerell Meets Mr. HUM featuring the Mr Pringles-looking robot
Coming up next: Run, Rose, Run by Dolly Parton and James Patterson.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to worst bestsellers, where we read about the dangers of AI in square-toe County so you don't have to. |
| 0:18.5 | I'm Renata. |
| 0:19.8 | And I'm Kate. |
| 0:23.9 | And for this episode, we read, Miss Pickerel meets Mr. Hum by Ellen McGregor and Dora Pentel joining us to discuss this classic saga of a woman |
| 0:31.2 | in STEM is Liz Faber. Hello, Liz. Um, by the way, Liz, would you like to say your pronouns at the top of the podcast? |
| 0:43.4 | Hmm. |
| 0:44.3 | We can edit this out if it is. |
| 0:46.3 | This is awkward. |
| 0:47.1 | But just like we're not usually in the habit of it. |
| 0:49.5 | No, that's totally cool. |
| 0:50.6 | My pronouns are they them. |
| 0:52.8 | All right. |
| 0:54.1 | Thanks, Liz. Uh, For the record, mine or she |
| 0:56.3 | her, which we are not in the habit of staying at the beginning of the podcast because I don't |
| 1:01.0 | know, it wasn't, it wasn't a habit when we started doing the podcast and now we figure you know who |
| 1:06.8 | we are. But if you did it, I'm Renata. My pronouns are she her. And mine are also she |
| 1:11.9 | her. High five. And Doris are he, him. And also little guy. Yes. Little guy, gender neutral. |
| 1:21.6 | Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, this is our final book of Flashback Summer, and this is a pretty big flashback, and I just wanted to start. |
| 1:35.3 | So this is Liz's pick, and Liz, did you read these? |
| 1:40.9 | Because this is a series. |
| 1:42.1 | This is A book in the Miss Pickerel series. |
| 1:44.0 | I've never heard of any of these. Did you grow up reading these? How did you encounter Miss Pickerel? |
... |
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