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 WB EZ 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, I'm Greta Johnson, and this is The Nerd at Book Club.

It's just like a regular book club, except sometimes the author stops by.

It is February, and this month we are reading Gwen E. Kirby's short story collection,

Shit Cassandra Saw.

This is a glorious amalgamation of all sorts of different stories. The topics span, centuries, and

continents. Yeah, feminism, violence, and bathroom retiling. There are listless teenage girls and

furious witches and obnoxious gentrifiers and baseball games and lost luggage stores and lady

pirates. This book kind of has everything. Gwen, I am so excited to talk to you. Welcome

to Nuredette. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. So I cannot remember the last time I read a book

with a swear word in the title. How hard was that to make happen? You know, to my surprise,

it was not hard at all. So it was the title that I proposed for the collection to my agent.

And I assumed my agent would be like, no.

Like, we're not doing that.

Right.

And then, you know, I assumed, I was like, oh, okay, well, the agent said yes.

And then I assumed my editor at Penguin would be like, absolutely not.

...