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.

WB.EZ is supported by Chicago Humanities, presenting its spring festival on April 27th in Lakeview

with historians Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Snyder,

Jonathan Blitzer on Immigration,

University of Chicago Professor Agnes Collard on Socrates,

and documentaries Unblocked Englewood by Chicago's Tanika Lewis Johnson,

and Beyond Closure on the 2013 Chicago Public School closures. Tickets and more conversations

on arts, culture, and current affairs at Chicago Humanities.org.

From WBEZ Chicago, I'm Greta Johnson, and this is the Nerdat Book Club. It's just like a

regular book club, except sometimes the author Book Club. It's just like a regular

book club, except sometimes the author stops by. It is April, and our selection this month is

Marie Helene Bertino's gorgeous and entrancing novel Beauty Land. It's about Edina, born in Philadelphia,

at the same moment in 1977 that the Voyager won spacecraft leaves Earth. When she is a young girl, she realizes

she's actually an alien disguised as a person. And her task is to send reports back to her home

planet about humanity via fax machine. That is all I want to say for now, since we're going to do

our best to keep this a spoiler-free conversation. Marie, welcome to NurdDab. It's so nice to be here. Thank you,

Greta. So you were born in 77, right? I was in Northeast Philadelphia, like our heroine.

Do you remember the point at which you first learned about Voyager? I think it was maybe

...