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, this is Nerdette.

I'm Greta Johnson, and we did it.

We made it to another weekend.

Coming up, a theoretical physicist says we should not dismiss the idea of extraterrestrials as wacky sci-fi. We should start from the humbling thought that there is nothing special about us,

that we are probably just like ants on a sidewalk. Plus, author David Eune tells us about the books

he and his wife Nicola want to publish under the new YA imprint Joy Revolution. We get to be a

boutique imprint focused on, you know, love story starring POC, written by POC, with the full backing

of the largest publishing house in the country, if not the world. But first, it's our

panel on the week that was with us this week. We have Kat Chow. She's a journalist and writer who used to be

on NPR's Code Switch team. She has a memoir coming out next month called Seeing Ghosts. Kat. Hey.

Hi. Thank you for having me on. Oh my gosh. Thank you for being here. We also have Joanne Freeman. She's a history professor at Yale,

co-host of Now and Then Podcast and the author of the book, Field of Blood, Violence in Congress,

and the Road to Civil War. Joanne, hey. Hey. I have to say that is a pretty fun title to read.

It sounds very intense and dramatic. That's a great title. Yeah, so much more

relevant than it started out being. I bet. Joanne's probably been a bit busy. Just a wee bit.

That's actually the perfect setup cat, because I think we should start this week by talking about work.

...