You're a good podcast listener. That's why I'm inviting you to kick off your shoes and head on over to the founder's bed and make yourself comfortable because we are going to have quite the chat. Howdy. I'm Jeff Goldsmith and this is the Q&A. My agenda is simple. Each week I plan to bring you in-depth insights into the creative process of storytelling.

And folks, wow, do I have an episode for you today?

One that I've been wanting to do for so long.

Yes, it is Severance.

And yes, we are with Dan Erickson, the creator and co-writer of Severance.

As you hopefully know, Severance has been nominated for 14 Emmys after its first season,

and one of which is, of course, outstanding dramatic series and also writing,

amongst many other great Emmy nominations that it so rightly deserves.

I just wanted to call out those too.

And it was really fun to have Dan in for a chat because it was just great to be able to walk back through previous episodes now that there's no longer real spoilers from the first season. Of course, there's spoilers of things that are unanswered that Dan can't talk about. And, you know, I didn't waste time with much of that. But really, we were able to get in some very interesting definitions and take a

look at how Dan went on this very long journey to change his pilot script and really continue to

refine it through collaboration until it became the show that we know. If you've never seen the show,

as usual, we start out, spoiler-free, really just

talking about the concept, right? If this were a movie, we'd be talking about things that we

know from the trailer, the concept. But yeah, when we get into spoilers and we really couldn't

talk spoiler-free beyond 15 minutes because there's just too much ground to cover. I think it should

also be noted that what's so interesting about season one in this interview

with Dan is this is Dan's first produced credit. That's right. Running a writer's room, Dan had never

even been in a writer's room before, but he adapted so quickly because he had a fantastically

creative team around him. And Dan was without a doubt very forthcoming about his creative process

and collaborating and what it took to get season one of Severance made. So I know you'll dig this

episode. And speaking of things to dig, Backstory Magazine turns 10. That's right. We survived a decade

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