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 from wb easy

chicago this is nerdette i'm greta Johnson. We made it to another weekend. Happy Halloween. We have a great show for you this week, and it is spooky as fuck. Coming up, non-fick giant Eric Larson tries to tell us he is not into Halloween.

And I remember dressing one of my kids as Rosemary's baby in a red jumpsuit

with horns and so forth. Then we hear from Emily Zarca, a true monster fiend. I started researching

the undead and that got me into grad school and got my PhD. But first, let's check in with two

smart humans about stuff that's been going on this week.

First up, we have Anne-Marie Awad. They're a journalist and host of the podcast on something.

Anne-Marie, hello. Hi, thank you for having me. Oh, my gosh. thrilled to have you. Plus, we've got

Wendy Zuckerman. She is the host of Gimlet's Science versus podcast. Wendy, welcome. Hello.

Okay, so I want to start this week with something that I actually have thought about a lot for kind of the last couple of years.

Essentially, ever since Game of Thrones proved to be like the most successful TV show,

kind of in the history of TV, everyone has been trying to figure out how to make the next

Thrones, right?

At this very moment, there are so many different iterations of this.

There's the Apple TV Plus Show Foundation, which is based on the Asimov novels.

If humanity is to climb from the ashes, the coming generations will need the knowledge to build upon.

Dune just came out.

There's the trailer for the Thrones prequel that just dropped a couple weeks ago.

...