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 Nerdad. I'm Greta Johnson. We did it. We made it to another weekend. If you have listened to pretty much any episode of this show, you probably know I am kind of obsessed with the idea of delight. It's something that I love a lot. It's a word that I was accused of overusing in an iTunes review many years ago. So you can imagine my own delight when I came across Ross Gay's book of delights. I think it is just a gorgeous book.

It's one of my favorites. It essentially involves an essay every day about one delight for a year.

Ross Gay is a poet and professor, and he is wonderful. And his definition of delight is pretty great.

It essentially can be anything.

It could be about pecans or his favorite scarf or bringing a tomato plant onto a plane.

Like the bird lands on your shoulder and you lose it.

You're like, oh, my God.

You know, and the practice of that book is to like, pay attention.

Now, in Ross's newest collection of essays, he is shifting his gaze from delight and examining joy.

It is not occasional. Joy is there, and we join it or we enter it or we reside there.

His newest essay collection inciting joy reflects on the complexity. we join it or we enter it or we reside there.

His newest essay collection inciting joy reflects on the complexity of life and the moments that create solidarity through joy and grief.

It's like the light that emanates from us as we help each other carry our sorrows.

Over the course of the book, he covers a wide array of

topics that range from the death of his father to basketball, to gardening, and the beauty of a

cover song. And he is our guest on today's show. Ross, welcome back to Nourdet. Thank you. Glad to be

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