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 WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdad. I'm Greta Johnson. This is usually when we would tell you about this month's book club pick, but we are actually taking the summer off from book club. However, do not worry. We still have a bunch of good bookish stuff for you, including this interview right now. Today's guest is Tom Perada. He is the author of a number

of novels, including The Leftovers, Mrs. Fletcher, and Election. His new book is a follow-up to

election. It's called Tracy Flick Can't Win, and it follows the tenacious and ambitious Tracy Flick,

whose life didn't turn out quite the way we may have

expected. She is the assistant principal at a New Jersey high school, and she is hoping to become

principal. That's where we'll leave it for now. Tom, welcome to Nerdat.

Thanks so much for having me, Greta.

So your book election came out almost 25 years ago in 1998. In some ways,

the world obviously has changed a lot since then, but in others, it's super similar. Is that

partly why you wanted to go back to Tracy's story? Yeah. I mean, I think that I was actually

really responding to the changes maybe more than the similarities.

And part of that, you know, I hope I'm not jumping the gun here, but part of that was, you know, all the conversations around Me Too and this reckoning the country had four or five years ago with all kinds of

male abuse from, you know, from rape all the way down to, you know, harassment on the job.

And obviously, election told a story about that,

but told it, I think, from a kind of early 90s perspective,

which was early in that discussion, I think.

And I think the language we used and the ethical framework we used changed a lot over those years.

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