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. And a whole new month, no less. Happy March to you. This week, we are going to dive into the world of boarding school, wrongful conviction, and true crime podcasts. Yes, we are talking about the book. I have some questions for you by Rebecca Mackay.

It was a nerd at book club pick after it came out in March of last year and it just came out

in paperback. And to celebrate, we are going to take a listen to my conversation with Rebecca.

The book is about Bodie, who is invited back to the fancy boarding school that she attended to teach a class about podcasting.

When Bodie was a student there in the 90s, her former roommate, Thalia, was murdered, and a boarding school staffer, a black man, was convicted of the crime.

Rebecca herself was a day student at a boarding school and her husband teaches

English now at the same school that she attended, which means that she lives on the campus

of her high school, which means that she has spent a lot of time thinking about why a boarding

school is the perfect setting for some drama. Yeah, I think one of the things, there's the hot house element, right?

Like everyone kind of trapped together in the woods.

There's that.

I also think there's something really interesting about this kind of permanent, very old place,

these buildings that have been there forever.

But then this really transitory population coming through, like,

you're there for four years, these really formative years of your life. And college is kind of the same

way, but, you know, these are kids. These are kids. Yeah, they're young. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Anyone could, you know, high school is this

...