There’s this whisper so many of us hear when we’re in transition.  You’ve never done this. How are you going to do this? Are you sure this is going to work? Maybe this was a mistake. New job? Starting over.  New relationship? Starting over.  New dream? Definitely starting over. But the truth is, you’re never starting from scratch. You’re starting from experience. Every misstep, success, and late-night “what now?”  is data you get to use this time around. You’re  not new; the

We’re wrapping up Spooky Season after four weeks of brilliant, fascinating guests, and this final conversation feels like the perfect way to end the series. This week's guest on Wait — What Do You Do Again? , is Dr. Mikki Brock. Mikki teaches and speaks widely on topics including demonology, witchcraft, and British history, and her research centers on questions of religious belief, gender, and identity in early modern Scotland. Calvinist Scotland was a world where witch tria

Dr. Mikki Brock  is a Professor of History at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. Her research focuses on questions of religious belief, gender, and identity in early modern Scotland, with a particular interest in the histories of the supernatural. She teaches and speaks widely on topics including demonology, witchcraft, and British history. Originally from Texas, Dr. Brock earned her B.A. from the University of Kansas and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the Univers

Every now and then, a guest says something that stays with me long after the recording. This week, it was Dr. Cailín Murray , an anthropologist at Ball State University who studies the intersection of folklore, belief, and the stories we tell about what haunts us.   “It’s not whether you believe in ghosts or not. We’re all made up of ghosts because we carry their DNA.”   Isn’t that great?!   So maybe, we’re all a little haunted, too.   Not by rattling chains or flickering lig

Dr. Cailín Murray was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Western Washington University in Bellingham, followed by a Master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Washington. Before joining the faculty at Ball State University, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Her fascination with ghosts and spirits began during graduate school while reading Karl Marx, and she has been actively researchi

Dr. Bernice Murphy is an Associate Professor in Popular Literature at Trinity College Dublin, where she specializes in American horror and Gothic fiction and film. She completed her PhD on Shirley Jackson at Trinity in 2003 and has since become a leading scholar on Jackson’s work, editing Shirley Jackson: Essays on the Literary Legacy  and serving as academic consultant on The Letters of Shirley Jackson  (Penguin Random House, 2021). Her research explores themes of place and

Shirley Jackson’s brilliant literature, monsters, and your scary neighbor. October invites us to play with fear. We pull the blanket to our chin or peek between our fingers, safely terrified by ghosts, vampires, and the things that go bump in the night. I’ve been thinking a lot about monsters and what they speak to in our larger society. But lately I've been thinking about the monsters hiding in shadows, but those just outside our front door. Because real horror rarely announ

Darkness falls across the land / The midnight hour is close at hand / Creatures crawl in search of blood / To terrorize y'alls...

Dr. Imani M. Cheers is a cultural curator, multimedia producer, and Associate Professor of Digital Storytelling at The George Washington...

Shannon Evans is not your typical Southerner. Known for her direct approach, she combines her storytelling abilities with her penchant...

The word empathy has been having a real moment recently, but it’s worth pausing on what it  means and how it’s different from sympathy. I...

JOHN DAVID GRAHAM is the founder and executive director of Good Samaritan Home, a non-profit social service agency in Ohio, offering...

Curiosity and the work of meeting each other across universes of our own making. When my kids were little, we loved Thomas the Train. One...

George Goulburn left his 30 year corporate career behind at the age of 51 to take an unconventional path and become a professional male...

There is a house in my neighborhood that has been sitting in disrepair for years. Apparently, the woman who owned it had a son who died...

Jenelle Coolidge is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC), Certified Eating Disorder Specialist (CEDS), and EMDR-trained therapist...

This summer, I (guiltily) watched And Just Like That and The Summer I Turned Pretty. Both shows are messy, nostalgic, occasionally...

Last night I made an amazing corn and tomato salad and afterward, sat outside looking at stars, night-blooming jasmine thick in the air....

One of my favorite must-watch shows as a kid was Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I loved the adventure of meeting new people across the...

Gerry Wilson is the author of an historical novel, That Pinson Girl, and a story collection, Crosscurrents and Other Stories. A seventh...