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

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

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