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PODCAST

Origin Stories

Have you ever wondered exactly how your favorite movie or book –– or podcast, TV series, documentary film, or magazine article –– got made? Origin Stories has you covered. Each week, veteran journalist Matthew Shaer talks to a different writer or director about the creation of a work close to their own hearts (and to ours). Nothing is off the table: not the frustrations and the joys, not the setbacks and the successes. Intimate and incisive, instructive and eye-opening, Origin Stories is the

arts performing arts

All Episodes

32:47

Janet Reitman on A Disaster of the U.S. Military’s...

Origin Stories ·

2025/12/17

Janet Reitman is a fellow at New America and a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine. A former longtime correspondent for Rolling Stone, she is a two-time finalist for a National Magazine Award and the author of some of the most influential journalism of the past two decades. In this episode, she talks with Matthew about "A Disaster of the US Military's Own Making," her 2024 Times Magazine expose on the Army suicide crisis. All good writing, Reitman says, necessarily involves

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35:02

Introducing So Your Parents Are Old

Origin Stories ·

2025/12/11

Special episode alert! This week, we're featuring an interview from So Your Parents Are Old, a new podcast about the realities (funny, sad, and somewhere in-between) of dealing with aging loved ones. In this episode, host Vanessa Grigoriadis chats with Amanda Uhle, a writer and the publisher of McSweeney’s, about her new book "Destroy This House." For more information on the show, plug the words "So Your Parents Are Old" into whatever podcast app you use. Or head on over to joincampside.com.

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32:41

Lorelei Lee on Cash/Consent

Origin Stories ·

2025/12/10

Lorelei Lee is a writer, activist, porn performer, and activist. A graduate of Cornell Law School and New York University’s MFA program, they write regularly for a range of publications, including N+1, Buzzfeed, and Wired. In this episode, Lorelei talks to Matthew about their groundbreaking essay “Cash/Consent,” which is both a memoir of Lorelei’s time in the porn industry and a reflection on the complicated relationship between their career and their “civilian” life. “I often have to write the

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32:53

James Vanderbilt on Nuremberg

Origin Stories ·

2025/12/05

James Vanderbilt is a screenwriter, producer, and director whose work includes some of the most acclaimed films of the last two decades. He’s perhaps best known for writing Zodiac, David Fincher’s modern classic thriller. In this episode, he talks to Matthew about Nuremberg, his new film as both writer and director, set just after World War II as the Allies prepared to put high-ranking Nazi officials on trial.Vanderbilt explains that one of the biggest challenges was finding a way to tell such a

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36:15

Clint Smith on How the Word Is Passed

Origin Stories ·

2025/12/03

Clint Smith is a celebrated poet, essayist, and staff writer at The Atlantic. In addition to his two poetry collections, Counting Descent and Above Ground, he is the author of the award-winning nonfiction bestseller How the Word Is Passed. In this episode, he talks to Matthew about the reporting of How the Word is Passed, and how he made it accessible without losing rigor. “When I was writing the book, I wrote about eight places, but I could have written about 1,008, because the scars of slavery

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35:03

Gilbert King on Bone Valley

Origin Stories ·

2025/11/26

Gilbert King is a writer, photographer, and author of several books, including Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. In this episode, he talks to Matthew about the creation of Bone Valley, his hit podcast about the 1987 murder of Michelle Schofield. Working in audio was a new experience for King, who relied on his producer, Kelsey Decker, to show him the ropes. "I was just ruining the tape left

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37:16

Evan Ratliff on Shell Game

Origin Stories ·

2025/11/19

Evan Ratliff is a magazine writer, podcaster, and author of Mastermind: Drugs, Empire, Murder, Betrayal, which was released in 2019 by Random House. In addition to co-founding Longform and The Atavist Magazine, Evan was also one of the founding editors of Pop-Up Magazine. In this episode, he talks to Matthew about Shell Game, a hit narrative podcast Evan funded, created, and distributed independently, working with a small team that included Evan's wife, Samantha Henig, and the independent

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34:51

Bonnie Tsui on Why We Swim

Origin Stories ·

2025/11/12

Bonnie Tsui is a veteran journalist and the author of several critically-acclaimed books, including On Muscle, American Chinatown, and Why We Swim, which was published in 2020 by Algonquin Books. In this episode, she talks with Matthew about the challenges of writing Why We Swim, which mixes rigorous scientific reporting, history, and long passages of essayistic exploration. “It’s an instinctive way of writing," Bonnie says of the latter. "I mean, you know you have to come back to the points

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34:51

Roy Wood Jr. The Man of Many Fathers

Origin Stories ·

2025/11/05

Roy Wood Jr. is a comedian, actor, and former correspondent for The Daily Show. In this episode, he talks to Matthew about his new book, "The Man of Many Fathers: Life Lessons Disguised as a Memoir," which is structured as an extended letter to his young son. Early drafts, Wood recalls, were composed by voice note, while walking to the set of The Daily Show – a process that helped give the book its emotional power and irreverent humor. "I don't believe you type the way you talk because you're

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73:48

Introducing Zero to Well-Read

Origin Stories ·

2025/11/04

Part book club, part English class, Zero to Well-Read is a fun and irreverent guide to the books everyone talks about, from classics you should have read in high school to the modern hits everyone's buzzing about. In each episode, hosts Jeff O'Neal and Rebecca Schinsky tell you everything you need to know about a must-read book, including its plot, what it feels like to read, why it’s important, and the key takeaways you can use at your next dinner party.

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6:04

Introducing Bad Elizabeth

Origin Stories ·

2025/11/03

Bad Elizabeth is a comedic true crime podcast hosted by friends and former “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” office mates, Gideon Evans and Kathy Egan-Taylor. The premise is as simple as it sounds: each episode explores the story of an “Elizabeth” (or any derivation of that name) who is notorious, be they a murderer, a fraudster, or just a complete a-hole. These women span both past and present, in pop culture, and world history. Gideon & Kathy guide you through these sordid and outrageous

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37:42

Mitch Albom on Twice

Origin Stories ·

2025/10/30

Mitch Albom is a journalist, playwright, and the author, most famously, of "The Five People You Meet in Heaven." Before scoring his breakout hit with "Tuesdays With Morrie," Mitch was a longtime sports reporter for The Detroit Free Press, where his column still appears every week. In this episode, he talks to Matthew about his new novel, Twice, and the importance of putting theme first. "The ideas always come before the characters and even the plot," he says of his creative process. "So I always

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36:47

Steve Burns on Alive with Steve Burns

Origin Stories ·

2025/10/29

Steve Burns is best known as the first host of the groundbreaking kids TV show Blue's Clues, which debuted nearly three decades ago, in 1996. After leaving Blue's Clues, Steve worked as a voiceover actor and a musician; his song "Mighty Little Man" became the theme song for "Young Sheldon." In this episode, he talks to Matthew about the creation of his new hit podcast, "Alive With Steve Burns," and the learning curve involved in experimenting with a new medium. "I watched like 40 hours of Dick

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30:35

Debora Cahn on The Diplomat

Origin Stories ·

2025/10/23

Debora Cahn is a television writer, producer, and showrunner. Debora launched her career as a scribe on The West Wing and Grey’s Anatomy; later, she served as a writer and executive producer on Homeland. In this episode, she talks to Matthew about The Diplomat, the hit drama series she created for Netflix. “The game that we're trying to win is to stay in a viewer's life for years,” she says of The Diplomat, which is now entering its third season. “Make this story interesting to people for

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32:44

Max Minghella on Shell

Origin Stories ·

2025/10/22

Max Minghella is an actor, writer, and director. Born in London, Max has acted in projects as varied as The Social Network, The Handmaid’s Tale, and The Ides of March. He also wrote and directed Teen Spirit, a coming-of-age drama set in the world of pop stardom. In this episode, he talks to Matthew about his latest directorial effort, Shell, a body-horror satire about beauty, technology, and transformation. His interest in this kind of material sprang, in part, from a previous acting gig on a Saw

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31:03

Brian Goldstone on There Is No Place for Us

Origin Stories ·

2025/10/16

Brian Goldstone is a journalist and anthropologist whose reporting focuses on inequality, housing, and the fragile architecture of the American dream. In this episode of Origin Stories, Goldstone talks to Matthew about There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America, his critically-acclaimed new nonfiction book. "In the last five or six months of writing, where I was just in that sort of fever dream phase, I had started waking up at 4 AM," Goldstone says. "Because with kids, that's the

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31:36

Stephanie Foo on What My Bones Know

Origin Stories ·

2025/10/15

Stephanie Foo is a veteran radio producer and longtime staffer at shows like Snap Judgment and This American Life. She joins Matthew to talk about the creation of her NYT best-selling memoir, “What My Bones Know,” which explores her early childhood trauma and her more recent diagnosis of complex PTSD. Foo discusses fart jokes, mining old journals for content, her husband’s editing skills, and how she deals with feedback. “Everything we make––everything we do our whole lives, including the way we

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32:24

John Robert Hoffman on Only Murders in the Building

Origin Stories ·

2025/10/09

Actor, writer, and producer John Hoffman talks to Matthew about co-creating and showrunning the hit television show "Only Murders in the Building,” which is now in its fifth season on Hulu. Hoffman addresses writing lines for comedic greats like Martin Short and Steve Martin, his writing schedule (start early!) and how he deals with studio notes. He also describes the wonder of having a series snap together: “For me, it’s like an internal turn of the dial that says, ‘OK, I understand it all now. I

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32:08

Yousef Srouji on Three Promises

Origin Stories ·

2025/10/08

Palestinian filmmaker Yousef Srouji is the creator of the critically-acclaimed documentary "Three Promises," which uses his mother’s old home video footage to tell an intimate story of life during the Second Intifada. Srouji talks to Matthew about coming to documentary film as a newbie and learning the tools of the trade on the job. He also discusses the difficulty of finding distribution for “Three Promises,” despite the project being largely apolitical. As for his next project, Srouji, a

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31:56

Mimi Leder on The Morning Show

Origin Stories ·

2025/10/01

Mimi Leder is a producer, director, and two-time Emmy winner. Among her credits are films like Deep Impact and On the Basis of Sex and television programs like The Morning Show, a critically-acclaimed drama now entering its fourth season on Apple TV. In this episode of Origin Stories, she talks to Matthew about the establishing the tone of The Morning Show, the importance of creative synergy with actors and staff, and learning to honor both her experience and her gut instinct. “It’s really a

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