Podcasts about The Addams Family

This week, John Adams and Toby Poser stop by to talk about thire new movie Mother of Flies

RNIB Connect Radio's Toby Davey is joined again by Vidar Hjardeng MBE, Inclusion and Diversity Consultant for ITV News across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands for another audio described theatre review.We have a musical comedy made from the finest ingredients this week as the current tour of ‘Waitress' visited the Wolverhampton Grand Theatre with description by Professional Audio Describer Nicola Williams. About ‘Waitress'The five-star musical returns, starring Carrie Hope Fletcher“Treat yourself to a slice of five-star musical pie” (The Times) with Carrie Hope Fletcher (Calamity Jane, Heathers, The Addams Family) as Jenna and Les Dennis as Old Joe for one week only! They'll be joined by Sandra Marvin as Becky and Evelyn Hoskins as Dawn.Meet Jenna, a waitress and expert pie-maker who dreams of some happiness in her life. When a hot new doctor arrives in town, life gets complicated. With the support of her workmates Becky and Dawn, Jenna overcomes the challenges she faces and finds that laughter, love and friendship can provide the perfect recipe for happiness.Brought to life by a ground-breaking, female-led creative team, this ‘warm, witty, wise and hilarious' (Express) hit features ‘one of the best scores in years' (The Stage) by the Grammy award-winning Sara Bareilles (Love Song, Brave) a book by acclaimed screenwriter Jessie Nelson (I Am Sam) and direction by Tony® Award-winner Diane Paulus (Pippin, Finding Neverland).Having received standing ovations night after night in London's West End and on Broadway, Waitress is ‘the real deal' (Independent) musical comedy'.For more about the current tour of ‘Waitress' and details of performances near you do visit the production website - https://waitressthemusical.co.uk(Image shows the RNIB Connect Radio logo. On a white background ‘RNIB' written in bold black capital letters and underlined with a bold pink line. Underneath the line: ‘Connect Radio' is written in black in a smaller font)

ALAKAZAM! The DizRadio Show Gets a literal Hand From Hollywood Magic Legend, and Addams Family Thing, CHRISTOPHER HART (Thing in The Addams Family Trilogy, Idle Hands, World Famous Magician, Columbo)! Get ready to be utterly enchanted and a little bit creeped out. This week we dive into Hollywood magic, movie-set secrets, and the art of illusion as we welcome a true industry icon to the show. He is a world-famous illusionist, a prestigious member of the Magic Castle, and possesses quite literally one of the most recognizable hands in cinematic history. We are beyond thrilled to welcome the legendary CHRISTOPHER HART to the studio! If you grew up loving family movies, Christopher's work is deeply woven into your childhood. As the man behind Thing in all three live-action Addams Family films, he brought an unbelievable amount of personality, wit, and charm to a character without ever showing his face. He sits down with the us to talk about the sheer wonder and timeless allure of magic, his personal favorite magicians who inspired his journey, and what it actually takes to bring an iconic, disembodied hand to life on the silver screen. From landing the coveted role to sharing incredible behind-the-scenes stories from the Addams Family sets, this is a masterclass in movie magic you don't want to miss! But the finger-snapping fun doesn't stop there! Chris also dives into his transition over to the horror-comedy genre, where he traded the lovable Addams family companion for a menacing, bloodthirsty appendage in the cult classic Idle Hands. He shares what it was like creating a totally twisted villainous hand, including the scoop on that unforgettable, chaotic scene featuring punk rock icons The Offspring! Then, Jonathan Grabs the Mic and Unlocks Magic! Keeping the mystical vibes rolling, Jonathan stops by the magic shop of memory lane to dust off some long-forgotten magic television specials that used to glue us to the screen. He also shares a hilarious personal tale about performing magic for a local Little League championship, and rounds things out with a fantastic breakdown of family-friendly magic movies that are perfect for your next weekend marathon! Grab your top hats, dust off your spellbooks, and give a big, high-five welcome! So enjoy the Nostalgia, the Magic, the Wonder, and the Memories with The DizRadio Show "A Pop Culture Celebrity Guest Show"!

Episode 224 gives you back-to-back "Addams Family" themed episodes! This week on Ready 2 Retro, we're diving into 1993's "Addams Family Values"— the sequel that somehow gets even weirder, funnier and arguably better!Returning once again is our spooky buddy, Nic Cowan, and he helps Max and Chelsea dig into the history behind the film, revisit some of their all-time favorite lines and tackle an important question: Which version of the Addams Family moive reigns supreme? This episode is so filled with so much fun that it would even make any camper from Camp Chippewa jealous!Nic Cowan:@undeadguyThe Surf Ninjas Shopready2retro.com

Beyond the Gun – Creative Partnerships There's a distinct difference between being cast as an actor in a theatre production and working as a creative collaborator and developing your own work. This session examines how actors can step into producing and move into the developmental life of a project—contributing ideas, shaping the script, and influencing the work as it develops. Actors such as Ngoc Phan, Nicholas Brown, Julia Robertson, Amy Ingram, and Cameron Hurry have expanded their work into producing, writing and directing. This conversation explores how actors can evolve their practice, build a reputation for meaningful creative input, and become initiators and collaborators whose contributions extend beyond performance into the heart of the work itself. Amy is a multi-award-winning actor and theatre-maker based in Brisbane, later this year she will appear in the return season of Pride And Prejudice at QTC and the World Premiere of Suzie Miller's Strong Is The New Pretty touring Nationally. Ngọc is an award-winning actor, director and playwright. Her diverse theatre work includes Vietgone, Boy Swallows Universe and Good Grief (Queensland Theatre), Laurinda (MT), Love Stories (Brisbane Festival/QPAC), Horizon (Playlab Theatre), Medea (Shock Therapy Productions), We're All Gonna Die, Away, A Streetcar Named Desire and Stunt Double (The Farm). Julia Robertson is a multidisciplinary theatre maker, director and actor living and working on Gadigal land. She is the Artistic Director of the award-winning devising group Little Eggs Collective, a recipient of the Ensemble Theatre's Sandra Bates Award for Directing, and a Young Artists Program finalist with Opera Australia. Julia was recently nominated for Best Direction of a Musical at the Sydney Theatre Awards for The Producers (Hayes Theatre Co. / Riverside Parramatta). In 2026, Julia will direct the premiere production of STELLA, The Musical in Melbourne, as well as The Addams Family for Hayes Theatre Co. She will also work as Movement Director on 84 Charing Cross Road for the Ensemble Theatre, and as Assistant Director on Suzie Miller's new work Strong Is the New Pretty for Sydney Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre and Brisbane Festival. Nicholas Brown is a NIDA graduate who has forged an impressive international career across film, television and theatre as an actor, writer, singer, songwriter and leading man with major roles in Bollywood films, Australian drama and as a much-loved ABC Play School presenter. He plays a lead role in upcoming Alex Proyas science fiction musical film R.U.R. As a playwright, Nicholas won the prestigious Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting in the 2024 NSW Premier's Literary Awards for his play Sex Magick which was performed in the 2023 Griffin Theatre season. It was also nominated for a 2025 AWGIE and a 2024 Sydney Theatre Award. Cameron Hurry is a Brisbane based actor and writer. He completed his actor training at the University of Southern Queensland. Cameron's theatre credits include: Pride and Prejudice (Queensland Theatre Company), Unconditional (Playlab Theatre), Three Little Words (Ad Astra), Twelfth Night (4MBS Brisbane Shakespeare Festival), Dance Nation (THAT Production Company), Grand Horizons (PIP Theatre), Frankenstein (Fractal Theatre), Macbeth (JUTE Theatre), Picnic at Hanging Rock (Brisbane Arts Theatre), and Aladdin and the Mysterious Magical Lamp, Jane Eyre, Little Women, Shadowlands (Harvest Rain Theatre Company). His film and television credits include: Spit, Boy Swallows Universe, The Bureau of Magical Things, Young Rock, and Wanted. Cameron has received the Matilda Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role – Independent Production (Grand Horizons) and has a proud member of MEAA for 20 years.

Josh and Dru kick off Pride with the L in LGBT with 1936's Dracula's Daughter. From wiki: “Dracula's Daughter is a 1936 American vampire film produced by Universal Pictures as a sequel to the 1931 film Dracula. Directed by Lambert Hillyer from a screenplay by Garrett Fort, the film stars Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden in the title role, and Marguerite Churchill, and features, as the only cast member to return from the original, Edward Van Sloan – although his character's name was altered from "Van Helsing" to "Von Helsing".”Also discussed: The Watcher in the Woods, All About Eve, Backrooms, By Design, Universal Monster Movies, Hays Code, Daughters of Darkness, The Addams Family, Sunset Blvd, Bonnie & Clyde, Piranesi, House of Leaves, Son of Dracula, and more. NEXT WEEK: Stranger by the Lake (2013) Bloodhaus: https://www.bloodhauspod.com/https://www.instagram.com/bloodhauspod/https://letterboxd.com/bloodhaus/Drusilla Adeline:https://www.sisterhydedesign.com/https://letterboxd.com/sisterhyde/https://www.instagram.com/sister__hyde/Joshua Conkelhttps://www.joshuaconkel.com/https://www.instagram.com/joshua_conkel/https://letterboxd.com/JoshuaConkel/  

To celebrate the 79th Tony Awards tomorrow, we are joined by the great Broadway writer, producer and actor, Rick ELICE. You know Rick's work: Jersey Boys, The Addams Family, Peter and the Starcatcher, The Cher Show, Water for Elephants and Smash, among many others. This is a conversation about the theater, the creative life and why they matter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Father-daughter film critics and podcast hosts Leonard Maltin and Jessie Maltin team with Turner Classic Movies for the essential guide to 25 family-friendly classic films, paired with delicious and simple recipes to make movie-watching a next-level experience for all ages.Family Movie Night Menus is the ultimate guide to family-friendly classic movie viewing. In this volume, bestselling author and critic Leonard Maltin teams with his daughter and Maltin on Movies podcast host Jessie Maltin to help introduce classics in the same way he did with his own family: by sharing the best of the best that's fit for the enjoyment of a range of ages from pre-school on up. And just like in the Maltin household, enhancing the experience with easy dishes-from snacks to entrees and desserts-inspired by the films to make together only adds to the experience.Each entry includes a film profile filled with behind-the-scenes stories about the production, stars, and filmmakers; moments to watch (or watch out) for; recommended further viewing; and a recipe inspired by the film to make together before the credits roll and enjoy while watching. The movies span one silent entry (The Kid), through classic horror (Bride of Frankenstein), to legendary stories (The Wizard of Oz), musicals (The Sound of Music), can't miss adventures (Star Wars), and modern must-sees (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone).Other featured titles include: Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), Singin' in the Rain (1952), To Kill a Mockingbird (1963), Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1973), E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982), Princess Bride (1987), Addams Family (1991), The Secret Garden (1993), Enchanted (2007), and more!

Legendary costume designer Colleen Atwood joins Voice of Costume for a fascinating look inside the gothic fashion and visual storytelling of Netflix's Wednesday. She explains how costume design begins with reality, then shifts slightly into the strange, stylized world of Tim Burton—where clothing must feel imaginative while remaining true to the character wearing it. Colleen explores Wednesday Addams' emotional evolution, her growing friendship with Enid Sinclair, and how costumes subtly express isolation, connection, and personal growth. She reveals how Wednesday's deliberately limited black-and-white palette creates opportunities to experiment with silhouette, texture, movement, function, and tonal contrast—especially during action sequences and the spectacular Venetian gala. The conversation also dives into Enid's deepening color palette, Morticia Addams' sculptural wardrobe, red-lined sleeves, Day of the Dead embroidery, and how Catherine Zeta-Jones' dance background helps bring dramatic costumes to life. Colleen discusses her longtime collaboration with Tim Burton, her obsession with fit and construction, and why costumes must look compelling from every camera angle—not merely beautiful from the front. A must-listen for fans of Wednesday, Jenna Ortega, Tim Burton, gothic fashion, the Addams Family, Netflix behind-the-scenes stories, costume design, and cinematic world-building. The "Voice of Costume" is the first podcast created between working costume designers sharing stories, inspiration, struggles, and insights into the creative career of costume design. A behind-the-scenes podcast to showcase the voices of Costume Designers around the world. Listen in on this inspirational, one-on-one conversation with Catherine Baumgardner. Audio available wherever you get podcasts. https://voiceofcostume.com/

Father-daughter film critics and podcast hosts Leonard Maltin and Jessie Maltin team with Turner Classic Movies for the essential guide to 25 family-friendly classic films, paired with delicious and simple recipes to make movie-watching a next-level experience for all ages.Family Movie Night Menus is the ultimate guide to family-friendly classic movie viewing. In this volume, bestselling author and critic Leonard Maltin teams with his daughter and Maltin on Movies podcast host Jessie Maltin to help introduce classics in the same way he did with his own family: by sharing the best of the best that's fit for the enjoyment of a range of ages from pre-school on up. And just like in the Maltin household, enhancing the experience with easy dishes-from snacks to entrees and desserts-inspired by the films to make together only adds to the experience.Each entry includes a film profile filled with behind-the-scenes stories about the production, stars, and filmmakers; moments to watch (or watch out) for; recommended further viewing; and a recipe inspired by the film to make together before the credits roll and enjoy while watching. The movies span one silent entry (The Kid), through classic horror (Bride of Frankenstein), to legendary stories (The Wizard of Oz), musicals (The Sound of Music), can't miss adventures (Star Wars), and modern must-sees (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone).Other featured titles include: Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), Singin' in the Rain (1952), To Kill a Mockingbird (1963), Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1973), E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982), Princess Bride (1987), Addams Family (1991), The Secret Garden (1993), Enchanted (2007), and more!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-unplugged-totally-uncut--994165/support.

Welcome to the Season 7 Finale of Decorating the Set: From Hollywood to Your Home with Beth Kushnick! For our Season 7 Finale, Beth welcomes her long time friend, Emmy-award winning director and executive producer, Frederick E. O. Toye. Fred has been a part of some of the BEST television made in the last 25 years. In addition to being a treasure trove of stories and Hollywood history, he was a delightful guest. A big thank you to Fred for donating his time to speak to us.  Thank you for listening to Season 7 of Decorating the Set and we can’t wait to see you for Season 8!  The Interview with Fred begins at Time Code: 3:50 Join the Decorating the Set Community by subscribing to our Official Facebook Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/decoratingthesetpodcast)! Interact with Beth, Caroline, Producer Mike, and all of the DTS listeners! GUEST BIO: FREDERICK E. O. TOYE   Frederick E. O. Toye is an American television director and executive producer. Toye made the move into television directing after working for five years as a production assistant and a decade as an editor. This background in the editing room gave him a solid sense of how to tell a clear story, which helped considerably in his work on such complex series as Chuck (NBC 2007–12) and Fringe (Fox 2008–13). Los Angeles native Toye got his first screen credit working as a production assistant on Billy Crystal’s 1989 HBO special Midnight Train to Moscow, before moving into visual effects on films like The Addams Family (1991) and then working as an assistant editor on hit films such as Forrest Gump (1994) and Men in Black (1997). As a TV director, Toye cut his teeth on network TV action and sci-fi thrillers like Alias, Lost, and Fringe and has also worked on character-rich dramas such as The Good Wife. That experience running the gamut between drama genres served Toye well in recent years, directing episodes of genre series like Westworld, Snowpiercer, Watchmen and The Walking Dead. In 2024, his prolific output included The Boys and Fallout. The same year, Toye received acclaim for his work on Shōgun, helming four episodes of the Emmy-winning FX drama series, including season finale “A Dream of a Dream.” The season’s penultimate episode, “Crimson Sky,” earned Toye his first-ever Emmy for outstanding directing, which was also Toye’s first-ever career nomination in the category. Toye followed it up by directing the pilot episode of Prime Video's prequel series The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, starring Chris Pratt and Taylor Kitsch. He set to direct the opening episodes of the Prime Video series Bloodaxe and God of War. ### For over 35 years, Beth Kushnick has created character-driven settings for countless award-winning television series and feature films. As a Set Decorator, she’s composed visuals that both capture and enhance any story. Now, she wants to help you capture and enhance YOUR story. Join Beth and her co-host, Caroline Daley, each week as they go behind the scenes of Hollywood's magic, and give you approachable, yet sophisticated tips to realize the space that best expresses who you are. ### Follow Beth Kushnick on Social Media:  Instagram: @bethkushnick Twitter: @bethkushnick Website: BethKushnick.com Beth is the Decorator By Your Side and now, you can shop her Amazon Store! CLICK HERE! Follow Caroline Daley on Social Media: Twitter: @Tweet2Caroline Website: PodClubhouse.com ### Credits: “Giraffes” by Harrison Amer, licensed by Pod Clubhouse. This is an original production of Pod Clubhouse Productions, LLC. Produced, engineered and edited at Pod Clubhouse Studios. For more information, visit our Website.

It's time to get creepy and kooky as Ready 2 Retro celebrates the 35th Anniversary of "The Addams Family" (1991). Returning to R2R is Nic Cowan as he brings his love for all things spooky and shares why this movie was so influential for him growing up! In the episode we cover the origins of the asentric family, history of the film and why the Addams Family still holds up to today's standards. This episode is guranteed to be "a review to die for" because Ready 2 Retro puts the "fun" in funeral!Nic Cowan:@undeadguyThe Surf Ninjas Shopready2retro.com

This episode of The Rizzuto Show spirals beautifully from wholesome weekend recap into full-blown suburban psychological warfare. You know… like every responsible daily comedy show should.Lern kicks things off with an annual hibachi pilgrimage complete with onion volcanoes, airborne chicken, mysterious yum yum sauce addiction, and a vegetarian teenager accidentally catching meat in her mouth out of pure social pressure. Honestly, hibachi is less “restaurant” and more “public performance art with teriyaki.”Meanwhile, Rizz discovers that the neighborhood children may officially think he's the mean old guy on the hill. After overhearing kids whisper “those are Mr. Rizzuto's dogs,” the gang conducts a full emotional autopsy on how years of HOA complaints, dirt bike feuds, poop-bag incidents, and aggressive radio storytelling may have turned him into the suburban cryptid of his subdivision.The solution? Obviously a bounce house festival called “Curmudgeon Fest 2026.”The crew also dives deep into the newest suburban panic sweeping America: grown adults stampeding Five Below stores to hoard “Neatos” and “dumpling” squishy toys before actual children can buy them. Tiny kids crying. Parents fighting collectors. Black Friday energy in Wildwood. Humanity thriving.Elsewhere in the chaos:Rafe accidentally spends his Saturday bonding emotionally with a stained-glass artisan named Dave while listening to Foghat in a basement.Lern delivers a passionate iced coffee complaint that somehow becomes a full societal discussion.Rizz warns everyone about a terrifying new AI Uber scam involving fake mess photos and cleanup fees.The gang discusses documentaries built entirely from bodycam footage and social media evidence.They debate whether single dads hosting sleepovers has unfairly become suspicious in modern parenting culture.Plus stories about weird dads from the 90s, mooning cops, NA beers, and the exact emotional danger of getting insulted while trapped in an Adirondack chair.Basically this episode has: neighborhood drama hibachi lore emotional damage weird toy economics suburban anthropology middle-aged confusion and one very wounded Blackstone grillIf you like sarcastic chaos, ridiculous conversations, and a group of adults turning tiny life moments into a full sociology documentary, congratulations — this daily comedy show remains medically unsafe for productivity.And yes… somebody absolutely compared Rizz to the Addams Family neighbor everyone warns their kids about.Another totally normal episode of your favorite daily comedy show.Follow The Rizzuto Show → linktr.ee/rizzshow for more from your favorite daily comedy show.Connect with The Rizzuto Show Comedy Podcast online → 1057thepoint.com/RizzShowHear The Rizz Show daily on the radio at 105.7 The Point | Hubbard Radio in St. Louis, MO.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dan and Brian are joined by their friend Gavin and his lawyer father Kevin to discuss the courtroom comedy classic My Cousin Vinny. Join as they discuss their own courtroom experiences, the accuracies and inaccuracies of My Cousin Vinny's depiction of a jury trial, whether or not the film's farce gags work, the remarkable casting and lineup of performances, whether Marisa Tomei deserved that Oscar, The Munsters vs. The Addams Family, and the what the most accurate courtroom movie is. Dan's movie reviews: http://thegoodsreviews.com/ Subscribe, join the Discord, and find us on Letterboxd: http://thegoodsfilmpodcast.com/

390 Sean Cassidy Interview, Son of Ted CassidySteven had the pleasure to talk with Sean Cassidy about his father, Ted Cassidy. Ted Cassidy had worked on many movies and TV shows, and is most famous for being Lurch, on The Addams Family. Sean and I not only talk about his dad, but we also discuss what he has been doing. I hope that you enjoy our chat!Please visit the Son of Lurch website at:tedcassidyofficial.comFor more information about Monster Bash go to www.monsterbash.us.Please send feedback to DieCastMoviePodcast@gmail.com or leave us a message on our Facebook page.

Father-daughter film critics and podcast hosts Leonard Maltin and Jessie Maltin team with Turner Classic Movies for the essential guide to 25 family-friendly classic films, paired with delicious and simple recipes to make movie-watching a next-level experience for all ages.Family Movie Night Menus is the ultimate guide to family-friendly classic movie viewing. In this volume, bestselling author and critic Leonard Maltin teams with his daughter and Maltin on Movies podcast host Jessie Maltin to help introduce classics in the same way he did with his own family: by sharing the best of the best that's fit for the enjoyment of a range of ages from pre-school on up. And just like in the Maltin household, enhancing the experience with easy dishes-from snacks to entrees and desserts-inspired by the films to make together only adds to the experience.Each entry includes a film profile filled with behind-the-scenes stories about the production, stars, and filmmakers; moments to watch (or watch out) for; recommended further viewing; and a recipe inspired by the film to make together before the credits roll and enjoy while watching. The movies span one silent entry (The Kid), through classic horror (Bride of Frankenstein), to legendary stories (The Wizard of Oz), musicals (The Sound of Music), can't miss adventures (Star Wars), and modern must-sees (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone).Other featured titles include: Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), Singin' in the Rain (1952), To Kill a Mockingbird (1963), Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1973), E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982), Princess Bride (1987), Addams Family (1991), The Secret Garden (1993), Enchanted (2007), and more!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-unplugged-totally-uncut--994165/support.

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens launches a new semi-regular series, Produced and Abandoned, spotlighting films that were completed but largely discarded by their distributors. First up: the bizarre and nearly forgotten 1980 horror-comedy Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype, a very loose retelling of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," starring Oliver Reed in a dual role, and written and directed by Charles B. Griffith, the legendary screenwriter behind The Little Shop of Horrors. Produced by Cannon Films, the movie was rushed from concept to completion in just a few months, only to practically vanish from theaters. Edward explores the film's wild production history, from Griffith's original comedy concept and failed attempt to cast Dick Van Dyke to Oliver Reed's last-minute involvement and the movie's mysterious disappearance after only a handful of theatrical screenings. Plus: the connections to cult favorites like Condorman and The Apple, the strange international afterlife of the film on VHS, and why forgotten studio castoffs like Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype still deserve rediscovery decades later. ----more---- Transcript From Los Angeles, California, the entertainment capital of the world. It's The 80s Movie Podcast. I'm your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today. Today, on this 137th episode of the show, I'm going to be starting a new semi-regular series called Produced and Abandoned, that brings movies that were made and barely exhibited back to the spotlight, if even only for a moment. One of the many advantages of having a non-linear podcast like this one is that I, as the host and the researcher and the writer, can zag unexpectedly at a moment's notice when I feel compelled to. And that happened to me this week. For a film historian like myself who focuses on movies from a specific discipline like, say, from the 1980s, the internet is a veritable cornucopia of people who share in some way many of your same passions, and you will find them doing a lot of the legwork unintentionally for you, or pointing you in a direction you didn't know you needed to go. In 2026, I. Edward Havens, still have an active Facebook account, which I mainly use to keep in touch with my friends and family who are scattered throughout the globe. I have curated my feed so that the non-relative crazy uncles and aunts of the world, with their tinfoil hats and indecipherable conspiracy theories about the strangest subjects, do not reach me. So it's not as toxic a space as many people know it to be. Some time last week, thanks to filmmaker Adam Rifkin, I learned about a private Facebook group called Old Movie Newspaper and Print Ads from Around the World. Nearly a century of digital newspaper clippings, mostly from the United States and mostly from the 1970s and 1980s. If, for example, if you wanted to know how many theaters the god awful 1988 Joe Piscopo horror/action/comedy film Dead Heat opened at in Detroit in May of 1988, I can tell you that now. It was twenty one theaters, by the way. Including four drive ins. And while perusing this private Facebook group of insane movie nerds, my kind of people, I saw an ad for an Oliver Reed movie I had never heard of before, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hype. Well, the episode that I had been working on, that I've been tinkering with for damn more than two years now, was moved to the backburner once again, for the time being. I had to learn more about this movie, and I had to learn about it right then and there, because that's who I am. At one thirty in the morning, with a toddler ready to wake up in five and a half hours. I was exhausted, but at least I was going to get the ball rolling. And what I discovered is just how amazingly quick this film went from concept to writing, to production to completion. In an interview published in the 1997 book "BackStory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1960s," the film's writer and director, Charles B. Griffith, described how the film came together. The title, originally "Doctor Feelgood and Mr. Hype," was one of several joke titles and ideas that Griffith had come up with for an expected meeting with Francis Ford Coppola about getting a movie made in the late 1970s. Griffith's own pitch for the film was that a hippie invents a new drug that turns its users into advertising executives. It was more meant to be an opening icebreaker joke than a real movie. After filming the movie Up From the Depths in the Philippines in 1978, Griffith would find himself talking to Cannon Films co-president Menahem Golan, who wanted Griffith to write a screenplay for The Happy Hooker Goes to Hollywood. While that film would get made, it would get made without Griffith ever signing on to it. But the two men would continue to talk regularly, as Griffith had been a roommate of Golan's when the Israeli filmmaker first arrived in America. And during one of those talks around New Year's Day of 1980s, Golan asked Griffith, who had just finished a two decade long, two dozen screenplay working relationship with Roger Corman, what he wanted to do next, Griffith would blurt out, for whatever reason, the title and pitch for "Doctor Feelgood and Mr. Hype," and Golan loved the idea. He was ready to put $750,000 into the production, provided Griffith had the film ready in four months... Ready to screen at the Cannes Film Market in four months, that is. Now, Griffith hadn't written a script for "Doctor Feelgood" at this point. All he had was that very basic one line concept, because it was never meant to be an actual film. Breaking down his timeline, Griffith figured he had three weeks to write and prep the film, a month to shoot, and two weeks to edit the footage. Of the $750,000 budget. Griffith would get twenty five thousand dollars to write and another twenty five thousand dollars to direct. As mentioned a moment ago, Griffith was a veteran of working with Roger Corman, so getting a shooting script ready in three weeks shouldn't have been a problem. Griffith, after all, had famously written the screenplay for The Little Shop of Horrors in just two days, and Griffith would completely change the direction of the story as well as the title. Cannon's own press release for the film would sum up the new story thusly... Horror spoof. Very loosely based on the R. L. Stevenson story, Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Lovable yet unattractive, chiropodist doctor Henry Heckle takes an overdose of a slimming drug, believing it will kill him. The drug transforms him and he becomes handsome and slim. He seduces several women, all of whom recoil from him when they see the ugliness in his eyes. The drug begins to wear off, and he takes a second dose, and he begins to terrorize the local community. Finally, he realizes that his love, Coral, loves him for himself, preferring the physically ugly but the spiritually beautiful. At first, Griffith tried to get the legendary Dick Van Dyke to play the titular characters, but Mr. Van Dyke was booked for all of 1980, appearing in the title role in a Broadway revival and U.S. tour of The Music Man. So he would turn to his second choice, who was, naturally as one would expect as a second choice to be for the wiry, immensely talented singer, dancer and actor Dick Van Dyke, the incredibly talented but somewhat pudgy, hirsute and not exactly known as a singer and dancer, Oliver Reed. By 1980, Mr. Reed had lost a lot of his star luster that made him an unusual heartthrob throughout the late 60s and early 70s. Not that he wasn't working on a regular basis. In fact, when Reed agreed to take the lead roles here, Griffith would have exactly one week to work with the legendary actor, who had a tiny hole in his schedule before he needed arrive in Paris to begin production on Disney's Condorman. That wouldn't be a problem for Griffith, who was used to dealing with massive production changes at the last minute. Reed's casting was announced to the press in late February, after Griffith had already cast Catherine Mary Stewart, who had recently finished her first film role in Menahem Golan's The Apple, as Coral, the beautiful young woman who falls for Heckyl, as well as Corman regulars Mel Welles and Dick Miller, and Jackie Coogan, the child star of Charlie Chaplin's The Kid Who found a renewed fame as Uncle Fester on the beloved 1960s television sitcom The Addams Family. The film would also be the first film for diminutive actor Tony Cox, best known as Marcus from the Bad Santa movies. Filming was scheduled to begin on March 3rd in Los Angeles. The schedule front loaded to get everything they needed from Reid before they lost him. But just before filming began, Griffith would lose his leading lady. I can't find out why Catherine Mary Stewart left the film before production began, but Griffith would find her replacement in Sonny Johnson. Johnson certainly had more film experience than Stewart, having appeared on an episode of Charlie's Angels, and featured in Bill Murray's Where the Buffalo Roam and in Animal House... although her scenes in the latter film would end up on the proverbial cutting room floor. Johnson would go on to co-star alongside Jennifer Beals in 1983's Flashdance, before sadly passing away in June of 1984 at the age of thirty of a ruptured aneurysm. She would join the cast the day before production began. Despite the legendary tales of Reed and his love of debauchery and excessive drinking, there are no contemporary reports of him being anything but an absolute gentleman on and off the set during his time with the production. The only issue Griffith had with the actor was that Reed had a fantastic take on heckle with a brilliant New York accent and sophistication. But, for Hyde, he would be slow and ponderous. You know, like the stereotypes of Oliver Reed. Busy with production, Griffith never noticed that in the Hollywood press, Cannon Films had, in promoting the 17 films they'd be selling at the Cannes Film Festival's market in early May, been telling the press that the budget for Dr. Heckyl was not $750,000, but $3,000,000. A not unusual mood for producers trying to get bigger sales from foreign markets. But sure enough, Griffith would have a 99 minute movie fully edited by Skip Schoolnik, whose next editing job would be on Halloween 2, and a musical score by Richard Band, ready for its first Cannes Film Market screening on May 11th. The film would screen a total of 8 times in 11 days, although there aren't any reports of how many countries cannon might have sold the film to during those two weeks. From all contemporary appearances, Cannon was preparing to open the film in the United States on October 10th, a date seemingly picked because Oliver Reed would be done with Condorman and not due on the set of his next film, Tobe Hooper's Venom, until the end of October. And as would be the norm in 1980, Cannon would prepare a sneak preview of the film to gauge audience reaction. On Friday, July 18th,1980, Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype would have a sneak preview at the Nickelodeon Theater in Boston, and according to the person who posted the image in the Movie Ads Facebook group, that would be the only paying public screening of the film, that it would be shelved forever from theatrical screening ,and banished to an otherwise ignoble premiere on VHS some years later. And while that is mostly true, it's not exactly one hundred percent true. I was able to find at least two actual theatrical release play dates, both opening on that same July 18th as the Boston sneak preview, at the Golden Mile Twin and the Imperial 6 in Toronto, two evening shows a day at the Golden Mile and five daily shows at the Imperial 6. The only contemporary hint as to how the film played in Toronto was that both screens dropped the film after a single week. Cannon would continue to promote and show the movie at various film festivals and markets around the globe, including at the Montreal Film Festival in late August 1980, where Menachem Golan's crazy disco sci-fi musical The Apple was screening in competition. And in an August 26th, 1980 article about Cannon Films in The Hollywood Reporter, it would be stated that Dr. Heckyl was one of eight movies Cannon was still planning to release theatrically before the end of the year. Except that never ended up happening. Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype does not appear to have ever played in any cinema outside of, maybe, one screening at a film festival in Barcelona on June 8th, 1981, but I can't find anything about this screening outside of a listing on the IMDb's Release info page. The film would start showing up on VHS tapes around the world, with titles like Experiência Fatal in Brazil, Boyfriend and Wild in Greece, Dr. Hekiru to Mr. Haipu in Japan. And my personal favorite, I'm Ugly, But I Want to Conquer in Hungary. In May of 2026, one can find the movie available for free with ads on the Tubi platform, as well as a pirated copy on the most popular English language video sharing platform. I might sit down one day and watch it, but as I said on the previous episode, I have a lot of plans for this podcast. Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again, hopefully, real soon. Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, https://the80smoviepodcast.com/, for extra materials about Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype. The 80s Movie Podcast has been researched, written, narrated, and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment. Thank you again. Good night.

Balassa Krisztián karmester, zenei rendező, akivel az Art-Színtér új nagyszabású produkciójáról, a West Endtől a Broadwayig című zenés utazásról mesél. A Budapesti Kongresszusi Központban látható előadás egy estére London West Endjének és New York Broadway-jének világát hozza el Budapestre. Olyan legendás musicalek dalai szólalnak meg magyar nyelven, amelyek közül több itthon ritkán vagy egyáltalán nem kerül színpadra ebben a formában, az Oroszlánkirálytól az Aladdinon és a Herkulesen át az Addams Family és az Eastwicki boszorkányok világáig. Az Art-Színtér produkciójában kivételes szereposztás áll színpadra. Kardffy Aisha, Kerényi Miklós Máté, Szabó P. Szilveszter, Náray Erika, Kocsis Dénes, Serbán Attila, Nádasi Veronika, Vágó Zsuzsi, Szulák Andrea, Mészáros Árpád Zsolt, Janza Kata és Cseh Dávid Péter idézik meg a musicalirodalom nagy pillanatait, miközben a hangzásvilágot a Szolnoki Szimfonikus Zenekar emeli ünnepi méretűvé, Balassa Krisztián vezényletével. Beszélgetünk arról, mit jelent karmesterként egy ilyen sokszínű estét összefogni, hogyan lehet egymás mellé helyezni grandiózus musicalrészleteket, lírai szólódalokat és lendületes táncbetéteket úgy, hogy a közönség valóban egy nagy ívű utazás részese legyen. Szóba kerül a zenei rendezés felelőssége, a szimfonikus hangzás ereje, és az is, hogyan találkozik a színház, a koncertélmény, a koreográfia, a jelmez és a modern színpadtechnika egyetlen estén. A West Endtől a Broadwayig komplex színházi élmény, amelynek célja, hogy a közönség úgy érezze, egy este alatt bejárta a világ leghíresebb zenés színházait, miközben ki sem mozdult Budapestről. A Sláger FM-en minden este 22 órakor a kultúráé a főszerep S. Miller András az egyik oldalon, a másikon pedig a térség kiemelkedő színházi kulturális, zenei szcena résztvevői Egy óra Budapest és Pest megye aktuális kult történeteivel. Sláger KULT – A természetes emberi hangok műsora

This Way Out's Brian DeShazor talks with Out Opera and Broadway actor Zachary James about his roles in Philip Glass' Akhnaten, Broadway, and being out on stage. In addition to his current role as Amenhotep III in the Olivier and Grammy-Award winning production of Akhnatan, he's played roles as Lurch in The Addams Family on Broadway, Abraham Lincoln in The Perfect American, Hades in the West End production of Hadestown. James was named one of the 30 most influential LGBTQIA+ artists in Opera by Operawire. And in NewsWrap: Hungary's anti-LGBTQ law ruled illegal as a new leader faces pressure to reform, the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a religious rights clash over queer families, Australia lifts blood donation restrictions for gay and bi men, Tennessee declares “Nuclear Family Month” to counter Pride, a trans custody case sparks international intervention, and a Trump photo-op goes off-script. Reported this week by Michael LeBeau and Michael Taylor Gray. Those stories and more when you find “This Way Out" for the week of April 27, 2026. Join our family of listener-donors today at thiswayout.org/donate/.

Support the show and receive your link to the private discord: ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcastBonus Episode of the show coming at you featuring two local portland players and friends who met through the discord for this show, Rob and Miggy! They recorded this episode to tell everybody why they love Pat Lawlor and his 1992 game "The Addams Family" so much.You can hear the excitement in their voices and no, the playback has not been sped up, they are just naturally that hyped up all the time! Enjoy!Support the show

Recorded for release W/C 20th April 2026 This week Dapper Laughs chats about his charity football match, we find out about the Wolverhampton Film Festival, Gary from Rugeley Musical Theatre prepares to become Fester in the Addams Family, Rob Reynolds lets us know about the latest album from Lake and we talk Rambling with Wayne Perks. We also pay tribute top Robert Bowers who passed away at the weekend.

Dave and Eric tackle the "trilogy" of Addams Family movies, including the dumb Made for TV one with Tim Curry: The Addams Family (1991) Addams Family Values (1993) Addams Family Reunion (1998)

Dave and Eric tackle the “trilogy” of Addams Family movies, including the dumb Made for TV one with Tim Curry:The Addams Family (1991)Addams Family Values (1993)Addams Family Reunion (1998) The post Sequel Harder – The Addams Family first appeared on NEOZAZ.

This episode we are joined actor and Nashville recording artist, Rachel Potter! Rachel is known for her roles on Broadway as Wednesday in The Addams Family and Mistress in Evita. She has also appeared on The X Factor and The Search for the Next Elle Woods. Her album Stages is out now and can be streamed on all music streaming platforms. Now based in Nashville, Rachel has made it her mission to bring Broadway to Music City. In partnership with the Hutton Hotel, Rachel has brought her concert series Off Broadway at the Hutton to life. On April 18th the newest concert will be performed- That's So High School featuring Taylor Louderman, Elle McLemore and Jelani Remy! You can check out Rachel's instagram for more info on how to get tickets! (There is a prom to follow!)We speak with Rachel about how Off Broadway at the Hutton Hotel started and what she hopes the future of the concert series will bring, being a working mom, her start on Broadway and much more!

YDirector Barry Sonnenfeld joins Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden on this episode of the Really? no Really? Podcast with more true stories from his career as both a Hollywood director and cinematographer. Peter discovered a TED Talk that Barry did called How to Get People to Do What You Want, that was fascinating, funny and very informative. Barry also has a new book out called, Best Possible Place, Worst Possible Time: True Stories from a Career in Hollywood, that's filled with fascinating stories spanning his whole career in Hollywood. From starting off as a cinematographer for the Coen Brothers to directing blockbuster movies like Men In Black, The Addams Family and Get Shorty. Barry will share some pretty entertaining stories. Some of our favorite stories include a scene from Get Shorty that needed to be cut for budget purposes but was also the head of MGM's favorite scene. Plus, you'll want to hear about his story working with Tommy Lee Jones and Rip Torn on Men In Black. They truly hated he each other. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On episode 340 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, Executive Editor Ryan McQuade is joined by AwardsWatch Editor-In-Chief Erik Anderson and contributors Mark Johnson, Karen Peterson, and Josh Parham to go back 35 years and take a look at the 64th Academy Awards, covering the films of 1991. On this retrospective, the AW team takes a look back in time to when the Oscars last rewarded a film for winning the "Big Five" awards, with The Silence of the Lambs taking home Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. In being only the third film in Oscar history to ever do that, and it being 35 years since it's big night, the wins for the film are historic, so the question would be for this episode, will The Silence of the Lambs stay a "Big Five" winner? In a wide ranging conversation, the Best Picture winner is mentioned alongside films The Prince of Tides, JFK, Beauty and the Beast, My Own Private Idaho, The Addams Family, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Cape Fear, Thelma & Louise, Boyz n the Hood, and more, as well as spicy, first time moment for the game that you'll want to listen to asap! In their in-depth discussion, the AW team talked about the film year of 1991, briefly discuss talk about The Silence of the Lambs as a Best Picture winner, and how that speaks to the legacy of their nominates and or wins, do an extensive conversation over the below the line categories and nominees for the year, and then the new version of the AW Shoulda Woulda Coulda game, where instead of individual replacements, they must decide as a group who the nominees and winners should be in the top eight categories. The rules of the game state they can only replace two of the nominees that year from each category, except in Best Picture, where the group could replace up to three films to make up the final set of five nominated films. Like past retrospective episodes, it was a fascinating, fun conversation including spirited debates, alliances, vote swinging, celebrating various movies, performances that aren't normally talked about and more that we all hope you enjoy. You can listen to The AwardsWatch Podcast wherever you stream podcasts, from iTunes, iHeartRadio, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music and more. You can also listen on the AW YouTube page. This podcast runs 2h32m. We will be back in next week for a review of Mother Mary, the latest film from director David Lowery. Till then, let's get into it. Music: "Modern Fashion" from AShamaleuvmusic (intro), "B-3" from BoxCat Games Nameless: The Hackers RPG Soundtrack (outro).

A two-season black-and-white sitcom leaves a 60-year shadow, a band logo becomes more famous than the band name, and a random music reference boomerangs back into your week at the perfect moment. That's the lane we love: pop culture history that feels like real life, where classic rock stories sit right next to TV theme songs and the little memories that make certain tracks impossible to forget.We start with The Addams Family and why the characters, jokes, and visuals still land. From there we follow the thread into TV music history with Vic Mizzy, including his connection to Green Acres, and we detour into some old-school Hollywood facts that make you hear those familiar themes a little differently.Then we go bigger on music culture: the origin of the Rolling Stones tongue and lips logo, how it first appeared in 1971, and what inspired it. We also tip our hat to creators who don't always get the spotlight, like Chip Taylor (Wild Thing and Angel of the Morning) and arranger Ted Nichols, whose work helped define the sound of classic cartoons. Add a Minute With Jimmy on Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground's Exploding Plastic Inevitable, plus reflections on Bowie, The Police, Hall and Oates, and INXS, and you've got a packed nostalgia podcast built for curious music fans.If you like music history, classic rock deep dives, and the stories behind the sounds, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave us a review. What song instantly takes you back to a specific season of your life?Learn Something New orRemember Something OldPlease like and follow the Music in My Shoes Facebook and Instagram pagesReach out to us at musicinmyshoes@gmail.comSend us a one-way message. We can't answer you back directly, but it could be part of a future Music In My Shoes Mailbag!!!

Writer, journalist and pop culture expert Steve Cox has authored more than twenty books on film and television, including books about Johnny Carson, The Three Stooges, "The Addams Family," "I Dream of Jeannie," "The Munsters," "It's a Wonderful Life" and "The Wizard of Oz." This week, Steve joins Gibert and Frank for a lively (and then some) conversation about Larry Fine's lady-killing, the unappreciated comic timing of Fred Gwynne and “Grandpa” Al Lewis, and Abbott and Costello's influence on Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David. PLUS: A Munchkin suicide hoax! Mayor McCheese cleans up! Buddy Hackett enjoys a malted! And Frank attends a Stooge funeral! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Riki Lindhome is an, actor, comedian and musician whose career spans film, television and music. She got her first major break when Tim Robbins cast her in his hit play Embedded, before making her film debut in Million Dollar Baby, directed by Clint Eastwood. She has since appeared in a wide range of projects, includingas Dr. Valerie Kinbott in Wednesday on Netflix, Knives Out alongside Daniel Craig, The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family and Gilmore Girls, as well as films such as The Wolf of Snow Hollow. Alongside her on-screen work, Riki is an accomplished songwriter, writing for series including Scrubs, Duncanville and The Big Bang Theory, and contributing music to films like The LEGO Movie 2, The Addams Family and The SpongeBob Movie. She also earned an Emmy nomination for her song “Frozen Lullaby.” Riki co-created and starred in Comedy Central's Another Period and the series Garfunkel and Oates, based on her musical comedy duo with Kate Micucci. The duo has amassed over 80 million YouTube views, released three chart-topping comedy albums, and been recognised in the Comedy Hall of Fame. She is currently performing her sell-out show Dead Inside at Soho Theatre in London until the 18th of April .Riki Lindhome is our guest in episode 576 of My Time Capsule and chats to Michael Fenton Stevens about the five things she'd like to put in a time capsule; four she'd like to preserve and one she'd like to bury and never have to think about again .Tickets for Riki's Soho Theatre run available here - https://sohotheatre.com/events/riki-lindhome-dead-inside .Follow Riki Lindhome on Instagram: @rikilindhome .Follow My Time Capsule on Instagram: @mytimecapsulepodcast & Twitter/X & Facebook: @MyTCpod .Follow Michael Fenton Stevens on Twitter/X: @fentonstevens & Instagram @mikefentonstevens .Produced and edited by John Fenton-Stevens for Cast Off Productions .Music by Pass The Peas Music .Artwork by matthewboxall.com .This podcast is proud to be associated with the charity Viva! Providing theatrical opportunities for hundreds of young people .To support this podcast, get all episodes ad-free and a bonus episode every Wednesday of "My Time Capsule The Debrief', please sign up here - https://mytimecapsule.supercast.com. All money goes straight into the making of the podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The guys investigate whether The Addams Family and the Book of Daniel exist in the same universe. For franchise sake...

Kevin Chamberlin sits down to discuss the serendipitous nature of a forty year career that has spanned from the Jersey Shore to the heights of Broadway and the global reach of the Disney Channel. He shares the story of his first big laugh as Smee in Peter Pan, an experience he describes as a drug that instantly solidified his career path. Kevin also dives into the "Uncle Fester contract," a unique industry standard he inadvertently helped create during the development of The Addams Family, and reflects on the bittersweet experience of being the sole Tony nominee for shows that were otherwise struggling with critics. The conversation shifts to Kevin's modern evolution as a digital creator, where he has amassed a massive following on TikTok and Instagram. He opens up about finding a creative outlet during the pandemic and how he balances his theatrical roots with the fast paced world of social media branding. Kevin also gives a look behind the scenes of his current project, When Playwrights Kill, discussing the joy of playing a role that allows him to pull from decades of experience working with legendary directors while finally portraying a gay character on stage for the first time in his theatrical career. Kevin Chamberlin is a three time Tony Award nominee for his performances in Dirty Blonde, Seussical, and The Addams Family. His extensive Broadway credits include My Favorite Year, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Triumph of Love, Chicago, The Ritz, Disaster!, and Wicked. On screen, he is widely recognized for his work in Die Hard With a Vengeance, the film adaptation of The Prom, and for his long running role as Bertram on the Disney Channel series Jesse. He is currently starring in the world premiere of When Playwrights Kill in Boston. This episode is brought to you by WelcomeToTimeSquare.com, the billboard where you can be a star for a day. Connect with Kevin: Instagram: @chamberlin.kevin TikTok: @chamberlin_kevin Threads: @chamberlin.kevin Connect with The Theatre Podcast: Support the podcast on Patreon and watch video versions of the episodes: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/TheTheatrePodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@theatre_podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook.com/OfficialTheatrePodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TheTheatrePodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Alan's personal Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@alanseales⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email me at feedback@thetheatrepodcast.com. I want to know what you think. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Outer Realm welcomes Friend and Special Guest, Author Eric Vernor Date: March 26th, 2026 EP: 698 TOPIC: Eric will be talking about one of his numerous books " Vampire Cult Killer: The Real Story of Rod Ferrell" About the book: -Join the author of The World History of Vampires and Haunted Asylums (E.R. Vernor) on a journey into the mind of one of the country's youngest killers to be put on Death Row. Vampire Cult Killer is the true story of a young man whose life was spared by the Florida Courts. On November 25th, 1996, Rod Ferrell and Scott Anderson, two teenagers from Murray, Kentucky, broke into the home of Heather Wendorf. Ferrell then bludgeoned her middle-aged parents to death. Ferrell and Anderson then escaped with three teenage girls, one being Heather Wendorf herself. In 2010, the author was contacted by Sondra ‘Star' Gibson, Rod Ferrell's mother, who wanted the public to know her son's full story through never seen before original art, poems, and handwritten letters of the infamous killer. Reporters presented the public with stories of Sondra participating with her son in cult rituals and sacrifices. Vampire Cult Killer seeks to unravel the real story of Rod Ferrell. This book goes deeper than any other, and it contains the full transcripts of court cases, interviews, and photos of the killer from early childhood to present day. Also is included the full court cases, and the follow up examination of his case when the notorious killer went back to court petitioning for his release in 2019, when mental health experts testified during the resentencing hearings that vampire cult leader Rod Ferrell has changed. Contact for the show - theouterrealmcontact@gmail.com https://linktr.ee/michelledesrochers_ Please support us by Liking, Subscribing, Sharing and Commenting. Thank you all !!! About Eric: E.R. Vernor, CFO, co-owner and the founder of Dark Moon Press LLC, is an author and lecturer who has written over fifty books on popular culture. The content ranges from self-help topics such as finance to self-empowerment, academic books on popular culture from vampires and zombies to the Devil and the occult. He has also been a consultant for A&E Channel's Paranormal State. Busy now filming and the host & Executive Producer of Eerie America Travel Guide of the Macabre, an Addams Family travel show after the books to be released this coming fall. Where to Buy the Book: Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GHVT5JSP?ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_5058DMJNJ6TDGZM019WM&bestFormat=true f you enjoy the content on the channel, please support us by subscribing: Thank you All A formal disclosure: The opinions and information presented or expressed by guests on The Outer Realm Radio and Beyond The Outer Realm are not necessarily those of the TOR, BTOR Host, Sponsors, or the United Public Radio Network and its producers. Although the content may be interesting, it is deemed "For Entertainment Purposes" . We are always be respectful and courteous to all involved. Thank you, we appreciate you all! United Public Radio & UFO Paranormal Radio www.uprntalkradio.com

It's finally here... Baseball is back and no one is happier than Chris McMonigle as the Yankees are going to play ball! Plus, we find out that the Giants offered Matt Stafford $100 million dollars to join the team. We're inching closer to the first pitch of the 2026 season and the anticipation is rising, so let's get ices! Craig and C-Mac find out the details on the 9/9/9 challenge at the ballpark, and it sounds like a scam! Craig and C-Mac can't old back their laughter as they find out how "Thing" from the Addams Family is going to throw out the first pitch. Suzyn Waldman joins Craig & C-Mac to talk about opening day, Luis Gil's return to the rotation and if there are any concerns for the 2026 season. Plus, it's Wednesday which means the boys SPIN THAT WHEEL!

Craig and C-Mac can't old back their laughter as they find out how "Thing" from the Addams Family is going to throw out the first pitch. Suzyn Waldman joins Craig & C-Mac to talk about opening day, Luis Gil's return to the rotation and if there are any concerns for the 2026 season. Plus, it's Wednesday which means the boys SPIN THAT WHEEL!

Tony-nominee and TikTok sensation Kevin Chamberlin says kindness is the key to longevity. The When Playwrights Kill actor joins host Robert Peterpaul for a morning chat on The Art of Kindness to discuss: How kindness and authenticity built his legendary acting career from Wicked to Seussical to Addams Family. Going viral on TikTok years after his Disney Channel hit Jessie and embracing a whole new digital chapter. Surviving Broadway chaos, on-stage mishaps, and finding humor in it all. Why you should “let it ruin your breakfast, not your lunch.” The importance of finding one moment of joy every day—and much more! KEVIN CHAMBERLIN is a three-time Tony Award-nominated actor. Kevin is best known for his work on stage in Dirty Blonde, Seussical, and The Addams Family as well as on-camera in Disney Channel's “Jessie”. Following his time on “Jessie”, Kevin quickly rose to online prominence, accumulating an audience of 12 million engaged fans across social media platforms. Check out: WHEN PLAYWRIGHTS KILL Got kindness tips or stories? Please email us: ⁠artofkindnesspodcast@gmail.com⁠ Follow Kevin @chamberlin.kevin Follow us ⁠@artofkindnesspod⁠ / ⁠@robpeterpaul⁠ ⁠Support the show⁠! (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theaok) Music: "Awake" by Ricky Alvarez & "Sunshine" by Lemon Music Studio. We are supported by the Broadway Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bjorn joins us to talk about his many varied interests from music to drama to programming and robotics. He talks about being spotted on more than one occasion on different beaches around town and his new interest in Jazz music. He is also looking forward to new heights as he may be joining a lumberjack show at Grouse Mountain in the summer. Bjorn played Lurch, the butler, in Delview's production of the musical, "The Addams Family" and describes some of the backstory he created in order to make the role more interesting. There are plenty more stories in this episode with the always-fascinating Bjorn. Mr. Yuill joins us for this one with a brief intermission at the start of the episode as we search for the source of some bird chirping sounds. You have to listen to understand!

The boys snap, crackle, and creep their way through Addams Family Values this week. A Word of the Day has been chosen, but you'll have to listen closely, it's a secret. Each of us gets assigned our very own Addams Family name. Jacob takes a moment to air his grievances against generic Great Value products, which somehow feels very on brand for this episode. Plus many more spooky surprises lurking in the shadows. Don't let this episode FESTER in your queue. Give it a listen! Send a textSupport the showhttps://linktr.ee/thefirsthourpodcast

The hot topic of conversation at last weekends Game Developers Conference was the RAM shortage and the hot topic of conversation at this weekends Podcast Developers Conference will be the RIFF surplus on this episode of Filthy Casuals! We're chatting about dev kits going out for Project Helix, AI generated podcasts, The Addams Family (?) and reviewing Slay The Spire 2 and Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection!Get an exclusive 15% discount on Saily data plans! Use code FILTHY at checkout. Download Saily app or go to https://saily.com/filthy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today on Too Opinionated, we're joined by actress, comedian, writer, and creator Anastasia Washington, one of the stars of the horror-comedy anthology The Grind, premiering at the 2026 SXSW Film Festival. The Grind is a four-part horror-comedy anthology exploring the dark side of gig work, hustle culture, and late-stage capitalism. Anastasia plays multiple characters that connect the film's interconnected stories into one world, starring alongside James Paxton (Twisters), Christopher Marquette (Barry), James Urbaniak (Oppenheimer), and Rob Huebel (Transparent). The film has already generated buzz with festival selections including SXSW and the Chattanooga Film Festival. A Los Angeles native, Anastasia has been performing since the age of three and has built an impressive multi-hyphenate career as an actress, comedian, podcaster, writer, director, singer, and host. Her work includes:

Brad Oscar is a two-time Tony Award nominee for his performances on Broadway as Franz Liebkind in Mel Brooks' The Producers and as Thomas Nostradamus in Something Rotten!Brad has performed in more than 15 shows on Broadway, including being in the original casts of the stage version of Schmigadoon, Mrs. Doubtfire, Big Fish, Aspects of Love, and a show I know a little bit about called Jekyll & Hyde. He's performed in Wicked, Nice Work If You Can Get It, The Addams Family, and Spamalot. He's also starred in The Producers in both the West End and Las Vegas productions.National tours in which Brad has performed include: The Phantom of the Opera, Young Frankenstein, and, of course, Jekyll & Hyde. Off-Broadway, Brad has appeared in Little Shop of Horrors, Broadway Bounty Hunter, Sweeney Todd, and Forbidden Broadway. Stages he's worked on in America include: the Arena Stage, the Old Globe, the La Jolla Playhouse, the McCarter, Barrington Stage, and more.In film and on TV, you can find Brad on such shows as: Ghost Town, The Producers, Smash, The Good Wife, and three Law & Orders.

Screw Scream 7, watch this instead (on Shudder!)Follow Spooko on Insta: @_spooko_Join the Feel Bad Club on our discord: https://discord.gg/mJAJYCChGyAnd if you're keen for more Peach and Shag, check out our OTHER pod (it's about Gordon Ramsay): @peachandshagsnightmaremethodOh, and pls drop a review if you've been listening for a while!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bubble Pro, Carla from Ok, Real Quick! Is back and we're celebrating March Birthdays* with Raul Julia who was born on March 9th in San Juan, Puerto Rico. So today, we'll be discussing three of his films, Presumed Innocent, Street Fighter, and The Addams Family, with a bit of The Addams Family Values because we just had to. Plus so much more! You know how we get. Content Warnings for Presumed Innocent: sexual assault, battery, murder, misogyny, slut shaming, corruption within the legal system, homophobic slurs, ableism and racism. Content Warnings for Street Fighter: Jean-Claude Van Damme, racial stereotypes.   *In case you missed it, this episode was supposed to be part of a theme month for March called March Birthday Madness. However, due to life happening, I wasn't able to release the first episode. For more information visit my YouTube channel.   Thanks for listening and Keep Streaming!   Find, follow, support the pod → https://linktr.ee/mystreamingbubble     Don't forget about Twin It to Win It → https://linktr.ee/twinittowinitpod 

In this quick Geek Freaks Headlines update, we break down the news that Winona Ryder has joined Wednesday Season 3 as filming begins near Dublin. The episode covers why Ryder feels like a perfect fit alongside Jenna Ortega and Tim Burton, what her reported character name Tabitha could mean for the Addams universe, and why the Season 3 focus on more Addams Family secrets sounds like the right move. We also touch on Eva Green joining as Aunt Ophelia, new teachers and students at Nevermore, and a rough production timeline for when fans might expect more updates.00:00 Winona Ryder joins Wednesday Season 3 and filming begins near Dublin00:07 Why Ryder is a natural fit with Jenna Ortega and Tim Burton00:14 Ryder's character name Tabitha and what it might mean for Addams lore00:21 Season 3 expanding the Addams Family with Aunt Ophelia and Eva Green00:28 New teachers, new students, and deeper Addams Family secrets00:36 Why Addams family history is the most exciting direction for the show00:41 Filming timeline guess and when more details may arriveWinona Ryder is officially joining Wednesday Season 3.Filming is already underway just outside Dublin.Ryder is reportedly playing a new character named Tabitha.The host points out Tabitha does not appear to be a known Addams Family character, which suggests a new addition to the show's world.Season 3 appears to be leaning further into Addams Family lore, not just school-based stories.Eva Green joining as Aunt Ophelia supports the idea of a bigger family-focused season.Netflix is also introducing new teachers, new students, and more family secrets.The biggest fan appeal here is the Burton and Ryder connection, plus Ryder's chemistry with Jenna Ortega from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.More production details are likely coming soon now that filming has started.“It's one of those castings where you're like, isn't she already in the show?”“They are going to be expanding The Addams Family in the third season, which is exactly what I wanted.”“I want less school, more Addams Family.”“Filming is starting right now, so we should be getting some more details out of this very soon.”If you enjoyed this quick update, subscribe to Geek Freaks Headlines, leave a review, and share this episode with a friend using #GeekFreaksHeadlines.GeekFreaksPodcast.com (source of all news discussed during our podcast)Instagram: @geekfreakspodcastThreads: @geekfreakspodcastTwitter: @geekfreakspodFacebook: Geek Freaks PodcastPatreon: Geek Freaks PodcastWhat do you want most from Wednesday Season 3? More Nevermore chaos, more Addams Family history, or more deep-cut lore reveals? Send us your questions and topic ideas for a future episode.Wednesday, Wednesday Season 3, Winona Ryder, Jenna Ortega, Tim Burton, Addams Family, Netflix Wednesday, Eva Green, Aunt Ophelia, Nevermore Academy, Geek Freaks Headlines, TV News, Pop Culture NewsTimestamps and TopicsKey TakeawaysMemorable QuotesCall to ActionLinks and ResourcesFollow UsListener Questions

If this crossword was a car, it would be a Bugatti; if it was a watch, it would be a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. In short, this was a top-of-the-line Tuesday crossword, built with precision, love, and care, and yet, surprisingly, priced exactly the same as all the other NYTimes crosswords, not a farthing more for that extra pizzazz.What were some of those pizzazz-y clues, you ask? Our favorite was 35D, Tough-but-loving fathers, informally, PAPABEARS (a debut). Our second (and it was a close second) was 18D, Boot out of Europe?, ITALY

The full version of this episode (80 minutes & Ad-free) is available for Silk+ Members (FREE for a limited time!) and includes access to over 600 more episodes from these podcasts: Calm History (120+ episodes) History Showcase (25+ episodes) Sleep Whispers (430+ episodes) ASMR Sleep Station (50+ episodes) 1 & 8-Hour Nature Sounds (50+ episodes) 1 & 8-Hour Background Sounds (30 episodes) … Continue reading *Sample* | 1 Hour about the TV Shows: Gilligan’s Island & The Addams Family | Bedtime Sleep Stories about History (Bonus Episode #86)

How do you juggle multiple book projects, a university teaching role, Kickstarter campaigns, and rock albums—all without burning out? What does it take to build a writing career that spans decades, through industry upheavals and personal setbacks? Kevin J. Anderson shares hard-won lessons from his 40+ year career writing over 190 books. In the intro, Draft2Digital partners with Bookshop.org for ebooks; Spotify announces PageMatch and print partnership with Bookshop.org; Eleven Audiobooks; Indie author non-fiction books Kickstarter; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Kevin J. Anderson is the multi-award-winning and internationally bestselling author of over 190 books across different genres, with over 24 million copies in print across 34 languages. He's also the director of publishing at Western Colorado University, as well as a publisher at WordFire Press, an editor and rock album lyricist, and he's co-written Dune books and worked on the recent Dune movies and TV show. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights, and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Managing multiple projects at different stages to maximise productivity without burning out Building financial buffers and multiple income streams for a sustainable long-term career Adapting when life disrupts your creative process, from illness to injury Lessons learned from transitioning between traditional publishing, indie, and Kickstarter Why realistic expectations and continuously reinventing yourself are essential for longevity The hands-on publishing master's program at Western Colorado University You can find Kevin at WordFire.com and buy his books direct at WordFireShop.com. Transcript of Interview with Kevin J. Anderson Jo: Kevin J. Anderson is the multi award-winning and internationally bestselling author of over 190 books across different genres, with over 24 million copies in print across 34 languages. He's also the Director of Publishing at Western Colorado University, as well as a publisher at WordFire Press, an editor, a rock album lyricist, and he's co-written Dune books and worked on the recent Dune movies and TV show. Welcome back to the show, Kevin. Kevin: Well, thanks, Joanna. I always love being on the show. Jo: And we're probably on like 200 books and like 50 million copies in print. I mean, how hard is it to keep up with all that? Kevin: Well, it was one of those where we actually did have to do a list because my wife was like, we really should know the exact number. And I said, well, who can keep track because that one went out of print and that's an omnibus. So does it count as something else? Well, she counted them. But that was a while ago and I didn't keep track, so… Jo: Right. Kevin: I'm busy and I like to write. That's how I've had a long-term career. It's because I don't hate what I'm doing. I've got the best job in the world. I love it. Jo: So that is where I wanted to start. You've been on the show multiple times. People can go back and have a listen to some of the other things we've talked about. I did want to talk to you today about managing multiple priorities. You are a director of publishing at Western Colorado University. I am currently doing a full-time master's degree as well as writing a novel, doing this podcast, my Patreon, all the admin of running a business, and I feel like I'm busy. Then I look at what you do and I'm like, this is crazy. People listening are also busy. We're all busy, right. But I feel like it can't just be writing and one job—you do so much. So how do you manage your time, juggle priorities, your calendar, and all that? Kevin: I do it brilliantly. Is that the answer you want? I do it brilliantly. It is all different things. If I were just working on one project at a time, like, okay, I'm going to start a new novel today and I've got nothing else on my plate. Well, that would take me however long to do the research and the plot. I'm a full-on plotter outliner, so it would take me all the while to do—say it's a medieval fantasy set during the Crusades. Well, then I'd have to spend months reading about the Crusades and researching them and maybe doing some travel. Then get to the point where I know the characters enough that I can outline the book and then I start writing the book, and then I start editing the book, which is a part that I hate. I love doing the writing, I hate doing the editing. Then you edit a whole bunch. To me, there are parts of that that are like going to the dentist—I don't like it—and other parts of it are fun. So by having numerous different projects at different stages, all of which require different skill sets or different levels of intensity— I can be constantly switching from one thing to another and basically be working at a hundred percent capacity on everything all the time. And I love doing this. So I'll be maybe writing a presentation, which is what I was doing before we got on this call this morning, because I'm giving a new keynote presentation at Superstars, which is in a couple of weeks. That's another thing that was on our list—I helped run Superstars. I founded that 15 years ago and it's been going on. So I'll be giving that talk. Then we just started classes for my publishing grad students last week. So I'm running those classes, which meant I had to write all of the classes before they started, and I did that. I've got a Kickstarter that will launch in about a month. I'm getting the cover art for that new book and I've got to write up the Kickstarter campaign. And I have to write the book. I like to have the book at least drafted before I run a Kickstarter for it. So I'm working on that. A Kickstarter pre-launch page should be up a month before the Kickstarter launches, and the Kickstarter has to launch in early March, so that means early February I have to get the pre-launch page up. So there's all these dominoes. One thing has to go before the next thing can go. During the semester break between fall semester—we had about a month off—I had a book for Blackstone Publishing and Weird Tales Presents that I had to write, and I had plotted it and I thought if I don't get this written during the break, I'm going to get distracted and I won't finish it. So I just buckled down and I wrote the 80,000-word book during the month of break. This is like Little House on the Prairie with dinosaurs. It's an Amish community that wants to go to simpler times. So they go back to the Pleistocene era where they're setting up farms and the brontosaurus gets into the cornfield all the time. Jo: That sounds like a lot of fun. Kevin: That's fun. So with the grad students that I have every week, we do all kinds of lectures. Just to reassure people, I am not at all an academic. I could not stand my English classes where you had to write papers analysing this and that. My grad program is all hands-on, pragmatic. You actually learn how to be a publisher when you go through it. You learn how to design covers, you learn how to lay things out, you learn how to edit, you learn how to do fonts. One of the things that I do among the lectures every week or every other week, I just give them something that I call the real world updates. Like, okay, this is the stuff that I, Kevin, am working on in my real world career because the academic career isn't like the real world. So I just go listing about, oh, I designed these covers this week, and I wrote the draft of this dinosaur homestead book, and then I did two comic scripts, and then I had to edit two comic scripts. We just released my third rock album that's based on my fantasy trilogy. And I have to write a keynote speech for Superstars. And I was on Joanna Penn's podcast. And here's what I'm doing. Sometimes it's a little scary because I read it and I go, holy crap, I did a lot of stuff this week. Jo: So I manage everything on Google Calendar. Do you have systems for managing all this? Because you also have external publishers, you have actual dates when things actually have to happen. Do you manage that yourself or does Rebecca, your wife and business partner, do that? How do you manage your calendar? Kevin: Well, Rebecca does most of the business stuff, like right now we have to do a bunch of taxes stuff because it's the new year and things. She does that and I do the social interaction and the creating and the writing and stuff. My assistant Marie Whittaker, she's a big project management person and she's got all these apps on how to do project managing and all these sorts of things. She tried to teach me how to use these apps, but it takes so much time and organisation to fill the damn things out. So it's all in my head. I just sort of know what I have to do. I just put it together and work on it and just sort of know this thing happens next and this thing happens next. I guess one of the ways is when I was in college, I put myself through the university by being a waiter and a bartender. As a waiter and a bartender, you have to juggle a million different things at once. This guy wants a beer and that lady wants a martini, and that person needs to pay, and this person's dinner is up on the hot shelf so you've got to deliver it before it gets cold. It's like I learned how to do millions of things and keep them all organised, and that's the way it worked. And I've kept that as a skill all the way through and it has done me good, I think. Jo: I think that there is a difference between people's brains, right? So I'm pretty chaotic in terms of my creative process. I'm not a plotter like you. I'm pretty chaotic, basically. But I come across— Kevin: I've met you. Yes. Jo: I know. But I'm also extremely organised and I plan everything. That's part of, I think, being an introvert and part of dealing with the anxiety of the world is having a plan or a schedule. So I think the first thing to say to people listening is they don't have to be like you, and they don't have to be like me. It's kind of a personal thing. I guess one thing that goes beyond both of us is, earlier you said you basically work at a hundred percent capacity. So let's say there's somebody listening and they're like, well, I'm at a hundred percent capacity too, and it might be kids, it might be a day job, as well as writing and all that. And then something happens, right? You mentioned the real world. I seem to remember that you broke your leg or something. Kevin: Yes. Jo: And the world comes crashing down through all your plans, whether they're written or in your head. So how do you deal with a buffer of something happening, or you're sick, or Rebecca's sick, or the cat needs to go to the vet? Real life—how do you deal with that? Kevin: Well, that really does cause problems. We had, in fact, just recently—so I'm always working at, well, let's be realistic, like 95% of Kevin capacity. Well, my wife, who does some of the stuff here around the house and she does the business things, she just went through 15 days of the worst crippling migraine string that she's had in 30 years. So she was curled up in a foetal position on the bed for 15 days and she couldn't do any of her normal things. I mean, even unloading the dishwasher and stuff like that. So if I'm at 95% capacity and suddenly I have to pick up an extra 50%, that causes real problems. So I drink lots of coffee, and I get less sleep, and you try to bring in some help. I mean, we have Rebecca's assistant and the assistant has a 20-year-old daughter who came in to help us do some of the dishes and laundry and housework stuff. You mentioned before, it was a year ago. I always go out hiking and mountain climbing and that's where I write. I dictate. I have a digital recorder that I go off of, and that's how I'm so productive. I go out, I walk in the forest and I come home with 5,000 words done in a couple of hours, and I always do that. That's how I write. Well, I was out on a mountain and I fell off the mountain and I broke my ankle and had to limp a mile back to my car. So that sort of put a damper on me hiking. I had a book that I had to write and I couldn't go walking while I was dictating it. It has been a very long time since I had to sit at a keyboard and create chapters that way. Jo: Mm-hmm. Kevin: And my brain doesn't really work like that. It works in an audio—I speak this stuff instead. So I ended up training myself because I had a big boot on my foot. I would sit on the back porch and I would look out at the mountains here in Colorado and I would put my foot up on another chair and I'd sit in the lawn chair and I'd kind of close my eyes and I would dictate my chapters that way. It was not as effective, but it was plan B. So that's how I got it done. I did want to mention something. When I'm telling the students this every week—this is what I did and here's the million different things—one of the students just yesterday made a comment that she summarised what I'm doing and it kind of crystallised things for me. She said that to get so much done requires, and I'm quoting now, “a balance of planning, sprinting, and being flexible, while also making incremental forward progress to keep everything moving together.” So there's short-term projects like fires and emergencies that have to be done. You've got to keep moving forward on the novel, which is a long-term project, but that short story is due in a week. So I've got to spend some time doing that one. Like I said, this Kickstarter's coming up, so I have to put in the order for the cover art, because the cover art needs to be done so I can put it on the pre-launch page for the Kickstarter. It is a balance of the long-term projects and the short-term projects. And I'm a workaholic, I guess, and you are too. Jo: Yes. Kevin: You totally are. Yes. Jo: I get that you're a workaholic, but as you said before, you enjoy it too. So you enjoy doing all these things. It's just sometimes life just gets in the way, as you said. One of the other things that I think is interesting—so sometimes physical stuff gets in the way, but in your many decades now of the successful author business, there's also the business side. You've had massive success with some of your books, and I'm sure that some of them have just kind of shrivelled into nothing. There have been good years and bad years. So how do we, as people who want a long-term career, think about making sure we have a buffer in the business for bad years and then making the most of good years? Kevin: Well, that's one thing—to realise that if you're having a great year, you might not always have a great year. That's kind of like the rockstar mentality—I've got a big hit now, so I'm always going to have a big hit. So I buy mansions and jets, and then of course the next album flops. So when you do have a good year, you plan for the long term. You set money aside. You build up plan B and you do other things. I have long been a big advocate for making sure that you have multiple income streams. You don't just write romantic epic fantasies and that's all you do. That might be what makes your money now, but the reading taste could change next year. They might want something entirely different. So while one thing is really riding high, make sure that you're planting a bunch of other stuff, because that might be the thing that goes really, really well the next year. I made my big stuff back in the early nineties—that was when I started writing for Star Wars and X-Files, and that's when I had my New York Times bestselling run. I had 11 New York Times bestsellers in one year, and I was selling like millions of copies. Now, to be honest, when you have a Star Wars bestseller, George Lucas keeps almost all of that. You don't keep that much of it. But little bits add up when you're selling millions of copies. So it opened a lot of doors for me. So I kept writing my own books and I built up my own fans who liked the Star Wars books and they read some of my other things. If you were a bestselling trad author, you could keep writing the same kind of book and they would keep throwing big advances at you. It was great. And then that whole world changed and they stopped paying those big advances, and paperback, mass market paperback books just kind of went away. A lot of people probably remember that there was a time for almost every movie that came out, every big movie that came out, you could go into the store and buy a paperback book of it—whether it was an Avengers movie or a Star Trek movie or whatever, there was a paperback book. I did a bunch of those and that was really good work. They would pay me like $15,000 to take the script and turn it into a book, and it was done in three weeks. They don't do that anymore. I remember I was on a panel at some point, like, what would you tell your younger self? What advice would you give your younger self? I remember when I was in the nineties, I was turning down all kinds of stuff because I had too many book projects and I was never going to quit writing. I was a bestselling author, so I had it made. Well, never, ever assume you have it made because the world changes under you. They might not like what you're doing or publishing goes in a completely different direction. So I always try to keep my radar up and look at new things coming up. I still write some novels for trad publishers. This dinosaur homestead one is for Blackstone and Weird Tales. They're a trad publisher. I still publish all kinds of stuff as an indie for WordFire Press. I'm reissuing a bunch of my trad books that I got the rights back and now they're getting brand new life as I run Kickstarters. One of my favourite series is “Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I.” It's like the Addams Family meets The Naked Gun. It's very funny. It's a private detective who solves crimes with monsters and mummies and werewolves and things. I sold the first one to a trad publisher, and actually, they bought three. I said, okay, these are fast, they're fun, they're like 65,000 words. You laugh all the way through it, and you want the next one right away. So let's get these out like every six months, which is like lightning speed for trad publishing. They just didn't think that was a good idea. They brought them out a year and a half apart. It was impossible to build up momentum that way. They wanted to drop the series after the third book, and I just begged them—please give it one more chance. So they bought one more book for half as much money and they brought it out again a year and a half later. And also, it was a trad paperback at $15. And the ebook was—Joanna, can you guess what their ebook was priced at? Jo: $15. Kevin: $15. And they said, gee, your ebook sales are disappointing. I said, well, no, duh. I mean, I am jumping around—I'm going like, but you should have brought these out six months apart. You should have had the ebook, like the first one at $4. Jo: But you're still working with traditional publishers, Kevin? Kevin: I'm still working with them on some, and I'm a hybrid. There are some projects that I feel are better served as trad books, like the big Dune books and stuff. I want those all over the place and they can cash in on the movie momentum and stuff. But I got the rights back to the Dan Shamble stuff. The fans kept wanting me to do more, and so I published a couple of story collections and they did fine. But I was making way more money writing Dune books and things. Then they wanted a new novel. So I went, oh, okay. I did a new novel, which I just published at WordFire. But again, it did okay, but it wasn't great. I thought, well, I better just focus on writing these big ticket things. But I really liked writing Dan Shamble. Somebody suggested, well, if the fans want it so much, why don't you run a Kickstarter? I had never run a Kickstarter before, and I kind of had this wrong attitude. I thought Kickstarters were for, “I'm a starving author, please give me money.” And that's not it at all. It's like, hey, if you're a fan, why don't you join the VIP club and you get the books faster than anybody else? So I ran a Kickstarter for my first Dan Shamble book, and it made three times what the trad publisher was paying me. And I went, oh, I kind of like this model. So I have since done like four other Dan Shamble novels through Kickstarters, made way more money that way. And we just sold—we can't give any details yet—but we have just sold it. It will be a TV show. There's a European studio that is developing it as a TV show, and I'm writing the pilot and I will be the executive producer. Jo: Fantastic. Kevin: So I kept that zombie detective alive because I loved it so much. Jo: And it's going to be all over the place years later, I guess. Just in terms of—given I've been in this now, I guess 2008 really was when I got into indie—and over the time I've been doing this, I've seen people rise and then disappear. A lot of people have disappeared. There are reasons, burnout or maybe they were just done. Kevin: Yes. Jo: But in terms of the people that you've seen, the characteristics, I guess, of people who don't make it versus people who do make it for years. And we are not saying that everyone should be a writer for decades at all. Some people do just have maybe one or two books. What do you think are the characteristics of those people who do make it long-term? Kevin: Well, I think it's realistic expectations. Like, again, this was trad, but my first book I sold for $4,000, and I thought, well, that's just $4,000, but we're going to sell book club rights, and we're goingn to sell foreign rights, and it's going to be optioned for movies. And the $4,000 will be like, that's just the start. I was planning out all this extra money coming from it, and it didn't even earn its $4,000 advance back and nothing else happened with it. Well, it has since, because I've since reissued it myself, pushed it and I made more money that way. But it's a slow burn. You build your career. You start building your fan base and then your next one will sell maybe better than the first one did. Then you keep writing it, and then you make connections, and then you get more readers and you learn how to expand your stuff better. You've got to prepare for the long haul. I would suggest that if you publish your very first book on KU, don't quit your day job the next day. Not everybody can or should be a full-time writer. We here in America need to have something that pays our health insurance. That is one of the big reasons why I am running this graduate program at Western Colorado University—because as a university professor, I get wonderful healthcare. I'm teaching something that I love, and I'm frankly doing a very good job at it because our graduates—something like 60% of them are now working as writers or publishers or working in the publishing world. So that's another thing. I guess what I do when I'm working on it is I kind of always say yes to the stuff that's coming in. If an opportunity comes—hey, would you like a graphic novel on this?—and I go, yes, I'd love to do that. Could you write a short story for this anthology? Sure, I'd love to do that. I always say yes, and I get overloaded sometimes. But I learned my lesson. It was quite a few years ago where I was really busy. I had all kinds of book deadlines and I was turning down books that they were offering me. Again, this was trad—book contracts that had big advances on them. And anthology editors were asking me. I was really busy and everybody was nagging me—Kevin, you work too hard. And my wife Rebecca was saying, Kevin, you work too hard. So I thought, I had it made. I had all these bestsellers, everything was going on. So I thought, alright, I've got a lot of books under contract. I'll just take a sabbatical. I'll say no for a year. I'll just catch up. I'll finish all these things that I've got. I'll just take a breather and finish things. So for that year, anybody who asked me—hey, do you want to do this book project?—well, I'd love to, but I'm just saying no. And would you do this short story for an anthology? Well, I'd love to, but not right now. Thanks. And I just kind of put them off. So I had a year where I could catch up and catch my breath and finish the stuff. And after that, I went, okay, I am back in the game again. Let's start taking these book offers. And nothing. Just crickets. And I went, well, okay. Well, you were always asking before—where are all these book deals that you kept offering me? Oh, we gave them to somebody else. Jo: This is really difficult though, because on the one hand—well, first of all, it's difficult because I wanted to take a bit of a break. So I'm doing this full-time master's and you are also teaching people in a master's program, right. So I have had to say no to a lot of things in order to do this course. And I imagine the people on your course would have to do the same thing. There's a lot of rewards, but they're different rewards and it kind of represents almost a midlife pivot for many of us. So how do we balance that then—the stepping away with what might lead us into something new? I mean, obviously this is a big deal. I presume most of the people on your course, they're older like me. People have to give stuff up to do this kind of thing. So how do we manage saying yes and saying no? Kevin: Well, I hate to say this, but you just have to drink more coffee and work harder for that time. Yes, you can say no to some things. My thing was I kind of shut the door and I just said, I'm just going to take a break and I'm going to relax. I could have pushed my capacity and taken some things so that I wasn't completely off the game board. One of the things I talk about is to avoid burnout. If you want a long-term career, and if you're working at 120% of your capacity, then you're going to burn out. I actually want to mention something. Johnny B. Truant just has a new book out called The Artisan Author. I think you've had him on the show, have you? Jo: Yes, absolutely. Kevin: He says a whole bunch of the stuff in there that I've been saying for a long time. He's analysing these rapid release authors that are a book every three weeks. And they're writing every three weeks, every four weeks, and that's their business model. I'm just like, you can't do that for any length of time. I mean, I'm a prolific writer. I can't write that fast. That's a recipe for burnout, I think. I love everything that I'm doing, and even with this graduate program that I'm teaching, I love teaching it. I mean, I'm talking about subjects that I love, because I love publishing. I love writing. I love cover design. I love marketing. I love setting up your newsletters. I mean, this isn't like taking an engineering course for me. This is something that I really, really love doing. And quite honestly, it comes across with the students. They're all fired up too because they see how much I love doing it and they love doing it. One of the projects that they do—we get a grant from Draft2Digital every year for $5,000 so that we do an anthology, an original anthology that we pay professional rates for. So they put out their call for submissions. This year it was Into the Deep Dark Woods. And we commissioned a couple stories for it, but otherwise it was open to submissions. And because we're paying professional rates, they get a lot of submissions. I have 12 students in the program right now. They got 998 stories in that they had to read. Jo: Wow. Kevin: They were broken up into teams so they could go through it, but that's just overwhelming. They had to read, whatever that turns out to be, 50 stories a week that come in. Then they write the rejections, and then they argue over which ones they're going to accept, and then they send the contracts, and then they edit them. And they really love it. I guess that's the most important thing about a career—you've got to have an attitude that you love what you're doing. If you don't love this, please find a more stable career, because this is not something you would recommend for the faint of heart. Jo: Yes, indeed. I guess one of the other considerations, even if we love it, the industry can shift. Obviously you mentioned the nineties there—things were very different in the nineties in many, many ways. Especially, let's say, pre-internet times, and when trad pub was really the only way forward. But you mentioned the rapid release, the sort of book every month. Let's say we are now entering a time where AI is bringing positives and negatives in the same way that the internet brought positives and negatives. We're not going to talk about using it, but what is definitely happening is a change. Industry-wise—for example, people can do a book a day if they want to generate books. That is now possible. There are translations, you know. Our KDP dashboard in America, you have a button now to translate everything into Spanish if you want. You can do another button that makes it an audiobook. So we are definitely entering a time of challenge, but if you look back over your career, there have been many times of challenge. So is this time different? Or do you face the same challenges every time things shift? Kevin: It's always different. I've always had to take a breath and step back and then reinvent myself and come back as something else. One of the things with a long-term career is you can't have a long-term career being the hot new thing. You can start out that way—like, this is the brand new author and he gets a big boost as the best first novel or something like that—but that doesn't work for 20 years. I mean, you've got to do something else. If you're the sexy young actress, well, you don't have a 50-year career as the sexy young actress. One of the ones I'm loving right now is Linda Hamilton, who was the sexy young actress in Terminator, and then a little more mature in the TV show Beauty and the Beast, where she was this huge star. Then she's just come back now. I think she's in her mid-fifties. She's in Stranger Things and she was in Resident Alien and she's now this tough military lady who's getting parts all over the place. She's reinvented herself. So I like to say that for my career, I've crashed and burned and resurrected myself. You might as well call me the Doctor because I've just come back in so many different ways. You can't teach an old dog new tricks, but— If you want to stay around, no matter how old of a dog you are, you've got to learn new tricks. And you've got to keep learning, and you've got to keep trying new things. I started doing indie publishing probably around the time you did—2009, something like that. I was in one of these great positions where I was a trad author and I had a dozen books that I wrote that were all out of print. I got the rights back to them because back then they let books go out of print and they gave the rights back without a fight. So I suddenly found myself with like 12 titles that I could just put up. I went, oh, okay, let's try this. I was kind of blown away that that first novel that they paid me $4,000 for that never even earned it back—well, I just put it up on Kindle and within one year I made more than $4,000. I went, I like this, I've got to figure this out. That's how I launched WordFire Press. Then I learned how to do everything. I mean, back in those days, you could do a pretty clunky job and people would still buy it. Then I learned how to do it better. Jo: That time is gone. Kevin: Yes. I learned how to do it better, and then I learned how to market it. Then I learned how to do print on demand books. Then I learned how to do box sets and different kinds of marketing. I dove headfirst into my newsletter to build my fan base because I had all the Star Wars stuff and X-Files stuff and later it was the Dune stuff. I had this huge fan base, but I wanted that fan base to read the Kevin Anderson books, the Dan Shamble books and everything. The only way to get that is if you give them a personal touch to say, hey buddy, if you liked that one, try this one. And the way to do that is you have to have access to them. So I started doing social media stuff before most people were doing social media stuff. I killed it on MySpace. I can tell you that. I had a newsletter that we literally printed on paper and we stuck mailing labels on. It went out to 1,200 people that we put in the mailbox. Jo: Now you're doing that again with Kickstarter, I guess. But I guess for people listening, what are you learning now? How are you reinventing yourself now in this new phase we are entering? Kevin: Well, I guess the new thing that I'm doing now is expanding my Kickstarters into more. So last year, the biggest Kickstarter that I've ever had, I ran last year. It was this epic fantasy trilogy that I had trad published and I got the rights back. They had only published it in trade paperback. So, yes, I reissued the books in nice new hardcovers, but I also upped the game to do these fancy bespoke editions with leather embossed covers and end papers and tipped in ribbons and slip cases and all kinds of stuff and building that. I did three rock albums as companions to it, and just building that kind of fan base that will support that. Then I started a Patreon last year, which isn't as big as yours. I wish my Patreon would get bigger, but I'm pushing it and I'm still working on that. So it's trying new things. Because if I had really devoted myself and continued to keep my MySpace page up to date, I would be wasting my time. You have to figure out new things. Part of me is disappointed because I really liked in the nineties where they just kept throwing book contracts at me with big advances. And I wrote the book and sent it in and they did all the work. But that went away and I didn't want to go away. So I had to learn how to do it different. After a good extended career, one of the things you do is you pay it forward. I mentor a lot of writers and that evolved into me creating this master's program in publishing. I can gush about it because to my knowledge, it is the only master's degree that really focuses on indie publishing and new model publishing instead of just teaching you how to get a job as an assistant editor in Manhattan for one of the Big Five publishers. Jo: It's certainly a lot more practical than my master's in death. Kevin: Well, that's an acquired taste, I think. When they hired me to do this—and as I said earlier, I'm not an academic—and I said if I'm going to teach this, it's a one year program. They get done with it in one year. It's all online except for one week in person in the summer. They're going to learn how to do things. They're not going to get esoteric, analysing this poem for something. When they graduate from this program, they walk out with this anthology that they edited, that their name is on. The other project that they do is they reissue a really fancy, fine edition of some classic work, whether it's H.G. Wells or Jules Verne or something. They choose a book that they want to bring back and they do it all from start to finish. They come out of it—rather than just theoretical learning—they know how to do things. Surprise, I've been around in the business a long time, so I know everybody who works in the business. So the heads of publishing houses and the head of Draft2Digital or Audible—and we've got Blackstone Audio coming on in a couple weeks. We've got the head of Kickstarter coming on as guest speakers. I have all kinds of guest speakers. Joanna, I think you're coming on— Jo: I'm coming on as well, I think. Kevin: You're coming on as a guest speaker. It's just like they really get plugged in. I'm in my seventh cohort now and I just love doing it. The students love it and we've got a pretty high success rate. So there's your plug. We are open for applications now. It starts in July. And my own website is WordFire.com, and there's a section on there on the graduate program if anybody wants to take a look at it. Again, not everybody needs to have a master's degree to be an indie publisher, but there is something to be said for having all of this stuff put into an organised fashion so that you learn how to do all the things. It also gives you a resource and a support system so that they come out of it knowing a whole lot of people. Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Kevin. That was great. Kevin: Thanks. It's a great show. The post Managing Multiple Projects And The Art of the Long-Term Author Career with Kevin J. Anderson first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Episode #574! Cryptology and The Fatal Bullet! This week we look at Cryptology magazine #1. This issue features articles on Bernie Wrightson, The Munsters, The Addams Family, pre-code horror comics and has classic horror movie reviews. Also this week we have Rick Geary's The Fatal Bullet which tells the story of the assassination of President James A. Garfield. And we talk about the first two seasons of Yellowjackets from Showtime and Pluribus from Apple TV. Check it out!   

How can you build iconic characters that your readers want to keep coming back to? How can you be the kind of creator that readers trust, even without social media? With Claire Taylor In the intro, Dan Brown talks writing and publishing [Tetragrammaton]; Design Rules That Make or Break a Book [Self-Publishing Advice]; Amazon's DRM change [Kindlepreneur]; Show me the money [Rachael Herron]; AI bible translation [Wycliffe, Pope Leo tweet]. Plus, Business for Authors 24 Jan webinar, and Bones of the Deep. Today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it's delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Claire Taylor is a humour and mystery author, the owner of FFS Media, and a certified Enneagram coach. She teaches authors to write stronger stories and build sustainable careers at LiberatedWriter.com, and her book is Write Iconic Characters: Unlocking the Core Motivations that Fuel Unforgettable Stories. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights, and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why Claire left social media and how she still markets her books and services What the Enneagram is and how core fears and desires shape character motivation Using Enneagram types (including Wednesday Addams as an example) to write iconic characters Creating rich conflict and relationships by pairing different Enneagram types on the page Coping with rapid change, AI, and fear in the author community in 2026 Building a trustworthy, human author brand through honesty, transparency, and vulnerability You can find Claire at LiberatedWriter.com, FFS.media, or on Substack as The Liberated Writer. Transcript of the interview with Claire Taylor Joanna: Claire Taylor is a humour and mystery author, the owner of FFS Media, and a certified Enneagram coach. She teaches authors to write stronger stories and build sustainable careers at LiberatedWriter.com, and her book is Write Iconic Characters: Unlocking the Core Motivations that Fuel Unforgettable Stories. So, welcome back to the show, Claire. Claire: Thank you so much for having me back. I'm excited to be here. Joanna: It's great to have you back on the show. It was March 2024 when you were last on, so almost two years now as this goes out. Give us a bit of an update. How has your writing craft and your author business changed in that time? Claire: One of the things I've been focusing on with my own fiction craft is deconstructing the rules of how a story “should” be. That's been a sort of hobby focus of mine. All the story structure books aren't law, right? That's why there are so many of them. They're all suggestions, frameworks. They're all trying to quantify humans' innate ability to understand a story. So I'm trying to remember more that I already know what a story is, deep down. My job as an author is to keep the reader's attention from start to finish and leave them feeling the way I hope they'll feel at the end. That's been my focus on the craft side. On the author business side, I've made some big shifts. I left social media earlier this year, and I've been looking more towards one-on-one coaching and networking. I did a craft-based Kickstarter, and I'd been focusing a lot on “career, career, career”—very business-minded—and now I'm creating more content again, especially around using the Enneagram for writing craft. So there's been a lot of transition since 2024 for me. Joanna: I think it's so important—and obviously we're going to get into your book in more detail—but I do think it's important for people to hear about our pivots and transitions. I haven't spoken to you for a while, but I actually started a master's degree a few months back. I'm doing a full-time master's alongside everything else I do. So I've kind of put down book writing for the moment, and I'm doing essay writing and academic writing instead. It's quite different, as you can imagine. It sounds like what you're doing is different too. One thing I know will have perked up people's ears is: “I left social media.” Tell us a bit more about that. Claire: This was a move that I could feel coming for a while. I didn't like what social media did to my attention. Even when I wasn't on it, there was almost a hangover from having been on it. My attention didn't feel as sharp and focused as it used to be, back before social media became what it is now. So I started asking myself some questions: What is lost if I leave? What is gained if I leave? And what is social media actually doing for me today? Because sometimes we hold on to what it used to do for us, and we keep trying to squeeze more and more of that out of it. But it has changed so much. There are almost no places with sufficient organic reach anymore. It's all pay-to-play, and the cost of pay-to-play keeps going up. I looked at the numbers for my business. My Kickstarter was a great place to analyse that because they track so many traffic sources so clearly. I could see exactly how much I was getting from social media when I advertised and promoted my projects there. Then I asked: can I let that go in order to get my attention back and make my life feel more settled? And I decided: yes, I can. That's worth more to me. Joanna: There are some things money can't buy. Sometimes it really isn't about the money. I like your question: what is lost and what is gained? You also said it's all pay-to-play and there's no organic reach. I do think there is some organic reach for some people who don't pay, but those people are very good at playing the game of whatever the platform wants. So, TikTok for example—you might not have to pay money yet, but you do have to play their game. You have to pay with your time instead of money. I agree with you. I don't think there's anywhere you can literally just post something and know it will reliably reach the people who follow you. Claire: Right. Exactly. TikTok currently, if you really play the game, will sometimes “pick” you, right? But that “pick me” energy is not really my jam. And we can see the trend—this “organic” thing doesn't last. It's organic for now. You can play the game for now, but TikTok would be crazy not to change things so they make more money. So eventually everything becomes pay-to-play. TikTok is fun, but for me it's addictive. I took it off my phone years ago because I would do the infinite scroll. There's so much candy there. Then I'd wake up the next morning and notice my mood just wasn't where I wanted it to be. My energy was low. I really saw a correlation between how much I scrolled and how flat I felt afterwards. So I realised: I'm not the person to pay-to-play or to play the game here. I'm not even convinced that the pay-to-play on certain social media networks is being tracked in a reliable, accountable way anymore. Who is holding them accountable for those numbers? You can sort of see correlation in your sales, but still, I just became more and more sceptical. In the end, it just wasn't for me. My life is so much better on a daily basis without it. That's definitely a decision I have not regretted for a second. Joanna: I'm sorry to keep on about this, but I think this is great because this is going out in January 2026, and there will be lots of people examining their relationship with social media. It's one of those things we all examine every year, pretty much. The other thing I'd add is that you are a very self-aware person. You spend a lot of time thinking about these things and noticing your own behaviour and energy. Stopping and thinking is such an important part of it. But let's tackle the big question: one of the reasons people don't want to come off social media is that they're afraid they don't know how else to market. How are you marketing if you're not using social media? Claire: I didn't leave social media overnight. Over time, I've been adjusting and transitioning, preparing my business and myself mentally and emotionally for probably about a year. I still market to my email list. That has always been important to my business. I've also started a Substack that fits how my brain works. Substack is interesting. Some people might consider it a form of social media—it has that new reading feed—but it feels much more like blogging to me. It's blogging where you can be discovered, which is lovely. I've been doing more long-form content there. You get access to all the emails of your subscribers, which is crucial to me. I don't want to build on something I can't take with me. So I've been doing more long-form content, and that seems to keep my core audience with me. I've got plenty of people subscribed; people continue to come back, work with me, and tell their friends. Word of mouth has always been the way my business markets best, because it's hard to describe the benefits of what I do in a quick, catchy way. It needs context. So I'm leaning even more on that. Then I'm also shifting my fiction book selling more local. Joanna: In person? Claire: Yes. In person and local. Networking and just telling more people that I'm an author. Connecting more deeply with my existing email lists and communities and selling that way. Joanna: I think at the end of the day it does come back to the email list. I think this is one of the benefits of selling direct to people through Shopify or Payhip or whatever, or locally, because you can build your email list. Every person you bring into your own ecosystem, you get their data and you can stay in touch. Whereas all the things we did for years to get people to go to Amazon, we didn't get their emails and details. It's so interesting where we are right now in the author business. Okay, we'll come back to some of these things, but let's get into the book and what you do. Obviously what underpins the book is the Enneagram. Just remind us what the Enneagram is, why you incorporate it into so much of your work, and why you find it resonates so much. Claire: The Enneagram is a framework that describes patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions that tend to arise from nine different core motivations. Those core motivations are made up of a fear–desire pair. So, for instance, there's the fear of lacking worth and the desire to be worthy. That pair is the Type Three core motivation. If you're a Type Three, sometimes called “The Achiever,” that's your fundamental driver. What we fear and desire above all the other fears and desires determines where our attention goes. And attention is something authors benefit greatly from understanding. We have to keep people's attention, so we want to understand our own attention and how to cultivate it. The things our attention goes to build our understanding of ourselves and the world. Being intentional about that, and paying attention to what your characters pay attention to—and what your readers are paying attention to—is hugely beneficial. It can give you a real leg up. That's why I focus on the Enneagram. I find it very useful at that core level. You can build a lot of other things on top of it with your characters: their backstory, personal histories, little quirks—all of that can be built off the Enneagram foundation. Why I like the Enneagram more than other frameworks like MBTI or the Big Five is that it not only shows us how our fears are confining us—that's really what it's charting—but it also shows us a path towards liberation from those fears. That's where the Enneagram really shines: the growth path, the freedom from the confines of our own personality. It offers that to anyone who wants to study and discover it. A lot of the authors I work with say things like, “I'm just so sick of my own stuff.” And I get it. We all get sick of running into the same patterns over and over again. We can get sick of our personality! The Enneagram is a really good tool for figuring out what's going on and how to try something new, because often we can't even see that there are other options. We have this particular lens we're looking through. That's why I like to play with it, and why I find it so useful. Joanna: That's really interesting. It sounds like you have a lot of mature authors—and when I say “mature,” I mean authors with a lot of books under their belt, not necessarily age. There are different problems at different stages of the author career, and the problem you just described—“I'm getting sick of my stuff”—sounds like a mature author issue. What are some of the other issues you see in the community that are quite common amongst indie authors? Claire: One that comes up a lot, especially early on, is: “Am I doing this right?” That's a big question. People say, “I don't know if I'm doing this right. I'm going to mess it up. This person told me this was the way to do things, but I don't think I can do it this way. Am I doomed?” That's the fear. A lot of what I help people with is seeing that there isn't a single “right” way to do this. There's a way that's going to feel more aligned to you, and there are millions of ways to approach an author career because we're all constructing it as we go. You were there in the early days. We were all just making this up as we went along. Joanna: Exactly. There was a time when ebooks were PDFs, there wasn't even a Kindle, and there was no iPhone. We were literally just making it up. Claire: Right. Exactly. That spirit of “we're all making it up” is important. Some of us have come up with frameworks that work for us, and then we tell other people about them—“Here's a process; try this process”—but that doesn't mean it's the process. Understanding what motivates you—those core motivations—helps you see where you're going to bump into advice that's not right for you, and how to start making decisions that fit your attention, your life, your desires in this author role. Early on we do a lot of that work. Then there are the authors who started a while ago and have a bunch of books. They hit a point where they say, “I've changed so much since I started writing. I need to figure out how to adjust my career.” Joanna: Tell us more about that, because I think that's you and me. How do we deal with that? Claire: Well, crying helps. Joanna: That is true! There's always a bit of crying involved in reinvention. From my perspective, my brand has always been built around me. People are still here—I know some people listening who have been with the podcast since I started it in 2009—and I've always been me. Even though I've done loads of different things and changed along the way, at heart I'm still me. I'm really glad I built a personal brand around who I am, rather than around one genre or a single topic. How about you? How do you see it? Claire: I'm the same. I just can't stick with something that doesn't feel right for me anymore. I'll start to rebel against it. There's also that “good girl” part of me that wants to do things the way they're supposed to be done and keep everybody happy. I have to keep an eye on her, because she'll default to “this is the way it should be done,” and then I end up constricted. As we advance through our careers, positioning around what motivates us and what we love, and allowing ourselves to understand that it's okay to change—even though it's painful—is crucial. It's actually destructive not to change over time. We end up forfeiting so many things that make life worth living if we don't allow ourselves to grow and change. We end up in this tiny box. People sometimes say the Enneagram is very restrictive. “It's only nine types, you're putting me in a box.” It's like: no. These are the boxes we've put ourselves in. Then we use the Enneagram to figure out how to get out of the box. As we start to see the box we've put ourselves in with our personality—“that's me, that's not me”—we realise how much movement we actually have, how many options we have, while still being ourselves. Joanna: So many options. This kind of brings us into your book, because part of the personal brand thing is being real and having different facets. Your book is Write Iconic Characters, and presumably these are characters that people want to read more about. It uses the Enneagram to construct these better characters. So first up— What's your definition of an iconic character, as opposed to any old character? And how can we use the Enneagram to construct one? Claire: An iconic character, in my imagination, is one that really sticks with us after we've finished the story. They become a reference point. We'll say, “This person is kind of like that character,” or “This situation feels like that character would handle it this way.” It could be our friends, our enemies, someone we meet on the bus—whoever it is might remind us of this character. So they really get lodged in our psyche. An iconic character feels true to some fundamental part of the human condition, even if they're not strictly human. So, all the alien romance people listening, don't worry—you're still in! These characters take on a life of their own. With an iconic character, we may hear them talking to us after the book is done, because we've tapped into that essential part of them. They can become almost archetypal—something we go back to over and over again in our minds, both as writers and as readers. Joanna: How can we use the Enneagram to construct an iconic character? I'm asking this as a discovery writer who struggles to construct anything beforehand. It's more that I write stuff and then something emerges. But I have definitely not had a hit series with an iconic character, so I'm willing to give your approach a try. Claire: It works with whatever your process is. If you're a discovery writer, start with that spark of a character in your head. If there's a character who's just a glimmer—maybe you know a few things about them—just keep writing. At some point you'll probably recognise, “Okay, it's time to go deeper in understanding this character and create a cohesive thread to pull all of this together.” That's where the Enneagram becomes useful. You can put on your armchair psychologist hat and ask: which of the nine core fears seems like it might be driving the parts of their personality that are emerging? Thankfully, we intuitively recognise the nine types. When we start gathering bits for a new character, we tend to pull from essentially the same constellation of personality, even if we don't realise it. For instance, you might say, “This character is bold and adventurous,” and that's all you know. You're probably not going to also add, “and they're incredibly shy,” because “bold and adventurous” plus “incredibly shy” doesn't really fit our intuitive understanding of people. We know that instinctively. So, you've got “bold and adventurous.” You write that to a certain point, and then you get to a place where you think, “I don't really know them deeply.” That's when you can go back to the nine core fears and start ruling some out quite quickly. In the book, I have descriptions for each of them. You can read the character descriptions, read about the motivations, and start to say, “It's definitely not these five types. I can rule those out.” If they're bold and adventurous, maybe the core fear is being trapped in deprivation and pain, or being harmed and controlled. Those correspond to Type Seven (“The Enthusiast”) and Type Eight (“The Challenger”), respectively. So you might say, “Okay, maybe they're a Seven or an Eight.” From there, if you can pin down a type, you can read more about it and get ideas. You can understand the next big decision point. If they're a Type Seven, what's going to motivate them? They'll do whatever keeps them from being trapped in pain and deprivation, and they'll be seeking satisfaction or new experiences in some way, because that's the core desire that goes with that fear. So now, you're asking: “How do I get them to get on the spaceship and leave Earth?” Well, you could offer them some adventure, because they're bold and adventurous. I have a character who's a Seven, and she gets on a spaceship and takes off because her boyfriend just proposed—and the idea of being trapped in marriage feels like: “Nope. Whatever is on this spaceship, I'm out of here.” You can play with that once you identify a type. You can go as deep with that type as you want, or you can just work with the core fear and the basic desire. There's no “better or worse”—it's whatever you feel comfortable with and whatever you need for the story. Joanna: In the book, you go into all the Enneagram types in detail, but you also have a specific example: Wednesday Addams. She's one of my favourites. People listening have either seen the current series or they have something in mind from the old-school Addams Family. Can you talk about [Wednesday Addams] as an example? Claire: Doing those deep dives was some of the most fun research for this book. I told my husband, John, “Don't bother me. I need to sit and binge-watch Wednesday again—with my notebook this time.” Online, people were guessing: “Oh, she's maybe this type, maybe that type.” As soon as I started watching properly with the Enneagram in mind, I thought: “Oh, this is a Type Eight, this is the Challenger.” One of the first things we hear from her is that she considers emotions to be weakness. Immediately, you can cross out a bunch of types from that. When we're looking at weak/strong language—that lens of “strength” versus “weakness”—we tend to look towards Eights, because they often sort the world in those terms. They're concerned about being harmed or controlled, so they feel they need to be strong and powerful. That gave me a strong hint in that direction. If we look at the inciting incident—which is a great place to identify what really triggers a character, because it has to be powerful enough to launch the story—Wednesday finds her little brother Pugsley stuffed in a locker. She says, “Who did this?” because she believes she's the only one who gets to bully him. That's a very stereotypical Type Eight thing. The unhealthy Eight can dip into being a bit of a bully because they're focused on power and power dynamics. But the Eight also says, “These are my people. I protect them. If you're one of my people, you're under my protection.” So there's that protection/control paradox. Then she goes and—spoiler—throws a bag of piranhas into the pool to attack the boys who hurt him. That's like: okay, this is probably an Eight. Then she has control wrested from her when she's sent to the new school. That's a big trigger for an Eight: to not have autonomy, to not have control. She acts out pretty much immediately, tries to push people away, and establishes dominance. One of the first things she does is challenge the popular girl to a fencing match. That's very Eight behaviour: “I'm going to go in, figure out where I sit in this power structure, and try to get into a position of power straight away.” That's how the story starts, and in the book I go into a lot more analysis. At one point she's attacked by this mysterious thing and is narrowly saved from a monster. Her reaction afterwards is: “I would have rather saved myself.” That's another strong Eight moment. The Eight does not like to be saved by anyone else. It's: “No, I wanted to be strong enough to do that.” Her story arc is also very Eight-flavoured: she starts off walled-off, “I can do it myself,” which can sometimes look like the self-sufficiency of the Five, but for her it's about always being in a power position and in control of herself. She has to learn to rely more on other people if she wants to protect the people she cares about. Protecting the innocent and protecting “her people” is a big priority for the Eight. Joanna: Let's say we've identified our main character and protagonist. One of the important things in any book, especially in a series, is conflict—both internal and external. Can we use the Enneagram to work out what would be the best other character, or characters, to give us more conflict? Claire: The character dynamics are complex, and all types are going to have both commonalities and conflict between them. That works really well for fiction. But depending on how much conflict you need, there are certain type pairings that are especially good for it. If you have a protagonist who's an Eight, they're going to generate conflict everywhere because it doesn't really bother them. They're okay wading into conflict. If you ask an Eight, “Do you like conflict?” they'll often say, “Well, sometimes it's not great,” but to everyone else it looks like they come in like a wrecking ball. The Eight tends to go for what they want. They don't see the point in waiting. They think, “I want it, I'm going to go and get it.” That makes them feel strong and powerful. So it's easy to create external and internal conflict with an Eight and other types. But the nature of the conflict is going to be different depending on who you pair them with. Let's say you have this Eight and you pair them with a Type One, “The Reformer,” whose core fear is being bad or corrupt, and who wants to be good and have integrity. The Reformer wants morality. They can get a little preachy; they can become a bit of a zealot when they're more unhealthy. A One and an Eight will have a very particular kind of conflict because the One says, “Let's do what's right,” and the Eight says, “Let's do what gets me what I want and puts me in the power position.” They may absolutely get along if they're taking on injustice. Ones and Eights will team up if they both see the same thing as unjust. They'll both take it on together. But then they may reach a point in the story where the choice is between doing the thing that is “right”—maybe self-sacrificing or moral—versus doing the thing that will exact retribution or secure a power-up. That's where the conflict between a One and an Eight shows up. You can grab any two types and they'll have unique conflict. I'm actually working on a project on Kickstarter that's all about character dynamics and relationships—Write Iconic Relationships is the next project—and I go deeper into this there. Joanna: I was wondering about that, because I did a day-thing recently with colour palettes and interior design—which is not usually my thing—so I was really challenging myself. We did this colour wheel, and they were talking about how the opposite colour on the wheel is the one that goes with it in an interesting way. I thought— Maybe there's something in the Enneagram where it's like a wheel, and the type opposite is the one that clashes or fits in a certain way. Is that a thing? Claire: There is a lot of that kind of contrast. The Enneagram is usually depicted in a circle, one through nine, and there are strong contrasts between types that are right next to each other, as well as interesting lines that connect them. For example, we've been talking about the Eight, and right next to Eight is Nine, “The Peacemaker.” Eights and Nines can look like opposites in certain ways. The Nine is conflict-avoidant, and the Eight tends to think you get what you want by pushing into conflict if necessary. Then you've got Four, “The Individualist,” which is very emotional, artistic, heart-centred, and Five, “The Investigator,” which you're familiar with—very head-centred and analytical, thinking-based. The Four and the Five can clash a bit: the head and the heart. So, yes, there are interesting contrasts right next to each other on the wheel. Each type also has its own conflict style. We're going into the weeds a bit here, but it's fascinating to play with. There's one conflict style—the avoidant conflict style, sometimes called the “positive outlook” group—and it's actually hard to get those types into an enemies-to-lovers romance because they don't really want to be enemies. That's Types Two, Seven, and Nine. So depending on the trope you're writing, some type pairings are more frictional than others. There are all these different dynamics you can explore, and I can't wait to dig into them more for everyone in the relationships book. Joanna: The Enneagram is just one of many tools people can use to figure out themselves as well as their characters. Maybe that's something people want to look at this year. You've got this book, you've got other resources that go into it, and there's also a lot of information out there if people want to explore it more deeply. Let's pull back out to the bigger picture, because as this goes out in January 2026, I think there is a real fear of change in the community right now. Is that something you've seen? What are your thoughts for authors on how they can navigate the year ahead? Claire: Yes, there has been a lot of fear. The rate of change of things online has felt very rapid. The rate of change in the broader world—politically, socially—has also felt scary to a lot of people. It can be really helpful to look at your own personal life and anchor yourself in what hasn't changed and what feels universal. From there you can start to say, “Okay, I can do this. I'm safe enough to be creative. I can find creative ways to work within this new environment.” You can choose to engage with AI. You can choose to opt out. It's totally your choice, and there is no inherent virtue in either one. I think that's important to say. Sometimes people who are anti-AI—not just uninterested but actively antagonistic—go after people who like it. And sometimes people who like AI can be antagonistic towards people who don't want to use it. But actually, you get to choose what you're comfortable with. One of the things I see emerging for authors in 2026, regardless of what tools you're using or how you feel about them, is this question of trustworthiness. I think there's a big need for that. With the increased number of images and videos that are AI-generated—which a lot of people who've been on the internet for a while can still recognise as AI and say, “Yeah, that's AI”—but that may not be obvious for long. Right now some of us can tell, but a lot of people can't, and that's only going to get murkier. There's a rising mistrust of our own senses online lately. We're starting to wonder, “Can I believe what I'm seeing and hearing?” And I think that sense of mistrust will increase. As an author in that environment, it's really worth focusing on: how do I build trust with my readers? That doesn't mean you never use AI. It might simply mean you disclose, to whatever extent feels right for you, how you use it. There are things like authenticity, honesty, vulnerability, humility, integrity, transparency, reliability—all of those are ingredients in this recipe of trustworthiness that we need to look at for ourselves. If there's one piece of hard inner work authors can do for 2026, I think it's asking: “Where have I not been trustworthy to my readers?” Then taking that hard, sometimes painful look at what comes up, and asking how you can adjust. What do you need to change? What new practices do you need to create that will increase trustworthiness? I really think that's the thing that's starting to erode online. If you can work on it now, you can hold onto your readers through whatever comes next. Joanna: What's one concrete thing people could do in that direction [to increase trustworthiness]? Claire: I would say disclosing if you use AI is a really good start—or at least disclosing how you use it specifically. I know that can lead to drama when you do it because people have strong opinions, but trustworthiness comes at the cost of courage and honesty. Transparency is another ingredient we could all use more of. If transparency around AI is a hard “absolutely not” for you—if you're thinking, “Nope, Claire, you can get lost with that”—then authenticity is another route. Let your messy self be visible, because people still want some human in the mix. Being authentically messy and vulnerable with your audience helps. If you can't be reliable and put the book out on time, at least share what's going on in your life. Staying connected in that way builds trust. Readers will think, “Okay, I see why you didn't hit that deadline.” But if you're always promising books—“It's going to be out on this day,” and then, “Oh, I had to push it back,” and that happens again and again—that does erode the trustworthiness of your brand. So, looking at those things and asking, “How am I cultivating trust, and how am I breaking it?” is hard work. There are definitely ways I look at my own business and think, “That's not a very trustworthy thing I'm doing.” Then I need to sit down, get real with myself, and see how I can improve that. Joanna: Always improving is good. Coming back to the personal brand piece, and to being vulnerable and putting ourselves out there: you and I have both got used to that over years of doing it and practising. There are people listening who have never put their photo online, or their voice online, or done a video. They might not use their photo on the back of their book or on their website. They might use an avatar. They might use a pen name. They might be afraid of having anything about themselves online. That's where I think there is a concern, because as much as I love a lot of the AI stuff, I don't love the idea of everything being hidden behind anonymous pen names and faceless brands. As you said, being vulnerable in some way and being recognisably human really matters. I'd say: double down on being human. I think that's really important. Do you have any words of courage for people who feel, “I just can't. I don't want to put myself out there”? Claire: There are definitely legitimate reasons some people wouldn't want to be visible. There are safety reasons, cultural reasons, family reasons—all sorts of factors. There are also a lot of authors who simply haven't practised the muscle of vulnerability. You build that muscle a little bit at a time. It does open you up to criticism, and some people are just not at a phase of life where they can cope with that. That's okay. If fear is the main reason—if you're hiding because you're scared of being judged—I do encourage you to step out, gently. This may be my personal soapbox, but I don't think life is meant to be spent hiding. Things may happen. Not everyone will like you. That's part of being alive. When you invite in hiding, it doesn't just stay in one corner. That constricted feeling tends to spread into other areas of your life. A lot of the time, people I work with don't want to disclose their pen names because they're worried their parents won't approve, and then we have to unpack that. You don't have to do what your parents want you to do. You're an adult now, right? If the issue is, “They'll cut me out of the will,” we can talk about that too. That's a deeper, more practical conversation. But if it's just that they won't approve, you have more freedom than you think. You also don't have to plaster your picture everywhere. Even if you're not comfortable showing your face, you can still communicate who you are and what matters to you in other ways—through your stories, through your email list, through how you talk to readers. Let your authentic self be expressed in some way. It's scary, but the reward is freedom. Joanna: Absolutely. Lots to explore in 2026. Tell people where they can find you and your books and everything you do online. Claire: LiberatedWriter.com is where all of my stuff lives, except my fiction, which I don't think people here are necessarily as interested in. If you do want to find my fiction, FFS Media is where that lives. Then I'm on Substack as well. I write long pieces there. If you want to subscribe, it's The Liberated Writer on Substack. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Claire. That was great. Claire: Thanks so much for having me.The post Leaving Social Media, Writing Iconic Characters, and Building Trust With Claire Taylor first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Marc Shaiman is a renowned American composer, lyricist, arranger, and music producer known for his work across film, television, and theater. Shaiman began his career as a musical director and arranger for Bette Midler before expanding into film scoring. He gained prominence with his work on films such as When Harry Met Sally, The Addams Family, Sister Act, City Slickers, A Few Good Men, Sleepless in Seattle, The American President, and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, on television with SNL, and on recordings with Harry Connick Jr. and Mariah Carey. Shaiman earned widespread acclaim for co-writing the Broadway musical Hairspray alongside his longtime co-lyricist Scott Wittman. The duo has also co-created the musicals Catch Me If You Can, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Some Like It Hot, and Smash. He has been nominated for multiple Academy Awards and has won a Tony, two Emmys, and two Grammys. Marc Shaiman is celebrated for his versatile, emotionally resonant music and his ability to blend classic musical theatre sensibilities with modern storytelling. Born and raised in New Jersey, he currently lives in New York with his husband, Lieutenant Commander (ret) Lou Mirabal. For more information visit www.marcshaiman.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices