When Miguel Esteban was 14 years old, he got an idea to make his own science fiction magazine. He wanted Octavia Butler to write a piece for it. So he picked up the phone to ask her.

Special thanks to Terry Gross and Fresh Air, which is produced at NPR member station WHYY and distributed by NPR. Quotes reprinted with permission of the Octavia E. Butler Estate.

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One Saturday night in the 90s, Patrick Makuakāne and about 15 other hula dancers showed up to a club in San Francisco they called Old Dreamland. "It didn’t feel like taking risks. Because no one was there to tell me 'what the hell are you doing?'"

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Nurse BokHee is in the background of every season of "Grey’s Anatomy." She’s become one of the show’s most beloved characters – but she's only had a few lines.

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Gabrielle Gatto works at one of the most famous cemeteries in the country. Recently, she recorded a day in her life for the podcast Finally! A Show, for an episode called “Finally! A Show about a Crematorium Worker at Green-Wood Cemetery.” 

Criminal listeners might recognize one of the voices in this episode - Lynda Thompson-Lindsay - who runs the Lawrence H. Woodward Funeral Home. You can hear our conversation with her in our episode One Troy. 

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The synthesizer was invented in the 1890s. But for people to really start using it, it took half a century, a musician named Wendy Carlos, and an album called Switched-On Bach.

Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan of Switched On Pop tell Phoebe why Wendy Carlos is “the most significant figure in 20th century music that the least people know about.”

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The night sky is getting brighter almost everywhere in the world. We visit a place that is trying to stay dark.

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Folk singer Peggy Seeger and her partner, Irene Pyper-Scott, live on different continents. Peggy has written dozens of poems and songs for Irene, and one for the man she spent 33 years with before that – Ewan MacColl. “He loved me the way I loved Irene.”

Ewan MacColl wrote the famous love song – “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” – about Peggy in 1957.

Peggy Seeger’s book is First Time Ever: A Memoir.

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McGillin’s Olde Ale House is the oldest bar in Philadelphia, and it also claims to be the most romantic place in the city. The Philadelphia Inquirer says: “McGillin’s has matchmaking magic.”

Special thanks to Andrew Stelzer. 

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Curtis was one of the first nationally-syndicated comic strips with a mostly-Black cast of characters. Ray Billingsley has been drawing it for newspapers every day for the past 35 years.

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When comic Maria Bamford made her OkCupid profile with the username Hogbook, she says Scott Marvel Cassidy was one of the only people who contacted her. His username was Lazer Eyes.

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Kyo Maclear remembers when she took a DNA test, the kit came with a piece of paper with terms and conditions that read, “You may discover unanticipated facts about yourself or your family when using our services that you may not have the ability to change.”

Kyo Maclear’s book is Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets.

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