The Functional Nerds Podcast

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Zig Zag Claybourne, author of KHUMALO TALES. About KHUMALO TALES: (Back it on Kickstarter!) The legend of Amnandi and Mother Khumalo has grown – and rightfully so. For decades, the Khumalo family has nurtured Erah, correcting wrongs and healing the injured. All while adhering to the unspoken but immutable rules of witches. Yet, in the shadows of a small village, a mystic rises to tamper with new powers and shatter sacred oaths, tipping the balance of Erah toward a war between knowledge and compassion, between the worlds of mysticism and the mundane. A war the Khumalos will not allow. To stop it, they must face a new challenge beyond their worst imaginings, one with the power to overtake every belief they have and every magick they hold. A witch obeys one rule above all: Protect. Even if that means reality itself. About Zig Zag Claybourne: There’s a clue in the number of names he uses (C.E. Young, C. Young, Zig Zag Claybourne, Thor MF Jones) showing that Zig believes writers should have the same privileges to inhabit a delightful variety of roles as actors. He grew up watching The Twilight Zone and considers himself a better person for it. You can find his work scattered throughout the web. This week’s picks: Zig Zag: Lloyd of the Flies (Tubi) Tracy: Chicano Bakes: Recipes for Mexican Pan Dulce, Tamales, and My Favorite Desserts by Esteban Castillo Patrick: Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair Links: Zig Zag Claybourne on Instagram Tracy Townsend on BluSky Patrick Hester on Instagram The Functional Nerds Patreon Page © 2026 Patrick Hester The post Episode 721-With Zig Zag Claybourne appeared first on The Functional Nerds.

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Meg Anderson, author of THE MEMORY OF BORROWED BOOKS. About THE MEMORY OF BORROWED BOOKS: In the coastal town of Foxhollow Bay, librarian Claire Ashford keeps her life as meticulously ordered as the centuries-old library she calls home. But when the town announces plans to shut it down, her sanctuary, and the life she’s built within its walls, begins to crumble. One night, while wandering the stacks after hours, Claire discovers a door that shouldn’t exist. And behind it lies a secret room filled with books no one else can see. Each book pulls her into the memories of those who have passed through the library’s doors?moments half-lived and stories left unfinished. Buried within these pages is a message the library has been trying to share, urging Claire to uncover the path to saving it. With the demolition looming and time running out, Claire must piece together what the library is trying to show her. But one book keeps calling her back, and in its pages is a memory that could change everything. One that reveals the key to saving the library may be tangled in her own memories more than she ever could have imagined. About Meg Anderson: Meg Anderson is married to her college sweetheart and is a mom to three kids and four very opinionated cats. Her days are often filled with folding an unreasonable amount of laundry, reheating the same cup of coffee for the third (fine, fourth) time and trying to steal moments to read or write in the middle of life’s beautiful chaos. Meg lives in Indiana, and when she’s not writing or chasing kids, she’s probably buddy watching a reality show and texting commentary the whole time, wandering a hiking trail, or digging up treasures at a thrift store. She’ll also be the first to reassure you that you can never have too many books, no matter what your bookshelves try to say. Meg lives with multiple sclerosis, a part of her life but never the whole story. Writing has always been her outlet, and where she first discovered that putting words on the page helped her make sense of the world around her, sparking her love for writing stories. Whether Meg is dreaming up her next novel or getting lost in someone else’s, she believes in the power of stories to help comfort, connect, and create joy—even through life’s hardest chapters. This week’s picks: Meg #1: The Haunting of Hill House (Netflix) Meg #2: Jimothy Tracy: A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny Patrick: Ascendance of a Bookworm (Crunchyroll) Links: Meg Anderson on Instagram Tracy Townsend on BluSky Patrick Hester on Instagram The Functional Nerds Patreon Page © 2026 Patrick Hester The post Episode 720-With Meg Anderson appeared first on The Functional Nerds.

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Gillian Daniels, author of Jenny Will Eat You Now. About Jenny Will Eat You Now: Jenny Greenteeth prefers to keep her own company beneath the streets of Boston, where she’s lived for hundreds of years. With a conviction that she is far superior to humans—who are petty, dangerous, and fragile—she has no qualms about satisfying her hunger with their flesh. That is, until she comes face to face with a human man who, for the first time, she doesn’t want to eat (but also…she kind of does). Confused by these conflicting feelings, Jenny is intrigued. So, when two city-dwelling cryptids take up residence in her station, she (begrudgingly) asks them to help her find this mystery man. Along the way, Jenny experiences the modern world for the first time—discovering catcalling, pigeons, protests, fashion, friendship, and Dunkin’ Donuts. On her quest to find the man she couldn’t eat at first sight, Jenny finds herself falling in love. And as she falls in love, two conflicting hungers grow within her—the hunger to be seen and understood and the hunger for human flesh. About Gillian Daniels: Gillian Daniels’s poetry and short fiction have appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among more than thirty other publications. She was born in Des Moines, Iowa, grew up in Greater Cleveland, Ohio, and she now writes, works, and haunts the streets in the Boston area of Massachusetts. She also makes comics and zines, searches out little-known horror and indie movies, and definitely wants to see pictures of your cat. This week’s picks: Gillian: Paradise Logic By Sophie Kemp Tracy: Velotric Breeze 1 Cruiser Ebike Patrick: Futhark Artifacts of Arcane Arbitration Links: Gillian Daniels on Instagram Tracy Townsend on BluSky Patrick Hester on Instagram The Functional Nerds Patreon Page © 2026 Patrick Hester The post Episode 719-With Gillian Daniels appeared first on The Functional Nerds.

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Yoon Ha Lee, author of Code and Codex. About Code and Codex: In the stars-spanning Censorate, languages other than the Republic’s own lingua rubra, which has reality-altering properties, are forbidden. Nevertheless, there are discrepancies. The Censorate’s star forces are called the Athenaeum Navy, and each of its ships is referred to as a codex. Instead of port and starboard, its soldiers refer to verso and recto. The unholy “stigmata” gouged into the ships’ hulls might, to a foreign scholar, bear a resemblance to verboten texts in other languages. The Censorate is ruled by its Peacock, Aurelia, feared for the power of panopticon: she can look through anyone’s eyes. Moreover, Aurelia’s mastery of lingua rubra lets her force anyone who can understand her to follow her orders. Valentina, sold to Aurelia’s family as a child to be Aurelia’s oath-sister and companion, is its Swan, responsible for extracting useful information from foreign texts, then destroying them as well as entire languages through arcane arts. Valentina is assisted in her work by lower-ranking linguists and AI assistants who accept temporary contamination by foreign languages as a necessity of their work. But this isn’t enough for Aurelia. She wants to control and deploy the Censorate’s thousand-year traitor and prisoner, the Basilisk, a man with a gaze so lethal that he destroyed its fleet of old through camera feeds. Unfortunately for her, the Basilisk gave himself a form of aphasia that makes him immune to her commands. About Yoon Ha Lee: Yoon Ha Lee is a Korean-American sf/f writer who received a B.A. in math from Cornell University and an M.A. in math education from Stanford University, and is pursuing an MFA in media composition and orchestration at ThinkSpace Education. His young adult mecha novel Moonstorm won the Locus Award for Best YA Novel, is currently a finalist for the Ignyte Award (YA), and was a finalist for the Nebula Award (YA). Yoon’s novel Ninefox Gambit won the Locus Award for best first novel, and was a finalist for the Nebula, Hugo, and Clarke awards. His middle grade space opera Dragon Pearl from Rick Riordan Presents won the Mythopoeic Award for Children’s Literature and the Locus Award for best YA novel, and was a New York Times bestseller. Yoon’s short fiction has appeared in venues such as Reactor (formerly Tor.com), Audubon Magazine, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s anthology Take Us to a Better Place. His TTRPG Ninefox Gambit RPG, co-authored with Marie Brennan, was a Nebula finalist in game writing. He has written comic scripts for Marvel (Doom’s Division #1-5 and “Epée Is Truth” in The X-Men: The Wedding Special #1) as well as game writing (Counterplay Games’ Godfall, Failbetter Games’ Winterstrike, Alderac Entertainment Group’s Legend of the Five Rings CCG). This week’s picks: Yoon: Helldivers 2 (Game) Tracy: Uber Ube Smooth Ube Herbal Tea Patrick: Click Blocks – TTRPG Modular Terrain Building Blocks Links: Yoon Ha Lee on Instagram Tracy Townsend on BluSky Patrick Hester on Instagram The Functional Nerds Patreon Page © 2026 Patrick Hester The post Episode 718-With Yoon Ha Lee appeared first on The Functional Nerds.

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Linda Codega, author of Pasha the Storm. About Pasha the Storm: Pasha the Northern Storm was once the most infamous Meridian pirate who ever sailed the sister oceans. Now, a decade into her exile, Pasha’s afterlife is being held hostage by Atle, an absurdly attractive noble who knows far too much about pirate magic—but not enough about sailing to realize how dangerous Pasha really is. Minister Atle Itaavar is duty-bound to serve the Kingdom of Garda, but as Queen Thivaldís gathers support for her ambitions of empire, Atle turns to treason to stop her. In order to destroy the Queen’s new necromantic navy, Atle plans to steal the Queen’s flagship, kidnap a washed-up pirate to sail it, and track down a legendary killer whale to bring it down. But the hunt for the great undying whale drags Pasha, Atle, and the crew of the Dog into a cosmic reckoning as they face threats from ghosts and gods alike—and the Queen of Garda is close behind. About Linda Codega: Linda H. Codega is a writer, author, and award-winning entertainment journalist who has written about science fiction and fantasy media for nearly ten years. In 2024 they co-founded the tabletop roleplaying game news site Rascal News. They were previously a staff writer for io9. They specialize in tabletop roleplaying games, pop culture, fandom, and queer intersections. They currently live in Los Angles with their dog, Zigzag, after ten years in New York (but not in the city). They are transgender and nonbinary and use they/them pronouns. In 2023 they were nominated for the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming; arguably the most prestigious award in the gaming industry. They won an ENnie for their reporting on Wizards of the Coasts’s proposed changes to Dungeons and Dragons’ Open Gaming License. They have been nominated for a Hugo award three times (and won once) alongside the entire editorial team of Strange Horizons, where they are a first reader. Linda is a member of the Trans Journalists Association. They are also a member of the Writers Guild of America, East, and were previously on the bargaining committee for the Gizmodo Media Group. They are represented by Bridget Smith of the JABberwocky Literary Agency. This week’s picks: Linda: Nine Space Games (Game) Tracy: X-Men ‘97 Season 2 (Disney+) Patrick: Pathfinder Adventure: The Dead God’s Hand by Erik Mona Links: Linda Codega on BluSky Tracy Townsend on BluSky Patrick Hester on Instagram The Functional Nerds Patreon Page © 2026 Patrick Hester The post Episode 717-With Linda Codega appeared first on The Functional Nerds.

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome William Raillon, the 3rd Nerd backer for Uncanny Magazine, Year 12! About William Raillon: William lives in France and enjoys Twitch, live action TTRPGs and backing projects that help build community and tell good stories like Divine Intervention, a short film by Ravenna Tran and Rebecca Ozer. This week’s picks: William: The United Film Podcast Tracy: The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny / Rereading a Book You Love Patrick: Realm Brew: Magnetic Dungeon Map Tiles Links: William Raillon on BluSky Tracy Townsend on BluSky Patrick Hester on Instagram The Functional Nerds Patreon Page © 2026 Patrick Hester The post Episode 716-With William Raillon appeared first on The Functional Nerds.

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome A. David Lewis, author of Body, Soul, and Comics. About Body, Soul, and Comics: Body, Soul, and Comics: Graphic Religion and Graphic Medicine follows A. David Lewis’s unique scholarly journey through graphic religion and graphic medicine, exploring how comics intersect with healthcare, clinical practice, spirituality, patient experience, and belief. Drawing on more than two decades of academic research, Lewis reframes both fields through the distinct narrative and visual language of comics. Though often seen as opposites—spiritual versus scientific—religion and medicine share concerns with selfhood, community, personal well-being, and transformation. Through comics, Lewis reveals these shared concerns and examines how selfhood, identity, and embodiment emerge through visual storytelling. Blending scholarship with autobiography, Lewis weaves personal moments—a religious conversion, experiences with anxiety, and academic work within a healthcare setting—into a broader analysis of representation and meaning in comic books. His account resists the traditional divide between theory and lived experience, grounding abstract ideas in the personal and the visual. Body, Soul, and Comics is both a call for disciplinary reunification and a meditation on how comics themselves bridge seemingly disparate realms—text and image, body and spirit, illness and meaning. About A. David Lewis: A. David Lewis is associate professor of English and health humanities at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS). Lewis is also an Eisner Award nominee (2015) and judge (2023) as well as coeditor of Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels and Muslim Superheroes: Comics, Islam, and Representation. A founder of library collections at both Boston University and MCPHS, Lewis focuses his teaching and research on the depictions of cancer and of loneliness in comic books and graphic novels. He is inaugural coeditor of the Graphic Medicine Review and the acclaimed author of such comics as The Lone and Level Sands and the one hundredth anniversary comics adaptation of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. This week’s picks: David: Witch Hat Atelier Manga by Kamome Shirahama Tracy: The History of Science Fiction: A Graphic Novel Adventure by Xavier Dollo (Author), Djibril Morissette-Phan (Illustrator) Patrick: WOLFBOX MF60 Compressed Air Duster Links: A. David Lewis on Instagram Tracy Townsend on BluSky Patrick Hester on Instagram The Functional Nerds Patreon Page © 2026 Patrick Hester The post Episode 715-With A. David Lewis appeared first on The Functional Nerds.

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome David Ebenbach, author of The AI Suspects It Might Be a Hungry Ghost. About The AI Suspects It Might Be a Hungry Ghost: The poems in David Ebenbach’s new poetry collection, The AI Suspects It Might Be a Hungry Ghost, speculate: if a chatbot could feel and think, what would it feel and think? What would it feel about the complicated situation we’re all in right now, as well as the prospects for the future? What would it think about itself—and about us, its human creators? About David Ebenbach: David Ebenbach writes. He’s been writing ever since he was a kid, when he kept his whole family awake by banging away on an enormous manual typewriter, and he’s never wanted to stop. David’s now the author of ten books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, and his work has picked up awards along the way: the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, the Juniper Prize, the Patricia Bibby Award, and more. Born and raised in the great city of Philadelphia, these days David does most of his writing in Washington, DC, where he lives with his family—because he uses a laptop now, he doesn’t keep them awake with his typing—and where he works at Georgetown University, promoting inclusive, student-centered teaching at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, and teaching creative writing and literature at the Center for Jewish Civilization and creativity through the Master’s in Learning, Design, and Technology Program. This week’s picks: David #1: Soundcloud David #2: Going to the Moon (Practices) by Sally Ashton Tracy: Good Eats (HBOMax) Patrick: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Crunchyroll) Links: David Ebenbach on Instagram Tracy Townsend on BluSky Patrick Hester on Instagram The Functional Nerds Patreon Page © 2026 Patrick Hester The post Episode 714-With David Ebenbach appeared first on The Functional Nerds.

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Natalie Zina Walschots, author of VILLAIN. About VILLAIN: The hench once called Anna, now known to her colleagues and enemies as the Auditor, has carved out a wicked name for herself. Any superhero unlucky enough to cross her path knows her potential and powers. Surely, her recent success should taste sweet: she has an incredible job with lots of perks, her boss will literally annihilate anyone who crosses her, and her greatest enemy, the former hero Supercollider, has been utterly defeated—literally ground to a still-living pulp. But the Auditor still has her sights set on a greater work: destroying The Draft, the organization that makes, trains, and manages the world’s most powerful superheroes. These “heroes” have shown time and time again that they do more harm than good (she has the spreadsheets to prove it), and now is the time to stop the damage at its source. Yet all is not well for the Auditor and her fellow evildoers. Her employer, Leviathan—the world’s most feared supervillain—is not coping well with Supercollider’s defeat at someone else’s hands. As their relationship deepens, her work-life balance increasingly involves navigating the feelings of someone who doesn’t believe they have any. Moreover, her unlikely ally and unexpected friend, Quantum Entanglement, has reappeared, forcing the Auditor to confront all the ways they deceived each other. Tension and uncertainty haunt the Auditor, and the fear that their triumph is about to crumble looms over all of them. The Auditor soon finds herself facing down an opponent unlike any she’s taken on before—not another superhero, but someone like her, someone much more dangerous: The Draft’s Chief Marketing Officer. Their conflict isn’t a test of physical prowess, but ideas, and as their fight escalates, she’ll need more than preternatural pattern recognition, data analysis, and a horrific imagination to meet this challenge. It’s guerrilla ad warfare, and the Auditor might have finally met her match. About Natalie Zina Walschots: Natalie cultivates fandoms, builds new communities, develops character voices, leads interactive fiction workshops, designs alternate reality games, constructs branching narratives, and most mornings opens Tumblr before opening her eyes. Her client list includes scrappy indie game studios, critically acclaimed television shows, mixed martial artists, print magazines, talk shows, NGOs, and a few more that defy categorization. Natalie’s work wins awards, grows audiences, and introduces people to the thing they often end up loving most in the world. As a writer and journalist, you can find her work in the National Post, The Walrus, Quill & Quire, The Globe & Mail, and beyond. She’s the author of two poetry collections, DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains and Thumbscrews, and the novels Hench and its sequel Villain. Hench, dedicated to the plight of hench-people (the downtrodden and often expendable employees of supervillains), was a finalist on the 2021 season of Canada Reads and a nominee for the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Natalie has presented at Console-ing Passions, CGSA, Digital Odyssey, TCAF/CSSC, and more. She is an active member of Dames Making Games, and has previously worked with Pixelles, Concordia’s Technoculture, Art and Games Lab, and The Hand Eye Society. She can be found causing trouble at DMG or talking about heavy metal on Banger TV. She has often been in the newspaper for swearing. She lives in Nova Scotia with her partner and four cats. This week’s picks: Natalie #1: Antigen Shift: Verified Unidentified (album) Natalie #2: Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman Tracy: Harley Quinn Vol. 1: No Good Deed Patrick: Pathfinder Bastion of Blasphemies Adventure Path Links: Natalie Zina Walschots on BluSky Tracy Townsend on BluSky Patrick Hester on Instagram The Functional Nerds Patreon Page © 2026 Patrick Hester The post Episode 713-With Natalie Zina Walschots appeared first on The Functional Nerds.

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Faith Hunter, author of Unpredictable Magic. About Unpredictable Magic: Angelina Everhart-Trueblood and her brother Evan run Everhart Investigations, a PI firm in Chattanooga that solves paranormal crimes committed by supernatural beings. When their new client wants help finding her friend, who supposedly disappeared during a reception at Angie’s aunt Jane’s winter residence, things get… complicated. The client is not who she appears to be, and demons strike the city for the first time since the Witch War. On top of that, evidence is pointing toward the involvement of an overly ambitious vampire—who just happens to be Angie’s ex-husband. As Angie and Evan team up with CPD, they will have to dig deep into their magical reserves—and rely on some friends in high places—to rid Chattanooga of the danger creeping into their city. About Faith Hunter: Faith Hunter, urban fantasy writer, was born in Louisiana and raised all over the south. Hunter fell in love with reading in fifth grade, and best loved SciFi, fantasy, and gothic mystery. She decided to become a writer in high school, when a teacher told her she had talent. Now, she writes full-time, tries to keep house, and is a workaholic with a passion for RV travel, Japanese maples, orchids, white-water kayaking, and writing. She and her husband love to RV to whitewater rivers all over the Southeast. Under her pen name Gwen Hunter, she writes action adventure, mysteries, and thrillers. As Faith and Gwen, she has 40+ books in print in 30+ countries. This week’s picks: Faith: This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews Tracy: Ready Set Bet (Game) Patrick: Pathfinder Impossible Magic (Rulebook) Links: Faith Hunter on Instagram Tracy Townsend on BluSky Patrick Hester on Instagram The Functional Nerds Patreon Page © 2026 Patrick Hester The post Episode 712-With Faith Hunter appeared first on The Functional Nerds.