{"id":3091,"date":"2013-10-25T01:26:53","date_gmt":"2013-10-25T05:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/?p=3091"},"modified":"2013-10-25T01:27:12","modified_gmt":"2013-10-25T05:27:12","slug":"on-the-eve-50th-episode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2013\/10\/25\/on-the-eve-50th-episode\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Eve of a 50th Episode&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/LS-lineup.jpg\" alt=\"Life Stories: Recent Guests\" title=\"Life Stories: Recent Guests\" width=\"353\" height=\"353\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"4\" vspace=\"4\" \/>As I write this, I&#8217;ve posted four episodes of the <i>Life Stories<\/i> podcast in five days. They&#8217;re episodes 45 through 49 of the series, which I launched back at the start of 2012, and I&#8217;m a few hours away from going out and recording what will be the 50th interview (but with the 52nd guest), which I&#8217;ll post later that same day.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve really enjoyed doing this podcast&#8212;interviewing writers has always been one of my favorite aspects of the whole <i>Beatrice<\/i> thing over the years, and I thought about doing a podcast for a long time, but I wasn&#8217;t sure at first whether I&#8217;d be able to find a focus tight enough to keep me alert and engaged over the long haul. If I was just talking about &#8220;books,&#8221; I figured I&#8217;d get overwhelmed by all the options, or try to cram too many authors in and flame out. Narrowing the show down to &#8220;memoir writers&#8221; turned out to be a great move: It&#8217;s a specific enough theme that I can always find an appropriate guest, but it&#8217;s also a diverse enough theme that I&#8217;ve had the opportunity to meet 52 amazing people with radically different, um, life stories.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re reading this shortly after I post it in October 2013, for example, you may have listened to some of this week&#8217;s episodes&#8212;ranging from <a href=\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2013\/10\/20\/life-stories-46-victoria-loustalot\/\">a 20-something woman<\/a> recalling the father who committed suicide before AIDS could ravage his health, or <a href=\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2013\/10\/22\/life-stories-47-shahan-mufti\/\">a Pakistani-American journalist<\/a> whose family saga is linked to the heart of their homeland&#8217;s identity, or <a href=\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2013\/10\/23\/life-stories-48-patty-chang-anker\/\">a former book publicist<\/a> who&#8217;s overcoming some of her most basic, life-limiting fears, or <a href=\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2013\/10\/24\/life-stories-49-jessica-alexander\/\">a humanitarian aid worker<\/a> who&#8217;s spent the last decade in some of the world&#8217;s most troubled regions. It&#8217;s been a pleasure and a privilege to be able to introduce people like them (and all the others) to you&#8212;or, if you&#8217;ve recognized some of the guests, to help you get to know them better. And I&#8217;m looking forward to continuing this podcast for another 50 episodes&#8230; just for starters.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you to everyone who&#8217;s listened to these interviews, whether you&#8217;re getting them direct from <i>Beatrice<\/i> or you&#8217;ve decided to subscribe to the podcast through iTunes. If the latter, have you thought about rating and reviewing the series? It turns out that&#8217;s actually a big help in getting the podcast in front of other potential listeners&#8212;and that helps me reach out to more readers so I can tell them about the great writers I&#8217;ve been discovering just as I&#8217;ve been sharing them with you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I write this, I&#8217;ve posted four episodes of the Life Stories podcast in five days. They&#8217;re episodes 45 through 49 of the series, which I launched back at the start of 2012, and I&#8217;m a few hours away from going out and recording what will be the 50th interview (but with the 52nd guest), [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3091"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3091"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3098,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3091\/revisions\/3098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}