And, no. That’s not a real tattoo. Here are some other facts about me.

My favorite topics to write about are teens and reproductive health — sometimes both at the same time!

Before I made my own podcasts, I was an independent public radio reporter, filing stories on everything from housing to health to art to education, but my unofficial beat was teenagers. I think that’s because I also write young adult novels. Whenever one of my editors had an assignment that involved teens, I got the call. I worked for shows like This American Life, Studio360, Marketplace, Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend America and I made stories about things like kids who feel misunderstood because they’re quiet, a high school senior whose dad kicked him out of the house for being gay, and a guy who convinced his younger siblings that he was a werewolf.

I made my first radio story in 1999 using a microcassette answering machine and a shiny red boombox.

That story was for This American Life. You can still hear it here, complete with all the pops and clicks from the boombox.

I created one of the first self-sustaining podcasts.

In 2010, I started The Longest Shortest Time. It’s a podcast about the surprises and absurdities of raising other humans. On the show, I covered topics ranging from birth injuries to transgender pregnancy to the sex lives of parents, as well as a series on discrimination against working moms called It's a Real Mother. In 2018, I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about the special misogyny I’ve faced as a mom working in podcasting. I’m proud to say that despite those struggles, The Longest Shortest Time ran strong for nearly a decade. The show was named one of the 50 Best Podcasts by The Atlantic and TIME and won several awards, including two from the Third Coast International Audio Festival and two Webby awards. The Longest Shortest Time’s signature event, Speed Dating for Mom Friends, was profiled in The New Yorker.

After The Longest Shortest Time, I felt a pull back to teenworld. Maybe because my own kiddo was almost a teen?

In 2021, I launched my fiction podcast, Here Lies Me. It’s a weird, dark, funny show about middle school for teens and adults. It was on Best Podcasts of 2021 lists from Spotify, Bello Collective, CBC’s Podcast Playlist, and Podcast the Newsletter and was named a Notable New Release by New York Magazine.