Category: Podcast

come closer and see

Posted on By Wil

I want to take a moment and say thank you for all the messages of comfort and support that so many of y’all have shared with me since Marlowe passed. I haven’t ever felt this kind of grief, for this long, in my life. When I am feeling the most sad, when I’m sobbing until I can’t breathe, I feel closest to her, so all I can do is go through it, honor it, and embrace her memory.

There’s a dog on Instagram called Wesley the Chicken Nugget. I adore him, and I love it when his person shares photos and video of him being a dog, so I completely understand how we can love animals we’ve never met. I know that lots of you loved Marlowe, and that comforts me every day.

So thank you, from Anne and me, for choosing to be kind.

I had to take a couple weeks off from recording stories for It’s Storytime (I’ve come to believe that four or five weeks of bereavement leave isn’t unreasonable) but we’re back to work and there’s a new story this week that I wanted everyone to know about.

It’s called To Carry You Inside You, by Tia Tashiro. Here’s my intro:

I grew up in the entertainment industry, not by choice, so I had a front row seat to the abuse and exploitation of child actors like myself. I grew up absolutely terrified of upsetting anyone on the set, robotically doing whatever I was told, so I could just get through it and have one of the precious and rare hours of my childhood where I got to just be a kid, before I was ripped out of childhood and thrust back into a place I never wanted to be.

Today, we are going to visit a future where child actors are still exploited, still used up and discarded, facing an adult life without purpose, that they were never prepared for, because nobody cared what happened to them past an arbitrary age.

We will meet a young woman who is doing her best to assemble the pieces of a stolen childhood into a fulfilling adult life. It isn’t what she wanted, or would have chosen for herself, but she’s doing her best, which is all any of us can do.

This is one of those examples of speculative fiction that I point to when I talk about the power of storytelling that lands on different people for different reasons. This story isn’t about me, but holy shit is it about me. In fact, when I reached out to Tia and asked for permission to do the narration, I mentioned that she captured the experience of being a child actor so perfectly and honestly, she must have some firsthand experience … imagine my surprise when she told me that she didn’t, that she used her imagination to create those moments.

Holy shit. That’s incredible. Please let me know what you think, if you listen.

Anyway, I’m doing my best to promote the show and just let people know it exists, but I keep getting crushed by the algorithm. On Threads, the posts before and after I talked about the podcast have thousands of views and hundreds of interactions, but my post about this episode has like 20 interactions and has only been seen by about 2000 of the 5000000 accounts that follow me. That seems … odd. And honestly, it’s kind demoralizing that one of the few direct ways I have to tell people this exists seems to work against supporting that. I’ve tried letting Bluesky know, and the 13 people who tend to notice me there are excited about it, I’m sure, but it just doesn’t seem to get traction there at all. If anyone reading this has experience bringing something to an audience who will probably love it, but just don’t know about it, I’d be grateful to hear anything you have to say about it.

Last thing, that is explicitly in service of promotion: If you listen to the podcast, you can help me out by rating and reviewing it wherever you are subscribed. The show’s audience is growing slowly but steadily, and I know it isn’t because of me; it’s because listeners are recommending it. That means so much to me. Thank you.

Books

It’s Storytime – Magnificent Maurice, or the Flowers of Immortality

Posted on By Wil

It is Wednesday, my dudes, and that means a new Storytime is waiting for you, wherever you get your podcasts.

This week’s story, Magnificent Maurice, or the Flowers of Immortality, was SO MUCH FUN to narrate. Here’s my intro:

About ten thousand years ago, some cats in Mesopotamia looked at a bunch of humans and thought, “I bet we could trick them into giving us food and shelter,” so they domesticated themselves. As a dog owner who is a member of my cat, Watson’s, staff, I’d say that it worked out pretty well for them.

This week, it is a privilege to tell you a story about one of the greatest cats who has ever lived (just ask him, he’ll tell you), a very special cat, with a very special job. I’m going to straighten my collar and make sure my hair is just so, as I tell you the tale of Magnificent Maurice, or the Flowers of Immortality.

You’re going to love this, especially if you are on staff for one or more housecats. In Patreon, we are celebrating our feline bosses, sharing their full names (Watson’s True and Full Name is His Royal Majesty, Sir Waddington Pottybottoms III, Esq.,The First of His Name, Head of The Complaint Department) and the titles of the songs we sing to them, featuring their names. It’s a lot of fun, and I encourage all of my fellow pet owners to jump in, here, if not there, and share.

“I’m not in your way, am I?”

Also, before I hit publish and get ready for work, I want to take a minute to thank all of you who listen to the podcast, who have subscribed to our Patreon, who have taken the time and effort to rate, review, and recommend us so we can grow. You are making it possible for me to do this, week after week, and I am intensely grateful to you. It is such a privilege to entertain you, to tell you these wonderful stories, and introduce you to authors you may not know, but I think you will love. And speaking of that, if you missed this, I wanted you to know that Senaa Ahmad, whose The Skin of a Teenage Boy is not Alive was on the pod a couple weeks ago, has a brand new short story collection out called The Age of Calamities (“Written by an inimitable new voice, The Age of Calamities is a genre-defying, mind-bending collection of absurdist, funny, and speculative short stories.“), that is available wherever you get your books.

It is such a gift to do this, y’all. If I can do this as my regular job for the rest of my career, if I never have to go work on camera again, if all I do is tell you stories and promote the Arts, I will be so happy. It feels like that has a very real chance of happening, and that fills me with such joy, I feel like I’m going to burst.

Okay. NOW I am going to go get ready for work. Stay safe, friends.

blog

It’s Storytime: Wend-Way-Go

Posted on By Wil

It is Wednesday, and that means there’s a new episode of It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton, waiting for you wherever you get your podcasts.

This week’s story is Wend-Way-Go by Tim Pratt. It was originally published in Uncanny Magazine.

I made a creative choice for this week that I haven’t made before on the podcast, and it was so satisfying, I wanted to talk about it a little bit.

When I was working on Star Trek, one of the adults in the cast — and I can’t remember who, no matter how hard I try — introduced me to the concept of “meeting the demands of the material.” They meant that our job as actors is to serve the writer’s intention, not the other way around. Before we start changing words or rewriting lines, it is our responsibility to do the work of understanding the author’s intent until the scenes work. And if the scene still doesn’t work after all of that, then it is time to talk about making changes. But you don’t go making changes because you’re 15 and don’t yet know what it means to be an actor, beyond following direction.

It took me awhile to process that, and it took me even longer to reliably meet the demands of the material, but I eventually got there and never left.

As a narrator of over 100 titles, my job is easier, more joyful, and more satisfying because I know to listen to what the author wants to say, and then do my best to communicate that through my performance. When it works, the listener doesn’t even know what I did; they just feel the story more completely than they would, otherwise. It’s a pretty great trick.

When we recorded this week’s story, Gabrielle (who directs and produces) and I both felt that the material was making a specific demand, that was also a gift to me: without saying so directly, Tim sets this story in what felt to both of us like South Carolina, for some reason. It was so clear in the text that the narrative character needed to speak in a soft drawl, that supported his fundamental gentleness.

It is a creative risk, to be sure. Accents are tough, and present a unique trap that catches me all the time when I discover I am doing an accent, when I should be performing with an accent.

So it’s exciting and a little scary, but I’m glad I did it. I loved this story, and I hope you do, too.

And now, links!

You can also support the show on Patreon, where $5 a month gets you access to the show with no ads, a growing community of lovely people, live AMAs with me, and weekly insights behind the scenes of the show.

If this is your first time reading or visiting my blog, welcome! I’m glad you’re here. If you’d like to get my posts in your inbox, here’s the thing:

i am doing my best to be a helper

Posted on By Wil

Mister Rogers says that when terrible things happen, to look for the helpers.

This is so important to me, I have the tattoo.

Terrible things are happening. I’m upset. And I’m angry. And I’m so sad.

While I am looking for the helpers, I am also doing my best to be a helper.

I have to be honest: when a domestic terrorist organization, created and unleashed on us by our own government, are terrorizing, tear-gassing, kidnapping, and murdering with impunity, the way I help feels pretty pointless.

It feels woefully inadequate to me, but I entertain, I tell stories, I help you recover your hit points. It’s what I know how to do, and it’s what I do best. And I keep reminding myself that if I can make something that helps someone else create the space I have when I read a book or listen to an album, or whatever I’m doing to rest, then I have to do that. I can’t not do that. This is my purpose. I entertain, especially when it feels like entertaining is less important than something other people need entertainment to get a break from doing.

I want to be crystal clear: I am not comparing myself to anyone, or suggesting that what I do is equivalent, but we all do what we can, right? I’m doing my best, I think.

What I do right now, and what I hope to do until I retire, is tell you stories that help you create a bit of safe space to just … be … for a minute, a place where you can recover some hit points, while you listen. Today, I went to the studio, and told you a story that you will hear next week. I was so grateful to have a break of my own. I loved doing this story. It was so satisfying to focus on how I chose the narrator’s emotional point of view, to find my own narrative pace, to notice something in the narrative that I hadn’t, before. To feel that indescribable thing performers only feel in our bodies when we perform.

It was a privilege and a blessing, all made possible by authors who said yes, a team of people who believe in me, and so many people I will never meet, who trust me with their time and attention, week after week.

I am so grateful. I will continue to do my best.

As I was about to click publish, I noticed that there are 1000 new subscribers to my posts. Welcome. If you’d like to get my posts in your email, here’s the thing:

blog

you walk outside, and everything just says “SOON”

Posted on By Wil

There is a massive winter storm barreling toward us right now, expected to arrive in the next 18 or so hours. Yesterday, it was unseasonably warm and stupidly beautiful. Today, it’s eerily calm, under grey skies. The air is so still, it carries the train whistles from all the way across the valley, and every lawnmower in town sounds like it’s next door. You walk outside, and everything just says, soon.1 Even the corvids and squirrels seem reluctant to come out of the trees, It never rains in Southern California, man. It pours.

This past weekend, though, it was great, and I was grateful for it.

Last Friday, Anne and I celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. We have both been so busy and overwhelmed for so long, we planned to skip our usual weekend getaway and just go out for a really fancy dinner, instead. So we went to Mozza in Hollywood, where I think Anne discovered that pasta can actually be wonderful and not what her husband struggles to assemble in our kitchen.

We had such a wonderful meal, and such a nice time out, on a Friday night like PEOPLE WHO GO OUT TO DO THINGS! And that would have been enough, but about two weeks ago, Anne said that she was really missing our usual weekend away, and how did I feel about using points to go somewhere close? I admitted that I, too, was feeling sad we weren’t going to have two days of absolutely nothing but Us. Funny how we both really wanted to do this together, but kept talking ourselves out of it because we’d agreed together that we would.

Anyway, she found a place, cashed in some points, and we spent the weekend up in Santa Barbara. It was nothing but long walks, petting dogs, eating incredible food, and prioritizing each other, our relationship, our friendship, and our marriage. Each of us truly is married to our best friend, and even after 26 years (30+ total), we still have all kinds of fun goofing off together. We have consistently done the hard work of being married and being a family, and that investment pays off at like fifty million percent all the time.

It’s just like … it’s such a blessing and so awesome to spend our lives together, and be mom and dad to our kids. We have worked really hard for a good life, and I’m grateful that I’ve worked so hard to heal my PTSD, so I can actually enjoy living it.

And now…

This week’s story dropped earlier today! It is Disassembling Light, by Kel Coleman. It originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies issue 385.

This is a magical story (meaning that Magic features prominently in the narrative) about a man who holds tremendous knowledge and skill in his heart, and the hopeful apprentice who comes to learn from him. It also makes me wonder what good is knowledge, if its holder doesn’t freely share it?

You can get It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton wherever you get your podcasts. Here’s some links to the more popular services:

You can also support the show on Patreon, where you’ll get the show with no ads, as well as some spiffy extras that all the cool kids are into these days.

Today, I recorded two episodes. One of the things we did is the most beautiful, heartbreaking, I-need-a-minute-to-compose-myself story I have read in a long, long time. I’m so excited for you to hear it. It’s also the source of the show’s first official blooper, where you will get to hear me use all my, uh, colorful metaphors in rather creative ways.

I would absolutely love to hear your feedback on the show, if you’re a listener. I feel like we’re doing good work, and putting good art into the world, but I have no idea what the audience thinks if I don’t ask, because we aren’t exactly in a theater together. Although, if I can figure out how to stage one of these stories, I’m into seeing what that would look and sound like. Maybe something cool is there, way off in the mysterious future.

  1. Unfortunately, it’s not the soon we are all waiting for ↩︎