Origin Stories

Alexis Coe is a historian, TV commentator, curator, and columnist whose work examines how power, myth, and repetition shape the way American history gets told. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling book You Never Forget Your First, a sharp, funny, and rigorously researched biography of George Washington that challenges centuries of received wisdom about America’s first president. In this episode, Coe talks to Matthew about how she discovered that no woman had written a full biography of Washington in more than forty years, why so many presidential histories have hardened into myth, and what happens when size and seriousness are mistaken for authority. She walks through her research process, her decision to focus on Washington off the battlefield, and the risks and rewards of writing history that refuses to sound reverent just because it’s old. “It tells me to trust myself creatively in the same way that I trust myself intellectually,” Coe says. “And that’s such a lovely feeling.”" To connect with the team and gain access to behind the scenes content, join our community at ⁠joincampside.com⁠. You can also find us on ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠TikTok⁠ & ⁠Youtube⁠. Have a question, guest recommendation or just want to say hi? Email us at Originstories@campsidemedia.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tommy Andres is an audio journalist whose work has spanned This American Life, CNN, and Marketplace, where he spent years as a senior producer. More recently, he’s focused on deeply reported, limited-run narratives, including Third Squad After Afghanistan, which was shortlisted for a National Magazine Award and won an Edward R. Murrow Award. He also served as executive producer on We Came to the Forest. In this episode, Andres talks to Matthew about The Eyes of the Fighter, a two-part story he hosted and produced for Sports Explains the World. It begins with a home invasion in the middle of the night and turns inward, as Andres tries to understand how Jermaine Thompson, a former wrestler and amateur MMA fighter, ended up inside his Atlanta home. The search takes him through wrestling gyms, MMA, and a spiral of addiction and pain. He also reflects on what it’s like to report on your own life, how body-camera footage challenged his memory of what happened, and the discomfort of turning someone else’s lowest moment into a story. “Did he fully know this was going to turn into a real thing? That’s a scary place to be,” Andres says. “Because you start asking yourself: did I help this guy or did I hurt this guy? The whole point of the piece is I’m rooting for him. And then you wonder if you just used him to get a story. That extractive feeling makes me uncomfortable.” To connect with the team and gain access to behind the scenes content, join our community at ⁠joincampside.com⁠. You can also find us on ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠TikTok⁠ & ⁠Youtube⁠. Have a question, guest recommendation or just want to say hi? Email us at Originstories@campsidemedia.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Selwyn Seyfu Hinds is a screenwriter, journalist, and creator whose work spans music, comics, and television. He was once the editor in chief of The Source, co-created the comic series Dominique Laveau: Voodoo Child, and has written for Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone. In this episode, he talks to Matthew about Washington Black, the Hulu adaptation of Esi Edugyan’s novel, developed in collaboration with Sterling K. Brown. He breaks down how the project came together, why he connected to Wash’s journey so personally, and how the show balances the brutality of slavery with a world driven by imagination, dreaming, and flight as a metaphor for hope. “Being a showrunner is as close as you can get to playing God,” he says. “It’s really you and the blank page and it’s Genesis and you’re like, ‘Let there be flying ships,’ right?” To connect with the team and gain access to behind the scenes content, join our community at ⁠joincampside.com⁠. You can also find us on ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠TikTok⁠ & ⁠Youtube⁠. Have a question, guest recommendation or just want to say hi? Email us at Originstories@campsidemedia.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mandy Matney is a journalist and the creator of the Murdaugh Murders podcast, the hit true-crime series that followed the unraveling of the Murdaugh family long before Alex Murdaugh’s 2023 murder conviction. Reporting from South Carolina, Matney broke major stories by leaning on deep local knowledge and a willingness to dig into details others overlooked. She is also the founder of the audio company LunaShark and the author of the bestselling book Blood on Their Hands: Murder, Corruption, and the Fall of the Murdaugh Dynasty. You can listen to her new podcast, True Sunlight here. In this episode, she talks to Matthew about how the Murdaugh Murders grew from a planned ten-episode podcast into an ongoing investigation with more than ninety episodes, what it was like becoming part of the story she was covering, and why local journalism is so important. “The fact that I knew enough about the beat to spot a connection most reporters would miss,” she says, “that’s why local journalism matters.” To connect with the team and gain access to behind the scenes content, join our community at ⁠joincampside.com⁠. You can also find us on ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠TikTok⁠ & ⁠Youtube⁠. Have a question, guest recommendation or just want to say hi? Email us at Originstories@campsidemedia.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

David DiGilio is one of the most prolific genre producers and writers working in Hollywood today. In addition to credits on films like “Tron: Ares” and hit shows like “Crossbones” and “Strange Angel,” he is the showrunner of the Amazon Prime blockbuster “The Terminal List,” as well as a spin-off/prequel called “The Terminal List: Dark Wolf.” In this episode, he talks to Matthew about structuring each season for maximum tension and emotional impact. "We start with a storyboard of episodes but also a character board, with each character’s arc across the season," DiGilio says. "Because ultimately, TV is a character-driven medium. Even more so than film. And so you’ve got to know that the character discoveries are going to inform the story and where it goes.” To connect with the team and gain access to behind the scenes content, join our community at ⁠joincampside.com⁠. You can also find us on ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠TikTok⁠ & ⁠Youtube⁠. Have a question, guest recommendation or just want to say hi? Email us at Originstories@campsidemedia.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dana Fox is a veteran screenwriter and producer. The showrunner of the Apple TV series “Home Before Dark,” and the creator of the sitcom “Ben and Kate,” she is best known as the co-writer of “Wicked” and “Wicked: For Good,” two of the highest-grossing (and most popular) movies in American history. In this episode, she talks to Matthew about the art of bringing a beloved franchise to the screen and the expectations that followed the release of the first film. “I was so proud that it touched all kinds of people, and made people feel seen. Like they have a place in the world,” Fox says. “All these things that were so great, so emotional. And then suddenly I became more panicked about the second movie, because I was like, ‘Oh my God, people’s expectations are off planet Earth.’ It’s like, ‘This movie has to be an A-plus plus plus plus plus plus for them to feel like it’s even an A.’ And that was exciting, but scary, you know?”  To connect with the team and gain access to behind the scenes content, join our community at ⁠joincampside.com⁠. You can also find us on ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠TikTok⁠ & ⁠Youtube⁠. Have a question, guest recommendation or just want to say hi? Email us at Originstories@campsidemedia.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Janet Reitman is a fellow at New America and a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine. A former longtime correspondent for Rolling Stone, she is a two-time finalist for a National Magazine Award and the author of some of the most influential journalism of the past two decades. In this episode, she talks with Matthew about "A Disaster of the US Military's Own Making," her 2024 Times Magazine expose on the Army suicide crisis. All good writing, Reitman says, necessarily involves letting go of material that no longer helps the piece, however painful that letting go may be. "Honestly, you can spend weeks writing a single section, writing it over and over again until it's right," she says. "And then you're told, 'This is going to get jettisoned.' This thing you've spent weeks on. And I mean, it's tragic. But sometimes it's also the best choice. It's the best decision."  To connect with the team and gain access to behind the scenes content, join our community at ⁠joincampside.com⁠. You can also find us on ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠TikTok⁠ & ⁠Youtube⁠. Have a question, guest recommendation or just want to say hi? Email us at Originstories@campsidemedia.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Special episode alert! This week, we're featuring an interview from So Your Parents Are Old, a new podcast about the realities (funny, sad, and somewhere in-between) of dealing with aging loved ones. In this episode, host Vanessa Grigoriadis chats with Amanda Uhle, a writer and the publisher of McSweeney’s, about her new book "Destroy This House." For more information on the show, plug the words "So Your Parents Are Old" into whatever podcast app you use. Or head on over to joincampside.com. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/origin-stories/id1833077585?i=1000740855568See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lorelei Lee is a writer, activist, porn performer, and activist. A graduate of Cornell Law School and New York University’s MFA program, they write regularly for a range of publications, including N+1, Buzzfeed, and Wired. In this episode, Lorelei talks to Matthew about their groundbreaking essay “Cash/Consent,” which is both a memoir of Lorelei’s time in the porn industry and a reflection on the complicated relationship between their career and their “civilian” life. “I often have to write the same thing many times,” Lorelei says. “I have to write it until I don’t feel the feelings, because as long as I’m still stuck on the emotional impact to myself, I’m not going to be able to understand the emotional impact on the reader. But that’s why writing and editing are two different things done at two different times.” To connect with the team and gain access to behind the scenes content, join our community at ⁠joincampside.com⁠. You can also find us on ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠TikTok⁠ & ⁠Youtube⁠. Have a question, guest idea, or just wanna say hi? Email us at Originstories@campsidemedia.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

James Vanderbilt, a screenwriter-producer-director known for Zodiac, discusses making Nuremberg. He talks about balancing heavy subject matter with moments of levity. He describes research-driven development, surprising character intros, structural rules worth breaking, and why timeless themes matter over topicality.