About Tracy V. Wilson

Tracy's nerdiness was obvious by fifth grade, when she reveled in writing her first book report (subject: "Jane Eyre") and winning her first science fair (subject: mold growth). As a literature student at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, she finally found her people and spent lots of time watching "Star Trek" and playing D&D -- when she wasn't writing poems or reading feminist fiction. Today, Tracy has a house full of computers, consoles and cats, and her library spans everything from Jane Austen to Marion Zimmer Bradley. Tracy joined HowStuffWorks.com as a staff writer in 2005 and is now the site director. You can find Tracy on Twitter at @PopStuffHSW and on Facebook at the official PopStuff page.

Most Recent: Tracy V. Wilson Postings

It may surprise you to know that I’m a Taurus, and Holly is a Gemini. It may also surprise you to know that neither of us believes in astrology (or, more succinctly, we both think it’s bunk) … but we look up our horoscopes from time to time. Or, in Holly’s case, all the times.

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Holly collects many things! I … have a lot of things, but I don’t really think of myself as a collector of most of them. It turns out, there are all kinds of rituals and definitions that surround collecting and collectors.

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Several listeners have asked for music podcasts, and here’s our first one! We took a giant risk with this episode by doing a thing we’ve never done before: putting in clips of things.

Here’s what we talked about, including links to where you can find the artists behind all the clips we played.

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Once again, a thing we love: People asked us to talk about something we already want to talk about. This time, franchise reboots. As with comic book movies, these have a pretty bad reputation among moviegoers at this point. But once we started looking, we saw lots of stuff that’s really good.

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In possibly our goofiest opening ever, Holly and I get down to why we didn’t talk about comic books when we talked about turning books into movies: It’s a whole other thing. As is turning manga into anime. But listeners have requested that we record an episode on comic book movies, so we complied.

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Holly and I have opinions on diamonds. Apparently those views are very strong. And apparently we are unreserved at sharing them with you and others.

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It’s What I Did on My Early Spring Vacation! OK, not really. The Penny Arcade Expo is the biggest consumer gaming show in the U.S., and going to PAX East for work is only kind of like a vacation. Most of the biggest names in games were there, and while I did get to see some awesome forthcoming stuff from some major players, I was really compelled by what’s going on in the independent game world right now.

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There are lots of cats at Holly’s house and a couple of them at mine. We’ve both been known to call ourselves crazy cat ladies. Whether that’s in jest is a little up for debate. We’re not just talking about our cats in this episode, though. It’s more about the crazy things people do — and crazy amounts they spend — on their pets.

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Every time we record, Holly has some kind of awesome T-shirt on, with some kind of fantastic design on. Not this time. She was in plain ol’ black, which is basically the opposite of what we were talking about.

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I’m so glad so many listeners have asked us to talk about food more. It gave us the perfect excuse to talk about trendy, trendy foods, many of which we truly love. Some of which we don’t get. I don’t know why I had doubts that food is part of pop culture: I just got from the Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference, and it has an entire subject area on food.

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