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Popular fiction podcast (and soon to be YA series!) might just be the opposite of Sweet Valley High. Creator Lauren Shippen and Marissa speculate on what would happen if the two universes collided (hint: DRAMA!). This is the Season Two Finale! Make...
What’s worse: your boyfriend cheating on you; your boyfriend crashing the plane he’s flying you in; everyone agreeing that your cheating boyfriend should stay with you because you’ll never walk again without his love; you convincing yourself you...
Mark Sullivan sits down at the microphone and before Marissa can even hit record, Pandora’s Podcasting Box cracks open. For a few minutes, this Sweet Valley High podcast becomes a movie podcast, a history podcast, a theater podcast, a...
Frenemies Lila and Jessica think they're duking it out over a secret scion, romantically masquerading as a construction worker. Marissa and her guest, actor Mark Sullivan, walk you through it all, from the poolside objectification to the final...
Bruce is a changed man. Jessica is certifiable. Caitlin is Francine’s Mary Sue. Only one question remains: Who are the Vanderhorns??? CJ Hoke is back again to delve in to these and other DRAMATICALLY PRESSING ISSUES!!! *** Notes: All joking...
Regina Morrow and Bruce Patman, in love? But…that would only work if Bruce had a total pod-person level personality shift! Marissa and her guest, CJ Hoke, discuss Bruce Patman’s pod-person level personality shift and (because this is a 33-year-old...
Marissa and guest Jeremy talk about the diverse lessons of LOVE LETTERS, from "be yourself," to "once you have a boyfriend everything will be okay," to "San Francisco is a cesspool." To top it off, Marissa reads a love letter of her own...kind of....
My Dearest Caroline, Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel —Being—who? Your fake boyfriend, that's who!...
Guest Mike Yarksy returns for a little bit of sensitive discussion of how we portray disability...and a little bit of ragging on Lila's stupid flat face. Stay tuned till the end for a word from our new sponsor, THE BOSTON SHOP!
Fate has forced Roger Barrett to trade his mother's life for a fancy new last name, a fancy new mansion, and a fancy pile of money. Meanwhile, his girlfriend (frizzy haired Olivia Davidson) is feeling SO NOT money, and Jessica is giving Machiavelli a...
"What you put on paper can be very personal and revealing...that's what art is all about. It's a way of communicating." When Jason made this innocuous statement to Betsy in Sweet Valley High #15, PROMISES, he had no idea that over 30 years later two...
Cancer, death, secrets, Luke Skywalker, alcoholism, teen drug use, threesomes at Miller's Point...and that's just Chapter One! Marissa is joined by guest Kali Baker-Johnson to unpack what PROMISES to be the greatest SVH book yet...or at the very...
Speaking of DECEPTIONS: When is telling a dude you don't want to date him secretly a coded message that you DO want to date him? And is it NEVER? Marissa and guest Elizabeth Yarwood consider and fail to answer this question, then read a delightful...
After several weeks of non-stop crisis in Sweet Valley, Marissa returns to the relatively placid territory of bad decisions and new boy problems (Nicholas Morrow, to be exact). But as guest Elizabeth Yarwood can attest, sometimes it’s the seemingly...
Marissa and guest Mischa Stanton eavesdrop on an upsetting conversation between Jessica Wakefield and Cara Walker, then travel in their mental time machines back to the days before cell phone ubiquity.
Q: What happens when you’ve just published a book about impending girlfriend death and every fiber of your writerly being says, “Can we go darker?” A: “KIDNAPPED!” Marissa is joined by accomplished podcast producer Mischa Stanton (in...
Katie LaDue joins Marissa once again, this time to examine WHEN LOVE DIES (and a few of the Sweet Valley boys therein) through a new lens. All I can say is SPOILERS SPOILERS SWEET VALLEY CONFIDENTIAL SPOILERS! BEWARE! (from back in 2011)
This is what it sounds like...when love dies. Sweet Valley High goes full soap opera and Marissa talks through the pain with teen television drama aficionado Katie LaDue. Oh, and file this one under "Very Special Episodes" because the topic of facing...
Are modern day teens woke enough to laugh at Suzanne Devlin? Were 12-year-old readers in the '80s indoctrinated into the grand tradition of victim-blaming and rape culture? Does Jessica Wakefield know what sex is? Marissa and guests William J....
It's the premiere of Season 2 of Sweet Valley Diaries! Let's celebrate by shipping Jessica to New York and getting beloved teacher Roger Collins fired for unspecified sex crimes! Don't panic, everyone. Marissa and her guests, William J. Stribling and...
Technically summer doesn't start until next week, but here at the Diaries, summer break is in full effect...and it's PERFECT. In this special between-seasons episode Marissa and guest-friend Alex Bishop dig into the series' first SPECIAL EDITION...
In this final episode of Season One, Marissa uses the power of the internet to call guest Mary Parker in Boston, and they BOTH use the power of imagination to invent several possible stage adaptations of the comitragic saga of Annie Whitman and...
It's the final main episode of Season 1, and we've come full circle. This is the tale of a wannabe cheerleader with a bad reputation that started Marissa's obsession with Sweet Valley High lo, those many years ago. Mary Parker was there to see that...
Marissa is joined once again by her dad, Don Flaxbart, and she's steering him straight down Memory Lane. Was high school in the 1960s Southwestern US anything like that Sweet Valley High life?