Origin Stories

Campside Media
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Have you ever wondered exactly how your favorite movie or book –– or podcast, TV series, documentary film, or magazine article –– got made? Origin Stories has you covered. Each week, veteran journalist Matthew Shaer talks to a different writer or director about the creation of a work close to their own hearts (and to ours). Nothing is off the table: not the frustrations and the joys, not the setbacks and the successes. Intimate and incisive, instructive and eye-opening, Origin Stories is the ultimate podcast for anyone curious about the workings of the creative mind.  New episodes every Wednesday! To connect with the team and gain access to behind the scenes content, join our community at ⁠joinoriginstories.com⁠. You can also find us on ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠TikTok⁠ & ⁠Youtube⁠.

  1. 1 DAY AGO

    Adam Rapp on The Outsiders

    Adam Rapp is a novelist, playwright, and screenwriter whose work spans theater, film, and fiction. His plays include The Sound Inside and Red Light Winter, and his novels include The Year of Endless Sorrows. He also wrote and directed the film Winter Passing, starring Zooey Deschanel and Will Ferrell. In recent years, Rapp took on a very different kind of challenge: adapting S.E. Hinton’s classic novel The Outsiders into a Broadway musical, which opened in 2023 and went on to win multiple Tony Awards. In this episode, he talks to Matthew about the decade-long process of turning a beloved coming-of-age novel into a stage production. Rapp describes how the show evolved through years of drafts, workshops, and creative experimentation, and how the team worked to balance the story’s emotional extremes while honoring the spirit of Hinton’s original book. “It was important for [The Outsiders] to be as brutal as it was tender, as funny as it was grim,” he says. “Tragedy and beauty — they both have to speak equally.” 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.

    32 min

  2. 25 MAR

    Shaun Raviv on The Killers of Swaziland

    Shaun Raviv is an Atlanta-based journalist and a fellow at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation. In 2024, he reported and hosted “Noble,” which was named the best podcast of the year by the New Yorker. But in this episode of Origin Stories, he talks to Matthew about the story that got him started in longform nonfiction: “The Killers of Swaziland,” which explores a tragic string of murders in the African country. “Even though I had very little experience,” Shaun says of his early efforts, “I still felt in my gut, I could take this really amazing story and put it on paper in a way that people would appreciate.” 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.

    29 min

  3. 18 MAR

    Salman Khan and Dr. Sohaira Siddiqui on More Muslim

    Dr. Sohaira Siddiqui and Salman Ahad Khan are behind More Muslim, a narrative podcast that explores the diversity of Muslim life through personal stories, history, and culture. The project grew out of a relationship that began more than a decade ago, when Khan took an Islamic law class with Siddiqui at Georgetown’s Doha campus and found himself having the kind of complex conversations about religion, ethics, and identity he’d been waiting his whole life to have. Years later, he returned to the idea of turning those conversations into a podcast, launching More Muslim with support from the Al-Mujadilah Center and Mosque for Women, where Siddiqui now serves as executive director and host of the show. In this episode, they talk to Matthew about building the podcast and the challenge of telling stories about Muslim life without flattening them into familiar narratives. They discuss the balance between universal themes and cultural specificity, and why each episode aims to capture a different slice of experience. “There are universal experiences that bind us together and connect us — that’s what makes storytelling across generations and people and religions compelling,” Siddiqui says. “But there are also moments of difference, and those are important to touch upon.” Khan adds: “There’s some part of my brain that’s been hardwired to be like, maybe I need to explain this thing to you.” 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.

    35 min

  4. 11 MAR

    Gus Van Sant on Dead Man's Wire

    Gus Van Sant is an Academy Award–nominated filmmaker whose work spans four decades of American cinema, from independent classics like Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho to mainstream hits like Good Will Hunting and Milk. In this episode, he talks to Matthew about Dead Man’s Wire, his new film about a bizarre and largely forgotten 1977 standoff in Indianapolis, when a struggling businessman walked into a mortgage office, wired a shotgun to his hostage’s neck with a so-called “dead man’s wire,” and held a mortgage executive captive for nearly three days. Van Sant explains how he stepped into the project after another director dropped out, how the film’s tight schedule forced him to shoot the movie in less than three weeks, and why the story interested him less as a conventional thriller than as a portrait of desperation. “I’m imagining that something’s interesting to me,” he says. “And I imagine that it’s interesting to other people.” 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.

    30 min

  5. 4 MAR

    Caleb Gayle on Black Moses

    Caleb Gayle is a historian and journalist whose work bridges narrative nonfiction and the academy. A professor at Northeastern and a longtime magazine writer, he has built a reputation for excavating overlooked Black histories and rendering them with literary force. In this episode, he talks to Matthew about Black Moses, his National Book Award–longlisted book about Edward McCabe — the 19th-century lawyer, newspaper publisher, and politician who envisioned Oklahoma as a Black-governed state. Gayle breaks down how he followed McCabe’s paper trail across archives with almost obsessive intensity, why he intentionally gets “lost” in research before finding the story, and how he learned to let narrative carry the theme. He also reflects on the discipline of structure and what it takes to make history feel urgent. “Beautiful prose is the ball game for me,” he says. “The only thing I have in my arsenal is to render their story with some relative beauty.” 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.

    36 min

  6. 25 FEB

    PJ Vogt and Sruthi Pinnamaneni on Search Engine

    PJ Vogt and Sruthi Pinnamaneni helped make Reply All, the rare show that made the internet feel legible. Created and hosted by PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman, and produced by Sruthi Pinnamaneni, the podcast took strange online mysteries and trends and reported the hell out of them. It was funny, accessible, occasionally anxious, and for a certain generation of listeners, it became the way the internet explained itself. When Reply All ended, it left behind not just a devoted audience, but a real absence: a space where curiosity about technology, culture, and human behavior could unfold. In this episode, PJ and Sruthi talk to Matthew about building their follow-up show, Search Engine, and what it means to start again. They get into why they chose to go independent, how they think differently about scale now, and what they’ve learned about curiosity, ambition, and sustainability in podcasting. “There’s a kind of intellectual space I like to be in,” PJ says. “Warm and curious... where you’re feeling the workings of a mind you enjoy riding shotgun with.” Sruthi reflects on the pressure that came with growth: “I want to feel like any size we’re at is a good size.” 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.

    35 min

  7. 18 FEB

    Mo Amer on Mo

    Mo Amer is a stand-up comedian, actor, and writer whose work blends raucous humor with serious conversations about borders, identity, and belonging. Born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents and raised in Houston, Amer began performing as a teenager before channeling his own family’s experience in the U.S. asylum system into Mo, the hit Netflix series he co-created, wrote, and starred in. Spanning two wildly funny and deeply moving seasons, Mo follows a lightly fictionalized version of Amer navigating family, work, and love while stuck in legal purgatory. In this episode, Amer talks to Matthew about concluding the series’ second season, building a show that’s both a meditation on belonging and a sharp commentary on what it means to be American right now, and carrying the emotional weight of telling a story so close to home. He reflects on the reaction from audiences who see themselves in Mo for the first time and from others encountering a character like him for the first time at all. “People walk up to me everywhere,” he says. “They feel seen.” 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.

    35 min

  8. 17 FEB

    David Greene on David Greene is Obsessed

    David Greene is a veteran journalist best known for his years as the co-host of All Things Considered on National Public Radio. Before taking the co-host's chair, he served as NPR's Moscow bureau chief, during which time he reported widely from regions as varied as Siberia and Chechnya. After leaving NPR, David co-founded Fearless Media, a production company focused on narrative journalism and audio storytelling. In this episode, he talks to Matthew about his new Campside show, "David Greene is Obsessed," which delves into the strange and wondrous fixations of guests like Paula Poundstone and David Arquette. You can find more of David Greene is Obsessed on ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠, ⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠. 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.

    43 min
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Trailers

About

Have you ever wondered exactly how your favorite movie or book –– or podcast, TV series, documentary film, or magazine article –– got made? Origin Stories has you covered. Each week, veteran journalist Matthew Shaer talks to a different writer or director about the creation of a work close to their own hearts (and to ours). Nothing is off the table: not the frustrations and the joys, not the setbacks and the successes. Intimate and incisive, instructive and eye-opening, Origin Stories is the ultimate podcast for anyone curious about the workings of the creative mind.  New episodes every Wednesday! To connect with the team and gain access to behind the scenes content, join our community at ⁠joinoriginstories.com⁠. You can also find us on ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠TikTok⁠ & ⁠Youtube⁠.

Information

  • Creator
    Campside Media
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    41
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © © Campside Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
  • Show Website
    Origin Stories
  • Provider

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