Episode 68

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Published on:

12th Mar 2024

WKRP In Cincinnati with Niko Stratis

Put on your best DJ voice and your finest 70s fashions as we talk with special guest Niko Stratis about the classic TV comedy, "WKRP In Cincinnati"! We know you are singing the theme song in your head right now. It's a wonderful conversation about nostalgia, themes that are still timely, and of course, whether turkeys can fly. Enjoy!!

Niko Stratis is a culture writer based in Toronto, Ontario by way of the Yukon where she spent close to two decades working as a journeyman glazier before coming out as a trans woman in her late 30s and being forced to abandon her previous line of work.

As a trans woman now in her 40s, Niko provides a unique voice in cultural spaces seeking to work through lifelong traumas and emotional highs and lows through her work.

She has twice been nominated for a digital publishing award for her personal essay work, is a team writer for queer outlet Autostraddle, and her work regularly appears in outlets like Spin magazine, Xtra and more. Her column in Catapult, Everyone Is Gay, was a widely read series that explored gender and sexuality in 90s music and music criticism and its impact on her as a closeted queer and trans woman in her teen years. Her newsletter, Anxiety Shark, is a self-published weekly essay collection using music to explore her relationship to themes like gender and sobriety.

Niko is working on her debut novel, GIRLS OF SUMMER, a punk rock novel about three friends spending a life-altering weekend at the Vans Warped Tour at a dusty Calgary speedway in 2002. The novel examines growing up isolated, lonely and desperate for a connective link to a perfect unknowable place that might tell you exactly who you were meant to be; about understanding your own transness through exposure to something so pure and perfect; queer love, desire and loss.

She lives in Toronto with her fiancé, their dog Bowie and two cats Winona and Ramona. She is a former smoker and a cancer.

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About the Podcast

Fine Beats & Cheeses
with Leslie & Lynne
Fine Beats & Cheeses with Leslie & Lynne celebrates cheesy pop culture.

About your hosts

Leslie Gray Streeter

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Leslie Gray Streeter is an author, veteran journalist, and speaker whose memoir “Black Widow” was published in March 2020 by Little, Brown, and Company. She is the lifestyle columnist for the Baltimore Banner, formerly the longtime entertainment and lifestyle columnist and writer for the Palm Beach Post. A native of Baltimore, Md, and a University of Maryland graduate, she and her work have been featured in The Miami Herald, the Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Atlantic, the Today show, SiriusXM, O, The Oprah Magazine, and more. She lives with her son Brooks in her hometown of Baltimore. She’s a slow runner, an amateur vegan cook, and a true crime and “Law and Order” enthusiast.

Lynne Streeter Childress

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Lynne Streeter Childress is an actor, director, teaching artist, and playwright. She is the founding artistic director of Building Better People Productions, a theater for young audiences company in Annapolis, MD. Her 28-year career in professional theater includes performing at the Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, and Adventure Theatre and teaching for institutions like the Folger Shakespeare Library and Baltimore School For the Arts, where she is currently a member of the theater faculty.  Lynne has seen firsthand how theater can communicate the most important things in the clearest and most interesting of ways, especially to young people. She lives in Annapolis, MD, with her husband and son.