Episodes
Sweet Valley Diaries #18: HEAD OVER HEELS
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...
Extra Drama #17: Natural and Unnatural Disasters
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....
Sweet Valley Diaries #17: LOVE LETTERS
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!...
Extra Drama #16: What Older Men Are Like
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!
Sweet Valley Diaries #16: RAGS TO RICHES
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...
Extra Drama #15: What is Art? (No, Seriously)
"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...
Sweet Valley Diaries #15: PROMISES
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...
Extra Drama #14: It's Hard to Get
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...
Sweet Valley Diaries #14: DECEPTIONS
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...
Extra Drama #13: Tactlessness & Corrupted Superpowers
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.
Sweet Valley Diaries #13: KIDNAPPED!
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...
Extra Drama #12: OMG [Spoiler] is [Spoiler]!
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)
Sweet Valley Diaries #12: WHEN LOVE DIES
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...
Extra Drama #11: Two GOOD Two BE Two
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....
Sweet Valley Diaries #11: TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE
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...
Super Edition #1: PERFECT SUMMER
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...
Extra Drama #10: "Wrong Kind of Girl: The Musical!"
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...
Sweet Valley Diaries #10: WRONG KIND OF GIRL
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...
Extra Drama #9: Memories of Valle Dulce High
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?
Sweet Valley Diaries #9: RACING HEARTS
So you love Ned Wakefield's dad jokes? We'll do you one better: a real life dad! Marissa's own actual father, the wise and weird Don Flaxbart, joins shares his thoughts and insights on this, the first "teenage romance of any kind" that he's ever read....
Extra Drama #8: Relevant Surf Terms
Outtakes, b-roll, and real talk about the actually important moral of HEART BREAKER. Marissa is joined once more by former youth body-surfing competitor Russ Nickel, who points out all the dad jokes in the book and reads some favorite passages.
Sweet Valley Diaries #8: HEART BREAKER
Now that all that coma/personality swap/assault unpleasantness is behind us, let’s get back to what really matters in Sweet Valley: the beach, boys, and miscommunications involving suntan lotion. Marissa is joined by Russ Nickel, funny guy, writer,...
Extra Drama #7: DEAR Fictional '80s Highschooler
We’ve read about fictional 1980s highschoolers, but what is it like to play one on TV?! Alex Jennings, who plays Carla on ABC’s The Goldbergs, is uniquely equipped to answer this question. But mostly we just talk about dry shampoo, what it would...
Sweet Valley Diaries #7: DEAR SISTER
In this tearful conclusion to the Sweet Valley High series, Elizabeth stays in a coma forever…PSYCH! But seriously, has Elizabeth awoken only to find that the events of DEAR SISTER are a fate worse than death? Actress Alex Jennings and Marissa give...