Dr. Elana Levine's recently published Her Stories (Duke Univ. Press) forms the backbone of this 4-part series on soap operas. This episode includes a look at the formative pioneers of serial storytelling - Irna Phillips, Agnes Nixon and William Bell. Other topics covered who owned any given show and how that impacted business decisions and how technology changed storytelling. Future episodes from this Levine interview discuss Super Couples of the 90s, fantasy and traumatic storylines, reproductive and feminist issues and the accelerated demise of many shows. For more on Agnes Nixon, listen in on a 2017 podcast episode between Cynthia and Elana.  Fans of All My Children and As the World Turns, check out a 2-part interview with two-time Emmy Award Winner Cady McClain (Dixie Cooney) from March 2020. Dr. Elana Levine is a Professor of Media, Cinema and Digital Studies in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.