Head On Fire

Head On Fire

In Head On Fire Don Martin (author of Where Did Everybody Go? & Verity Vox and the Curse of Foxfire) goes on a search for answers to life’s biggest and smallest questions. What is the purpose of anger? Is there a solution for loneliness? How do you write a hit pop song? Don asks experts in fields you didn't even know existed questions you didn't even know you wanted the answers to. Join Don every other Tuesday for brand new episodes, or catch the full video on YouTube! Find Don on social media @byDonMartin everywhere or if you'd like to appear on the show email Don@byDonMartin.com.

Episodes

July 8, 2025 74 mins
Superheroes dominate cinema and pop culture, and they have for a while now. Sure, there's been a shift in movie theater attendance post-COVID pandemic, but people still show up for superheroes. I wondered why, so I asked an expert on the subject why he thinks caped crusaders and teams of mutant misfits capture our imagination.

Find  @BlerdWithoutFear over on his YT channel!

Social links: https://bydonmartin....
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The internet has become a place where we all perform for one another, where authenticity is both something to aspire to and something to be wary of. I sat down with Franchesca "Chescaleigh" Ramsey to discuss the role of the content creator, how it differs from an influencer, and what it means to exist on social media these days.

Find Franchesca on her website at: https://www.franchesca.net/

Pre-order Where Di...
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If you are someone who has complained that every new piece of media is a sequel, prequel, remake, reboot, or a studio banking on pre-existing IP (intellectual property) to bring in audiences, this is the episode for you. We are kicking off 2025 with Nadira Goffe, a staff writer at Slate, who helps us contextualize this moment in pop culture as well as looking back at a time when media felt like "hope-ium".

Links, book...
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December 24, 2024 117 mins
Grab your wieners, your marshmallows, your bad haircuts, and toss them all on the funeral pyre of 2024.

Robyn Valentine, co-host of the Coffee & Cauldrons podcast and author of Magickal Tarot & The Apprentice Witch, joins me to review the highs, lows, personal triumphs, and things we'd love to leave behind as we BURN 2024 DOWN to prepare for a bright new year ahead.

Hopefully.

Email: contact...
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Ella Harrison is the author of The Book of Spells. She has a degree in anthropology and uses her social media platform to educate and entertain audiences on the topics of folklore, folk magic, and the history of holiday traditions. If you've ever wondered about figures like Krampus or Perchta, this is the show for you.

Email: contact@headonfirepod.com

Social links:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/he...
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They say all politics is local, but that's difficult to believe when every single topic of conversation at our dinner table seems to have national stakes. From the books on our kids' shelves to who reads those books to them to the statues in our parks to who is allowed in our parks, every issue large and small feels like it's operating on some grand scale. It's hard to gain perspective, hard to know what information to trust, ...
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Thanks to the Make America Healthy Again movement, there is a lot of misinformation and disinformation on the rise about food, "chemicals", and whether what we eat is safe. Thankfully, Erin the Food Science Babe is here to help.

Subscribe to Erin's channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/FoodScienceBabe

Email: contact@headonfirepod.com

Social links:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/headonfire...
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The mantel of the witch is one that has been worn by people for all sorts of reasons. 

There are those who don the black hat for political purposes, as a feminist symbol, or a way for those who find themselves on the margins of society in one way or another to reach for the power they otherwise could never hope to have. 

Then there are the people call themselves witches because they cast spells and divine the...
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Dr. Sam Montano is no stranger to combating conspiracy theories regarding emergency management. She’s been doing it since Hurricane Katrina. She holds a BS in Psychology, as well as Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Emergency Management and teaches the subject at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Her book Disaster-ology came out in 2021. I sat down with her to help parse fact from fiction on what FEMA is, the politicization of cl...
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October 1, 2024 56 mins
A.J. Jacobs is a New York Times bestselling author known for his immersive, year-long experiments, including The Year of Living Biblically, The Know-It-All, and his latest book, The Year of Living Constitutionally.

Email: contact@headonfirepod.com

Social links:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/headonfirepod/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/headonfirepod
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headonfirep...
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By all accounts Victoria Aveyard is both an outlier and also as close to the Hollywood version of becoming an author as it gets. 

While the average age for a debut novelist is around 36, Victoria’s debut novel—Red Queen—was published shortly after graduating from college and went on to become a massive, runaway success. And so did all of the rest of her novels. In fact, every one of Victoria’s novels has been a New Yo...
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Charlie Sprinkman developed the app Everywhere Is Queer, which is quickly becoming one of the best, most comprehensive lists of queer owned and operated businesses. 

Whether you’re looking for a travel agent, a craft store, a bakery, or a horse ranch, the Everywhere is Queer app is helping people realize that supporting queer owned and operated businesses in person and online might be easier and closer to home than pe...
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August 20, 2024 79 mins
Danny Hieber earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his B.A. in linguistics and philosophy from the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Prior to and during graduate school he worked for Rosetta Stone’s Endangered Language Program to create language-learning software with Native American communities.

Email: contact@headonfirepod.com

Social links:<...
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Chris Copeland has worked on some of your favorite things. Invincible, The Witcher, Young Justice, and he made his directorial debut for Dreamworks on the series Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. He’s had a long career that began here in Chicago as a nerd who loved superheroes and now gets to help bring them to life. We talked about how a storyboard artist is one of the first people to visualize what a writer has written, how ...
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Roberta Blevins left the MLM world in 2017 and spent all of her time since then educating the public on the dangers involved in joining these barely legal pyramid schemes. She was a key witness in the case against Lularoe and was featured in the documentary LuLaRich which showcased how the billion dollar clothing company misled thousands of women. These days Roberta educates people via her podcast and social media platform ti...
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Clare Brown is a satirist and author of the new audiobook New Nigeria County. Her social media platform is famous for flipping gender and racial stereotypes while both educating and inviting her audience to laugh. 

Email: contact@headonfirepod.com

Social links:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/headonfirepod/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/headonfirepod
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headonfirep...
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Even if you don’t play video games, Jennifer Hale is still probably one of your favorite actors…you just didn’t know it. As of this recording she is just shy of 500 acting credits on IMDb including numerous roles in the Star Wars universe, Mortal Kombat, DC, Marvel, Disney. Even Biker Mice from Mars…remember that? She’s been in DuckTales and Rick and Morty and The Little Mermaid and the Big Bang Theory and the PowerPuff Girls ...
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Maggie Tokuda-Hall is a children’s and young adult author who writes stories that help kids of all types see themselves on the page as the main character. She also writes books that help parents and kids have age appropriate conversations about the world we live in. One of those books, Love In The Library, became the centerpoint for exposing a longtime issue with a major children’s publisher and book distributor about the pra...
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Dr. Althea Need Kaminske is a cognitive psychologist who teaches at the Indiana University school of medicine interested in the application of human memory research to educational settings. She also helps run The Learning Scientists, an international group of cognitive psychologists who engage in science communication about the science of learning. Her new book, The Psychology of Memory, came out earlier this month.

E...
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Matthew Keith is a Barbie collector, photographer, and doll expert whose work has been featured in The Los Angeles Time, NewNowNext, and on a social media feed near you.

Find him at https://www.dollsonthebrain.com 

Social links:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/headonfirepod/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/headonfirepod
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headonfirepod

Support my work on Pa...
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