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90: Encyclopedia Brown with Adam Gwon: Deep Thoughts About Potatoes, Problem Plays, and Pop Culture Expectations for Detective Stories

Updated: 16 hours ago

June 24, 2025

25 cents per day, plus expenses. No case too small!

Adam Gwon, Emily's childhood friend and award-winning musical theater writer, joins the Guy sisters today to share how Donald Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown had an outsize influence on his understanding of storytelling. The delightful format of each short Encyclopedia Brown mystery—which gave the reader all the same information the boy detective had and invited you to test your wits against that of the sleuth before checking the answer in the back of the book—taught Adam how to curate information when telling a story. These mystery stories also gave children a needed sense of order and rules for the world. But when the boy detective grows up, can pop culture grapple with the mysteries that have no answers?

If you're ready to test your observational skills against the boy detective, throw on your headphones, turn to page 119, and take a listen!

Learn more about Adam at his website

Follow Adam on Instagram

Mentioned in this episode


The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex


We are Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.

We both have super-serious personas in our "day jobs." No, really. Emily is a Finance writer who used to be a classroom teacher. Tracie writes and consults on social justice and mindfulness and works as a copywriter and project manager for non-profits. If you really need to see the bona fides, please visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com 

For our work together, what you need to know is that Tracie is older (3 years), Emily is funnier (by at least 3 percent), and we're both hella smart, often over-literal, and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love movies and tv, science fiction and murder mysteries, good storytelling with liberal amounts of dramatic irony, and analyzing pop culture for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, and whatever else we find there. 

Find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirls

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video version, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.
 
 
 

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