Alexandra Paskhaver is a syndicated columnist and podcast creator
Alexandra Paskhaver Alexandra Paskhaver has a knack for seeing absurdity in tasks others find healthy and wholesome.
The Rutgers University student describes going to the gym as “an exercise in futility.” She says canoeing gives her “a cold sinking feeling.” And she complains that bringing her rather large dog to the vet requires a dose of horse tranquilizer—for her, not the dog.
“You try restraining a 65-pound torpedo all the way from the parking lot up the concrete steps and the gravel walk to the local animal hospital,” the School of Arts and Sciences senior wrote in a syndicated humor column . “I usually lose the battle right around the steps, which means I go up the gravel walk on my face.”
Paskhaver began writing out her funny thoughts during her first year at Rutgers when she contributed to an SAS Honors Program blog. But over the last two years her gently satirical take on life has caught on with audiences well beyond the university.
In 2023 she began writing humor columns for two Pennsylvania newspapers. Over the last year her work has been distributed through the news syndicate Cagle Cartoons Inc. which reaches more than 800 media outlets.
This fall Paskhaver is reaching new audiences through a more modern medium. She has created a children’s educational podcast, The Word Search, for the platform GoKidGo. She has written scripts for 52 episodes—each one a 15-minute fictional and funny slice of life set in the sleepy town of Littleton.
The program, which includes voiceovers by Rutgers English professor Paul Hufker, is carried on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, and iHeartRadio. Margot Maxwell, a graduate of the Mason Gross School of the Arts, served as the sound engineer.
“I didn’t really intend to get into podcasting,” said Paskhaver, a computer science major with minors in American studies and political science. “I noticed GoKidGo had programs focusing on STEM subjects, history, and music, but nothing on vocabulary.
“So I thought ‘aha, here is my chance.’ I pitched them the idea and they accepted it.’’
The characters she created could fit easily into a classic Saturday morning cartoon show: an athletic, assertive teenage girl, Jane Boswell, and her nervous, nerdy friend Sam Johnson. Rather than solve mysteries—as in Hanna-Barbera’s Scooby Doo Where Are You? —the two friends search for words missing from a dusty old dictionary in Sam’s house. Sam, the story goes, is a distant descendant of Samuel Johnson, the British author whose A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755.
Alexandra Paskhaver created The Word Search podcast with characters Jane Boswell and Sam Johnson
“There is something wrong with this dictionary,” Jane declares in the debut episode. “There are missing lines all over the place.”
Sam confesses that his ancestor never quite finished the job. “My side of the family moved to Littleton out of shame,” he says.
The show gets positive user reviews, with one listener calling it “amazing” and another noting “how fun everything sounds.”
Hufker, who teaches in the Writing Program and is also a playwright, described The Word Search as “Faulkner meets Garrison Keillor.”
“Alexandra has this amazing insight and foresight in the way she writes,” says Hufker, who does the voices for two characters: Jane’s Scottish accented father, Mr. Boswell, and Sam. “She has created this very specific, very clear sense of place that’s very Faulknerian while also picking at these small things and making them funny in a way that’s very Prairie Home Companion.”
Paskhaver said her whimsical writing style was influenced by the British author and humorist, P. G. Wodehouse, and the American newspaper columnist Dave Barry. She also cited Fred Rogers and his 1969 testimony before the U.S. Senate in which he famously said: “You don’t have to bop someone over the head to make a point.”
“I do think that’s missing in a lot of modern children’s shows,” Paskhaver said. “There’s a lot of action thrown at you, and I wanted to slow that down and focus on the more conversational day-to-day interactions.
Rutgers English Professor Paul Hufker“You don’t need to fly a rocket ship through the city when you could just be exploring your neighborhood park.”
Hufker got to know Paskhaver when she took his 200-level writing course on creativity. He was impressed with the quality and range of her writing, which includes an 18-episode sitcom on the American Revolution that she wrote during an independent study with Louis Masur, a professor of history and American studies. A research paper she wrote for Hufker—The Power of the Pen: Creative Propaganda and the Battle for the American Mind—was presented at the Rutgers University Undergraduate Research Writing Conference.
“I stopped her in the hallway and said: ‘You have got to keep writing,’ Hufker recalled.
Paskhaver intends to follow that advice. She landed many of her current writing gigs—from newspapers to the podcast—through cold calls. She said she’ll continue exploring writing opportunities while pursuing a career as a software engineer.
She noted there are key commonalities between the two roles.
Her brief bio for Cagle reads: “Alexandra Paskhaver is a software engineer and writer. Both jobs require knowing where to stick semicolons, but she’s never quite; figured; it; out.”