Hi, Staniel James here. Two years ago, some of our colleagues had the idea to start a show about books and the people behind them. It would be a show for book tragics, for people who wanted to know how the stories they love came to be, who were curious about the process of writing great literature, but also about the lives that inform the stories our great writers tell. It would actually be a show with many of the hallmarks of a great book absurdity, tragedy, comedy, and family.
My grandmother, in some ways, even though we were close and had a fairly open relationship, she was also quite secretive and in some ways quite mysterious. She had a tatoo of a broken heart on her shoulder that she would never speak about how or why she got it or when she got it.
Read This was named for the enthusiasm and the light that comes from pushing your favorite book into your friend's hands. Read this so we can talk about it. Read this because I know you'll love it. At seven am and we tell a lot of stories about all the things that go wrong in the world. But read this as an antidote to all that. It's a pleasure to listen to a favorite podcast of ours and for thousands of
listeners around the world. It's the type of show that makes orange juice tastes like champagne as you listened to it. And the thing that really makes read this special is its host, Michael Williams. I'm going to be completely honest. If I visit your house, I'm one hundred percent having a furtive berth at what's on your bookshelves. Michael is the book Tragic's tragic. He reads hundreds of books a year, and he's a champion of the people who write them.
Whether he's speaking with national treasures like Alexus Wright, Tim Winton or Helen Ghana, or international superstars like George Saunders and Enwright, Colson Whitehead or Roxane Gay, or whether he's introducing you to an emerging writer. He may be talking about their work publicly for the very first time. Michael brings his empathy, his charm, and his humor the conversations that are revealing and surprising. Sincerity is comedy minus time. Oh that's great.
Oh my god, I got to write that one down.
First of all, my agent said, I'm begging you not to write a book in the second person. I can't sell. Your agent's a coward. I'm going to say it right now, Chris, if you're listening, please don't find me. There's a level that I feel underappreciated, soladly, poor, poor, underappreciated, and you have no idea how I suffer. Honestly, it's become a little tiresome to hear writers say some version of this in every episode. That's a beautiful question, mate, you know,
that's such a good question. Truly, those are a great questions. Good question, good question, such a writer's question. That's a beautiful question. What a good question.
Choose my words carefully here, that's a great question.
That's such a brilliant, strong question to open up with a really lovely question. I don't think I've been asked that before. Writers who have spent years thinking about and carefully crafting their stories often find them I was thinking about their work in new ways. Well, I've never thought of it like. That's very interesting you say that, that was a really interesting idea. I don't think I've ever
thought about it in quite those terms. Read This has been produced by Clara Ames, with editing by Clara and Sarah mcvee. It's been mixed by Travis Evans, and the beautiful compositions featured on the show are made by Zoltnfeccho. Each of these people have bought their creativity and their care and to Read This over the past two years, particularly Clara, who has led the show since almost the beginning and is thoughtful, creative and incredibly kind. Schwartz Media
has made the decision to stop producing Read This. It's a sad byproduct to the sale of seven AM and their decision as a company to get out of audio all together. But Read This is beloved, has a loyal audience and will hopefully find a new home. We at seven AM will be listening to Read This wherever we can, because we love it. In the meantime, there are almost one hundred brilliant barring for funny and timeless episodes waiting for you wherever you listen to podcasts. Bring on the
next hundred. We were in an Apple store the other day and my fourteen year old went to all the devices in the shop and subscribed to Read This on the podcast app on them and did automatic download just to get the numbers up. That's what he's done for me. What have you done lately,