If you love reading pulse-pounding stories about fictional spies, you’ll love Ben Macintyre’s thrilling true (and bestselling) stories about real-world spies, like The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, and Operation Mincemeat. His latest yes-this-is-absolutely-a-true-story (Ben has the documentation to prove it) book, Agent Sonya, has the pacing of a great novel and plenty of incredible details as the story cuts from Shanghai and Manchuria in the 1920s ...
Jul 29, 2021•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast James Baldwin died in 1987, but his work still speaks to us — as if it was written last year, or last month, or even last week. Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. joins us on the show to discuss leaving the U.S. in order to write about Baldwin (and why Baldwin came back from Paris); why we’re reaching for Baldwin now, more than three decades after his death; what Baldwin has to teach us about the intersection of memory, history, identity and race — and more. Featured books: Begin Again: James Baldwin’s Americ...
Jul 27, 2021•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is what we talk about when we talk about voice: Fern, Gwin and Jesenia are the heart of Carolyn Ferrell's acclaimed new novel, Dear Miss Metropolitan, and their voices are unforgettable. Their story is a story of trauma and grief and hope unlike any you've read before, though readers who love The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead won't want to miss this one. Carolyn joins us on the show to talk about her electrifying novel, the inspiration she draws from th...
Jul 22, 2021•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast We've run out of superlatives to describe Helen Macdonald’s memoir, H is For Hawk. She’s followed her acclaimed bestseller — which showed many readers a new way of looking at the natural world — with a delightfully smart collection of essays in Vesper Flights, now out in paperback. Helen joins us on the show to talk about how birds’ nests changed her understanding of home, writing in hotel rooms, and what the natural world can teach us about building community and more. Featured books: Vesper Fl...
Jul 20, 2021•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Fox & I, Catherine Raven’s tale of an intentional friendship with a wild red fox and how it changed her, is a kaleidoscopic meld of quiet observation, sharp reflection, wry humor and poetry. She joins us on the show to talk about empathy, what it means to be alone but not lonely, and other brilliant and surprising lessons she learned from her companion. Featured titles: Fox & I: An Uncommon Friendship by Catherine Raven, The Little Prince and Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Mob...
Jul 15, 2021•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Kean is an eclectic writer with an affinity for scientific subjects and their weird and darker paths, and he has an inimitable knack for transforming this passionate interest into astonishing story, punctuated with humor and rife with the absurd in his books The Disappearing Spoon, The Violinist’s Thumb, Caesar’s Last Breath, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons and The Bastard Brigade. His latest book, The Icepick Surgeon, is a tale of scientists and doctors gone amok, crossing the line fr...
Jul 13, 2021•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Readers LOVE Matt Haig's charming, full of heart, and genuinely unputdownable novels The Midnight Library and How to Stop Time and made both of them bestsellers. Like many of us, Matt spent much of 2020 feeling a little anxious, a little frazzled--and looking for comfort, the subject of his latest work, The Book of Comfort. He joins us on the show to talk about hope, change and the importance of weird thinking. Featured books: The Comfort Book, The Midnight Library and Reasons to Stay Alive by M...
Jul 08, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast We’re huge fans of S.A. Cosby’s pulse-pounding noir novels set in Red Hill County, VA—and we’re not alone: Dennis Lehane, Walter Mosley, Lee Child, Stephen King and Laura Lippman are too. But Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears are more than action-packed thrill rides where the bad guys are very bad and the good guys are doing the best they can with what they have. S.A. Cosby joins us on the show to talk about redemption, family, writers he loves, and making up lies to find the truth. Featur...
Jul 06, 2021•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ayad Akhtar’s plays—Disgraced (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama), The Who and the What, and Junk¬—and his novels, American Dervish and Homeland Elegies, are electrifying, unforgettable works of art that push audiences and readers to think about community and power, money and success, and what it means to be American. He joins us on the show to talk about the inspiration for the outrageous and wildly funny Homeland Elegies (now available in paperback), Shakespeare and more. Featured books: ...
Jul 01, 2021•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast We’re not the only readers who adore Casey McQuiston’s super-fun, hilarious—and bestselling—love stories. She joins us on the show to talk about using astrology to help with character development (and more), writing rom-coms during the pandemic, the magical power of true love, Tik Tok and more. Featured titles: Red, White and Royal Blue and One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston, Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid, She’s Too Pretty to Burn by Wendy Heard, How to Find a Princess by Alyssa Cole, The C...
Jun 29, 2021•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kiese Laymon — memoirist, essayist, novelist — is one of the most extraordinary and exciting writers working today. Best known for his acclaimed memoir Heavy, he recently bought back the rights to his first two books, the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourselves and Others in America and the picaresque coming-of-age novel, Long Division, so he could revise them and send them back into the world as they’re meant to be. He joins us on the show to talk about language and memory, rewriting and...
Jun 24, 2021•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Writer Gerry Allen is trapped at home after a bad fall, isolated in his swank apartment high over Baltimore Harbor — and the strange calls and letters he’s getting won’t stop. Laura Lippman’s killer new novel Dream Girl is a nod to a classic Agatha Christie locked-room mystery with a twisty plot, crackling dialogue, and lots of literary fun. Featured Books: Dream Girl, Lady in the Lake and My Life as a Villainess by Laura Lippman, Misery by Stephen King, Zuckerman Unbound by Philip Roth, Circe b...
Jun 22, 2021•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast We fell head over heels for Mostly Dead Things, Kristen Arnett’s wonderful, darkly comic debut novel about family (and taxidermy) set in central Florida — and we’ve been waiting, waiting, waiting for her latest novel, With Teeth, which we tore through as soon as it arrived. Kristen joins us on the show to talk about the family dynamics at the center of With Teeth, queerness on and off the page, nostalgia and more. Featured books: With Teeth by Kristen Arnett, Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diaz, Long...
Jun 17, 2021•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast You don't have to be an avid fly fisher to appreciate John Maclean's beautiful new book HOME WATERS, but it will certainly inspire you to spend more time outside. A former Washington correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, with a second career writing books about wildfire, John now splits his time between DC and his family’s cabin on Seeley Lake in Montana. And if you’ve read John’s father’s book, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, you know that cabin, and the Blackfoot River, and John’s ...
Jun 15, 2021•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast You might know Danielle Henderson as the creator of the legendary feminist Ryan Gosling meme (which she later turned into a book); or from her most excellent recaps of Scandal and other shows for Vulture; her work as a television writer; or as the co-host of the screamingly funny movie podcast, I SAW WHAT YOU DID. Danielle’s memoir, THE UGLY CRY, is the unforgettable, darkly comic, true story of her unconventional childhood in the 80s — it’s a complex and wry do-I-laugh-or-do-I-cry memoir, and D...
Jun 10, 2021•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast HOW THE WORD IS PASSED is one of our most anticipated books for June 2021 — it’s a powerful portrait of America today, built from our history and Clint Smith’s incredible insight. Writer for @TheAtlantic, teacher and Doctor, Clint Smith is also a poet (Counting Descent) and the host of @thecrashcourse Black American History. Our interview with Clint runs a little longer than usual because there’s so much shared ground to cover. Featured books: How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith, Long Division...
Jun 08, 2021•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ashley C. Ford's essays and journalism have run in The Guardian and Buzzfeed; She's profiled Serena Williams and Anne Hathaway for Allure, Stacey Abrams for Marie Claire, and Vice President Kamala Harris for Elle; and her most recent podcast was Lovecraft Country Radio, the official companion to the hit show. No matter the subject or the format, Ashley knows how to tell a story with deep honesty and a lot of style, and now the story she's telling is hers. Glennon Doyle (Untamed) says Ashley's a ...
Jun 03, 2021•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Maggie O'Farrell joins us to talk about HAMNET, her dreamy, intoxicating story of grief and love and Shakespeare, now out in paperback. Featured Books: Hamnet, The Vanishing of Esme Lennox and I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell, the stories of Alice Munro (Dear Life is a great place to start) and Mary Oliver's poetry. This episode was produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Jun 01, 2021•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
