We had a great time welcoming writer Amber Sparks to the show and discussing her new novel Happy People Don’t Live Here, which features a girl detective, abusive men, ghosts, a mermaid, and what it means to keep your love for someone alive long after they — or you — are gone. Then, we do a deep dive on We Love You, Bunny, this year’s follow-up to Mona Awad’s cult hit novel Bunny.

We sat down with Jason Diamond, bookish man about town and author of Kaplan’s Plot, a multigenerational Jewish gangster saga in bookstores now. He made a strong case for Chicago as a literary city and for not forgetting the immigrant experience in your ancestry.

Then, we pull back the curtain on back-of-the-book blurbs and other publicity tactics.
“Riveting!” — Stephen King

We’re feeling spooky with horror author Kyle Winkler, back to discuss his latest novel, the creepy and horrifying Enter the Peerless, which starts with a private investigator trying to figure out what happened to a bunch of people who went into an abandoned trailer and never came out. Always a thoughtful and fun guest, Kyle gives us some insight into his process for this novel while establishing a mind-meld with Nathan over possible Halloween costumes.

Plus, Mason overreacts to an upcoming novel being based on the Faust myth, and demands a moratorium on Faust retellings. Will the literary establishment take note?

The first in an occasional series focusing on short stories we found in various journals, and interviews with those authors. Short stories don't get much love outside of The New Yorker or MFA workshops, but they should! Many of them are incredible. Our guests include writers Billy Irving, Kelly Magee, and Kit McGuire. 

We knew Zuck was a fan of the podcast, but we didn’t know he would go so far as to dig up our old articles and use them, along with a million other books, to train Meta’s AI. Oh, you say he didn’t do it himself, and maybe it’s not stealing (legal opinions pending)? This may be true, or it may just be a topic we debate on this episode.

Writer Erin Lyndal Martin joins the show to inform us that Saddam Hussein wrote a romance novel, but only after we wondered if Joe Rogan could do it. Other topics include whether men should read more literature (spoiler: yes) and whether doing so would make the world a better place (debatable). Also, what to do about books that are capital-I Important but maybe not so great?

Bestselling author and bookstore owner Paul Bradley Carr returns for Part 2 of our conversation about artificial intelligence, the power of narratives, drinking blood, and whether vaping is cool (spoiler: no). The AI chatbots kept trying to disrupt our Zoom session with Paul, but for now, humans remain dominant. We also discuss Tom Comitta’s Patchwork, a novella constructed entirely out of snippets of text taken from other, previously published works.

Author Kyle Winkler joins this episode to talk about horror fiction. What's scarier: There's a Wocket in my Pocket or Goodnight Moon? We also give a close read to Kyle’s novel Tone Bone (spoiler: we like it). Plus, we review the novel BLOB by Maggie Su, and, in the process, enjoy saying “blob” over and over again. Try it!

We invited former tech journalist and bestselling author Paul Bradley Carr for a rollicking discussion about his new novel, The Confessions. It features an all-knowing Artificial Intelligence that doesn’t want to destroy the world—because it was trained by reading fiction. He also shared his polite and laudatory thoughts about several leading tech industry personalities. Plus, our discussion of Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano’s latest novel, Ballerina, inspired Nathan to invent the cool new subgenre Proustian Noir.

We were joined by author and poet Dan Eastman for a discussion about confessional poetry, second-person POV, and the best memes. I ask you: should poems mention Facebook? Still waiting on our podcast name during this episode. Nice of Dan to not make fun of us for this.