fiction/non/fiction

Co-hosts Whitney Terrell, V.V. Ganeshananthan, and Jennifer Maritza McCauley are joined by poet and essayist Kathryn Nuernberger, a frequent guest and longtime friend of the show, for a look back at the past decade of episodes. The quartet discuss the show’s origins, its focus on the Midwest and the globe, how the hosts prep for interviews, and how they think about the show’s tagline: “We believe...

Sociologist Nicole Bedera joins co-hosts V.V Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about the Cornell 7 and her book, On the Wrong Side: How Universites Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence. She explains how the Cornell case, in which a student said she was gang-raped at a fraternity party at the Ivy League institution, falls into a long tradition of universities mishan...

Acclaimed writer Yiyun Li returns to the show to talk about her new novel, Music Against the Night, with co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell . Li explains how she first became interested in fictionalizing the lives of married musicians John Field and Adelaide Percheron and reflects on the limits, challenges, and opportunities of conducting historical research for fiction. She discusse...

Award-winning fiction writer T. Geronimo Johnson joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about his new novel, The Occidental Book of the Dead. He discusses how the book addresses white supremacy and the United States’ deep-seated and racist mythology through the perspective of George Washington Jonson, a black police officer working in a fictional version of Atlanta. Johnson...

Poet James Richardson joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and Christian Barter to talk about his collection of new and selected poetry, Within the Hour. Richardson discusses how his early fascination with science and his enjoyment of science fiction has influenced his poetry and considers the way his aphorisms counterbalance his more lyric poems. He reflects on the role that literary criticism has play...

Fiction writer and popular YouTuber Sam A. Miller joins co-hosts Christian Barter and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about his debut story collection, Still Lost: Tales from the Year 2080, as well as his educational and comedic videos . Miller reflects on how he got started on YouTube a decade ago, when he was an adolescent, and amassed 4.8 million followers by developing Sam O’Nella Academy, a chann...

Fiction writer Emily McBride joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss her debut novel, Queen Mab , and maternal mental health. McBride talks about the media frenzy around the trial of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts woman charged with killing her three children, and considers how Clancy’s insanity defense has seized the public imagination, prompting new conversation about...

Nonfiction writer Robert Moor joins co-hosts Christian Barter and Jennifer Maritza McCauley to talk about his new book, In Trees , and the power of “tree thinking,” a concept developed by the evolutionary biologist Robert J. O’Hara . Moor explains how this form of thought emphasizes branching, growth, and pruning, as opposed to hierarchical ordering, and shows how these principles can be identifie...

Nonfiction writer G’Ra Asim joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about his new book, 99 Problems Finding the 1: a love story (sort of). Asim discusses Afropessimism, heteropessimism, and their relationship to his pursuit of love as a cis straight black man; defines the idea of “thinkful wishing”; and recalls the ways in which black couples in his family, including his par...

Novelist Aruni Kashyap joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Jennifer Maritza McCauley to talk about the surprising surge of a new youth movement in India. Kashyap, the author of a new novel, How to Date a Fanatic, about young queer academics navigating the Indian campus protests of the mid-2010s, explains how the Chief Justice of India likening unemployed youth to “cockroaches and parasites” has...

Poet, essayist, and playwright Claudia Rankine joins co-hosts Christian Barter, Jennifer Maritza McCauley and Whitney Terrell to talk about her new book Triage .  Rankine outlines the decades-long relationship between the book’s narrator and a character she names “the theorist,” who, as college students, develop the habit of collapsing whenever they greet each other. She talks about how each...

Entomologist Dino Martins joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about the Cyclospora outbreak that has sickened thousands of people across the U.S., as well as the New World screwworm that has been affecting the cattle population. Martins, the author of a new book called Hidden Creatures: Luscious Leeches, Bashful Botflies, and the Wondrous, History-Shaping World of Parasit...

Non-fiction writer Joshua Jelly-Schapiro joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Christian Barter to talk about the life of performer and activist Harry Belafonte, who died in 2023. Jelly-Schapiro, the author of a new biography of Belafonte, considers the entertainer’s distinctive combination of mainstream appeal and radical politics. He notes how Belafonte’s vault to stardom and success with the f...

Houston-based poet Lupe Mendez joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and Jennifer Maritza McCauley to discuss ICE raids, the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and the political climate in Texas heading into the midterms. Mendez details the last few minutes of Araujo’s life and talks about the government’s altered story of Araujo’s death. Mendez also explains why he decided to write about the Mexican com...

Artist and writer Molly Crabapple joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about the Jewish Labor Bund and its socialist, secular, anti-Zionist principles. Crabapple, whose artist great-grandfather Sam Rothbort was part of the organization, discusses researching and writing her New York Times bestselling book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund, w...

MLS commentator Nate Bukaty joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about Kansas City’s influence on American soccer and how the city came to host the World Cup. Bukaty is the co-author of Perfect Pitch: How Kansas City Became the Heart of American Soccer and Landed the World Cup along with the writer Rustin Dodd. He discusses how immigration and local leaders like Lamar Hun...

Acclaimed nonfiction writer Peter Hessler joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about his new memoir, Other Rivers: A Chinese Education. Hessler, a New Yorker staff writer who first went to China as a teacher in the 1990s, explains how education there shifted between that era and 2019, when he returned to Sichuan Province with his wife and daughters to teach English again....

Young adult novelist Soman Chainani joins co-hosts Christian Barter and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss the impact of age on politics. Chainani, the author of a new novel called Young World that features a teenage everyman’s unlikely rise to the presidency, explains trying to make his premise as plausible as possible using devices like a Supreme Court decision, a split Electoral College, and realis...

Journalist Matthew Wolfe joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new book Fires in the Night: The Earth Liberation Front, the FBI, and a Secret History of Eco-Sabotage . Wolfe talks about the history of environmental activism, including its rarely discussed bipartisan past, and explains how industry made climate change a Democratic and progressive issue. He reflects o...

Writer Deb Olin Unferth joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and Christian Barter to discuss the enduring power of apocalyptic narratives and her new novel Earth 7 . The novel follows the life of Dylan, the daughter of a researcher, cast adrift on an earth that has been depopulated by war and environmental collapse. As Dylan’s mother tries to replicate and preserve the DNA of the earth’s now extinct flo...

Novelist Ben Fountain joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new book, Rasputin Swims the Potomac. Fountain's satire, set in the not-to-distant future, describes the furor, scandal, and hysterical “weeping sickness” that arrives in the wake of the fictional President’s decision to seek an unprecedented third term. Fountain talks about the technical choices he has mad...

Historian Sarah Pearsall joins co-hosts Jennifer Maritza McCauley and Whitney Terrell to discuss her new book, Freedom Round the Globe: a World History of the American Revolution . As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Pearsall talks about how she chose to write about the global context of the American Revolution. She explains how the hanging of an indigenous wom...

Music critic Barry Walters joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and Christian Barter to discuss his new book, Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music 1969-2000. Walters talks about how he chose the artists that he includes in his book and explains how musicians like David Bowie, Lou Reed, Grace Jones, and Sylvester saved his life. He explores how social repression shaped and complicated work from LGBTQ ba...

Wake Forest University Professor of Philosophy Christian B. Miller joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and Jennifer Maritza McCauley to discuss his newest work of nonfiction, The Honesty Crisis: Preserving Our Most Treasured Virtue in an Increasingly Dishonest World. Miller argues that integrity and honesty are rapidly disintegrating and we are quickly losing social norms around truth-telling. He outli...

Writer Rebecca Lehmann joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss her debut novel, The Beheading Game, a work of speculative historical fiction in which King Henry VIII’s second wife, the beheaded Queen of England Anne Boleyn, comes back to life after her wrongful execution, sews her head back on, and seeks revenge. Lehmann considers the contested history of Anne Boleyn, the...