Just In Case We Die

Send us Fan Mail The sixth novel that was ever discussed, way back in 2023, before Rebecca had joined the cast and it was just Aaron and Rodney, was The Book of Daniel by E. L. Doctorow. Everyone here at Just In Case We Die was quite enamored of that novel. Aaron, in particular, loved it, so he–tired of disappointing his castmates with his hand-picked selections–chose another story by this most Am...

Send us Fan Mail This month, the fine folks at Just In Case We Die post the first episode in a series of discussions in which they will dissect a difficult novel that has baffled readers, delighted conspiracy theorists, exhausted English majors, and earned its place among the most intimidating masterpieces in American literature: Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow . Published in 1973, this mammoth...

Send us Fan Mail It’s October! Everyone at Just In Case We Die firmly believes that October is the best month of the year. It’s not too hot. It’s not too cold. The leaves are changing colors. Halloween is almost here! Halloween is the best time of year to read scary stories. No one writes better scary stories than master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. Mr. Poe has three entries on our curated lis...

Send us Fan Mail In July, the random generator drew #768, which corresponded to a book entitled Max Havelaar. This book was written by an author named Multituli. No one even remotely connected to this podcast had ever heard of either this book or this writer, so some research ensued. As it turns out, Max Havelaar is an 1860 anticolonial work of satire that exposed the brutal exploitation of Javane...

Send us Fan Mail In 1917, a Hungarian-American immigrant (and newspaper publisher) named Joseph Pulitzer bequeathed money in his will to Columbia University to start a journalism school and to establish the Pulitzer Prize. Initially intended to recognize special achievements in journalism, the awards have since expanded to include works of fiction, drama, and music. Every year, the Pulitzer Prize...

Send us Fan Mail “On the sun-drenched island of Utajima, young fisherman Shinji returns home from the sea to find his quiet life transformed by the arrival of Hatsue, the beautiful daughter of the island’s wealthiest man. Their attraction is immediate, but in a small tradition-bound community, love is never truly private.” The preceding paragraph, we think, is a decent, concise back-of-the-book ex...

Send us Fan Mail Summer camp, business trips, weddings, moving a child from Tennessee into Illinois, productions of 1776 , and two days of skate punk made the months of June and July too busy for all three cast members to commit to a regular recording schedule. With nothing else to fill a programming void, Rodney sat down without his castmates and had a fascinating conversation with an author loca...

Send us Fan Mail After years of writing poetry, Chilean author Roberto Bolaño made the decision to secure more financial security for his family by making the transition into scribing novels. His first novel, La pista de hielo ( The Skating Rink ), was published in 1993. His breakthrough, Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), came about in 1998. Unbeknownst to the public and his ever-gr...

Send us Fan Mail The folks here at Just In Case We Die have decided that all a novelist has to do to earn a spot on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die is to pen a book about identity chasing. From On the Road (which Aaron adores) to Disappearance (which all but Rodney found boring), there have been many spotlighted novels that cover this theme. This novel, one that the cast was so...

Send us Fan Mail June is almost over and you have probably noticed that the fine folks at Just In Case We Die haven't posted any new material. This month, there was supposed to be a discussion of The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra (#1022 on the curated list). Well, guess what? It's June 24th and Aaron hasn't even had a chance to start reading it yet. At the end of May, Rebecca's te...

Send us Fan Mail  The critical blurb on the cover of book #776 on our curated list states that The Memoirs of Hadrian is "singularly beautiful", which is a really interesting opinion since the cast of Just In Case We Die found it "boring", "tedious", and "uneventful." Ostensibly, a 300+ page passing-of-the-torch epistle between emperors in ancient Rome, it r...

Send us Fan Mail On Sunday, May 3, 2026, The Davis Theatre in Chicago had a single screening of Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie , a new film by Academy-Award-winning director Alex Gibney, as part of the annual Doc10 Festival. This film is a documentary partially stitched together from footage filmed by novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths as her husband, Salman Rushdie, recovered from the...

Send us Fan Mail Once upon a time, Aaron recommended a novel he had recently completed to Rebecca, citing it as his favorite novel of 2021. Already familiar with the work of the author, Rebecca jumped right in, despite Aaron’s misgivings about the science-fiction content of this spectacular book. Rebecca loved Cloud Cuckoo Land so much that she brought it to the table as an entry on her veto list...

Send us Fan Mail Last year, for the bonus material in April, Just In Case We Die celebrated National Library Week with a lively discussion about some of the unique things libraries are doing all around the world. The year before that, the cast celebrated International Children’s Book Day by reminiscing about some of their favorite books and authors from when they were kids. What do they have in st...

Send us Fan Mail Back in January, the random number generator gave us #1, 167. This number corresponded to a Cuban novel by Guillermo Cabrera Infante entitled Three Trapped Tigers. None of the cast had heard of it. Research ensued, and the following information was discovered: A paperback in English was going to cost $73.85. The cheapest editions were either in Chinese ($17.85) or on Kindle in Spa...

Send us Fan Mail It occurred to the crew here at Just In Case We Die that a vast majority of the broadcast space is devoted to male authors. It would seem that the editors of the original list didn’t have as many women writers that they found to be “essential.” In three full years of episode dropping, with the minor exception of three short stories, there have only been six discussions featuring n...

Send us Fan Mail Watchmen is, without question, the most unique book to be up for discussion on Just In Case We Die . Of all the tomes to ever appear on the curated list, Watchmen is the only comic book. Originally released as twelve individual issues, the final collected volume premiered at the end of 1987 and has subsequently become one of the most consistently-reprinted graphic novels of all ti...

Send us Fan Mail It is February 2026. This means that this is the first episode of the fourth season. It also means that Rebecca has a pre-arranged prior commitment and cannot join the cast for their bonus discussion. While the cat’s away . . . This seemed like a perfect opportunity to bring Rodney’s friend Joe Tavano, former sci-fi podcaster and self-avowed expert on all things J. R. R. Tolkien,...

Send us Fan Mail The final episode of the third season features one of the world’s most successful writers. The author of novels, short story collections, works of nonfiction, children’s books, and comics, Margaret Atwood has been topping bestseller lists and wowing prize jury judges for more than six decades. Few Canadian writers have enjoyed the success that she has made seem easy. This discussi...

Send us Fan Mail If there is one thing that everyone here at Just In Case We Die can agree on, it’s this: Haruki Murakami is one of the greatest contemporary storytellers. Japan’s best-selling novelist, Haruki Murakami has made an international name for himself with thought-provoking, meaningful narratives that explore loneliness and the nature of love within the warm, surreal embrace of magical r...

Send us Fan Mail This month’s book up for discussion involves one of the strangest novels to ever be featured on Just In Case We Die . It’s a crass, vulgar, and irreverent  commentary on American media wrapped up in a misguided and confounding allegory written by an Australian author who somehow managed to beat Booker Prize-stalwart Margaret Atwood for Britain’s most distinguished literary prize....

Send us Fan Mail Remember last December when the crew at Just In Case We Die celebrated the holidays and National Read A New Book Month by combining both into one gift-giving effort? Well, they decided to do that same thing again (even if two of them still haven’t finished the books they were given last year). Classic titles, obscure titles, novels by authors who have been mentioned repeatedly on...

Send us Fan Mail André Brink’s A Dry White Season is a great example of the sort of novel Aaron, Rodney, and Rebecca are describing when they classify a book as “essential.” First published in 1979, this thought-provoking story recounts the journey of a white Afrikaaner as he transforms from a passive observer into an active challenger of injustice. Emphasizing the necessity of taking action again...

Send us Fan Mail All three cast members of Just In Case We Die are acknowledging that their accumulation of books has gotten out of control. The to-be-read piles get increasingly more problematic. This is not a problem that appears to be remedying itself in the near future. Consider: 1) Next month, each cast member will be given two books by their co-hosts. 2) Every month for the next year, they’l...

Send us Fan Mail It's Aaron's turn to handpick a book from the list, and he selected Italo Calvino's 1979 post-modern masterpiece. This novel is one that he has admired for more than a quarter century. In fact, he's been trying to foist it on Rebecca seemingly ad nauseum since 2001. The real reason he picked it, though, is because he wants Rodney to gain a greater appreciation...