Kurt Vonnegut Radio with Gabe Hudson

Charles Yu is an author who has won the National Book Award. He's also a screenwriter who has written for Westworld. Charles gets real about the surge in hate crimes against Asian Americans in recent years and the psychic toll these attacks have had. Charles explains why it feels like something in our society is either broken or it was always there and has just been recently revealed. And how is t...

Bethanne Patrick is a renowned book critic, host of the podcast Missing Pages, and author of the forthcoming memoir Life B: Overcoming Double Depression. Her work appears frequently in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NPR Books, and she sits on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. Bethanne talks about overcoming her lifelong struggle with "double depression" and her dog Molly Bloom...

Rafia Zakaria is the Pakistani-American author of Against White Feminism, a columnist for The Baffler, and a human rights lawyer. She's also a former Director of Amnesty International. Rafia explains what happened when she wrote a column in The Baffler about how the New York Time's podcast Caliphate was filled with lies. Rafia and Gabe also talk about Angelina Jolie's activist posts on Instagram....

Elizabeth McCracken is the James A. Michener chaired professor in creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin and the award-winning author of 8 books. Her most recent novel The Hero of This Book was just named one of the 10 Best Books of 2022 by Time Magazine and People Magazine. Elizabeth tells the story of how the dedication page for her most recent novel just showed up in the mail one...

Keri Blakinger is the author of Corrections in Ink and an award-winning journalist at The Marshall Project. As a student at Cornell University in 2010, Keri was arrested in Ithaca for possession of heroin. She was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, after which she became an award-winning journalist who covers death row in the Texas prison system. Keri describes what it felt like to see h...

Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a young Latina superstar novelist and poet whose debut novel recently appeared on a billboard in Times Square. Melissa and Gabe talk about why West Side Story is so relatable for lonely Latinas who obsess over mediocre white guys. Melissa explains why every single woman writer need a big yellow couch. And what happened when Melissa ordered a yellow couch from the internet?...

Tod Goldberg is the New York Times Bestselling author of over a dozen books and a beloved citizen of Literary Twitter. He is also the Director of the MFA program at the University of California, Riverside. Tod tells Gabe about what his grandfather, who just barely survived the pogroms in Ukraine, taught him about being Jewish. This interview is a portrait of the writer as a wild big-hearted force...

Soraya Nadia McDonald is the senior cultural critic for Andscape (formerly known as The Undefeated). She won the George Jean Nathan Prize for dramatic criticism, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. Soraya tells Gabe about her decision to go public with her cancer diagnosis and the bond she formed with her Twitter followers who are cancer survivors. Soraya also talks about Aretha Fr...

Diksha Basu is an award-winning novelist and journalist. Diksha generously cracks open her heart open so that she and Gabe can carefully examine the contents therein. And what they find is her fabulous grandmother as well as her squad of powerful and hilarious aunts: these women in Delhi have not just shaped who Diksha is but have armed her with invaluable tools to contend with the messiness of li...

Joe Hagan is cohost of Vanity Fair's podcast Inside the Hive the author of the culture defining book Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone. Joe is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair. He has written in depth about some of the most significant figures of our time, including Beto O’Rourke, Hillary Clinton, the Bush family, Karl Rove, Henry Kissinger, and Dan Rather....

Stephanie Land didn’t take the traditional path to writing a New York Times Bestselling memoir MAID: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive. And she didn’t take the traditional path to having her memoir be adapted into a Netflix Emmy-nominated series MAID. Stephanie and Gabe talk about her struggles as a single mother living in public housing with two children and her determination to...

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the young New York Times Bestselling author of the story collection Friday Black and Chain Gang All Stars. But what experiences have shaped the brilliant mind behind this cutting edge work of fiction? Nana and Gabe discuss what it was like for him to grow up Ghanian-American with his family in Spring Valley, Rockland County, NY. Nana & Gabe talk about his rapping, inclu...

Merve Emre is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, the author of many award-winning books, and a professor at the University of Oxford. Merve and Gabe chop it up about Merve’s journey from Turkey to Brooklyn as a young child. What was it like for her family to live in Park Slope in the early 90’s? How did she break her arm that one time as a kid, and how does that event inform who she is today...

Tressie McMillan Cottom is the author of Thick and Other Essays, a columnist for the New York Times, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a 2020 McArthur Fellow. Tressie talks to Gabe about the kind of freedom she wants for all Black women. And how her mother was a member of the Black Panther Party. We learn about Tressie's 18 stages of essay writing. And why are whi...

Molly Jong-Fast is a correspondent for Vanity Fair and host of the podcast Fast Politics. Molly sits down with Gabe to tell him what it felt like to do battle with Elon Musk out on the timeline. Molly explains why she loves Twitter and how she used it to sting Bill Maher. She gets into why a Tucker Carlson presidency is the ultimate doomsday scenario. And why does Molly think that Jon Stewart migh...