Otherppl with Brad Listi

Sonya Walger is the author of the novel Wifehouse, available from Union Square Press. Walger is an award-winning actress, best known for her role as Penny Widmore on Lost and Molly Cobb in the first three seasons of Apple TV+'s For All Mankind. She studied English Literature at Christ Church, Oxford and was the host of the literary podcast, Bookish. Her first book, Lion, a semiautobiographical nov...

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 825, my conversation with Clancy Martin, author of How Not to Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind (Pantheon). Air date: March 29, 2023. Martin is the acclaimed author of the novel How to Sell (FSG) as well as numerous books on philosophy. A Guggenheim Fellow, his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New York, The A...

Daniel Kraus is the author of the novel Angel Down, available from Atria Books. It was awarded the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Daniel Kraus is a New York Times bestselling writer of novels, TV, and film. His novel Whalefall received a front-cover review in The New York Times Book Review, won the Alex Award, was an LA Times Book Prize Finalist, and was a Best Book of 2023 from NPR, The New Yor...

Volume 89 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...the return of Mira...still alive...describes her health ordeal...Brad's colonoscopy journey...his true crime spiral continues...gets reprimanded for helping the homeless...revisiting the hyper-capitalist hell of the Met Gala...making sense of the Baldoni-Lively saga...Channing Tatum's mournful Instagram poetry for Zöe Kravitz...the hantavirus cruise ship...

Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the New York Times bestselling author of London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth (Doubleday).  Patrick's other books include the New York Times bestsellers Rogues, Empire of Pain (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction), and Say Nothing, which received a National Book Critics Circ...

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 647, my first conversation with author Susan Choi. We were discussing her National Book Award-winning novel, Trust Excerise. Air date: June 10, 2020. Choi is the author of Trust Exercise, which received the National Book Award for fiction, as well as the novels The Foreign Student, American Woman, A Person of Interest, and My Ed...

Vol. 9 of Story Time, a new series on the program featuring an author reading aloud from his work. In this episode,  Kim Samek reads the title story from her acclaimed debut collection, I Am the Ghost Here (The Dial Press). Samek's fiction has won the O.Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and has been cited as a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories. Her stories appear in Zyzzyva, The Th...

Mira is out sick again this week, so instead of a new episode of Brad & Mira for the Culture, I am instead joined by Chris Stuck, who came to my attention recently when he published a very provocative and unusually candid essay on the online literary magazine Zona Motel. The essay is called ‘Chasing Wild Geese Through the Corporate Book World, or How I Became a Hack and Stated Self-Publishing My F...

Kim Samek is the author of the debut story collection I Am the Ghost Here, available from The Dial Press. Samek's fiction has won the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize and has been cited as a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories. Her stories appear in Zyzzyva, The Threepenny Review, Story, Guernica, and elsewhere. She works as a TV writer and producer, with credits including WordGir...

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 598, my first conversation with author Kimberly King Parsons. We were discussing her debut story collection, Black Light, which went on to be nominated for the National Book Award. Air date: September 18, 2019. Kimberly King Parsons is a National Book Award-nominee and the bestselling author of We Were the Universe, a New York T...

Volume 88 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Samantha Irby, substitute podcaster...Mira is out this week with a herniated disc...the chaos reigns...Sam explains her love of Orc penises and monster smut...Brad obsesses over a children's hospital in Denmark...feels inferior to The Strokes...prepares for next week's colonoscopy...reluctantly processing the White House Correspondents Dinner...Klay Thomp...

Julian Zabalbeascoa is the author of the debut novel called What We Tried to Bury Grows Here, available now in trade paperback from Two Dollar Radio. It was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A dual citizen of Spain and the US, Julian Zabalbeascoa was born and raised in California’s Central Valley. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing in Madrid from the University of New Orleans and...

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 635, my conversation with Sarah Kendzior about her book entitled Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America (Flatiron Books). Air date: April 5, 2020. Kendzior is the bestselling author of The View from Flyover Country, Hiding in Plain Sight, They Knew, and The Last American Road Trip. She li...

Volume 87 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira on how her entire life is 4/20...and how her paraplegic dog had surgery....her new author photo is imminent...Brad continues true crime obsession, finishes watching The Jinx...the turkey croissant conundrum...Angry Adam's midlife crisis podcast recommendation...Kash Patel is not a sloppy drunk who wets the bed, his lawyer says...Katy Perry did not ru...

Willy Vlautin is the author of the novel The Left and the Lucky, available from Harper. It is the official April pick of the Otherppl Book Club. Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, Willy Vlautin is the author of seven novels and is the founder of the bands Richmond Fontaine and The Delines. Vlautin started writing stories and songs at the age of eleven after receiving his first guitar. Inspired by so...

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 734, my conversation with Kate Durbin, author of the poetry collection Hoarders (Wave Books). Air date: October 24, 2021. Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles-based writer and artist. Her books of poetry include E! Entertainment, The Ravenous Audience, and ABRA, which won the 2017 international Turn On Literature Prize. Durbin was the A...

Volume 86 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Brad is visited by animals...a white pigeon...a coyote...Mira is swarmed by bugs...ants...mosquitoes...Coachella, Weekend 1 recap...Trent Reznor wins Mira's jet-black heart...pondering Lena Dunham's tell-all memoir...Lauren Sanchez believes the oligarchy needs to stop apologizing and start having fun...Nicole Kidman is becoming a death doula...Aubrey Plaz...

Ada Limón is the author of Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry, available from Scribner. She served as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. Ada Limón is the author of seven books of poetry, including Startlement: New & Selected Poems; The Hurting Kind, which was a finalist for the Griffin Prize; The Carrying, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the...

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 571, my conversation with Roger McNamee, author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe (Penguin Press). Air date: March 20, 2019. McNamee has been a Silicon Valley investor for 35 years. He co-founded successful funds in venture, crossover and private equity. His most recent fund, Elevation, included U2’s Bono as a co-...

Volume 85 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Spring Break recap...the Listis do Las Vegas...Brad goes Mormon?...Mira in the Cheese Castle...Passover in John Hughes country...Angry Adam returns from London...Trump spirals deeper into senile homicidal insanity...teases nuclear war...LeAnn Rimes experiences orgasmic jaw release on camera...Tiger Woods needs to work on his driver...Kristi Noem's cross-d...

Gwydion Suilebhan  is the Executive Director of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, which announced the 2026 recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction on April 6th—Mahreen Sohail's debut story collection, Small Scale Sinners (A Public Space Books). Suilebhan is also a writer, arts and technology innovator, and arts advocate. A founding member of The Welders—a Helen Hayes Award-winning playwrights c...

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 702, my conversation with author Andrea Bajani. Air date: April 21, 2021. Andrea Bajani (Rome, 1975) is one of the most respected and award-winning novelists and poets of contemporary Italian literature. He is the author of four novels and two collections of poems. His novel, If You Kept a Record of Sins, has brought him a great...

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 846, my conversation with author Lorrie Moore. (Note: Brad & Mira for the Culture is on Spring Break and will return next week.) Air date: June 25, 2023. Moore is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award...

Jung Yun is the author of the novel All the World Can Hold, available now from 37 Ink / Simon & Schuster. Jung Yun was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. She received her MFA in English and creative writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of O Beautiful, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a New York Times Group Read, and a San Fra...

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 131, my conversation with the late Ned Vizzini. Air date: December 16, 2012. Ned Vizzini (1981-2013) was the bestselling author of the acclaimed young adult books It’s Kind of a Funny Story (also a major motion picture), Be More Chill, Teen Angst? Naaah . . . , and The Other Normals. He wrote for the New York Times, Salon, and T...