A weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading authors. Hosted by Brad Listi.
Listeners of Otherppl with Brad Listi that love the show mention: keep it up brad, host brad, small press, writerly, consistently thoughtful, yoohoo, writers talk, writers', listening to other people, writer's, childhoods, one on one interviews, brad is a great, brad's, literary podcast, i'm amazed, monologues, thoughtful interviews, publishers, it's a podcast.
The Otherppl with Brad Listi podcast is a must-listen for literature enthusiasts and aspiring writers. Brad does an exceptional job of engaging his guests in intelligent and interesting conversations, making each episode a delight to listen to. The layout of the podcast is well-structured, and every aspect of it is enjoyable. As a result, I have found myself purchasing around 85% of the books that have been discussed on this podcast. I am now a big fan and highly recommend giving it a go if you appreciate literature.
The best aspect of The Otherppl with Brad Listi podcast is undoubtedly the engaging discussions with interesting authors. Brad's thoughtful questions inspire authors to reveal new perspectives and ideas, making each conversation enlightening and thought-provoking. It is a fantastic opportunity to gain insights into the lives and creative processes of these talented individuals.
However, while the majority of the content is excellent, there are occasional moments when the host rambles or grunts during interviews. Some may find this charming and genuine, but others might find it distracting or unnecessary. Nonetheless, these moments are few and far between, so they do not detract significantly from the overall quality of the podcast.
In conclusion, The Otherppl with Brad Listi podcast is a gem for anyone interested in literature or writing. Brad's skill as an interviewer shines through in each episode, creating a space for genuine conversations that reveal both the personal experiences and professional insights of authors. While there may be occasional moments that some listeners find distracting, they do not overshadow the wealth of valuable material present in this podcast. Overall, it is an invaluable resource for both readers and writers alike.

Luke Kennard is the author of the novel Black Bag, available from Zando. It is the official March 2026 pick of the Otherppl Book Club. Kennard is an award-winning poet and novelist. In 2014 he was named one of the Next Generation Poets by the Poetry Book Society in their once-per-decade list. His collection, Cain, was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and described by Alan Hollinghurst as “the cleverest and funniest thing I've read this year,” and Notes on the Sonnets won the Forward prize for Best Poetry Collection in 2021. The Transition, his first novel, was a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. The Book of Jonah, his new poetry collection, will be published by Picador in 2025. Luke Kennard lives in Birmingham, UK, where he teaches Creative Writing at Birmingham University. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 766, my conversation with author Anakana Schofield. Air date: April 6, 2022. Anakana Schofield is an award-winning Irish-Canadian writer of fiction, essays, and literary criticism. Her previous novels are Malarky (2012) and Martin John (2015). The UK edition of Bina was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Volume 83 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...trying to process this year's Oscars...Brad's Fashion Corner...the Marty Supreme shutout...Club Chalamet turns on its hero...Sean Penn no-shows...the chainsmoker-bodybuilder dichotomy...Penn has been tactically deployed to Ukraine...Javier Bardem stands alone...Babs takes the In Memoriam segment off the rails...Mira's grandma has her moment of triumph before an audience of a billion people...the predictable social media of it all...PTA goes momentarily Gollum ...& more... *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Naeem Murr is the author of the novel Every Exit Brings You Home, available from Murr is the author of three novels, including The Boy (a New York Times Notable Book) and The Perfect Man (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize). A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, he's been awarded a regional Commonwealth Writers Prize, a PEN Beyond Margins Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Chicago. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 836, my conversation with author and humorist Samantha Irby. Air date: May 14, 2023. Irby's books include Quietly Hostile, Meaty, Wow, No Thank You, and We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. She also writes for television, having worked on shows like Shrill, And Just Like That, and the forthcoming Tuca & Bertie. She blogs at Bitches Gotta Eat and lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vol. 7 of Story Time, a new series on the program featuring an author reading aloud from his work. In this episode, Tobi Coventry reads aloud from his debut novel, He's the Devil, available from Abrams Books. It was the official February 2026 pick of the Otherppl Book Club. For the past ten years, Coventry has worked as a book scout for film and television production companies. In 2023, he produced an award-winning short horror film, Blood Rites, based on a story by Daisy Johnson. He lives in East Sussex, UK. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Volume 82 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Brad reviews his AWP 2026 experience in Baltimore...accidentally dropped his winter hat in a toilet...traveled with large amounts of avocados and tangerines...fasted daily...didn't pee...worked out at dawn in hotel gym...Mira goes to the Frieze LA, now hates art...gets a severe migraine in the aftermath...goes to Disneyland...Trump starts WWIII to distract from the fact that he's a psychotic child rapist...Britney gets a DUI in Ventura....Florida woman shoots at Rihanna's house...JFK Jr., Carolyn, Love Story...Ryan Murphy is unafraid to insult the dead...& more... *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Namwali Serpell is the author of On Morrison, available from Hogarth Press. Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in New York. Her debut novel, The Old Drift, won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times's Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her second novel, The Furrows, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and was selected as one of The New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year. Her book of essays, Stranger Faces, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. She is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction, the Caine Prize for African Writing, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award. She is a professor of English at Harvard University. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 545, my conversation with author, poet, and screenwriter Mark Leidner. Air date: October 3, 2018. Mark Leidner is the author of two feature films: the sci-fi noir Empathy, Inc. (2019) and the relationship comedy Jammed (2014). He is also the author of the story collection Under the Sea (Tyrant Books, 2018), the poetry collection Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me (Factory Hollow, 2011), and the book of aphorisms The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover (Sator, 2011). *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 461, my conversation with author and journalist Michael Finkel about his book The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit (Knopf). Air date: April 12, 2017. Michael Finkel is the author of True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, which was adapted into a 2015 major motion picture. He has written for National Geographic, GQ, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, and The New York Times Magazine. He lives in western Montana. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tobi Coventry is the author of the debut novel He's the Devil, available from Abrams Books. It was the official February pick of the Otherppl Book Club. For the past ten years, Coventry has worked as a book scout for film and television production companies. In 2023, he produced an award-winning short horror film, Blood Rites, based on a story by Daisy Johnson. He lives in East Sussex, UK. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 847, my conversation with National Book Award-winning author Tess Gunty from 2023. Tess's debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch, was a New York Times Bestseller and the recipient of the 2022 National Book Award for Fiction. It has been translated into a dozen languages. The novel also received the Barnes and Noble Discover Prize, the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the Open Bank Vanity Fair Award for best new author in Spain, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and the British Book Award for Debut Fiction. The Rabbit Hutch was named one of twelve Essential Reads by The New Yorker, and a best book of the year by: The New York Times, People, TIME, Oprah Daily, the Chicago Tribune, NPR, and others. It is currently a finalist for the inaugural Inside Literary Prize, the first literary prize in America to be determined by a panel of incarcerated judges. I spoke with Tess as she was celebrating the publication of the paperback edition of The Rabbit Hutch. Air date: June 28, 2023. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vol. 6 of Story Time, a new series on the program featuring an author reading aloud from her work. In this episode, Emily Nemens reads aloud from her sophomore novel, Clutch, available from Tin House / Zando. Nemens's debut novel, The Cactus League, was a New York Times Book ReviewEditors' Choice and named one of NPR's and Lit Hub's favorite books of 2020. Her stories have appeared in BOMB, The Gettysburg Review, n+1, and elsewhere; her illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker and in collaboration with Harvey Pekar. Emily spent over a decade editing literary quarterlies, including leading The Paris Review and serving as co-editor and prose editor of The Southern Review. She held the 2022-23 Picador Professorship (University of Leipzig) and teaches in the MFA program at Bennington College. She lives in central New Jersey with her husband and dog. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Volume 81 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Brad plants a beautiful garden...continues tedious AWP preparations...binge-watching UFO docuseries...the aliens are probably in the ocean...Mira still hasn't set up her hummingbird cam...is now invested in a new conspiracy theory involving the late Queen Elizabeth...Marty Supreme loses huge at the BAFTAs...the Tourette Syndrome vs. Racism online circular firing squad...Prince Andrew gets arrested...screams "I AM THE QUEEN'S SON"...Bonnie Blue gets knocked up by one of 400 men with whom she had unprotected sex in a 24-hour period...& more... *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emily Nemens is the author of the novel Clutch, available from Tin House. Nemens's debut novel, The Cactus League, was a New York Times Book ReviewEditors' Choice and named one of NPR's and Lit Hub's favorite books of 2020. Her stories have appeared in BOMB, The Gettysburg Review, n+1, and elsewhere; her illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker and in collaboration with Harvey Pekar. Emily spent over a decade editing literary quarterlies, including leading The Paris Review and serving as co-editor and prose editor of The Southern Review. She held the 2022-23 Picador Professorship (University of Leipzig) and teaches in the MFA program at Bennington College. She lives in central New Jersey with her husband and dog. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 600, my conversation with National Book Award-winning author Sarah M. Broom from 2019. Broom a writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Oxford American, and O, The Oprah Magazine among others. A native New Orleanian, she received her Masters in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. She was awarded a Whiting Foundation Creative Nonfiction Grant in 2016 and was a finalist for the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction in 2011. She has also been awarded fellowships at Djerassi Resident Artists Program and The MacDowell Colony. She lives in New York state. I spoke with Sarah as she was on tour in support of The Yellow House. Air date: September 25, 2019. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Volume 80 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Brad's AWP travel packing anxiety...his compassion for Chevy Chase....watching Eyes Wide Shut, looking for clues to our present reality...contemplating a possible trip to Guatemala....Mira reviews Wuthering Heights..."shockingly prude"...getting obsessed with the Nancy Guthrie case...shoddy police work...another edition of This Week in Dead Influencers...Angry Adam unleashes his wrath...Amy Schumer's revenge bod and performative Valentine's Day post-divorce social media spectacular...Clavicular gets attacked in NYC...bone-smashing and Chad-fishing...mogging and jester-gooning...Shia LaBeouf laissa les bons temps rouler at Mardi Gras...& more... *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eric Lichtblau is the author of American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate, available from Little, Brown & Co. Lichtblau is a Washington journalist and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. He was a reporter in the Washington bureau of the New York Times for nearly 15 years until 2017, and a reporter for the Los Angeles Times for 15 years before that. He has also written for the New Yorker, TIME, USA Today, and other publications. His other books include The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men, a New York Times bestseller; Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice; and Return to the Reich: A Holocaust Refugee's Secret Mission to Defeat the Nazis. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 863, my conversation with Yiyun Li from 2023. Yiyun Li is the author of several works of fiction—Wednesday's Child; The Book of Goose; Must I Go; Where Reasons End; Kinder Than Solitude; Gold Boy, Emerald Girl; The Vagrants; and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers—and the memoirs Things in Nature Merely Grow and Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. She is the recipient of many awards, including a PEN/Faulkner Award, a PEN/Malamud Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, a PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Windham–Campbell Prize, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, among other publications. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Original air date: September 6, 2023. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vol. 5 of Story Time, a new series on the program featuring an author reading aloud from her work. In this episode, Lily Meyer reads from her new novel The End of Romance, available from Viking Books. Meyer is a translator, a critic, and the author of the novel Short War. She is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her stories and translations can be found in The Dial, The Drift, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and many other journals, and her essays and criticism appear in outlets including Bookforum, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Volume 79 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Brad prepares for AWP...Mira advises amphetamines...the Pee-Wee Herman documentary...Brad can't cope with Van Morrison being an asshole...Mira's severe vitamin D deficiency...Angry Adam returns...Bad Bunny drives middle-aged women wild...please save America...Lady Gaga is Latina now...the Epstein Files fallout continues...Ghislaine pleads the 5th...Brad learns about looksmaxxing...& more... *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lily Meyer is the author of the novel The End of Romance, available from Viking. Meyer is a translator, a critic, and the author of the novel Short War. She is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her stories and translations can be found in The Dial, The Drift, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and many other journals, and her essays and criticism appear in outlets including Bookforum, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 562, my conversation with Ingrid Rojas Contreras from 2019. Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her memoir The Man Who Could Move Clouds was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award, and her debut novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree was the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Believer, and Zyzzyva, among others. She lives in California. I spoke with Ingrid as she was on tour in support of his debut, Fruit of the Drunken Tree. Air date: December 11, 2019. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram YouTube TikTok Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Volume 78 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...podcasting from the fetal position...Brad and Mira are spiritually broken after spending the weekend reading the Epstein Files...Mira doubles her psych meds....Mira goes to a trampoline park, gets injured....Happy birthday, Elmo...farewell to the wonderful Catherine O'Hara...reviewing this year's Grammy Awards...Brad's Fashion Corner....Olivia Dean is an angel sent from heaven?....Justin Bieber's on-stage underwear choices....Brad gets choked up during Bob Weir in-memoriam...the Melania documentary debuts...super-fan tries to break Luigi out of prison...massive airplane toilet failure nightmare...& more... *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Schmidt is a member of an activist collection called The Friends of Attention. Together they have published a book called Attensity: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement, available from Crown. Schmidt is a writer and organizer originally from Missouri, now living in Brooklyn. He is a writer and the Editor-in-Chief of The Empty Cup, a dispatch on the politics of attention. Currently working on a book-length project about non-institutional communities of study he is a member of the Friends of Attention coalition, and leads workshops, seminars, and study groups at the Strother School of Radical Attention, where he is co-founder and Program Director. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 696, my conversation with Vesna Maric from March 2021. Maric was born in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1976. She left Bosnia-Herzegovina at sixteen as part of a convoy of refugees. She went on to work for the BBC World Service and has written for Lonely Planet for over two decades. Vesna is an author of fiction and non-fiction, essays and a variety of journalism. Her memoir, Bluebird, was longlisted for The Orwell Prize. I spoke with Vesna Maric as she was celebrating the publication of her debut novel, The President Shop. Air date: March 10, 2021. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Volume 77 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Brad goes to the nursery...encounters an angry pit bull...confronts Mira about her unused Christmas gift...Mira rewatches Mad Men...Angry Adam returns with a vegeance...Kanye takes out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal...claims brain damage caused him to hate the Jews...Alex Honnold free solos a skyscraper...unleashes psychological trauma on millions....Erika Kirk begins another national tour...wants to 'make heaven crowded again'...& more... *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kathleen Boland is the author of the debut novel Scavengers, now available from Viking. Boland's fiction has appeared in Tin House, Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere, and she has received support from the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center. The former event director for Catapult/Counterpoint Press/Soft Skull Press, she earned her MFA from Louisiana State University, where she received the Robert Penn Warren Thesis Award. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emily Witt is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine and a native of Minneapolis. She has been reporting from the streets of her hometown over the past couple of weeks, covering the ICE raids, the killings of Rene Good and Alex Pretti, the non-fatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, and the spirited citizen response by Minneapolitans. She recently wrote about it in a piece called 'The Battle for Minneapolis,' with includes some excellent photos by Philip Cheung. Emily Witt is the author of Future Sex (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux), Nollywood: The Making of a Film Empire (Columbia Global Reports 2017), and an award-winning memoir called Health and Safety (Pantheon). In addition to her work for The New Yorker, she has also written for n+1, The New York Times, GQ, the London Review of Books, and many other places. She has degrees from Brown, Columbia, and Cambridge, and was a Fulbright scholar in Mozambique. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brenda Navarro is the author of the novel Eating Ashes, available now in a new translation by Megan McDowell, from Liveright Press. Official January 2026 pick of the Otherppl Book Club. Brenda Navarro is one of the most critically acclaimed authors in the Spanish language. Eating Ashes won the Cálamo and CEGAL prizes and was a finalist for the Mario Vargas Llosa Biennial Novel Prize. Originally from Mexico, she lives in Madrid. Megan McDowell has translated works by Samanta Schweblin and Mariana Enriquez, among others. Her translations have won the National Book Award for Translated Literature and the English PEN award. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Volume 76 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Brad's Liver King epiphany...the Indiana Hoosiers are awash in God's glory...Abella Danger's ESPN moment...Mira's sex worker friend group...Ralph Fiennes shows hog in The Bone Temple...Mira's dad experiences a home invasion in the nude...Angry Adam brings the mediocrity...The Beckham Family Feud...Posh Spice's grinding problem...the Glambot Shitstorm...Elordi and Robbie's Wuthering Heights soft-core marketing strategy...Happy 80th to Dolly Parton...& more... *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Karl Ove Knausgaard is the author of the novel The School of Night, the fourth book in his acclaimed Morning Star series. Available from Penguin Press. Translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken. Knausgaard's first novel, Out of the World, was the first ever debut novel to win the Norwegian Critics' Prize, and his second, A Time for Everything, was longlisted for the 2010 International Dublin Literary Award. The My Struggle cycle of novels has been heralded as a masterpiece wherever it has appeared. His work is published in thirty-five languages.Martin Aitken's translations of Scandinavian literature number some thirty-five books. His work has appeared on the shortlists of the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and the 2018 U.S. National Book Award, as well as the 2021 International Booker Prize. He received the PEN America Translation Prize in 2019. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 308, my conversation with the poet Michael Earl Craig. Craig is from Dayton, Ohio, home of the gas mask and the mood ring. He is the author of Woods and Clouds Interchangeable (Wave Books, 2019), Talkativeness (Wave Books, 2014), Thin Kimono (Wave Books, 2010), Yes, Master (Fence Books, 2006), Can You Relax in My House, (Fence Books, 2002), and the chapbook Jombang Jet (Factory Hollow Press, 2012). He lives in the Shields Valley, near Livingston, Montana, where he runs a full-time farrier practice. He was the 2015-2017 Poet Laureate of Montana. I spoke with Earl as he was celebrating the publication of Talkativeness. Air date: August 31, 2014. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Volume 75 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Brad's farmer's market dilemma...Mira believes Bob Weir was murdered by John Mayer...lobbies Brad to watch The Traitors...Angry Adam returns...Beyonce never talks about money?....Spencer Pratt for mayor....Cher goes for Dax Shepard's jugular...Golden Globes recap...Brad's Fashion Corner...etc. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kathleen Schmidt returns to the program to discuss the current state of the publishing industry—and what needs to change. As the Founder and CEO of Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations, Kathleen is a well-respected voice in book publishing with in-depth experience in all aspects of the industry, including as a publicist, literary agent, acquisitions editor, and ghostwriter. Her career encompasses 30 years of creating and directing impactful and strategic global media, marketing, and branding campaigns for politicians, A-List celebrities, athletes, and high-profile personalities. To date, she has worked on 50 New York Times bestsellers, and her clients have continuously appeared in top-tier national print, broadcast, and radio outlets such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, Vogue, Elle, Financial Times, Vanity Fair, GQ, and Sirius XM. Schmidt, who learned to read when she was four, comes from a family of voracious readers. Inspired by the legendary book editor Jackie Kennedy Onassis, she purposely focused on obtaining a position in book publishing. Her fast-growing Substack newsletter, Publishing Confidential, shares her wealth of inside knowledge that she hopes will help demystify the book industry. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 616, my conversation with Tim O'Brien from December 2019. O'Brien received the 1979 National Book Award for Going After Cacciato. Among his other books are The Things They Carried, Pulitzer Finalist and a New York TimesBook of the Century, and In the Lake of the Woods, winner of the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. He was awarded the Pritzker Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military writing in 2013. I spoke with Tim O'Brien as he was on tour in support of his memoir, Dad's Maybe Book. Air date: December 11, 2019. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram YouTube TikTok Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Volume 74 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...we're so back, baby.......Brad and Mira review their holidays...Brad threw his back out on Christmas Eve trying to do a tai-chi workout...Mira saw Marty Supreme and got a terrible UTI...the annual celebrity infestation of St. Bart's...Trump bombs Venezuela, kidnaps Maduro...the Bari Weiss destruction of CBS News continues apace...Ashley Tisdale reveals 'toxic celebrity mom group' drama in New York magazine...and more.... *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gerald Howard is the author of The Insider: Malcolm Cowley and the Triumph of American Literature, available from Penguin Press. Howard retired in 2021 as executive editor and vice president of Doubleday Books. He received the 2009 Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of Fiction and has worked over the years with authors such as Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Debby Applegate, Hanya Yanagihara, Pat Barker, Sean Wilentz, and Bill Bryson. Howard's essays and reviews have appeared in Bookforum, The New York Times Book Review, The American Scholar, London Review of Books, n+1, Slate, and other publications. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jim Newton is the author of Here Beside the Rising Tide: Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead, and an American Awakening, available from Random House. Newton is a journalist, teacher, and author of Justice for All, Eisenhower, Worthy Fights, and Man of Tomorrow. He was at the Los Angeles Times for twenty-five years as a reporter, bureau chief, editorial page editor, columnist, and editor at large. He lives in Pasadena, California, and teaches at UCLA, where he founded and edits the award-winning public affairs magazine Blueprint. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Susannah Cahalan is the author of The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary (Viking). Cahalan is a #1 New York Times–bestselling author, journalist and public speaker. Her first book, Brain on Fire, has sold over a million copies and has been translated into more than twenty languages. Her second book, The Great Pretender, was shortlisted for the Royal Society's 2020 Science Book Prize. She lives in New Jersey with her family. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Original air date: August 17, 2025 A special episode featuring Amanda Yates Garcia, also known as The Oracle of Los Angeles. Amanda is a writer, socially engaged artist, public witch, and doctoral student in the department of World Arts Cultures and Dance at UCLA. Her first book, Initiated, received a starred review from Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly and has been translated into six languages. Amanda hosts the Between the Worlds podcast, which looks at the Western Mystery traditions through a mythopoetic lens and has been downloaded over 2.5 million times, with over 1,900 five-star reviews. Amanda is the founder of Mystery Cult, a 20k strong online and in-person community on Substack dedicated to eco-somatic ritual practice and cultivating radical enchantment. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Original air date: October 12, 2025. What does it mean to be a “minor writer” in a world obsessed with major success? In this episode, I talk with Jeff Alessandrelliabout his essay 'Minor, Minor, Minor Writer,' and what it has to say about literary ambition, obscurity, ego, and the quiet reality behind most books. We discuss BookScan recon, indie lit fame, the collapse of serious readership, and the stubborn hope that keeps writers going anyway. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Alessandrelli lives in Portland, OR, where he directs and co-edits the non-profit book press/record label Fonograf Editions. His latest book is And Yet (Future Tense Books, 2024). “Minor, minor, minor writer” is an excerpt from an essay that will be included in a forthcoming collection to be published by Autofocus Books in late 2027/early 2028. His new Substack is https://substack.com/@jalessandrelli. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ocean Vuong is the author of the novel The Emperor of Gladness, available from Penguin Press. Ocean's other books include the critically acclaimed poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time Is a Mother, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the American Book Award, he used to work as a fast-food server, which inspired The Emperor of Gladness. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently splits his time between Northampton, Massachusetts, and New York City. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Original air date: June 10, 2025. Claire Hoffman is the author of Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson, available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Hoffman is also the author of the memoir Greetings from Utopia Park and is a journalist reporting for national magazines on culture, religion, celebrity, business, and more. She was formerly a staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone. She is a graduate of UC Santa Cruz, and has an MA in religion from the University of Chicago and an MA in journalism from Columbia University. She serves on the boards of the Columbia School of Journalism, ProPublica, and the Brooklyn Public Library. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is an affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Original air date: July 8, 2025. Jessa Crispin is the author of What Is Wrong With Men: Patriarchy, The Crisis of Masculinity, and How (Of Course) Michael Douglas Films Explain Everything, available from Pantheon Books. Jessa's other books include Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto, The Dead Ladies Project, and My Three Dads. She is the editor and founder of The Culture We Deserve as well as host with Nico Rodriguez of TCWD weekly podcast. In 2002, she launched Bookslut.com, one of the first and most treasured literary websites of the era; it ran for fifteen years. She is originally from Lincoln, Kansas, and currently lives in Philadelphia. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is an affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the program, we finish the year by highlighting the top-5 most-listened-to episodes of 2025. Big thanks to everyone who guested and everyone who listens. And a very special thank you to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. Wishing you all a very happy 2026! *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the program, we'll begin a countdown of the top 10 most-listened-to episodes of 2025. Please note that the countdown will unfold in two installments. Today, we'll be covering #10 through #6, and then on Christmas Day, a breakdown of the top 5 episodes of the year. Happy Holidays to all! Enjoy! *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carla Kaplan is the author of Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford (Harper Books). Kaplan is an award-winning professor and writer who holds the Stanton W. and Elisabeth K. Davis Distinguished Professorship in American Literature at Northeastern University. She has published seven books, including Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters and Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance, both New York Times Notable Books. A recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities “Public Scholar” fellowships, Kaplan has been a fellow in residence at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute; is a fellow of the Society of American Historians; and serves on the board of Biographers International. She divides her time between Boston and Cape Cod. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vol. 4 of Story Time, a new series on the program featuring an author reading aloud from her work. In this episode, Jeannie Vanasco reads from her new memoir A Silent Treatment, available from Tin House. Official December pick of the Otherppl Book Club. Jeannie's other memoirs are Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl and The Glass Eye. Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, she lives in Baltimore and is an associate professor of English at Towson University. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Volume 73 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Christmas shopping confusion...Brad anesthetizes himself with Ken Burns documentaries...Brad's friend has a gun....Mira's dog almost dies?....might adopt a feral cat...all planets are in retrograde...the darkest weekend in memory....a cascade of terrible news...Alec and Hilaria, house-hunting in Jersey?...Bennie and the Jens...Dick Van Dyke turns 100....looking back on 2025...the year in review...and more.... *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Susan Straight is the author of the novel Sacrament, available from Counterpoint Press. Straight has published nine previous novels, including Mecca, A Million Nightingales, and Highwire Moon, and one memoir, In the Country of Women. She's been a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the National Book Award, among other honors, and received the Lannan Prize, the O. Henry Award, the Edgar Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement from the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. Her fiction has been translated into ten languages. She was born in Riverside, California, where she lives with her family. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ulys.app/writeabook to download Ulysses, and use the code OTHERPPL at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription." Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices