Podcasts about border trilogy

For our December episode on books, we, the CPT staff, have been reading (and, on this occasion, watching):JRR Tolkien, Return of the King, (1955)Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (1995)Stephen King, Carrie (1974)Cormac McCarthy, The Border Trilogy, (1999)Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Idea, 2011Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. (2024)

In this episode we head across the border one more time for a consideration of the Border Trilogy as a whole.  How does knowing how the story begins and ends change how we read any of the different parts?  My guests on this filibuster over the border include Dr. Nell Sullivan, a Kentuckian who earned her BA in English from Vanderbilt University and earned her PhD from Rice University.  She is currently Professor of English at University of Houston-Downtown, where she teaches courses in American literature and the literature of the American South.  A former editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal, she has published extensively on gender and class representation in McCarthy's novels, and has also published essays on Katherine Dunn, William Faulkner, and Nella Larsen, among others.  Her work has appeared in numerous essay collections and in such journals as Genre, Critique, The Southern Quarterly, Mississippi Quarterly, and African American Review.   She's joined by long time contributor Dr. Stephen Frye.  Steve Frye is professor and chair of English at California State University, Bakersfield and President of the Cormac McCarthy Society. He is the author of Understanding Cormac McCarthy (Univ. of South Carolina Press) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy, and Cambridge UP's Cormac McCarthy in Context. He has written numerous journal articles on Cormac McCarthy and other authors of the American Romanticist Tradition.  Additionally, he is the author of the novel Dogwood Crossing and the book, Unguessed Kinships: Naturalism and the Geography of Hope in Cormac McCarthy, University of Alabama Press. Bringing in a breath of non-academic fresh air is Marty Priola. Voracious reader, a sometime critic, and book collector, Marty attended the Christian Brothers University of Memphis, the Publishing Institute at the University of Denver, and earned his J.D. at the University of Memphis.  Marty's website for McCarthy appreciation became the first website and a foundational part of the formation of the Cormac McCarthy Society, and he still maintains the Cormac McCarthy webpages and forums.  He has written two entries on McCarthy for the Dictionary of Literary Biography. His writing is also featured in exchanges with Peter Josyph in Cormac Mccarthy's House: Reading Mccarthy Without Walls and The Wrong Reader's Guide to Cormac Mccarthy: All The Pretty Horses, which he edited and published in its first (ebook) form.   As always, listeners should beware: there be spoilers here. Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt.  To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.comThe website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you'd like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino.Support the showStarting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

The guest for this episode is Dr. Nick Monk, who joins me for a consideration of perhaps McCarthy's most idiosyncratic work.  The 90s were an exciting time for McCarthy fans.  In 92 he published the award winning All the Pretty Horses, followed two years later by the next installment in the Border Trilogy, The Crossing. Before he would go on to close out the trilogy in 98, however, in 1995 he also published a strange and fascinating play, The Stonemason. The play is about the Telfairs, a family of Black stone masons in Louisville, Kentucky.  The play examines the mystical and perhaps metafictional notion of stone masonry.  Using experimental techniques, we follow Ben Telfair in his worshipful relationship to his 100 year old stonemason grandfather, Papaw.  The play was canceled both figuratively and literally before it was ever fully produced.  Was it shut down because of McCarthy's appropriation of Black life? Or because the novelist included elements in the play which are more or less impossible to stage?  Both? Dr. Nick Monk is the author of True and Living Prophet of Destruction: Cormac McCarthy and Modernity, published in 2016 by the University of New Mexico Press, and he edited the collection Intertextual and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Cormac McCarthy: Borders and Crossings from 2012. Nick has also published on McCarthy and the ‘Desert Gothic,' Native American literature – particularly Leslie Silko – intercultural communication, identity, and teaching and learning in higher education. Nick is currently Director of the Center for Transformative Teaching, and Honorary Professor in the Department of English, at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.As always, readers should beware: there be spoilers here.Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they'll someday see the light.  We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you'd like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino.Support the showStarting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

While scouring the Sonoran Desert for objects left behind by migrants crossing into the United States, anthropologist Jason De León happened upon something he didn't expect to get left behind: a human arm, stripped of flesh. This macabre discovery sent him reeling, needing to know what exactly happened to the body, and how many migrants die that way in the wilderness. In researching border-crosser deaths in the Arizona desert, he noticed something surprising. Sometime in the late-1990s, the number of migrant deaths shot up dramatically and have stayed high since. Jason traced this increase to a Border Patrol policy still in effect, called “Prevention Through Deterrence.” First aired in 2018 and over three episodes, Radiolab investigates this policy, its surprising origins, and the people whose lives were changed forever because of it. Part 3: What Remains  The third episode in our Border Trilogy follows anthropologist Jason De León after he makes a grisly discovery in Arivaca, Arizona. In the middle of carrying out his pig experiments with his students, Jason finds the body of a 30-year-old female migrant. With the help of the medical examiner and some local humanitarian groups, Jason discovers her identity. Her name was Maricela. Jason then connects with her family, including her brother-in-law, who survived his own harrowing journey through Central America and the Arizona desert. With the human cost of Prevention Through Deterrence weighing on our minds, we try to parse what drives migrants like Maricela to cross through such deadly terrain, and what, if anything, could deter them. Special thanks to Carlo Albán, Sandra Lopez-Monsalve, Chava Gourarie, Lynn M. Morgan, Mike Wells and Tom Barry.CORRECTION: An earlier version of this episode, when it originally aired, incorrectly stated that a person's gender can be identified from bone remains. We've adjusted the audio to say that a person's sex can be identified from bone remains. EPISODE CITATIONS: Jason de Leon's latest work is a global participatory art project called Hostile Terrain 94 (https://zpr.io/dNEyVpAiNXjv), was exhibited at over 70 different locations around the world in 2020.   Read more about it here (https://zpr.io/uwDfu9bXFriv).   Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

While scouring the Sonoran Desert for objects left behind by migrants crossing into the United States, anthropologist Jason De León happened upon something he didn't expect to get left behind: a human arm, stripped of flesh. This macabre discovery sent him reeling, needing to know what exactly happened to the body, and how many migrants die that way in the wilderness.  In researching border-crosser deaths in the Arizona desert, he noticed something surprising. Sometime in the late-1990s, the number of migrant deaths shot up dramatically and have stayed high since. Jason traced this increase to a Border Patrol policy still in effect, called “Prevention Through Deterrence.” First aired in 2018 and over three episodes, Radiolab investigates this policy, its surprising origins, and the people whose lives were changed forever because of it. Part 2: Hold the Line After the showdown in court with Bowie High School, Border Patrol brings in a fresh face to head its dysfunctional El Paso Sector: Silvestre Reyes. The first Mexican-American to ever hold the position, Reyes knows something needs to change and has an idea how to do it. One Saturday night at midnight, with the element of surprise on his side, Reyes unveils ... Operation Blockade. It wins widespread support for the Border Patrol in El Paso, but sparks major protests across the Rio Grande. Soon after, he gets a phone call that catapults his little experiment onto the national stage, where it works so well that it diverts migrant crossing patterns along the entire U.S.-Mexico Border. Years later, in the Arizona desert, anthropologist Jason de León realizes that in order to accurately gauge how many migrants die crossing the desert, he must first understand how human bodies decompose in such an extreme environment. He sets up a macabre experiment, and what he finds is more drastic than anything he could have expected. Special thanks to Sherrie Kossoudji at the University of Michigan, Lynn M. Morgan, Cheryl Howard, Andrew Hansen, William Sabol, Donald B. White, Daniel Martinez, Michelle Mittelstadt at the Migration Policy Institute, Former Executive Assistant to the El Paso Mayor Mark Smith, Retired Assistant Border Patrol Sector Chief Clyde Benzenhoefer, Paul Anderson, Eric Robledo, Maggie Southard Gladstone and Kate Hall. EPISODE CREDITS:  Reported by - Latif Nasser with help from - Tracie Hunte Produced by - Matt Kielty with help from - Bethel Habte, Latif Nasser EPISODE CITATIONS: Art: Jason de Leon's latest work is a global participatory art project called Hostile Terrain 94 (https://zpr.io/dNEyVpAiNXjv), which will be exhibited at over 70 different locations around the world in 2020.  Read more about it here (https://zpr.io/uwDfu9bXFriv).     Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

While scouring the Sonoran Desert for objects left behind by migrants crossing into the United States, anthropologist Jason De León happened upon something he didn't expect to get left behind: a human arm, stripped of flesh. This macabre discovery sent him reeling, needing to know what exactly happened to the body, and how many migrants die that way in the wilderness. In researching border-crosser deaths in the Arizona desert, he noticed something surprising. Sometime in the late-1990s, the number of migrant deaths shot up dramatically and have stayed high since. Jason traced this increase to a Border Patrol policy still in effect, called “Prevention Through Deterrence.” In a series first aired back in 2018, over three episodes, Radiolab investigates this policy, its surprising origins, and the people whose lives were changed forever because of it.We begin one afternoon in May 1992, when a student named Albert stumbled in late for history class at Bowie High School in El Paso, Texas. His excuse: Border Patrol. Soon more stories of students getting stopped and harassed by Border Patrol started pouring in. So begins the unlikely story of how a handful of Mexican-American high schoolers in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country stood up to what is today the country's largest federal law enforcement agency. They had no way of knowing at the time, but what would follow was a chain of events that would drastically change the US-Mexico border. Special thanks to Centro de Salud Familiar La Fe, Estela Reyes López, Barbara Hines, Lynn M. Morgan, Mallory Falk, Francesca Begos and Nancy Wiese from Hachette Book Group, Professor Michael Olivas at the University of Houston Law Center, and Josiah McC. Heyman at the Center for Interamerican and Border Studies. EPISODE CREDITS:  Reported by - Latif Nasser, Tracie HunteProduced by - Matt Kieltywith help from - Bethel Habte, Tracie Hunte, Latf NasserCITATIONSBooksJason De Léon's book The Land of Open Graves here (https://zpr.io/vZbTarDzGQWK)  Timothy Dunn's book Blockading the Border and Human Rights here (https://zpr.io/VTPWNJPusaCn)  Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!   Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.   Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

In this episode we ride to the end of the road in the last episode of the Border Trilogy, CITIES ON THE PLAIN.  My guest for this foray is Dr. Bryan Vescio, Professor and Chair of English at High Point University in North Carolina.  A guest on former episodes on faith and Suttree, Dr. Vescio is the author of the 2014 book Reconstruction in Literary Studies: An Informalist Approach, as well as numerous articles on American authors including Mark Twain, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Nathanael West, and, of course, Cormac McCarthy. As always, readers should beware: there be spoilers here.Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they'll someday see the light.  We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you'd like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino.Support the showStarting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

Editor and literary critic Oscar Villalon joins V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to celebrate the life and legacy of the novelist Cormac McCarthy, who died last month. The hosts and Villalon reflect on McCarthy's vast vocabulary and cinematic descriptions, in which he juxtaposed lyrical prose with graphic violence. Villalon considers McCarthy's use of regionally accurate Spanish in the Border Trilogy as evidence of the author's broad understanding of the U.S.'s multilingual diversity. Villalon also reads and discusses a passage from McCarthy's 1994 novel The Crossing, the second book in the trilogy. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf and Todd Loughran. Oscar Villalon ZYZZYVA LitHub “Barbarians at the Wall,” by Oscar Villalon, from Virginia Quarterly Review Oscar Villalon (@ovillalon) · Twitter Cormac McCarthy The Orchard Keeper (1965) Outer Dark (1968) Child of God (1974) Suttree (1979) Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West (1985) All the Pretty Horses (1992) The Crossing (1994) Cities of the Plain (1998) No Country for Old Men (2005) The Road (2006) The Passenger (2022) Stella Maris (2022) Others: “Cormac McCarthy, Novelist of a Darker America, Is Dead at 89,” by Dwight Garner, The New York Times “Cormac McCarthy Had a Remarkable Literary Career. It Could Never Happen Now,” by Dan Sinykin, The New York Times “Albert R. Erskine, 81, an Editor For Faulkner and Other Authors,” by Bruce Lambert, The New York Times Paul Yamazaki on Fifty Years of Bookselling at City Lights, by Mitchell Kaplan, Literary Hub “Crossing the Blood Meridian: Cormac McCarthy and American History,” by Bennett Parten, Los Angeles Review of Books Oprah's Exclusive Interview with Cormac McCarthy - Video - June 1, 2008 Oprah on Cormac McCarthy's Life In Books Oprah's Book Club William Faulkner Cormac McCarthy, MacArthur Foundation Grant City Lights Booksellers and Publishers The Crystal Frontier by Carlos Fuentes Roberto Bolaño Larry McMurtry King James Version of the Bible/Old Testament/Apostle Paul Saul Bellow Ernest Hemingway Caroline Casey Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 1, Episode 7: What Was It Like to Care About Books 20 Years Ago? Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 1, Episode 24: Oscar Villalon and Arthur Phillips on Getting That Big, Fat Writer's Advance Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 5, Episode 10: ‘How on Earth Do You Judge Books?': Susan Choi and Oscar Villalon on the Real Story Behind Literary Awards Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 40 is a long ride through rough country as we dig into The CROSSING, McCarthy's masterful middle volume in the Border Trilogy.  My guests today are twin scholars Jonathan and Rick Elmore.  That's right, twins.  Jonathan Elmore is Associate Professor of English at Savannah State University and the Managing Editor of Watchung Review.. He is the editor of Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction: Narrative in an Era of Loss (Lexington) and co-author of An Introduction to African and Afro-Diasporic Peoples and Influences in British Literature and Culture before the Industrial Revolution (ALG). His scholarship has been published in The Cormac McCarthy Journal, Mississippi Quarterly, The British Fantasy Society Journal, Orbit, The Journal of Liberal Arts and Humanities, and The Criterion, among others.    His twin brother Rick Elmore is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Appalachian State University and Senior Managing Editor of book reviews at Symposium. He researches and teaches in the areas of twentieth-century French philosophy, critical theory, animal philosophy, and Cormac McCarthy Studies. He is the co-editor of The Biopolitics of Punishment: Derrida and Foucault (Northwestern University Press). His articles and essays have appeared in Politics & Policy, Symplokē, Symposium, Mississippi Quarterly, and The Cormac McCarthy Journal, among others. As always, readers should beware: there be spoilers here.Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society, although in our hearts we hope they'll someday see the light.  We appreciate favorable reviews on your favorite podcasting platform.  If you enjoy this podcast you may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt. To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter.  The website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com, and if you'd like to support the show you can click on the little heart symbol at the top of the webpage to buy the show a cappuccino, or you can support us at www.patreon.com/readingmccarthy.Support the showStarting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

Frequent guests Steven Frye and Stacey Peebles join me for another roundup of All the Pretty Horses, the National Book Award winning novel which finally forced the literary world to sit up and take notice of McCarthy.  We climb on and hold tight for this ride through this incredible novel.  Stacey Peebles is Chair of the English program, Director of Film Studies, and the Marlene and David Grissom Professor of Humanities at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.  She is the author of Welcome to the Suck: Narrating the American Soldier's Experience in Iraq (Cornell Univ Press, 2011) and Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (Univ of Texas, 2017).  She is editor of the collection Violence in Literature and, with Ben West, is co-editor of the volume Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy, published this past year by MLA.  She has published widely on the representation of contemporary war and on McCarthy, and has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.   Steve Frye is professor and chair of English at California State University, Bakersfield and President of the Cormac McCarthy Society. He is the author of Understanding Cormac McCarthy (Univ. of South Carolina Press) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy, and Cambridge UP's Cormac McCarthy in Context. He has written numerous journal articles on Cormac McCarthy and other authors of the American Romanticist Tradition.  Additionally, he is the author of the novel Dogwood Crossing and the forthcoming book, Unguessed Kinships: Naturalism and the Geography of Hope in Cormac McCarthy, University of Alabama Press.  Listeners are reminded this is a show of approachable literary criticism and not a review show, and so we don't always shy away from spoilers; discussions of his novel may spoil other parts of the Border Trilogy. Thanks as well to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. Download and follow us on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  Listeners may also enjoy the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL PODCAST, hosted by myself and Kirk Curnutt.  To contact me, please reach out to readingmccarthy(@)gmail.com. Despite the evening redness in the west Reading McCarthy is also on Twitter; the website is at readingmccarthy.buzzsprout.com.   Support the showStarting in spring of 2023, the podcast will accept minor sponsorship offers to offset the costs of the podcast. This may cause a mild disconnect in earlier podcasts where the host asks for patrons in lieu of sponsorships. But if we compare it to a very large and naked bald man in the middle of the desert who leads you to an extinct volcano to create gunpowder, it seems pretty minor...

Guests: Robert Norton, William Inboden, & Brent Cline Host Scot Bertram talks with Robert Norton, Vice President and General Counsel of Hillsdale College and a former top-level legal executive of automakers, about questions that persist regarding the adoption of electric vehicles. William Inboden tells us about his deep look into President Ronald Reagan's foreign policy record in The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink. And Brent Cline, Associate Professor of English at Hillsdale, returns for a trip through Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, the first of his "Border Trilogy."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to The Cluttered Desk Podcast! In this episode, Andrew and Colin explore the newest phase of Andrew's Ph.D. process. In addition, they discuss a text on one of Andrew's reading lists: Ralph Ellison's masterpiece, Invisible Man.  *** The Coda:  Andrew: Kombucha and Bourbon  Colin: A red wine from Aldi (maybe the $8 bottle?) *** Here are links for this episode: Andrew's recommendations: The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy   Colin's recommendations: Vertigo (1958) *** Please contact us at any of these locations: Website: www.thecdpodcast.com Email: thecluttereddeskpodcast@gmail.com Twitter: @TheCDPodcast  Facebook: www.facebook.com/thecdpodcast Andrew is on Twitter @AndrewPatrickH1 (Twitter non grata) Colin is on Twitter @ColinAshleyCox  *** We want to thank Test Dream for supplying The Cluttered Desk Podcast's theme music. You can find Test Dream at any of these locations: Website: testdream.bandcamp.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/testdream Twitter: @testdream *** Our entire catalogue is available through iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play.

In this episode Irene and Margaux welcome writer, poet, academic and editor Anna Sulan Masing for a salmon pink dinner party (oui oui, an actual IRL dinner party!).  With Anna, we spoke about spirits, bread making and the pomodoro technique, collaborative work, food and academia, the fake meat industry, storytelling, culture appropriation in the kitchen, garlic and ginger and much more.  Anna (@AnnaSulan) is the founder and editor-in-chief of both SOURCED and CHEESE, the magazine of culture. Our menu for this episode:Courgette carpaccio and aubergine caponata, served with wholemeal breadHomemade pappardelle with fennel, radicchio, soya cream and parmesan (this recipe was taken from Rachel Roddy's An A-Z of Pasta)Plum frangipane tartRecommendations from today's episode:One Pot, Pan, Planet by Anna Jones (2021)A Modern Way to Cook by Anna Jones (2014)An A-Z of Pasta by Rachel Roddy (2021)The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy (1992, 1994, 1998) Chicago Fire, a TV series available on Netflix And you can read more about our bread routine here. 

More bonus content!  We're back to our regular three items for the monthly bonus episodes- pro tip, book recommendation, and challenge.  This month, we talk about how to light a match like a boss.  Our book of the month is "All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy.  The challenge for the month is to do something you've never done before.  

Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, are known as “Ambos Nogales” — “both Nogaleses.” The city straddles the border of Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. For a long time, a hole-riddled chain-link fence ran along that border. Residents could cross back and forth with ease. But in 1995, the federal government replaced the chain-link fence with a wall. Over time, that wall has been fortified with surveillance towers, more Customs and Border Patrol agents, and drones.  President Trump wants to extend the Nogales model all along the US-Mexico border. In the final episode of the season, The Impact goes to Nogales with the Arizona Republic to find out why the federal government decided to build the wall, how it has changed Ambos Nogales, and how it has affected migrants who hope to cross into the United States. Further listening and reading:  Rafael Carranza’s reporting in the Arizona Republic Maritza Dominguez’s work on the Valley 101 podcast  Radiolab’s Border Trilogy explores Operation Blockade and the federal government’s Prevention Through Deterrence policy Vox’s guide to where 2020 candidates stand on policy, including immigration Subscribe to The Impact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes of the latest season each week. Host: Jillian Weinberger, @jbweinz About Vox: Vox is a news network that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I discuss American novelist Cormac McCarthy with literary scholar Dr Julius Greve. Cormac McCarthy is known for his often bleak and unwavering take on the Western. He has written over ten novels, as well as plays and screenplays in the Southern Gothic literary tradition. Less discussed is the philosophical dimension of McCarthy’s novels. With Julius I discussed how philosophy is present in the  Blood Meridian, Suttree, The Orchard Keeper, The Road, Child of God, No Country for Old Men, The Border Trilogy and Outer Dark. We touched on ecocentrism, geocentric criticism, panpsychism, violence, myth and science and the role of German Idealism in McCarthy's work. Central to Julius’ interpretation is  the idea that McCarthy offers a synthesis of Orphic and Promethean myths, which offers a very human blend of grief and grace. Julius Greve is a lecturer and research associate at the Institute for English and American Studies, University of Oldenburg, Germany. He is the author of Shreds of Matter: Cormac McCarthy and the Concept of Nature (Dartmouth College Press, 2018), and of numerous articles on McCarthy, Mark Z. Danielewski, François Laruelle, and speculative realism. Greve has co-edited America and the Musical Unconscious (Atropos, 2015), Superpositions: Laruelle and the Humanities (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017), “Cormac McCarthy Between Worlds” (a special issue of EJAS: European Journal of American Studies, 2017), and Spaces and Fictions of the Weird and the Fantastic: Ecologies, Geographies, Oddities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). He is currently working on a manuscript on the relation between modern poetics and ventriloquism. You can find out more about Julius here. You can listen to more free content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player FM, Stitcher and Podbean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review. You can follow me on Twitter: @drphilocity

Une claque d’inspiration et de motivation, par une entrepreneure qui s’est lancée seule contre l’une des plus grosses entreprise de la World Company.L’invitée du nouvel épisode de Génération Do It Yourself a tout fait. Gagner un concours du meilleur scénario ? DONE. Préparer Miss France ? Fait. Jouer dans un film Hollywoodien (taken 3 pour les plus curieux) ? CHECK. Écrire une thèse de littérature anglaise, étudier à Brown, devenir prof de fac et publier un livre ? Fait, fait et refait. Et malgré tout ça, Carole Juge Llewellyn (du nom de son poney - true story) a quand même réussi à lancer (avec succès) sa propre boîte : Joone qui vend couches bio et produits pour bébé et sa maman - sur abonnement. “Je suis certainement une hyper-active non diagnostiquée et du coup non-traitée. C’est pour ça que j’ai besoin de faire mille choses à la fois !” Cette alienne me donne trois heures (!) de son temps pour me raconter son incroyable parcours, ses hauts très hauts et ses bas très bas (son accident de cheval qui la prive pendant un temps de son bras droit et l’échec de sa première entreprise qui la laisse interdite bancaire !), le tout avec une incroyable sincérité. “Le poids du jugement face à “c’est une fille, elle n’a pas de réseau, elle n’a pas fait école de commerce”, c’est un gros caillou dans la chaussure.”Un épisode passionnant - avec des milliards d’enseignements sur la pensée positive, sur le scaling, sur l’importance des valeurs d’entreprises. En bref, un épisode qui donne la niaque ! Je n’ai pas réussi à vous négocier un code promo, mais si vous êtes intéressés par la marque, il y a un “kit découverte” de 29€ pour ceux qui veulent en savoir plus. Si vous êtes intéressés par son coach c’est lui > Adrien Falcon Forcément, en sa qualité de doctoresse en littérature elle nous conseille deux-trois livres mais aussi plein d’autres trucs : # The Road de Cormac McCarthy, l’histoire bouleversante d’un père et de son fils dans un monde post-apocalyptique. # De l'innocence à l'expérience : la quête initiatique du cow-boy dans The Border Trilogy de Cormac McCarthy - sa thèse (elle a reçu les félicitations du jury !)# Comment créer votre entreprise ? # Shoe dog - la biographie du fondateur de Nike dont on a déjà parlé sur le podcast. # Son livre à elle (ça c’est moi qui vous le conseille) : Une ombre chacun. # La série d’HBO, silicon valley On a cité les excellents épisodes : #102 Maëlle Chassard – Lunii – Comment détrôner Sophie la girafe dans le coeur des enfants (et des parents) ?#101 Anthony Bourbon – FEED – L’avenir de la nourriture est-il liquide ou en barre ? #99 Antoine Freysz – Kerala Ventures – Comment être le The Voice des entrepreneurs ?#87 Mikael Aubertin – Good Goût – Séduire les consommateurs les plus difficiles : les bébésMerci à Morgan pour la musique et le mixage. Contactez-le sur studio-module.com !

The Ex-Worker is back! Over the next three months, we will be releasing an audio version of CrimethInc.'s 2018 book, No Wall They Can Build: A Guide to Borders and Migration in North America, divided into eleven episodes released every week. In this short episode, we reflect on the evolution of the Ex-Worker podcast as a project, and set the scene for the forthcoming audiobook. In the year and a half since the book was released, much attention has focused on the US/Mexico border, and Trump's anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric have prompted widespread resistance. However, the crisis of raids, family separations, inhumane detention, and death and disappearance in the borderlands was in full swing during the Obama administration, and has roots stretching far back in the history of the United States. To provide context for what's been going on around the border since the book was published, a volunteer from the solidarity group No More Deaths joins us to talk about changes and continuities between the Obama and Trump eras, the impact of the administration's efforts to build a wall on communities around the border, updates on state repression against the group's volunteers, and the wave of resistance and solidarity building towards a world of free movement. Want to learn more? We'll be releasing the first installment of No Wall They Can Build later this week—stay tuned! {April 1, 2019}   -------SHOW NOTES------   Table of Contents: The Ex-Worker is Back! {0:01} Migration, Borders, and Resistance in the Trump Era {4:05} Interview with No More Deaths Volunteer {10:29} Conclusion {27:30} We'll be releasing an audiobook of No Wall They Can Build: A Guide to Borders and Migration in North America through eleven weekly episodes over the next three months. You can read the book in PDF or see the Spanish translation; also check out our poster diagramming the North American border regime and immigrant solidarity stickers. Take a moment to learn more about No More Deaths, including their legal defense campaign demanding that the charges be dropped against their volunteers and the [#WaterNotWalls campaign](http://forms.nomoredeaths.org/legal-defense-campaign/waternotwalls/) to ensure their ability to continue to provide humanitarian aid in the desert. Other organizations working to support migrants include Aguilas del Desierto (San Diego, CA), Florence Project, Mariposas Sin Fronteras (Tucson, AZ), People Helping People in the Border Zone (Arivaca, AZ), Protection Network Action Fund, Southside Workers Center (Tucson, AZ), South Texas Human Rights Center, and the Tohono O'odham Hemajkam Rights Network](https://www.facebook.com/tohrn520/). Some useful general resources about the border include the Radiolab podcast “Border Trilogy”, the books Storming the Wall by Todd Miller and The Land of Open Graves by Jason DeLeon, and the Telemundo/Weather Channel documentary “The Real Death Valley”. On “The Wall” and border militarization, see “America's Virtual Border Wall Is a 1,954-Mile-Long Money Pit”, Tohono O'odham elder Ofelia Rivas's Censored News Live Video interview “Welcome to Honduras Migrant Caravan”, and the books Operation Gatekeeper by Joseph Nevins and Border Games by Peter Andreas. - On conceptualizing interior checkpoints as an extension of The Wall, see “The 100 Mile Border Zone” by the ACLU, “Checkpoint America” by the Cato Institute, and “The Cost of Crossing” from the New York Times. On anti-immigrant border militias, see the Al-Jazeera article “Desert Hawks”, the Southern Poverty Law Center Report “Investigating Deaths of Undocumented Migrants on the Border”, and David Neiwart's book And Hell Followed with Her. On the Border Patrol, see the books Migra! by Kelly Lytle Hernandez and Border Patrol Nation by Todd Miller, and the documentary Disappeared: How US Border Patrol is Fueling a Missing Person's Crisis at the Border, part 1 and part 2.      

Border Trilogy While scouring the Sonoran Desert for objects left behind by migrants crossing into the United States, anthropologist Jason De León happened upon something he didn't expect to get left behind: a human arm, stripped of flesh. This macabre discovery sent him reeling, needing to know what exactly happened to the body, and how many migrants die that way in the wilderness. In researching border-crosser deaths in the Arizona desert, he noticed something surprising. Sometime in the late-1990s, the number of migrant deaths shot up dramatically and have stayed high since. Jason traced this increase to a Border Patrol policy still in effect, called “Prevention Through Deterrence.” Over three episodes, Radiolab will investigate this policy, its surprising origins, and the people whose lives were changed forever because of it.   Part 3: What Remains  The third episode in our Border Trilogy follows anthropologist Jason De León after he makes a grisly discovery in Arivaca, Arizona. In the middle of carrying out his pig experiments with his students, Jason finds the body of a 30-year-old female migrant. With the help of the medical examiner and some local humanitarian groups, Jason discovers her identity. Her name was Maricela. Jason then connects with her family, including her brother-in-law, who survived his own harrowing journey through Central America and the Arizona desert. With the human cost of Prevention Through Deterrence weighing on our minds, we try to parse what drives migrants like Maricela to cross through such deadly terrain, and what, if anything, could deter them. This episode was reported by Latif Nasser and Tracie Hunte and was produced by Matt Kielty and Tracie Hunte.  Special thanks to Carlo Albán, Sandra Lopez-Monsalve, Chava Gourarie, Lynn M. Morgan, Mike Wells and Tom Barry. Jason de Leon's latest work is a global participatory art project called Hostile Terrain 94, which will be exhibited at over 70 different locations around the world in 2020.  Read more about it here.   Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.   CORRECTION: An earlier version of this episode incorrectly stated that a person's gender can be identified from bone remains. We've adjusted the audio to say that a person's sex can be identified from bone remains. 

This week on the MashReads Podcast, we are joined by Bustle's book editor Cristina Arreola to talk about all of the books you should be reading this spring. Join us as we talk about what books we absolutely loved and what upcoming books you should keep an eye out for, including The Recovering by Leslie Jamison, The Feamle Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer, An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, and How To Write An Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee. Then, as always, we close the show with recommendations: Martha recommends Kali Uchis’ new album Isolation. “I feel like it got lost in the Cardi B/ Drake wave that happened in music. Her music is just this beautiful fusion of a bunch of different genres like jazz, pop, rob, and her voice is wonderful, and the features that are on the album are fantastic. You have everyone from Georgia Smith to Tyler the Creator to Steve Lacey. It’s just a perfect album to anticipate spring and summer with.” Cristina recommends Radiolab’s "Border Trilogy," a three part series on the border U.S./ Mexico border. “If you’re interested at all in the immigration debate, this series a really good primer and delves deep into it.” She also recommends Francisco Cantú's The Line Becomes A River, a memoir about Cantú's experience growing up on the border and working as a border agent. “It’s just really heart breaking and it’s not polemic and it just humanizes the issue in a way that I think is really necessary.” MJ recommends the Twitter account Modern Glee (@Glee_2018), which imagines the television show Glee would look like if it still existed in 2018. “It reaches these ridiculous peeks the show actually did when it was airing.” Cristina also recommends a tweet of a hilarious photo from a maternity photoshoot with Ronnie from Jersey Shore “It’s one of the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.” Also mentioned on the podcast: 'The Rosary,' an essay by Alexander Chee about becoming a rose gardener. And also, be sure to check out more of Cristina's work by checking out Bustle's books coverage.  

Border Trilogy  While scouring the Sonoran Desert for objects left behind by migrants crossing into the United States, anthropologist Jason De León happened upon something he didn't expect to get left behind: a human arm, stripped of flesh. This macabre discovery sent him reeling, needing to know what exactly happened to the body, and how many migrants die that way in the wilderness.  In researching border-crosser deaths in the Arizona desert, he noticed something surprising. Sometime in the late-1990s, the number of migrant deaths shot up dramatically and have stayed high since. Jason traced this increase to a Border Patrol policy still in effect, called “Prevention Through Deterrence.” Over three episodes, Radiolab will investigate this policy, its surprising origins, and the people whose lives were changed forever because of it.   Part 2: Hold the Line After the showdown in court with Bowie High School, Border Patrol brings in a fresh face to head its dysfunctional El Paso Sector: Silvestre Reyes. The first Mexican-American to ever hold the position, Reyes knows something needs to change and has an idea how to do it. One Saturday night at midnight, with the element of surprise on his side, Reyes unveils ... Operation Blockade. It wins widespread support for the Border Patrol in El Paso, but sparks major protests across the Rio Grande. Soon after, he gets a phone call that catapults his little experiment onto the national stage, where it works so well that it diverts migrant crossing patterns along the entire U.S.-Mexico Border. Years later, in the Arizona desert, anthropologist Jason de León realizes that in order to accurately gauge how many migrants die crossing the desert, he must first understand how human bodies decompose in such an extreme environment. He sets up a macabre experiment, and what he finds is more drastic than anything he could have expected. This episode was reported by Latif Nasser and Tracie Hunte, and was produced by Matt Kielty, Bethel Habte and Latif Nasser. Special thanks to Sherrie Kossoudji at the University of Michigan, Lynn M. Morgan, Cheryl Howard, Andrew Hansen, William Sabol, Donald B. White, Daniel Martinez, Michelle Mittelstadt at the Migration Policy Institute, Former Executive Assistant to the El Paso Mayor Mark Smith, Retired Assistant Border Patrol Sector Chief Clyde Benzenhoefer, Paul Anderson, Eric Robledo, Maggie Southard Gladstone and Kate Hall. Jason de Leon's latest work is a global participatory art project called Hostile Terrain 94, which will be exhibited at over 70 different locations around the world in 2020.  Read more about it here.   Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.   CORRECTION: An earlier version of this piece incorrectly stated that Silvestre Reyes's brother died in a car accident in 1968; it was actually his father who died in the accident.  We also omitted a detail about the 1997 GAO report that we quote, namely that it predicted that as deaths in the mountains and deserts might rise, deaths in other areas might also fall. The audio has been adjusted accordingly.  

Border Trilogy While scouring the Sonoran Desert for objects left behind by migrants crossing into the United States, anthropologist Jason De León happened upon something he didn't expect to get left behind: a human arm, stripped of flesh. This macabre discovery sent him reeling, needing to know what exactly happened to the body, and how many migrants die that way in the wilderness. In researching border-crosser deaths in the Arizona desert, he noticed something surprising. Sometime in the late-1990s, the number of migrant deaths shot up dramatically and have stayed high since. Jason traced this increase to a Border Patrol policy still in effect, called “Prevention Through Deterrence.” Over three episodes, Radiolab will investigate this policy, its surprising origins, and the people whose lives were changed forever because of it.   Part 1: Hole in the Fence: We begin one afternoon in May 1992, when a student named Albert stumbled in late for history class at Bowie High School in El Paso, Texas. His excuse: Border Patrol. Soon more stories of students getting stopped and harassed by Border Patrol started pouring in. So begins the unlikely story of how a handful of Mexican-American high schoolers in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country stood up to what is today the country’s largest federal law enforcement agency. They had no way of knowing at the time, but what would follow was a chain of events that would drastically change the US-Mexico border. This episode was reported by Latif Nasser and Tracie Hunte and was produced by Matt Kielty, Bethel Habte, Tracie Hunte and Latif Nasser.  Special thanks to Centro de Salud Familiar La Fe, Estela Reyes López, Barbara Hines, Lynn M. Morgan, Mallory Falk, Francesca Begos and Nancy Wiese from Hachette Book Group, Professor Michael Olivas at the University of Houston Law Center, and Josiah McC. Heyman, Ph.D, Director, Center for Interamerican and Border Studies and Professor of Anthropology. Jason de Leon's latest work is a global participatory art project called Hostile Terrain 94, which will be exhibited at over 70 different locations around the world in 2020.  Read more about it here.   Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Have you ever wondered what Jesus looked like? Or maybe why the Bible rarely tells us what a person what thinking? Characters in Bible stories are described and portrayed very differently compared to characters in modern stories. In this episode Tim and Jon discuss character design in the Bible. The guys start out (0-9:50) showing how our modern tradition of telling every detail about a character in a story, where they are from, what they look like, what their inner thoughts are, comes from Greek story telling tradition. This is the exact opposite of ancient Jewish storytelling. The biblical authors didn’t rely on telling you about a character, instead, they would tell you what they did. The characters themselves remain very mysterious. Tim says this lack of detail is done intentionally so the reader has to work for an interpretation. In the second part of the episode (9:50-21:13), Tim explains the two ways biblical authors use character details. One, a narrator will use “direct characterization.” A specific detail will be given because it is useful in the story. We are told Saul is tall because later, we find out that David is short. We are told Joseph is handsome because later, Potiphar’s wife attempts to seduce him. Jon asks if this technique is used because the of the constraints of passing stories on pre printing press. The second way is the names of characters. In Hebrew literature, a character’s name represents the very essence of their being and shows their role in the story. Saul means “The one who was asked for” because Israel asked him to be king. The two sons of Naomi in the book of Ruth, their names are Mahlon and Chilion mean “one who is sick” and “to die”. Their only role in the story is to die and set up the plot conflict. In the third part of the episode, (21:13-25:56) Tim explains that just because a character does something in a story, doesn’t mean the author is endorsing the action. Many authors use a minimalist technique of telling the reader the character’s choices but not saying why the character made these choices. A famous is example is when Moses kills the Egyptian who was beating the Hebrew. We don’t know why Moses killed him, we only know that he did. Biblical narrators refuse to tell us if a character is “good” or “evil” instead they let us decide for ourselves. In the fourth part of the episode (25:56-end) Jon asks why. Why would biblical authors take the risk of their work being misinterpreted? Tim says the Biblical authors want readers to puzzle over the ambiguities of their stories because it is meant to represent the ambiguities that are inherent in life. The big narrative of the Bible puts meaning and purpose in the world, but individual stories are meant to create a feeling of opaqueness and mystery. More Bible Project resources are here on the website: thebibleproject.com Watch the accompanying video to this content here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EQDGax19xk Thank you to all our supporters! Show Resources: Shimon Bar-Efrat, ​Narrative Art in the Bible​ Adele Berlin, ​Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative​ Meir Sternberg, ​The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading​ Robert Alter, ​The Art of Biblical Narrative​ Yairah Amit, ​Reading Biblical Narrative Cormac McCarthy, ​The Road​ and ​The Border Trilogy: ​(1) All the Pretty Horses, ​(2) The Crossing, ​(3) Cities of the Plain. Music Credits: Defender Instrumental: Rosasharn Music Educated Fool: Jackie Hill Perry Ruby: CJBeards Flooded Meadows: Unwritten Stories Produced By: Dan Gummel. Jon Collins. Matthew Halbert Howen.

International bestselling sci-fi and thriller novelist and screenwriter, Blake Crouch, took time-out from his busy schedule to talk to me about his mind-bending new book Dark Matter, and adapting his work for both film and TV. Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today! The hybrid author has penned more than a dozen novels that have been translated into over 30 languages, and his short fiction has appeared in numerous publications. In addition to having his Wayward Pines trilogy adapted into a #1 hit TV show by FOX, Blake wrote the screenplay for his latest novel, Dark Matter, for Sony Pictures. He also recently co-created Good Behavior, a TNT show based on his novellas, starring Michelle Dockery (set to premiere November 15th, 2016). His novel Dark Matter was described by the NY Times as an, “… alternate-universe science fiction …. countdown thriller in which the hero must accomplish an impossible task,” and bestselling sci-fi author Andy Weir called it, “An exciting, ingeniously plotted adventure about love, regret, and quantum superposition.” If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, click subscribe to automatically see new interviews. If you missed the first half you can find it right here. In Part Two of this file Blake Crouch and I discuss: The author’s tips for conquering writer’s block Why versioning and backing up drafts is crucial How to lean into procrastination and find your most productive writing time Why understanding that ‘everything’s been written,’ can set your creativity free Why you need to write the kind of book you want to read Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Audible is Offering a Free Audiobook Download with a 30-day Trial: Grab Your Free Audiobook Here – audibletrial.com/rainmaker BlakeCrouch.com Dark Matter: A Novel – Blake Crouch Blake Crouch on Facebook Blake Crouch on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How Bestselling Sci-fi Thriller Author Blake Crouch Writes: Part Two Voiceover: Rainmaker FM Kelton Reid: Welcome back to the Writer Files, I am still your host, Kelton Reid, here to take you on yet another tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of renowned writers to learn their secrets. In part two of this file, the international best selling sci-fi and thriller novelist and screenwriter, Blake Crouch, returned to talk to me about his mind-bending new book, Dark Matter, and adapting his work for both film and TV. The hybrid author has penned more than a dozen novels that have been translated into over 30 languages and his short fiction has appeared in numerous publications. In addition to having his Wayward Pines trilogy adapted into a number one hit TV show by Fox, Blake wrote the screenplay for his latest novel, Dark Matter, for Sony Pictures. He also recently co-created Good Behavior, a TNT show based on his novelas starring Michelle Dockery. His novel, Dark Matter was described by the New York Times as an alternate universe sci-fi countdown thriller in which the hero must accomplish an impossible task, and best-selling sci-fi author Andy Weir called it an exciting and geniously plotted adventure about love, regret, and quantum superposition. In part two of this file, Blake and I discuss the author’s tips for conquering writer’s block, why versioning and backing up drafts is crucial, how to lean into procrastination and find your most productive writing time, why understanding that everything’s been written can set your creativity free, and why you need to write the kind of book you want to read. If you’re a fan of The Writer Files please click “subscribe” to automatically see new interviews as soon as they’re published. If you miss the first half of this show, you can find it in the archives on iTunes, on WriterFiles.FM, and in the show notes. This episode of The Writer Files is brought to you by Audible. I ll have more on their special offer later in the show but if you love audiobooks or you’ve always wanted to give them a try, you can check out over 180,000 titles right now at Audibletrial.com/Rainmaker. And you’re a fan of Christopher Nolan’s work. I definitely get that kind of atmosphere from your book. Blake Crouch: He does original … He writes, I mean, he obviously did the Batman movies, but he writes these very cool speculative thriller ideas that also have an emotional core. I just love his approach. I love the way he presents his ideas, like when he dropped that first Inception trailer. You’re like, What is this about? They’re running upside down in a hallway, and there’s nothing else. I can’t get enough of that kind of stuff. He’s definitely a huge inspiration for me. The Author s Tips for Conquering Writer s Block Kelton Reid: Yeah, for sure. I got tinges of Memento at times from Dark Matter, but you describe it as if Christopher Nolan directed It’s a Wonderful Life, which is hilarious and apropos, for sure. So do you believe in writer’s block, the million dollar author question? Blake Crouch: Yeah, I guess I do. I believe that you go through periods of time where the ideas are really challenging and eluding you. Why those crop up, I think, probably owe to a whole host of psychological reasons. But, I do think that just the idea of writer’s block, I mean, people say like, Oh, writer’s block doesn’t exist. You just sit down and you write. That sounds great, but you can also just sit down and write a bunch of ****, and you’re not actually getting closer to your goal of writing the next great thing. What’s hard is writing a book that was as good or better as the last one you wrote, which you thought was the best thing you could ever do at that point in time. That’s the thing that’s really hard, and I think that’s what leads down the path towards writer’s block. It’s not really like, Oh I just can’t write for reasons. It’s more like, When I’m not writing, it’s because I haven’t found the idea that makes me want to jump up and down and tell the world this story. That’s, for me, what writer’s block is. It’s not just not being able to string a sentence together, it’s not having the idea that makes me want to string sentences together. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah. So much of writing is thinking, is it not? Kind of processing, letting your brain do Blake Crouch: All of it. 90% of it. Kelton Reid: For sure. Are you a PC or a Mac user, by the way? Blake Crouch: I mean, I’ve been a Mac for the last, I don’t know, five or so years. I don’t know. When did Mac stop being cool? I don’t know when that happened, but it’s just not cool anymore. They’re not innovating, so I don’t know, I have a feeling after this Mac Air I’m probably going to go back to PC for my next book. Kelton Reid: Interesting. Blake Crouch: I just can’t. Before Mac, I had these giant, chunky PCs. You could hear, it’s like a jet engine when they were running. I love my Mac Air. I love the battery life on it. But, the general Apple approach is sort of wearing on me lately. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Are you a Scrivener user, or do you use Microsoft Word primarily for your stuff? Blake Crouch: I don’t know what Scrivener is, so … Yeah, I use Microsoft Word. Kelton Reid: Okay. Blake Crouch: Obsessed with fonts. Obsessed with fonts. I love new fonts and discovering fonts and that’s my favorite way to procrastinate. Maybe I should pick a cool new font, maybe that ll and it actually does jar me out of things occasionally. And I always think I’m going to use these fonts right up until the end, but when it’s time to turn them in, I pretty much bring it all back to Times New Roman 12, and keep it very normal. I think it’s actually more helpful for people who are reading manuscripts in manuscript form to not have any distractions. The font itself doesn’t help the story, they just need to be able to read the story and characters in a vacuum. Why Versioning and Backing up Drafts is Crucial Kelton Reid: That’s right. Do you have any great organizational hacks for writers? I mean, you must have, I d imagine, quite a few in place if you’re juggling the screenwriting thing and the prose thing. Do you have some you could share with us? Blake Crouch: I have, if you looked into my Dropbox I have tons of folders. I keep every new, substantial new, when I finish a manuscript, when I feel like all right, that’s my first draft, I’ll save that, then I’ll copy that, and I’ll paste it into a new folder that’s second draft. I never go back to the first draft again. It’s always there in case I want to return to it. I think it’s good and important to have an iteration of every draft of the novel as you move through the writing process. I’m just looking here now, I m curious how many I have. Dark Matter has… Let’s see, accepted manuscripts, I have so many folders. I have accepted manuscripts. I have a copy edited folder. I have a galley copy folder. I have a marketing folder. I have a miscellaneous folder where I threw everything else. I basically have five drafts of Dark Matter. Kelton Reid: Hmm. Blake Crouch: That would be my big one is just you can’t have enough folders. Kelton Reid: Yeah. It’s all backed up to the Cloud there so you never Blake Crouch: It’s all backed up, I back it up to Dropbox. How to Lean into Procrastination and Find Your Most Productive Writing Time Kelton Reid: Cool cool. All right. How does Blake Crouch beat the dreaded procrastination? Do you kind of lean into it? Blake Crouch: I use Freedom sometimes. Have you ever heard of that program where it turns your internet off? I mean, it’s stupid, but I’ll do that sometimes. I find that I write most of my words for the day in very short bursts of time. Most of it is just like, procrastinating, emails, things like that, but then all the work that actually gets done say, in a four hour “writing period” happens in about 30 minutes. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Blake Crouch: Lately, I’ve been trying to think more in terms of like, tuning into those periods of bursts of creativity and capturing those. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Blake Crouch: That’s the best I can offer. I mean, procrastinating, I think is part of it. Kelton Reid: For sure. Blake Crouch: I don’t really procrastinate when I know what I’m doing. I think the procrastination comes from not being 100% sure of how the scene should go and letting my subconscious kind of work on it while I do other things. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah. How does Blake Crouch unplug at the end of a long writing day? Blake Crouch: Well, I love to have a glass of wine and read over and paper what I’ve written. Print it out, read it over on paper, and just get a sense of how it reads with a little bit of distance and with a tiny bit of time. After I do that, once I’ve done that, I don’t think about it anymore. I’m like, done. I love to go and run. That’s why I like to, if I get my stuff done by noon, I have the rest of the day to go play. Kelton Reid: Love it, I love it. We will be right back after a very short break. Thanks so much for listening to the Writer Files. This episode of The Writer Files is brought to you by Audible, offering over 180,000 audiobook titles to choose from. Audible seamlessly delivers the world’s both fiction and nonfiction to your iPhone, Android, Kindle or computer. For Rainmaker FM listeners, Audible is offering a free audiobook download with a 30 day trial to give you the opportunity to check them out. Grab your free audiobook right now by visiting Audibletrial.com/Rainmaker. I just hopped over there to grab Stephen King’s epic novel 11.22.63, about an English teacher who goes back in time to prevent the assassination of JFK. You can download your pick or any other audiobook free by heading over to Audibletrial.com/Rainmaker. To download your free audiobook today, go to Audibletrial.com/Rainmaker. Why Understanding that Everything s Been Written, can Set Your Creativity Free Kelton Reid: Let’s cruise through some creativity questions. How do you define creativity? Do you have a definition? Blake Crouch:What occurs to me as you say that is I think creativity is taking all of the works of art, whether it’s books and paintings and movies and things, taking all of those themes and storylines that have inspired you over the years, and finding a way to mold and shape those into something new and fresh, that also says something about where you are at this point in your life. Cormac McCarthy had a kind of a famous saying, when someone asks him about originality, he was like, Well, all books are made of other books. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Blake Crouch: It’s so true, it’s so true. There is actually nothing purely original, and I think understanding that really frees you up to write about what you want to be writing about. I mean, you could look at Dark Matter … I mean, it’s one of the reasons I hesitated to write Dark Matter at first. Because it’s like, a multiverse story, basically, at heart. It’s about the multiverse, or alternate realities. And yes, we’ve had many, many, many stories like that. If that’s your frame of reference in the way you view things, which I find is the way reviewers tend to evaluate books, then you’ll never write anything. You’ll truly never write anything because there’s nothing really original left. The only thing, the only way that originality comes into play is that you are telling a story that has probably been told many times before, but you’re telling it in your voice and you’re telling it from your unique camera angle of life as you see it, with all the baggage that you have in your life at that moment. That’s where the originality comes from, and that’s what creativity is. It isn’t coming up with the new plot thing that no one’s ever come up with before, because I’m pretty sure there aren’t any of those left. Kelton Reid: I love that, very well put. What do you think, in your estimation, makes a writer truly great? Blake Crouch: I think continuing to evolve and push their own boundaries. You know, I have a lot of friends in this business, and one of the things you do is you read each other’s manuscripts. That s the first line of defense in letting people know where it’s succeeding and where you think it’s not succeeding. Whenever I see a writer trying actively and desperately to take a quantum leap in what they do, I respect that. I think great writers are not writing the same book over and over again. They are really kind of pushing themselves in the nature of their storytelling. That, to me, is what turns me on in the writers that I love. Kelton Reid: Nice, nice. Do you have a couple faves sitting there on your nightstand right now? Blake Crouch: What have I read? I mean, I’ve read a bunch of debuts lately. I’ve kind of been on a blurbing streak. I grew up loving Pat Conroy, because he was the first adult fiction writer I ever read. I read the Prince of Tides when I was 12. I mean, obviously my writing couldn’t be more different from his, but I have a real sentimental nostalgic love of his books. Cormac McCarthy is one of those writers I would place in that category of you just don’t know what his next book is going to be. If you look at something like All the Pretty Horses in the Border Trilogy to The Road, oh I’m sorry, to No Country for Old Men, which is in some ways just a thriller, to The Road, which is just science fiction, he would definitely be up there. I also read this awesome memoir called When Breath Becomes Air, which just came out, by the neuroscientist, or a neurosurgeon, rather, who gets a diagnosis of lung cancer when he is like 36 and he starts writing a memoir about his, basically last 2 years. It’s just devastating. Love Stephen King’s, I just finished the first book in the Dark Tower series, which I’ve never read. I’m blown away by it. Kelton Reid: Fantastic. Well, I know we’re running short on time here. Your latest, Dark Matter, opens with the great T.S. Eliot quote. Do you have another quote just hanging over your desk that you wanted to drop on us? Blake Crouch: Like a good writing quote? Kelton Reid: Yeah, or just a quote in general that you come back to. Blake Crouch: Yeah. Hmm. I have so many. Trying to think of a good one here. There is a really cool one by Margaret Mitchell. She said, I sweat blood to make my style simple and stripped bare. That’s really become true to me over the last seven years. Each book seems to be a condensing of style and trying to say more with less. That’s kind of been my North Star over the last few years from book to book. Kelton Reid: Very nice, very nice. Yeah, definitely I’m a fan of your work. Cormac McCarthy came to mind. Also too, The Road has that very poetic style and it’s dark, kind of gritty sci-fi style. Your book has very poetic kind of structuring that’s just truly compelling. Blake Crouch: Thank you. Why You Need to Write the Kind of Book You Want to Read Kelton Reid: I would encourage listeners to find Dark Matter, the sci-fi thriller, it’s definitely kind of a mind-bender, but it’s a fantastic read. Congratulations on the successes of that. Did you have any other nuggets you wanted to drop on your fellow scribes on keeping the ink flowing, keeping the cursor moving? Blake Crouch:Yeah, no, I think the people always ask, What’s the best advice that you have? I really think it’s just, Write the kind of book that you would want to read. That’s it. Also have expectations, like if the kind of book that you’re dying to read is a quiet little gem that’s written in colloquial French set in the late 1700s, awesome, you should definitely write that book. You should also know that probably there’s not thousands and thousands of people who want to read that. I think it’s writing what you want to write, but also having expectations about what the audience actually is for what you want to write. Kelton Reid: Love it, I love it. Lock, stock, and barrel with Blake Crouch. I believe that we can find most of your books at BlakeCrouch.com. There’s a books tab there where you can find all of these fantastic books by the author. Anywhere else you want to connect with readers and writers out there? Blake Crouch: They can always find me on Twitter and Facebook. It’s fairly easy to find. Kelton Reid: Fantastic, well thank you so much for taking time out of your incredibly busy schedule to rap with us about your process. Blake Crouch: Hey, this was a blast. Kelton Reid: Awesome. Hopefully, you will come back for your next one. Blake Crouch: I’d love to. Kelton Reid: All right, cheers. Thanks so much for joining me for this half of a tour through the writer’s process. If you enjoy The Writer Files podcast please subscribe to the show and leave us a rating or a review on iTunes to help other writers find us. For more episodes, or to just leave a comment or a question, you can drop by WriterFiles.FM. You can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers, talk to you next week.