Podcast appearances and mentions of John Jeremiah Sullivan

In which John Jeremiah Sullivan pities the monster.

John Jeremiah Sullivan is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and has written for Harper's, The New Yorker, and GQ. He is the author of Pulphead and the forthcoming The Prime Minister of Paradise: The True Story of a Lost American History. “I love making pieces of writing and trying to find the right language to say what I mean. It's such a wonderful way of being alive in the world. I mean, your material is all around you. ... I'm lucky that it has stayed interesting for me. It hasn't faded. The challenges of writing, they still glow.” Show notes: Sullivan on Longform Sullivan's GQ archive Sullivan's New York Times Magazine archive 10:00 “Uhtceare” (Paris Review • May 2021) 28:00 Pulphead (FSG Originals • 2011) 30:00 The Best American Essays 2014 (Mariner Books • 2014) 30:00 “The Ill-Defined Plot” (New Yorker • Oct 2014) 50:00 “Man Called Fran” (Harper's • Sept 2023) 50:00 “The Final Comeback of Axl Rose” (GQ • Aug 2006) 50:00 “Upon This Rock” (GQ • Jan 2004) 50:00 “Peyton's Place” (GQ • Oct 2011) 50:00 “Leaving Reality” (GQ • Oct 2011) 54:00 “Pulp Fever” (Daniel Riley • GQ • Nov 2011) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In which John Jeremiah Sullivan lays the golden egg.

*clears throat*It's always easier not to. Not to write. Not to swim. Not to write about swimming. Easier not to turn left off the state road and descend the mountain to the lake below. It's not like anyone will ever force you to. The excuses offer themselves too easily. And besides, entropy doesn't even ask for one, content to carry you down its current, you low-down lazy bum.But here I am. I've done it. I've come to the water's edge. Lake Chinnabee. My trunks on. My shirt off. And…my only thought is of turning around. It is March. It is windy. And it is always easier not to. Even at the water's edge.Chinnabee is a small lake. 17 acres, if that means anything to you. You could achieve the opposite bank in a few minutes' swim. Quaint. “A pastoral valley of peacefulness” is how the forest service describes it. Sure.It's smack in the middle of the Talladega National Forest. This is northeast Alabama. The mountains (insofar as that means anything here). The foothills of Appalachia, anyway. That famous trail officially ends 300 miles to the east at Springer Mountain, Georgia. But technically the range continues, or unravels really, across the border here before laying down on the coastal plain below. There's a movement to extend the trail to Alabama; AT2AL it's called. A purist's vision, I guess, to trace the mountains down to the last peak, Mount Cheaha, which is just a few miles east of here, where I stand on the bank of this lake, the end of the end, the southern terminus, thinking about not swimming.Then comes another thought. One that is at once stupid and profound. A holy-fool thought, to which I am too often inclined. This one having to do with time, and how we encounter it. How it shapes us. Namely that these mountains are very old and that it is a wondrous, almost inconceivable thing to be upon them.The geological events that brought about the Appalachian mountains took place hundreds of millions of years ago, and involved great volcanic eruptions, the colliding of continental shelves, the coming together and the coming apart of Pangea. The Appalachians were once contiguous with a range that today stands in Morocco. I've just written that, but really I don't even know what that means. The timespace of these hills, it's like they're in some kind of superposition. I'm looking at rock that was once at the center of Pangea, at the center of everything. In a range that is thought to have once been as tall as the Himalayas, the tallest in the world. But time, in this case expressing itself as hundreds of millions of years of erosion and continental drift, has worn it down and spanned an ocean through it.I'd given a reading the night before, which is why I was up in this corner of the state. I'd published a book a few years ago about Confederate monuments and the protest movements to remove them. It had came out in September of 2020, which you might remember as a time of global viral pandemic. So the book tour was virtual. And though I was lucky enough to do a good number of events discussing and promoting the book, they all took place on Zoom. So this reading in March was the first I'd done in person.The writer John Jeremiah Sullivan talks about reading old writing as a kind of vaudeville, an impersonation of yourself. And for me this was doubly so. The book was written years ago now and chronicles events and experiences that took place in the years before that, and what's more it renders a version of me that is even younger and more naive. I had wanted to trace an intellectual and moral development that took place over the past decade or so on questions of race and equity and how we face the past. And so reading it that night, as good as it felt to read in public and in person, it also felt tired, and a bit uncanny. I didn't quite recognize myself. Was it me? It was not not me, but also not quite me. Not anymore, anyway. I'd written those words and had those experiences, sure but they'd been so worked over, they'd taken on a worn smoothness. The geological events that led to that book were now so far in the past, the eruptions and subductions worn down through time and repetition. My reading copy of the book dogeared, yellow, exhausted.That project felt finally done. Funny to think that the first proper reading of this book might well also be the last. Point is, I woke this morning with a renewed if belated exuberance to swim and to write and to write about swimming and to turn left off the state road and descend the mountain to the lake below - easier though it may be have been not to.By now I've dallied long enough for the sun to get up over the treeline and the wind has tapered off but Jesus it is cold. I am still thinking of not swimming even as I plunge. I surface, turn, float on my back and regard the great dome of the sky.There's a box turtle on a fallen log up by the marshy banks where a stream feeds the lake. The turtle's neck is fully extended, as if on a string drawn to the sun above.I feel compelled to nod to the turtle, who acknowledges by presence not at all, and I go back to floating.Whence come the mountains? Whence come the ideas? It occurs to me that this sense of exhaustion I'm feeling can only be cast off by exhausting myself anew. It's easier not to. But also, of course, worse. I swim to the shore and stand in the sun, drip-drying.That's when another stupid-profound thought hits me: Sure, this is the southern terminus, the end of the end of the trail, but I need only to turn around and there I'd be at the start once more.I head north up a trail that traces the lake's feeder stream until, after a mile or so, I come to a waterfall. And there for a time I stand beneath it, letting all that water come down upon me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebluemillionmiles.substack.com

John Jeremiah Sullivan will begreifen, woher die Faszination für den Pferderennsport kommt - auch, um seinen eigenen Vater besser zu verstehen. WDR 2 Literaturkritiker Denis Scheck stellt "Vollblutpferde" vor. Von Denis Scheck.

This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).  "David Foster Wallace noticed early on that tennis is a good sport for literary types and purposes. It draws the obsessive and brooding. It is perhaps the most isolating of games. Even boxers have a corner, but in professional tennis it is a rules violation for your coach to communicate with you beyond polite encouragement, and spectators are asked to keep silent while you play. Your opponent is far away, or, if near, is indifferently hostile. It may be as close as we come to physical chess, or a kind of chess in which the mind and body are at one in attacking essentially mathematical problems. So, a good game not just for writers but for philosophers, too." - John Jeremiah Sullivan, String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis *** In a world where the majority of one-on-one relations are becoming increasingly adversarial and gamified, the tennis court provides an ideal clay for metaphor. In this week's episode, we read a passage from Taylor Jenkins Reid's bestselling tennis epic Carrie Soto is Back (translated, as always, into cat language). A cat with a tennis ball in its mouth then explores its surprising parallels with David Foster Wallace's voluminous and genre-transcending writings on the sport, meowing its thoughts with unexpected clarity. “The lattice of the Fates twines the destinies of these disparate minds, their varied and unexpected parallels reinforcing the epistemic grid to create a resilient hermeneutic surface, imparting force and direction to the anomized and deliterated individual as the thrust of the racket gives flight to its impetuous target.” – Cuddle Princess, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair *** MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language. This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). Praise for Meow: A Novel "Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair "Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature  Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary    Twitter: twitter.com/meowlibrary and YouTube

John Jeremiah Sullivan gilt ohne jede Übertreibung als einer der großen Meister des aktuellen New Journalism. „Vollblutpferde“ ist ein Memoire an den verstorbenen Vater, eine Eloge an die Schönheit des Pferdesports und eine Recherche-Reise zu sich selbst.Von Christian Metzwww.deutschlandfunk.de, BüchermarktDirekter Link zur Audiodatei

From Blue Velvet to One Tree Hill, scores of movies & TV shows have been filmed in & around Wilmington, North Carolina. Perhaps the best-known is Dawson's Creek, the popular late-90s coming-of-age drama series. While the show tried to tackle progressive storylines, its stark lack of diversity made Dawson's Creek frequently cited as the whitest show ever. Nearly two decades after it went off the air, tourists still come to Wilmington in search of the show's landmarks.But Wilmington has a more difficult, less visible side to its history, politically as well as culturally, going back to the 1700s. Long before North Carolina became one of America's original 13 colonies, there were thriving Indigenous communities throughout the region. There was also a time when Wilmington's most famous musician was a man of color, Frank Johnson, fiddler, composer, and bandleader - and one of the biggest stars in American music in the years before the Civil War.During Reconstruction, Wilmington was an unusually progressive, forward-thinking town. In contrast to the state of things elsewhere in the South, Wilmington elected a racially diverse local government, led by both whites and freed Black people.That came to an abrupt end in 1898 with a white-supremacist coup, a bloody rampage that left numerous people of color dead and black-owned businesses destroyed. Those the mob didn't kill, they chased out of town. That left Wilmington with a mostly white population, an all-white local government – and a whitewashed version of the city's history in which Black people's contributions were erased from the official story.This might seem like ancient history, but it's not. Wilmington's most famous native-born musician is probably Charlie Daniels, the country-music star who died in the summer of 2020. Daniels was born in 1936 – less than four decades after that 1898 uprising. The real story of the 1898 coup is finally coming to light in recent years, thanks to works like the 2020 Pulitzer-winning book Wilmington's Lie. But it's still not widely known.In this episode of Carolina Calling, we explore Wilmington – a town that keeps its secrets even as they're hidden in plain sight – through the life and career of Frank Johnson, whose his story and stardom were all but lost to time – or rather, to the erasing effects of the 1898 massacre on Wilmington's history. This episode features John Jeremiah Sullivan, a writer and historian who lives in Wilmington and has written extensively about the city's music and history for The New Yorker and New York Times magazine, as well as Grammy winner Rhiannon Giddens, and musicians Charly Lowry and Lakota John.Music featured in this episode:Paula Cole – “I Don't Want To Wait”“Saraz Handpan C# Minor”Charlie Daniels – “Long Haired Country Boy”Traditional – “The Lumbee Song”Lakota John – “She Caught The Katy”Ranky Tanky – “Knee Bone”Lauchlin Shaw, Glenn Glass & Fred Olson – “Twinkle Little Star”Marvin Gaster, Rich Hartness, Beth Hartness & Harry Gaster – “Rye Straw”Evelyn Shaw, Lauchlin Shaw, A.C. Overton & Wayne Martin – “Money, Marbles and Chalk”Marvin Gaster, Rich Hartness, Beth Hartness & Harry Gaster – “Chickens Growing at Midnight”Rhiannon Giddens w/ Franceso Turrisi – “Avalon”Rhiannon Giddens w/ Franceso Turrisi – “There Is No Other”Joe Thompson & Odell Thompson – “Donna Got a Rambling Mind”The Showmen – “39-23-46”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Join Lisa for a rollicking conversation with Jonathan Meiburg, musician and author of A Most Remarkable Creature: the Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Bird of Prey. Called "Johnny rooks," "false eagles," "flying monkeys," "shiftless wanderers of rubbish pits," and so much more, the caracara is a cheeky Muppet of a bird. Each of the ten species is notorious for curiosity, charm, and chicanery. You might not want to share an apartment with one, but you will never regret getting to know them.  Want to follow up on our sources or watch any of the videos we mention? Go to ThisAnimalLife.com and click on Show Notes or see below.   SHOW NOTES: “An Evening with Jonathan Meiburg and Jeff VanderMeer” Books & Books, YouTube, April 2021.  De Waal, Frans. Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? WW Norton, 2016. “Fallowfields Falconry - Meet Boo the Intelligent Caracara” YouTube, December 2011. “Geoff & Tina,” Caught by The River, March 2021.  Geoff Pearson and Tina video, “Clever Bird,” YouTube, August 2008. Genius Dog Challenge about word-learning in dogs, “Squall the Genius Dog,” This Animal Life, podcast, August 2021.  Gibson, Graham, The Bedside Book of Birds, Nan A. Talese, 2005. “The Great Ape Escape” the story of the orangutan Fu Manchu who fashioned a key and hid it in his lip, This Animal Life, podcast, August 2021.   Harrington, Katie, & Jonathan Meiburg “Use of appeasement display and recruitment by an adult Striated Caracara (Phalcoboenus australis) to overcome territorial defense,” Wilson Journal of Ornithology, August 2021. “Larue the Crested Caracara and fearful behavior,” with Hillary Hankey, Avian Behavior Institute, June 2003.   Sean McCann, “Red-Throated Caracara's are Way Cool Because . . .” YouTube, February 2014. Keep up with caracara expert Sean McCann on Twitter.  “Meet Kevin the Caracara” Falconry and Me, YouTube, April 2020. Jonathan Meiburg interviewed on “The Bedside Book of Birds with Margaret Atwood, David Sibley, Jonathan Meiburg, and Jessica Leber” Doubleday Publishing, YouTube, March 2021. Jonathan Meiburg's most remarkable book is A Most Remarkable Creature:  The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey Jonathan Meiburg interviewed on “Science and Nature: From the Page to Wilder Places,” Los Angeles Times Events, April 23, 2021.  Jonathan Meiburg interviewed for Paris Review Interview, by John Jeremiah Sullivan, April 2021.  Morrison, Joan, lecture on “Crested Caracaras,” Orange Audubon Society, YouTube, December 2020.  Pepperberg, Irene M., Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence—and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process, Collins, 2008. Pilley, John W. Dr., Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, October 2013. “Project Aims to Save Rare Bird,” Tampa Bay Times, 2005. The Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which sent Jonathan to the Falkland Islands in 1997.  Vanderbilt University, “Study Gives New Meaning to the Term ‘Bird Brain.'” Neuroscience News, June 2016.  Wallace, Amy, “Meet the Birds: Zorro the Striated Caracara,” Falconry and Me, YouTube, April2020.    

Rhiannon Giddens, virtuoso banjo player, singer-songwriter, Grammy winner, MacArthur "Genius" Grant recipient and keeper of the flame of African-American roots music, will be among the featured performers at this year's Ojai Music Festival, coming Sept. 16-19, under the musical direction of John Adams. We talked with Giddens from her home in Dublin, where she and her partner, Francesco Turrissi, now live. It will be her first trip to Ojai, though she's inadvertently hit on an Ojai theme with her popular "Aria Code" podcast, in which she contrasts an aria from Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" with Vivian Liberto Cash's imagined lament at the absence of her husband, Johnny Cash, while she holds down the fort in Casitas Springs. Giddens will perform a mix of her own music, as well as modernist masterpieces by Adams and Mozart. Giddens, who will be featured on the cover of the Fall 2021 issue of Ojai Quarterly, first came to prominence with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, reviving the once-ubiquitous and now nearly forgotten Black string band, as well as for her acting chops on "Nashville." She holds an important place in the folk music scene as a chronicler and interpreter of the vital tradition of roots music. For more information, check out the 2021 Ojai Music Festival program or read the fascinating article by John Jeremiah Sullivan in the May 13, 2019 issue of the New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/20/rhiannon-giddens-and-what-folk-music-means https://www.ojaifestival.org/2021-festival-schedule/

Today's guest is Deborah Kaufmann, VP of Literary Affairs at Legendary Entertainment. Translated into lay, non-Hollywood terms, this means that Deborah is some sort of in-house scout for Legendary, in charge of finding literary properties that can be adapted to the big or small screen. As you'll find out, such properties can include books, but also unpublished short stories, podcasts, and news and magazine articles. It was fascinating to get to know Deborah's work a bit more in depth, and to hear her thoughts on the current state of the movie business and the revolution brought about by streaming giants such as Netflix and Amazon. Show Notes Deborah's book recommendations: - Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro - Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker - Weather by Jenny Offill About Deborah: Since 2014, Deborah Kaufmann has been overseeing acquisitions of literary properties for Legendary Entertainment's film and TV divisions, and working in New York. Previously, she was a senior editor based in Paris, publishing award-winning and international bestselling authors for 15 years – including Jenny Offill, Howard Jacobson, Claire Vaye Watkins, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Malala Yousafzai, Tana French, Anthony Horowitz, Walter Kirn, Elizabeth Gilbert, Audrey Niffenegger, Jeff Lindsay, and many others. She also ran the Orbit France science-fiction and fantasy imprint.

Elon Green is the author of “Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York.” The book was published by Celadon Books earlier this month. The book is about men who were picked up in piano bars in New York City in the early 1990s, and then killed, dismembered and left outside the city. The book is about the lives those men led. Green did a massive amount of reporting in order to write this book. He gathered trial transcripts, massive amounts of police files, and documents handed over by friends and family members. He also interviewed about 160 people, some of them many times. Green has written for the New York Times Magazine, The Awl, and New York. He’s been anthologized in Unspeakable Acts, which was edited by Sarah Weinman. Green has also been an editor at Longform since 2011. In 2013 and 2014, he did Annotation interviews with some of the best literary journalists of all time, including reporters like Tom Wolfe, Mike Sager, John Jeremiah Sullivan, and Gay Talese. He did those for Nieman Storyboard.

S5 Ep 59: In this episode, meet contemporary art curator Jennifer Dasal, journalist and science writer Emily Willingham, and writer and editor John Jeremiah Sullivan. ArtCurious by Jennifer Dasal: https://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/611497/artcurious/ Phallacy by Emily Willingham: https://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/621131/phallacy/ Blood Horses by John Jeremiah Sullivan: https://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/636390/blood-horses/

For this week's episode we read John Jeremiah Sullivan's 2004 essay about attending one of the biggest Christian rock festivals in the world--Creation Fest, which is held annually in rural Pennsylvania and attracts upwards of 50,000 people each year. We talk about what separates great participatory journalism from frustrating participatory journalism, and our own brushes with youth-group Christianity. Then, for no good reason at all, we do a deep internet dive into erotic Elon Musk fanfic.

THE PROLOGUEKnown as Arkansas’s “cemetery angel,” Ruth Coker Burks provided end-of-life care for patients with AIDS in Hot Springs during the height of the AIDS crisis and buried their remains in her family’s cemetery.IN ADAPTATION“Three Encounters” by John Jeremiah Sullivan.Performed by MC Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger.Produced by Spacebomb and Maxwell GeorgeIN SESSIONA Fayetteville Roots Festival performance by Los Texmaniacs.

This week, a special episode. Ozark Highlands Radio partners with Oxford American Magazine to bring Woodstock, New York based contemporary folk and Americana superstar Josh Ritter, recorded live at South on Main in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas. Also, an interview with Oxford American Literary Project executive director Ryan Harris. Mark Jones offers an archival recording of Ozark original Karen Bell performing the classic tune “Grandfather’s Clock.” “The Oxford American is a nonprofit organization with a mission to explore the complexity and vitality of the American South through excellent writing, visual art, and events programming. Our quarterly print magazine was founded in 1992, and, in addition to winning four National Magazine Awards, has helped launch the writing careers of such noted authors as Jesmyn Ward and John Jeremiah Sullivan, while publishing beloved writers like Charles Portis, Nikky Finney, Peter Guralnick, and many others. “Our concert series at South on Main in Little Rock is an extension of the magazine, creating meaningful opportunities for the community to experience the most culturally significant artists in our region. “The OA has a longstanding history of curating great music. Our Winter 2018 issue is dedicated to the music of North Carolina. It is our twentieth installment of the series, which the Houston Chronicle calls "the single best music-related magazine of any given year." Each music issue comes with a sought-after CD, curated by the editors to showcase the region's hugely varied musical legacy.” More information about Oxford American programming, the magazine, and their mission can be found at https://www.oxfordamerican.org Moscow, Idaho born and currently Woodstock, New York based musician Josh Ritter is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and author who performs and records with the Royal City Band. Ritter is known for his distinctive Americana style and narrative lyrics. In 2006 he was named one of the "100 Greatest Living Songwriters" by Paste magazine. - https://www.joshritter.com In this week’s “From the Vault” segment, musician, educator and country music legacy Mark Jones offers a 1977 archival recording of Ozark original Karen Bell performing the classic tune “Grandfather’s Clock,” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives.

Points South premieres September 18th! Subscribe now and never miss an episode. Coming this season: Ken Burns, Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons, Mary Miller, John Paul White, Los Texmaniacs, John Jeremiah Sullivan + more. For more information visit oxfordamerican.org/pointssouth.

Dan and Eric discuss Elizabeth Kolbert and her piece about the destruction of biodiversity and the change of the climate; essayist John Jeremiah Sullivan, and his profile of contemporary folk musician Rhiannon Giddens; and novelist Camille Bordas and the intricacies of her lovely short story, her third in the magazine.  Plus: D & E discuss the most recent episodes of the New Yorker Fiction podcast and the New Yorker Radio Hour.  Not to be missed!!!

This week, a very special episode. Ozark Highlands Radio partners with Oxford American Magazine to bring Johnson City, Tennessee based up & coming contemporary folk and Americana superstar Amythyst Kiah, recorded live at South on Main in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas. Also, an interview with Oxford American Literary Project executive director Ryan Harris. In this performance, Amythyst is joined by Taylor Green on keyboard and Andrew Gibbens on drums. “The Oxford American is a nonprofit organization with a mission to explore the complexity and vitality of the American South through excellent writing, visual art, and events programming. Our quarterly print magazine was founded in 1992, and, in addition to winning four National Magazine Awards, has helped launch the writing careers of such noted authors as Jesmyn Ward and John Jeremiah Sullivan, while publishing beloved writers like Charles Portis, Nikky Finney, Peter Guralnick, and many others. “Our concert series at South on Main in Little Rock is an extension of the magazine, creating meaningful opportunities for the community to experience the most culturally significant artists in our region. “The OA has a longstanding history of curating great music. Our Winter 2018 issue is dedicated to the music of North Carolina. It is our twentieth installment of the series, which the Houston Chronicle calls "the single best music-related magazine of any given year." Each music issue comes with a sought-after CD, curated by the editors to showcase the region's hugely varied musical legacy.” More information about Oxford American programming, the magazine, and their mission can be found at https://www.oxfordamerican.org “A professed Southern Gothic songster born in Chattanooga but based in Johnson City, Tennessee, Amythyst Kiah’s commanding stage presence is only matched by her raw and powerful vocals—a deeply moving, hypnotic sound that stirs echoes of a distant and restless past. Accoutered interchangeably with banjo, acoustic guitar, or a full band (Her Chest of Glass,) Amythyst’s toolbox is augmented by her scholarship of African-American roots music. Provocative and coolly fierce, her ability to cross the boundaries of blues and old-time through reinterpretation is groundbreaking and simply unforgettable. Amythyst Kiah is forging an important path from her musical ancestry to a multi-cultural generation with contemporary sensibilities and undeniable flair.” Learn more about Amythyst Kiah at… https://amythystkiah.com/about In this week’s “From the Vault” segment, musician, educator and country music legacy Mark Jones offers a 1977 archival recording of Ozark original Aunt Ollie Gilbert performing the ballad “Springtime in Alaska,” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives.

Ozark Highlands Radio is a weekly radio program that features live music and interviews recorded at Ozark Folk Center State Park’s historic 1,000-seat auditorium in Mountain View, Arkansas. In addition to the music, our “Feature Host” segments take listeners through the Ozark hills with historians, authors, and personalities who explore the people, stories, and history of the Ozark region. This week, a very special episode. Ozark Highlands Radio partners with Oxford American Magazine to bring Chapel Hill, North Carolina based rising contemporary folk and Americana superstars “Mandolin Orange,” recorded live at South on Main in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas. Also, an interview with Oxford American Literary Project executive director Ryan Harris. Mandolin Orange are joined in this performance by Eli West on guitar & banjo, Josh Oliver on electric guitar, Clint Mulligan on Bass, and Joe Westerlund on drums. “The Oxford American is a nonprofit organization with a mission to explore the complexity and vitality of the American South through excellent writing, visual art, and events programming. Our quarterly print magazine was founded in 1992, and, in addition to winning four National Magazine Awards, has helped launch the writing careers of such noted authors as Jesmyn Ward and John Jeremiah Sullivan, while publishing beloved writers like Charles Portis, Nikky Finney, Peter Guralnick, and many others. “Our concert series at South on Main in Little Rock is an extension of the magazine, creating meaningful opportunities for the community to experience the most culturally significant artists in our region. “The OA has a longstanding history of curating great music. Our Winter 2018 issue is dedicated to the music of North Carolina. It is our twentieth installment of the series, which the Houston Chronicle calls "the single best music-related magazine of any given year." Each music issue comes with a sought-after CD, curated by the editors to showcase the region's hugely varied musical legacy.” More information about Oxford American programming, the magazine, and their mission can be found at https://www.oxfordamerican.org “Mandolin Orange is an Americana/folk duo based out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.The group was formed in 2009 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and consists of the group's songwriter Andrew Marlin (vocals, mandolin, guitar, banjo) and Emily Frantz (vocals, violin, guitar). Mandolin Orange has produced five albums of Marlin's original works of American roots music. In the last three years, the group has toured throughout the U.S and Europe, including appearances at Austin City Limits, South-by-Southwest, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Newport Folk Festival, Pickathon, and Merlefest. They signed to Yep Roc Records in 2013 and have produced four albums under their umbrella, This Side of Jordan, Such Jubilee, Blindfaller and Tides of a Teardrop.” Learn more about Mandolin Orange at - http://www.mandolinorange.com/#home-section In this week’s “From the Vault” segment, musician, educator and country music legacy Mark Jones offers a 1981 archival recording of Ozark originals Pat & Bob Momich performing the traditional tune “Soldier’s Joy,” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives.

Acid West is a rollicking trip through the muck of American myths that have settled in our country’s underbelly. Following the footsteps of John Jeremiah Sullivan and Eula Biss, yet displaying an antic energy and freewheeling imagination entirely his own, Joshua Wheeler is a nonfiction virtuoso with a preternatural talent for dissecting the uncanniness of our cultural moment. The first collection of his sui generis essays, Acid West, is an outstanding debut that’s sure to become a cult classic. Wheeler is in conversation with Brian Phillips, former staff writer for Grantland and a former senior writer for MTV News.

When her mother suffers a stroke, Tessa Fontaine joins the traveling circus sideshow. She recounts this unique time in her life in her incredible new memoir, THE ELECTRIC WOMAN. She and James talk about being okay with not knowing what you're writing about, how first books are like teenagers, and finding the untold story. And, she is the first guest (to James's knowledge) to flashback to Eagle-Eye Cherry's "Save Tonight." Plus, Meg Reid of Hub City Writers Project.   Tessa Fontaine: http://www.tessafontaine.com/home.html Tessa and James discuss: Annie Hartnett Harper  University of Alabama  University of Utah  Freytag's Pyramid  LET'S NO ONE GET HURT by Jon Pineda  "The First Cut is the Deepest" by Sheryl Crow  "Save Tonight" by Eagle-Eye Cherry  Cormac McCarthy Ernest Hemingway  Jenna Johnson  HELL'S ANGELS by Hunter S. Thompson  - Meg Reid: (Hub City) https://hubcity.org/  (Book Design) http://www.megireid.com/ Meg and James discuss:  WPA  Newtonville Books  Turnrow Book Co.  Square Books  Tessa Fontaine  Betsy Teter  Publisher's Group West  Dzanc Books Milkweed Editions  OVER THE PLAIN HOUSES by Julia Franks  FLIGHT PATH by Hannah Palmer  John Jeremiah Sullivan  Sewanee  WHISKEY & RIBBONS by Leesa Cross-Smith Emily L. Smith  Lookout Books  ECOTONE  UNC-Wilmington  NEA  Sarabande Books  Carolina Wren Press  THE HANDS OF STRANGERS by Michael Farris Smith  Lemuria Books  Parnassus Books  Eric Svenson  Kelly Estep  Carmichael's Books  Bookmarks in Winston-Salem   - http://tkpod.com / tkwithjs@gmail.com / Twitter: @JamesScottTK Instagram: tkwithjs / Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tkwithjs/

John Jeremiah Sullivan is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the southern editor of The Paris Review. He writes for GQ, Harper’s Magazine, and Oxford American, and is the author of Blood Horses and Pulphead: Essays. Sullivan lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)​Since 1996 Ben Ratliff has been writing about music with passion and insight for The New York Times. Over the course of two decades he has been expanding his readers’ horizons and turning them on to new sounds. At the same time, the past 20 years have brought an utterly transformative revolution in the distribution and consumption of those sounds. In 1996—three years before Napster, five years before the first iPod—listeners were largely constrained in what they could hear by their geographical, financial, and historical situations. For many of us today, those constraints have largely disappeared. It has never been so easy to hear so much for so little. Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty is Ben Ratliff’s bracing, impassioned response to this unprecedented situation. It is a music appreciation guide for the cloud era.As Ratliff sees things, there are both negative and positive aspects to the current landscape. Services like Spotify and Pandora can monitor our listening practices, feeding us back more of what we already know we like. At their worst, these services encourage musical comfort-listening, a surrender of agency to algorithms. On the flipside, we’re living in an age of unprecedented access, rendering old categories and hierarchies of taste obsolete. As Ratliff asserts, a huge wealth of music is out there for all of us to experience—all we need to do is listen better than the algorithms are listening to us.And so, in a series of beautifully composed and originally conceived chapters, Ratliff gives us a refreshingly new framework for engaging with music—one that largely ignores genre categorizations or a composer’s intent and instead places the listener at center stage. Ratliff focuses on various qualities of music that we can listen for, exploring aural attributes like repetition or speed, as well as more subjective emotions and ideas such as sadness or “the perfect moment.” Along the way, Ratliff touches on a dizzying array of music, drawing surprising connections from João Gilberto and Frank Sinatra to Aaliyah and Erik Satie (and that’s just one chapter).Ratliff has a lot of smart things to say about the changes of the past 20 years, and there is no doubt Every Song Ever will spur debate about our relationship to music, and its role as both culture and commodity. But at its heart, this book is a celebration—of the possibilities for pleasure within music, of the diversity of recorded sound, and of the act of listening at a time when listeners have never had it so good.Praise for Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty“In this insightful guide to contemporary music appreciation, genre limitations are off the table . . . Ratliff’s scholarship shines; there’s a lot to be said for a book on music appreciation that can draw apt parallels between DJ Screw and Bernstein’s rendition of Mahler’s ninth symphony.”—Publishers Weekly“It’s fascinating how Ratliff can bring a fresh ear to such familiar music . . . and how inviting he makes some little-known music sound . . . [Every Song Ever] makes unlikely connections that will encourage music fans to listen beyond categorical distinctions and comfort zones.”—Kirkus Reviews“Every Song Ever jumps into the grand adventure of losing yourself in music, at a time when the technology boundaries have blown wide open. Ratliff brilliantly makes connections between the arcane and the everyday, pointing to sounds you’ve never heard—as well as finding new pleasures in music you thought you’d already used up.” —Rob Sheffield, author of Love Is a Mix Tape and Turn Around Bright Eyes“Everyone knows we live in an age when most people can listen to anything, anytime, anywhere. Whether that’s depressing or mind-expanding depends ultimately on what kind of attention we pay. Ben Ratliff has the gifts to help us surf this wave of sonic information, not stand there mumbling at it in a grumpy-grampy way. After all, it’s presumably not going to end until the electrical grid does.”—John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead“This is a book about one exemplary listener’s love for how many ways music can mean, set in sentences as forceful and subtle as Elvin Jones. Slayer and Shostakovich, Ali Akbar Khan and the Allman Brothers—none of them are the same once Ben Ratliff’s ears get through with them. And your ears won’t be the same once you get through Every Song Ever.”—Michael Robbins, author of Alien vs. Predator and The Second SexBen Ratliff has been a jazz and pop critic for The New York Times since 1996. Every Song Ever is his fourth book, followingThe Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music (2008); Coltrane: The Story of a Sound (2007, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award); and Jazz: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings (2002). He lives with his wife and two sons in the Bronx.Alex Ross has been the music critic for The New Yorker since 1996. He is the author of the essay collection Listen to This, and the international bestseller The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, which was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award.

What do Michael Jackson, Christian Rock, and nearly-electrocuted high schoolers have in common? They’ve been written about by John Jeremiah Sullivan, and argued about by Tod, Rider, and Julia in today’s latest episode. Join us as we rhapsodize over some excellent essays. Also join us as we pull random books off our shelves (thanks to your help) and chat about them at random. Discussed: Julia tells you about Mark Twain’s OTHER pen names, Tod makes a very mysterious phone call, and Rider adores a classic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joel Lovell, deputy editor of The New York Times Magazine. Show notes: @lovelljoel Lovell's New York Times archive Lovell's GQ archive Lovell's This American Life archive [2:00] "George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You'll Read This Year" (Joel Lovell • New York Times Magazine • 2013) [8:20] "The Semplica-Girl Diaries" (George Saunders • New Yorker • 2012) [12:40] George Saunders on respect [12:55] Twitter response to Lovell's profile of George Saunders [14:50] The first time Lovell read Saunders [19:40] Writer Paul Tough [23:35] Saturday Night magazine [25:00] GQ conversation between Lovell and John Jeremiah Sullivan [27:45] "Upon This Rock" (John Jeremiah Sullivan • GQ • 2004) [34:40] The New York Observer on Lovell's "Men + Money" column for GQ [35:30] Lovell on money advisors (The Washington Post • 2009) [42:30] "The Upside of the Downside" (Joel Lovell • New York • 2008)

That's Not a Feeling (Soho Press) by Josefson Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation (McSweeney's) by Bissell Dan Josefson will discuss and sign his highly anticipated debut novel, That's Not a Feeling, with award-winning essayist and short story writer Tom Bissell (Magic Hours). "Dan Josefson is a writer of astounding promise and That's Not a Feeling is a bold, funny, mordant, and deeply intelligent debut." --David Foster Wallace "Every one of Bissell's pieces is like some great, transfixing documentary you stumble on while channel-surfing late at night--something you feel, in that moment, a kind of gratitude toward for redeeming your sleeplessness. Considered alongside his fiction, this new collection makes clear that Tom Bissell is one of our most interesting and ambitious writers." --John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead Dan Josefson has received a Fulbright research grant and a Schaeffer award from the International Institute of Modern Letters. He has an MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and lives in Brooklyn. That's Not A Feeling is his debut novel. Tom Bissell is the author of Extra Lives, Chasing the Sea, God Lives in St. Petersburg, and The Father of All Things. A recipient of the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Bay de Noc Community College Alumnus of the Year Award, he lives in Portland, Oregon. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 21, 2012. Copies of the book from this event can be purchased here: http://tinyurl.com/b3yrbrr

Wilmington, NC resident John J. Sullivan’s recent book "Pulphead: Essays." gained national critical attention in 2011: A "New York Times" notable book; a "Time" top 10 nonfiction book;and one of "Library Journal's" best books. What is it about Sullivan’s writing that gained it so much admiration? We will find out when we talk to John Jeremiah Sullivan.

One of the greatest horrors of slavery was the breakup of families. A new book tells another chapter in that story" how separated families attempted to find each other and reunite" before and after the Civil War. And we will learn about some of those efforts from Heather Andrea Williams, author of "Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery."

Pulphead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Sullivan; House of Prayer No. 2 (Nan A. Talese) by Richard Fans of kick-ass, can't-put-it-down nonfiction, take note: This event combines the funny, probing, insightful cultural musings of John Jeremiah Sullivan with the riveting Gothic-styled memoir of Mark Richard. "Pulphead is upsettingly good. It's the most inspired book of essays since David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. John Jeremiah Sullivan perceives the world with so much original wit and energy that when I put this book down, the roll of duct tape on my desk suddenly seemed like it might be full of funny secrets. I'm grateful that Sullivan is doing such outlandishly brilliant, enlivening stuff." —Wells Tower "Read Richard's amazing memoir House of Prayer No. 2 -- read it as soon as you can, you'll barrel through it -- and you'll know after just two pages of his effortlessly killer prose that he's special all right ... Narrating, mostly, through the best use of second-person urgency since Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, he describes being a disc jockey, a deckhand, a private eye, a ditchdigger. The man can tell a full story in the flick of a phrase ... Hallelujah. A"  —Entertainment Weekly John Jeremiah Sullivan is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the southern editor of The Paris Review. He has written for GQ, Harper's Magazine, and Oxford American, and is the author of Blood Horses. He is the winner of a Whiting Writers' Award, two National Magazine Awards for feature writing, and a Pushcart Prize. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, he currently lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, with his wife and two daughters and, most weeks, his wife's entire family. Mark Richard is the author of two award-winning short story collections, The Ice at the Bottom of the World and Charity, and the novel Fishboy. His short stories and journalism have appeared in a number of publications, including the New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, Vogue, GQ, the Paris Review, Vogue, and The Oxford American. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Whiting Foundation Writer's Award, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He has been visiting writer in residence at Texas Tech University, the University of California Irvine, Arizona State University, the University of Mississippi, Sewanee: The University of the South, Sewanee, and the Writer's Voice in New York. His television credits include Party of Five, Chicago Hope, and Huff, and movies for CBS, Showtime, and Turner Network Television.  He is the screenwriter of the film Stop-Loss. Richard is a lecturer at the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California.  He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Jennifer Allen and their three sons. Photo of Sullivan (left) by John Taylor. Photo of Richard by Jeff Vespa.

This week: Essayist John Jeremiah Sullivan takes a hard left turn…Talk show giant Dick Cavett spits out etiquette tips… We learn the meaning of “peplum”… Mega-producer Nile Rodgers gets revenge on Studio 54… The Edsel flops right into a cocktail glass… And Caldecott Award-winner Brian Selznick (Hugo) shares unforgettable picture books – for adults. Plus a playlist from indierock supergroup Wild Flag.