Podcasts about watch arguing my way through

Love it or hate it, the genre of “reality tv” has now shaped American history. That means no matter how you feel about it, you cannot ignore it. Enter Cue the Sun!, the most comprehensive, thoughtful and well written book about the history and development of the genre we have come across. We talk to the book's author, Emily Nussbaum about how the genre has come to take up so much space in American pop culture and what that means for our country as a whole. We also talk to Ferguson Books' owner Dane Ferguson about how his shop serves rural communities in the upper midwest. You don't want to miss it. Books mentioned in this week's episode: Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV by Emily Nussbaum I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum Black Bear Lake by Leslie Liautaud Thief River Falls by Brian Freeman Alter Ego by Brian Freeman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Novelist Sally Franson and critic Emily Nussbaum join host V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about reality television. Franson, a recent reality TV show winner whose new novel, Big in Sweden, is from the point of view of a woman who joins the cast of a program in that country, reflects on transforming her real-life experience into fiction. Nussbaum, a staff writer at The New Yorker whose new nonfiction book, Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV, addresses the history of what she calls the “dirty documentary” genre, discusses the hundreds of interviews she conducted with reality show staff, as well as the form's surprisingly early origins and the influence of The Apprentice on national politics. Nussbaum and Franson trade notes on how the relationships between people on camera and people behind the camera influence edited footage; the way race was and is handled on reality television; and what it's like to be a contestant or producer. They also talk about poor labor conditions on sets and what that means to the genre. They read from their work. 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. Sally Franson  Big in Sweden A Lady's Guide to Selling Out Emily Nussbaum Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution “Is “Love Is Blind” a Toxic Workplace?” | The New Yorker Others: Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 26: “Sally Franson on Fashion and Literature” Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6, Episode 33: “The Stakes of the Writers' Strike: Benjamin Percy on the WGA Walkout, Streaming, and the Survival of Screenwriting” Allt för Sverige Big Brother The Real World Survivor Love is Blind An American Family The Amazing Race Heartburn by Nora Ephron Nora Ephron Carl Bernstein Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Not Your Demographic, Erin & Stella celebrate their 2020 accomplishments, share their 2021 reading goals and mourn Brodie Lee. --- Books discussed:  Die - Kieron Gillen Enforcer Enigma - Gail Carriger 20th Century Ghosts - Joe Hill When Harry Met Harry - Sydney Smyth On Fine Fae - Molly Harper On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century - Timothy D. Snyde Wicked Things - John Allison I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution - Emily Nussbaum Far Away - Caryl Churchill The  Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett Men We Reaped - Jesmyn Ward Plain Bad Heroines - Emily M. Danforth The Once and Future Witches - Alix E. Harrow --- Follow us! #NotYourDemoPod Twitter: @Stella_Cheeks Instagram: @NYDErnGenC Support the show! Patreon.com/NYDProductions  

This week on Not Your Demographic, Erin & Stella celebrate their 2020 accomplishments, share their 2021 reading goals and mourn Brodie Lee. --- Books discussed:  Die - Kieron Gillen Enforcer Enigma - Gail Carriger 20th Century Ghosts - Joe Hill When Harry Met Harry - Sydney Smyth On Fine Fae - Molly Harper On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century - Timothy D. Snyde Wicked Things - John Allison I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution - Emily Nussbaum Far Away - Caryl Churchill The  Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett Men We Reaped - Jesmyn Ward Plain Bad Heroines - Emily M. Danforth The Once and Future Witches - Alix E. Harrow --- Follow us! #NotYourDemoPod Twitter: @Stella_Cheeks Instagram: @NYDErnGenC Support the show! Patreon.com/NYDProductions  

This week Erin & Stella are wrapping up the year with, well, not fanfare exactly, but with some hope. That's pretty good for 2020. They rant about wrapping paper and rave about wrestling. Plus, mania presented as reading. See you all in the new year! --- Books discussed:  Plummet Book - Sherwin Tjia The Siren - Tiffany Reisz Plain Bad Heroines - Emily M. Danforth Tiny Nightmares - Edited by Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto Dune - Frank Herbert Kate Kane 2 - Alexis Hall Enforcer Enigma - Gail Carriger TekWar - William Shatner Locke & Key 2: Head Games - Joe Hill When Harry Met Harry -Sydney Smyth Men We Reaped - Jesmyn Ward 20th Century Ghosts - Joe Hill I Miss You When I Blink: Essays - M. L. Philpott I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution - Emily Nussbaum --- Follow us! #NotYourDemoPod Twitter: @Stella_Cheeks Instagram: @NYDErnGenC Support the show! Patreon.com/NYDProductions

This week Erin & Stella are wrapping up the year with, well, not fanfare exactly, but with some hope. That's pretty good for 2020. They rant about wrapping paper and rave about wrestling. Plus, mania presented as reading. See you all in the new year! --- Books discussed:  Plummet Book - Sherwin Tjia The Siren - Tiffany Reisz Plain Bad Heroines - Emily M. Danforth Tiny Nightmares - Edited by Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto Dune - Frank Herbert Kate Kane 2 - Alexis Hall Enforcer Enigma - Gail Carriger TekWar - William Shatner Locke & Key 2: Head Games - Joe Hill When Harry Met Harry -Sydney Smyth Men We Reaped - Jesmyn Ward 20th Century Ghosts - Joe Hill I Miss You When I Blink: Essays - M. L. Philpott I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution - Emily Nussbaum --- Follow us! #NotYourDemoPod Twitter: @Stella_Cheeks Instagram: @NYDErnGenC Support the show! Patreon.com/NYDProductions

*Note: given the current temporary closure of TPL due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have made our best efforts to offer suggestions below for materials which are part our online collections, and available at home to anyone with a current Toronto Public Library card. Why are wait time for ebooks or audiobooks sometimes so long? Learn more about limits on the number of eBook copies and the length of time they can be borrowed. Book by Emily NussbaumI Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV RevolutionBooks by Rachel GieseBoys: What it Means to Become a ManBooks on TV mentioned in I Like To WatchI’ll Be There for You: The One About Friends by Kelsey MillerSex and the City by Candace BushnellI Think I’m Outta Here: A Memoir of All My Families by Carroll O’ConnorThe Sopranos Sessions by Matt Zoller SeitzOther Seminal Books on TVTV (the book) by Alan SepinwallThe Platinum Age of Television: From I Love Lucy to The Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific by David BianculliSitcom: A History in 24 Episodes by Saul AusterlitzOther Related MaterialsI Love Top Ten Lists (article from The New Yorker)Critic Emily Nussbaum on the charms of modern television-watching (article from Vox)Critic Emily Nussbaum Weighs In on Best TV shows of the Decade (clip from NPR)Live Mic: Best of TPL Conversations features curated discussions and interviews with some of today’s best-known and yet-to-be-known writers, thinkers and artists, recorded on stage at one of Toronto Public Library’s 100 branches. Episodes are produced by Natalie Kertes, Jorge Amigo, and Gregory McCormick. Technical support by Michelle De Marco and George Panayotou. AV support by Jennifer Kasper and Mesfin Bayssassew. Marketing support by Tanya Oleksuik. Music is by The Worst Pop Band Ever.

Hello, Emily Nussbaum! Emily is the television critic for the New Yorker, and in 2016 she won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. In 2019, she released her first book, I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution. This week, Emily sits down with Perrie to talk about what she wore during a pivotal job interview, ‘80s fashion, letting kids watch Twin Peaks, perspectives on Carrie Bradshaw, and more.   Follow @emilynussbaum on Instagram and Twitter. Shop Emily’s book, I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution, in bookstores and online.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

This week we're talking books that spark a deep connection. Along the way, Erin reveals her abiding love for lifeguards in hot tubs, Amy admits the abuse that Podcat puts her through, and we wonder about the intricacies of loan sharking. We also mention a couple amazing book-related newsletters you should subscribe to, including the New York Times Books Newsletter, and Lithub. _____Our picks this week: Novels:Amy: The Friend, Sigrid NunezErin: The Woman Upstairs, Claire MessudOther Books:Amy: Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl, Jeannie Vanasco(Memoir)Erin: I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution, Emily Nussbaum(Essays / NonFiction)Pop Culture:Amy: Earthbreak (Podcast) Erin: Vanity Fair (Magazine / Website)

This month we’re discussing the non-fiction genre of Arts! We discuss “capital-A” art, creating, consuming, and destroying art, library hold-list hacks, Video Game Club for Masochists, woo woo, and scraping ideas off of the sides of artist Faraday cages. You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system. In this episode Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards | Kaya Fraser Things We Read Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over by Nell Irvin Painter Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks Me Artsy edited by Drew Hayden Taylor Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert Gorey's Worlds by Edward Gorey Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey by Karen Wilkin Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey by Edward Gorey La Bande Dessinée by Benoît Mouchart Other Media We Mention Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud  The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville Graphic Annotations of China Miéville’s The Last Days of New Paris The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (Wikipedia) Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier Girl with a Pearl Earring painting by Johannes Vermeer (Wikipedia) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum Stardew Valley (Wikipedia) Krobus: “He is a shadow person who lives in the sewers.” Ready Player One by Ernest Cline Halo (franchise) (Wikipedia) Mass Effect (Wikipedia) Book Club for Masochists Episode 003 - Technology (non-fiction) Episode 064 - Video Games Trailer for Take Me (a short film Matthew’s mom wrote) The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey Three Books From The Fantod Press by Edward Gorey (are they zines? Maybe?) Redburn: His First Voyage by Herman Melville This is the one with the cover by Edward Gorey featuring some sailors Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot, illustrated by Edward Gorey Dracula (1924 Play) > 1977 Revival (Featuring art design by Edward Gorey) Nine Inch Nails - The Perfect Drug Real Artists Have Day Jobs: (And Other Awesome Things They Don't Teach You in School) by Sara Benincasa Red: A Haida Manga by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality by Bob Joseph Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert Me Funny edited by Drew Hayden Taylor Me Sexy: An Exploration of Native Sex and Sexuality by Drew Hayden Taylor The Secret by Rhonda Byrne The Creative Independent The Art of Process with Aimee Mann and Ted Leo The Curse of the Blue Figurine by John Bellairs and illustrated by Edward Gorey The Coasters - Searchin’  Wikipedia article on the song Links, Articles, and Things Paradise, Nevada (Wikipedia) “Paradise is an unincorporated town” (it’s for tax reasons, of course…) David Datuna (Wikipedia) “Known for: Sculpture, installation; consuming the banana from Comedian” Love is in the Bin (Wikipedia) Banksy artwork that was shredded after auction Twitter thread from Stephanie about books they read in their art book club Shia LaBeouf's extremely loud motivational speech, explained Rupi Kaur Is the Writer of the Decade (Instagram poetry) Matthew’s analysis of the Goodreads top graphic novels of the year CinemaSins (Wikipedia) Suggest new genres or titles! Fill out the form to suggest genres! Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email! Join us again on Tuesday, January 21st we’ll be talking about our 2020 Reading Resolutions! Then on Tuesday, February 4th we’ll be discussing the romance subgenre of Chick Lit!

On this “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” Halloween special, we talk about how the iconic series deals with gender, power, sexuality, and sexual assault. We consider what makes Buffy a feminist text and why it’s worth analyzing and discussing today. Cited in this episode: Camron, Marc. “The Importance of Being the Zeppo: Xander, Gender Identity and Hybridity in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Slayage: The Journal of Whedon Studies - www.whedonstudies.tv/uploads/2/6/2/…593/camron.pdf Kane, Vivian. “James Marsters Tells the Story Behind That Buffy Scene That Made You Hate Spike.” The Mary Sue - www.themarysue.com/james-marsters-…you-hate-spike/ Nussbaum, Emily. I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution - www.amazon.com/Like-Watch-Arguin…ion/dp/0525508961 The music used in this episode is "Lost Souls" by Portrayal freemusicarchive.org/music/Portraya…l_-_Lost_Souls used under an attribution license creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Joshilyn Jackson doesn't just write best-selling thrillers. She narrates them, too. Should we?Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, September 23, 2019: Top Five Steps to Burn Chart Success (a How-to). Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCAST#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution, Emily NussbaumKJ: Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David EpsteinJoshilyn:Gretchen, Shannon KirkThe Better Liar: A Novel, Tanen Jones Lady in the Lake, Laura Lippman#FaveIndieBookstoreLittle Shop of Stories, Decatur, GAOur guest for this episode is Joshilyn Jackson. She is the author of:Never Have I Ever The Almost SistersThe Opposite of EveryoneSomeone Else’s Love StoryA Grown-Up Kind of PrettyBackseat SaintsThe Girl Who Stopped SwimmingBetween, Georgia, Gods in AlabamaMy Own MiraculousDon’t Quit Your Day JobWedding Cake for BreakfastThis episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.The image in our podcast illustration is by TKTranscript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey all. As you likely know, the one and only sponsor of the #AmWriting podcast is Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps writers all the way through their projects to the very end. Usually Author Accelerator offers only longterm coaching and they're great at it, but they've just launched something new inside outline coaching, a four week long program for novelists and memoir writers that can help you find just the right amount of structure so that you can plot or pants your way to an actual draft. I love the inside outline and I think you will too. I come back to mine again and again, whether I'm writing or revising. Working through it with someone else helps keep you honest and helps you deliver a story structure that works. Find out more at www.authoraccelerator.com/insideoutline.Jess:                                     00:57                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        00:57                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     00:57                    All right, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:57                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     00:57                    Okay.KJ:                                        00:57                    Now one, two, three.KJ:                                        00:57                    Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia,Jess:                                     00:57                    and I'm Jess Lahey.KJ:                                        00:57                    And this is #AmWriting,Jess:                                     00:57                    with Jess and KJ.KJ:                                        00:57                    #AmWriting is our podcast about all things writing. Long things, short things, book proposals, entire books, short articles, blog posts, YA, pitches, whatever we can think of. And as I think most of you know, #AmWriting is really the podcast about sitting down and getting the work done.Jess:                                     01:43                    I'm Jess Lahey, I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and an upcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids. And I write for the Washington Post and the New York Times and various other outlets.KJ:                                        01:53                    And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of a novel forthcoming next year and also a parent-y type book How to Be a Happier Parent, former lead editor and writer for the New York Times Motherlode blog But I saw someone in one of our reviews accusing us of having a nonfiction focus on parenting writing. To which I was like, 'What?' I mean that has certainly been our professional writing, I guess our guests probably see it that way. But not today.Jess:                                     02:27                    Not today. I'm so excited. Can I introduce? Cause I'm super excited. Today our guest is Joshilyn Jackson. She is a New York Times and USA Today best selling author of nine novels, including one that I am (spoiler) not finished with, so be careful - called Never Have I Ever, it is so good. But one of the big reasons we wanted to have Joshilyn on today is that she does something that almost no one really does, which is narrate. She narrates her own fiction audio. And we know a lot of people, including ourselves who narrated our own nonfiction, but fiction is a whole other game. Not only does she narrate her own fiction, she's really, really good at it. She's won a bunch of awards. She was nominated for an Audi award, she was on Audio File Magazine's best of the year list, she was an Audible All Star for the highest listener ranks and reviews. I mean that's huge. And then I also have to add, because near and dear to my heart, she also works with an organization called Reforming Arts. And she has taught writing and literature inside Georgia's maximum security facility for women. So we have that in common as well. Welcome so much to the show, Joshilyn. We're so excited to talk to you.Joshilyn:                              03:56                    Oh, thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here.Jess:                                     03:59                    We love talking to authors, but one of the topics that has come up a lot for us is narrating audio books. Not only because Sarina Bowen (one of our frequent guests and sort of almost another host) has a podcast about audio books. Specifically, I'm a huge audio book fan and we've been talking a lot lately about people who choose to narrate their own fiction cause it's really hard. So we would love to talk to you about that today, but we'd love to start with sort of just how you got started with writing. What's your story?Joshilyn:                              04:40                    Oh, I've always wanted to be a writer. When I was three, I published my first novel using the Crayola stapler method. My mom helped, and to be fair, it wasn't a very good book. Yeah, I'm dating myself, but when Walden Books came out with Blank Books, I was in middle school and I would buy a Blank Book and write a novel into it and the novel would be just however many pages the Blank Book was. And I was a huge Stephen King fan. I would write these books, I remember one was called Don't Go Into the Woods and all these girls who looked a lot like girls who were kind of mean to me in middle school, one by one went into the woods and never came back. It's terrible, but really derivative Stephen King novel.Jess:                                     06:54                    Alright, so let's skip ahead to your adult life. How does writing become a part of your adult life?Joshilyn:                              07:02                    I mean it's my job, is that what you mean?Jess:                                     07:08                    Yeah, exactly. In terms of your professional work. I know one little thing about you that I would love to interject here, a bit of trivia. You got plucked out of a slush pile. How did that go down?Joshilyn:                              07:22                    Yeah, I didn't know any better. So what I did was I loaded up 160-something query letters into a shotgun, pointed it at New York, which is of course insane, don't do that. If you're getting ready to query a book query 10 - 15 agents, if you don't get a 20% return of agents saying let me see a partial or your manuscript, your query is not good enough and it doesn't matter how good the book is. So to shoot off that many at once is just to burn all your lottery tickets when you don't know if your query is good enough and is representing your book to a point where somebody is going to take you seriously. Out of the 160-something queries I got one request to look at the work and that was my agent.Jess:                                     08:12                    Wow. And that was the one that got pulled out of the slush pile?Joshilyn:                              08:31                    There's thousands of those they get everyday. And it wasn't the best query, but he was interested in the idea. So he asked me to send the manuscript, and I did, and we ended up working together.Jess:                                     08:42                    And how did that first that first book deal go for you? How did that all come about?Joshilyn:                              08:47                    Oh, it was a long time coming. So, he was my agent and he was interested in me. We had a couple of phone conversations, I sent him some short stories I'd had published. And he shopped two nonfiction book proposals, a children's book series, and two novels for me. At that point I was pretty ground down about it. That's a lot of rejection, and a lot of years, and a lot of work. So I just quietly said to myself, 'You know, I'm not gonna break up with my agent. I'm not going to have this big dramatic thing. I'm just going to stop sending him stuff, I'm gonna stop calling him, I'm gonna stop bothering him because I've done nothing but cost this guy money. So, you know, I'll just let it go and New York can suck it. I'm going to write cause I can't imagine not writing, but I'm done trying to be published. I was butt hurt, I picked up my toys and went home. And that Christmas he sent me a present, and a letter, and it was like his family Christmas letter. And at the bottom, he had written a little note just to me and he said, 'When am I gonna see something from you again? You really are one of my favorite writers.'. You don't say that to somebody who's never been published. You say you're so talented. You say you have so much potential. You say, I think we can sell this. You don't call an unpublished person, one of your favorite writers. So I sent him the manuscript I'd been working on and he sent it out, he said this is going to auction. And he sent it out to I think eight places like saying, this is an auction, you have two weeks. And we had a preempt in two days and he made me turn the preempts down. I was not going to turn that preempt down, I was so excited. It was an offer of actual like folding for a book I'd written. And he was like, no, we're turning this down. And I was like, okay, technically I'm the boss of you and we're not turning it down. He said, 'It's cute that you think that, but I'm the one who understands this industry and we're turning it down. We turned it down and he sent word out to the other houses that we had turned down a preempt. And everybody had 48 hours to get their best offer in and five of them showed up to bid.Jess:                                     11:27                    That's fantastic. I emailed with shaking fingers in return when I heard that we had a preempt that was for an amount of money that I was like, 'Whoa.' I remember typing back. 'Oh, okay. I trust you.' But in my head I was like, I totally don't trust you, we should accept this. I saw that you were part of a book called Don't Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors in the Day Jobs They Quit. So what was the day job you quit?Joshilyn:                              12:07                    It's a job that I called tote monkey. I'm dating myself again, but there was a car parts place that had these dot matrix printers and when the stuff was all down on the floor from the printer, I would take a huge stack and peel those rinds off and then separate it like white, blue, pink, goldenrod, white, blue, pink, goldenrod. And then I'd file each of those colors where they had to be filed. And by then the dot matrix printers would have other huge stacks lined up and I'd just take them and peel them is all I did.Jess:                                     12:43                    Were you so sad to have to quit that job to become a professional writer?Joshilyn:                              12:48                    I had dropped out of college to be an actor and eventually was starving and had to take this day job. I called my father and I said, 'I want to go back to college.' And he said, 'You can go back to college until you get a B, I'll pay for it until you get a B.' So I went back to college and I never got a B, that job taught me that I didn't want to be doing that job.Jess:                                     13:18                    So the acting stuff leads us to the big questions that I'm dying to ask you about how you got started narrating your own audio work. And did that start from the beginning? Was that something that you specifically trained to do? Please tell us all about it. Because, and I have to sort of spoiler here is that some of the conversations we've had is about like, Ooh, that's kind of interesting. I wonder what it would take to be able to narrate our own fictions. So what does it take, Joshilyn?Joshilyn:                              13:48                    I don't think it's necessarily a good thing most of the time when authors read their own books, to be honest. Because it is a really specific skill set. And I did go to school in theater and I did live off the grid for awhile as an actor and a playwright. And most of the time when I made money, it was doing voice acting and I got some pretty good gigs. I've done voice acting for local commercials and radio spots. But I've also done stuff for a documentary that PBS was doing, stuff like that. So I had a theatrical background and when my first novel came out, while the narrator of that novel is a wildly, promiscuous murderess and people always think that your first novel is autobiographical, which of course my first novel was, but as you know from earlier, it did not sell. This was my third novel, so it wasn't autobiographical. I am not a wildly, promiscuous murderess, for the record. And I wasn't sure how much I wanted to be associated with her anymore than I was. You know, with a debut, that's the first question you get - so how much of this is your life? And so, I didn't really want to do it. My second novel, I figured I had that distance. Plus I also thought Arlene should sound really young and I don't think I've ever sounded particularly young. She has to sound young for you to forgive her. But my second book, I really thought I could do it. So I went to my editor and I said, 'You know, I used to be an actor and I've done a lot of voice acting, do you think I could read the audio book?' And she said, 'Oh, no, don't do that.' And I said, 'Okay, but I really have done it before.' And she was like, 'You know, I was with Warner Books and they were the most theatrical of the audio books. Some audio book companies want a real straight read with just very light differentiations between the voices and some of them want it to be really theatrical.' This was a very theatrical one that wanted big differences in the voices and they put musical tracks in and stuff. So I said, 'Well, can I audition?' And my editor said, 'Yes, you can audition, but you're not going to get hired. But, sure.' So, I had a friend named Darren Wong, he's actually an author, too. He wrote The Hidden Light of Northern Fires, which is a great book. And he used to run an audio book magazine called Verb, it was an all audio magazine. So he had a home studio and an edit board and professional grade equipment and he helped me edit it and set levels. So it was a really good recording and I did a fight scene with five different men having a fight. And I did a comedic scene so they would know my timing and I did straight narration with energy so they knew I could get them through the landscape descriptions or whatever. And then after I turned that in, like two weeks later, my editor called and she was like, 'Oh yes, you can read your audio book.' So I started reading my own and the first one did well. And so after that, the next time we got a book contract, they had a little clause in there that said, I had to read the audio book, it was already in the contract and I thought that was really flattering. And now I read for other people who aren't me, too.Jess:                                     17:32                    I had heard that actually because as I said, our frequent guest, Sarina Bowen, has a podcast called Story Bites with Tanya Eby. Tanya has her own studio and they tend to really pick apart narration. Especially since Sarina picks the narrators for her books and she's very picky about that and they raved about your narration. So they were one of the reasons we found out about you.KJ:                                        18:03                    You were episode three of their Story Bites Podcast. You'll want the rest, but if you want to taste it for free that's one way to do it.Jess:                                     18:22                    Well, and Sarina also raved about The Almost Sisters. That was a book that she really enjoyed and we trust her judgement. What I meant was you guys have read The Almost Sisters, I have not yet. I'm going to now though because the first of Joshilyn's books that I have read is Never Have I Ever, and I am so deep in and what I wanted to say is I'm listening to the audio and I also have the hard cover of the book, as well. And one of the things I wanted to say about your narration there is you have two very different women in particular that are sort of at the heart of this book. And I have to say that what I was struck by from the very beginning is your depiction of Rue, one of the two sort of main-ish characters. And you do such a brilliant job with her because I'm not even sure what it is you're doing because I don't have the technical words to describe it, but there's something in her voice that renders her a completely different human being than your protagonist who has such... I've heard for various audio book narrators that they'll often have recordings of their characters or are you able to do that just sort of as you go through?Joshilyn:                              19:56                    I don't use recordings, I do use my husband. I met him doing black box theater. We were working at a regional repertory theater together. The first time I ever saw him, he was learning to stage sword fight - that is hot. So we've known each other since we were teenagers. I was 18, I think he was 19. And he is a theater guy, his masters degrees is in stage management. So when I'm getting ready to do an audio book, I go through and set voices with him and he says, 'No, that's not right.' Or, 'Oh, that sounds just like her, but can you take it just a little deeper? Drop your register just a little bit.' So he works with me on the characters and it's good to have that because my voice sounds different in my head. So he's sort of my feedback loop. And then I'm an outside enactor like I was never method, where you go inside, and try to find some memory, and attach it. I've always been like, if you put your body and face into the shape, you'll feel the thing that your body is in the shape of. So the way I set characters is with a stance and a facial expression. So if I get into a certain position and hold my face a certain way, that voice just comes out because that's what I have the character attached to. So I'm sure it looks bizarre to my sound editor and director when I'm in there doing a scene with a bunch of different people talking as I fold myself into different shapes and make these weird facial expressions, but it works.Jess:                                     21:30                    That's really interesting. What that reminds me of - I was lucky enough to see Bradley Cooper play The Elephant Man. And at the very, very beginning, he walks out to the middle of the stage to center stage as just a guy, as Bradley Cooper. But he becomes the character by changing his body shape, that's how he does it. And he does it right in front of you so that you can see it happen. And it's a really cool thing. I think you should totally set up some videos so we can see what it looks like. .Joshilyn:                              22:00                    I would rather not see it myself. I don't want to feel self conscious about it because it works and maybe I don't want to see that.Jess:                                     22:10                    Well, so the next question I have then is now that you do all this narration, do you hear your characters as you write them?Joshilyn:                              22:19                    I guess, but I always have. And I mean, the kind of stuff I'm talking about with setting voices, that takes a lot longer for a book I didn't write. For a book I did write, I know what these people sound like in my head and I just try to approximate that with the voice and the range that I have. Which you know, is getting harder as I get older. In another 10 years I probably won't have the vocal elasticity to do my side gig anymore. So I'm trying to do a few more because I love it. I'm doing a few more a year than I used to, just to be able to do it while I can. Because you really do need some good elasticity and I'm not willing to give up drinking or fried food entirely and coddle my vocal chords to try and get another five years out of them.Jess:                                     23:11                    Can you tell ahead of time when a line is not going to work? KJ and I talked about this because we were lucky enough to be able to record our nonfiction books. And other friends and advisors have done the same - where you hit a line (and I used to be a speech writer as well) and I remember specifically I wrote a speech for a governor and we got to rehearsal with the prompter and there was just a line and he was like, 'This is never gonna come out right.' It's just not coming out of my mouth right. Do you ever hear that when you're writing or do you just not worry about that?Joshilyn:                              23:44                    I definitely it when I'm writing because I read aloud to myself as a writer. Like especially dialogue, I'll read it out loud while I'm writing. I mutter and talk while I'm writing. And if a paragraph doesn't sound right or I'm having trouble with it, I'll read it aloud and sometimes I edit aloud. I'll just change it mid-sentence to make it sound better and then just write down what I heard myself say.Jess:                                     24:12                    I will say, over my 20 years as an English teacher, I have told my students over and over and over again, if you want really good editing, if you would like to really get your paper clean, you've got to read it out loud.Joshilyn:                              24:24                    So smart. And just speaking as an audio book reader, as a person who reads them aloud, and I listen to them obsessively. You can tell the people who don't read their work aloud from the people who do. Not that it's that huge of a difference where now the book's not good or anything like that. But like people who read them aloud have so much less unintentional, internal rhyme. When you're just looking at words, you can write a sentence like Mike took the bike down the street with his friend Rike and they ate a pipe. You don't hear it cause it's visual and you don't see it. But then when you were listening to an audio book, I'll hear a string of rhymes and I'll be like, 'That person did not read their book out loud.'Jess:                                     25:07                    Well, and actually when we interviewed Steven Strogatz about his book that just came out recently about calculus that's just beautiful. He said that he dictates when he writes and he found his last line of his book because of the rhythm, cause he was walking at the time. And so that rhythm then made it into his writing because it was spoken in the first place and not because it was just his fingers dancing across the keyboard. So I find it fascinating. And Sarina Bowen also uses dictation software as well and our guest Karen Kolpe that we interviewed just recently also uses dictation software. So, I'm always curious about the difference between dictation and just writing with your hands and being able to hear those things and how that changes your work. So that is fascinating to me. It had never occurred to me that maybe I would be writing in rhymes unintentionally.Joshilyn:                              26:02                    Yeah, I've never tried to use dictation software, but maybe I should because I listen so much. It's weird; I tried to be a playwright for a while and I'm not a very good playwright to be honest, because I'm not willing to leave that room. Like a play should be a framework where a director can come in and do things and then there's room for actors to come in and do things so that it's a different play every time. And I'm just obsessively (and I'm not saying I have control issues, but I have control issues) and writing a play, I've just always felt I was trying to lock stuff down and make it be the way it is in my head. And it felt like the whole front of my head would heat up. Whereas when I'm acting or when I'm writing a novel and I am in control of what I do, even though of course you're being reactive, I feel like it's coming from the occipital lobe. It feels like it comes from a different place in my brain.Jess:                                     27:08                    That's so interesting. There was an interview a long time ago that I heard with Michael Ondaatje and he said he does not hear his work at all, he only sees it. And it's very difficult for me, I don't hear my work either. I do nonfiction though, so maybe it's different. But for me it's very visual and not sound related. So it's always fascinating to get into the head of someone who writes differently. Like I just don't hear it.Joshilyn:                              27:34                    Yeah, that's interesting. If I'm engaging it just in the terms of the visual, it's not going to get where I need it to be.Jess:                                     27:45                    One of the things you did for for this most recent book (a central thing in this book is scuba diving) and this was something you had never done before, right?Joshilyn:                              27:56                    No, never.Jess:                                     27:59                    So how did you even, not having had the experience, I just assumed when I listened to the book that Oh, that's something she does and isn't that cool? She knows what the words are, but how did you even know that was going to be a thing if you had never done it before?Joshilyn:                              28:15                    Amy was always a scuba diver, I wanted the metaphor. The ocean was so perfect for what I was doing in terms of like, (if you've ever dropped your sunglasses off a boat, you know the ocean can hide anything) you're never getting those back. In terms of being like this massive place where you can put things that you are just gone forever and also being kind of an entity with its own breath, so that your secrets are sort of housed in this living system. There were lots of metaphors that I wanted that scuba diving gave me and so I watched YouTube videos and did some interviews and I was like, I'm not getting this. I went to my husband and I said, 'Hey baby, it's about time for my midlife crisis and I need to learn to scuba dive for this book. I think my midlife crisis is going to be scuba diving. Would you like to have it with me?' He'd already had his midlife crisis - he learned to play the bass and joined a band. But he was like, 'Yeah, I'll do yours with you. That sounds really fun. If the other choice is an oiled cabana boy, I say scuba diving.' So we started diving and it really changed the book. I knew that Amy (Amy's my narrator, the protagonist, the scuba diving instructor), she's the one who has sort of the dark past and she's entirely reinvented herself. And you know, I wanted that baptismal imagery - go into the water, come up a different person. She's very self-destructive after she does this kind of terrible thing, she almost doesn't survive it. she has so much guilt. And then she sort of navigates her own understanding of grace and she reinvents herself and finds a life she can sustain. But I needed something to be the pivot that she uses to save herself. And I tried a bunch of different things and scuba diving was also in there. And then after I was diving, I was like, I don't need anything else. This is what saves her. Because it's so, it's like yoga plus plus - it is meditation, it is prayer, you cannot project into the future, you cannot worry about the past, it grounds you entirely in the present. You actually use your own breath. Like once you have a good technical ability to dive, once you've practiced enough and you're not fussing with your equipment all the time and you really understand how to get neutrally buoyant in the water, you actually change levels in the water and aim yourself just using your own breath. So it's your breath inside the ocean's breath. It is, it's also like super fun.Jess:                                     31:02                    I loved the idea of someone finding freedom in an activity that many people would find completely claustrophobic and closed in. So there was something really interesting about scuba diving as a metaphor. (as I also scuba dive) Something that a lot of people wouldn't be able to bear because it would feel too close. For her, it's exactly that that gives her the freedom. I really loved that metaphor. Well, one of the things I wanted to say about this book - so KJ and I talk all the time about people's ability to a) stick the landing on books, and b) surprise us. Well, the surprise thing I can attest to because I was listening to it as I was before I went to sleep last night and I had headphones on and my husband was reading something else and I got really upset and I said, 'Oh, well, duh. I figured that out a while ago.' And then you totally tricked me, you completely messed with my head. I thought I was ahead of you and you were so ahead of me. And I love that. I mean, the ability to be surprised is huge, it's especially huge for me because there's so many books (KJ can attest to this) that I have thrown. I've joked about throwing books across the room because I get so angry at formulas that make me feel dumb as a reader. And you made me feel like - you had me.Joshilyn:                              34:45                    Oh good. I'm glad I enjoy a plot twist.KJ:                                        34:49                    How much of that do you set up ahead of time and how has that evolved over the course of nine books?Joshilyn:                              34:59                    So this was my first book that is really leaning hard into domestic noir.KJ:                                        35:05                    I would agree that this is twistier, and I can actually only go back to The Almost Sisters, but that one's pretty twisty, too.Joshilyn:                              35:15                    Yeah. I always use the engine of a murder mystery or a thriller (sometimes to greater degrees than others) plot twists because I enjoy it. But, really the only thing that's changed in terms of genre is the stakes and the pacing. The stakes are super high, I don't know how to explain it, it really is just about stakes raising. It's still my voice, my kinds of fierce, female characters who act instead of reacting, my thematic things I'm always interested in, you know, I'm always writing about redemption and motherhood. So, I would agree with you. But for me, the plot is the thing that comes last. The plot is the cookie. I understand what I want to address thematically very, very well. I understand these characters down to their bones. Sometimes I think about characters for years before I write them. I've been thinking about Rue and for a vehicle to write Rue for more than seven years and she was a hard person to place because she's difficult. You wouldn't want a place in your life. She's a nightmare, but she's a very interesting nightmare. So, I know the characters, I know the stakes, I know the themes, and the plot is the cookie. I try to play fair, too. Like something will happen and it'll really surprise me and then I go back and edit and put in clues and foreshadowing and I'm good at it. I have a facility for this. I think as writers, we all have things that we're good at and things that we really struggle with. I'm good at crafting those kind of plot twists. That's the thing that comes easily to me, because it's fun and I'm surprising myself, too. And I try to play fair so that at least some readers will catch onto what I'm doing. Or if you go back and read it a second time, you're like, 'Oh, right there. She practically tells me right there.' But you slide it into these little moments where you're describing a car and nobody's paying attention or you know, there's all kinds of tricks you can do to misdirect. It's like a magician's sleight of hand with coins. They do everything, they just got you looking at the wrong place when they do the thing.KJ:                                        37:35                    I'm at the stage of a revision where I have a list of about six things that I just need to go back and make sure are properly set up. And it doesn't take that much, you know? I did read something recently where a character very suddenly took a turn that I really was like, 'What, what?' There was like one warning of this and none of the warning came from the character. So it yanked me, and you have to find that line where you've given people enough preparation that they aren't pulled out of the story by wait a minute, is this consistent with what happened before?Joshilyn:                              38:22                    Flannery O'Connor says you have to get to an end that feels inevitable, yet surprising. And I love her.Jess:                                     38:36                    It's so funny you guys are saying that about fiction because that's what I'm working on right now. Even in nonfiction where I have two chapters and they're sort of two chapters that really go together and one was submitted with my proposal, so I wrote that a long time ago. And then the other one I just finished. So I have them now side by side because I need to plant seeds for one in the other, in order for the reader to be led a bit down a path and for things to at least feel like I've prepared them a little bit for what's coming next. And I love that part of the process. I love it. You know, with nonfiction it's not really about hints, but it is, it is anyway, it's narrative hinting, even though it's nonfiction. I love that.Joshilyn:                              39:23                    Yeah. I think that's really actually cool that that translates into nonfiction. That's really interesting.KJ:                                        39:33                    If there aren't a bunch of through lines, then you just get a bunch of different stories.Jess:                                     39:47                    Well, and it's funny that you were talking about hearing and I said I don't hear my work, but that's actually not true because I always try to end on a major chord. You know, there's that sort of resolution to a major chord at the end where your reader can go, 'Ah, okay. Yeah, it feels good.' And so I do hear that little bit. I try to come back to a major chord at the end of a chapter so that I leave my reader feeling at least not like they're, you know, hanging there on a dissonant note and that I've just dumped them off the edge. So there is a little bit of sound there.KJ:                                        40:20                    Let's hope we've left our listeners on a major chord at this point. It's think it's time to shift gears and talk about what we've been reading.Jess:                                     40:32                    Please share with us - you first.Joshilyn:                              40:35                    I always have a book and an audio book going. And can I do a little commercial for Libro FM? So the way I get my audio books is through a service called Libro FM, which it's just like any other subscription service. You know, you get a credit every month, and your credits never expire, and it costs exactly the same, but it benefits your local independent book seller. You choose the store you want to shop through. So of course I'm all over that. So I was listening to Gretchen by Shannon Kirk and this is some next level WTF. Like I loved this book. It is so smart. Like I don't even know if it's a thriller, it verges on horror. But, then I loved the character so much and the character of Gretchen - I dream about, it's really good. It's about a young woman who's on the run with her mother and they have hidden identities and they move into this little shack. And then they have to leave and they're on the run again. And the girl next door is named Gretchen and she finds herself involved in this (puzzles are a big metaphor) game with Gretchen that has these very far reaching consequences.Jess:                                     42:02                    I'm on their website right now getting this book, I'm so excited.Joshilyn:                              42:08                    And then the book I just finished reading with my eyes is called The Better Liar by Tanen Jones. It doesn't come out till January. Here's what I liked about it - it's a thriller, it's suspense, which I really like, but it's fun. Like the plot is fun and twisty and sinister, but she's doing something so smart and so emotionally resonant just under the surface. I went to it for like a fun, twisty read and it is - I got that. But at the end I was not just like, 'Whoa, what the twists.' I was like, 'Whoa, Holy crap.' There was an emotional surprise. It's about a woman who has to appear with her, estranged sister to claim her inheritance and she has reasons for needing the money. And when she goes to find her sister (who's a troubled person) she finds her body, but she meets somebody else who looks like her sister, but who has secrets of her own, and they go to try and claim this inheritance. It is great.Jess:                                     43:26                    Oh, that is a great premise. I'm going to have to buy that one, too.Joshilyn:                              43:32                    I just finished both of those and I just started Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman and it's great so far, which is completely unsurprising because I've never read a Laura Lippman book and gone, 'Oh well that was disappointing.' She's so good and I'm loving it so far.Jess:                                     43:49                    Okay. KJ, you're up. What have you been reading?KJ:                                        43:52                    I have not been reading anything, to be honest. I'm in the middle of something that I like, but I'll wait until we finish it. I'm in the middle of Range by David Epstein, which we've talked about before. I'm rereading, I'm doing a lot of rereading right now. I have a list of like fresh books I read this year and I was thinking I should make a list of books I actually reread, too.Jess:                                     44:17                    I have been joking around on our text trio that I have been (because my brain is so occupied right now with getting to my deadline and this book) that I've been doing a lot of re-listening. And my re-listening choices have been Sarina Bowen books. And so every once in awhile I'll text Sarina with some observation about some characters she wrote like eight years ago. And it's just really comforting.KJ:                                        44:46                    It occurs to me that I did forget to mention that I might have just read a book called Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson.Jess:                                     44:57                    I was just about to say that exact thing.KJ:                                        44:59                    So, I did just read an entire novel. Which normally would've been what I put on #AmReading. And it is great, and it is twisty, and it is turny, and it is satisfying, it's really satisfying.Jess:                                     45:16                    I really, really love it. And while I have you, I do have to ask you one quick question, Joshilyn, did the title come first or did the premise come first?Joshilyn:                              45:25                    The premise came first. In fact, I had almost finished the book with a completely different title that I don't remember, it wasn't a great title. And my friend Sarah Gruin was like, 'Why aren't you calling this Never Have I Ever? I was like, 'Oh, I don't know. You're so right. That's obviously the title. Nevermind.'Jess:                                     45:48                    I love that because ever since I started the book that was kind of one of my first questions. I wrote it on the inside flap - which came first, the cover or the title or the premise - because it's great. Both of them are great. I also have been listening to Emily Nussbaum, who's the television critic at the New Yorker. She has a book called I Like To Watch and it's all about being a television critic, which is something I don't think I would do, but I'm fascinated by the job. I'm fascinated that the job exists and I'm a huge fan of Emily Nussbaum to begin with. So I'm loving this and this is a book that you can read in chunks because it's sorta like essay, more essay format. And it's really lovely, which is not surprising because Emily Nussbaum is a lovely writer, so I recommend that so far, I'm not done with it either. Alright. An independent bookseller?Joshilyn:                              46:42                    I live in Decatur, Georgia and we have so many Indies. They're my favorite things to visit when I travel. I live like four blocks from EagleEye, so that's my walk up and get a book independent. And then down on the square there's a store called Little Shop of Stories, which is a kid's shop. It's like an independent that just sells children books and a lot of YA, but they have

We hit teenage Polina years as we discuss her pick Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). She shares that this was a view of the adult life she wanted at the time. Diana had to reconcile Michael Caine in a romantic context. Thanks to our sponsor Frankie & Myrrh! Save 20% by using promo code “HAPPILY” on their selection of aroma therapy products and at the same time, you support the show! Polina references Emily Nussbaum’s interview on Fresh Air and her book I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution, and her essay Confessionals of a Human Shield, available in her book. She also references Rebecca Solnit’s essay Men Explain Things to Me, Facts Didn't Get in Their Way. Between two Thanksgivings two years apart, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly. Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey, Dianne Wiest, Michael Caine, Max von Sydow, Woody Allen, Carrie Fisher, Sam Waterston, Maureen O'Sullivan, Lloyd Nolan, Lewis Black, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Christian Clemenson, Julie Kavner, J.T. Walsh, John Turturro, and Richard Jenkins. (from IMDb.com) Find other amazing podcasts by searching #ladypodsquad on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and all the social media platforms. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @HEAMCast, like us on Facebook @HappilyEverAftermath, and e-mail us at contact@heamcast.com.

In Episode 105, Flourish and Elizabeth talk to Emily Nussbaum, television critic for The New Yorker, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, and the author of I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution. The conversation focuses on the technological changes that have shaped television over the past two decades—and how those changes have altered the way we watch, discuss, and talk about it in turn. They then discuss a related listener letter on mismatched expectations between TV creators and audiences.

On today's show, we interview one of our favorite writers and thinkers, Emily Nussbaum, the Pulitzer prize-winning TV critic for the New Yorker. Nussbaum is the author of a new collection of essays called “I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution”, released last month. The book is full of language she thinks we're lacking in this so-called Quality Television era: language about unabashedly loving the TV shows you love, without being shamed into calling them “guilty pleasures” by snooty cultural gatekeepers. Nussbaum talks to Mother Jones assistant news editor, Becca Andrews, about being Jane the Virgin mega-fans, and the messy task of critics who need to wrestle with certain male artists as the MeToo era forces painful new assessments of their work.

Look! Up in the sky! Is it really more like a novel? Is it more like a 10-hour movie? No, it's TV! In her first book, I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution (Penguin Random House), critic Emily Nussbaum celebrates TV as TV, exploring the unique aspects of the form and helping TV viewers get over status anxiety. We talk about the satisfying/horrifying experience of culling her past reviews and profiles for the book, the audience-oriented nature of TV storytelling, whether it's important for a well-loved show to nail the finale, and the dual influences of The Sopranos and Buffy the Vampire Slayer on her work as a critic. We also get into her Peak TV moment, how technology has changed TV over the decades, the only time she predicted the upcoming season's TV hits (Lost and Desperate Housewives), her theory that most workplace shows are actually about TV writing rooms, the difference between weekly and binge-released shows, the perils of writing profiles of the people she's reviewed, and the challenge of being a funny writer who wants to make serious points. We also get into the question of how (whether?) to separate the artist from the art in the #metoo era, and how she deals with the fact that much of her sense of humor came from watching and reading Woody Allen throughout her youth. On the lighter side, she tells us her favorite songs from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and I reveal the '90s show that I binged on 200+ episodes of last year! • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

This week, Liberty and Rebecca discuss The Way Through the Woods, Lock Every Door, Symptoms of a Heartbreak, and more great books. This episode was sponsored by the Versify podcast, Simon & Schuster and The Best Lies, and Sourcebooks and Kingdom of Exiles. Pick up an All the Books! 200th episode commemorative item here. Subscribe to All the Books! using RSS, iTunes, or Spotify and never miss a beat book. Sign up for the weekly New Books! newsletter for even more new book news. Books discussed on the show: Second Sight: A Novel by Aoife Clifford I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum Lock Every Door: A Novel by Riley Sager The Way Through the Woods: On Mushrooms and Mourning by Litt Woon Long and Barbara J. Haveland Symptoms of a Heartbreak by Sona Charaipotra Casting into the Light: Tales of a Fishing Life by Janet Messineo Girls Like Us by Cristina Alger  In at the Deep End by Kate Davies What we're reading: Erosion: Essays of Undoing by Terry Tempest Williams From Hell to Breakfast by Meghan Tifft More books out this week: Sealed by Naomi Booth Under the Cold Bright Lights by Garry Disher Layover by David Bell  Surfside Sisters: A Novel by Nancy Thayer  Betrayal in Time: A Novel (Kendra Donovan Mysteries) by Julie McElwain  The Tribe (Paperbacks from Hell) by Bari Wood The Twelve by Cindy Lin The Plus One by Sarah Archer Unsung Heroine (Heroine Complex) by Sarah Kuhn   Whisper Network by Chandler Baker Buzz, Sting, Bite: Why We Need Insects by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson The Gifted School: A Novel by Bruce Holsinger  American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century by Maureen Callahan  Never Look Back by Alison Gaylin Maggie Brown & Others by Peter Orner We Went to the Woods: A Novel by Caite Dolan-Leach The Wind That Lays Waste by Selva Almada The Ghost Clause by Howard Norman The Big Book of Classic Fantasy by Ann Vandermeer and Jeff VanderMeer In Oceans Deep: Courage, Innovation, and Adventure Beneath the Waves by Bill Streever  Pretty Revenge by Emily Liebert They Could Have Named Her Anything: A Novel by Stephanie Jimenez Mixed-Race Superman: Keanu, Obama, and Multiracial Experience by Will Harris Temper by Layne Fargo Stone Cold Heart: A Novel by Caz Frear Growing Things and Other Stories by Paul Tremblay Deep River by Karl Marlantes Big Cabin by Ron Padgett  Very Nice: A Novel by Marcy Dermansky We Came Here to Forget: A Novel by Andrea Dunlop A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio, Ann Goldstein (Translator) Chimes of a Lost Cathedral (Revolution of Marina M.) by Janet Fitch Tell Me Who We Were by Kate McQuade Dragonslayer (The Dragonslayer) by Duncan M. Hamilton  In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond: In Search of the Sasquatch by John Zada The Flight Girls by Noelle Salazar  The Best Lies by Sarah Lyu Across the Void: A Novel by S.K. Vaughn Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun by Guillermo del Toro, Cornelia Funke

This week, Liberty and Rincey discuss The Gone Dead, Evvie Drake Starts Over, Big Sky, and more great books. This episode was sponsored by Libro.fm, The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs by Katherine Howe, and FabFitFun. Pick up an All the Books! 200th episode commemorative item here. Subscribe to All the Books! using RSS, iTunes, or Spotify and never miss a beat book. Sign up for the weekly New Books! newsletter for even more new book news. Books discussed on the show: Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes The Gone Dead: A Novel by Chanelle Benz Big Sky by Kate Atkinson The Great Unexpected by Dan Mooney Wicked Fox by Kat Cho The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India's Quest for Independence by Anita Anand The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone by Felicity McLean Murder in the Crooked House by Soji Shimada and Louise Heal Kawai What we're reading: They All Fall Down by Rachel Howzell Hall Initiated: Memoir of a Witch by Amanda Yates Garcia More books out this week: Cygnet: A Novel by Season Butler The Snakes by Sadie Jones A Family of Strangers by Emilie Richards Finding Mrs. Ford by Deborah Goodrich Royce Call It What You Want by Brigid Kemmerer The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs: A Novel by Katherine Howe This Is Not a T-Shirt: A Brand, a Culture, a Community--a Life in Streetwear by Bobby Hundreds The Drama of Celebrity by Sharon Marcus A Nearly Normal Family: A Novel by M.T. Edvardsson and Rachel Willson-Broyles Dear Wife by Kimberly Belle Paranoid by Lisa Jackson The Journal I Did Not Keep: New and Selected Writing by Lore Segal This Wicked Tongue by Elise Levine The Not Good Enough Mother by Sharon Lamb Here Is What You Do: Stories by Chris Dennis Dressed in Dreams: A Black Girl's Love Letter to the Power of Fashion by Tanisha C. Ford The Virtue of Sin by Shannon Schuren Queen of the Sea by Dylan Meconis Twisted Family Values by V.C. Chickering How Could She: A Novel by Lauren Mechling The Last Collection: A Novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel by Jeanne Mackin That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile by Azar Nafisi, Lotfali Khonji (Translator) The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast by Andrew Blum Emperors of the Deep: The Ocean’s Most Mysterious, Most Misunderstood, and Most Important Guardians by William McKeever The Friend: A Novel by Joakim Zander Escape from Earth: A Secret History of the Space Rocket by Fraser MacDonald Beyond the Limit by Cindy Dees Project Duchess by Sabrina Jeffries Say No to the Duke: The Wildes of Lindow Castle by Eloisa James Sweet Heat by Zuri Day Slow Dancing at Sunrise by Jo McNally Dating by the Book by Mary Ann Marlowe Kingdom of Exiles by Maxym Martineau Once Upon a Bad Boy by Melonie Johnson Gone Too Long: A Novel by Lori Roy Technically, You Started It by Lana Wood Johnson The Iron Dragon’s Mother by Michael Swanwick Hexarchate Stories by Yoon Ha Lee After the End by Clare Mackintosh The Orphan's Song by Lauren Kate I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite