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How does writing make you a better reader? Easy: turn a book report into a creative engagement that deepens your attention span and your meaning-making capacity. My guest shows us how she's reimagined an elementary-school assignment into a new way to read and connect with others, inspired by Jenny O'Dell's book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy.  Christie George is a writer, curator and producer who has been working at the intersection of media, technology and social change for 25 years. She distributed independent films at Women Make Movies, she is the former President of New Media Ventures and the founding principal of The Togethering Lab. She writes a newsletter about creative practice called Practice Practice and is the author of The Emergency Was Curiosity, an illustrated book report, exhibition and event series focused on cultivating individual and collective creative attention.    You can catch up with Christie and any of the places below. But if you're lucky enough to be in the Bay Area on October 18, you can join her symposium:  A Life of Their Own. She calls it a gathering for people who beat up their books.    Links christiemgeorge.com emergencwascuriosity.com https://thepracticepractice.substack.com/   Here at the podcast, we welcome your responses and recommendations. You can catch us at our Instagram, or email us: [email protected].

It's the 25th anniversary of a combination literary hoax and totem of the "Just Say No" campaign, with a bit of "satanic panic" tossed in for color. Welcome to Go Ask Alice, the supposedly anonymous, supposed journal of a good girl whose life is ruined by drugs (that somehow makes drugs sound great). Join my guests and I as we try to take this book seriously for our final installment of Gen X Summer School.  My "guest lecturers" for Gen X Summer School: Jen Capra is an Emmy nominated Sesame Street writer, aspiring author, and content creator-slash-professional starving artist. You can find her at JenCapra.com, as well as @genxistentialcrisis on TikTok.  Patrick Harrigan is the author of the novel Lost Clusters and the short story collections Thin Times and Thin Places, The Lecture Tour and On Tour Forever, and has had other work published by The MIT Press, Camden House, Fantasy Flight Games, Chaosium, Pagan Publishing, the HP Lovecraft Film Festival, and others. His new novella, "The Tristans, by Isobel Chase Montgomery" is now available from Amazon, and his series of weird microfictions, "The Sunday Scaries" appears weekly at GhoulishDelights.com .  Michael McDunnah is a long-time communications professional who writes about film and television at unaffiliatedcritic.com, and co-hosts The Unenthusiastic Critic podcast. He lives in Chicago.  And as always, you can find more about the podcast on Instagram, or contact us directly at [email protected]

Who let us read this stuff?! It's the Gen X classic Flowers in the Attic, V.C. Andrews's introduction to puberty with a side of incest, wrapped in a faux-gothic nightmare. Join my guests for a rip-roaring ride through this book that got passed from girl clique to girl clique, and influenced a generation. My "guest lecturers" for Summer School: Jen Capra is an Emmy nominated Sesame Street writer, aspiring author, and content creator-slash-professional starving artist. You can find her at , as well as @genxistentialcrisis on TikTok.  Patrick Harrigan is the author of the novel Lost Clusters and the short story collections Thin Times and Thin Places, The Lecture Tour and On Tour Forever, and has had other work published by The MIT Press, Camden House, Fantasy Flight Games, Chaosium, Pagan Publishing, the HP Lovecraft Film Festival, and others. His new novella, "The Tristans, by Isobel Chase Montgomery" is now available from Amazon, and his series of weird microfictions, "The Sunday Scaries" appears weekly at GhoulishDelights.com.  And as always, you can find more about the podcast on Instagram, or contact us directly at [email protected]

Stephen King, the father of Generation X's nightmares--and an obvious first class for Gen X Summer School! Join my guests and I as we dig into Night Shift, an early compilation of King's short stories. It includes the material for so many of his later masterpieces (Salem's Lot, Children of the Corn, The Stand), along with many of his misfires (Maximum Overdrive, The Lawnmower Man). Who let us read this stuff? And how did it shape a generation of young readers? My "guest lecturers" for Summer School: Jen Capra is an Emmy nominated Sesame Street writer, aspiring author, and content creator-slash-professional starving artist. You can find her at JenCapra.com, as well as @genxistentialcrisis on TikTok.  Patrick Harrigan is the author of the novel Lost Clusters and the short story collections Thin Times and Thin Places, The Lecture Tour and On Tour Forever, and has had other work published by The MIT Press, Camden House, Fantasy Flight Games, Chaosium, Pagan Publishing, the HP Lovecraft Film Festival, and others. His new novella, "The Tristans, by Isobel Chase Montgomery" is now available from Amazon, and his series of weird microfictions, "The Sunday Scaries" appears weekly at Ghoulishdelights.com. Michael McDunnah is a long-time communications professional who writes about film and television at www.unaffiliatedcritic.com, and co-hosts The Unenthusiastic Critic podcast. He lives in Chicago.  And as always, you can find more about the podcast at our Instagram, or contact us directly at [email protected]

Class is in session! Join us for Gen X Summer School: the books that made feral latchkey children into feral adults with no f's to give. Launching this week!

Has there ever been a more urgent moment to ask ourselves what it means to be human? And how can a novel help us ask that question better? (Hint: there may be clones...) Thankfully, my guest has all of the right questions and interpretations for the book that made him: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.  Jinwoo Park is a Korean Canadian writer and literary translator based in Montreal. Born in Seoul, he has lived across North America and the UK since age 11. He earned his master's in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford in 2015. He won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers' Award in 2021 and the Emerging Translator Award from LTI Korea in 2023. His debut novel, Oxford Soju Club, was longlisted for Canada Reads 2026. You can find his insightful social media posts—about books, writing, Korean and American culture, and more—at the link below, as well as his official, authorial website.  https://www.instagram.com/jinwoopark0721/ jinwoo-park.com And as always, you can find more about the podcast at our Instagram, or contact us directly at [email protected]

Black mermaids?! Say what?! That's just the hook! Join my guest for a deep dive (get it?) into Rivers Solomon's The Deep—a novel that makes a new myth from an American atrocity.  Jasmyne Gilbert (she/her/hers) studies the beliefs and stories that shape society. She believes stories are sources of power and tools for critique and transformation, and amplifies those that imagine deliciously, irresistibly free futures, especially for Black folks. Merging myth, depth psychology, speculative imagination (what-if thinking), and cultural analysis, her research examines the hidden potential of stories to inspire community-building and systemic change. She holds a degree in English from Tuskegee University and is currently pursuing a PhD in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute. You can follow her public research at jasmynegilbert.com  https://substack.com/@jasmynegilbert | https://www.instagram.com/jasmynegilbert/   Our musical inspiration this month comes from the two audioscapes that spawned The Deep's mythology. Drexciya's Afrofuturist techno album Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller, and clipping's song The Deep.    And as always, you can find more about the podcast at our Instagram, or contact us directly at [email protected]

Everything is terrible! How do we wake up every morning and keep going? My guest makes the very compelling case for an answer in Albert Camus's existential absurdist classic The Plague (La Peste).  Kevin Gannon is the director of faculty development and a professor of history at Queens University in Charlotte, NC. He's spent almost 30 years in higher education, yet still maintains hope for the future through both rage and love, as Paulo Freire put it. When he's not reading existential literature, you can most likely find him at a baseball game. He's the co-editor of the book The Campus Crisis Toolkit, and you can find him on social media as The Tattooed Prof. To get you in the mood, check out DJ/curator Diego Dela Rosa mixtape Trust. And as always, you can find more about the podcast at our Instagram, or contact us directly at [email protected]

If you've ever dreamed of doing the extraordinary, but thought it was too late, this episode is for you. Meet Dorothy Gilman's The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, who decides, in her 60s, to pursue a life-long dream of becoming a spy. In addition to digging into the life lessons of the novel, my guests tell us what it's like to have a book shared across a family, and with the person you love.  Sara Scrimshaw has proudly used her liberal arts degrees in history and dance, working in historic house museums/gardens and as a dancer. Sara currently oversees programs at Greystone Mansion & Gardens and performs with Deborah Rosen & Dancers, and she recently co-executive produced the independent film DEAD MEDIA. Despite doing a report on Albania in 5th grade after reading The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, she has yet to visit the country in person. You can find her as @scrimstreet at Bluesky and Instagram.  Joseph Scrimshaw is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles, originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has many years of experience as a writer, director, actor, comedian, and producer in multiple mediums. He's written for Adult Swim's fantasy comedy TV show, Tigtone, the movie-riffing group, RiffTrax, the scripted podcast, Getting On With James Urbaniak, and more. Joseph's plays Adventures in Mating, An Inconvenient Squirrel, and My Monster (written with Bill Corbett) have been performed worldwide. He's also the co-host of the popular Star Wars podcast, ForceCenter. His first feature film, the horror movie Dead Media, is currently playing in film festivals and planning future screenings. Learn more about Joseph at josephscrimshaw.com The Scrimshaws are Angelenos, but Minnesotans at heart. Don't forget to check out standwithminnesota.com to support the ongoing work in Minneapolis and environs.  And finally: DJ Diego Dela Rosa has their patented Mixtape, inspired by Mrs. Pollifax over at Spotify. Give This Mixtape Made Me: Fortify a listen! As always, you can send feedback and ideas via our Instagram or via email at [email protected].

Wuthering Heights is coming! The movie, anyway. What do you need to know about the book, and why has it become such a cultural touchstone? Lucky for us, my friend Dr. Julie Townsend joins me for a re-read of Emily Brontë's 1847 novel. We dig into the book itself, and puzzle over the continued popularity of Wuthering Heights as a romance, in anticipation of Emerald Fennell's upcoming movie.  Julie Townsend is Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities in the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies at the University of Redlands. She is author of The Choreography of Modernism in France and currently experiments with performance art practices in the humanities classroom. She is also the co-founder of Best College Path, which offers students personalized guidance through the college admissions process.  Meanwhile, to get you in the mood, DJ/curator Diego Dela Rosa has put together a very special, Wuthering Heights-inspired playlist, for your tempestuous, romantical listening needs. And as always, you can find more about the podcast at our Instagram,  or contact us directly at [email protected]

Do you think you know Los Angeles? Beyond the fantasy images that television and movies have fed us for decades, there is an even more magical city that lives with the people and places outside the media view. In this episode, my marvelous guest shares the book that showed her THIS Los Angeles: Francesca Lia Block's Weetzie Bat.  My guest, Sara Benincasa, is an actress, comedian, TV writer (Mystery Science Theater 3000) and the author of the forthcoming presidential biography ABRAHAM F***ING LINCOLN. Past titles include REAL ARTISTS HAVE DAY JOBS, AGORAFABULOUS!, DC TRIP,  and GREAT. And lucky us, she's also on tour! See if she's coming to your town in December and January by checking out her calendar here.    And while you're at it, don't forget the very special playlist from our California native DJ/music curator Diego Dela Rosa, with their mixtape for a magical, queer LA.    As always, you can find more about the podcast at our Instagram,  or contact us directly at [email protected]

We took the podcast on tour, and we learned so many things about the state of reading! In this episode, we report back from the inaugural Enchanted Realms Fantasy Book Festival in Los Angeles. DJ Diego Dela Rosa and I discuss what we learned about fantasy readers and the community they create, we share some interviews from the folks who attended, and I talk with Brooke Cantrall, the creator of the festival (which is now a rebranded fantasy events business called Dragons and Dreams).  We mention a fun personality quiz that we set up for the event, where we asked folks to choose the fantasy character archetype that best describes them. And DJ Diego curated a bespoke playlist for each! You can play along at home: choose the archetype that fits you best, and then mosey over to Spotify to hear your playlist. Here are your options:  The Crown, The Shadow, The Pen, The Rose, The Sword.   You can find these links, as well as book recs from the Enchanted Realms attendees, at our Instagram. As always you can contact us directly at [email protected]

Why do we read hard books anymore? Is it worth the time and effort? My guest is here to make the case for how hard books make us better readers, and help us connect to other books and other people. (In fact, a book can read us. Yep. You heard that right!) Bill McDonald grew up in SoCal, where both his parents and most of his relatives were teachers, and he was not a rebellious child. More-or-less educated at Colgate and The Claremont Graduate School, and then by four years of college teaching in downstate Illinois, Bill and his wife Dolores came back to California to help found Johnston College at the University of Redlands in 1969, where his interdisciplinary training in religion, philosophy, and literature proved to be of maximum utility. He's now twenty years retired from U of R's English department and the Hunsaker Chair in Distinguished Teaching, and sort of retired from Johnston. He says: "Retirement's a military trope: I've stepped away from the front lines but continue soldiering on with alumni and development work and teaching one-two courses a year." He's written a couple of books, including one on Thomas Mann, and co-authored, edited/co-edited several others with Johnston alums and colleagues, but at heart he's a co-learner who has taken delight in sixty years in "unsolitary reading" with generations of college students. Don't forget this month's mixtape, courtesy of DJ Diego Dela Rosa, titled: This Mixtape Made Me Ponder. As always, you can find more about the podcast and host at our Instagram, or contact us directly at [email protected]

If you're finding yourself shellshocked and paralyzed by the times that we're living through, you're not alone! It's a great time to remember how art, and especially literature, can remind us that there are many possible futures, and reconnect us to our agency.  In this short episode, you'll hear a "book playlist" of speculative fiction that I turn to when I'm feeling despair about the world. On the list: R.F. Kuang's Babel, Kelly Barnhill's When Women Were Dragons, Chris Adrian's The Children's Hospital, and N.K. Jemisin's duology The City We Became/The World We Make.  And an extra bonus: DJ Diego Dela Rosa is back with a curated mixtape "This Playlist Made Me Resist." You can find it on Spotify.  Let us know what books keep you going in these times! Drop us your greatest hits at our Instagram page , or contact us directly at [email protected].

A small book can pack a big punch, and Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke, is a terrific example of this phenomenon. It just might make you see the world as a kinder, more magical place. My guest, Liz Andres, lays it all out for us in this episode.  Liz Andres is a museum professional and scholar based in Los Angeles. She holds degrees in Art History, Classical Archaeology, and Museum Studies from U.C. Berkeley and the University of Leicester and is currently pursuing a PhD in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her research focuses on hybrid and liminal creatures in ancient Greek art and mythology, museum taxidermy, and representations of death, myth, and nature in the visual arts. She is a resident mythologist with Morbid Anatomy, and frequent Death Cafe host. Follow her on Instagram or at Lilibet Sugarbones.   As always, you can find more about the podcast and host at our Instagram page , or contact us directly at [email protected]