PHILLY — Really hit close to home, this one, especially with how dang nippy out it's getting; feeling of late like hibernation is just about all I'm up for. Otessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), her fourth book and second novel, is about a mid-twenties Manhattanite intent on blocking out the world by ingesting an increasingly harrowing cocktail of sedatives. Read it last week, mostly lying on my side, on my couch, on Benadryl, but also walking places, in the daytime, in the cold. In this episode, which I recorded at 7 a.m. while walking to the dentist, I get into why this character wants to block out the world and whether she's able to find her way back into the world. Also: my shifting affinities towards character-driven rather than auto-fictional writing. And: how being an alt bro doesn't change the fact that you're still, physiologically and temperamentally, a bro.

Sean Thor Conroe has written stories for X-R-A-Y (http://x-r-a-y.com/author/sean-thor-conroe/) and has another coming soon from Soft Cartel. He lives on twitter at http://twitter.com/stconroe and in Philadelphia, where he works on his health.