In this episode of Doug Reads with Friends, Doug talks with Erik Simpson, Professor of English at Grinnell College and one of Doug’s dearest friends from his years in Grinnell. Erik chose Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, giving Doug a long-overdue first read of one of the most beloved novels in English. Their conversation begins with Erik’s work in book arts, paper engineering, teaching, bird photography, and the strange habits of professional readers, before turning to Austen, rereading, Darcy’s listening, Elizabeth’s changing judgment, whether the novel is feminist, and why Charlotte Lucas may be one of the book’s most important characters. Along the way, Erik does what great teachers do: he takes a sentence, a small moment, or a strange detail and opens it up into something much richer.

Next time: Graciela Guzman and The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler.

Music by Eiren Caffall. Please check out her music on Spotify and visit her website at https://www.eirencaffall.com/.

Chapters:
0:00 INTRO: Erik Simpson, friendship, and Pride and Prejudice
2:13 Paper engineering, book arts, and making books physical
8:42 Reading on paper, ebooks, and audiobooks
11:35 Birds, photography, and becoming a cliché
13:11 Start small, start strange: Erik as a professional reader
18:08 Growing up with books and becoming an English professor
20:11 OK, now the book: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
25:31 Darcy listens, Elizabeth rereads, and Austen’s slow romance
34:19 Feminism, neurodivergent Darcy, and Charlotte Lucas’s choice
41:04 Bath, rereading, and a future Austen reunion
43:48 Next time: Graciela Guzman and The Parable of the Sower

Tammy Draughon joins Doug to talk about The Longest Race by Kara Goucher, but the conversation quickly becomes about much more than running. Doug and Tammy look back on nearly 30 years of friendship, beginning as young teachers at Enloe High School, and talk about teaching physics, coaching high school runners, doing hard things, surviving the Boston Marathon bombing, parenting, faith, and the responsibility coaches have to the young people in their care. Then they turn to Goucher’s memoir and its account of abuse, power, silence, and finding one’s voice inside the Nike Oregon Project. It is a conversation about endurance in every sense: in classrooms, on race courses, in families, in faith, and in friendship.

Music by Eiren Caffall. Please check out her music on Spotify and visit her website at https://www.eirencaffall.com/.

Chapters:
00:05 — Tammy Draughon and The Longest Race
01:13 — Thirty years of teaching, physics, and finding a calling
07:42 — Running, coaching, and becoming California Coach of the Year
11:29 — Do Hard Things
16:46 — Coaching herself, marathon training, and Boston goals
20:09 — The Boston Marathon bombing
24:56 — Family, faith, and the empty nest
27:11 — OK, now the book: The Longest Race by Kara Goucher
30:10 — Power, abuse, and finding your voice
35:18 — Reading Kara Goucher as a woman, runner, and coach
39:33 — Boston dreams and racing together

In this episode of Doug Reads With Friends, Doug talks with his oldest friend, Jeremy Hornik, about nearly 50 years of friendship, ridiculous Shakespeare summers, Chicago improv, slot machine design, family, loss, reading, and the pure comic pleasure of Cocktail Time by P.G. Wodehouse. Jeremy’s choice leads to a conversation about books that do not need to be “important” to matter, the serious craft behind unserious delight, and the strange brilliance of Wodehouse’s language, callbacks, country houses, idiot lords, smart servants, and angry swans.

Next time, Doug talks with Tammy Draughon about The Longest Race.

Music for Doug Reads With Friends is by Eiren Caffall; learn more about her work at https://www.eirencaffall.com/.

00:05 INTRO: A hotel apartment, a ceasefire, and an interrupted podcast

03:01 Almost 50 years of friendship

04:33 Stylin’ Mermaid and stupid Shakespeare

07:31 Chicago improv, famous people, and terrible scenes

10:45 From You Don’t Know Jack to slot machines

17:26 Rockababy, family, and remembering Donna

22:07 Reading, Goodreads, rereading, and creative energy

26:18 OK, now the book: Cocktail Time by P.G. Wodehouse

31:43 The serious pleasure of unserious books

35:16 Wodehouse’s language, callbacks, and one angry swan

41:28 Next time: Tammy Draughon and The Longest Race

Ep 7: AI Ethics, PosseLove & Culpability (with Dr. Lana Mahgoub)

A family survives a self-driving car accident. Two people in another car don’t.

From there, everything gets more complicated.

Doug sits down with Dr. Lana Mahgoub—psychologist, author, and longtime member of his Grinnell Posse—to talk about Culpability by Bruce Holsinger, a novel that uses AI not just as a theme, but almost as a character. What begins as a question of who caused an accident quickly turns into something harder: how responsibility works in a world where humans and machines are intertwined.

Along the way, the conversation moves well beyond the book. Lana reflects on her path from Posse scholar to psychologist, what it means to build support systems that actually last, and how those same ideas show up in therapy, parenting, and everyday life. There’s a throughline here about relationships—how they protect us, shape us, and sometimes fail us.

The discussion of AI lands close to home. Lana sees versions of it already in her work, with kids turning to chatbots for connection and answers. The question isn’t whether AI will play a role—it already does. The harder question is what it’s doing to how people think, relate, and make decisions.

There’s also a quieter tension running underneath everything: the instinct to protect—your kids, your patients, yourself—and the reality that you can’t control everything. Not outcomes. Not technology. Not even the people closest to you.

It’s a conversation about responsibility, but also about limits—of systems, of knowledge, and of control.

Chapters

0:00 INTRO: Meet Dr. Lana and the Posse Connection

01:41 What Is Posse—and Why It Still Matters
04:28 From Grinnell to a Career in Psychology
08:01 Starting a Private Practice and Working with Kids
11:27 Parenting, Therapy, and Real Life vs Theory
13:22 Writing a Children’s Book About Anxiety
20:57 OK, now the book: Culpability by Bruce Holsinger
26:20 From the Novel to Real Life: AI, Kids, and Therapy
32:59 Ethics, Responsibility, and What AI Means for Us
38:22 Next time: Jeremy Hornik and Cocktail Time by P. G. Wodehouse

Next: Jeremy Hornik, discussing Cocktail Time by P. G. Wodehouse.

Music by Eiren Caffall. Please check out her music on Spotify.

In this episode of Doug Reads with Friends, I’m joined by my longtime friend and former colleague Hazel Raja. We first met in 2013 when she interviewed me to join NYU Abu Dhabi, and over the years we became not just colleagues, but close friends. In this conversation, we reflect on what it means to build real relationships at work, the blurred lines between being a boss and a friend, and how those relationships can shape us long after we’ve moved on.

Hazel shares her perspective on leadership and career development, including her belief in seeing and supporting the “whole person”—not just the job they do. We also talk about her transition from life in Abu Dhabi to suburban California, what she misses about living abroad, and how becoming a parent has changed the way she thinks about work, time, and presence.

We then turn to the book she chose, This American Woman by Zarna Garg—a funny, candid memoir that opens up deeper conversations about culture, identity, ambition, and the different ways success is defined in American and Indian contexts. We explore how we each experienced the book from our own perspectives, and what it reveals about career paths, family expectations, and gratitude.

As always, the book is just the starting point. This episode is really about friendship, growth, and the stories that shape who we become.

00:00 – Introduction: Friendship First, Book Second
01:54 – Bosses, Boundaries & Blurred Lines
06:00 – Leading the Whole Person
10:38 – Why This Work Matters
13:13 – Abu Dhabi vs Suburban Life
15:58 – Parenting, Presence & Phones
20:53 – The Book: This American Woman
23:12 – Culture, Ambition & Career Paths
27:14 – Humor, Hardship & Perspective
39:26 – Looking Ahead

In the next episode, I’ll be joined by Dr. Lana Mahgoub, one of the members of the Posse I mentored while at Grinnell College. Lana has chosen the novel Culpability by Bruce Holsinger—a compelling, fast-paced story full of secrets and difficult questions. I hope you’ll consider picking up a copy and reading along before that conversation drops.

Music for Doug Reads with Friends by my friend Eiren Caffall. You can find her work on Spotify—please give it a listen and support her music.

What does it take to build a country?

Doug sits down with Ope Awe—Watson Fellow, Schwarzman Scholar, JD/MBA, and one of the most remarkable former students he’s ever worked with—for a conversation about entrepreneurship, governance, and economic development.

They begin with Ope’s journey across South Korea, Brazil, Indonesia, Rwanda, and China, and how those experiences shaped her thinking about what drives real change.

Then they turn to Disrupting Africa by Olufunmilayo Arewa, a powerful and deeply researched book that argues many of today’s challenges—from corruption to weak infrastructure—are rooted in colonial systems designed for extraction.

Along the way: big ideas, real-world examples, and a plan for future gorilla trekking in Rwanda.

Music by Eiren Caffall — https://www.eirencaffall.com/

In this episode of Doug Reads with Friends, Doug is joined by longtime friend John Bowers — a Grinnell alum and visual effects professional based in Los Angeles — for a wide-ranging conversation sparked by his pick, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. They talk about how they first met (through John’s wife, Leighton), John’s path from Teach for America to Hollywood, and the creative puzzle-solving behind visual effects work before turning to the novel itself. Doug came in thinking he knew Frankenstein and left realizing how wrong he was — and how powerful, philosophical, and surprisingly moving the book really is. Together they explore the creature’s loneliness, Victor’s failures, the novel’s language and structure, and why this 200-year-old story still feels deeply relevant.

Music for Doug Reads with Friends is by Eiren Caffall. Learn more about her work at https://www.eirencaffall.com/.

Next time: Doug talks with Ope Awe about Disrupting Africa: Technology, Law and Development — a challenging, thought-provoking book that pushes Doug into new intellectual territory and sets up a very different kind of conversation.

Chapters

• INTRO — Welcome to Doug Reads with Friends (with John Bowers) (00:05)
• How We Know Each Other: Leighton, Grinnell & Flower Girls (01:17)
• Teach for America: The Hardest Job You’ll Ever Love (05:02)
• Dad Life, 3 vs 8: Discovering Who Your Kids Are (07:31)
• Hollywood, Visual Effects & What a Compositor Actually Does (10:18)
• Aphantasia: Making Images Without a Mind’s Eye (14:36)
• From Artist to Supervisor: Star Wars, Strikes & Red-Eye Weekends (16:57)
• OK, Now the Book: Frankenstein (23:34)
• “I Thought I Knew This Book”: The Creature, Loneliness & Misread Monsters (26:02)
• Victor Sucks: Curiosity, Creation & Why Frankenstein Is the Monster (30:07)
• Quotes, 19th-Century Language & The Birth of Consciousness (33:19)
• OUTRO — Arctic Dog Sleds, Orkneys Shade & Next Time — Disrupting Africa (40:05)

Episode 3: Lost in Oaxaca (with Alicia Hayes)

In Episode 3 of Doug Reads With Friends, Doug is joined by Alicia Hayes—one of the most admired (and most universally liked) people in the world of fellowships advising, and a longtime friend from their shared professional home: NAFA, the National Association of Fellowships Advisors.

Alicia chose Lost in Oaxaca by Jessica Winters Mireles, a romance novel set in a place that feels vivid enough to become a character of its own. Doug and Alicia talk about how they both “fell into” scholarship advising, what keeps Alicia motivated after more than two decades at UC Berkeley, and what it means to be a serious reader (including the very casual detail that Alicia reads about 100 books a year). Then they dig into the book itself: what romance novels are, what this one does well, what didn’t land, and why setting, culture, and perspective matter more than we sometimes realize.

As always: the book is the excuse, the friendship is the reason.

Email Doug with comments or suggestions: [email protected]

Music by Eiren Caffall — https://www.eirencaffall.com/ (and follow her on Spotify)

Next time: Doug reads Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with John Bowers.

Chapters

00:00 Intro: The Book Is the Excuse
01:58 NAFA, scholarship advising, and Alicia Hayes
04:08 Falling into the work (and staying for the students)
08:20 Awards, Mentorship, and “Office of Two” at Berkeley
16:30 Alicia Reads 100 Books a Year (No Big Deal)
21:44 OK, Now the Book: What Even Is a Romance Novel?
23:00 Oaxaca as a Character
28:17 Unlikable Heroines, Coyotes, and the “Oaxaca Was Good to Me” Problem
37:29 Next Time — Frankenstein (Not the Green Guy)

Episode 2: The Art of Gathering (with Josh Blue)

In Episode 2 of Doug Reads With Friends, Doug calls up his friend Josh Blue—Grinnell alum, Hong Kong–based educator, and one of Doug’s daily companions thanks to a remarkably committed New York Times puzzle Facebook group.

Josh chose The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker, a book about why so many meetings, dinners, and events feel flat—and how intentionality, belonging, and what Parker calls generous authority can transform the way we bring people together. Doug and Josh talk about building community abroad, why Hong Kong became home, reading and book clubs, translanguaging and bilingual parenting, cultural differences in how people gather, and the risks (and rewards) of asking people to step outside their comfort zones.

For the next episode on February 6, I will be discussing Lost in Oaxaca with Alicia Hayes.

As always: the book is the excuse, the friendship is the reason.

Email Doug with comments or suggestions: [email protected]

Music by Eiren Caffall (follow her on Spotify)

Chapters

00:00 Welcome to Doug Reads With Friends
01:16 The Daily Puzzle Friendship
03:53 Nanjing, 2002, and the World Getting Real
06:42 How Hong Kong Became Home
12:08 Josh the Reader
14:58 Language, Bilingual Parenting, and Translanguaging
18:12 The Book Choice and Why This Fits the Podcast
20:03 Back-Cover Blurb and “Could Have Been an Email”
21:25 Thanksgiving as a Case Study: Who Belongs, Rules, and Bob
22:53 Culture and Language: What the Book Assumes
24:59 Gatherings at Work: Designing Workshops Across Contexts
28:20 Generous Authority and Being Human as a Leader
31:10 What Didn’t Land: Putting People on the Spot
32:17 Challenge by Choice and Posse Retreats
34:07 Japanese Communication Norms and Authority Across Cultures
36:46 Wrapping It in a Bow: Appreciation and the Next Gathering
41:01 Outro: What We’re Reading for Episode 3

Welcome to the first episode of Doug Reads With Friends, the podcast I made so I have an excuse to call people I miss and pretend it’s for content. My first guest is Cheryl Rainford: high school friend, theater kid, VW Thing legend, and (plot twist) my kidney recipient. We talk The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong: found family, underdogs, Western Mass vibes, and why “JUICY” sweatpants are basically a setting detail.

Stick around: two weeks from now I’m talking with Josh Blue about The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker.