Before we get going with interviews, this introduction will let you get to know our hosts and learn what they're hoping to do here. How and why do we read—and why can't we stop talking about it all?

Want to keep track of the books and authors we mentioned? Check out what comes close to a comprehensive list below!

Intro and outro music: "Your Love Hip Hop" courtesy Music_Unlimited on Pixabay

Gaston Bachelard The Practice of Everyday Life

Don Clifton StrengthsFinder 2.0

Hernan Díaz Trust

Gustav Eckstein The Body Has a Head; also Lives, in which the mentioned story, "Two Lives," is included

Jonathan Franzen How to Be Alone ("Lost in the Mail")

Paolo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Christopher Gilbert Turning into Dwelling

Pierre Hadot Philosophy as a Way of Life

Liam Heneghan A Primer on Human Impacts on the Environment

John Irving Avenue of Mysteries

Jack Kerouac Atop an Underwood

Barbara Kingsolver Demon Copperhead

Karl Ove Knausgaard My Struggle (vol. 6)

László Krasznahorkai The Melancholy of Resistance

Julia Kristeva New Maladies of the Soul

Alan Lomax The Land Where the Blues Began

Cormac McCarthy All the Pretty Horses

Matthew McConaughey Greenlights

Katja Oskamp Marzahn, mon amour

Orhan Pamuk The Museum of Innocence

James Rebanks The Shepherd's Life

Katy Scrogin "Complex Adaptive Democracy"

Bruce Springsteen Born to Run

Wallace Stevens The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination

J. R. R. Tolkien The Silmarillion

Walt Whitman Poetry & Prose

RadioArt(r) The Phone Book

Ryan Iverson Werner Herzog Reads

Authors:

Walter Mosley

Sarah Orne Jewett