Leo Braudy talks with host Laurie Winer about his new book Haunted: On Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Zombies, and Other Monsters of the Natural and Supernatural Worlds; and its relevance for understanding our terrifying new post-election world. Impresario Paul Crewes recommends Michael Morpurgo's WWII yarn The Amazing Story of Adopho Tips; and we listen to Dorothy Parker's Love Song.

Paul Crewes, the new Artistic Director of the Wallis Annenberg Center in Beverly Hills, joins host Laurie Winer to discuss the tremendous possibilities for theater in Southern California. Also, author Dinah Lenney stops by to recommend two books: Marisa Silver's Little Nothing; and Nancy Reisman's Trompe L'Oeil. The show closes with a reading of Anne Sexton's poem "To a Friend Whose Work has Come to Triumph."

Screenwriter John Romano joins Laurie Winer and co-host Dinah Lenney to talk about his adaptation of Philip Roth's 1997 classic novel American Pastoral about a family torn apart amidst the turmoil of the late 1960s. The film directed by Ewan McGregor, who co-stars alongside Dakota Fanning and Jennifer Connelly, was released this past month. A wide-ranging discussion ensues, addressing Roth's relationship to the "meaning" of the 60s, family suffering, Job's suffering, and ours in the age of Trump. Also, author Simon Reynolds drops by to recommend a biography of Occultist Colin Wilson by renaissance man Gary Lachman; and Linda Balgord reads Mark Strand's Eating Poetry.

Host Evan Kindley talks with Simon Reynolds about his new book "Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, from the Seventies to the Twenty-first Century." David Bowie may be Glam's greatest superstar, but figures as diverse as Roxy Music, Alice Cooper, and LA's own Sparks are also central to this most colorful and still-influential 1970's pop movement. The LA Times Jill Leovy drops by to recommend anthropologist Hortence Powdermaker's After Freedom, a study of 1920'as Mississippi; and which remains a stunning reminder of the severe oppression suffered by Black Americans under Jim Crow. This week's poetry reading is of Denise Levertov's Psalm Concerning the Castle.

Laurie Winer and co-host Medaya Ocher, managing editor of the LA Review, are joined by Jessica Koslow, chef extraordinaire and creator of Sqirl, one of LA's most popular new restaurants - on the occasion of the publication of Jessica's first cookbook, Everything I Want To Eat.  It's the Comfort Radio edition of the podcast, as Laurie and Medaya build up an appetite learning about the secrets behind Jessica's scrumptious creations. Also, Leslie MM Blume drops by to recommend Anita Loos brilliant comic novel from the 1920s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; and Judy Kaye reads ee cummings' Poem I thank God for most this amazing.

Legendary publisher and editor Robert Gottlieb talks with Laurie about his new memoir Avid Reader; reflects on his glory days at Knopf and The New Yorker; and expresses confidence about the state of writing today. Tracy Tynan offers PG Wodehouse as comfort reading for these treacherous times. Tom and Laurie launch a new poetry feature with a reading of WB Yeats The Second Coming.

Laurie is joined by LARB legal editor Don Franzen for a discussion on the two competing California Ballot Initiatives related to the Death Penalty: Proposition 62 that calls for an end to the Death Penalty in the state; and Proposition 66, a confusing pro-Death Penalty measure, that calls for speeding up executions. To provide clarity, Laurie and Don are joined by Stephen Rohde, from Death Penalty Focus, and the legendary former District Attorney of Los Angeles County, Gil Garcetti.

Despina Stratigakos, author of Hitler at Home, joins Laurie and co-host Boris Drayluk for a wide-ranging discussion about how tasteful interior design operated as propaganda in the Third Reich; the powerful woman who was at the heart of that effort, Gerdy Troost; and the lessons we should draw from this tale for our own celebrity-saturated politics. Also, Nicholson Baker returns to explain his mysterious relationship to Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory.

Costume designer and author Tracy Tynan joins Tom and Laurie to talk about her new memoir Wear and Tear: The Threads of My Life. The daughter of a legendary couple from Swinging London in the 60s - theater critic Kenneth Tynan and actress-turned-author Elaine Dundy - Tynan spins tales of a daringly dysfunctional, but beautifully dressed, nuclear family. Also, LARB editor Evan Kindley drops by to recommend a book by (appropriately) the British developmental psychoanalyst DW Winnicott.

Author Nicholson Baker joins Tom, Laurie, and Evan Kindley to discuss his new book Substitute: Going to School with a Thousand Kids which tells the story of Baker's time as a substitute teacher in a Maine public school system. This opens up into a fascinating discussion of pedagogy in light of the everyday realities of contemporary American public schooling.