"Songwriting is about being awake to something you've never thought of or a way of thinking about something you've never experienced before," Mary Chapin Carpenter says on the pod. The five-time GRAMMY winner has a poet's way of thinking about songwriting. And on those rare occasions when she's stuck, she goes songwalking.

I've always been a fan of Carpenter's music, but when she mentioned David Grann and S.A. Cosby as two of her favorite writers, I swooned.

Carpenter's new album, her 17th, is Personal History.