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Public episodes

  • Colm Tóibín Reads Tobias Wolff

    Colm Tóibín joins Deborah Treisman to discuss “Awaiting Orders,” by Tobias Wolff, which was published in The New Yorker in 2005. Tóibín, who is a fiction writer, essayist, playwright, and poet, has won the International Dublin Literary Award, the Folio Prize, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, among others. He has published more than a dozen books of fiction, including the novels “Brooklyn” and “The Magician,” and the story collections “The Empty Family” and “The News from Dublin.”


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    1 hr 4 min
  • An Alternative History of the Microphone

    The first microphones were invented in the 1870s as components for telephones. By the 1930s, politicians as unalike as FDR and Hitler were using microphones as both audio devices and visual props for projecting power. The history of the microphone often focuses on its function as a technology of transmission, but as David Trotter wrote recently in the LRB, microphones ‘both receive and transmit’, and there is another tradition more concerned with listening than transmitting. In this episode, David joins Tom at the mic to discuss these alternative histories, as well as the role of microphones in the history of eavesdropping, Francis Ford Coppola’s movie The Conversation and the strange cry that Ted Hughes picked up on his RAF radio while doing his National Service.

    Read David's piece in the LRB: https://lrb.me/trotterpod

    From the LRB

    Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod

    Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠

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    Get in touch: [email protected]

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    48 min
  • Andy Weir: Project Hail Mary Author Teaches Writing | How I Write

    Learn more about Alpha School at ⁠https://go.alpha.school/howiwrite

    Andy Weir is on the show today, and he's famous for books like Project Hail Mary and The Martian, both of which turned into movies.

    In this conversation, we discuss science fiction as much as writing. How does he come up with new ideas? What makes for a good plot? How does he think through the science itself, bending reality in fun and playful ways?

    This interview does have some spoilers! So, if you haven't read the books, you might want to do that before you listen. However, if you love writing and don't care about spoilers, this conversation is for you.

    About the host
    Hey! I’m David Perell and I’m a writer, teacher, and podcaster. I believe writing online is one of the biggest opportunities in the world today. For the first time in human history, everybody can freely share their ideas with a global audience. I seek to help as many people publish their writing online as possible.
    Follow me
    Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-write/id1700171470
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DavidPerellChannel
    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2DjMSboniFAeGA8v9NpoPv
    X: https://x.com/david_perell

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    1 hr 11 min
  • Louise Kennedy

    Louise Kennedy has followed her Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize-nominated Trespasses with another brilliant novel, Stations, which follows the trajectories of two teenage friends as they leave '80s Ireland for London. We sat down with her to talk about her own journey, why escape is so difficult and creating characters for readers to take to their hearts.

    25 min
  • Mark Normand: How to Make Your Writing More Funny | How I Write

    Learn more about Alpha School at ⁠https://go.alpha.school/howiwrite

    Mark Normand is on the show today to teach us how to write good comedy. He moved to New York in 2006 when he was a nobody, barely knew how to tell jokes. This interview tells the story of how he worked his way up from admiring Seinfeld from afar to actually opening for him on tour in various cities.
    About the host
    Hey! I’m David Perell and I’m a writer, teacher, and podcaster. I believe writing online is one of the biggest opportunities in the world today. For the first time in human history, everybody can freely share their ideas with a global audience. I seek to help as many people publish their writing online as possible.
    Follow me
    Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-write/id1700171470
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DavidPerellChannel
    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2DjMSboniFAeGA8v9NpoPv
    X: https://x.com/david_perell

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    0 min