Weird Era

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Weird Era episodes

July 04 Episode 128: Weird Era feat. Sarah Schulman
About Sarah Schulman:
Sarah Schulman's love of New York is evident in The Cosmopolitans, her 9th novel and 16th book. Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at CUNY, her honors and awards include a Guggenheim in Playwriting and a Fulbright in Judaic Studies. A well known literary chronicler of the marginalized and subcultural, Sarah's fiction has focused on queer urban life for thirty years. Her nonfiction includes The Gentrification of The Mind, a memoir of the homogenization of her city in the wake of the AIDS crisis. Her plays and films have been seen at Playwrights Horizons, The Berlin Film Festival and The Museum of Modern Art. An AIDS historian, Sarah is co-founder of the ACT UP Oral History Project. She is on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace and is faculty advisor to Students for Justice in Palestine at the College of Staten Island.
About The Cosmopolitans:
In this retelling of Balzac’s Parisian classic Cousin Bette, Sarah Shulman spins her revenge story in _Mad Men–_era New York City. Bette, a lonely spinster, has worked as a secretary at an ad agency for thirty years. Her only real friend is her apartment neighbor Earl, a black, gay actor with a miserable job in a meatpacking plant. Shamed and disowned by their families, both find refuge in New York and in their friendship.
Everything changes when Hortense, Bette’s wealthy niece from Ohio, moves to the city to pursue her own acting career. Her arrival reminds Bette of her scandalous past and the estranged Midwestern family she left behind. When Hortense’s calculating ambitions cause a rift between Bette and Earl, Bette uses her connections in the television ad world to destroy those who have wronged her.
Textured with the grit and gloss of midcentury Manhattan in the days before the Civil Rights and Feminist Movements, The Cosmopolitans “balance[s] the hopes of an entire era on the backs of a fragile relationship. . . . Jarring and beautiful, this is a modern classic” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
51 min
June 19 Episode 127: Weird Era feat. Emily Haworth-Booth
About Emily Haworth-Booth:
Emily Haworth-Booth teaches at the Royal Drawing School and is an illustrator, a graphic novelist, and a children’s author of three books for children: The King Who Banned the Dark (short-listed for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the Carnegie Medal for Illustration, and the Klaus Flugge Prize), The Last Tree, and Protest! Mare is her debut book for adults. She lives in Devon with her husband, dog, and several horses.
About Mare:
For a long time, a woman lives with her husband and their dog. She teaches an online class about children’s books and plods away at a book of her own. Then the dog dies, and a doctor’s visit reveals that she isn’t able to have children, even if she wanted to.
When an opportunity to lease a mare part-time comes her way, it seems like the ideal arrangement and the fulfillment of a childhood wish—perhaps even something to fill the emptiness, diagnosable and otherwise, that she has begun to feel. She has no problem sharing; she shares a garden with the children next door and chores with her husband. The horse will be something to care for, just two days a week, without getting in too deep.
But as she takes up riding lessons, faces mounting medical bills, and walks and brushes and dreams of the horse, her affection starts to become all-consuming. Time spent with the mare casts a light on the rest of her responsibilities and relationships, ultimately forcing her to confront what it means to love a being who does not belong to her. With tender humor and insight, Emily Haworth-Booth’s Mare radiates life and feeling—and introduces an irresistible literary voice.
46 min
May 08 Episode 126: Weird Era feat. Sarvat Hasin
About Strange Girls:
An award-winning international author’s stunning US debut about two estranged friends who reunite over one feverish weekend and reckon with the choices that tore them apart
A decade has passed since Ava spoke to Aliya. During the years of silence, Ava's life has remained at a standstill, while Aliya got the one thing they both wanted more than anything: a book deal. Forced back together at a mutual friend’s bachelorette in London, Ava returns to Aliya’s doorstep, desperate to unpack the truth of their shared history—and what they meant to each other.
When the two first met in the halls of their historic campus, their connection was electric. Aliya and Ava created a world of their own through the stories they wrote, influencing and borrowing from each other’s work. But when the end of college loomed, the real world began to pull them in opposite directions. Was their bond ever truly as strong as Aliya thought? And what would become of the stories they told themselves about each other?
Weaving together the friends’ past and present, Strange Girls is an ingenious portrait of a fraught friendship, and an exploration of the ties forged in the intensity of the college experience, and the scars left when they break.
About Sarvat Hasin:
Sarvat Hasin is a novelist and dramaturg from Pakistan. She has a masters in creative writing from the University of Oxford. Her first novel, This Wide Night, was published by Penguin Random House India and longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Her second book, You Can’t Go Home Again, was published in 2018 and featured in Vogue India's and The Hindu's best of the year lists. Her third novel, The Giant Dark, was a runaway critical success, won the Mo Siewcharran Prize, and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award. Strange Girls is her US debut. She lives in London.
39 min
May 01 Episode 125: Weird Era feat. Yann Martel
About Yann Martel:
YANN MARTEL is the author of Life of Pi, the global bestseller that won the 2002 Man Booker Prize and was adapted to the screen in the Oscar-winning film by Ang Lee. He lives in Saskatoon, Canada.
About Son of Nobody:
Harlow Donne has devoted his life to the Classical world. When a chance comes up to study an obscure collection of papyrus fragments at Oxford University, he seizes it. Though it means leaving his daughter and fracturing marriage back home in Canada, this is the kind of career break he desperately needs.
In the depths of the Bodleian Library, Harlow discovers a lost account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilization itself. He names the epic poem The Psoad, after its protagonist, a Greek commoner identified as Psoas of Midea, but known to all as son of nobody.
As sole translator and interpreter of The Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, the text unlocks echoes of Ancient Greece into the present day, and a personal message to his beloved child appears. Despite the two-thousand-year gap between the two, a thread hasn’t frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of ambition, love, and grief.
In this masterpiece of myth, history, and domesticity, Son of Nobody explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them, and how we live—then, now, and always.
47 min
April 16 Episode 124: Weird Era feat. Andrew Martin
About Andrew Martin:
Andrew Martin is the author of the novel Early Work, a New York Times Notable book of 2018, and the story collection Cool for America, longlisted for the 2020 Story Prize. His essays and stories have appeared frequently in The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, and Harper's, as well as in The Yale Review, The Atlantic, McSweeney's, The Times Book Review and elsewhere. He teaches in Brooklyn and New Hampshire, and lives in New York City with his family.
About Down Time
Without Cassandra, Aaron would probably be dead. Fortunately, she won’t leave him—despite the drinking, flirting, solipsism, armchair socialism, overspending, infidelity, catastrophic depression, and disparate but increasingly frequent spells of drug- and booze-addled debauchery. Unfortunately, she might be reaching the end of her rope.
Cass and Aaron, like the other neurotic, ambivalent intellectuals in their orbit, are getting older. There’s Malcolm, with his own alcoholism and marginally more successful writing career; his partner, Violet, a doctor with little patience for both; Antonia, a teaching fellow whose book about ecocide may get her tenure at a prestigious university near Harvard Square—yes, that one. When Sam, a charming trust-fund punk at the center of this loose network, dies suddenly, and a global pandemic takes hold, all five must contend with the lives they’ve made: their desires and disappointments, habits and hang-ups, pathologies and addictions, and the possibilities of making art and being good as the earth whirls to its end.
Down Time marks the delightful return of Andrew Martin, the author of the pitch-perfect slacker classics Early Work and Cool for America. Compulsively readable and contagiously intelligent, this is a wryly comic social novel of settling down, selling out, growing up, and getting out that turns a terribly funny and hyper-literate eye on our most desperately guarded ambitions: to love and be loved, to know and be known, to stay sane, if only just.
51 min
April 10 Episode 123: Weird Era feat. Daniyal Mueenuddin
About Daniyal Mueenuddin:
DANIYAL MUEENUDDIN was brought up in Lahore, Pakistan, and Elroy, Wisconsin. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Yale Law School, his stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, and The Best American Short Stories 2008, selected by Salman Rushdie. His collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. For a number of years he practiced law in New York. He now divides his time between Oslo, Norway, and his farm in Pakistan’s South Punjab.
About This is Where the Serpent Lives:
Moving from Pakistan’s dazzling chaotic cities to its lawless feudal countryside, This Is Where the Serpent Lives powerfully evokes contemporary feudal Pakistan, following the destinies of a dozen unforgettable characters whose lives are linked through violence and tragedy, triumph, and love. Orphaned as a little boy and fending for himself in the city streets, Yazid rises to a place of responsibility and respect in the Lahore household of Colonel Atar, a powerful industrialist and politician, only to find that position threatened by conflicting loyalties and misplaced trust. Born on Colonel Atar’s country estate to a poor gardener, Saqib is entrusted with the management of a pioneering business, but he overreaches and finds himself an outlaw, confronting the violence of the corrupt Punjab Police. The colonel’s son competes with his cherished brother for the love of a woman and discovers that her choice colors his life with unexpected darkness as well as light.
In matters of power and money and the heart, Mueenuddin’s characters struggle to choose between paths that are moral and just and more worldly choices that allow them to survive in the systems of caste, capital, and social power that so tightly grip their culture. Intimate and epic, elegiac and profoundly moving, This Is Where the Serpent Lives is a tour de force destined to become a classic of contemporary literature.
42 min
December 05, 2025 Episode 122: Weird Era feat. Lauren Rothery
About Lauren Rothery:
Lauren Rothery was born in London and raised in San Diego. She spent her twenties writing and directing short films and music videos between New York and Los Angeles. In 2020, she moved to Europe and began writing fiction. Television is her first novel.
About Television:
An aging, A-list movie star lotteries off the entirety of his mega-million blockbuster salary to a member of the general viewing public before taking up with a much younger model. His non-famous best friend (and often lover) looks on impassively, while recollecting their twenty-odd years of unlikely connection. And an aspiring filmmaker, unknown to them both, labors over a script about best friends and lovers while longing for the financial freedom to make great art.
Told in their alternating, intricately linked perspectives, Television is a funny, philosophically astute novel about phenomenal luck, whether windfall or chance encounter. Like Joan Didion’s classic Play It as It Lays, but speaking to a since irrevocably changed Hollywood, it portrays a culture in crisis and the disparities in wealth, beauty, talent, gender, and youth at the heart of contemporary American life. In this glittering but strange new world, lit up by social media and streaming services—what, if not love, can be counted in your favor?
With plays in chronology, bright, nimble dialogue, and a profoundly modern style, Lauren Rothery’s debut novel is an arresting feat of literary impressionism, and marks the arrival of a significant new talent to the landscape of American fiction.
42 min
November 21, 2025 Episode 121: Weird Era feat. Souvankham Thammavongsa
SOUVANKHAM THAMMAVONGSA is the author of four poetry books and the short story collection How to Pronounce Knife, winner of the 2020 Giller Prize and 2021 Trillium Book Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN America Open Book Award. Her stories have won an O. Henry Award and appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Granta, and NOON. She has also written book reviews for The New York Times, and edited the anthologies Best Canadian Poetry (2021) and The Griffin Poetry Prize (2021). Born in the Lao refugee camp in Nong Khai, Thailand, she was raised and educated in Toronto.
Ning is a retired boxer, but to the customers who visit her nail salon, she is just another worker named Susan. On this summer's day, much like any other, the Susans buff and clip and polish and tweeze. They listen and smile and nod. But beneath this superficial veneer, Ning is a woman of rigorous intellect and profound depth. A woman enthralled by the intricacy and rhythms of her work, but also haunted by memories of paths not taken and opportunities lost. A woman navigating the complicated power dynamics among her fellow Susans, whose greatest fears and desires lie just behind the gossip they exchange.
As the day's work grinds on, the friction between Ning's two identities—as anonymous manicurist and brilliant observer of her own circumstances—will gather electric and crackling force, and at last demand a reckoning with the way the world of privilege looks at a woman like Ning.
Told over a single day, with razor-sharp precision and wit, Pick a Colour confirms Souvankham Thammavongsa's place as literature's premier chronicler of the immigrant experience, in its myriad, complex, and slyly subversive forms.
27 min
November 07, 2025 Episode 120: Weird Era feat. Alan Light
About Alan Light:
Emmy Award–winning music journalist Alan Light is the author of numerous books including The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah” (which was adapted into an acclaimed documentary), as well as Let’s Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain and biographies of Johnny Cash, Nina Simone, and the Beastie Boys. He was the cowriter of bestselling memoirs by Gregg Allman and Peter Frampton. Alan was a senior writer at Rolling Stone and the editor-in-chief of Vibe and Spin. He contributes frequently to The New York Times, Esquire, and The Wall Street Journal, among many publications, and cohosts the podcast Sound Up! With Mark Goodman and Alan Light.
About Don't Stop: Why We (Still) Love Fleetwood Mac's Rumours:
The author of The Holy or the Broken and former editor-in-chief of Vibe brings his “thoughtful and illuminating” (The New York Times) insight to Fleetwood Mac’s iconic album Rumours, celebrating its story, mythology, and enduring impact.
On January 1, 1975, struggling young singer-songwriter Lindsey Buckingham was invited to join the veteran blues band Fleetwood Mac. He agreed on the condition that his girlfriend, an equally unknown vocalist named Stevie Nicks, also be included. Within two years, Rumours was born—and went on to become one of the most popular albums of all time.
Almost five decades later, it is the only classic rock record that still attracts young listeners and continues to top sales and streaming charts. In Don’t Stop, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Alan Light unravels the enduring allure of Fleetwood Mac’s monumental album. Since its 1977 release, Rumours has captivated generations with its unparalleled blend of romantic turmoil and musical genius. Light explores the album’s transformation from a pop phenomenon to a cultural touchstone, and its unique ability to remain relevant in today’s rapidly changing music scene.
Drawing on in-depth interviews with current artists inspired by Fleetwood Mac, as well as fans who have only recently discovered the album, Light investigates what keep Rumours at the forefront of popular culture, from Glee to Saturday Night Live to Daisy Jones & the Six. Through insightful analysis and storytelling, Don’t Stop celebrates the album’s trail blazing sound and diverse voices, and the emotional depth that continues to fascinate audiences. From the incredible soap opera behind the album’s creation to its embrace in the age of TikTok, this book presents a kaleidoscopic view of a landmark work that has transcended its time.
48 min
October 24, 2025 Episode 119: Weird Era feat. Zadie Smith
About Zadie Smith:
Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW, Swing Time, and The Fraud; as well as a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia; three collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free and Intimations; a collection of short stories, Grand Union; and the play, The Wife of Willesden, adapted from Chaucer. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Zadie Smith was born in north-west London, where she still lives.
About Dead and Alive:
A profound and unparalleled literary voice, Zadie Smith returns with a resounding collection of essays.
In the past two decades, few writers have been able to master the craft and art of the essay in the way that Zadie Smith has. Her discerning eye and singularly intimate perspective emblazon Smith as a preeminent critic of our generation, society, and culture. In her inimitable honesty and poignant voice, Smith studies the fault lines that divide us and consistently finds within them grounds for solidarity and compassion.
This eagerly awaited new collection brings Zadie Smith’s unique skills as an essayist to bear on a range of subjects that have captured her attention in recent years. Organized in five sections—eyeballing, considering, reconsidering, mourning, and confessing—she unspools personal dialogues with various sources of inspiration. She takes an exhilaratingly close look at artists Toyin Ojih Odutola and Kara Walker. She invites us along to the movies in her review of Tár, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and to her desk when researching the Tichborne trial and writing her New York Times bestselling novel The Fraud. She asks us to look at the young Michael Jackson and to mourn with her the passing of writers Joan Didion, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, Philip Roth and Toni Morrison. And she shows us once again in Dead and Alive her unrivalled ability to think through critically and humanely some of the most urgent preoccupations and tendencies of our troubled times.
A master of perception always in search of a lesser-known reality, Smith continually assesses, and reassesses, what it means to identify with the contemporary world, and how we choose to remember the history that brought us here.
49 min