Poured Over

“I'm really driven by poetry. I'm really driven by language. But also, I'm driven by a desire to connect with the people. So I could have been a teacher. I could have been a politician. I could have been anyone that communicates with people verbally because I liked that. I wound up a performer, but it was all rooted in poetry. And as a book person, I have loved books since I was a toddler.” Writer, performer, National Book Award Winner (Just Kids), Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Patti Smith joins us on the show to take us behind the scenes of A Book of Days, connecting with readers, taking the pictures she wants to take (and leaving the rest to others), her love of mathematics, paying attention to marginalia in books, Arianna Grande and Harry Styles, Keanu Reeves (and the John Wick movies), dancing to pop music and much more with Poured Over’s host Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and guest bookseller, Grace. Featured Books (Episode)
: A Book of Days by Patti Smith
 Woolgathering by Patti Smith
 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
 2666 by Roberto Bolaño Featured Books (TBR Topoff)
 This Searing Light, The Sun, and Everything Else by Jon Savage
 Morning Glory on the Vine by Joni Mitchell Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

“It's hard to be funny, you can't really plan on — you don't know what will land with people…. absurdity just exists constantly in the world that we live in. And to my mind, the humor comes from the way different people traverse absurdity, how they try to normalize it, or how they freak out because they want to build their own weirdness on top of it. And so for me, that's where I get a lot of the humor, just the different ways that people respond to the absurdity around them.” Kevin Wilson (Nothing to See Here and The Family Fang) is one of our very favorite writers and he joins us on the show to riff on Now is Not the Time to Panic, his new novel about family, friendship and art, plus rural spaces, pre-internet life, rewriting, balancing fatherhood and career, his literary influences and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff Book recommendations from Marc and Madyson.   Featured Books (Episode): Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson   Featured Books (TBR Topoff): Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart Looking for Alaska by John Green   Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

“I had never known what it was like to feel full. And I know that sounds like really odd, but because most people can — I would be with friends and a friend would stop eating. She's like, I'm full. And I'm like, What's wrong with me that I don't know what it feels like to feel full? And I don't know what the answer to that question is, to this day. I don't know if it's a psychological or emotional thing, or if it was an actual physical thing that like my tummy was bottomless. But this feeling of fullness makes me feel like, it's my body, like I'm actually finally having a conversation with my body.” Attorney, advocate, podcaster, and bestselling author (Adnan’s Story) Rabia Chaudry shares her charming, often funny — and always deeply personal story — of her relationship with food in her new memoir with recipes, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family. She joins us on the show to talk about food and family, body image, changing behaviors and a solution that works for her, finding universal truths in a story’s details, her newest podcast (Rabia & Ellen Solve the Case), why pulao beats biriyani and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer.   Featured Books (Episode): Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family by Rabia Chaudry Adnan’s Story by Rabia Chaudry   Featured Books (TBR Topoff): Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samrin Nostrat Brain on Fire by Susanna Cahalan Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

“I always feel like as a reader, I always want to go in ready to be changed, ready to be transformed by what I'm reading, ready to be expanded. And that's what I love about books, they work on you kind of like magic.” Madeline Miller’s novels, The Song of Achilles and Circe, keep working their magic on readers everywhere. She joins us on the show to take listeners behind the scenes of her new novella, Galatea, in a very fun conversation that covers voice, subverting stories, Troilus & Cressida, the books and writers Madeline loves (and some she’s added to her TBR pile), and plenty of shared fangirling over Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc, Kelly and Madyson.   Featured Books (Episode): Galatea by Madeline Miller The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller Circe by Madeline Miller The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid Babel by R.F. Kuang Trust by Hernan Diaz   Featured Books (TBR Topoff): The Silence of the Girls by Park Barker The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde   Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

“More people than we realize are works in progress, are trying to figure out a way to think about the world… As Beyoncé said in her new album, they're contradicted. They're internally contradicted more than we think. We can make the kind of change we seek, we deserve in this country, if we allow the idea that more of us are contradicted, more of us need help sorting through the world, and we have the patience — we can muster that kind of patience and love to help people sort through how they see the world.” Bestselling author Anand Giridharadas (Winners Take All) joins us on the show to talk about his urgent new book, The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy, psychological transitions and cognitive dissonance, not giving up and bringing people into community, doing the work that works for you, how writing this book changed him and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer.   Featured Books: The Persuaders by Anand Giridharadas Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas   Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

“…The idea just kind of spun itself into existence in my head, the world started to form almost immediately — when my creative brain kind of immediately kicks in like that, I've learned to listen to it, because usually, that means something, something good is trying to come out.” N.K. Jemisin — winner of three consecutive Hugo Awards for Best Novel (each of the Broken Earth books) and now a fourth for Best Graphic Story or Comic (Far Sector), and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient — is one of our favorite writers, and we’ll follow her anywhere. She joins us on the show to talk about closing out her Great Cities duology with The World We Make, adapting the Broken Earth series for the screen, the challenges of writing about a city massively in flux, NY pizza, Ozymandias the cat, her literary inspirations, what’s she’s reading and more with guest host Kat Sarfas. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Madyson.   Featured Books (Episode): The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin Monstress by Sana Takeda and Marjorie Liu Witch King by Martha Wells   Featured Books (TBR Topoff): All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jean Anders Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo   This episode of Poured Over was produced and hosted by Kat Sarfas and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

“…It was at the end of an exhibition called The Art of The Troubles. And that had been a little controversial (as these things very often are in post-conflict societies). Some people felt it had gone too far. Other people felt that it hadn't gone far enough. It just made me think about how maybe art could be used to say things that are really unsayable in a place where people are obsessed with language and obsessed with identity and where languages are so problematic.” Louise Kennedy joins us on the show to talk about her US debut, Trespasses, a story about love, loss and identity that’s so unforgettable, it’s our newest Discover pick. Listen in as Louise riffs on the layers of her debut: coming of age, class, searching for safety, rewriting matinee idols, transgression, mothers and daughters, her literary influences and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book reviews from Marc and Madyson.   Featured Book (Episode): Trespasses by Louise Kennedy   Featured Books (TBR Topoff): Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan Wolf Den by Elodi Harper   Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

"We don't know our parents, I mean, we think we do; you know, all of us have a practice of dealing with contained worlds. And that practice begins with our families, it begins with our parents, because these are individuals that we don't fully understand, but we are completely dependent on for our survival... And so it creates this really interesting situation where, you know, we take them for granted in a certain way, we think we understand them, but we don't. I want to see if I could get that crossed in some small way, by showing these alternate realities…" Marjorie Liu joins Poured Over guest host Kat Sarfas to talk about her latest graphic novel, The Night Eaters: She Eats the Night, the first volume in a new series, along with their shared love of comics and graphic novels, how the story evolved for Marjorie, family, inherited trauma, the importance of play, sibling relationships, Dungeons & Dragons, creepy dolls and much more.   Featured Books (Episode): The Night Eaters: She Eats the Night by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda The Monstress series of graphic novels by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton   Featured Books (TBR Topoff): Neil Gaiman’s Snow, Glass, Apples by Colleen Doran and Neil Gaiman Bunny by Mona Awad   This episode of Poured Over was produced and hosted by Kat Sarfas and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

“I was always writing, and I think it goes back to that Charlotte's Web thing when I had that experience of something taking me out of this world. It was mysterious, and transcendent, and glorious. And I'm still searching for that every day — if I can find a story that will do that to me and just kind of mystify me and leave me a slightly different person than I was before.” Jennifer Finney Boylan and Jodi Picoult joined us on stage at our flagship store on Union Square in New York City to talk about their bestselling novel, Mad Honey, along with keeping bees (and secrets), what they learned from their collaboration, why they write, their literary inspirations and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. Featured Books (Episode): Mad Honey by Jennifer Finney Boylan and Jodi Picoult Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult I’m Looking Through You: A Memoir of Growing Up Haunted by Jennifer Finney Boylan Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White Liberation Day by George Saunders Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

Siddhartha Mukherjee, oncologist and Pulitzer Prize winner, discusses his latest book on gene therapy and cell therapy, the influence of literature on his writing, and the importance of storytelling in science. Topics also include the progress of gene therapy, the slow brain and mood disorders, and the non-chronological approach to writing his book.