Poured Over

"Because for every kid who makes it out, there are thousands more who are just as capable, who don't. And I think we need to shift the conversation away from what was it that helped that one kid make it out to why are all these other kids not?" Andrea Elliott's Invisible Child belongs on the shelf next to Evicted by Matthew Desmond and Alex Kotlowitz's books There are No Children Here and An American Summer. She joins us on the show to talk about eleven-year-old Dasani and her family, how systems feed the poverty cycle, why we need to challenge our love of success stories, and more. Featured book: Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"I'm so grateful to be part of the world of books. And that's what makes me work so hard on them because it's possibly the greatest privilege I've been afforded." Nick Offerman's fifth book, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play, is charming, earnest and a little pointed, and, of course, very funny. It opens with Nick gallivanting in Glacier National Park with pals George Saunders and Jeff Tweedy, sees him repairing a stone wall and buying a livestock with his buddy James Rebanks, and roadtripping with his wife, Megan Mullally and her excellent audiobook recommendations. Nick joins us on the show to talk about how the fun's really an excuse to ask big questions about our place in the wider world, offer some thoughts on where we need to go and some nuanced ideas for how we might get there, and more. Featured titles: Where the Deer and the Antelope Play by Nick Offerman, Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawaii Strong Washburn and Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing by Lauren Hough. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

America's opioid crisis shows no signs of slowing down, and if you want to know how we got where we are, Beth Macy's 2018 bestseller Dopesick is coming to Hulu as a limited series on October 13th, produced by Danny Strong (Game Change and Recall), Warren Littlefield (The Handmaid's Tale), director Barry Levinson, actor Michael Keaton and Beth herself, among others. Beth joins us on the show to talk about the screen adaptation of her powerful book—and what she learned writing for the screen for the first time—how the community she's covered is responding, and more, including a sneak peak of her next book, Raising Lazarus: Hope and Justice in the Future of America's Overdose Crisis. Featured books: Dopesick by Beth Macy, Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, The Urge: Our History of Addiction by Carl Erik Fisher and Unsettled: How the Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy Failed the Victims of the American Overdose Crisis by Ryan Hampton. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"Suffragettes, but witches." That was the three-word pitch that Alix E. Harrow used to sell her very fun and very smart second novel, The Once and Future Witches, our newest Monthly Speculative Fiction pick. Alix joins us on the show to talk about portal fantasy, our fascination with fairy tales (and why we keep returning to them), being a messy reader and more. Featured books: The Once and Future Witches, The Ten Thousand Doors of January and A Spindle Splintered, all by Alix Harrow, Ammonite and Spear by Nicola Griffith, and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"One of the ways you make magic work is by believing it's going to work." Readers love Naomi Novik's series set at the mysterious (and deadly) Scholomance. Volume two, The Last Graduate, has just landed, and our favorite prickly heroine Galadriel (El) is back, along with her gang of friends, and, of course, Orion Lake, who El might just hate a little less these days. Naomi Novik joins on the show for a spoiler-free conversation about worldbuilding, El's evolution, Ursula Leguin's story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, and more. Featured books: The Last Graduate and A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik. Produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"You never know what's going to happen in a bookstore." Wiley Cash joins us on the show to talk about the story about a too-big aircraft and a too-short runway that inspired his new novel, When Ghosts Come Home; tell us why he had to set the book in the 1980s; and how excited he is by the current rise of the Rural South in literary fiction. He also delivers a couple of reading lists you'll want to add to your TBR pile now. Featured books: When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash, Razorblade Tears and Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby, Hell of a Book by Jason Mott, Aftershocks by Nadia Owasu, and Writers and Lovers by Lily King. Produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes ever Tuesday and Thursday.

"I was honing my writing voice before anyone knew anything or cared about me as a writer." Phoebe Robinson's a force of nature with her standup shows, podcasts, TV shows and books. And now she's adding publisher to her list of accomplishments with her new imprint, Tiny Reparations Books. Phoebe joins us on the show to talk about her newest book, Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes, her new imprint and the incredible debut authors she's publishing, black hair, performative allyship and more. Featured books: Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes by Phoebe Robinson, What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harris, Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li, Queenie by Candace Carty-Williams, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid and Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson. Produced/Hosted by Elani Wilson and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"But if you say today, I'm just working on this little monologue by this one character, you can trick yourself into making something bigger…" Anthony Doerr joins us on the show to talk about his epic new novel-about-everything, Cloud Cuckoo Land, his first since his Pulitzer Prize-winning All the Light We Cannot See. Featured books: Cloud Cuckoo Land , All the Light We Cannot See, and Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Platero and I by Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Annals of the Formal World by John McPhee. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Ruth Ozeki's new novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, is a beautiful story about books and libraries, life and love. Ruth joins us on the show for a lively conversation about hearing voices, the connections between her last bestseller A Tale for the Time Being, and her latest, the relationship between her writing practice and her meditation practice, her very funny debut novel My Year of Meats, and more. Featured books: The Book of Form and Emptiness, A Tale for the Time Being, My Year of Meats, and The Face, all by Ruth Ozeki. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Brendan Kiely's an award-winning author of YA fiction, including All-American Boys, which he co-wrote with Jason Reynolds. His fifth book is a bit of a departure for him; The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege is a nonfiction book that asks us to consider where we are in the world today and how we start and sustain necessary conversations about race and whiteness with young people and ourselves. Brendan joins us on the show to talk about his own experience growing up white in a Boston suburb, his days as a teacher, and what he's learned from talking with and listening to students from middle school through college. Featured books: The Other Talk by Brendan Kiely, All-American Boys by Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds. Produced/hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.