I'd Rather Be Reading

When it comes to dream I’d Rather Be Reading guests—I’m talking about names at the top of the vision board—Emily Giffin would be right there at the apex. Yes, this is a nonfiction books podcast, but I do read fiction from time to time, and one fiction author whose books I never miss is Emily Giffin, my No. 1 favorite fiction writer of all time. I actually met Emily at a book signing in the summer of 2016 in Nashville—at Draper James, Reese Witherspoon’s boutique—and Emily changed my life. At that time, I was freelance writing some, but hadn’t yet taken the leap to become a full-time writer. During the book signing, I mentioned something about wanting to be a writer to Emily, and even though lines at book signings move pretty quickly, she took a moment to give me words of wisdom I never forgot—and signed my book and told me to not give up and to keep writing. The next year, 2017, I became a full-time writer, and am now a senior editor at a major fashion magazine as we speak here in 2024. It’s really incredible what one inspiring encounter can do—and Emily, I loved you before meeting you in 2016, and I loved you even more after. Actually, I’ll get to see Emily again in person this week, at a book signing in Atlanta for Emily’s latest, The Summer Pact, her twelfth novel—which is the book we’re talking about on the show today. The title of the book is so powerful, and not at all what I was expecting. Emily’s latest is full of so many plot twists, and, while many of her books focus on love and romance, the crux of this book is friendship—although, don’t get me wrong, there’s still definitely some love and romance in here. As I tell Emily in our conversation, I think The Summer Pact is her bravest and most courageous work; she tackles some heavy-hitting topics here, topics she’s never tackled before in any of her books prior. In this book we meet Lainey, Tyson, Summer, and Hannah, who all arrive at college from completely different worlds. They soon become a tight group of friends, but, as graduation nears, tragedy strikes, and they make a promise to one another in that moment to always be there for each other, no matter how much distance or circumstance separates them. Then, a decade later, life turns upside down for one of our characters. She calls in her closest friends, who are all in the midst of their own crossroads. But they made a promise, and they all come together to embark on a shared journey of self-discovery, forgiveness, and acceptance, with, as I said, so many twists and turns along the way, including a trip to Capri, Italy, which has risen to the top of my travel bucket list. Just like I had a different career before I became a full-time writer, so did Emily—after graduating from Wake Forest and the University of Virginia School of Law, Emily was a practicing attorney for several years before moving to London to write full-time. Since then, 12 novels followed—Something Borrowed, which was turned into a feature film with Ginnifer Goodwin and Kate Hudson; Something Blue; Baby Proof; Love the One You’re With; Heart of the Matter; Where We Belong; The One and Only; First Comes Love; All We Ever Wanted; The Lies That Bind; Meant to Be; and, now, The Summer Pact. I am such a fan, and I can’t wait for you to hear our conversation.   The Summer Pact by Emily Giffin

Today, we’re talking about travel tips and tricks and tales with a fascinating person to tackle the topic with—none other than Gary Janetti, whose new book We Are Experiencing a Slight Delay: Tips, Tales, Travels is out July 9. On the 1 percent chance you don’t know the hilarious Gary Janetti, allow me to introduce you: Gary is a writer, producer, and actor who has written for Family Guy and was an executive producer on Will and Grace. He also produced the satire animated sitcom The Prince, about Prince George, for HBO Max; in addition to producing, he also provided the voice of Prince George. Gary has written two books prior to We Are Experiencing a Slight Delay—Start Without Me (I’ll Be There in a Minute) and Do You Mind If I Cancel? (Things That Still Annoy Me), and both were bestsellers. I found Gary years and years ago through his Instagram page, which specifically uses a satirical characterization of Prince George as his imagined and often totally catty responses to news items about other members of the British royal family. Gary took that success on Instagram and turned it into The Prince. Gary is married to fashion stylist and television personality Brad Goreski, and, naturally, Brad shows up frequently in We Are Experiencing a Slight Delay, which takes us inside Gary’s travels all around the world. This new book talks about the absurdity and glory of travel, taking us from an Italian spa to the Orient Express to Venice and London and Mykonos and Australia and a family cruise on the Queen Mary 2, just for starters. In addition to telling stories from his trips, Gary also gives a ton of practical advice on all aspects of being a traveler, from packing, suggestions on how to get upgrades, and his restaurant and hotel recommendations in his favorite cities. In our conversation today, Gary talks to us about how to combat jet lag, his top tips for packing, what’s worth a splurge while traveling, solo travel, and so much more.   We Are Experiencing a Slight Delay: Tips, Tales, Travels by Gary Janetti

As our series honoring the tragic plane crash that killed John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and Lauren Bessette continues in the leadup to the 25-year anniversary of the crash on July 16, I’m so happy to welcome William D. Cohan to the show, who wrote a book not just about his friend from Andover, John, but also about three other friends from the prep school that lost their lives far too soon. This is such an interesting concept for a book—in his book Four Friends: Promising Lives Cut Short, which came out in 2019, William introduces us to four of his friends from boarding school who all died far, far too soon. One of them is John, who we spend the bulk of today’s episode talking about, but we also meet Jack Berman, the child of impoverished Holocaust survivors, who achieves the American dream—only to have his life ended in a senseless act of violence. Then we have Will Daniel, the grandson of President Harry Truman and the son of the managing editor of The New York Times, who does everything to escape a family legacy he’s ultimately trapped by. He dies tragically, as does Harry Bull, who—like John would as well—takes an inexplicable and devastating risk on a beautiful summer day that ultimately ends his life. Even the story of John—who, of course, we all think we know—is told through a new lens in this book. This book will make you appreciate life and realize how very, very fragile it really is. All of these men met at Andover, the most elite of American boarding schools, and went on to forge lives for themselves, lives that, as William writes, were “ended just as they were getting going.” This book gives us a glimpse into John in his Andover years, specifically, and William writes about what it was like to know a young John, what it was like to meet Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and so much insight into John, who lost his life far too soon as just 38 years old.   William D. Cohan is a journalist perhaps most known for covering Wall Street and high finance; he’s written for Vanity Fair as a special correspondent and writes regularly for The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Fortune, and is an on-air contributor for CNBC. He’s also written other bestselling books, like The Last Tycoons and House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World, The Price of Silence (which is about the Duke lacrosse scandal that gripped the nation), and Why Wall Street Matters. Since Four Friends came out in 2019, he has published the 2022 book Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon about the General Electric Company. He was a senior Wall Street M&A investment banker for 17 years and also appears regularly on MSNBC, CNN, BBC, and Bloomberg TV, where he is a contributing editor. I enjoyed my conversation with him so much, and I know you will enjoy it, too.   Four Friends: Promising Lives Cut Short by William D. Cohan

Hi listeners—please be advised that this episode is true crime in nature and contains graphic descriptions of a violent crime. If this may be triggering for you, please skip this episode, and we’ll see you back in your feed later this week. Take care of yourselves.   We have spoken on I’d Rather Be Reading before about the horrendous quadruple homicide that took place in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022, where four University of Idaho students were viciously murdered—brutally stabbed to death with a military style knife—while they slept in their off-campus home. Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin senselessly lost their lives on November 13, 2022, and while there has been an arrest made for their deaths, Bryan Kohberger, the accused, has not yet gone to trial. At the crime scene, 1122 King Road, there was no sign of forced entry or damage inside the home. Nothing appeared to be missing. The victims were stabbed multiple times with fatal wounds in the chest and upper body with a large knife. At least one victim had defensive wounds on her hands, and no murder weapon has ever been found. Kohberger was arrested on December 30, 2022, in Pennsylvania; the death penalty is currently being sought in his case, which likely won’t go to trial until next year. He was arrested on four counts of first-degree murder and one felony count of burglary; he pled not guilty to all charges.   Today on the show we have who I consider to be the foremost expert on the case—Howard Blum, who has written a new book, When the Night Comes Falling: A Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders, which came out June 25. Howard’s book, interestingly, is bookended with the stories of two fathers—the book opens being told through the eyes of Bryan Kohberger’s father, Michael, and closes with Steve Goncalves, Kaylee’s father. The level of detail in When the Night Comes Falling is remarkable and heartbreaking, and Howard has a theory about who the target of the crime was—and it’s not who many have speculated it to be all along. In this episode, Howard and I talk about the two surviving roommates and their puzzling actions on that November 13, about Kohberger’s trial and when it’s expected to finally take place, about whether Howard thinks, as I do, that they tore down 1122 King Road—the site of the murders—too prematurely, and so much more. This is a case that haunts me and haunts so many others, I know—many of us remember being carefree college students, and to think of our lives so savagely being cut short as they were really just beginning is tragic and devastating. I know we all want justice for Kaylee, Maddie, Xana, and Ethan, and I hope we find it.   Let me tell you about the dynamic Howard Blum: he is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, a frequent contributor to Air Mail (which is where I found his work), a former reporter for both The Village Voice and The New York Times, and the author of several nonfiction books, including the New York Times bestseller American Lightning, about the October 1, 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times building by union members. Several of his books are bestsellers, actually, and I have no doubt that When the Night Comes Falling will be, too. He earned two Pulitzer Prize nominations while working at The New York Times and has also been nominated for a Pulitzer for his coverage of the Idaho student murders. I can’t imagine that he won’t eventually win a Pulitzer for his coverage in this space. When the Night Comes Falling is the definitive and inside story of this horrific crime, which Howard has covered from the very beginning.   When the Night Comes Falling: A Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders by Howard Blum

As we continue our series on John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and Lauren Bessette to honor the 25-year anniversary of their tragic deaths in a July 16, 1999, plane crash, we are going to be talking to people that knew the victims—and I truly want to thank each and every one of them for their courage in talking about them. As I told each of my guests in our pre-show, I know that, to them, these aren’t just celebrities—these are real people and real friends who they loved and lost, and I am so thankful that they all, first of all, shared their stories in the pages of a book, and then, later, with me on this show. Thank you all for having conversations with me.   Today on the show we have Dr. Steven M. Gillon, author of the 2019 book America’s Reluctant Prince: The Life of John F. Kennedy Jr. Dr. Gillon is a leading historian and scholar who was also a close friend of John’s, and I ask him what it is like to examine John from both a historic lens and a deeply personal lens in this book. In America’s Reluctant Prince—which is a great title, by the way—he not only shares his own experience, but also shares exclusive interviews and information from previously classified documents about John’s life, from before his birth until the day he died 25 years ago, a full picture of, as the book puts it, John’s “complicated and rich life.” Dr. Gillon is the scholar-in-residence at the History Channel, a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, and senior faculty fellow at the Miller Center for the Study of the Presidency at the University of Virginia. Before his current academic appointment, he spent nine years teaching history at Yale and three years at Oxford. He is one of the nation’s leading experts in modern American history and politics, and his articles have appeared not just in academic journals but also in outlets like The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, and The Chicago Tribune. Over the past decade, Dr. Gillon has hosted a number of shows on the History Channel and has also served as the main narrator and executive producer for a number of History Channel and A&E documentary specials, including many about the Kennedy family; he also served as the chief consultant on the History Channel’s eight-hour series, The Presidents. Dr. Gillon frequently contributes to HuffPost and has appeared on Today, Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News as a commentator and expert on issues related to modern American history, and has written or edited nearly a dozen books, including The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry That Defined a Generation and the book we are discussing today, about his dear friend John, who he met while at Brown—they met when Dr. Gillon gave a lecture to a class that JFK Jr. was taking about none other than John’s father, President John F. Kennedy. What a way to meet and begin a friendship!   America’s Reluctant Prince: The Life of John F. Kennedy Jr. by Dr. Steven M. Gillon

I still remember exactly where I was on Saturday, July 17, 1999, when the news bulletin flashed across the screen that the small plane carrying John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn, and her sister Lauren was missing. The three had flown out of New Jersey’s Essex County Airport the night before, Friday, July 16, in John’s Piper Saratoga plane, headed for Martha’s Vineyard, where they were to drop off Lauren and then go on to Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, where John and Carolyn were due to attend the wedding of cousin Rory Kennedy the next day. But they never made it there, and their plane crashed into the dark waters of the Atlantic Ocean, killing all three passengers instantly. John was 38 years old, Lauren was 35, and Carolyn, just 33 years old.   For our third series on I’d Rather Be Reading, we are focusing on John, Carolyn, and Lauren ahead of the 25-year anniversary of their tragic deaths on July 16. To kickstart our series we have the brilliant biographer Christopher Andersen, who has written 35 books, many of them bestsellers, and two of them about JFK Jr. specifically. Christopher is our guest today to provide context to the landscape of John’s life in 1999; we will later talk to many people who knew John and Carolyn, but to lay the groundwork for those conversations, I thought Christopher would be the perfect person. He has worked at Time and later as a senior editor at People; he has also written for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Life, and The New York Daily News. He has appeared on nearly every media outlet you can think of discussing culture, and has written many, many books on the Kennedys, the royal family, Katharine Hepburn, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, the Clintons, the Bushes, the Obamas, Barbra Streisand, and so many more. Today, we’re focusing on two of his books: The Day John Died, released in 2000, and The Good Son: JFK. Jr. and the Mother He Loved, which came out in 2014. Both are fantastic, and I’m excited to kick our series off today and for you to hear from Christopher. All by Christopher Andersen: The Day John Died  The Day John Died 25th Anniversary E-Book The Good Son: JFK Jr. and the Mother He Loved

This conversation today with my new friend Glynnis MacNicol is so empowering, as is her latest book, I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman’s Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris, which came out June 11. In Glynnis’ latest memoir, she takes us to Paris during the pandemic—a Paris she calls “quiet Paris”—where, because of COVID, there’s no tourists coming in, and because it’s August, all of the Parisian locals are headed out. It was a magical experience, and Glynnis kind of had the city to herself. In this book and in our conversation today we dissect why it’s still so taboo for women to want to experience pleasure—which Glynnis does during this season in her life, leaning into, as she writes, “the audacity of being selfish.” She writes in the book that “The thing women fantasize about most is freedom”; we talk about that in our conversation today, and I was struck by Glynnis’ ability to so vividly make her reader feel as though they were right alongside her in Paris, experiencing all the city has to offer in a very unique time. In this book, Glynnis writes about the way society regards women over 40; she will turn 50 in early September, and she writes that when you’re a woman of a “certain age,” you are only promised that everything will get worse—but what if everything you’ve been told is a lie? After Glynnis—who, at the time, was 46 and unmarried with no children—spent 18 months in isolation, from March 2020 to August 2021 as the pandemic raged on, this memoir sees her break out of her tiny Manhattan apartment and across the Atlantic to Paris; what follows is, as the book reads, a decadent, joyful, unexpected journey into one woman’s pursuit of radical enjoyment, with her weeks filled with food and friendship and, yes, sex. Glynnis also write the 2018 memoir No One Tells You This about turning 40 and also created and hosted the podcast Wilder: A Reckoning with the Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder; she’s written everywhere from The New York Times to The Guardian, The Cut, Town & Country, The Daily Beast, Elle, and The New York Daily News, among others. I can’t wait for you to hear what she has to say.   I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman’s Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris by Glynnis MacNicol

There are so many books coming out this month about rethinking women and the workplace—specifically by former magazine editors, which, as a magazine editor, I’m really into. Out today is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, Samhita Mukhopadhyay’s powerful The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning, which opens with a beautiful epigraph from Toni Morrison that reads “You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.” So many of us have bought into, as Samhita calls it, the myth of making it—as she writes, our definitions of success are myths, and seductive ones, at that. She writes in the book that we have a collective responsibility to re-imagine work as we know it, and she advocates for a liberated workplace that pays fairly, recognizes our values, and gives people access to the resources they need. The book traces the origins of, basically, how we’ve been getting it all wrong all of these years—I especially enjoyed the rethinking of Helen Gurley Brown, former editor-in-chief at Cosmopolitan and author of Sex and the Single Girl, as well as rethinking Lean In and Girlboss and hustle culture. Samhita writes about how millions of us “in the past decade—and especially during and after the pandemic—have looked at their lives and said, ‘What the fuck?’ Why are we working all the time to make less than our male counterparts? Why are we doing most of the childcare, even when our partnerships are ‘equal’? Why have we sacrificed so much of our personal happiness to be driven by these undefined measures of success? Why were we spending more time with our coworkers than with anyone else in our lives? Why are we tired all the time?” She adds, “The way we work has become untenable, both personally and globally. We are craving something more and something better,” and she adds, of her rock bottom while executive editor at a major fashion magazine, “all I could think was, This is not normal. There must be a better way. My hope is, together, we can find it.” In this book and in this conversation, Samhita discusses the end of the hustle, Anna Wintour, burnout, working moms, and so much more. Samhita is the former executive editor of Teen Vogue and former executive editor at Feministing. As a writer, her work has appeared in New York Magazine, The Cut, Vanity Fair, Vogue, The Atlantic Monthly, and Jezebel. Let’s get into our conversation.   The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning by Samhita Mukhopadhyay

You may not know the name Judith Jones, but you’ve certainly felt this dynamic woman’s impact and influence on culture. Judith Jones was the editor behind books like The Diary of Anne Frank and Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child; she was also behind authors like Sylvia Plath, John Updike, Langston Hughes, Sharon Olds, and so many others. Her work, as our guest today writes in her new book, was “unrivaled in the industry.” Book editors are kind of shadow figures—they’re behind-the-scenes, unsung heroes, who, as Sara B. Franklin writes in her book The Editor: How Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America, which came out on May 28, are people who “work in the service of their authors, not themselves, and their touch is meant to be difficult, if not impossible, for readers to see”—a bit of an invisible hand, if you will. Judith Jones rose through the ranks of publishing when it was very much an industry still dominated by men; one of her gifts was the ability to see talent in women writers, especially women writers many had overlooked. It’s hard to believe that, for example, publishers weren’t chomping at the bit for the works of Anne Frank or Julia Child, but they weren’t; it was Judith who saw their books through to the finish line. She is most associated with cookbooks, and Sara writes that Judith may never have fully gotten the respect she so deserved because “books about food were (and to some extent still are) treated with an air of condescension by the literary world.” Sara and I talk about that on the show today, as well as topics like Judith’s portrayal in the 2009 Nora Ephron film Julie & Julia—which Judith didn’t like so much—and some of Judith’s misses, like with the aforementioned Sylvia Plath and The Bell Jar. Through Sara’s book, Judith emerges from the shadows to the spotlight—the amount of passion and dedication Sara put into this bestselling book is remarkable. I can’t wait for you to meet Sara and, through her, meet Judith. A little about Sara: she is a writer, teacher, and oral historian who teaches courses on food, writing, embodied culture, and oral history at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. In addition to writing The Editor, she also edited Edna Lewis, co-authored The Phenicia Diner Cookbook, and holds a PhD in food studies from NYU and studied documentary storytelling at both the Duke Center for Documentary Studies and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. Take a listen to our conversation.   The Editor: How Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America by Sara B. Franklin

Alzheimer’s and finding a cure for it is a cause I am deeply passionate about; we have spoken about it on the show many times before. I couldn’t be more thrilled to bring you today’s guest, Dr. Heather Sandison, who is here to talk to us about her brand-new book Reversing Alzheimer’s: The New Toolkit to Improve Cognition and Protect Brain Health, which came out June 11. This book is a much-needed exploration of this awful disease, and how both patients and their caregivers can take back control. There are currently 6.5 million Americans alone living with Alzheimer’s, and that number only grows. As Dr. Sandison writes, the urgency for a solution has never been greater, and this book helps us find one. Dr. Sandison is at the forefront of dementia care and research. She is both the founder of Solcere Health Clinic (which is San Diego’s premier brain optimization clinic) and also Marama, the first residential memory care facility to have the goal and aim of returning cognitively declined residents back to independent living. She sees up close and personal every single day what Alzheimer’s and dementia looks like, and she’s doing something about both preventing it and reversing it. The main takeaway that I got from Reversing Alzheimer’s was that there is hope, and that we have more power to fight back against this disease than we previously thought we did. There is a growing body of evidence that shows that implementing a handful of strategies can improve cognition and quality of life in dementia patients, and this book lays out this customizable and doable approach so that work can begin immediately in that effort. If you are looking to fortify your brain health against cognitive decline, implement lifestyle changes that can reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s, transform your environment to support cognitive wellness, and understand options for brain health to fit any budget—this book is for you. This book, for anyone who has experienced Alzheimer’s up close, is a big exhale; Dr. Sandison wants a future where Alzheimer’s is not a terminal diagnosis, but a reversible condition, a future free of the affliction of this disease. I think you, like me, will find hope in these pages and in this conversation. Dr. Sandison is a renowned neuropathic doctor specializing in neurocognitive medicine and is also the primary author of the peer-reviewed research “Observed Improvement in Cognition During a Personalized Lifestyle Intervention in People with Cognitive Decline,” which was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease last August. She also hosts the annual online Reverse Alzheimer’s Summit, where she shares cutting-edge insight into what is possible for those suffering with dementia. Dr. Sandison is the doctor I wish my family had when my grandparents were suffering with dementia, but one that I’m also so glad is here now with the mission of making dementia rare and optional, and to shatter common misconceptions about Alzheimer’s and share what she has learned about keeping our brains sharp, no matter our age.   Reversing Alzheimer’s: The New Toolkit to Improve Cognition and Protect Brain Health by Dr. Heather Sandison