Otherppl with Brad Listi

Adrian Todd Zuniga is the guest. He's the creator and host of Literary Death Match, an international reading series, comedy show, and all-around entertainment. Note: I will be appearing with Melissa Broder at the April 1st edition at Ace Hotel Theater in Los Angeles during AWP. For tickets, click here. Nice to finally have Adrian on the show. When I first met him, he was Todd. I've always called him Todd, which he still allows on the basis of a grandfather clause. I've known him for a number of years but didn't know a ton about his life until he came over the other day and sat down across from me. We discussed "Adrian."  We discussed "Todd."  We discussed "Adrian Todd." He had a hell of a childhood, which I'm not sure he fully realizes. Or maybe it seems less dramatic to him because it's his childhood and he lived it. For me, in hearing about it, I thought: Jesus, that's a lot. It's also interesting. And it makes Literary Death Match make more sense somehow. It makes it seem more unlikely, which then makes it seem more impressive. I have a soft spot for people who conduct cultural experiments and have weird ideas and try to actualize them—and then do. Having pursued a few weird ideas in my day, I have a feel for how much work it is to put on a Death Match. (Hint: it's a fuck-ton.) Todd—sorry, Adrian Todd—has been doing this thing for a decade, largely on his own. Yes, he's had help. But he's the prime mover. It's takes a Herculean amount of effort, and he deserves some credit for that. A tip of the cap as LDM turns 10. In today's monologue, I talk about LDM Los Angeles on April 1st, and how I'm going to interview someone in public (Melissa Broder) for the second time in my life.    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mark de Silva is the guest. His debut novel, Square Wave, is available now from Two Dollar Radio.  If I recall correctly, Mark's parents dropped him off at my house, which, if true, would make him the first guest in the history of the program to be dropped off by his parents, which is hopefully the start of a trend. (Maybe I should do a series of interviews called "Writers and Their Parents" wherein writers come over with their parents, and we all sit down and talk.) Mark went to Cambridge and got a Ph.D. in Philosophy. I feel like I should tell you that. He grew up in the Inland Empire here in Southern California, the child of psychotherapists. I think I'm remembering that correctly. This conversation took place two or three weeks ago. My life has been crazy since then. My brain is completely shot. I can't remember much. But I do remember laughing a lot during this interview, and feeling like it went really well. So there's that. I hope you guys enjoy it.  In today's monologue, I think I talk about caffeine. And I talk about my barista, a gentle man with a ponytail.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hanya Yanagihara is the guest. Her novel A Little Life was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award, and it is now available in trade paperback from Anchor Books. I feel like A Little Life is having the kind of existence that pretty much all writers hope their books will have. It seems to provoke passionate responses. The people who love it really fucking love it and the people who hate it are incensed by it and there are way more people who love it than hate it. You can't ask for much more than that. Hanya was only in town for a day and pretty solidly booked but she found an hour to come over and talk with me, and for that I'm grateful. I learned a lot from her. She knows her shit, and she really fought hard for her novel. She fought hard to see her vision of this book realized, and she's protective of it in a way that seems both smart and endearing. Also: it paid off huge. Few works of literary fiction strike a nerve the way this book has struck a nerve. Also: it's 700 pages long and she wrote it in 18 months. Also: she doesn't own a cell phone. In today's monologue, I give a quick update on the health of my son and share news about some appearances I'll be making during AWP here in Los Angeles in April.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alexander Chee is the guest. His new novel, The Queen of the Night, is available now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It is the official February pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Years ago Alex was out in LA and we had a drink and he told me he was working on this novel. It's amazing to see it all come to fruition, to see him on Late Night with Seth Meyers, to see the book reviewed all over the place, to see everybody chattering about it online. Just happy for him. It was a long road from start to finish, but he got there, and we talk about that. We also talk about his late, beloved father, and what an incredible polymath he was, and what it was like to be a mixed race kid growing up in Portland, Maine. We talk about the Iowa Writers Workshop and AIDS activism and what it was like to be in the green room getting ready to appear before a national television audience. And of course we talk opera and historical fiction and The Queen of the Night.  In today's monologue I talk about 400 episodes and what, if anything, that means. I also give an update on the health of my son.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jarett Kobek is the guest. His new novel is called I Hate the Internet, available now from We Heard You Like Books.  This one was fun. I didn't know what to expect. Or I guess I sort of knew what to expect: Jarett and I would talk about the internet and what it feels like to hate it. But I didn't know quite what to expect from Jarett himself. Jonathan Lethem called him "the American Houellebecq," so I guess I was imagining that he would be drunk and smoking cigarettes and difficult to talk to, and so on. I imagined him as preemptively hating me, thinking of me as "the media," annoyed that he had agreed to do the podcast. Then he showed up and it was easy. More than that, it was interesting. This is a guy who really thinks about the world that we live in and the information we consume and the products we buy and how the powers that be make these things come to pass. He thinks about a lot more than that, but those are some of his main preoccupations. He's a good conversationalist, a curious person, a skeptic, and, I think it's safe to say, a man who has a very well-developed problem with authority.  The interview runs longer than normal. Hope that's okay. On this one, I just let the tape run. In today's monologue, I talk about some scary health stuff that we're going through with our son, and how that has been all-consuming lately, and how unhealthy (but unavoidable) it is to start Googling when confronted with medical troubles.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elizabeth Bruenig is the guest. She is a staff writer for The New Republic. Her work focuses on politics and religion.   Really excited to have Elizabeth on the program. I've been a big fan for a while now and feel like she is already, at the ripe old age of 25, an indispensable voice in our political discourse, and on the topic of religion.  She first came to my attention (and you'll hear me mention this in the monologue) when she submitted an essay to The Nervous Breakdown several years ago. She must have been twenty or twenty-one at the time. Something like that. The quality of the writing blew me away. To see her have the success that she's having now is really wonderful, and not at all surprising. In our conversation we discuss her personal history, growing up in Texas, her religious upbringing and her conversion, in college, to Catholicism. We talk about God, Augustine, the nature of belief. And of course we talk about politics. Hillary Clinton vs. Bernie Sanders. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and the GOP shit-show. All of it.   In the monologue, I talk, as I said, about the history of my Elizabeth Bruenig fandom and then I get into Election 2016 and start rambling and don't stop rambling for roughly fifteen minutes.  You're welcome, America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ruth Wariner is the guest. Her new memoir, The Sound of Gravel, is available now from Flatiron Books. It is the official January selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.  This is one of the most devastating reading experiences I've had in recent memory.  Ruth Wariner's childhood in LeBaron, a fundamentalist Mormon colony in Mexico, is almost beyond belief. That she was able to survive seems miraculous, and the fact that she has now transmuted the horrors of her youth into a book is, I feel, an act of real heroism. When she showed up at my door, I was a little rattled. I had just finished the book and was still processing it. Ruth and her husband pulled up in front of the house and got out of their rental car and...the word that comes to mind is "sunny." They are sunny people. I feel like Ruth has the right to be ultra-goth and cynical—after what she's been through, it seems like she should be allowed to chain-smoke everywhere she goes, including in hospitals and on airplanes—but that wasn't the sense that I got when I met her—not at all. She sat down in the garage and we talked for an hour about all of it—Mormonism, polygamy, child abuse, the prison of belief, the deep pain of loss, the love of family, time, healing, catharsis, you name it. It was a good hour. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did.  In today's monologue, I recall how I raced to read Ruth's memoir and wound up listening to the audiobook version at double-speed, and what it did to my head. I also pay a little homage to Glenn Frey of The Eagles, yet another Baby Boomer rock icon, gone, it seems, too soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Margaret Malone is the guest. Her debut story collection, People Like You, is available now from Atelier 26 Books.  Really enjoyed meeting Margaret. She showed up at my door and I almost felt like I knew her already. There was something familiar about her. We have a friend in common. Maybe that was it. She used to live in LA. Maybe that was it. We're roughly the same age. Maybe that was it. Or maybe it was a combination of all of these things. Anyway, she seemed familiar and it was easy talking with her. We've been through some similar stuff as parents, too. Trying to have kids. How harrowing that can be. And then she and I talked about some difficult health issues that her husband faced, and what that was like. We talked about Portland, too. She lives in Oregon now, and is involved in the literary community, and so on. We talked about other stuff, too. Margaret is a gem.   In today's monologue I talk about the Powerball lottery and the death of David Bowie. And social media grief.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chiwan Choi is the guest. His latest poetry collection is called Abductions, available now from Writ Large Press. First episode of 2016. Here we go. Though technically Chiwan and I spoke in late 2015. He came over. It was cold. He was in a t-shirt. I offered him a coat. He said he was fine. I couldn't believe it. I felt like a sissy. He sat for the hour and seemed unaffected. Maybe something's wrong with me. Anyway it was really fun talking with him. We've met on a handful of occasions at literary events around Los Angeles. He grew up in LA, is very active in the literary community here. He was born in Korea. He lived in South America on his way to living in Los Angeles. He's an immigrant. His family immigrated. A sense of dislocation has been with him to a degree for all of his life. Or for most of his life. I think that's true. I hope I said that right. He can obviously say it better than I can. We talk about those parts of his life, among other things. I found his stories about being a child and moving around really touching. Listen to it. You'll see.   In today's monologue I talk about the holidays. And Star Wars. I talk about Christmas trees. And the shame I feel over how few books I read last year compared to some people.    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this, the 2015 Holiday Spectacular episode, I was happy to be joined in-studio by my friends Mira Gonzalez, Tyler Madsen, and Gene Morgan. They arrived at my house to help me execute a simple plan: we would drink alcohol together and call people and record it. And that's what we did.  Happy holidays, everybody. This is the final show of 2015. Thanks for all of your continued support. I appreciate it very much and will talk to you in the new year.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices