The New Yorker: Fiction

Rank #1: David Sedaris Reads Wells Tower . David Sedaris joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss "Leopard," by Wells Tower from a 2008 issue of the magazine.

Rank #2: David Sedaris Reads Miranda July . David Sedaris reads "Roy Spivey," by Miranda July.

The Guardian Books podcast

Rank #1: Colm Tóibín in conversation – books podcast . The acclaimed Irish novelist talks to Charlotte Higgins about House of Names, his reimagining of the Greek tragedy of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon

Rank #2: Should we stop working? And the books of 2019 – books podcast . On this week’s show, we take a look ahead at the books coming out this year, and speak to Josh Cohen about why we should all slack off a little at work

The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker

Rank #1: Kristen Roupenian Reads "Cat Person" . Kristen Roupenian reads her story "Cat Person," from the December 11, 2017, issue of the magazine. Roupenian recently completed an M.F.A. and is now a Zell Fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Rank #2: Curtis Sittenfeld Reads “The Prairie Wife” . Kirsten’s commute is when she really focusses on whether she has the power to destroy Lucy Headrick’s life. Yes, the question hums in the background at other moments, like when Kirsten is at the grocery store and sees a cooking magazine with Lucy on the cover—it’s just so fucking weird how famous Lucy is—but it’s in the car that Kirsten thinks through, in a realistic way, which steps she’d take. 

The New Yorker Radio Hour

Rank #1: Is America Ready to Make Reparations? . Late in the Civil War, the Union general William T. Sherman confiscated four hundred thousand acres of land from Confederate planters and ordered it redistributed, in forty-acre lots, to formerly enslaved people—a promise revoked by President Andrew Johnson almost as soon as it was made. More than a hundred and fifty years later, the debate on what America owes to the descendants of slaves, or to people robbed by the legal discrimination that followed, still rages. David Remnick talks with Ta-Nehisi Coates and Susan B. Glasser about how reparations has become a major focus in the 2020 Democratic primary contest. And we’ll visit Georgetown University, where students have chosen to take reparations upon themselves.

Rank #2: James Comey Makes His Case to America . In a long career in law enforcement, the former F.B.I. Director James Comey aimed to be above politics, but in the 2016 election he stepped directly into it.  In his book, “A Higher Loyalty,” Comey makes the case to America that he handled the F.B.I. investigations into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails and Donald Trump’s campaign correctly, regardless of the consequences. Even after being fired by President Trump, the former F.B.I Director says he doesn’t dislike the President; he tells David Remnick that what he feels is more akin to sympathy.  Trump “has an emptiness inside of him, and a hunger for affirmation, that I’ve never seen in an adult,” Comey says. “He lacks external reference points. Instead of making hard decisions by calling upon a religious tradition, or logic, or tradition or history, it’s all, ‘what will fill this hole?’ ” As a result, Comey says, “The President poses significant threats to the rule of law,” and he chides Congressional Republicans for going along with the President’s aberrations. “What,” he rhetorically asks Mitch McConnell and others, “are you going to tell your grandchildren?”  Nevertheless, Comey remains hopeful about the resilience of American institutions. “There isn’t a ‘deep state,’ [but] there is a deep culture,” he believes. “It is [about] the rule of law and doing it the right way,” and it serves as “a ballast” during political turmoil. David Remnick’s interview with James Comey was taped live at New York’s Town Hall on April 19, 2018.

The New Yorker: Politics and More

Rank #1: Ta-Nehisi Coates Revisits the Case for Reparations . When Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote “The Case for Reparations” for The Atlantic, in 2014, he didn’t expect the government to make reparations anytime soon. He told David Remnick that he had a more modest goal. “My notion,” Coates says, “was you could get people to stop laughing.” For Coates, to treat reparations as a punch line is to misunderstand their purpose. He argues that reparations weren’t only meant to atone for the horror of chattel slavery but to address racial inequities and the economic impact that has persisted since emancipation, more than a century ago. “The case I’m trying to make is, within the lifetime of a large number of Americans in this country, there was theft.” “The Case for Reparations” was an intellectual sensation, and Coates did change the conversation; of the more than twenty candidates in the 2020 Democratic Presidential race, eight have said they’re in favor of at least establishing a commission to study the subject. He points to Senator Elizabeth Warren, who sought out Coates to discuss his article years before she was considered a candidate. But Coates’s own hopes for America truly making amends remain modest. “It may be true that this is something folks rally around,” he says, “but that’s never been my sense.”

Rank #2: James Comey Makes His Case to America . In a long career in law enforcement, the former F.B.I. Director James Comey aimed to be above politics, but in the 2016 election he stepped directly into it.  In his book, “A Higher Loyalty,” Comey makes the case to America that he handled the F.B.I. investigations into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails and Donald Trump’s campaign correctly, regardless of the consequences. Even after being fired by President Trump, the former F.B.I Director says he doesn’t dislike the President; he tells David Remnick that what he feels is more akin to sympathy.  Trump “has an emptiness inside of him, and a hunger for affirmation, that I’ve never seen in an adult,” Comey says. “He lacks external reference points. Instead of making hard decisions by calling upon a religious tradition, or logic, or tradition or history, it’s all, ‘what will fill this hole?’ ” As a result, Comey says, “The President poses significant threats to the rule of law,” and he chides Congressional Republicans for going along with the President’s aberrations. “What,” he rhetorically asks Mitch McConnell and others, “are you going to tell your grandchildren?”  Nevertheless, Comey remains hopeful about the resilience of American institutions. “There isn’t a ‘deep state,’ [but] there is a deep culture,” he believes. “It is [about] the rule of law and doing it the right way,” and it serves as “a ballast” during political turmoil. David Remnick’s interview with James Comey was taped live at New York’s Town Hall on April 19, 2018.

All the Books!

Rank #1: Episode #103: New Releases and More for April 18, 2017. This week, Liberty and Rebecca discuss Locking Up Our Own, How to Be Married, Imagine Wanting Only This, and more books. This episode was sponsored by Life After and Book Riot Insiders. Find a list of the titles discussed on this episode in the shownotes. Subscribe to Book Riot Insiders here.

Rank #2: Episode #104: New Releases and More for April 25, 2017. This week, Liberty and Rebecca discuss Borne, Scienceblind, Startup, and more books. This episode was sponsored by Book Riot Insiders, I Found You, and ThirdLove. Find a list of the titles discussed on this episode in the shownotes. Subscribe to Book Riot Insiders here.

World Book Club

Rank #1: Kurt Vonnegut. Kurt Vonnegut joins an audience of World Service listeners to answer questions about his novel Slaughterhouse-Five

Rank #2: Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou answers listeners questions about her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Presenter: Harriett Gilbert.

Books and Authors

Rank #1: Celeste Ng. Mariella Frostrup talks to celebrated American novelist Celeste Ng, whose new book Little Fires Everywhere explores what happens when a calm and ordinary suburb is disrupted by the arrival of a new residents - a teenage girl and her artistic mother. Ian Rankin shares his passion for Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow and we hear from the Sharjah Book Fair which has just closed its doors in the UEA. While the Icelandic crime writer novelist Lilja Sigurdardottir explains why the financial crash of 2008 inspired many authors to explore the society's underbelly.

Rank #2: Crime writer John Harvey on his new book Body and Soul. John Harvey and favourite characters in fiction

Audio Book Club

Rank #1: To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee: Slate's Audio Book Club. Meghan O’Rourke, Troy Patterson and Emily Bazelon discuss Harper Lee's book, To Kill A Mockingbird. We recommend, but don't insist, that you read the book before listening to this audio program.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rank #2: Slate's Audio Book Club: The Catcher in the Rye. Slate's Audio Book Club. Stephen Metcalf, Troy Patterson, and James Ryerson discuss J.D. Salinger's classic novel The Catcher in the Rye. We recommend, but don't insist, that you read the book before listening to this audio program.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Radio Atlantic

Rank #1: The Great Recession, One Decade Later. In December 2007, the U.S. marked the beginning of its longest recession since World War II. Now the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency born in the ashes of the nation's economic downturn, is under new leadership that promises big changes. Meanwhile, a tax plan speeding through Congress could have far-reaching effects on the economy, well beyond taxes. On paper, the U.S. economy looks robust. But for whom, and for how long?This week, Annie Lowrey and Alana Semuels join our hosts to look at what's happened in the decade since the Great Recession, and what's happening now. What lessons have we learned from the crisis? And which are we doomed to repeat?Links:- "The Never-Ending Foreclosure" (Alana Semuels, December 1, 2017)- "The Great Recession Is Still With Us" (Annie Lowrey, December 1, 2017)- “The GOP Targets America’s Most Loved and Hated Tax Break” (Alana Semuels, November 2, 2017)- “The U.S. Isn’t Prepared for the Next Recession” (Annie Lowrey, October 31, 2017)- “Mick Mulvaney Is Pretending Everything's Totally Normal at Work” (Gillian B. White, November 28, 2017)- “Could a Tax Fix the Gig Economy?” (Alana Semuels, November 6, 2017)- “Trump Says His Tax Plan Won't Benefit the Rich—He's Exactly Wrong” (Annie Lowrey, September 29, 2017)- "Could a Memo by Christina Romer Have Saved the Economy?" (John Hudson, February 22, 2012)- “The Fight Over the CFPB Reveals the Broken State of American Politics” (David A. Graham, November 28, 2017)- "The Shadow of the Stimulus" (Ross Douthat, February 1, 2009)- "Return of the Shopping Avenger" (Jeffrey Goldberg, December 1, 2009)- The Half Has Never Been Told  (Edward Baptist)- The Unwinding (George Packer)- "The Nutshell Studies" (Katie Mingle, 99 Percent Invisible)- "The Reason This 'Racist Soap Dispenser' Doesn't Work on Black Skin" (Max Plenke, Mic.com, September 9, 2015)Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rank #2: The Miseducation of Ta-Nehisi Coates. In his new book, We Were Eight Years in Power, The Atlantic's national correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about the past eight years of his career—his pursuit of an understanding of America, and his route to becoming a celebrated author. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, our cohosts Matt, Jeff, and Alex each conduct an interview with Ta-Nehisi about what he's found.This is a longer episode than our usual, so if you'd like to skip around, here are the three segments, for easy fast-forwarding:[00:00] Matt's interview, focused on the questions that infused Ta-Nehisi's early writing at The Atlantic, and the answers that he's found[32:46] Jeff's interview, focused on the two administrations Ta-Nehisi has chronicled, and his political outlook[59:52] Alex's interview, focused on Ta-Nehisi's community, family, and lifeLinks:- The Mis-Education of the Negro(Carter G. Woodson, 1933)- “Black People, Culture and Poverty” (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2009)- "The Math on Black Out-of-Wedlock Births" (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2009)- “The Radical Critique of Obama” (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2009)- “On Jewish Racism” (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2009)- “Still More…” (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2009)- “Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?” (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2012)- "The End of White America?" (Hua Hsu, 2009)- "The Issues: Race" (Hua Hsu & Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2009)- “A Plea for Straight Talk Between the Races” (Benjamin Mays, 1960)- "The First White President" (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2017)- "This Is What European Diplomats Really Think About Donald Trump" (Alberto Nardelli, Buzzfeed, 2017)- "Donald Trump's Race Wars" (Jonathan Chait, 2017)- "Tyranny of the Minority" (Michelle Goldberg, 2017)- Elizabeth Kolbert's author archive (The New Yorker)Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bookworm

Rank #1: Tayari Jones: An American Marriage. Her fourth book, which took her six years to write, An American Marriage brought Tayari Jones to the attention of Oprah’s Book Club. As a result, her novels have become best sellers and reach a wider audience. Jones discusses having both the sensibilities of an urban person and a southern person. Guest Michael McKenzie, Executive PR Director of Algonquin Books, joins the discussion of regional and expansive literature. Judy Bloom makes a surprise appearance, rescuing Tayari Jones at a crucial moment in her career.

Rank #2: Mary Ruefle: My Private Property. Mary Ruefle reads the entirety of her glorious and gruesome essay about shrunken heads, the title essay in her book My Private Property. Then she discusses falling in love with shrunken heads in a museum as a teenager, and a similar tiny poem she wrote years before.

The New Yorker: Poetry

Rank #1: John Ashbery Reads Charles Simic . John Ashbery reads Charles Simic and his own work, and has a discussion with the New Yorker poetry editor, Paul Muldoon.

Rank #2: Robert Pinsky Reads Elizabeth Bishop . Robert Pinsky joins Paul Muldoon to read and discuss Elizabeth Bishop’s “At the Fishhouses” and a poem of his own.

LRB Readings

Rank #1: Mary Beard: From Medusa to Merkel. Mary Beard delivers her lecture ‘Women in Power’ at the British Museum.Read Mary Beard in the LRB: https://lrb.me/beardpodSign up to the LRB newsletter: https://lrb.me/acast For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Rank #2: ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’. Andrew O’Hagan on the art of terrible writing about sex. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Longform

Rank #1: Episode 129: Rukmini Callimachi (Part 1). Rukmini Callimachi covers ISIS for The New York Times. “Nine out of 10 Americans said they were aware of James Foley's execution. That's a huge win for ISIS. That's what they want. I think they've realized that journalists are the crème de la crème as far as targets. And that's a really scary thing for our profession.” Thanks to TinyLetter and Lynda for sponsoring this week's episode. If you would like to support the show, please leave a review on iTunes. Show Notes: @rcallimachi Callimachi on Longform [4:00] "The Horror Before the Beheadings" (The New York Times • Oct 2014) [4:00] "From Amateur to Ruthless Jihadist in France" (The New York Times • Jan 2014) [7:00] "ISIS Declares Airstrike Killed a U.S. Hostage" (The New York Times • Feb 2015) [11:00] "With Proof From ISIS of Her Death, Family Honors Kayla Mueller" (The New York Times • Feb 2015) [12:00] "As U.S. Bombs Fall, British Hostage of ISIS Warns of Another Vietnam" (The New York Times • Sep 2014) [21:00] Callimachi's Pulitzer-nominated work for the AP [26:00] McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (Misha Glenny • Random House • 2008) [27:00] The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Lawrence Wright • Alfred A. Knopf • 2006)

Rank #2: Episode 144: Cheryl Strayed. Cheryl Strayed is the author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. “There's a long history, of women especially, saying 'Well, I just got lucky.' I didn't just get lucky. I worked my fucking ass off. And then I got lucky. And if I hadn't worked my ass off, I wouldn't have gotten lucky. You have to do the work. You always have to do the work.” Thanks to TinyLetter, Trunk Club, and HP Matter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @CherylStrayed cherylstrayed.com The Complete Dear Sugar Archive Strayed on Longform [1:00] Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Knopf • 2012) [1:00] Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar (Vintage • 2012) [4:00] "Dear Sugar #44: How You Get Unstuck" (The Rumpus • July 2010) [9:00] "What Wild Has Wrought" (Nicholas Kristof • May 2015 ) [13:00] Torch (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt • 2006) [28:00] "Dear Sugar #48: Write Like a Motherfucker" (The Rumpus • Aug 2010) [28:00] "Write Like a Motherfucker" coffee mug [1:11:00] Into the Wild (Jon Krakauer • Random House • 1996) [1:13:00] "Oprah Talks to Cheryl Strayed" (O Magazine • July 2012)