712: A Discussion of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, with Rachael Tillman!

In this week's episode, John interviews music journalist and biographer Bob Spitz about the massive sixty-year career of The Rolling Stones, how the music moves us, and the process of creating a good book with a tidal wave's amount of material to cover.

On this show, John and Matt Peters continue The Kerouac Project Book Club with a discussion of William S. Burrough's Naked Lunch.

In this week's episode, John speaks with the poet Henry Hughes about poetry, fishing, patience, creativity, Charles Bukowski, and other matters of literary interest.

In this week's episode, John speaks with the poet Lara Egger about her new book, Flop Era. Other topics covered: the jostling of syntax, the long learning curve of becoming a writer, and how constraints point us towards problem-solving that allows authenticity to bleed through our work.

In this week's episode, John speaks with fiction writer and editor Dave Housley about the joys of using writing prompts, the problem-solving of writing meaningfully improbable stories inspired by pop culture, and the limits of post-modern irony. His newest books is Aliens Attack!, now out with Mason Jar Press.

In this week's show, Rachael Tillman and I discuss The Bell Jar, in part 3 of our series on Sylvia Plath. If you are keen, check out the previous installments: episodes 685 (The Colossus and Other Poems) and 693 (Emily Van Duyne's Loving Sylvia Plath).

Sophia Ferrara returns to the secret HQ of TDO to chat about the pleasure-filled dystopia of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, while John freaks out about the novel's structure or lack thereof.

In #710, Sophia Ferrara returns to the secret HQ of TDO to chat about the dystopia of Rollerball, as imagined in the film and the short story, which was called "Roller Ball Murder." Jonathan E and his pal Moonpie turn out to be a threat to The Corporation while thriving in a technocratic bloodsport. Good times.

In this week's show, John speaks with the poet Philip Schultz about his wonderful new poetry collection, Enormous Morning. We discuss the self-critical voices that Philip calls the shit-bird, how personas can empower us to become more of ourselves, and the ironies of finding gratitude in our depression in observing how the world tears itself apart.

In this week's show, John speaks with the writer and actor, Felicia Day about her extraordinary page-turner of a graphic novel, The Lost Daughter of Sparta. We discuss how to regulate our bodies as writers, how rich the literature of ancient myth absolutely still is, and how to read for audiobooks, since she has a wealth of acting experience and John doesn't.