fiction/non/fiction

In the wake of the election, writer Maggie Tokuda-Hall joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss what Project 2025 has in store for authors and book bans. Tokuda-Hall explains Project 2025’s misuse of terms like “critical race theory” and “pornography” and how these will be used to attack mainst

Writer Jennifer Maritza McCauley joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to analyze the fallout from Tony Hinchcliffe’s “floating island of garbage” comment at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. McCauley—whose mother is Puerto Rican—discusses the island’s history and her communities’ reactions. McCaule

In the lead-up to the presidential election, novelist Jess Walter returns to the show to revisit his previous comments about former president Donald Trump. Walter joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss Trump’s dangerous decisions and inflammatory rhetoric, as well as how reactions to him have

In the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, novelist Stephen Markley joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss his novel The Deluge, which predicts and depicts the impact of climate change over the next couple of decades. Markley talks about researching and portraying the scale of catastrophic

Linguist, writer, and professor Anne Curzan joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss how language is constantly changing—and how that’s okay. Curzan talks about how, in her work as an English language historian, she’s learned that people have always been critical of usage changes; Ben Franklin,

Nonfiction writer Jeff Sharlet joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss how mainstream media outlets sanitize Donald Trump’s rhetoric in their reporting rather than straightforwardly describing his words and behavior, an approach recently dubbed “sanewashing” by The New Republic’s Parker Molloy