Good podcasts! Good interviews! Existential despair!
Some wonder for your Monday.
A few things to spice up your week:
My friend Rachel Syme has written about my favorite podcast, You’re Wrong About, for this week’s New Yorker. (Rachel also did a very delightful interview with Mandy Patinkin.)
My own wonderful podcast (if I dare say so myself) had two episodes last week: one on The Ten Commandments (with our film-producer pal Caitlin Mae Burke) and one on the wonderful Higher Ground (with our L.A. Times film critic pal Justin Chang). Both are pretty great. Also we are getting ready to do another paid episode (a spooky one!) so if you wish to subscribe, now is the time.
The third installment of the great Don Hertzfeldt’s existential masterpiece World of Tomorrow is out now. Ten minutes, stick figures, mortality; it’s got it all. I interviewed Don last year for Vox.
I have just started reading Lydia Millet’s novel A Children’s Bible (it’s recently been nominated for the National Book Award, so I’ll be writing a short little review of it for Vox), and I can’t wholly vouch for it since I’m only a few chapters in but so far it is great.
I have been writing and writing and writing for days — you’ll be happy to know I finished the chapter, which ends with a recipe for a Gibson — and I have been listening to this lovely playlist that Tom made for me of his favorite writing music, which I now pass on to you. It’s all minimalist classical type stuff and it’s great.
Have a good week, friends, and let us know what you are reading and listening to.