I read my audiobook! And wrote about The Rehearsal!

Two little things for you.

Hello from Paris! I’m off work for the next couple of weeks, mostly thinking about future book projects. In fact, I just got back from a whirlwind trip to Amsterdam for research, which I am hoping will be fruitful.

But I have two things of note to pass along:

• “The Rehearsal,” the most audacious and jaw-dropping TV show around these days, came to the audacious and jaw-dropping conclusion of its second season this weekend. (I can’t really even explain this show to you if you haven’t seen it, unless the words “Nathan Fielder” mean something to you.) Anyhow, the Times’s chief TV critic Jim Poniewozik and I teamed up to discuss it, as best we could, and you can read our attempt here if you like. Discussed herein: is anything real, is this just low-fi AI maybe, empathy, neurodivergence, Evanescence’s “Bring Me To Life” …

• The audiobook of We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine is out today! I read it myself! I think you might like it. You can get it from anywhere you get your audiobooks, including Audible or, might I suggest, Libro.fm, which supports indie booksellers. Tell your friends!!