Podcast
Otherppl with Brad Listi: Books & Culture
Otherppl is a books and culture podcast hosted by novelist Brad Listi. Featuring candid, in-depth conversations with acclaimed and emerging authors, the show explores literature, writing, publishing, the creative process, screenwriting and pop culture. More than 1,000 interviews since 2011. New episodes weekly.
- Books chart
- #112
- Episodes
- 1,370
- Releases
- Twice a week
- Typical length
- 1 hr 14 min
- On air since
- 2011
- Latest episode
- 17 hours ago
Episodes
1,370 episodes, newest first
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1 hr 12 min
1061. Alexander Maksik
Show notes
Alexander Maksik is the author of the novel Passengers, now available from Europa Editions. It has been longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award for Fiction.
Maksik is the author of You Deserve Nothing, a New York Times and IndieBound bestseller; A Marker to Measure Drift, which was a New York Times Notable Book, as well as a finalist for the William Saroyan Prize and Le Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, and the basis of the 2023 motion picture Drift; Shelter in Place, named one of the best books of the year by the Guardian and the San Francisco Chronicle; and The Long Corner, a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, and named one of the best books of the year by The Australian. Maksik is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize and The Sewanee Review's Andrew Lytle Prize. His books have been translated into a dozen languages.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1 hr 28 min
REPLAY: Tao Lin on Psychedelics, Attention, and Change
Show notes
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 521, my conversation with Tao Lin, author of Trip: Psychedelics, Attention, and Change (Vintage).
Air date: May 20, 2018.
Tao Lin is the author of the novels Leave Society and Taipei, the novella Shoplifting from American Apparel, and other books. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Harper's Magazine, Granta, The Paris Review, NOON, and elsewhere. He was born in Virginia, has taught in Sarah Lawrence College’s MFA program, and is the founder and editor of Muumuu House.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1 hr 14 min
REPLAY: Frederick Barthelme on Family, Fiction, and American Decline
Show notes
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 327, my conversation with Frederick Barthelme, author of the novel There Must Be Some Mistake (Little, Brown).
Air date: November 5, 2014.
Barthelme studied fiction with John Barth at the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, from which he received his Master of Arts degree. From 1977 to 2010 he taught fiction writing and directed the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. He won numerous awards including individual grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and diverse grants and awards as editor of Mississippi Review and Mississippi Review Online, which he founded and edited. He is the author of sixteen books of fiction and nonfiction and has been published in GQ, Fiction, Kansas Quarterly, Epoch, Ploughshares, Playboy, Esquire, TriQuarterly, NorthAmerican Review, The New York Times, Frank Magazine, The Southern Review, the Boston Globe Magazine, and elsewhere. His work has been translated into nine languages. His memoir, Double Down: Reflections onGambling and Loss, co-authored with his brother Steven, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The same honor was awarded to his collection, The Law of Averages. His novel Elroy Nights was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was a 2004 PEN/Faulkner Award finalist. In 2010 he won the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction and is presently editor and publisher of the online literary publication New World Writing (previously Blip Magazine).
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1 hr 13 min
1060. Emily Ogden
Show notes
Emily Ogden is the author of Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe (Viking). It is the official October pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Ogden's other books include On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays and Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, and a Mellon Fellowship in the Columbia Society of Fellows, she is a professor of English at the University of Virginia.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1 hr 57 min
REPLAY: Michael Schumacher on Allen Ginsberg, Poetry, and the Beat Generation
Show notes
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 684, my conversation with the late Michael Schumacher, author of Dharma Lion (University of Minnesota Press), a biography of the 20th century American poet Allen Ginsberg. Michael Schumacher died on December 29, 2025 at age 75.
Air date: December 9, 2020.
Schumacher (1950–2025) wrote extensively about Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Generation. His articles, reviews, and essays have appeared in newspapers and magazines across the country. He was editor of Family Business,a collection of letters between Allen and Louis Ginsberg, and The Essential Ginsberg, a volume of the best of Ginsberg’s poems, essays, songs, letters, journal entries, interviews, and photographs.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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19 min
Are Too Many Books Being Published?
Show notes
A brief reflection on the overwhelming number of books being published, the difficulty authors face finding readers, and whether traditional publishers should simply publish fewer books. Plus: a plea for better pitching etiquette, the problem with turning fan mail into a transaction, and why I no longer wants to publish anything unless it feels urgent, deeply personal, and worth the risk.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1 hr 30 min
You Can See Everything Except Bigfoot
Show notes
Volume 109 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira sees You Can See Everything and The Devils...Happy Birthday, Tyler!....Siri and Kaya send gifts...Brad witnesses the Brewers win the pennant...experiences childlike joy for the first time in decades...did O.J. have a murder buddy?...Trump lusts after man's ass...Katie Zacharia, we hardly knew ya....Dudus gives Diddy a beatdown...new Bigfoot film casts aspersions upon old Bigfoot film...Jenny McCarthy remembers her time at Tom and Katie's wedding...& more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1 hr 3 min
1059. Diane Williams
Show notes
Diane Williams is the author of the story collection I Liked Rex (New York Review Books).
Williams is the author of several collections of short fiction and the founder and editor of the literary annual NOON. An omnibus of her work, The Collected Stories of Diane Williams, was published in 2018. I Liked Rex is her twelfth book of fiction. The NOON archive, as well as Williams's personal literary archive, was acquired in 2014 by the Lilly Library. She lives in New York City.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1 hr 33 min
REPLAY: Steve Anwyll on Montreal, Poverty, and Making Art Anyway
Show notes
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 570, my conversation with Steve Anwyll, author of the debut novel Welfare (Tyrant Books).
Air date: March 13, 2019.
Steve Anwyll's short stories have appeared in Forevermag, Fence, Hobart and others.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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28 min
What Does It Really Take to Make a Literary Podcast?
Show notes
What does it take to make a literary podcast—and what makes someone a good guest? In this episode, I share some thoughts on the labor behind every episode, the generosity and respect that make a great conversation possible, and why independent literary media needs more than good wishes to survive. If we want a thriving literary culture, we have to help build it—and support it.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1 hr 6 min
Kelly Clarkson Wants to Buy Molly
Show notes
Volume 108 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira sees Digger, has strong feelings...Tyler gets a short king suit...Brad goes to New York City...Uncle Rico is on his flight...his teenage daughter goes to a live taping of SNL, bears witness to Shane Gillis...Angry Adam AWOL...having back surgery later this month...Shane Gillis just wants to stare at whores, y'all...Kelly Clarkson's futile attempts to buy Molly in Brooklyn...Selma Blair is a savage assassin who will bite you...Siri and Kaya demand clarification...& more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1 hr 21 min
1058. Tananarive Due
Show notes
Tananarive Due is the author of the novel Mazywood, available from Saga Press. It was the official September 2026 pick of the Otherppl Book Club.
Tananarive Due is an American Book Award and NAACP Image Award–winning author, who was an executive producer on Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror for Shudder and teaches Afrofuturism and Black Horror at UCLA. She and her husband, science fiction author Steven Barnes, cowrote the graphic novel The Keeper and an episode for Season 2 of The Twilight Zone for Paramount Plus and Monkeypaw Productions. Due is the author of several novels and two short story collections, Ghost Summer: Stories and The Wishing Pool and Other Stories. She is also coauthor of a civil rights memoir, Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights (with her late mother, Patricia Stephens Due).
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1 hr 19 min
REPLAY: Anne Helen Petersen on How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation
Show notes
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 677, my conversation with Anne Helen Petersen. We were talking about her book Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
Air date: October 21, 2020.
Anne Helen Petersen received her PhD in media studies from the University of Texas, where she studied the history of the gossip industry. Today, she writes about the future of work, celebrity, burnout, and more at her newsletter, Culture Study.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1 hr 24 min
Bob De Niro Has 10 to 18 Dogs
Show notes
Volume 107 of Brad & Mira For the Culture..Mira recaps her return to the motherland...she did not get diarrhea...the soothing sounds of Siri and Kaya...Brad tries to teach his son how to compliment women...Angry Adam's cortisol level recedes in the wilds of Idaho...Keep Tom Cruise Weird...Digger does a nosedive at the box office...Diddy gets sent to solitary again...Taylor Swift has another new BFF...Woody Harrelson claims that Bob De Niro has 10 to 18 dogs...& more...
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1 hr 22 min
1057. Sam Tallent
Show notes
Sam Tallent is the author of the novel Brut, a literary thriller available from Random House.
Tallent is a comedian, novelist, and host of the Chubby Behemoth podcast. For the last decade, he has performed more than forty-five weekends per year in North America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. Sam has two comedy specials: Waiting For Death to Claim Us and The Toad’s Morale. He also has a travel show, Wide World, on YouTube. He lives in Detroit and cooks dinner for his wife every night.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1 hr 54 min
REPLAY: Robin McLean on Feminist Westerns, Cosmic Time, and Unconventional Living
Show notes
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 748, my conversation with Robin McLean. We were talking about her debut novel Pity the Beast, available from And Other Stories.
Air date: December 15, 2021.
Robin McLean worked as a lawyer and then a potter in the woods of Alaska before turning to writing. Her debut novel Pity the Beast was chosen in multiple Best Books of 2021 lists in outlets such as the Guardian, Wall Street Journaland White Review, while the American Booksellers Association chose it as an Indie Next pick. She teaches writing across the U.S. and internationally, and currently lives in the high desert West.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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22 min
Excerpt from 'Sunrise,' by Téa Obreht
Show notes
Téa Obreht reads from her new novel Sunrise, available from Random House.
Obreht is the internationally bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife, Inland and The Morningside. Her novels have won the Orange Prize for Fiction, been a finalist for the National Book Award, won the Southwest Book Award, and won for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and Zoetrope: All-Story, among many other publications. Originally from the former Yugoslavia, Obreht now resides in Wyoming.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1 hr 19 min
How to Write a Biography
Show notes
A new Craftwork conversation with Brendan O'Meara, author of the biography The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine, available from Mariner Books. The paperback edition will be available on November 2.
O’Meara is the founder and host of the Creative Nonfiction podcast. As a sportswriter, he’s covered a wide swath of events including the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes, as well as several local and professional sports for Trail Runner Magazine, Bleacher Report and the Associated Press. His essays and craft pieces have appeared in Writer’s Digest, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction Magazine, and Longreads. He lives in Oregon.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.
Support the show on Patreon
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1 hr 16 min
1056. Roshan Sethi
Show notes
Roshan Sethi is the author of the debut novel The Simp, available from Simon & Schuster.
Sethi is a writer, director, and practicing oncologist. He is the cocreator of The Resident, which ran for six seasons on Fox. His directorial debut, 7 Days, won the Independent Spirit Award for best first feature. He subsequently directed World’s Best for Disney+ and cowrote the abortion drama Call Jane, which premiered at Sundance in 2022. His third film as a director, A Nice Indian Boy, recently premiered at SXSW to rave reviews. His next film, The Surgeon, starring Michelle Yeoh and Martin Freeman, is forthcoming. The Simp is his debut novel.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
-
1 hr 12 min
REPLAY: Heidi Julavits on Book Reviews, Psychics, & The Believer
Show notes
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 62, my conversation with Heidi Julavits. We were talking about her novel The Vanishers (Doubleday), winner of the PEN New England Fiction Award.
Air date: April 18, 2012.
Heidi Julavits is the author of The Folded Clock: A Diary and four novels. She is an associate professor at Columbia University and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in New York City and Maine.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors.
Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter.
Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
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