People Still Read Books

Hey, we're here. The book, "How Lucky," is out. It belongs to the world now. Will talks to, really, the only person he could talk to about it: Tim Grierson. We hope you enjoy the book, and the podcast. Send Will your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're back! We're just a few days away from the publication of HOW LUCKY. Whoa. But today, we have another May 11 release date author, the wonderful Jessica Anya Blau, discussing the extremely fun "Mary Jane." Send Will your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're back! We're delighted to talk to Luke Epplin, author of "Our Team," about the 1948 Cleveland Indians and intersecting stories of Larry Doby, Bill Veeck, Satchel Paige and Bob Feller. It's an awesome book. Also: Will's book "How Lucky" is about in, like, 12 days now. Woah! Send Will your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Margaret Coker is the former Baghdad bureau chief for The New York Times and has written a gripping story of the Falcon, a counter-terrorism unit in Baghdad that took on ISIS. It\'s absolutely riveting. She\'s also the editor of The Current, a publication covering Coastal Georgia.\r\nSend Will your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com.\r\nFollow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let\'s go on this journey together.\r\n \r\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\r\n

It\'s NCAA Tournament week! Will is delighted to host ESPN\'s John Gasaway, whose new book \"Miracles on the Hardwood,\" which is about the history of Catholic schools in college basketball ... which is to say, it\'s about the history of college basketball.\r\nSend Will your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com.\r\nFollow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let\'s go on this journey together.\r\n \r\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\r\n

Hey, this is a fun one: It's our friend Tim Grierson! He's got a new book out, "This Is How You Make A Movie." We talk to him about it. We're very official. Send Will your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're back on our weekly show. This week, we talk with Eric Nusbaum, author of "Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers and the Lives Caught in Between." Also subscribe to his terrific newsletter at sportsstories.substack.com. We're also short on a guest for next week. Send me your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're back! Sorry about the delay! Holidays! Schedules! Insurrections! We are back to our weekly shows, and we kick it back with Pete Croatto, author of "From Hang Time to Prime Time," a book about the ascension of the NBA to where it is today. It's a good book! Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Wallace-Wells is the author of "The Uninhabitable Earth," a New York Times bestseller about the ravages that potentially await us if we do not confront climate change. He has also written brilliantly and rationally about the Covid-19 pandemic and, less important, he's also Will's longtime editor at New York Magazine. In the last PSRB podcast of 2020, Will and DWW discuss climate, politics and whether we should have hope. (We should.) Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together.

Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting are among the great minds behind Television Without Pity and the Extra Hot Great podcast, and they've wrote a lovely, hilarious book about "Beverly Hills 90210." Listen to them talk about loving terrible things so much they become great, Luke Perry implanting himself on our lives and also some, uh, problematic moments from the show's history. Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together.

David Daley is the former EIC of Salon and a noted political writer and activist. He is the author of "Ratfucked: How Your Vote Doesn't Count," and the new book "Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy." He has ... some thoughts about what is happening right now. Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together.

Melissa Maerz is a longtime entertainment journalist--she's one of the founders of Vulture--and one of the smartest pop culture minds working. And "Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused" is a terrific, engrossing read, a testament to Richard Linklater's great film. But it's also a history of Generation X, and of that particular moment in movie, and generational, history. She's very smart and a blast to talk to. Plus: "Dazed and Confused" is still awesome. Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together.

We didn't have to wait long for bad news after the good news of the election: Alex Trebek died on Sunday morning. His legacy will live on, and he even has 35 shows left to do. Claire McNear is a writer for The Ringer and author of the wonderful new book, "Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider's Guide to Jeopardy!" We taped this podcast before his death, but it's otherwise a terrific tribute to an amazing show and an amazing host. And Claire is great. Buy the book. Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together.

Mark Leibovich is the chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine and author of two great books, "Big Game," about the NFL, and "This Town," about Washington D.C. and politics. And in our Election Week special, we talk about Trump, and this election, and the NFL, and how to stay sane this week. We're taking next week off, so this is our last show until after the election. Stay safe out there. Also, there was some issue with the recording. Mark sounds great, but Will is very echo-y. Mark's answers are the only things worth hearing, so just skip Will if he annoys you. (This should always be done anyway.) Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together.

David Hill grew up in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and knew little about the town's history with gambling, the mob and '50s vice. But he discovered it while researching and writing "The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice." It's a terrific, terrific book. You might also know his work from Grantland back in the day. He talks to Will about the book, about Hot Springs and about releasing books in a pandemic. He's awesome. Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together.

RJ Young was a Black man who married into a white Oklahoma family whose patriarch was obsessed with guns. To bond with his father-in-law, he began to train as a firearms instructor, and that leads him down a path of reckoning with the NRA, the police and how differently white people and Black people interact with guns. Young is also a sports radio broadcaster for ESPN and his next book is about the Tulsa Race Massacre. He's also very funny. The book is "Let It Bang: A Young Black Man's Reluctant Odyssey Into Guns" Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together.

Spencer Hall is one of the best sportswriters on the planet, but he might be one of the best writers, period. The longtime blogger and podcaster, along with his former SB Nation colleagues, has co-written his first book, "The Sinful Seven: Sci-Fi Western Legends of the NCAA." It's about college football, but it's about a lot more than that, and his section is fiction, an allegorical Western in the vein of Larry McMurtry. You'll love it: It's like an old paperback you can hold in your fist. He and Will discuss the book, self-publishing vs. a big publishing house, television and the weird fandom Thomas Pynchon had for Dinosaur Jr. This is a fun one. Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together.

Our third guest is the great Steven Hyden, one of the best music writers on the planet and the author of the hilarious and sharp, "This Isn't Happening: Radiohead's 'Kid A' and the Beginning of the 21st Century." The book tracks the history of Radiohead and the creation of "Kid A," their most divisive, and maybe best, album. He and Will talk about the book, and also trying to keep your head above water in the scary world of publishing. They also agree that they'll be perfectly happy just to die alone at their desks. Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together.

Look, we did a second show! It's a good one too: It's a conversation with Jessica Luther and Kavitha A. Davidson, authors of the smart, fascinating book "How to Love Sports When They Don't Love You Back." Is it possible to be an ethical sports fan? No one has thought about this very question more than they have. They don't have the answers. But they have plenty of intelligent, thoughtful things to say. It's Episode Two! And this one even sounds cleaner than the first one! Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together.

Greetings! Welcome to the People Still Read Books podcast, a weekly podcast in which Will Leitch, author of five books, including the upcoming "How Lucky," builds up to the May release of his book by talking to some of his favorite authors about their books and their experiences in publishing. It's a way to learn about the industry AND talk to some great authors about their great books. There's no better Episode One guest than Linda Holmes, author of the NYT bestseller "Evvie Drake Starts Over" and host of the NPR podcast "Pop Culture Happy Hour." She's one of the best people we know. Will talks to her about publishing her first book in her 40s, what it's like to go from writing online forever to being a bestselling author, how to stay sane when your book is release and what it's like to suddenly be talking about your book on the "Today" show with Jenna Bush. It's a super fun podcast. And we're going to be doing this weekly! Follow the podcast at @stillreadbooks on Twitter, and email your author recommendations to peoplestilllreadbooks@gmail.com. Let's go on this journey together.