Shelf Life
By Grand Journal
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Category: Books
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Subscribers: 1
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Episodes: 58
Description
Shelf Life is a show about books and the people who love them. In each episode, we invite a celebrated bibliophile (think Alan Cumming, John Waters, and Joyce Maynard) to select two of their favorite books, and then we chat about them, drawing connections between their lit choices and their lives and careers.
| Episode | Date |
|---|---|
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Francis Spufford on Blitz London, archangels, and the temptation to change history.
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Mar 02, 2026 |
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Madeleine Dunnigan on heated rivalries, women writing desire, and boyhood’s pressure systems
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Feb 09, 2026 |
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Jonathan Mahler on the 1980s New York that made Trump — and Michael Chabon’s comic-book Gotham
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Jan 26, 2026 |
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Laurie Gwen Shapiro on Amelia Earhart, Harriet the Spy, and the art of rewriting legend
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Sep 16, 2025 |
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Ada Calhoun on Ghostwriting, Thornton Wilder, and the audacity of desire
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Aug 29, 2025 |
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Geoff Dyer on Bad Food, Jazz Renegades, and the "Soviet Resignation" of Post-War Britain
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Jul 17, 2025 |
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Biographer Katherine Bucknell on Christopher Isherwood's Odyssey from Weimar Berlin to California
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Mar 04, 2025 |
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Legendary Publisher Edwin Frank in Praise of Rudyard Kipling — and Why the 20th Century Novel Matters
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Jan 21, 2025 |
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Jeanette Winterson on ghosts, tech bros, and what her success taught her about class in Britain
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Dec 31, 2024 |
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Jennifer Kabat on America's forgotten populist uprising and the politics of place
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Nov 06, 2024 |
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Ricky Ian Gordon's Odyssey of Sex, Drugs and Opera
|
Oct 29, 2024 |
|
YA author Rex Ogle on Life as a Poor Kid in a Land of Plenty
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Oct 08, 2024 |
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Helen Phillips on a mother's primal love, and the perfidy (and promise) of AI in her novel, Hum
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Sep 03, 2024 |
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Musician Orenda Fink on Glass Castles, Witchy Mothers, and Family Dysfunction
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Aug 24, 2024 |
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Jennifer Belle on complicated teenage girls, and writing with Madonna
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Apr 29, 2024 |
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Curtis Sittenfeld on writing comedy, and Jane Austen's headstrong heroines
|
Apr 20, 2024 |
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Ada Zhang on the Lives of Others and stanning Eudora Welty
|
Feb 27, 2024 |
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The Dead Presidents Society with Actor Dylan Baker
|
Feb 12, 2024 |
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Ramit Sethi on money, pleasure, and finding moments of awe
|
Jan 30, 2024 |
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Season Three is Coming: turn the page on a new chapter.
|
Jan 23, 2024 |
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Between Dystopias: Marlon James and Hafizah Augustus Geter Live at Deep Water Lit Fest 23
|
Oct 10, 2023 |
|
DJ Taylor on George Orwell's literary genesis, and why the author of 1984 still matters
|
Jun 14, 2023 |
|
Christopher Bollen on Graham Greene, Agatha Christie, and the abiding pleasures of the whodunnit
|
Apr 26, 2023 |
|
Joanna Quinn, author of The Whalebone Theater, on secret gardens, complicated heroines, and procrastination.
|
Mar 31, 2023 |
|
Ari Shapiro on singing for Bono, cooking for Nina Totenberg, and what novels teach him.
|
Mar 23, 2023 |
|
Reading Stephen King with Sera Gamble, co-creator of the hit show, You.
|
Feb 23, 2023 |
|
Brooke Gladstone on her terrible waitressing, the future of media, and why Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita resonates today
|
Jan 19, 2023 |
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Jerry Stahl on a bus trip to Auschwitz, his friendship with Anthony Bourdain, and Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust.
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Jan 05, 2023 |
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A Year in Reading with Joyce Maynard, Darcey Steinke, Edmund White, and John Waters
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Dec 28, 2022 |
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Marion Nestle on late starts, unhappy families and her war on food myths
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Dec 11, 2022 |
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Leila Taylor on Shirley Jackson's Haunted Houses, Black Goth, and Being a "Creepy Kid."
|
Nov 23, 2022 |
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Lydia Millet on writing about goodness; and Mary Ruefle makes a cameo.
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Nov 12, 2022 |
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Orlando Figes on writing history, radioactive fungi, and why Madame Bovary is the greatest novel ever written
|
Nov 01, 2022 |
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A.M. Homes on absurdity, satire, and the troubles of men
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Oct 16, 2022 |
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Jonathan Escoffery on tough guys, the joys of ackee, and writing the books we need to see in the world
|
Sep 22, 2022 |
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Seán Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness Wide, on love, loss, and poetry
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Sep 10, 2022 |
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Michael Cunningham on originality in fiction, and realizing his destiny while bartending at a tiki bar
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Aug 26, 2022 |
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Director Anthony Fabian on Mrs Harris, talking cats, and Colum McCann's sexy resurrection of Nuryev
|
Aug 17, 2022 |
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Douglas Stuart on love and war in 1980s Glasgow and Cromwell's England
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Aug 09, 2022 |
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Sondre Lerche on Marguerite Duras, and the alchemy of love
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Aug 02, 2022 |
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William Boyd on Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, and the art of the comic novel
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Jul 24, 2022 |
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Courtney Maum on riding out depression (literally), and the children's party that changed her life.
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Jun 14, 2022 |
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Melissa Gilbert on family secrets, escaping Hollywood, and L.A. noir
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Jun 06, 2022 |
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David Hare on not being a nice boy, the irrelevance of critics, and bourgeois marmalade
|
May 30, 2022 |
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Season Two is coming: bookworms, are you ready?
|
May 25, 2022 |
|
Kevin Barry on reading Annie Dillard, and finding his voice through Saul Bellow
|
Mar 15, 2022 |
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Meredith Talusan on Complex Women in Literature
|
Mar 09, 2022 |
|
Peeling an orange with rare food hunter Dan Saladino
|
Feb 19, 2022 |
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Brendan Slocumb on time traveling with Anthony Doerr and Hanif Abdurraqib
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Feb 01, 2022 |
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Brian Broome on Mary Karr's The Liar's Club, and the art of writing memoir
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Jan 04, 2022 |
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Darcey Steinke on writing the female body and avoiding the paparazzi with Jackie O.
|
Dec 23, 2021 |
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Joyce Maynard on memoir, Salinger, and the original Spider-verse
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Dec 17, 2021 |
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Becky Ann Baker on Somerset Maugham, and life as Lena Dunham's screen mom
|
Dec 11, 2021 |
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John Birdsall: The Complicated Legacy of James Beard
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Nov 24, 2021 |
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Nic Stone: On Losing Her Religion, and Revisiting The Virgin Suicides
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Nov 22, 2021 |
|
Alan Cumming: On Visiting Gore Vidal and Reading Jean Rhys
|
Nov 18, 2021 |
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Sarah Waters: On the Brothers Grimm and Victorian Sex
|
Nov 15, 2021 |
|
John Waters: On the Serious Pleasures of a Bright Young Thing
|
Nov 15, 2021 |