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Shelf Life
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.
Podcasting since 2021 • 58 episodes
Shelf Life
Latest Episodes
Francis Spufford on Blitz London, archangels, and the temptation to change history.
Francis Spufford’s new novel, Nonesuch, drops us into Blitz London—blackouts, random acts of violence, food rationing—and then, almost imperceptibly, the world acquires another layer. In this episode, Spufford, the author of Golden...
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Season 4
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Episode 9
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54:52
Madeleine Dunnigan on heated rivalries, women writing desire, and boyhood’s pressure systems
Madeleine Dunnigan’s fierce, unnerving coming-of-age novel, Jean, is set in the final weeks at Compton Manor, an all-boys school that sells itself as enlightened where desire moves like weather, and cruelty is a kind of social sport.In t...
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Season 4
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Episode 8
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52:24
Jonathan Mahler on the 1980s New York that made Trump — and Michael Chabon’s comic-book Gotham
Few cities lend themselves to myth quite like New York, a city that reinvents itself so often that each generation claims its own version. In this episode, we speak with journalist Jonathan Mahler about The Gods of New York, his sweepi...
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Season 4
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Episode 7
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51:27
Laurie Gwen Shapiro on Amelia Earhart, Harriet the Spy, and the art of rewriting legend
Before you can shape a story, you have to pay attention to the world as it really is—even when it’s messy, even when it stings. That lesson from Louise Fitzhugh’s classic Harriet the Spy has guided the career of reporter and biographer...
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Season 4
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Episode 6
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54:17
Ada Calhoun on Ghostwriting, Thornton Wilder, and the audacity of desire
“Anything Ada Calhoun wants to write is well worth reading,” declared Kirkus in its review of her new novel, Crush, a sharp and seductive exploration of midlife desire and the unruly force of infatuation. Calhoun is the author...
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Season 4
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Episode 5
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51:37
