- 1 hour 16 minutes1056. Roshan Sethi
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.
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Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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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.
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29 September 2026, 8:08 am - 1 hour 11 minutesREPLAY: Heidi Julavits on Book Reviews, Psychics, & The Believer
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.
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27 September 2026, 8:08 am - 23 minutes 42 secondsExcerpt from 'The Simp,' by Roshan Sethi
Roshan Sethi reads from his 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.
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Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com
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26 September 2026, 8:08 am - 53 minutes 9 secondsAngry Adam's Kafkaesque Prison
Volume 106 of Brad & Mira For the Culture..Mira prepares for a return to the motherland...Mira's dad refuses to use soap...Brad's no good very bad terrible morning...Siri and Kaya weigh in on Spirit's penis...Ed Sheeran cries onstage...Orland Bloom and the Mara sisters have a threesome in the new Werner Herzog film...Is Channing Tatum running a burner account?...Detroit woman gets lost postmortem...Meryl Streep plays Jesus in Greta Gerwig's new Narnia movie... & 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.
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24 September 2026, 8:08 am - 1 hour 13 minutes1055. Emily St. John Mandel
Emily St. John Mandel is the author of the novel Exit Party, available from Knopf.
Mandel is the author of six novels, most recently Sea of Tranquility, which has been translated into 25 languages and was selected by President Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2022. Her previous novels include The Glass Hotel, which was also on Obama’s list, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and has been translated into 26 languages; and Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award among other honors, has been translated into 36 languages, and aired as a limited series on HBO Max. She lives in New York City and Los Angeles.
***
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.
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22 September 2026, 8:08 am - 1 hour 9 minutesREPLAY: Margaret Malone on the Portland Writing Scene, Philosophy, Psychology, & Improv
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 396, my conversation with Margaret Malone. We were talking about her debut story collection, People Like You (Atelier 26 Books). It was a finalist for the PEN / Hemingway Award for First Fiction, and it won the 2016 Balcones Fiction Prize.
Air date: January 13, 2016.
A recent MacDowell Fellow, Margaret's writing has appeared or is forthcoming from BOMB, The Missouri Review, The Rumpus, Oregon Humanities, Paper Darts, The Masters Review, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Randolph’s M.F.A. program (the best in the country in her opinion), and Humboldt State University where she received a B.A. in Philosophy. She lives with her husband filmmaker Brian Padian and two children in Portland, Oregon.
Margaret has been a volunteer facilitator with the non-profit Write Around Portland and a co-host of the artist and literary gathering SHARE. She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Ford Family Foundation, the MacDowell Foundation, Oregon Arts Commission, the Regional Arts & Culture Council, and Literary Arts.
She hosts the interview series & radio show Bust the Canon on XRAY.FM and teaches creative writing through Stanford’s Distinguished Careers Institute and in Portland at Literary Arts.She also works with people individually through The Blue Wolf Writers, mentoring both established and emerging writers on their projects in person and online.
And, oh yeah, she started a Substack, too.
A former member of the Dangerous Writers, in her heart she will always spend Thursday nights at the northeast corner of the table in Tom Spanbauer’s basement.
***
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.
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20 September 2026, 8:08 am - 27 minutes 6 secondsBen Loory Reads 'The Poet' & 'The Squid Who Fell in Love with the Sun'
Vol. 19 of Story Time, featuring an author reading aloud from his/her/their work. In this episode, Ben Loory reads two stories. The first story is called 'The Poet,' from his debut collection entitled Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day. And the second story is called 'The Squid Who Fell in Love with the Sun,' from his second collection, Tales of Falling and Flying. Both books are available from Penguin.
Loory’s fables and tales have appeared in over 100 magazines and journals, including The New Yorker, Tin House, The Sewanee Review, Electric Literature, BOMB Magazine, TriQuarterly, The Adroit Journal, The Kenyon Review, Fairy Tale Review, Wigleaf, and A Public Space. They have been heard on This American Life, Selected Shorts, and WORDTheatre, and been anthologized in Tiny Nightmares, The New Voices of Fantasy, xo Orpheus: 50 New Myths, andYear’s Best Weird Fiction Vol. 5. They have also been adapted to short film, live theater, chamber music, and dance, and been translated into many languages, including Arabic, Farsi, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, Burmese, and Indonesian. Loory is also the author of a picture book for children, The Baseball Player and the Walrus (Dial Books for Young Readers 2015). He lives and teaches short story writing in Los Angeles.
***
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.
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19 September 2026, 8:08 am - 1 hour 4 minutesThe Least Alive a Non-Dead Person Has Ever Looked
Volume 105 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira's mother-in-law texts her about a bloody dog penis whose penis was bloody...the podcast celebrates 15 years of quality podcasting...Brad accuses Mira of not showing enough support...Siri and Kaya send word from Australia...Bob Mackie RIP...Mira envies Mitch McConnell's drug cocktail...recapping the Emmy Awards...Brad's Fashion Corner...Macklemore opposes mass-slaughter of civilians, is booted from Ed Sheeran tour...Harry and Meghan's UK disaster is underway...Lady Gaga is a mama....no more Pitt kids...Don Jr.'s Russian oligarch wedding...Florida Man under the bed...Catherine Zeta Jones is upset about the term 'nepo baby'...Sydney Sweeney gets nude and talks sports... & 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
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17 September 2026, 8:08 am - 1 hour 5 minutes1054. Salman Rushdie & Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Salman Rushdie and Rachel Eliza Griffiths join me to talk about Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, the new documentary directed by Academy Award–winning filmmaker Alex Gibney. Inspired by Rushdie’s 2024 memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, the film revisits the August 2022 attack that nearly killed him and follows his physical and emotional recovery. At its center is intimate, never-before-seen footage shot by Griffiths—Rushdie’s wife—during the aftermath; she is also credited as a cinematographer on the film. We talk about their decision to document that experience, the process of working with Gibney, and the complicated intersections of violence, survival, love, memory, and art. Knife begins its theatrical rollout September 17. Rushdie’s memoir, a 2024 National Book Award finalist, is available now from Random House.
Volume 104 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Mira weighs in on the death of Gloria Steinem...Florida weather in LA...Mira professes her love for M. Night Shyamalan...is Brad obsessed with Phish?....Mira telephones three different McDonald's restaurants...Brad prepares for the 15th anniversary of his podcasting career...gets huge on Instagram by not talking...Increasingly-Angry Craig from East Tennessee makes his podcast debut..Angry Adam returns...the terrifying trailer for the new Elizabeth Holmes documentary... Trump claims he was in the rubble on 9/11...the curious case of the man who was duct-taped to an airplane seat, mid-flight...death and mayhem at Burning Man...Miley drops the 'Cyrus'...& 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.
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15 September 2026, 8:08 am - 38 minutes 56 seconds15 Years of Otherppl: What 1,000+ Conversations with Writers Have Taught Me
In this special anniversary episode, Brad reflects on 15 years of Otherppl, more than 1,000 conversations with writers, and what the experience has taught him about writing, publishing, ambition, failure, persistence, and the creative life. He also looks back at how the show began, what it has become, and why long-form conversation still matters.
***
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
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14 September 2026, 8:08 am - 1 hour 15 minutesREPLAY: Chuck Klosterman on Journalism, Expertise, & the Complexities of Progress
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 423, my conversation with Chuck Klosterman. We were talking about his book But What If We’re Wrong: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past (Blue Rider Press)
Air date: July 20, 2016
Klosterman is the bestselling author of nine nonfiction books (including Football; X; The Nineties; and Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs), two novels (Downtown Owl and The Visible Man), and the short story collection Raised in Captivity. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ (London), Esquire, Spin, The Guardian (London), The Believer, and ESPN. Klosterman served as the Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine for three years and was an original founder of the website Grantland with Bill Simmons. He was raised in rural North Dakota and now lives in Portland, Oregon.
***
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
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