fiction/non/fiction fiction/non/fiction

New York Daily News columnist Harry Siegel joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan and guest co-host Matt Gallagher to talk about his recent piece about the Supreme Court’s decision to permit what he has dubbed “after-the-fact bribery.” Siegel, who has covered corruption for years, explains how the legality of accepting gratuities, tips, and gifts has become so nuanced that it’s now almost impossible to prosecute a politician who’s been bought off, and details why the newest version of the law is “fundamentally incoherent.” Siegel also talks about the language, literature, and history around ducking the rules, including the origin of the word “scofflaw,” and reads from a recent New York Daily News article.
To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/
This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.
Harry Siegel


“Supreme Court Legalizes After-the-Fact Bribery” New York Daily News | June 6, 2024


“Scofflaw Trump is a Defaming Menace to America” New York Daily News | January 27, 2024


The muckrackers and the gunslingers: What’s in the balance as the Supreme Court gets ready to take up a legal challenge to New York’s tough firearm laws” New York Daily News | February 1, 2019


Others:


“English, loanword champion of the world” by Britt Peterson | The Boston Globe | June 29, 2014       

Breaking Bad


The Sopranos     

Succession


Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravations by Amman Shea

Thomas Malthus


Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis

e.e. cummings


Krazy Kat by George Harriman


Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol


All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren


The Last Hurrah by Edwin O’Connor



Democracy by Joan Didion


Democracy and American Novel by Henry Brooks Adams


Primary Colors by Joe Klein



Plunkitt of Tammany Hall by William R. Riordon


The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan


The Man in the Arena: Selected Writings of Theodore Roosevelt: A Reader by Theodore Roosevelt



Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Novelist Sally Franson and critic Emily Nussbaum join host V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about reality television. Franson, a recent reality TV show winner whose new novel, Big in Sweden, is from the point of view of a woman who joins the cast of a program in that country, reflects on transforming her real-life experience into fiction. Nussbaum, a staff writer at The New Yorker whose new nonfiction book, Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV, addresses the history of what she calls the “dirty documentary” genre, discusses the hundreds of interviews she conducted with reality show staff, as well as the form’s surprisingly early origins and the influence of The Apprentice on national politics. Nussbaum and Franson trade notes on how the relationships between people on camera and people behind the camera influence edited footage; the way race was and is handled on reality television; and what it’s like to be a contestant or producer. They also talk about poor labor conditions on sets and what that means to the genre. They read from their work.
To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/
This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.
Sally Franson 

Big in Sweden

A Lady's Guide to Selling Out


Emily Nussbaum

Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV

I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution

“Is “Love Is Blind” a Toxic Workplace?” | The New Yorker


Others:

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 26: “Sally Franson on Fashion and Literature”

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6, Episode 33: “The Stakes of the Writers’ Strike: Benjamin Percy on the WGA Walkout, Streaming, and the Survival of Screenwriting”

Allt för Sverige

Big Brother

The Real World

Survivor

Love is Blind

An American Family

The Amazing Race


Heartburn by Nora Ephron


Nora Ephron

Carl Bernstein


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the wake of the recent Trump-Biden debate, public relations operative Phil Elwood joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan and guest co-host Matt Gallagher to talk about his career spinning stories in favor of infamous international leaders. Elwood, whose clients previously included figures like Libya’s Gaddafi family and Syria’s al-Assads, recalls his strangest assignments, his biggest regret—helping Qatar to secure soccer’s World Cup—and his proudest accomplishments, including spotlighting the mental health treatment that has helped him. He reflects on how his career shifted when he was swept up in then-FBI Director Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and also explains tactics such as “detonating the bomb in a safe location,” which means giving an unavoidable, damaging story to a second-tier publication so that the “hit isn’t so bad.” Elwood reads from his new book, All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Phil Elwood
All the Worst Humans: How I Made New for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians

Others:


“Sri Lanka, Lobbyists and War Crimes” by Ken Silverstein | Harper’s Magazine | October 23, 2009


“Gunner Palace,” by Peter Travers | Rolling Stone | February 24, 2005


“Nothing seemed to treat their depression. Then they tried ketamine,” by Meryl Kornfield | The Washington Post | September 12, 2022

John Grisham


Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election by Robert Mueller | U.S. Department of Justice | March 2019


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Literary Hub observes July 4, we return to our archives for a 2017 episode that remains relevant today. We will return with a new episode July 11.
In episode 6, V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell talk political betrayal past and present with novelist Jess Walter and poet Kiki Petrosino. Jess Walter once interviewed an ailing Mark Felt, aka "Deep Throat" of Watergate fame, and he gives us the skinny on the literary qualities of Nixon, Trump, Flynn, NY mobsters, and his 2005 novel Citizen Vince. Plus, would John Gotti have liked the president? On the eve of the release of her new book, Witch Wife, Kiki Petrosino talks to us about MacBeth's witches and how Shakespeare can help us decode our current age of political skulduggery. What Trump Administration officials would you cast in Macbeth? Readings: All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward; Citizen Vince by Jess Walter; Witch Wife by Kiki Petrosino; The Tragedy of Macbeth; The Tempest; The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
In the Stacks: J.J. Cantrell interviews Annie Philbrick of Bank Square Books in Mystic, CT and Savoy Bookshop & Cafe in Westerly, Rhode Island.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Novelist Maxim Loskutoff joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan and guest co-host Matt Gallagher to talk about his new novel, Old King, which is about Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, who moved to Montana to withdraw from society. Loskutoff, who grew up in Missoula, Montana, discusses the mythology that draws men like Kaczynski—who sought to be in nature, and to avoid technology and other people—to his home state; the gap between the imaginary American West and its reality; and how these connect to American settler colonialism. He also explains how he positioned the Kaczynski of his novel not as a hero or even an antihero, but as a symbol of this dark and unhealed facet of American society. Loskutoff reads from Old King.
To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/
This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Maxim Loskutoff

Old King

Ruthie Fear

Come West and See

Opinion | The Unabomber and the Poisoned Dream of the American West - The New York Times


Others

William Kittredge

Richard Hugo 


Lewis and Clark 

Billy the Kid 

Jack Kerouac 


“The Story of Jack and Neal: the friendship that made On the Road—and the Beat Generation—possible” by James Parker, The Atlantic, March 11, 2022


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist and novelist Nicolás Medina Mora joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan and guest co-host Matt Gallagher to talk about Mexico’s president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who will be the first woman and first Jewish person to lead the country. Medina Mora explains current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s history, his hold on Mexico’s political imagination, and how his connections to Sheinbaum will affect policy moving forward as he uses his last days in office to attempt 18 changes to Mexico’s constitution. Medina Mora, who is an editor at the Mexican magazine Nexos, reflects on writing about Lopez Obrador through both fiction and journalism. He elaborates on a pre-election piece he wrote for The New York Review of Books and also reads from his novel, América del Norte, in which he plays with the relationship between fiction and nonfiction.
To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/
This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.
Nicolás Medina Mora

América del Norte

Where Next for Mexico? | Nicolás Medina Mora | The New York Review of Books

Nexos


Others

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 32: "Claire Messud on Blurring Family History and Fiction"


Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 17: "Ed Park on Korea’s Past, Real and Imagined"



"Mexico’s outgoing president pushes ahead with plan to fire 1,600 judges" by Christine Murray | Financial Times



"Mexico’s bloodiest election in history sends new asylum-seekers to the US border" by Caitlin Stephen Hu, David Culver, Norma Galeana and Evelio Contreras| CNN


The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices