It’s been almost a year since Miranda July released her hit novel, “All Fours.” The novel features a woman in her mid-40s who heads out on a solo road trip across the country, only to stop at a roadside motel 30 minutes from her home. She winds up staying there for three weeks, exploring and questioning what she actually wants and needs out of midlife, thing ... Show More
Oct 21
On Our Third Date, I Asked for a Joint Bank Account (Encore)
Janene Lin loathed the moment when the dinner bill would hit the table. When her date would pay, she felt like her love was for sale. Splitting the bill felt like no one had anything at stake. Most of the time, she would pay the bill herself, but that left her feeling uncared-for ... Show More
46m 6s
Oct 14
Does My Son Like His Stepmother More Than Me?
One thing that comforted Denise Ryan after her divorce was that she and her ex-husband still talked every day. Even though they lived apart, they were still co-parenting their son, Alexander, and they were constantly jumping on the phone to tell each other what he was up to at th ... Show More
48m 18s
Oct 7
How Alan Cumming Escaped His Father and Became Himself
The actor Alan Cumming is not the man his father wanted him to be. Growing up, Cumming says, his father had specific ideas about how he should look and what he should do with his life, ideas he enforced with abusive violence. However, Cumming tried to stay true to himself: As a t ... Show More
46m 39s
Nov 2024
Book Club Meets: Desire, hormones, and tampons, with Miranda July
<p>Would you rip up your current life and reinvent yourself if you had the chance? Do you have desires you’d want to explore? Maybe there are hidden parts of yourself you’ve never had the chance to get to know? Which societal rules would you want to ignore?</p><p> </p><p>Aut ... Show More
46m 48s
Sep 2024
Say More - Miranda July and Esther Perel on The Rebirth of Desire
This week, Esther is in a borrowed bedroom in Los Angeles, the perfect place to talk about desire and the novel on every bedside table, All Fours. The writer, director, and artist, Miranda July, joins Esther to examine the erotic and to explore how love and desire relate and how ... Show More
51m 41s
Oct 2016
#42 Miranda Sawyer (Journalist & Music Critic): What's A Modern Midlife Crisis?
Miranda is a writer and broadcaster. She writes regularly for The Observer and The Mirror. Her first writing job was at Smash Hits, in 1988. Then Select magazine, where she won a PPA award for Writer of the Year. During the 90s, she had a column in Time Out and she wrote for The ... Show More
38m 41s
May 2024
The New Midlife Crisis
From John Cheever’s 1964 short story “The Swimmer” to Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling 2006 memoir, “Eat, Pray, Love,” our culture has long grappled with what it means to enter middle age. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz e ... Show More
49m 33s
Jun 2019
Elizabeth Gilbert on Travel After "Eat, Pray, Love"
For this week's episode, we sat down with the best-selling author to talk about how travel has changed for her since that infamous Eat, Pray, Love adventure, and the role it now continues to play during her grieving process after the loss of her partner, Rayya. Plus, she also exp ... Show More
39m 39s
Dec 2023
Escaping the Mimetic Matrix
<p>A. Natasha Joukovsky comes on the pod to discuss her debut novel The Portrait of a Mirror, Rene Girard, Wilde, the Novitate Conference, contemporary moralism, narcissism, life working a full time job while writing novels, and more.</p>
<p>Follow her on IG @<a href="https://www ... Show More
44m 18s