Mythili Rao

Tonight! I’m looking forward to speaking with poet Raymond Antrobus about his new memoir, The Quiet Ear, at the Kiln Theatre with @intelligence2.bsky.social. Come by if you can! kilntheatre.com/whats-on/ray...

Reading Rainbow emphasis is encouraging kids to read. The focus is not on teaching them to read. The mission is reading should be fun!

We are all readers, worthy of literacy. LeVar Burton said “but you don’t have to take my word for it” because he wanted us to look to the books. That’s the beauty 💚

This month’s best paperbacks: Haruki Murakami, Richard Powers and more Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some wonderful new paperbacks, from a must-read graphic history to a tale of lost love

Cool layout for the @theguardian.com September paperback roundup, featuring (a condensed version of) my review of What Iranians Want by @arashtehran.bsky.social: www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

Audience capture Indignity Vol. 5, No. 175

Indignity Vol. 5, No. 175, CURRENT EVENTS DEP'T.: Who Were the Big War Speeches Meant For? www.indignity.net/audience-capture/

Paul Laity · After Martha For the hospital, and for the NHS, it was a closed case, another preventable death: medicine is imperfect, such things...

This is such a painstakingly reported, clear-eyed account of the hellish search for accountability after a “preventable death.” www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Happy 75th birthday to Henry Huggins, Ramona Quimby's big-kid neighbor Beverly Cleary's fictional third grader with an adopted dog named Ribsy made his debut in 1950. Cleary was praised for writing simple, humorous stories that kids wanted to read.

I was happy to pitch in on NPR and talk a bit about Beverly Cleary's Henry Huggins, one of my favorite books as a kid.

Kara Walker Deconstructs a Statue, and a Myth

“In Walker’s treatment, sections of man and horse have been cut apart and resoldered together in a tangle of hooves, haunches, bridles and necks, the parts more or less recognizable but the whole an entirely new, unsettled being.” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/a...

Wow. When I went to Amsterdam in 2018 to record the radio companion to this New Yorker piece with Astrid Holleeder, she was still in hiding: I got into a car with my Marantz and mics not knowing where we were going. A most unusual production experience. www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tny...

The official voice of the US government Is cruel, gross, and weird. What is that doing to us? Joking memes about imprisonment, deportation, and death by alligator are designed to radicalize and desensitize.

The official voice of the U.S. government draws from 4chan trolls, explicitly white nationalist phrases and talking points, and radicalizing, dehumanizing, desensitizing language for its targets. I talked to propaganda experts about what it’s doing to us:
www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

From this year’s International Booker winner, Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from the Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi.

Terrific Bloomberg Weekend essay: “The fight for the soul of the South is nothing less than a fight over the future of America itself.”

How did the fourteenth century shape England? With Helen Carr Intelligence Squared · Episode

Palace intrigue, queer alliances, war with Scotland, war with France, the Black Death-- the 14th century has it all. For the latest episode of @intelligence2.bsky.social I spoke with historian @helencarr.bsky.social about her new book, The Sceptred Isle: open.spotify.com/episode/2QT2...

The Safekeep, with Women’s Prize-winner Yael van der Wouden Intelligence Squared · Episode

I spoke w/ @womensprize.bsky.social winner Yael van der Wouden about her novel The Safekeep. We talked about the bureaucracy of war, millennial fantasies of home ownership, repeatedly hearing she resembled Anne Frank as a kid, and more! @intelligence2.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/6VzK...

The gender segregation in little kids’ soccer leagues in the UK drives me insane. It’s bad for girls, bad for boys, bad for parents, bad for everybody.

YouTube video by Intelligence Squared Charlottesville: An American Story, With Deborah Baker

youtu.be/_Vk93Kk1CM8?... and the video link, for those who prefer watching their podcasts!

What can Charlottesville teach us about America’s national story? With Deborah Baker Intelligence Squared · Episode

@deborahbaker.bsky.social has written a fantastic book about Charlottesville and the events that set the stage for the 2017 Unite the Right Rally. It was an honor to speak with her about it for the @intelligence2.bsky.social podcast. Do listen! open.spotify.com/episode/49W5...

What Do Commercials About A.I. Really Promise? If human workers don’t have to read, write, or even think, it’s unclear what’s left for them to do.

“So many of these new gadgets are straightforwardly presented as salves for the massive ennui that plays bass notes beneath the music of contemporary corporate culture.” www.newyorker.com/culture/crit...

Opinion | The Civil War That Never Ended

Jamelle Bouie interviews a biographer of Charles Sumner, and it's absolutely fascinating.

Gift link.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/o...

The ’70s Performance Artist Who Became a Hero to ‘Garbage Men’

"Ms. Ukeles saw an entire universe of exploitation, both in the labor markets and in our domestic arrangements, that was being ignored at the expense of all the attention paid to subverting the erotic expectations of men." She is so cool: www.nytimes.com/2025/06/14/n...

The Sexual Evolution by Nathan H Lents review – colourful tales of animal reproduction From gay penguin parents to snake orgies, a biology professor looks at sexual adaptation in the animal world

Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈 I reviewed The Sexual Evolution by Nathan Lents for The Guardian: www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

The Oligarchs Are Fighting Does the Trump-Musk breakup resemble an ancient Greek myth or a Godzilla movie? Either way, mere mortals will likely get trampled.

It felt like @janemayer.bsky.social and @sbg1.bsky.social and I have been training for years to talk about a Musk-Trump inferno--the vanity, the campaign finance, the history back to the Borgias, the Putinism of it all.
www.newyorker.com/podcast/poli...

Ben Calhoun The Critic and Her Publics · Episode

Attention audio peeps! You don’t want to miss this conversation from with the excellent @bencalhoun.bsky.social, eaturing close listening, hog rectums, all the good stuff: open.spotify.com/episode/3ahC...

This is so exciting!

I’ve recently been pulling up old Reading Rainbow episodes on YouTube to share with my kids and it’s shocking how good they are. Pete Seeger singing Abiyoyo? Julia Child reading about cake? Run DMC rapping about how cool books are? Jason Alexander voicing a fictional dog? We used to care about kids

Ritual, Ancestry, and Cultural History in Modern China, with Alice Mah Intelligence Squared · Episode

I was really taken with Alice Mah's story and was grateful to the team at @intelligence2.bsky.social for the chance to speak with her. We talked about sweeping tombs, acts of translation, gifts of cash, and what pollution can do to your sense of smell. Take a listen: open.spotify.com/episode/1SnF...

This book is a very different sort of memoir. It's about an urban environmentalist's research into toxic pollution in the villages of South China, but also about "hungry ghosts," tangled immigration histories, and spiritual debts. And ecological anxiety.

Pudsey Scammer - BBC Sounds The story of serial fraudster David Levi, masterminding a decade-long fundraising scam.

And, the story that started it: The brazen tale of serial fraudster David Levi, from Lytham St Annes-- the Pudsey Bear Scammer. Brilliantly reported by BBC Manchester's Mat Trewern: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

BBC Sounds - Strange But True Crime - Available Episodes Listen to the latest episodes of Strange But True Crime on BBC Sounds.

Happily, the pilot was greenlit and the series is here! I didn't directly work on these new episodes, but it's great to hear the terrific Rima Ahmed of BBC Leeds helming this series, and to see the concept take on a life of its own. Check it out: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand...?

Last year, I had the privilege of helping the innovative folks at
BBC Sounds pilot a new show. The idea was to find a way to bring the deeply-sourced beat reporting of local radio reporters around the UK to true-crime-loving podcast listeners.

Naval Academy book removals spark effort to make them available again A group of Annapolis-area residents and Naval Academy alumni launched an effort to purchase books removed from the Nimitz Library and provide them to the students for free.

“We’re talking about adults here. We’re talking about a very elite, smart group of people that are at the academy,” Amundson said. “They should be able to discern for themselves what they can read.” www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...