Summer Mailbag: The Influence of ‘Lost,’ Prestige TV Fatigue, and Reading Recommendations

24:25Andy Greenwald:what was the mythology? Like, I was obsessed, and I love it. But it is, there's parts of it that are baggy. Damon will say there are parts of it that are baggy. Sure, yeah. We still don't know who shot at them from the other outrigger. Like, they left a lot of stuff. They left a lot of holes. Now, mystery, I think, is what makes good art. But I think that the idea of a mystery box show, like the way that severance is received and discussed. I don't think that, I honestly don't know if Lost would be able to survive in the current climate of like speculation and frame-by-frame analysis. And also like that weird literal thing that people have now, it's like, well, they would never do that because, you know, they were too far from drinkable water, you know?

25:07Andy Greenwald:There's people that like, they had to come up with a reason why Hurley wasn't losing weight. Like people were... Yeah. So the reason I, one of the reasons I keep up bringing Lost is because, you know, and that show's not for everyone. Sorry, the reasons I keep bringing up Dark and that show is not for everyone. But it really did seem like the Germanic response to the bagginess of a show like Lost. Every single screw was turned super tight. Every angle was 90 degrees. It ended in a way that is like, it lives up to its title. Let's put it that way. But that to me is the best expression of what it seems like sometimes fandom or executives want, which is everything neat and tidy buttoned up three seasons.

25:50Andy Greenwald:We're going to do it and take everything to its logical conclusion. I loved the show, but I think that there was a lot more air in Lost. Did you just stick the Lost signal ending? No, we never did. Okay. We're saving it for season two, right, Kaya? Would have been super controversial. Do you have an official opinion on this finale of Lost? Honestly, I don't think I've seen it since aired. So I don't even really remember a lot of it other than the revelations that kind of come out. Dan says, Hi, love the pod for your mailbag. I've been thinking about this. we often hear about shows that were ahead of their time and couldn't find an audience or got canceled.

26:25Homicide Life on the Street, My So-Called Life, etc. What about recent shows that arrived too late? Shows that would have popped before the streaming era fracture viewership and changed habits. Is there a 2025 show that you think would have killed it in 2010 or 2015? Good question.

26:42Andy Greenwald:This is a great question. And this question kind of led me to a theory. Is the... I don't want to say highbrow because it suggests it's not kind of gross, but has comedy been the thing that suffered the most with the explosion of streaming TV? Because I think comedy was something that I looked for programming the most. If one comedy was good on any night of a TV network, I would watch the next comedy because it was on the same network or maybe it had some sort of connective tissue, different world Cosby kind of thing. you know we often talk about the NBC Thursday night thing but I would go as far as to recall the Comedy Central run where it was like Broad City yeah the Ken Alterman era at Comedy Central is outrageous Kroll show Workaholics Detroiters yeah so it's like this basically you had this patent of quality you would be like I'll try anything on this thing on this network especially this kind of show so when I see shows like Adults or Dave or What We Do in the Shadows and I think that they're modestly successful in their own ways.

27:51I wonder if they would be much bigger deals if FX had like a comedy night. They honestly, for all I know, do. I just don't watch FX on cable anymore.

28:02Andy Greenwald:Usually when we talk about the development teams being, like the elite development networks slash teams being HBO and FX, generally what we're talking about is, you know, attention-grabbing drama series. But they're also the places that consistently, and maybe the only places left that consistently develop comedies of a really high order. And I think Amy Gravitt is the person at HBO and I think it's, as far as I know, like at FX, it's still, it's Nick Rad and Gina Balian and the team that's been there for a long time. I think those are still both really consistent deliverers of really high quality comedy.

28:43Andy Greenwald:But when we say like it would have been bigger, I mean, I think there's two different ways to look at it. There's the like NBC comedy nights on Thursdays or the ABC family comedies that just became the shows that everyone watched and talked about. And to a degree, Abbott Elementary is the best version of that that we have now. It is big. It made stars. The other version of it is the Comedy Central version, which is lower budget launching stars, creating brands. I think FX has done really well in that lane. Whereas I see HBO, like with everything since the merger, they are trending a little bit bigger.

29:15Andy Greenwald:I mean, HBO just outbid other places for an in-house, admittedly, Warner Brothers. But I think they were in a bidding war over it for a Bill Lawrence, Steve Carell show. Yes. Right, that is coming up. But also they've got Nathan Fielder and other trying to, you know, attention grabbing. Larry David is doing a show with the Obamas, right? Yeah, sketch comedy show. So they're still working. They're in a really big space. I think that, to me, the things that came to mind for this, I don't want to cut you off if you had any other comedy thoughts. No. Sometimes, the first place I went with this was AMC original programming.

29:55Like Interview with a Vampire?

29:56Andy Greenwald:Not their current programming, which I think is working for them. I think they found a niche. But again, this is a few years ago, but like Lodge 49. Yeah. The Lodge 49 era. um the what was the name of the um the uh bob odenkirk campus comedy that was going to be his follow-up to um right the sound one of my favorite things on podcasts is the sound of everyone in the room typing to get it um we'll figure it out i it's i can't remember it or uh but the point being these were shows that in a different era would have been cast differently not the odenkirk part but like everything around them they would have been budgeted differently and they would have been received differently you know i they both worked fine for what they were but they were delivered into an ecosystem that had already moved past this type of shows where people were like willing to give it a chance um and i feel like there's a bunch of those you know that just feel increasingly like yeah this is very high quality this is very good intentions and creative teams behind it but just greenlit at the wrong time you know for I think they also had like a very strange like where do I find AMC stuff Lucky Pink by the way yeah yeah and maybe the bigger point there is that like AMC is that one of the shows where you were like you watched the first one and you were like truly the greatest TV show of all time and then the opposite oh okay I found it a little chinteel.

31:33Andy Greenwald:As far as campus comedies go. What's your favorite campus comedy? What was the Amanda Peet show that she made? The chair with Sandra Oh. That was a good show. That was good. Should we just do that part of the podcast? But wait, are we getting to the root of this question, do you think? Like there's just. Yes. What's the root of the question? I think that there are other examples of things that we have championed that would have been harder cells in any ecosystem. but I do feel like, you know, play the hits, you know, for us, the opposite of hits for us, 000 or the English or like Hugo Blix miniseries.

32:10Well, I was going to say there are shows that are international productions that I wonder whether would just be better off as Netflix shows because Netflix seems to have a unique ability to platform international stuff and sell it back to Western audiences or American audiences specifically. Sure. And they're just like, yep, I'll give Squid Game a try. You know, and now obviously that's a very grabby dystopian drama, but would Say Nothing have been bigger on Netflix? Would Tokyo Vice have been bigger on Netflix? I don't know.

32:43Andy Greenwald:Tokyo Vice maybe. The reason I want to come back to Loud 49 was just, in my mind, it was more recent. I think it's 2018. 2018, which is longer ago. It's already a different era of television. But... Lodge 49 is just like, you know, its title was inspired by Pynchon. It was created by a novelist named Jim Gavin. It starred Wyatt Russell, who is now going to be in Avengers Doomsday, but, you know, was an actor that we kind of like from Linklater movies. And it felt like the kind of show that if given the right opportunity, because it was such a good hang, people would have found it and found their way to it.

33:17Andy Greenwald:And that would have been doable for a network like AMC when it was still receiving tons of carriage fees no matter what. But also, maybe they wouldn't have produced it in the way that they did, which did feel a little bit caught in between. Because the whole point of the show is that it was like a cool beach hangout vibe, but it was so clearly shot in Georgia that that took me out a little bit. And the mixed cast of like, I don't even know the budgetary history. I don't need to get into it. Sure. But like we are missing that. But I'm using that as an example of the TV version of the kind of middle brow quality movie that got eaten out of the movie business.

33:57Andy Greenwald:We're not getting these kind of like, this is an ongoing series and we'll hang out with it for a while. If you're getting it, if Lodge 49 comes out today, like it's not being made unless Matthew McConaughey is starring in it for Apple. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tremphaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tremphaya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tremphaya, proper training is required.

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35:55The Dog Stars, now playing in theaters and IMAX. This episode is brought to you by Panda Express, telling someone you love them. It isn't always easy, but showing them through food. Sometimes that's better than words, especially when that food's wok cooked at Panda Express, a Joe has favorite pick from delicious classics like orange chicken, honey, walnut shrimp, Kung Pao chicken, and black pepper, sirloin steak. Perfect for when you're watching the team you love or eating with the person you love. Have you eaten yet? Click or tap the banner to order or visit a Panda Express near you. John has a question.

36:33I have a question about prestige TV fatigue. In the last year, I have gotten much more enjoyment from watching Baseball, Top Chef, Bake Off, 100 Foot Wave, Taskmaster, and other shows like that. And I don't necessarily...

36:44Andy Greenwald:John feels like he's enjoying life. I don't think this is necessarily indicative of a drop of quality or anything. I loved Say Nothing, for example, but I find I have less time and interest for very important TV. Are you folks experiencing a similar thing? Does this change the way you cover TV? I think it's similar to the... This is a good follow-up because it's related to the previous question. There was a moment when the prestige, quote-unquote, important TV that we covered was Breaking Bad, which was also super entertaining and was a, by the end, it was six consecutive week lift, right? And then it was like a short sports season and then you were done with it.

37:23Andy Greenwald:Sometimes now, the best shows of the year are, Say Nothing is a great example. Say Nothing was incredible work, completely underseen. I found both compelling and at times really enjoyable, but a limited historical series that could be really tough and really demanding. Yeah. That's different. Like, it's like the great, there's no middle class anymore. Can I just say that? Yeah. There's no middle class of this for, you know, the prestige stuff has trended more prestige or more limited, which requires a different kind of investment. Like, the best TV shows, I feel like John would like The Pit, you know?

38:04And is The Pit the wire?

38:07Andy Greenwald:No. But, you know, it weirdly... Anything about this is, I mean, because, look, Top Chef episodes are like an hour and 15 minutes, right? 100 Foot Wave typically goes up to about an hour. With commercials. Top Chef without is like still, it's 55. It's the heavy, it's long. Don't they do 90-minute episodes? With commercials, which net out to like... About an hour. Of actual watching it. Okay. But, so it doesn't seem to be, and then when you have Bake Off, that's at least a lot of volume of an episode. Look, I think maybe what you're looking for here is a repeatable experience and a consistent level of quality.

38:40And even though we've been critical of Top Chef or whatever, or even said like 100 Foot Wave, like kind of caught in between what Garrett's doing and what the rest of the surfing community is doing, like ultimately it sounds like what you want is, I know I'm going to get this feeling when I tune into this. And I think that for me, if there's anything that I'm sharing with you, John, it's that there are real fluctuations of quality for a lot of shows. The best shows kind of can maintain it, but even something like The Pit had down episodes or episodes where you were like, okay, that was gross and exciting, but it was 51 minutes and I'm, you know, I feel like something's coming.

39:25You're on that arc, but because we do so much, hey, you're not going to fucking believe this episode. You have to build up to that. Whereas for Taskmaster, for Bake Off, you're like, cool. I am going to feel the exact same way at the end of this.

39:38Andy Greenwald:I'm sorry to cut you off. You say it at the end of this as you would at the beginning. Go ahead. Yes. That was not a seamless baton pass. I apologize. You don't remember what you were going to say? No, I remember. It's the TV. You're just like Chris has been talking for 30 seconds. Chris, you're done. can we do something about this? We should get one of those little like chess clocks. No, the TV forgot how to be TV. So if you talk about Last of Us, whether you love the show or hate the show, there is no argument over the fact that the second episode was a very, very different show than the sixth episode, for example, just pulling that out of a hat.

40:09Andy Greenwald:Or, you know, it may be skewed in a more positive way that the third episode that everyone loved in the first season was different than the second episode that everyone loved in the second season. That is a wide variance of your experience of viewing the show and also because it's so big, so prestige, such an adaptation it doesn't really, I'm not saying this as a flaw, but it doesn't spend a lot of time being like, let's hang out in Jackson and meet all the characters so we know where we're going to be. That's not the type of the show that it is. So the investment of your time can have a very different return week to week.

40:40Andy Greenwald:Whereas your example with The Pit, by minute 41 of the pilot, I was like, I can't wait to learn every single person in this room's name. And I know that I will. So that when there's an episode where the nurses stand in a circle like a Greek tragedy from the actual Odyssey times, and they're like, truly, these are our problems today in medicine. I was like, okay, cool. I wonder what Dr. Langdon's doing right now. I love the experience. I also wonder if John's experiencing a little bit of the same issues that Catherine was experiencing, which is just, it's really noisy in the swimming pool. Do I want to jump in?

41:15Andy Greenwald:Yeah. Like, maybe John would enjoy the bear because certainly the first two seasons, episode to episode, it's very engaging and the episodes aren't that long. But the pressure to have an opinion about it and to have watched all of it in order to talk to anyone can be daunting. Sure. So. Yeah. Dylan asks, thank you to Andy's endorsement of Bluey. I introduced it to my kids ages six and four and it's now their favorite show. This has given me some credibility in their eyes to recommend shows. I've tried to turn them on to some of my favorite classics with mixed results. They love Errol Flynn and Danny Kaye but hate Miyazaki.

41:53Andy's girls...

41:54Andy Greenwald:I'm sorry, we're going to have to revisit this. Andy's girls are slightly older and Sear's ward is frozen in time as an early teen. Thank you for listening. So I'd like to learn from their experience. What are your recs for films or TV shows from any era that will be enjoyable for me and for my kids? I think the... This is a really tough one. Muppets. Muppets are... really good generally. High quality across the board. The early movies especially I will always watch. I love watching. The entirety of the original Muppet Show is streaming on Disney Channel and a lot of that, Disney Plus, and a lot of that is very much adult coded in ways that are really fun.

42:39Andy Greenwald:So I think that is a reliable indicator of everyone being pretty happy. Beyond that, there are certain classic era, classic era Disney movies like Mary Poppins that are just phenomenal always then it gets a little trickier like because you heard of Mary Poppins dog no but I'm like no I mean like but I mean in terms of things that I actually enjoy watching too I was able to my kids got into Fantastic Mr. Fox but will not watch Isle of Dogs that's where they're but now they're old enough to start watching but now my older daughter likes Tenenbaums so we're in the clear but like because my kids liked Miyazaki one of the reliable things to do was just like go to like the Apple movie like the iTunes movie store and like call up Spirited Away and scroll down to the recommended also and then there's other anime movies that we ended up discovering that they liked but if this guy kids don't like that stuff I'm not sure but the algorithm has been helpful for me in those ways Does it ever recommend like stuff that is inappropriate like Blue-Eyed Samurai or something like that?

43:49Andy Greenwald:No. So far, no. I mean, it does recommend... There are a lot of anime movies in which the spirit of a girl turns into a small fox that a boy falls in love with. And this is a lot of like, what's going on? So it does get a little questionable. But in terms of family, everyone loving it. From your childhood, that was the first movies you really start to fall in love with, like Ferris Bueller or Goonies, resonate with your kids? 100 % no. But that also may be, not to, you know, gender is a spectrum, but my kids just are profoundly uninterested in movies about special boys, whether it's Star Wars, Back to the Future, Karate Kid, or hearing about my childhood, honestly.

44:38Andy Greenwald:But they do love rom-coms that are increasingly inappropriate. Like my older daughter is 12 and her favorite movie is Clueless. Really likes like Room of the View. Really likes all Pride and Prejudice. Room of the View is a rom-com? Yeah. If you watch it the right way. Pride and Prejudice. The Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice is the most watched movie in the household. Steven said, here's my mailbag question. Nothing for your word, by the way. No. Commando. I don't have anything for them. I mean, to me, it would just be... I think the biggest change that I feel like has happened is it didn't feel like there was as much age-appropriate stuff for us when we were younger.

45:18There wasn't. And so the constant fight was, I want to watch the thing that's just a few years too old for me.

45:24Andy Greenwald:Yes, we were pitched up, which my younger daughter has to deal with. And I was much more like, I want to get away from the kids' stuff as fast as possible. You know what I mean? I was always trying to sneak around a door to see Miami Vice on TV. Yes. You know, like that kind of thing. and now if I had had as many options if there was so much stuff marketed to me when I was eight I don't know if I would have been like oh I want to know what's going on I'm moonlighting you know I think that there's a it's amazing how much high quality stuff there is for kids I think another show that they fell in love with that your older kid might start to get into is like Owl House was a Disney show that they loved it's really smart but it is a completely different thing to be catered to constantly versus just trying to age up to the point where you can plausibly rent Kentucky Fried Movie.

46:13Steven asks, with the rise of international television breaking into the mainstream in North America with Squid Game, Dark Money Heist, and more recently, Eaternaut, when you watch foreign language television or films, do you prefer subs or dubs? Subtitles or dubbed versions?

46:27Andy Greenwald:Never dub, dog. Subs only. I never dub. I tried it because I was curious with Eaternaut. Hmm. for a couple of scenes and it just didn't have like any emotional like, uh, quality. I mean, I'm sure the voice actors tried their best, but like, it's just kind of like reading. It's not, it's not acting. Um, and I wonder if that will get better. I wonder if a certain, uh, artificial intelligence programs might. Do you, I mean, do you, I'm just, I know you don't have the answer to this because we didn't prepare this level of, of data, but like, I, I do wonder Netflix, like what percentage of people are doing dubs versus subs?

47:10Andy Greenwald:I mean, there are... There's a big... It's whether you're second screening or not. So you cannot watch Eats or Not and also look at your phone for extended periods of time because, yes, you can follow along visually, but you'll miss some nuance of these characters who are oftentimes like it's off-screen voices and stuff like that. So I think that that is the sort of major thing that why people might choose to have dubs on. I think also, from what I've heard anecdotally, culturally, people who grew up in non-English-speaking countries are more used to dubs. Like, a lot of the material that they saw was dubs growing up.

47:45Andy Greenwald:So that is a more, it's not a barrier to entry. The flip side of that is what's interesting to me. It's not in the question, and maybe we'll have other opportunities to talk about it, but everything is subtitled now, and so many people watch things with subtitles intentionally. not just like my parents putting subtitles on the wire because they literally didn't understand what any of these people were saying about any subject. But more the fact that like everything on TikTok and even on Instagram, like are the clips from this are subtitled. But that's also so sometimes people just are looking at their phones with the volume on and they can just.

48:17Andy Greenwald:Right. But it's normalizing subtitles and normalizing using looking at that part of the screen. And it does change, I think, people's relationship to like when I put subtitles on things or if they just automatically come on, English speaking things, I am reading ahead. And so I'm not really keyed into performance. The only time I've actually recently, I've tried to not do it because I do find that it's a different viewing experience to read something even as you're trying to process a frame. I never do it with movies because I just feel like that is not the way that a film was meant to be seen.

48:52And yet. That being said, I was just watching Tenet again

48:57Andy Greenwald:this weekend. And that movie is not mixed well. Like, the dialogue is not mixed high enough to be able to even come close to understanding all the shit that they're talking about. I fucking love Tenet, but, like, when you turn the subs on, you're like, oh. But also, there's an element of, like, like, I think this came up when we were talking about Andor. Like, there have been moments when watching episodes of Andor, especially re-watching them for the pod, where I've thrown subtitles on just to make sure I've gotten something. And I see something that I absolutely... But it didn't matter. I understood that Partigaz was saying, like, referring to some munitions project.

49:39Yeah, like, he's like, you got to do this. But I didn't know that that was also the same thing that was referenced three episodes ago or something like that. Yeah. Chris and Andy, in a slow TV period, I'm wondering if you have any recommendations for under-the-radar shows that maybe pre-exist your podcasting careers.

49:54Andy Greenwald:Whoa, boy. I feel like we've done this. This is from Nate. We've tried to be pretty open about the shows that we loved growing up, the shows that we loved when we were first in New York together. And they're ones that I feel like are just now accepted parts of the canon, like Friday Night Lights. I think people get that that's amazing. I did podcast a little bit about it on Sick the Landing, but I don't think that's a secret. I came across... The other day, one of my favorite things to happen on the internet is when I accidentally find myself on a Wikipedia page for a season of 24. You were so into 24.

50:36And you're just like, the president's twin.

50:41Andy Greenwald:You were so into that. I was really into the first three seasons of 24. And politically, you were really into Jack Bauer's methods. I remember that that was a big... More Nina's, but yeah. This morning at breakfast, my younger daughter asked me something that she's asked before, which was, when you were my age, what were your favorite TV shows? Which is such a strange question, going back to what you were saying, what we were saying before about like, what was available to us. because I was like when I was seven or eight everyone's favorite TV shows that year were the Cosby show Family Ties Growing Pains like that's what everybody watched you know and that and I was like explaining that they were they were comedies about families and then she stared at me for a minute and she said are they the shows with the fake laughing and I was like oh that's interesting yeah and she goes I hate that what do you mean you hate that what do you know then I said that and then I stormed make your own breakfast it was a great bit I have to I carved out some time towards the end of this pod because we have so many emails asking us what we're reading what books we would recommend and whether we would do another Summer of Dove type reading project I want to talk to you about this plan let's hash it out that was a very joyful time during a very dark period of American life and the pandemic.

52:07Andy Greenwald:We were so fortunate, I think, to choose one of the greatest American novels, certainly of the 20th century. Yeah. And a book that contains such multitudes and is such a journey. I think it's tough, although I think we should make this a conversation, to think of another book or book series that has the same kind of populist but also artistic weight. Um, that said, in the earliest, earliest days of Hollywood prospectus pod, we briefly started a Tumblr for our book club or double down book club, which still remains, I think on the internet is the only official register of like, we like George Pelicanos and Alan first.

52:50Andy Greenwald:And here are the books that we liked by them. Um, so I don't know if it would be like a recurring, like here is the watches bookshelf and we could like physically put copies up here next to the golden bananas that are here for some reason and have them here and we would just do a little riff on why we like this book and then the world it opens up. Do we do like an Elmore Leonard episode of things that we love? I think an Elmore Leonard episode would be good. I find that Elmore Leonard's pleasures are not where I would be like, let's go back to what Jack Ryan was doing in this book. You know what I mean?

53:23It's not like the mechanics of the plot kind of.

53:25Andy Greenwald:The way this drunk ordered a scotch from the woman with the cigarette was so amazing. Yeah. I, you know, I have books that I can recommend that I've been reading this year, and I'm happy to do so. But as far as like a project, you're right. There was something, there was like a little bit of kismet around Lonesome Dove. I think it was the first time we had both read it. It was a big, long novel that was supportive of multiple episodes of discussion, but also fun and surprising and sad. And then there was TV, and we could talk to people about it. I mean, my memory of reading the part where Redacted dies while holding the paperback in one hand, while forgetting to flip the chicken that I was grilling in the backyard is literally burned.

54:09Andy Greenwald:Very much like Redacted. Into my mind. Okay, so what could we do? Is there like another doorstopper novel that you have either you've had your eye on? that's the other thing is that like we got lucky and i both started reading one some dove for fun and then we were both like this is incredible yep and then turned it into content and it's hard to be like let's read treat of tree of smoke by dennis johnson and make it into like or or delilo's underworld yeah or whatever and and have it be relevant to what we're doing i the other thing about it that i loved and this this has been a theme in this entire mailbag podcast is that it was 40, it wasn't yet, but it was about to be 40 years old.

54:54Andy Greenwald:There was nothing, nothing urgent about covering this book. Its place in the firmament was settled. And I kind of liked that, you know, that that was made it a more pleasurable experience. It wasn't about like, why now? Why is this? So I don't know. I don't, I saw this mailbag question and I do think that there is some value in building a little shelf of like our, canonical books because there like there was a period when you and I were both talking about fandom it's like we read one early George Pelicanos book and then what was so thrilling about it was not just that he was writing new books but there were so many there were different series to get into and we would be texting on the back when you had to do the hit three four times yeah language would be texting about these books James Crumley books that I still reread but and I think inform how we feel about things.

55:53Andy Greenwald:But I don't know about a doorstopper. Also, Kaya's contemporary corner, all with K's, I think would be... That would be KKK. I don't have any notes. We pretty much just go off the dome here. First idea, best idea. That would probably do numbers for us because Kaya reads more contemporary fiction than either of us. My favorites? Well, I just finished the new Miranda July novel. All fours? All fours, which I enjoyed a lot, but I have no, like I have not engaged with Miranda July in any other format. Have you left your marriage yet? I feel like that's the all fours thing, right? Yeah, it's a lot of middle-aged ennui and perimenopause.

56:40Other than that...

56:41Andy Greenwald:I don't know her. Is she related to Benny Jezret? I think one of my favorite things I read this year was Colored Colored Television by Danzi Senna, which was, it's basically a novel about a woman who, she's a novelist living in Los Angeles and she tries to get into the TV writing industry. And it's one of those books that kind of makes you feel almost like sick to your stomach with secondhand embarrassment, but like you can't put it down. because of like the failures of her professional career or yeah okay other than that what's that one called again color television color television okay um i'll throw a couple of titles out just do you know i i think i shouted out play world by adam ross earlier in the year i think john mulaney shouted that out yeah i kind of think i beat him to the punch although anthony jeselnik beat me to the punch i love that novel uh i want to shout out a patrick hoffman who we've brought up a couple of times he's been on the pod.

57:43And there's a new novel called Friends Helping Friends, which is set in Colorado and is about a sort of small-time crook who gets caught between a white militia and law enforcement in a game of criminal enterprises. How does that work out? I wouldn't give it away. I don't want to do that. And yeah, other than that, I've been trying to get through Anna Karenina, which has been my big project that i did east of eden last year i tried to like read at least one classic year uh i've read a couple of other books in my downtime from anna karenina because i can't travel with it it's too heavy so i've read america fantastica which is a recent novel by tim o 'brien who wrote the things they carried which i liked quite a bit and a hero of france which is just another first

58:33Andy Greenwald:banger alan first banger that's not a new one though right no it's just it's about the french resistance. Should we reread all the Alan First books? I was thinking about that recently. Maybe we could do Night Soldiers. God damn, it's a good book. I feel unprepared for this because You always say that? I always ask you if you want to do book talk. Yeah, but I wasn't ready today. I'm not ready. And then you're doing Instagrams of the Ivan Doig book. Doiga, I believe. Nothing? Yeah, English Creek by Ivan Doiga is the best book that I've read in a long time. That's a recommendation. I loved it. It's set in 1939 in Montana.

59:11Andy Greenwald:And it was just like, I think I said this, like discovering it was like, oh, what if William Faulkner was Mark Twain? And it's so fun and exciting. And the writing is so lively and great. I read, Kai, have you read any Mieko Kawakami? She wrote Breast and Eggs. I haven't, no. I read a book by her called All the Lovers in the Night. That was kind of cool. Have you ever read any of that? You know what? I know you pretty well. and I read an old I mean there's a there's a children's book author named Russell Hoban who wrote these books speaking of the guy who wanted things for his kids about a I think a badger called Francis and it's like bread and jam for Francis and these are very like popular books I remember those he then and his wife drew Lillian Hoban drew the pictures it's a great book about a a mold Christmas I'm telling you all this because then he left his wife moved to London and wrote a bunch of adult novels about guys who were divorced and living in London.

1:00:05Andy Greenwald:He wrote a book called Turtle Diary that got turned into a pretty mediocre movie in the 80s, but it's a really interesting middle-aged romance. It's not like all fours, but there are turtles in it. And then, it's true. Here's the thing. We didn't even talk about this. This is my last one. Recently, I was looking at old issues of spin on Google Books, because sometimes it's fun to be like, not just like what were the ads when magazines existed and had ads, but I'm always like, I wonder what Chris reviewed this month. You know, it's like dilated people's second record or whatever. Or what I, you know, like the time I went to Bam Margera's house and interviewed his parents while Ryan Dunn was drunk, passed out on the couch.

1:00:48Andy Greenwald:I was looking at the masthead and at the bottom of the masthead from Spin in like the late 90s, early 2000s is a guy named Gilbert Rogan, editorial director. Okay. I was there on the masthead when I worked there. Never knew who it was. So I was like, who was that guy? What role did he have? So then I read about this guy who was a legend in New York publishing and was like a legend at Sports Illustrated for many, many years. And that he also, and then I guess had a relationship with Bob Miller who bought the magazines and was just advising them even though he was retired. That was his role with Spin.

1:01:17Andy Greenwald:He wasn't assigning you dilated people's reviews. But it turns out he also was once praised by John Updike as like the greatest other young novelist of his time. And he wrote like dozens of stories for The New Yorker, some of which turned into kind of like story collection novels. And then he turned in 1974 or whatever, 78, he turned into a new short story to your guy Roger Angel at The New Yorker, who was the fiction editor then. And he said, these seem a bit like you're milling the same terrain. And he never wrote fiction again. No shit, really? All this, his two novels were republished a bunch of years ago, like five, six years ago.

1:01:50Andy Greenwald:And they're really fun. Roger rejected them, though. Yeah, but these were already out. And they were published in one volume by Verse Chorus Press, What Happens Next, and Preparations for the Ascent. and they are like a missing link in that kind of like lightly comic 70s. But what do I do with my life? John Updike, Woody Allen vibes. And pretty fun. There's always something more to discover. Okay, so maybe we'll make the recommendation, the book recommendations in the shelf part of our... Okay, but I want to, I think we should answer this. We should figure out something though to the root of the question.

1:02:23Andy Greenwald:Like we should find a project. Yeah, for sure. Are we going to do that? Yeah. Before or after you watch The Wind Rises by Miyazaki. I just want to put it in the iCal. Thanks to everybody for listening. We will be back. Andy, probably solo on this coming Thursdays, if this is going up. Like hard solo. Hard solo. The Andy Greenwald show returns. And then, yeah, we'll be back soon. I'm going to have Jenny Lewis on and we're just going to talk about wisdom. She can sing her name again. Things we've learned. Yeah. It's going to be great for me. Have a good trip. Thanks to Kaya. Thanks to John.

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1:03:39Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro Plans.