The Moth Podcast

Good news: The Moth reading series (a much-loved storytelling series hosted by the hilarious Jonathan Ames, the also-very-funny Andy Borowitz, and others) have begun to put some of their favorite readings out on a weekly podcast!


A couple of my favorites so far include Malcolm Gladwell reading a very funny (though perhaps not entirely true) story about shenanigans he undertook while as a writer for The Washington Post and Dan Kennedy (author of two of my five all-time favorite McSweeneys pieces) talking about his days as a corporate marketing exec (from his new, highly-recommended book Rock On).

At lunch today I finally got around to listening to Elna Baker's story "Yes Means Yes," about her attempt to reconcile her devout Mormonism with a desire to be with an atheist that she meets and falls for. It's hard to do justice to just how funny, sad, and sincere her fifteen minute reading is, but I'll just say that I'm still reeling from it two hours later (maybe because I'm a non-believer that has been on the other end of this situation more than once in my life?).

Anyway, if you like things that are good, things that are funny, and things that only last 15 minutes, you might want to check out this podcast series.

The New Yorker Festival

After spending the last few days participating in a number of events at the New Yorker Festival, I have emerged with a few stray thoughts:

• George Saunders is as funny and interesting in person as he is in print. Friday night he repeatedly brought the house down at the Angel Orensanz theatre in his conversation with Jonathan Safran Foer on "The Incredible." I was delighted to hear him talk about Donald Barthelme's "The School," particularly after having dedicated a post to Bartheleme just days before. Saunders had some very interesting things to say about writing fiction as a line-by-line, nuts and blots process that I found extremely illuminating. Plus, I met him and he's an incredibly nice guy!
• Andy Borowitz is a truly gifted wit. After giving a comedic presentation on Saturday morning, he asked the audience if they had any questions, about literally anything at all. As people asked him questions about Hillary Clinton, the new Radiohead album ("I think that this might not be the best question for this crowd. Let's talk about it on Facebook later, I'll 'poke' you"), and the Cleveland Indians, he was killing with everything he said. He seemed like the absolutely perfect bar companion. I'm still reeling, though, from the fact that he created the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." I wonder if he also wrote the iconic opening theme song?
• People really, really want to win the weekly New Yorker caption contest. The place was sold-out for NY'er cartoon editor Robert Mankoff's event. Did you know that they get 15,000 submissions for it every week? I could never take the contest that seriously after the skewering they got by these two different McSweeney's articles. That said, I'm always interested in finding out how any style of humor works from an expert and it was definitely nice as well to hear a little bit about the drawing style of my favorite author/illustrator, James Thurber.
  
• Although I know that umbrage has been taken with the festival's self-congratulatory nature, that was just not the case at any of the events I was at. The audience seemed geniunely excited to be there and the hosts and speakers (especially Henry Alford at the Parlor Games event on Saturday), really seemed to make a concerted effort to engage and entertain their audience.
  

It really made me happy to see so many people show up for such a wide variety of events. Although I've never been a fatalist about literature and think people overestimate its decline within our culture, it was really fantastic to see such a wide mix of people show up regardless of the type of event. Who knew that about 15 German college students would flock to a 10 AM Andy Borowitz event? Or that a similar mix of people will spend $25 to play New Yorker-related Parlor Games on a Saturday night? (well, actually, I would totally do that one). Overall, it was a great reminder of exactly why you put up with all the annoyances that living in New York brings.