Sociologist Nicole Bedera joins co-hosts V.V Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about the Cornell 7 and her book, On the Wrong Side: How Universites Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence. She explains how the Cornell case, in which a student said she was gang-raped at a fraternity party at the Ivy League institution, falls into a long tradition of universities mishandling reports of sexual violence. Bedera describes the history of Title IX, which forbids discrimination on the basis of sex, and pinpoints how sexual violence came to fall under its framework. She considers how Title IX’s effectiveness has fluctuated since its establishment in 1972, and especially under the Trump administration, which during its first stint shifted regulations in a way that made it easier for universities to avoid accountability. Bedera discusses what universities stand to gain from improper handling of sexual violence cases and why administrators insist on referring to such cases as isolated, rather than representing systemic problems. She also addresses common misconceptions about sexual violence and Title IX investigations. Bedera reflects on her time as a victim advocate, using her experience to conduct fieldwork at an anonymized Title IX office, and how Title IX could be reimagined as a state agency to be more effective. She reads from On the Wrong Side.

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 podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, AJ Abernathy, Sienna Hoopingarner, and Grace Workman.

Nicole Bedera

• On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpatrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence
• “A New Title IX Rule Essentially Allows Accused Sexual Assailants to Hide Evidence Against Them”

Others

• Jane Doe says she did not feel supported by Cornell’s president. | The New York Times

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Acclaimed writer Yiyun Li returns to the show to talk about her new novel, Music Against the Night, with co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell. Li explains how she first became interested in fictionalizing the lives of married musicians John Field and Adelaide Percheron and reflects on the limits, challenges, and opportunities of conducting historical research for fiction. She discusses the role grandparents play in her characters’ lives and how older mentors can shape an artist’s personal and professional growth. She also shares how she chose to structure two wide-ranging life stories within one novel, and how her characters illustrate disparities in opportunity among equally talented peers. Li considers how her characters define failure and success, and how these definitions affect John and Adelaide, neither of whom achieve fame. She reads from Music Against the Night.

Yiyun Li

• Music Against the Night
• Encountering the Past in “Music Against the Night” | The New Yorker
• Things in Nature Merely Grow
• The Book of Goose
• Wednesday's Child
• Must I Go
• Where Reasons End
• Kinder Than Solitude
• Gold Boy, Emerald Girl
• The Vagrants
• A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
• Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

Others

• A Life and Times: Fryderyk Chopin | Dr Alan Walker
• A Confession and Other Religious Writings | Leo Tolstoy
• Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 5, Episode 42: Yiyun Li on Complicated Friendships Real and Imagined

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Award-winning fiction writer T. Geronimo Johnson joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about his new novel, The Occidental Book of the Dead. He discusses how the book addresses white supremacy and the United States’ deep-seated and racist mythology through the perspective of George Washington Jonson, a black police officer working in a fictional version of Atlanta. Johnson talks about researching police work but almost entirely avoiding depicting scenes of it on the page, and also explains why the book transitions from third to first person. He reflects on how structures of The Egyptian Book of the Dead and other classics are incorporated into the story. He reads from The Occidental Book of the Dead.

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 podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Archer Walsh, Elizabeth Willis, and Eric Thong.

T. Geronimo Johnson

• The Occidental Book of the Dead
• Hold It 'Til It Hurts
• Welcome to Braggsville

Others

• A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson
• The Egyptian Book of the Dead, translated by E.A. Wallis Budge
• The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
• Confessions by St. Augustine

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Poet James Richardson joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and Christian Barter to talk about his collection of new and selected poetry, Within the Hour. Richardson discusses how his early fascination with science and his enjoyment of science fiction has influenced his poetry and considers the way his aphorisms counterbalance his more lyric poems. He reflects on the role that literary criticism has played in his career as a poet and gives listeners a rare glimpse into his process of inspiration and composition. He speculates on the increasing role that politics has played in his new work, particularly since 2016, and reads from Within the Hour.

This podcast is produced by Christian Barter, Whitney Terrell, Valen Williams, Ashley Holmes, Rylee Adamson, and Lucien Hockaday.

James Richardson

• Within the Hour: Poems and Aphorisms, 1971-2026
• For Now
• During
• By the Numbers
• Interglacial: New and Selected Poems and Aphorisms
• Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays

Others

• “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

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Fiction writer and popular YouTuber Sam A. Miller joins co-hosts Christian Barter and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about his debut story collection, Still Lost: Tales from the Year 2080, as well as his educational and comedic videos. Miller reflects on how he got started on YouTube a decade ago, when he was an adolescent, and amassed 4.8 million followers by developing Sam O’Nella Academy, a channel with a scrappy, homemade feel and distinct illustrations. Miller discusses the genesis of the unusual aliens who set the stage for most of Still Lost’s human-centered stories by solving potentially world-ending problems like climate change right off the bat. He explains why he decided to self-publish the science fiction collection and how it found its way to a traditional publisher. He also shares his science fiction influences and talks about how his personal history with addiction shapes the book’s final story. He reads from Still Lost.

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 podcast is produced by Christian Barter, V.V. Ganeshananthan, AJ Abernathy, Grace Workman, and Sienna Hoopingarner.

Sam Miller

• Still Lost: Tales from the Year 2080 by Sam A. Miller
• Sam O'Nella Academy - YouTube

Others

• Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
• Blindsight by Peter Watts
• Wheelers by Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen

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Fiction writer Emily McBride joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss her debut novel, Queen Mab, and maternal mental health. McBride talks about the media frenzy around the trial of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts woman charged with killing her three children, and considers how Clancy’s insanity defense has seized the public imagination, prompting new conversation about postpartum psychosis. McBride reflects on Queen Mab’s protagonist, a 23-year-old graduate student of Victorian and modernist literature, who struggles to bond with her baby and begins to fear that her child is a changeling. McBride explains the narrative shifts she uses to portray the character’s fluctuating reality and why literary allusions to changelings and fairies make sense in the context of the pressures of new motherhood. She also discusses how the most infamous “bad mothers” in folklore have skewed society’s perception of postnatal depression. She reads from Queen Mab.

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 podcast is produced by Whitney Terrell, V.V. Ganeshananthan, Emily Farris, Sydney Perkins, and Emma Ware.

Emily McBride

• Queen Mab by Emily McBride

Others

• Inferno by Catherine Cho
• Lucky Jim By Kingsley Amis
• Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare
• The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Medea by Euripides
• Labyrinth (1986) dir. by Jim Henson
• Cottingley Fairies: How Sherlock Holmes's creator was fooled by hoax | BBC (2020)

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Nonfiction writer Robert Moor joins co-hosts Christian Barter and Jennifer Maritza McCauley to talk about his new book, In Trees, and the power of “tree thinking,” a concept developed by the evolutionary biologist Robert J. O’Hara. Moor explains how this form of thought emphasizes branching, growth, and pruning, as opposed to hierarchical ordering, and shows how these principles can be identified in the work of writers like Tolstoy and Wordsworth. He explores the role the giant sequoia played in founding modern conservatism and takes listeners on a tour of his own experiences in the trees from Papua New Guinea to Vancouver, Canada, where he participated in a tree sit with activists protesting an oil pipeline. He discusses the ethics of climate activism and how tree thinking might help us re-imagine the environmental movement for a new age. He reads from In Trees.

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 podcast is produced by Whitney Terrell.

Robert Moor

• In Trees by Robert Moor | Moon Palace Books
• On Trails by Robert Moor | Moon Palace Books

Others

• The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
• “The Trouble with Wilderness” by William Cronon
• On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
• Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau
• Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 9, Episode 56: Matthew Wolfe on the Secret History of Radical Environmentalism
• 
  

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Nonfiction writer G’Ra Asim joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about his new book, 99 Problems Finding the 1: a love story (sort of). Asim discusses Afropessimism, heteropessimism, and their relationship to his pursuit of love as a cis straight black man; defines the idea of “thinkful wishing”; and recalls the ways in which black couples in his family, including his parents, have modeled relationships for him. He explains how—inspired by the viral New York Times essay “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love”— he came up with a series of inquiries that push two participants to reflect on their experiences of gender and race. He talks about how culture influences understanding of romance, mentioning Destiny’s Child, Dexter, and Minor Feelings. He reads from 99 Problems Finding the 1.

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 podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell.

G'Ra Asim

• 99 Problems Finding the 1: : a love story (sort of)
• Boyz n the Void: a mixtape to my brother

Others

• “On the Necessity of Turning Oneself into a Character,” by Phillip Lopate from To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction
• “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” | Vogue
• Dexter (TV Series 2006–2013) - IMDb
• Atlanta (TV Series 2016–2022) - IMDb
• Destiny's Child - Soldier ft. T.I., Lil' Wayne
• “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love,” by Mandy Len Catron, The New York Times
• Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong
• Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

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