What authors have to say about life, the universe and everything

Aside from being able to share great books with you all, one of the added benefits of Curious Reading Club is the chance to interview authors. This happens often but not every time, sometimes as a live Q&A with club members and sometimes as a separate conversation that I share later. But it’s a privilege to be able to dig deeper on an author’s ideas, outlook, and process.

We don’t actually have an interview this month—I was sadly unable to make contact with Tim Clare, despite several attempts. But it did make me think about all the fun conversations I’ve had since starting this up.

So I thought I’d share our growing archive of interviews here. 

I’ve grouped them by broad subject to help you see some common threads, although subject matter inevitably goes much further than these one liners can capture, and there are many more overlaps between the various interviews once you start digging in.

Our planet, past, present and future

We spoke to Ferris Jabr on a holistic approach to earth science; Laura Poppick on the benefits of thinking about deep time; and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson on maintaining hope in the face of environmental crisis.

The art of writing about history

We talked to Bonnie Tsui about mixing reporting and memoir; we had Carvell Wallace on the joys and difficulties of writing memoir; Adam Higginbotham on bringing history to life (part I, part II); and Rebecca Nagle on digging up complicated stories. 

Technology and society

Alexis Madrigal spoke to us about how the world has changed and what we can do about it; Karen Hao talked on what’s wrong with AI; Nicola Twilley on the way refrigeration has utterly changed our food and our lives; and Henry Grabar spoke about society’s terrible incentives around parking and cars.

Politics, policy and ethics

Annalee Newitz discussed propaganda and the culture wars; Nora Krug told us about illustrating a guide to resisting tyranny; Carl Elliott spoke on whistleblowers; Lauren Markham on who benefits from the current migration system; and Carly Anne York shared her thoughts on the importance of engaging people about the value of scientific research.

Talking with these fantastic authors has been a real highlight of the last 18 months for me; I hope you get something out of these conversations too.

⌘

In a bit of self-promotional news, I have an op-ed in the New York Times today about the ghoulish Sora 2 app from OpenAI—a true moment of technological awfulness, a deepfake-generating machine dressed up as a social media network. The question I ask is essentially “what is this for?” and the only genuine answer I can see from the results is that it is there to make us disbelieve everything we see.

There’s a little follow-up and context on my blog too, and a subtle easter egg about what I’m working on for those who have been following along.

Onwards

Bobbie