Episode 608: 1Q1A Steven Hall - Maxwell's Demon

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15722176.png] What if we responded to death... by throwing a party? By the time Erica Buist's father-in-law Chris was discovered,...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15719199.png] What’s to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15630261.png] From national bestselling author Nick McDonell, The Council of Animals is a captivating fable for humans of all...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15619370.png] The Top 10 Sunday Times Bestseller. For history nerds and food lovers, the curious and the hungry, an...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15609348.png] Flash Forward: An Illustrated Guide to Possible (And Not So Possible) Tomorrows takes readers on a journey from...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15586489.jpg] From one of today’s leading experts on the emerging science of the microbiome comes a ground-breaking book that...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15586481.jpg] Thirty years later, something is wrong with Spence. The Great Man can’t concentrate; he falls asleep reading The...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15584863.jpg] The Fehler sisters wanted to be more than bug girls but growing up in a fourth- generation family...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15584855.jpg] Your brain is a collection of maps: detailed representations, scrawled across your brain’s surfaces, of the sights, sounds,...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15549025.jpg] In the early days of the Cold War, a spirit of desperate scientific rivalry birthed a different kind...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000-0x0+0+0_15549018.jpg] Hailed by George Saunders as “a true original—a wise and wildly talented writer,” Lee Durkee takes readers on...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15537623.jpg] A is for aronia, berry member of the apple family, clothes-stainer, superfruit with reputed healing power. D is for...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15537615.jpg] For millennia, the first four books of the New Testament have not only supported the central tenets of Christianity...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15508338.jpg] Soon to be a movie! Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails,...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15508329.jpg] Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15499882.jpg] wise, bighearted, boundlessly joyful novel of love, disaster, and unconventional family Jane falls in love with Duncan easily. He...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15499874.jpg] Wherever we go, we carry with us our own souls, morals and seeds of creation or destruction. This book,...

One of our greatest scientists reveals ten profound insights that remind and explain to each of us how we experience this...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15472164.jpg] When a deadly Fly Flu sweeps the globe, it leaves a shell of the world that once was. Among...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15469559.jpg] Zero day: a software bug that allows a hacker to break into your devices and move around undetected. One...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15459844.jpg] Discovered as three notebooks in an antique store in Rome at the turn of the millennium, The Reincarnationist Papers...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15451357.jpg] When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15444993.jpg] Today music fills our lives. How we have created, performed and listened to this music throughout history has defined...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15444988.jpg] Eleanor Zarrin has been estranged from her wild family for years. When she flees boarding school after a horrifying...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15444982.jpg] Sam asks Rose about when they first discovered T.S. Eliot in this episode of 1Q1A. If you enjoy this...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15441209.jpg] Today our guest is Steven Hall, author of The Raw Sharks Texts a seminal and amazing book that was...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15441204.jpg] Sam asks Steven if he still reads the back of cereal boxes. Listen to what Steven has to say....

He walks the stars embedded in the virtual dome of night and, when he tires of a world, throws a small...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15400831.jpg] He walks the stars embedded in the virtual dome of night and, when he tires of a world, throws...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15390868.jpg] Out of Nowhere Into Nothing is a collection of sublime meditations on the unbelievable, the coincidental, and the apparitional;...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15390761.jpg] Out of Nowhere Into Nothing is a collection of sublime meditations on the unbelievable, the coincidental, and the apparitional;...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15390767.jpg] An energetic, witty collection of stories where the supernatural meets the anomalies of everyday life--deception, infidelity, lost cats, cute...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15390748.jpg] An energetic, witty collection of stories where the supernatural meets the anomalies of everyday life--deception, infidelity, lost cats, cute...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15373805.jpg] From the internationally bestselling author of Sarah's Key comes Tatiana de Rosnay's Flowers of Darkness, a riveting and emotionally...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000-0x0+0+0_15371925.jpg] Land of Big numbers is ten short stories and as you know I love short stories. The characters are...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000-0x0+0+0_15371925.jpg] Land of Big numbers is ten short stories and as you know I love short stories. The characters are...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15371643.jpg] Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life,...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15371635.jpg] Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life,...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15371625.jpg] Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books,...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15371606.jpg] Luckenbooth, her third novel, about an Edinburgh tenement and the curse that haunts it, infecting the lives of all...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15371601.jpg] Luckenbooth, Jenni's third novel, about an Edinburgh tenement and the curse that haunts it, infects the lives of all...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15371589.jpg] It is the year of our Lord 1349 and it is the season of the Plague. Novice friar Brother...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15371582.jpg] It is the year of our Lord 1349 and it is the season of the Plague. Novice friar Brother...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15333878.jpg] Sophie Jones is a physics prodigy on track to unlock the secrets of the universe. But when she meets...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15333874.jpg] Sophie Jones is a physics prodigy on track to unlock the secrets of the universe. But when she meets...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15316159.jpg] The only numbers in this book are the page numbers. Math Without Numbers is a vivid, conversational, and wholly...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15316153.jpg] The only numbers in this book are the page numbers. Math Without Numbers is a vivid, conversational, and wholly...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15312614.jpg] Harmony, North Carolina is a typical town—full of saints and sinners you can’t tell apart... Its history echoes with...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15287541.jpg] Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15273603.jpg] In the Land of the Cyclops is Karl Ove Knausgaard's first collection of essays to be published in English....

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15273600.jpg] In the Land of the Cyclops is Karl Ove Knausgaard's first collection of essays to be published in English....

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15267639.jpg] Humankind has always had the urge to memorialise, to make physical testaments to the past. There’s just one problem:...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15267635.jpg] Humankind has always had the urge to memorialise, to make physical testaments to the past. There’s just one problem:...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15267621.jpg] From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author: a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals--and a young boy--whose lives...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15267616.jpg] From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author: a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals--and a young boy--whose lives...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15267608.jpg] Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15267601.jpg] Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15267590.jpg] A shattering new biography of rock music’s most outrageous―and tragic―genius. Over fifty years after his death, Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970)...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15267584.jpg] A shattering new biography of rock music’s most outrageous―and tragic―genius. Over fifty years after his death, Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970)...

From the outside, the Chengs seem like so-called model immigrants. Once Patty landed a tech job near Dallas, she and Liang...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15228310.jpg] From the outside, the Chengs seem like so-called model immigrants. Once Patty landed a tech job near Dallas, she...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15190893.jpg] Ari Eden’s life has always been governed by strict rules. In ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn, his days are dedicated to intense...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15190866.jpg] Have you ever wondered why you have a brain? Let renowned neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett demystify that big gray...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15176053.jpg] The co-host of the popular NPR podcast Planet Money provides a well-researched, entertaining, somewhat irreverent look at how money...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15176043.jpg] Once a promising actor, Tim Brettigan has gone missing. His father thinks he may have seen him among some...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15164400.jpeg] France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15148613.jpeg] 1969: the height of counterculture and the year universities would seek to curb the unruly spectacle of student protest;...

itunes pic [https://assets.podomatic.net/ts/5c/b9/36/info18232/3000x3000_15148517.jpeg] Thea Hope longs to be an alchemist out of the shadow of her famous mother. The two of them...

In Japan, a covert industry has grown up around the "wakaresaseya" (literally "breaker-upper"), a person hired by one spouse to...

What will the world look like in ten thousand years―or ten million? What kinds of stories will be told about...

From the decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822 to the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon a...

From the decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822 to the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon a...

Written as a report to the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, our unnamed...

One evening, Mother tells Daughter a story about a tiger spirit who lived in a woman’s body. She was called...

A group of Colombian soldiers prepares to raid a drug lord's safe house on the Venezuelan border. They're watching him...

Graham and Annie have been married for nearly thirty years. A golden couple, their seemingly effortless devotion has long been...

“Leave it as it is,” Theodore Roosevelt announced while viewing the Grand Canyon for the first time. “The ages have...

Set in a 2054 where humans have locked themselves out of the internet and Elon Musk has incinerated the moon,...

After an ignominious early retirement, Remington announces to his wife Serenata that he’s decided to run a marathon. This from...

After an ignominious early retirement, Remington announces to his wife Serenata that he’s decided to run a marathon. This from...

A deliciously compulsive first novel from New York Times Editor’s Choice author of Lights On, Rats Out, Cree LeFavour’s Private...

It’s hard to avoid innovation these days. Nearly every product gets marketed as being disruptive, whether it’s genuinely a new...

Do you feel like your life is an endless to-do list? Do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram because...

Ride shotgun on a trip to space with astronaut Terry Virts. A born stroyteller with a gift for the surprising...

Renowned southern pastry chef Lisa Donovan's memoir of cooking, survival, and the incredible power in reclaiming the stories of women Noted...

The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Orphan Train returns with an ambitious, emotionally resonant novel that captures...

It's 1913, and on the surface, Laura Lyons couldn't ask for more out of life—her husband is the superintendent of...

Elizabeth is tired. Years after coming to New York to try to build a life, she has found herself with...

This dazzling debut novel for fans of Mrs. Poe and Longbourn explores the scandalous historical love affair between Branwell Brontë...

Young adult novelist McConaghy (the Chronicles of Kaya series) makes her adult debut with the clunky chronicle of Franny Stone,...

It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she...

Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone...

A New York Times Editors' Choice, this revelatory debut story collection from O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa honors characters...

No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it...

Writing with “a sense of wonder that hasn’t prevailed since the days of Heinlein” (Books in Canada), best-novel Hugo and...

From the internationally best-selling author of You Should Have Left, Measuring the World, and F, a transfixing retelling of the...

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old...

Writing with “a sense of wonder that hasn’t prevailed since the days of Heinlein” (Books in Canada), best-novel Hugo and...

An electric debut novel set against the twilight of the American gold rush, two siblings are on the run in...

Named one of The New York Times' "7 New Books to Watch Out for in April," this revelatory debut story...