Doug Reads With Friends

Ep 11: Hope, Radical Care & The Parable of the Sower (with Graciela Guzman)

In this episode of Doug Reads with Friends, Doug talks with Illinois State Senator Graciela Guzman about organizing, public service, community care, and Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower. The conversation moves from Graciela’s path from Grinnell to healthcare policy to elected office, into a powerful discussion of fear, hope, burnout, survival, and what it means to care for people when the world feels like it is falling apart. Music by Eiren Caffall. Please check out her music on Spotify and visit her website at https://www.eirencaffall.com/ [https://www.eirencaffall.com/]. Chapters: 0:00 INTRO: State Senator Graciela Guzman and Parable of the Sower 1:34 AmeriCorps, healthcare, and finding the policy path 4:45 Organizing, governing, and redefining public service 8:52 Running as herself and representing her community 11:29 ICE, rapid response, and community care in crisis 14:30 Working with opposition and staying in relationship 17:54 Grinnell, trusteeship, singing, and reading as imagination 25:21 OK, now the book: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler 27:28 Pessimism, hope, survival, and teaching through fear 36:26 Caring, burnout, and staying whole for the long haul 39:52 Mac Field, radical care, and changing each other’s lives

Ep 10: Start Small, Grinnell Mornings & Pride and Prejudice (with Erik Simpson)

In this episode of Doug Reads with Friends, Doug talks with Erik Simpson, Professor of English at Grinnell College and one of Doug’s dearest friends from his years in Grinnell. Erik chose Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, giving Doug a long-overdue first read of one of the most beloved novels in English. Their conversation begins with Erik’s work in book arts, paper engineering, teaching, bird photography, and the strange habits of professional readers, before turning to Austen, rereading, Darcy’s listening, Elizabeth’s changing judgment, whether the novel is feminist, and why Charlotte Lucas may be one of the book’s most important characters. Along the way, Erik does what great teachers do: he takes a sentence, a small moment, or a strange detail and opens it up into something much richer. Next time: Graciela Guzman and The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. Music by Eiren Caffall. Please check out her music on Spotify and visit her website at https://www.eirencaffall.com/ [https://www.eirencaffall.com/]. Chapters: 0:00 INTRO: Erik Simpson, friendship, and Pride and Prejudice 2:13 Paper engineering, book arts, and making books physical 8:42 Reading on paper, ebooks, and audiobooks 11:35 Birds, photography, and becoming a cliché 13:11 Start small, start strange: Erik as a professional reader 18:08 Growing up with books and becoming an English professor 20:11 OK, now the book: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 25:31 Darcy listens, Elizabeth rereads, and Austen’s slow romance 34:19 Feminism, neurodivergent Darcy, and Charlotte Lucas’s choice 41:04 Bath, rereading, and a future Austen reunion 43:48 Next time: Graciela Guzman and The Parable of the Sower

Ep 9: Do Hard Things, Favorite Teachers & The Longest Race (with Tammy Draughon)

Tammy Draughon joins Doug to talk about The Longest Race by Kara Goucher, but the conversation quickly becomes about much more than running. Doug and Tammy look back on nearly 30 years of friendship, beginning as young teachers at Enloe High School, and talk about teaching physics, coaching high school runners, doing hard things, surviving the Boston Marathon bombing, parenting, faith, and the responsibility coaches have to the young people in their care. Then they turn to Goucher’s memoir and its account of abuse, power, silence, and finding one’s voice inside the Nike Oregon Project. It is a conversation about endurance in every sense: in classrooms, on race courses, in families, in faith, and in friendship. Music by Eiren Caffall. Please check out her music on Spotify and visit her website at https://www.eirencaffall.com/ [https://www.eirencaffall.com/]. Chapters: 00:05 — Tammy Draughon and The Longest Race 01:13 — Thirty years of teaching, physics, and finding a calling 07:42 — Running, coaching, and becoming California Coach of the Year 11:29 — Do Hard Things 16:46 — Coaching herself, marathon training, and Boston goals 20:09 — The Boston Marathon bombing 24:56 — Family, faith, and the empty nest 27:11 — OK, now the book: The Longest Race by Kara Goucher 30:10 — Power, abuse, and finding your voice 35:18 — Reading Kara Goucher as a woman, runner, and coach 39:33 — Boston dreams and racing together

Ep 8: Unimportant Joy, Stylin' Mermaid & Cocktail Time (with Jeremy Hornik)

In this episode of Doug Reads With Friends, Doug talks with his oldest friend, Jeremy Hornik, about nearly 50 years of friendship, ridiculous Shakespeare summers, Chicago improv, slot machine design, family, loss, reading, and the pure comic pleasure of Cocktail Time by P.G. Wodehouse. Jeremy’s choice leads to a conversation about books that do not need to be “important” to matter, the serious craft behind unserious delight, and the strange brilliance of Wodehouse’s language, callbacks, country houses, idiot lords, smart servants, and angry swans. Next time, Doug talks with Tammy Draughon about The Longest Race. Music for Doug Reads With Friends is by Eiren Caffall; learn more about her work at https://www.eirencaffall.com/ [https://www.eirencaffall.com/]. 00:05 INTRO: A hotel apartment, a ceasefire, and an interrupted podcast 03:01 Almost 50 years of friendship 04:33 Stylin’ Mermaid and stupid Shakespeare 07:31 Chicago improv, famous people, and terrible scenes 10:45 From You Don’t Know Jack to slot machines 17:26 Rockababy, family, and remembering Donna 22:07 Reading, Goodreads, rereading, and creative energy 26:18 OK, now the book: Cocktail Time by P.G. Wodehouse 31:43 The serious pleasure of unserious books 35:16 Wodehouse’s language, callbacks, and one angry swan 41:28 Next time: Tammy Draughon and The Longest Race

Ep 7: AI Ethics, PosseLove & Culpability (with Dr. Lana Mahgoub)

Ep 7: AI Ethics, PosseLove & Culpability (with Dr. Lana Mahgoub) A family survives a self-driving car accident. Two people in another car don’t. From there, everything gets more complicated. Doug sits down with Dr. Lana Mahgoub—psychologist, author, and longtime member of his Grinnell Posse—to talk about Culpability by Bruce Holsinger, a novel that uses AI not just as a theme, but almost as a character. What begins as a question of who caused an accident quickly turns into something harder: how responsibility works in a world where humans and machines are intertwined. Along the way, the conversation moves well beyond the book. Lana reflects on her path from Posse scholar to psychologist, what it means to build support systems that actually last, and how those same ideas show up in therapy, parenting, and everyday life. There’s a throughline here about relationships—how they protect us, shape us, and sometimes fail us. The discussion of AI lands close to home. Lana sees versions of it already in her work, with kids turning to chatbots for connection and answers. The question isn’t whether AI will play a role—it already does. The harder question is what it’s doing to how people think, relate, and make decisions. There’s also a quieter tension running underneath everything: the instinct to protect—your kids, your patients, yourself—and the reality that you can’t control everything. Not outcomes. Not technology. Not even the people closest to you. It’s a conversation about responsibility, but also about limits—of systems, of knowledge, and of control. ---------------------------------------- Chapters 0:00 INTRO: Meet Dr. Lana and the Posse Connection 01:41 What Is Posse—and Why It Still Matters 04:28 From Grinnell to a Career in Psychology 08:01 Starting a Private Practice and Working with Kids 11:27 Parenting, Therapy, and Real Life vs Theory 13:22 Writing a Children’s Book About Anxiety 20:57 OK, now the book: Culpability by Bruce Holsinger 26:20 From the Novel to Real Life: AI, Kids, and Therapy 32:59 Ethics, Responsibility, and What AI Means for Us 38:22 Next time: Jeremy Hornik and Cocktail Time by P. G. Wodehouse ---------------------------------------- Next: Jeremy Hornik, discussing Cocktail Time by P. G. Wodehouse. Music by Eiren Caffall. Please check out her music on Spotify.