Tift Merritt on Her New Album Sugar & Making a Life in Music

Tift Merritt on Her New Album Sugar & Making a Life in Music

Rhett welcomes Tift Merritt — Grammy-nominated songwriter and one of Americana's most influential voices — to talk about Sugar, her first album in nearly a decade, recorded live in Nashville and shaped by everything that happened in the years between. Now based in her hometown of Raleigh, Merritt reflects on leaving New York, finding meaning offstage, and returning to music with renewed purpose. She traces the origin of "Everyday Singing" — built from feminist letters and recorded with a choir of women affected by lost research funding — talks through her strategies for quieting the inner critic, and offers hard-won advice to young artists: trust your instincts, and "put love in the world." Tift’s new album is out now [https://www.tiftmerritt.com/] Follow Tift @tiftmerritt [https://www.instagram.com/tiftmerritt/] Follow Rhett @rhettmiller Wheels Off is hosted and produced by Rhett Miller. Executive producer is Kirsten Cluthe, Studio Kairos. Music by Old 97's. Episode artwork by Mark Dowd. Show logo by Tim Skirven. Watch the podcast on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@wheels-off] and Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2bPKYgHEbeWUeFxuej94?si=NNc1lrZ9R56XAnWNbDGjdg], and listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can also ask Alexa to play it. Revisit previous episodes of Wheels Off with guests Rosanne Cash, Rob Thomas, Jeff Tweedy, Lucinda Williams, Stewart Copeland, Jennifer Egan, Nick Hornby, and more. New episodes drop bi-weekly. Subscribe wherever you listen. If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Josh Ritter on Songwriting, Mentorship, and the Creative Life

Josh Ritter has built a twenty-year career writing songs that collapse the distance between folk tradition, literature, and revelation. He joins Rhett from his home in Brooklyn where he’s doing what he calls “rehaunting” his world — the intentional process of reintroducing strangeness and synchronicity after a long stretch on the road. Ritter and Rhett also get into the interior work — imposter syndrome, comparison as the thief of joy, and why gratitude isn’t soft wisdom but a practical creative strategy. Plus: the Pete Seeger postcard that arrived a year after Ritter mailed a cassette from high school, and what it finally meant when he was old enough to understand it. Josh will be joining Rhett at his Songwriting Is Magic retreat in September. Learn more here. [https://www.songwritingismagic.com/] Follow Josh @joshritter [https://www.instagram.com/joshritter/?hl=en] | Follow Rhett @rhettmiller  Wheels Off is hosted and produced by Rhett Miller. Executive producer is Kirsten Cluthe, Studio Kairos. Music by Old 97’s. Episode artwork by Mark Dowd. Show logo by Tim Skirven. Watch the podcast on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@wheels-off] and Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2bPKYgHEbeWUeFxuej94?si=NNc1lrZ9R56XAnWNbDGjdg], and listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can also ask Alexa to play it.  Revisit previous episodes of Wheels Off with guests Rosanne Cash, Rob Thomas, Jeff Tweedy, Lucinda Williams, Stewart Copeland, Jennifer Egan, Nick Hornby, and more. New episodes of Wheels Off drop bi-weekly. Subscribe wherever you listen. If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Aaron Lee Tasjan on Joy, Songwriting, and Learning to Let Go

Aaron Lee Tasjan joins Rhett for a conversation about joy as armor, the craft of songwriting, and the long game of staying creatively alive. Tasjan talks about why he does his best work from a higher, more positive frequency — and what that actually means for writing songs. He unpacks why creativity gets harder with age, the books that shaped his process, and why the most powerful thing a young artist can do is realize they have more time than they think. Pre-order Get Over It Underdog [https://blueelan.com/collections/aaron-lee-tasjan].  Follow Aaron Lee Tasjan @aaronleetassjan [https://www.instagram.com/aaronleetasjan/?hl=en] Follow Rhett @rhettmiller Aaron will be joining Rhett at his Songwriting Is Magic retreat in September. Learn more here. [https://www.songwritingismagic.com/] Wheels Off is hosted and produced by Rhett Miller. Executive producer is Kirsten Cluthe, Studio Kairos. Music by Old 97’s. Episode artwork by Mark Dowd. Show logo by Tim Skirven. Watch the podcast on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@wheels-off] and Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2bPKYgHEbeWUeFxuej94?si=NNc1lrZ9R56XAnWNbDGjdg], and listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can also ask Alexa to play it. Revisit previous episodes of Wheels Off with guests Rosanne Cash, Rob Thomas, Jeff Tweedy, Lucinda Williams, Stewart Copeland, Jennifer Egan, Nick Hornby, and more. If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Emily Franklin: Love and Other Monsters, Writing 25 Books, and the Creative Life

Author Emily Franklin joins Rhett to talk about her 25th novel, Love and Other Monsters — the untold origin story of Frankenstein and the monsters we create on the page. They get into what it takes to sustain a prolific creative life. Emily also opens up about shedding critical inner voices, why poetry is the structural foundation of everything, and what it means to take bigger creative risks later in a career. Emily Franklin is the bestselling author of twenty-five books including The Lioness of Boston, now in its eleventh printing and recently a Jeopardy! clue. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Kenyon Review, and JAMA, and been featured on NPR. Follow Emily @emilyfranklinauthor [https://www.instagram.com/emilyfranklinauthor/] Follow Rhett @rhettmiller Wheels Off is hosted and produced by Rhett Miller. Executive producer is Kirsten Cluthe, Studio Kairos. Music by Old 97’s. Episode artwork by Mark Dowd. Show logo by Tim Skirven.  Watch the podcast on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@wheels-off] and Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2bPKYgHEbeWUeFxuej94?si=NNc1lrZ9R56XAnWNbDGjdg], and listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can also ask Alexa to play it. Revisit previous episodes of Wheels Off with guests Rosanne Cash, Rob Thomas, Jeff Tweedy, Lucinda Williams, Stewart Copeland, Jennifer Egan, Nick Hornby, and more. If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Anthony Horowitz: Why the World Needs a Good Whodunit

Anthony Horowitz, one of the world's most prolific and versatile storytellers, joins Rhett for a conversation about creativity, craft, and the enduring power of the mystery novel. Horowitz reflects on a career built from the most unlikely of beginnings: a miserable boarding school, a library that became a refuge, and a boy who learned to make friends by telling stories. The two discuss his new book A Deadly Episode, and what it was like to write a book about filming a TV episode while simultaneously writing the TV episode itself. Drawing on decades of experience across every storytelling medium, Horowitz makes a compelling case for why murder mysteries aren't mere entertainment — they're a meaningful antidote to a world increasingly short on truth.  Horowitz has written two highly acclaimed Sherlock Holmes novels, The House of Silk and Moriarty; three James Bond novels, Trigger Mortis, Forever and a Day, and With a Mind to Kill; the mystery novels featuring book editor Susan Ryeland: Magpie Murders, Moonflower Murders, and Marble Hall Murders, and the Detective Hawthorne novels: The Word is Murder, The Sentence is Death, A Line To Kill, The Twist of a Knife, Close to Death, and now A DEADLY EPISODE. He is also the author of the teen spy Alex Rider series, which has sold more than nineteen million copies worldwide and has become a hugely successful show on Amazon Prime TV. His breakthrough murder mystery, Magpie Murders, and the follow up Moonflower Murders, were both adapted for TV and aired on PBS – the Marble Hall Murders series will air in September 2026. He lives in London with his wife and dog.  A Deadly Episode is out now. More on Anthony at anthonyhorowitz.com [https://anthonyhorowitz.com/]. Follow Rhett @rhettmiller Wheels Off is hosted and produced by Rhett Miller. Executive producer is Kirsten Cluthe, Studio Kairos. Music by Old 97’s. Episode artwork by Mark Dowd. Show logo by Tim Skirven.  Watch the podcast on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@wheels-off] and Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2bPKYgHEbeWUeFxuej94?si=NNc1lrZ9R56XAnWNbDGjdg], and listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can also ask Alexa to play it. Revisit previous episodes of Wheels Off with guests Rosanne Cash, Rob Thomas, Jeff Tweedy, Lucinda Williams, Stewart Copeland, Jennifer Egan, Nick Hornby, and more. If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]