Libsyn Directory

Best of 2025 - Part 2

Release Date: 12/25/2025

Excerpt from 'The End of Romance,' by Lily Meyer

Otherppl with Brad Listi

Vol. 5 of Story Time, a new series on the program featuring an author reading aloud from her work. In this episode, reads from her new novel , available from Viking Books. Meyer is a translator, a critic, and the author of the novel Short War. She is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her stories and translations can be found in The Dial, The Drift, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and many other journals, and her essays and criticism appear in outlets including Bookforum, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book...

Bad Bunny Saves America

Otherppl with Brad Listi

Volume 79 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Brad prepares for AWP...Mira advises amphetamines...the Pee-Wee Herman documentary...Brad can't cope with Van Morrison being an asshole...Mira's severe vitamin D deficiency...Angry Adam returns...Bad Bunny drives middle-aged women wild...please save America...Lady Gaga is Latina now...the Epstein Files fallout continues...Ghislaine pleads the 5th...Brad learns about looksmaxxing...& more... *** is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go...

1021. Lily Meyer

Otherppl with Brad Listi

is the author of the novel , available from Viking. Meyer is a translator, a critic, and the author of the novel Short War. She is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her stories and translations can be found in The Dial, The Drift, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and many other journals, and her essays and criticism appear in outlets including Bookforum, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review. *** is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is...

Elmo is in the Epstein Files

Otherppl with Brad Listi

Volume 78 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...podcasting from the fetal position...Brad and Mira are spiritually broken after spending the weekend reading the Epstein Files...Mira doubles her psych meds....Mira goes to a trampoline park, gets injured....Happy birthday, Elmo...farewell to the wonderful Catherine O'Hara...reviewing this year's Grammy Awards...Brad's Fashion Corner....Olivia Dean is an angel sent from heaven?....Justin Bieber's on-stage underwear choices....Brad gets choked up during Bob Weir in-memoriam...the Melania documentary debuts...super-fan tries to break Luigi out...

Peter Schmidt on Attention Activism, Corporate Greed, and Reclaiming Our Humanity in the Digital Age

Otherppl with Brad Listi

is a member of an activist collection called . Together they have published a book called , available from Crown. Schmidt is a writer and organizer originally from Missouri, now living in Brooklyn. He is a writer and the Editor-in-Chief of , a dispatch on the politics of attention. Currently working on a book-length project about non-institutional communities of study he is a member of the coalition, and leads workshops, seminars, and study groups at the , where he is co-founder and Program Director. *** is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's...

Erika Kirk Free Solos Trump Tower

Otherppl with Brad Listi

Volume 77 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Brad goes to the nursery...encounters an angry pit bull...confronts Mira about her unused Christmas gift...Mira rewatches Mad Men...Angry Adam returns with a vegeance...Kanye takes out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal...claims brain damage caused him to hate the Jews...Alex Honnold free solos a skyscraper...unleashes psychological trauma on millions....Erika Kirk begins another national tour...wants to 'make heaven crowded again'...& more... *** is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's...

1020. Kathleen Boland

Otherppl with Brad Listi

is the author of the debut novel , now available from Viking. Boland’s fiction has appeared in Tin House, Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere, and she has received support from the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center. The former event director for Catapult/Counterpoint Press/Soft Skull Press, she earned her MFA from Louisiana State University, where she received the Robert Penn Warren Thesis Award. *** is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. This episode is...

Emily Witt on ICE Raids, Protests, and the Battle for Minneapolis

Otherppl with Brad Listi

is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine and a native of Minneapolis. She has been reporting from the streets of her hometown over the past couple of weeks, covering the ICE raids, the killings of Rene Good and Alex Pretti, the non-fatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, and the spirited citizen response by Minneapolitans. She recently wrote about it in a piece called with includes some excellent photos by Philip Cheung. Emily Witt is the author of (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux), (Columbia Global Reports 2017), and an award-winning memoir called (Pantheon). In...

1019. Brenda Navarro and Megan McDowell

Otherppl with Brad Listi

is the author of the novel , available now in a new translation by , from Liveright Press. Official January 2026 pick of the . Brenda Navarro is one of the most critically acclaimed authors in the Spanish language. Eating Ashes won the Cálamo and CEGAL prizes and was a finalist for the Mario Vargas Llosa Biennial Novel Prize. Originally from Mexico, she lives in Madrid. Megan McDowell has translated works by Samanta Schweblin and Mariana Enriquez, among others. Her translations have won the National Book Award for Translated Literature and the English PEN award. ***...

Mira's Screaming Nude Father Scares Away Intruders

Otherppl with Brad Listi

Volume 76 of Brad & Mira For the Culture...Brad's Liver King epiphany...the Indiana Hoosiers are awash in God's glory...Abella Danger's ESPN moment...Mira's sex worker friend group...Ralph Fiennes shows hog in The Bone Temple...Mira's dad experiences a home invasion in the nude...Angry Adam brings the mediocrity...The Beckham Family Feud...Posh Spice's grinding problem...the Glambot Shitstorm...Elordi and Robbie's Wuthering Heights soft-core marketing strategy...Happy 80th to Dolly Parton...& more... *** is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's...

More Episodes

Today on the program, we highlight the top-5 most-listened-to episodes of 2025.

Big thanks to everyone who guested and everyone who listens. And a very special thank you to everyone who supports the show ⁠on Patreon.⁠

Wishing you all a very happy 2026!

***

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Otherppl with Brad Listi⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.