Anthropic Settlement Portal Shows All. Mostly.

Summary

Book Riot – The Podcast

Episode: Anthropic Settlement Portal Shows All. Mostly.

Hosts: Jeff O’Neal & Rebecca Schinsky
Release Date: October 6, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Jeff O’Neal and Rebecca Schinsky delve into the recent Anthropic AI copyright settlement, discuss a dramatic spike in sales for Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland following its new film adaptation, celebrate the return of Reading Rainbow with a modern twist, and debate the current challenges and quirks of the publishing industry. They also touch on book banning legal decisions, the surprising popularity of Kamala Harris’s memoir 107 Days, and share their recent reading experiences.

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KEY DISCUSSION POINTS & INSIGHTS

The Anthropic AI Copyright Settlement Portal

• [07:01] Jeff introduces the massive Anthropic settlement—$1.5 billion to authors whose copyrighted works were used improperly by the AI company.
  • Authors can now check if their books are in the dataset, see if copyrights were filed properly, and submit claims up to March 23, 2026.
  • Many authors discovered their publishers never filed copyrights, causing missed compensation.
  • “A whole lot of authors found out by surprise that their publishers had not filed their copyright.” – Rebecca [07:26]
• Eligibility & Payouts:
  • Even obscure titles may be listed, and each eligible book counts as a “share”—payouts will be equal, not sales-based.
  • Estimated payout: initially $3,000/book (based on 495,000 eligible books), but could drop to ~$1,500 if claims approach one million titles.
  • Larger authors (e.g., Dan Brown, Stephen King) must decide whether to accept the payout (and waive future legal claims) or keep options open for larger lawsuits elsewhere.
• Opt-In/Opt-Out Complexity:
  • Authors must opt out before knowing exact payout amounts.
  • “Do I have to sign away my rights before knowing how much money I'm going to get?...That would seem to matter.” – Jeff [13:17]
• Model Implications:
  • Anthropic must remove pirated books from its AI training data, but can include copyrighted titles if they acquire legally.
  • “If they go legally acquire a copy…they can feed it right back in. It just has to be legally acquired.” – Rebecca [15:46]

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Vineland Adaptation - Pynchon on Screen

• [16:52] Rebecca reviews One Battle After Another, a film adaptation of Pynchon’s Vineland.
  • Set mostly 15 years after the 2008 prologue; keeps the wild energy and political punch of the novel.
  • Describes a thrilling car chase in California’s hills as “so compelling…zany and weird and pointed and scary and political and so good.”
  • “That’s how I felt for the last 90 minutes of this movie. And the last needle drop is so glorious…” – Rebecca [18:19]
• Box Office & Book Sales:
  • Despite modest box office ($22 million), film has quadrupled Vineland’s 2024 sales—already at 8,000 units vs. 1,800 in all 2023.
  • “People will be discovering over and over again and they want to go back to Vineland and see what the deal is.” – Jeff [21:01]
• Book vs. Movie:
  • The book is “less legible” for casual readers—potentially surprising for new fans brought in by the movie’s accessibility.
  • “I think you need to be a little bit of a nerd…to go appreciate this movie…You need to be a certain kind of reader for Pynchon.” – Rebecca [21:58]
• Diversity & Adaptation Choices:
  • The film reframes much of the narrative around Black women and revolutionaries, drawing on the backgrounds of its creators.

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Reading Rainbow Returns, Rebooted & Online

• [24:47] Announced reboot of Reading Rainbow with TikTok star and librarian Michael Threets as host.
  • Viral engagement: over 5 million people viewed Book Riot's announcement on Facebook.
  • Not on PBS: Will stream on Kidzuko, a Sony-run YouTube channel, due to copyright disputes.
  • The new show emphasizes libraries as inclusive community spaces and focuses on developing young readers’ identities.
  • “It’s all about engaging kids as readers, as library users with that curiosity and that joy that Reading Rainbow is all about.” – Rebecca [27:47]
• Cultural Commentary:
  Discussion of changing habits around reading, screen time for kids, and generational differences in consumption.

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Publishing’s “Gambling Problem” & Track Record Crisis

• [29:53] In-depth discussion of Tajja Isen’s Walrus piece on the publishing industry’s obsession with “track,” or sales record.
  • Authors with a modestly selling first book are often penalized more than debut authors with no track record—bad sales data is worse than no data.
  • “An absence of data is better than having bad data.” – Rebecca [30:42]
  • Baked into this is risk aversion and “potential” as a sort of currency.
  • The conversation has sparked a wave of industry think pieces, with contributions from Kathleen Schmidt (marketing as gambling) and Neon Literary (readers’ need to take more risks).
  • To maintain a healthy, diverse publishing ecosystem, risk-taking must be shared between editors, marketers, media, and readers.
• Critique of “Spoonfeeding”:
  • Hosts challenge the notion that readers are only exposed to a handful of heavily marketed books—algorithmic discovery and media coverage play as much of a role as big publishers.

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Book Bans and the Legal Status of “Government Speech”

• [39:44] The Florida district court’s ruling on And Tango Makes Three:
  • Removal from school libraries does NOT violate authors’ or students’ First Amendment rights, as school libraries represent “government speech.”
  • “A school library is not a public forum for expressing opinions.” – Judge Allen Windsor, summarized by Rebecca [41:10]
  • Removing a book does not make it unavailable; students can buy or borrow it elsewhere.
  • The result: administrations (and state governments) can curate library content to match their values—depicted as a troubling, Orwellian turn for public education and access.
  • “This is troubling in ways that a very direct New York Times reporting doesn’t quite convey…” – Rebecca [43:21]
  • Public libraries vs. school libraries—the former must host all viewpoints, the latter now increasingly controlled by local/state policies under this legal precedent.

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Kamala Harris’s Bestseller & the State of Memoirs

• [43:43] 107 Days by Kamala Harris is on track to be 2025’s top-selling memoir.
  • “Throws more elbows” than expected—Harris critiques Biden, owns up to personal campaign missteps, and reflects on the chaos of 2024’s compressed campaign season.
  • “She does reveal some spikiness in her relationship with the Bidens near the end…She also owns a lot of responsibility for decisions.” – Rebecca [46:38]
  • Harris signals she’s done with electoral politics (“not a setup to run for something else”).
  • High initial sales likely front-loaded by Harris’s admirers; sales may taper quickly.
  • “...it is not a testament to Kamala Harris’s popularity as much as to...a pretty soft market for memoirs this year.” – Rebecca [49:10]

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Frontlist Foyer – Recent Reads & Recommendations

• Cory Doctorow’s Insidification ([52:47])
  • Explores how platforms evolve to exploit users and creators for shareholder gain (“making everybody’s experience shitty in the end”).
  • “Wherever there is a platform, there is the likelihood that this will happen…here’s what to look out for and what we could do.” – Rebecca [55:51]
  • Focuses on competition and regulation as antidotes; readable even for non-industry readers.
• Mary Roach’s Replaceable Youe ([57:20])
  • Engaging, gross, and insightful about the history and science of body-part replacements; narrated by Roach herself for extra personality.
• Bora Chung’s Midnight Timetable ([57:20])
  • A “novel in ghost stories”—blends political themes, surreal scenarios, and dark humor in an accessible format.
  • “Creepy, strange, quite funny at times…I really enjoyed it.” – Jeff

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NOTABLE QUOTES & MEMORABLE MOMENTS

• On copyright dereliction:
  “Does this fall into had one job territory?…Aren't you supposed to do that?” – Jeff [07:31]
• On the payout unknowns:
  “Do I have to sign away my rights before knowing how much money I'm going to get? That would seem to matter.” – Jeff [13:17]
• On Vineland the movie:
  “That's how I felt for the last 90 minutes of this movie…the last needle drop is so glorious that you just go out on a high.” – Rebecca [18:19]
• On adaptation faithfulness:
  “All the other stuff from the movie, like the zany cross-genre stuff, there are no alien aliens, there are no ninja sequences…they maintain a lot of the heart.” – Rebecca [21:58]
• On publishing’s problem:
  “When you can see that this book did not sell well, that feels heavier than this book could do anything.” – Rebecca [31:04]
• On book marketing myths:
  “To a first approximation, no one has heard of any book that comes out in a given week. I haven't been spoon fed anything.” – Jeff [35:23]
• On legal censorship logic:
  “…what happens in the school is government speech. And they…don’t choose to say that being gay is okay.” – Rebecca [42:00]
• On Harris’s campaign memoir:
  “She spills a little tea, she throws some elbows…I think she takes a lot of responsibility for things that she could have done better.” – Rebecca [46:38]
• On Doctorow’s message:
  “The real point…for the average reader and internet user is: wherever there is a platform, there is the likelihood that this will happen.” – Rebecca [55:51]

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TIMESTAMPS FOR IMPORTANT SEGMENTS

• [07:01] – Anthropic Settlement Portal: What it means and how it works
• [16:52] – Review & cultural impact of One Battle After Another (Pynchon’s Vineland adaptation)
• [24:47] – Reading Rainbow reboot announcement and its viral reception
• [29:53] – Publishing’s “track record” philosophical crisis
• [39:44] – School book bans, “government speech,” and their legal/ethical implications
• [43:43] – Kamala Harris’s 107 Days: Elbows thrown, authorship, and industry context
• [52:47] – Recent reads: Doctorow’s Insidification; Roach’s Replaceable Youe; Chung’s Midnight Timetable

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For further exploration, check the show notes linked in your podcast app for application information, articles referenced, and the Book Riot flagship newsletter.

Transcript

[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Amy Duggar King]

Mm, that's so hot.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

This is the Book Riot podcast. I'm Jeff o'. Neill.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And Rebecca, have you been. Did you have any books copyrighted by Anthropic? Are you going to get a big fat paycheck? What do you. What do you got? I've been digging around in the database.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Sadly, I am not eligible for a $3,000 payday from Anthropic, but a whole lot of people are.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We're going to cover that big story today. Reading Rainbows coming back. You're going to talk about 107 days, a little bit more. We got new book picks. But before we do any of that, if you've ever been interested in writing for Book Riot, now's your chance. You can come apply. There'll be a link in the show notes. What else they need to know. I'm now opening up the thing that says there's a whole thing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There is a whole thing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's a whole thing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There's a whole application process with clear, you know, requirements and requests of the information for you to send. Just click the link in the show notes, fill out that application. Neither of us is involved in the contributor vetting process. We cannot help you any further. But familiarity with what Book Riot does and how we do it certainly can't hurt your chances. We're looking for all kinds of writers. There's more information there. Link in the show notes. It's open for a couple of weeks, so, so don't, don't hesitate if that's something you've been thinking about.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yep. Let's see Other news and notes. We'll be recording a Hot List check in for the Patreon. I took about 15 minutes just off the dome. If I couldn't determine whether it was a hot List or not, that means it wasn't Rebecca. That's how.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is the new method for the Hot List and I think it's the right one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yep. So there's that. We go check out us talking about the Bluest Eye on Zero to well Read. We, we had, hard to say, had a great time talking about the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, but we had a time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

One of the recent questions that you've introduced to our recordings of Zero to well read is could you make an adaptation of this with the Muppets and one human character? And I have never been so glad that you missed a moment like, thank God I didn't have to answer that question about the Bluest Eye. You thought of that after we did that episode. Jeff is mildly disturbing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The most disturbing one. I mean, that's disturbing. But actually, no, this episode's not out yet. But anyway, it's an increasingly unhinged hook for three minutes of discussion.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It was a great question the week you thought of it, which was when we recorded the Hamlet episode that will be out in a couple of weeks. We are about to record To Kill a Mockingbird and my answer is like, absolutely not.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But we'll actually. That's amazing though.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Terrible.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Be amazing. Scout Finch, played by Gonzo. Incredible stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Real serious subject matter there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We also are working together on the new book Riot flagship newsletter. Go check that out over there. Yeah, I think that kind of gets us into the week. Rebecca, let's do a break and we'll get into. I want to talk about Anthropic and we got a bunch of other stuff to do.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Colleen Hoover fans, get ready. Her best selling novel Regretting you is coming to the big screen. From director Josh Boone, who brought us the Fault in Our Stars. This powerful story follows Morgan, played by Allison Williams, and her daughter Clara, played by McKenna Grace, as they navigate love, loss and the secrets that can tear a family apart. With an all star cast including Dave Franco, Mason tames Scott Eastwood and Willa Fitzgerald. Regretting youg brings to life everything readers loved about the book. First love, second chances, heartbreak, and the complicated, beautiful bond between mothers and daughters. It's the kind of film you want to see with your mom, your best friend, your book club, anyone who loves to laugh, cry and gasp together in a theater. Don't miss Regretting youg. Only in theaters October 24th this episode is sponsored by Zondervan, publisher of Holy Disruptor by Amy Duggar King. Stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook. In Holy Disruptor, Amy Duggar King steps out of the shadows of her famous family to share her unfiltered story of faith, resilience and finding freedom from generational patterns. With honesty and courage, Amy reveals the struggles she's faced, the truths she's uncovered, and the hope that's carried her. This powerful audiobook, told in Amy's voice, isn't about perfection, it's about breaking cycles and daring to live differently. And she does openly address the challenges of growing up in the Duggar family spotlight along with her journey to healing in this honest memoir. For anyone longing to rise above the past, Amy's story is a bold invitation to step into healing and wholeness. Narrated by Amy herself, the audiobook is available everywhere. October 14th again, stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook edition of Holy Disruptor by Amy Duggar King.

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[Jeff O'Neill]

Foreign I did wonder about the logistics of this. Their one and a half billion dollar settlement that Anthropic made with a group of claimants authors is now available to I guess go see if your text was in there. Was it copyrighted correctly by your publisher?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

A whole lot of authors found out by surprise that their publishers had not filed their copyright.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Let me ask you this, does this fall into had one job territory? 100 Aren't you supposed to do that? I just thought this was pro forma. I didn't even think it was a question that they copyrighted your stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I don't think it's supposed to be a question.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. So a lot of people getting caught out for not doing the paperwork.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It seems like that was just anecdotally I was on today in books duty the week that this settlement broke and the also the week that the site writer Beware was saying was doing a lot of coverage about the fact that this is how authors were discovering that their publishers had not filed their copyrights and they had a little, little link to. Here's where you can go to see if your copyright has actually been filed. That is the most clicked thing I have published in a long time. Is that right? Wow.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's really interesting.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

A lot of folks out there concerned about their copyrights.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I would propose this to agents. I think this is also an agent's fault. I don't, you know, if you're gonna get a cut of the thing, make sure the thing is done. You know, set yourself a reminder in like three months. Did they file? Can I go check somewhere to see that you did this? Anyway, so here's how it's going to work. You have until March 23, 2026. So a good six months to see if one of your one or more of your works are listed among the data set that was deemed to be improper here. Libjen is the primary one. Libjin sounds like. Sounds like something someone make up with AI Sloth to be like a George.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Soros Illuminati, futuristic and weird. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You will then see if you're eligible. And if you are eligible, you can receive payment for each qualifying work that you own. You do give up the right to sue Anthropic because this is essentially you saying I done sued you and here's the money for it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. That's one of the notes. Here is you. You can use this form either to file your claim or to exclude yourself and all rights holders from the settlement. Excluding yourself is required if you plan to bring a different suit on your own or to participate in another suit. So you've got some choices to make. Do you want this settlement? And I, I guess this process is one of the things that the judge had asked for clarification before he approved the settlement plan of like how are we going to determine who's eligible? Is there going to be a time bound period so that you don't get stragglers five years down the road saying oh wait, I think actually you owed me money. How do we make sure. That it's, you know, equitable and captures as many folks as possible. And so this is what they've come up with.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And then for each work you will get essentially a single share of the piece. What's interesting to me, and I don't know, this is probably the only way you can do this is that if they will be distributed equally amongst the shares. So if you. You don't have to be. I don't know where the crawdads thing that's going to get as much as a book of poetry from FSG that was as long as copyrighted in the thing. So I just plugged in DaVinci Code. Right. So here's something that's interesting. First of all, Dan Brown has three different Da Vinci Codes. Guessing one is a reprint of some kind and then another one is a young adult adaptation. And then there are four other books. There's the real history behind the Da Vinci Code by Sharon Newman. There is truth and fiction in the Da Vinci Code by Bart Ehrman, Breaking the Da Vinci Code, and the Da Vinci Cook by Joanne Pence. So I'm just saying here, there's a lot of books here. I was doing a little bit of reading upwards of a million, probably more. So you'll get. But, but Rebecca, a million divided by a billion is still a lot of money. Do we have an over under on what the checks are going to be to individuals? Because the other thing I should say before the one and a half billion is after lawyers fees and administrative costs, which will be considerable. I would be surprised if there's a billion left. I mean, I'm just.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't know what the termination. And originally the estimation based on the number of books they thought were eligible was about $3,000 per book, but that was based on 495,000 books, I think. And so if it's actually a million books that end up being eligible, that check might be dropped down to something like 1500. Just depends on.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But how many people are going to claim.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And how many people are going to claim them. Right. Because how many books are out there that went into these AI models but that the authors are dead or don't know about this or can't be bothered to fill out an online form. There's a lot of ways that folks who are owed this money might not claim it and that would benefit all the people who do go to the trouble to fill out the form.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Here's a question for you. If I'm Dan Brown or one of these authors where one of these books sold a lot of copies. Like, a lot of copies. Am I signing away my rights to sue Anthropic for nine grand?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, wouldn't I just rather sort of keep that in my back pocket for. We don't know how this is going to play out. We could find that this is wildly low. They could. When they sue and there's already happening when they're suing Google, Gemini or Microsoft. Other places there may be some precedent says, you know what, actually, we can determine that. It cost you X number of sales. It cost you 10% of your sales.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It is very early. That's a. It's a great point. I think if you can afford to play any kind of longer game. This is not legal advice, but my. My observer of the industry advice would be we. This is the first settlement of this kind that we have seen. My assumption is it will not be the last. I would sit on my hands personally and see how this develops. Waving this one might turn out to be more lucrative in the long run.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Also, I think it's weird and I haven't gone through the whole process because I'm not an author and maybe I could pretending I'm Dan Brown, which would be funny.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Is that a form of fraud you're open to?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I just want to see the process.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The da Vinci fraud.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do I have to sign away my rights before knowing how much money I'm going to get? Like, do I have to wait for the whole thing to happen to be like, oh, it was. Because that would seem to matter to me whether or not I want to give up my.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

If you're going to exclude yourself, you have to do that by January 7th. And it's open to submit a claim through March 23rd. So, yes, like, I think you do have to exclude yourself before you know the total number of books that are going to.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Can I assume about that? I don't know much about the law. I know you can sue for any reason that I do know.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Welcome to America, baby. You can sue for just about any reason.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do I have any. Whether you'll win against this. To be like, wait a minute, you're saying I have to opt out before I know what the payout is.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Mm.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't like that, Rebecca. I don't. I don't think that's cool. I'd say if I'm the offer of. Well, I don't know. Maybe the da Vinci Cook did very well. Maybe it did great. But I think if my book was truth and fiction, the Da Vinci Code, which Came out a long time ago from Oxford Unitary Press. Probably going to take my three grand and run.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. If you're an obscure small press poetry book that sold a thousand copies in its initial print run, which is a lot of copies for an obscure. If you're a very successful small press poet, you probably still are better off taking the $3,000 here than pursuing like holding yourself open to pursue future legal action. But bigger authors who might have better cases on their own or cases for more money because their, their demonstrated demand is higher. So the potential sales that AI might eat into are theoretically higher. It'll be interesting to see because if.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm Stephen king, I've got 40 books that are hugely popular at least. I'm like, could I get a settlement from anthropic for 6 million just today just to avoid the legal battle? I, maybe I might be able to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I think we'll see somebody try. It'll be interesting to see who the first one is.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Another notable thing, I guess I hadn't put this together, but it makes sense. And in fact, if it weren't this way, it would be very strange. But this also part of the settlement is that Anthropic had to take all these books out of the models. Now I don't know if they can go put them back in by getting a copy of Breaking the Da Vinci Code by Darrell Bakken, like manually scan. Because remember that was part of the settlement. Is this that you didn't buy it correctly?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, yeah. The settlement was over books that were pirated. And this judge said that books that were legally acquired were fair use or.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Come back and talk to me or something like that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Or we can talk about that later under this judgment. I. My reading is that like, let's say it's. Yeah, the Da Vinci Code. If they go legally acquire a copy of the Da Vinci Code, they can feed it right back in. It just has to be legally acquired.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes. But I will not hold any of that to be anything other than for now until the Supreme Court starts ruling on some of this stuff. Because these are going to be taken all the way up the flagpole. This one wasn't. For reasons we've got some interesting ideas about, we thought about. One is maybe they want to take the money and run. Two is maybe they thought it could be a lot worse. Three is the, the author's group, knowing what the judge said, say, okay, maybe we've taken this one as far as we can go. But yeah, I think this is, I think this is pretty serious. I would say if it were me. Again, not a lawyer, not legal advice. But if my royalties for like the last few years have not been a half of my payout, I take the payoff. Yeah. And then I'll live to get some more money from Gemini or Google or whoever else is going to come down the road. Rebecca, you saw one Baptist, another. I have not. You have to tell me about it. I didn't. I couldn't get there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's. It's amazing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I've heard nothing but wonderful things.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's the best movie I've seen in years. It is. If you're wondering about the pension ness of it all, it is a spiritual adaptation, a spiritual translation of the novel Vineland. But it's moved up. The opening scenes start in like 2008, 2009, and then most of the story takes place 15 years later in the present day. So present politics feel very on the screen. Like, the first part is great. The last hour and a half is just. It's on rails the whole time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's a shot of a road, apparently. Talk to me about the shot of a road.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, there is a. There's like a chase. There's a car chase scene that is somewhere out in the middle of nowhere in California. And it's super hilly. It looks super dangerous to drive. And you're like in the driver's seat of these cars that are going after each other where it basically looks like you're going over those hills on roller coasters of like, you can't see what you're going to run into when you crest this hill or who's going to be there or what might happen. It is so compelling. It's like zany and weird and pointed and scary and political and so good. And when I walked out of the theater, I had this feeling of like, what he's like, what is this thing that I'm feeling? How do I try to label this feeling? And the closest example that I have is. Remember that scene in Station 11 where he plays A Tribe Called Quest?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And like jumps up and starts rapping and we both talk. Yeah. Frank plays and he starts, like we talked about feeling like we were levitating. Like my soul left my body for the three minutes of that scene. That's how I felt for the last 90 minutes of this movie. And the last needle drop is so glorious that you just go out like on a high. The theater was packed. Everybody was laughing. The jokes are very pension esque. The names are Pinchonesque, but they are not the same Names as the ones in the book. Like Sean Penn's character is a. Like Lieutenant Lockjaw. At one point, someone. It's just like dropped into a conversation like that. This is Colonel Toejam. Like these, these. It's just wonderful. And there is a reference to the Sisters of the Brave Beaver, which feels like a pension thing. These nuns out in the woods not spoil the movie. But I was the only person who cackled when they introduced that. And I wanted to be like, what are you people doing here?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Maybe that's kind of like. I remember when I went to see Fight Club for the first time and it was in the theaters and I laughed at several places that everyone wasn't sure if they were watching a comedy yet. No. And I think there's an element of pinchin is like, wait, is this Apocalypse? Well, Apocalypse Now? Is this Saving Private Ryan? Or is this the Big Lebowski? And the answer is yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, it is. All the tones. It is like all the things. I'm gonna go see it probably several more times. I can't wait for you to see it. I texted you when I was walking out, like, this is a goddamn masterpiece.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, I thought you were talking about the Lowdown, because that was the last. I was like, wow, that's strong.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I'm loving the Lowdown and Ethan Hawke playing a cranky bookseller, small town reporter forever.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Life go.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, is great. No, but that was about one battle after another. It's a phenomenal.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I do not come to you completely empty handed on one battle after another. I've got data for you. Tell me private data, sourced directly from Brenna herself about Vineland over the last three years.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Is it selling well?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Would you like to guess how many units Vineland sold in all of 2024? This was all before there was a movie announced. This is a hard question, but you're very good at this, so I'll at least give you a shot. All of 2024. The book's been out 35 years. It's pinching a name, but not very much read. I'm giving you all that context. 5000 1800. So not off by order of magnitude. I'll count that for a win for that through the date that Brenna sent me this email, which is last week. So through end ish of September, it had already sold 8,000 copies before up.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

To the YouTube movie more than four times. Four times last year's sales. So some people are finding out that movie is based on a book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There was a Spike. Brenna says in January I have a little graph here. I can share it with you later if you're interested. But when she thinks that's when the movie is announced. But then certainly in March when the trailer came out, there was a spike. And then I would guess this chart would be even bigger. It's basically quadrupled the weekly sales and I'll be curious to see what the long tail of that because as much press and praise as the movie has gotten, it didn't do huge box office like 22 million. I think it'll have good word of mouth. And you know, this is for when you're. This is sort of an Andrew Wiley move is like you invest for all time. Like you want to be in the PTA business, the DiCaprio business. So I, I don't really care about that from a box office point of view. But I think in terms of the sales, I think people will be discovering over and over again and they want to go back to. To Vineland and see what the deal is. I wonder if they'll be disappointed or not. What do you think? Yeah, someone who saw the movie then picks up the book, are they gonn. What the hell?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, I mean the book is so much less. The book is just less legible than the movie is. Like you don't need to be a power movie viewer. Like it's not art house. You don't need to be a movie nerd to go appreciate this movie. And like it really did feel when the lights came up like it was a cross section of Richmond in that theater. I think you need to be a little bit of a nerd and a certain kind of reader is my discovery of having just read Pension for the first time. So I think folks might be confused like this. If you do hang through it, you will get the connection. That sort of the vibe of the movie is similar to the vibe of the book and the main beat that this main character and his daughter are going off in search of his former partner, the daughter's mother, because of revolutionary activities from decades ago. Those things carry through. But like most of the side characters that come up in the film are wholly original to the film. All the other stuff from the movie, like the zany cross genre stuff, there are no aliens aliens. There are no ninja sequences, you know, in the movie. But they maintain some like a lot of the heart of it. It makes sense to me that Pynchon has a writing credit on the script.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Sure. Does it have a monologue about a chain of paramilitary Chuck E. Cheeses?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, but it has other interesting. It has a whole bunch of paramilitary stuff. And I thought, interestingly, like, I was listening to an interview with Leonardo DiCaprio and Paul Thomas Anderson over on the Big Picture podcast and they were talking in part about how the movie is about black women in a lot of ways. Like, the main characters are black women. Leo is on screen a lot, but his former partner that they're in search of is a black woman. His daughter is a biracial girl. And all of these revolutionaries that he, that his character had fallen in with are black women who are angry at America for particular reasons. And that point, like those politics come across, I think there's a lot of word of mouth opportunity there because I haven't seen the film be marketed in that way. Like, it's all Leonardo DiCaprio on screen for good reasons. You know, he's the biggest movie star we've got. But there is appeal to a wide range of communities and viewers that I do think it has a lot of word of mouth appeal. And that podcast is how I learned that Paul Thomas Anderson is married to Maya Rudolph.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You didn't know that?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I didn't know that. And that like there are elements of like her personal story and their raising of black girls together that have infused the writing of it. So there's, there, it's a rich text.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's a shot in the trailer of I, I don't know what the character's name in the movie is, but I assume the character in the book is Frenasi pregnant in like shooting a machine gun. That's like, I think that would draw a lot of people in if that was Mark.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Her name in the movie is Perfidia Beverly Hills.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's. I mean, look, I don't know why you want to try to out pinch in pinion, but I, I leave the artist their canvas in those particular ways. Speaking of retranslating, rejiggering, reshaping things, we, when I think Danica put this on Facebook for us, just a little blurb that Reading Rainbow is being rebooted and the host is Michael Threets. I have never seen a piece of our Facebook content get engaged with it. It went, as of right now, 5.1 million people have seen it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

People are very excited, like, like a.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Hundred thousand, like shares. Like, I mean this is real insider baseball stuff. But, but let me tell you, this is not something we see normally. Stuff we put on when you said.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, there's so much reader nostalgia for Reading Rainbow. Folks our age And a little bit younger, loved Reading Rainbow. It hasn't been on the air in 20 years. And then to bring it back, but to update it, the new host is a book talk, like beloved book talk star. And you said it was like Bob Rossi and who else? Or Bob Ross.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Mr. Rogers.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes, Bob Ross and Roger Mr. Rogers. Like, combined through the spirit of LeVar Burton into this person who like really captures the enthusiasm, the care for books and reading that Reading Rainbow is all about.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This is a genius move, Very smart move. And the little trailer has like some other celebrities talking about their library, like Evan Moss Bacharach is doing. Here's the place that looks like I'm having a neurological event. The show will not air on PBS because remember, longtime listeners of the BR POD will know that Reading Rainbow is property of Buffalo Toronto Public Media, who had a legal, whatever, branding falling out with LeVar Burton. And so they own the rights to the name Reading Rainbow. It will instead stream on Kid Zuko, which is capital A, capital K, I D, capital Z, U K O. A YouTube channel operated by Sony Pictures Television. That's really. I mean, it's a YouTube show which. Yeah, at first I was like, what? And I was like, it makes sense.

[Amy Duggar King]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, that's where kids are watching their short form content.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And Michael is the resident librarian at pbs. So like, is already in that ecosystem. But yeah, PBS isn't airing it on the air partially because kids aren't sitting down in front of PBS on TV anymore and also for all those weird licensing and copyright reasons. But that. Yeah, that makes sense to me that it's on YouTube now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The other thing that looks just from the trailer and I'm guessing from the kinds of stuff Threes has made, is he's going to talk about more than the books. Like the library as a safe space, a place of inclusivity and an exploration. And the other things that my memory of watching Reading Rainbow when I was 6 or 7 is it really was the books. This seems like it's more about like the library as a place and the other things that happens in libraries.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And the identity. Yeah. And the identity of a reader. That the books are one of the ways in. But that this is about engaging kids as readers, as library users with that curiosity and that joy that Reading Rainbow is all about. And I'm just going to like, my head canon now is gonna be that when I'm out at restaurants and I see parents give their kids iPads to like occup. Occupy yourself. I'm just gonna be just like, let me believe that they're all just watching Michael 3 eats on reading Rainbow.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do you know this is a schism in the parenting community about iPads at dinner with kids? How much do you know about that?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It is like. I mean, I'm pretty anti screens at dinner tables ever, I think. Take your kids to restaurants and teach them how to be citizens in the world.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'll include that for the phones for the adults, too. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. Like, let's all have conversations with each other. My friends who. Whose kids can, like, sit through a meal and be engaging and interesting. That's. I want to hang out with you as a child and I'm excited about the kind of adult you're going to be, but if I'm on a plane and a kid needs to watch 17 hours of reading Rainbow on their iPad to get through it, do what you got to do.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Cerebral media euthanasia. I participate. I understand. You go. You do Your interest in having for.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Dinner, you know, very disturbing. Five movie lineups on your overnight flight.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I really hope I don't end up watching one Bachelor other for the first time on a Delta flight.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, no, no, no. You have got to get.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's a 70 millimeter here in Portland, but it's been all sold out.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And then I went to see it in a. We don't have a 70 millimeter in Richmond, but I went to see it on a BTX surround sound screen and that's a great experience.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I like how the movie industrial complex can just put whatever three letters in front of. What does BTX stand for? I don't know that it's an awesome sound. I. There's. You know what it should be? It should be Placebo by Dolby Atmos. That's the name. That's what it all should be.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There are scenes that are incredible and that would be, I think, amazing on imax. And I am sad that there is not an IMAX close to me to go do it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. My local Baghdad is playing it. So if I can't make it to the 70 millimeter, I'll probably go check it out there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It would be a travesty to watch this for the first time on the backseat of a Delta Comfort. Don't do it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Okay, let's see. Where do we want to go next? What do you want to say about this? Publishing has a gambling problem post. I thought it was pretty interesting. This is Taja Eason, who writes for the Walrus, which is a Canadian art and culture magazine that I quite like. And she covers books and publishing for them quite well. Often does in depth things. This was more about the idea of track. And this is how I, I think more people would call it track record.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This is like a sales record. Yeah, record. And the essential conundrum she is toying, investigating, pulling on is a seeming contradiction, which is if you have one book that didn't do as well as the original publisher hoped, you are less likely to get a second book deal than someone who's published nothing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That an absence of data is better than having bad data.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes. Which is. Leads to some potential, which is. This is actually something that makes a lot of sense to me and I don't know if I'm broken or if the system broken or we are all broken together, but the idea of potential, it's like the same thing. By pulling a lottery, potential is a thing that we're all getting.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It feels like a very Kahneman and Tversky, you know, cognitive shortcut situation that, like when you can see this, that this book did not sell well, that feels heavier than this book could do anything. Like the likelihood that any book will do anything is almost zero. The books that do sell, that develop meaningful track are the outliers. And I think she does a good job making that point in this piece. And our good, you know, friend of the pod, Laura McGrath, is quoted several times talking about, shouts to Laura about how publishing works and what we do and don't understand about statistics inside publishing. But like, it makes intuitive feeling sense to me, but I don't know that it makes sense, makes rational sense that you're like. When we know that to a first approximation, a book that comes out is going to do nothing. I have this book that didn't do as well as I expected, but it did something. Should I continue to publish books by this person that will do something or should I take gambles on other books that will do nothing? It's a really interesting trick. I put this in the show notes not just because I think it's a good long read. It's like we can't possibly get into all of it here, but we'll put it in the, in the show notes so that you can read it for yourself. But this has launched a bunch of think pieces.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes, I saw a bunch.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There have been a ton of responses. Kathleen Schmidt responded to it in her Publishing Confidential substack and was like, it's not just the publishers, like the editors that are making a gamble on things. Marketing is also gambling about this stuff. Someone else I think it was Neon Literary wrote a piece about like this also has a reader component. Like readers have got to take risks on books that they don't know for sure that they're going to like if we want to have a diverse ecosystem. And that's what was exciting to me about this piece kind of going viral and sparking so many responses was this feels like motion towards a robust conversation about how do the books that get made get made, why do they get made, what's working well in publishing and what isn't. Because some of this too feels connected to me to the problems with literary fiction today where it says too much overtly and doesn't trust readers because we don't want to challenge readers too much. We want them to get what they're expecting. We want them to have a comfortable experience and that, you know, erodes the quality of the book. Publishers are risk averse and they're trying to put out books that they can feel like this book has a shot. So that's, you know, understandable for like we're getting at this like flurry of Romantasy because Romantasy books have sold, but most of the new Romantasy books are not developing track and readers play a role in it as well. Which I was so glad to see someone point out that like if we want a diverse and interesting, healthy, thriving, robust publishing landscape, it takes everybody. It takes editors taking risks on weird stuff. It takes marketing getting budget to try to market something that we're not sure we can make into a success. It takes readers being willing to try it out. It takes book media being willing to read it and cover it, that everybody has a role to play here. But it this kind of made me think this week that we're not alone in this publishing landscape feeling like things are not as good as they have been in terms of the books that are coming out and not as good as they could be. And this feels to me like people are starting to really talk about that from every angle of the industry.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Can I, can I linger on an idiosyncratic grievance, please? Not just in this but in some discourse I said so there's like, like it's on readers to look beyond the season's biggest titles that they're being spoon fed by major publishers. And then later we get and restricting the range of what makes it to bookshelves by spoon feeding with so much aggression. So a don't use the same metaphor twice in the span of two sentences, especially cliche. That's my note on the writing. But there's this larger idea out here that big publishers are just putting in our face just a limited number of titles and it's just blah, blah, blah and nothing else. How do you square that? How do I square that? How do we as someone, the industry that cares about this, the chattering classes around books with the fact, to a first approximation, no one has heard of any book that comes out in a given week. I haven't been spoon fed anything. When's the last time I was spoon fed something?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great, that's a great point. And if anybody is spoon feeding, it's the algorithms that are.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That are consolidated spoons.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And the feed is. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And publishers play a role there when they see what is working in the algorithm and then they juice those things and only those things. That's a rational choice to make because it is likely to get you some sales. But I think that the idea that publishers are spoon feeding things to book to readers, it erases all of the steps that happen between a publisher putting a book out and a reader being exposed to the book. And a lot of it is on media. A ton of it is on algorithms.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Algorithms and media. Because like if we compare that to say the marketing for one battle after another and the press tour, if, if we're being spooned, I don't even know what book. Let's say Katabasis. Just to take one like that, one of the biggest titles of the year, a big print run, splashy stuff. Compared. Have I seen 1 50th. The stuff about Katabasis that I've seen about, about one battle after another. Like this idea that publishers can spoon feed anything to any reader right now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, there's.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I just isn't born out in sales. I just don't think it is.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Too many books. Yeah, like there's just too many books to consolidate attention around anything. Like if there's spoon feeding happening, it's like juicing it on the back end after you see that something is already successful. Mel Robbins starts to go viral for the let them theory. And so a publisher doubles down on publicity and placements and getting her out there on media, you know, drawing more attention to it. Just as an example of one of, you know, this year's hits. But the. Also there's a lot of passive voice in the piece like the publishers. We're being spoon fed and readers, especially in this medium economy, have to go seek out information about like books.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, yeah, a minor interest to most people there's not enough. You can't.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

16% of all Americans, as we recently learned, are reading anything for fun. That's not books. That's anything for pleasure reading.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So I guess I maybe know too much about how the sausage is made on the publicity and marketing side to think the idea that any marketers like, yeah, I have been spoon feeding people about Catherine Newman's wreck.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, yeah, there's I've. There are maybe three authors in the entire publishing industry where their marketer is like doing Mr. Burns fingers of like, yes, we have a million dollars. And I know, look at them.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Ethics supplying them. Anyway, so let's go to. I don't know, there's no transition. Well, you know what? We'll take an ad break. That'll be my transition.

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios New film Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere starring Golden Globe winner Jeremy Allen White and Academy Award nominee Jeremy Strong. Scott Cooper, the director of the Academy Award winning movie Crazy Heart, brings you the story of the most pivotal chapter in the life of an icon. Springsteen Deliver Me from Nowhere Only in theaters October 24th. Get your tickets now. So this is one of the questions that's been floated around, more than floated. Now it's been adjudicated to some degree about whether or not an author's rights are being stepped upon, violated in having their book be banned from school libraries, public school libraries. The first very famous book in Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Purnell, illustrated by Henry Cole, about gay penguins who adopt a chick, which is based on a true story, which has been banned a lot. But this is a particular case in Florida at the Escambia County School Board. A district court in Florida ruled that had not violated the First Amendment rights of students or authors when it removed a children's book because it was said government speech can. Since they see this as government speech and government speech itself cannot be censorship. I feel like I'm a little in Orwellian territory when I read sentences like that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, this is kind of a follow on to a decision that we got earlier in the summer because I remember making a social video that was like, so this is fun. Now we're talking about anything that happens in school as government speech. And therefore, like, school districts can just take books off of shelves because they don't approve of them. And therefore the only books left on the shelf are the ones that carry the school district's message or the state's message. And this judge, Judge Allen Windsor, he's in U.S. district Court in the Northern District of Florida, said that first off, a school library is not a public forum for expressing opinions. So the author's First Amendment rights were not violated. And then also that removing the book from its collection did not keep it from the student who sued because the student could still buy the book or borrow it from a friend. So I guess under this judge's thinking, there's only a violation here if the book becomes completely unavailable, like, is censored by the government off of all shelves and out of all bookstores, and is completely unavailable. But yeah, this idea that, that what administrations, what governmental departments decide to say in schools is government speech, and that government speech then can be used to determine what other forms of speech are acceptable in those schools that, like, well, this doesn't align with this administration's values. So we just aren't going to put these books on the shelves and that'll be fine. It's not censorship. Because you could go to your bookstore and buy the shelves like, or buy the books is completely out of line with what libraries are intended to do. And is also obscuring this very Orwellian thing about it's government speech. And the government has said it. Like, what happens in the school is government speech. And there. And we don't choose to say that being gay is okay. So it's very like this is troubling in ways that a very direct New York Times like reporting of the facts. I don't think quite conveys what's upsetting here.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The idea, I mean, I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. I guess the. The world's most reasonable man is wondering about the following. So I have to pay taxes to fund school and public libraries. What if I believe some things that the library the government says will not be allowed in? Do I have a. I mean, the world's most reasonable man thinks whether or not that meets a legal definition of censorship or not. It is suppressing ideas.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, it is. And the sort of. The flip side of it is that like, public libraries have to rent their space to any citizens groups that, you know, go through the proper channels to access them. The public library can't say, like, yes, you can have the county Democrats meeting here, but you can't have your MAGA group show up. They have to make space for both. And that's one of the reasons. Reasons that public libraries are so often the site of protests from both sides. Like, oh, you let this conservative group come here. Well, the liberals are going to protest. Oh, there's a drag queen story hour. The conservatives are going to protest. So if public libraries have to hold those spaces for all taxpayers, we're talking about schools as different in some way and that this is state speech, government speech that happens in the school. That's what taught. What's taught in the school is state speech. And they're. That you don't have First Amendment rights is functionally what they're saying. You can't claim that if you are punished in school for something that you have said or that if a book that takes your perspective about LGBTQ folks being fine is.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Or any issue, frankly, it does. I mean, you can abstract the things.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We take a book off shelves that aligns with your values in some way. We haven't violated your First Amendment rights because your First Amendment rights don't apply in this. This space is what they. That is the, like the big thing that they are trying to say here. The administration speaks for the schools. Schools are government property. Therefore what we say here is government speech. And you don't have First Amendment rights in that place.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Huge bummer. I Guess is my detailed and expert legal analysis.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, the same things we say every time like get involved, go to your school board meeting, volunteer for a campaign, do something.

[Jeff O'Neill]

One book that is going to be available in many places because it's selling like hotcakes is 107 days by one Kamala Harris, which is on track to be the best selling memoir of 2025. As I wrote in today in books, that's a relatively low bar because it's not been a huge year for celebrity books. I guess this is over performing what I thought it was going to do. I didn't really have a sense of it as I also suggested that I'm guessing the people that are interested in reading this are going to be interested in reading it quite quickly. Yeah, I don't know how long of a tail it's going to have, but I don't know what to make of it. Went back for a printing, it'll be 500,000 in print. You you've read this. My sense in reading some of the coverage and you can tell me if this resonates with your own reading is that it's a little. It throws a little more. A few more elbows than maybe we thought when we were coming into this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, yeah, it throws more elbows. Like this is, as I said last week when I had started it, like this is Kamala Harris taking her moment to tell her version of what happened. It's organized like it starts at 107 days till the election and then you count down 106, 105, 104. And it's basically, it's nice. She captures what happened on each day and her thought like or some big event from that day and her thoughts around it, the decision, the behind the scenes kinds of stuff. So she does, you know, reveal some spikiness in her relationship with the Bidens near the end. Some decisions that she wished had been made differently in my reading of it. She also owns a lot of responsibility for decisions that she made during the campaign that she now thinks she should have made differently or that if she had made them differently, not necessarily she would have won, but that things could have gone better. There are many. This is one of the things I was going to talk about in front list foyer that I've been frustrated by the op ed coverage around it. That's like just call it the blame book. Kamala Harris blames everyone else except herself. And I've seen folks say that the construction of 107 days is intended to be like, well, if I'd had more time, I would have won. Nowhere in the book does she say that it Clearly, 107 days is not long enough to run a presidential campaign in today's political landscape. That's why people run them for six months. Like she was at a disadvantage. That is just a fact. Anyone from any party trying to campaign in 107 days would be at a disadvantage. She spills a little tea, she throws some elbows. I think she takes a lot of responsibility for things that she could have done better. Conversations she wishes that she had had differently places where she made errors. In big interviews, she talks about when she went on the View and they asked her, what would you have done that's different than Joe Biden? And she said, I can't think of a thing like just really knowing that you've screwed it up in some way and how high the stakes were for everything. I think you're reading of it that most of the demand for this is on the very front end for like, folks who were interested in her perspective probably pre ordered the book or planned to go buy it as soon as it came out. I think that's correct. I'm not surprised then that they have like all these first day sales and maybe we've got to go back for a second printing. But my expectation is that the sales will slow down over the course of the year and that if it is the bestselling memoir of the year, it's. It is not a testament to Kamala Harris's popularity as much as to. It's been a pretty soft market for memoirs this year.

[Jeff O'Neill]

If you were gearing up to consider a second presidential run and you were. Kamala Harris, is this the book you would have written?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No. And she says it basically at the very end like, that she is no longer interested in trying to change systems from the inside of the systems. It's a pretty clear statement that she doesn't write a sentence that says I'm done running for office. But she comes as close, close as a person in her position probably would. I. I read it as a. I have. As a statement of like, I have done the things that I can do in, in the official systems in political office. And she says she wants to like, be in the streets with the people. I think we'll see her in activism, like a return to public life in some way. But this is not a setup to run for something else.

[Jeff O'Neill]

At the time, it was a wild moment when, when Biden withdrew and the powers that be in the Democratic Party at first did not and then did circle the wagons around her candidacy. I think the farther we get from it, the even stranger it feels like something that would have happened 100 years ago. Is this really how things are running? It really is so strange to think about that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It is. It's wild when one of the like first juicy bits out of this is that when Biden calls her to tell her that he's stepping out and that he's going to endorse her, he says, we're going to wait of weeks, a couple, couple days to endorse you. And she's like, that will be a disaster. Like, if you're going to endorse me, you have to do it immediately. And then she says basically on like page five, I should have told him months ago he needed to get out of the race. Um, she owns that, you know, right up front she talks about the conversations within the party and with big players about should we have a small primary. Her case, of course, is it was hard enough in 107 days with the person who already had name recognition and all this visibility.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There was no right answer.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, there was no, there was no right answer. She's clear about what she thinks the right answer was. But I do think the farther we get away from how chaotic that campaign was, the more we're all going to appreciate exactly how weird and wild it was. And that it didn't seem that wild. That someone had 107 days to campaign for president is also just reflective of, of how chaotic the landscape is when Donald Trump is involved and she has plenty of words for him.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I'm sure that she's just, you know, dodges all the stuff that could be said. I mean my least favorite genre of, of criticism is like the post election political criticism from bystanders about how however all the campaigns mess up, sometimes you lose. I don't know. That's kind of where I end up on these things.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, I think if you're like, you know, a political wonk a little bit like I happen to be, and you wondered like watching the tick tock of the election, are they doing this? What are they thinking? She does answer some of those questions. You have to decide if you believe her or if her explanations are good enough for you. But you do get the perspective there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, that's your entry, your first entry in from Frontless for you, which is brought to you by Thrift Books where you can buy 107 days and then 18,999,999 other books number grows by the day I bet most of them are copyrighted, some people who sell books on Thriftbooks will be dipping into the anthropic cauldron of filthy lucre. You can buy books, DVDs, games, gifts and more. Free shipping in the US of orders over 15 bucks. And each purchase gets you closer to a free reading reward. Rebecca, you had one other list here for frontless foyer. What else have you been reading?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I've also been reading Insidification by Cory Doctorow.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Nice.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I mean, it's great. One of my questions about it was, will this be book length or should it be a long New Yorker piece? And I think really it should be like a novella. But he does a nice job of laying out how this works. Like. Like how platforms develop to first provide a lot of value for users and then provide a lot of value for advertisers and then squeeze as much value as possible out of both of them for their shareholders so that everybody has a shitty experience in the end. And then he maps onto it a bunch of examples like, this is maybe the one business y kind of book where I've been like, yes, give me all the case studies. You know, most of the time you get a couple case studies and you're like, I get it, it you can stop making your point now. But I pay attention to this stuff and I learned new things that made me really mad. Like that one of the reasons that the Google search is so bad now is that someone figured out that if they served you slightly shitty Google results, they could make you search twice or three times before you got to the thing you were looking for. And that means two to three times the ad revenue off of each search. And that there is like documentation inside Google about the two guys who had the fight over this and that the money guy won out over the product guy in that case. And examples of that from, like all Internet products, DoorDash and Uber apps, ways that this impacts, you know, wage theft and misclassifying of workers or how. How classifying gig workers as contractors who don't have a. Who don't work for the company, they use this app as an intermediary. What that lets businesses get away with that they wouldn't be able to get away with if those were people showing up to a building, working at a desk. Like DoorDash does not show drivers the. The tip that the customer has committed to giving to them. And Uber disincentivizes people from actually taking a lot of rides because if you take every ride that you're offered As a driver, it knows that you're low hanging fruit and so it will offer you lower wages for the ride than someone who more selective. It tries to entice them. Like the algorithm does this. Oh, Jeff only takes one out of every five rides and we really need more people on the road today. So we have to offer Jeff more money for this to get him to take it where Tom would take it for cheaper. It's really maddening. I think we speculated about, like, what will Cory Doctorow's proposed solutions to this be? And I'm happy that they're bigger scale than they could have been. Like, he's got a successful substack. And so there was a version of this book maybe that was like, like, well, if you're in media, you just need to try to like, own your own spaces. Except Substack is also just a platform that will someday become subject to the same insidifying forces.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, I got an email from Substack. Like, they're aggregating posting. It's social media. Substack is an app. I was like, wait a minute, you guys, you're not even doing the evil Mr. Burns thing, right? You're not supposed to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, they're just saying it. And so the real, I think the real point that Dr. O wants to make for the average reader and Internet user is, is wherever there is a platform, there is the likelihood that this will happen. And here's what to look out for and here's what we could do. And it's really, it comes down to competition and regulation. And he talks about the ways that those could work and the ways that they've been thwarted. If you care about Internet usability at all, it's, it's also very readable. It's not too wonky. So I think this is something you could put in the hands of someone who doesn't like, work on the Internet and they would totally understand it because they're like, yeah, yeah, Uber isn't as good as it used to be. Or, you know, how come when I order doordash and I tip really well, it still takes an hour to come and the food is cold and it's like, oh yeah. Because they don't actually show the driver that you're tipping. There's all of these little, these little things. They will make you very suspicious, probably rightfully so, of most of what happens on the Internet.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I took a cab when I was in New York, took a regular old yellow cab. And I know not every place is new, but it did make Me think that it feels like it would have made more sense even in a city like Portland or Richmond where there are cabs for the apps just to get to tell the cab that you want to go there like professional cab drivers doing the work and they could own the platform and benefit from it and not be rent seeking. Anyway. Interesting. I have two quite different ones. My audiobook that I just listened to is Replaceable youe by the great Mary Rue.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, I haven't gotten to it yet. What's the verdict?

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's. In a lot of ways I think it might be the perfect subject for her because it is both really gross and mad scientifically and historically driven. So this idea is like the. The various ways we've tried to replace parts of our bodies. Right. There's one, the first couple are about dentures and skin. They will. If you. If it's too gross you. You will know very early when they talk about. About dentures and basically a little set of dentures people used to keep next to their food in the Victorian area to preach you their food for them because everyone's teeth were so bad. So she's had a little piece of. Anyway, also the most, the most zero to well read core thing I heard was I think she said this exists but you can have a pig that's gene edited for you so that you're ready to have it donate its kidney and heart and stuff to you. Never let me oink. It's like really crazy stuff. Like I was like oh no, never let me. It's. It's terrific. It's a wonderful listen. She narrates it, which I don't. I think I've listened to the last few, but I don't remember her narrating it or she really leaned into it. But she really does a wonderful job. It feels even more personal because. Because she is such a specific person that even her intonation is a reminder of what a weird and wild orchid. Mary Roach. One of a kind treasure. I also read Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung, which is a novel in ghost stories which got me interested because I like a little spooky reason. But I don't like full on horror. This has some severance vibes in which we have this unnamed narrator who's wandering around this secret, secret research laboratory, but everyone's gone. And each chapter is this narrator encountering an object that may or may not always be sentient, trying to figure out what the story is. Each one of the stories has like it has a political overtone, but it's not ham fisted. It's not like. And that's why sexism is bad. Which you know and I are very not. I mean sexism is bad. Like I'm ready for 102. I'm through 101. Can I get to 102? Creepy, strange. Quite funny at times. I really enjoyed Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung. Glad to hear those are my two. Anything else we let the people know about?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Nope. Check out zero to well read in your feed. Check out the Book Riot flagship newsletter. There's a link in the show notes and the Book Riot Podcast is a proud member of the Airwave Podcast Network. Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this audiobook excerpt from Holy Disruptor by Amy Duggar King. Thanks again to our sponsors at Zondervan.

[Amy Duggar King]

For years my story has been told. For me, I'm that Amy crazy cousin Amy, the happy, spunky niece of one of the most famous families in America, the Duggars. For 10 seasons and 109 episodes as a featured member of the smash hit cable television show 19 Kids and Cats, I felt like I had no control over how I was presented to the public. My uncle Jim Bob Duggar, wouldn't listen to me and the network took orders directly from him. I wanted to scream from the rooftops. I'm not crazy or wild. Imagine a world where normal activities like wearing a bathing suit or going to the movies is considered a sin. This is what the patriarch of my family, my uncle, called ungodly behavior. Wearing anything bright yellow or black is wrong. No one goes to college. Kissing is absolutely forbidden. Wearing shorts even on the hottest days? Forget it. I've never done drugs in my life. I don't like to party. I don't have a police record. But because I was different from all of my cousins, I was considered the black sheep. I wasn't allowed to be myself and I had to hide who I was if I had any hope of being accepted in my aunt and uncle's home.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Home.

[Amy Duggar King]

I loved going to the mall with my friends, having full blown concerts in my car, going to dances and being adventurous. But at Uncle Jim Bob's home, I was made to feel ashamed for being who I was, a normal teenage girl. Not only was I singled out and shamed, but I was lied to as well. I'm still trying to untangle the lies, some of them televised across the country and even the world, from the truth. Now it's finally time to tell my own story. It's not all black and white. My childhood was fun in a lot of ways and I spent almost every single day with my cousins from the oldest cousin Josh, pushing us girls in the Radio Flyer wagon down a huge hill as we laughed and screamed with joy to being surrounded by television crews under bright lights and traveling the world together. Doors were flung open to us because of the Dugger name. I have been told stories about my family by many different people, including my mom, family, friends and people in my community. My own memories are twisted and tangled threads of good and bad, fun and fear, order and chaos, love and pain, truth and lies, godliness and evil. There were painful, complicated moments where I felt uninvited, rejected and too much or not enough, as well as moments that were loving, good, warm and comforting. In a way, I miss the closeness of our Duggar family, but I do not miss the legalism or the judgment. This is a story of a little girl born into what would become a very famous family, but who had a deep heartache and trauma of her own that no one outside of her house knew much about. My uncle and aunt seemed to have the perfect family and mine was anything but. This is also a story of escaping control, manipulation and abuse from almost everyone close to me as I fought to find out who I truly was and getting to know myself and finding my voice took some time, but I finally discovered it and I am no longer afraid to stand up for what is right. What I experienced through the years with my uncle and aunt and their 19 kids, along with my own grandparents and parents, has helped me grow into a truth seeker, a truth teller and a holy disruptor. My faith has been my anchor, guiding me through even the hardest moments. But that doesn't mean this journey has been easy. In fact, it's been deeply painful because I've seen and experienced things that I know must grieve the heart of God. Watching people twist faith for their own gain, witnessing deception where there should have been truth, truth and feeling the weight of betrayal from those who claim to love God. It's heartbreaking. Yet through it all, I've held on to the certainty that God sees, knows and cares. And even when my heart aches, I find comfort in knowing that his love remains constant as I navigate the wild seas of my life. The beautiful story of Jesus calming the wind and the rough waters resonates deeply within me, offering a powerful symbol of the peace he desires for every corner of our lives. Mark, chapter 4, verse 35 through 41. Being a holy disruptor is all about standing up for the truth in order to break the trauma and toxic cycles in a family. It's about saying, this has gone on long enough and it stops with me. Though it can be costly to be a holy disruptor, I have learned to be filled with an inner calm that comes only from knowing Jesus. This as I continue to face the wind and waves, I am at peace, and I willingly stand against anything or anyone who breaks the heart of God. As you listen on, you'll see that I'm not hiding anything under the rug. In fact, the rug has been completely pulled away. Settle in for a story that reveals a world of unrealistic expectations and manipulation. A world where I had to untangle a web of carefully crafted lies while fighting to protect my own mental health. It's a journey of breaking free from toxic cycles, confronting painful truths, and finding the faith to keep going. Consider this my unfiltered testimony. And if your story is anything like mine, I want you to hear this loud and clear. No matter what chaos or trauma you're experiencing, if you're willing to become a holy disruptor, sweet freedom is waiting to embrace you on the other side. I was always told you are too loud, Amy. Well, folks, if you ask me, I haven't been loud enough, and I'm about to get even louder.