Wait, How Many Books Were Published in 2025? PLUS: Louise Erdrich!

Summary

Book Riot – The Podcast

Episode: Wait, How Many Books Were Published in 2025? PLUS: Louise Erdrich!
Date: March 23, 2026
Hosts: Jeff O’Neill & Rebecca Schinsky
Special Guest: Louise Erdrich

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Overview

This episode delivers a lively mix of publishing industry news, adaptation updates, and an insightful interview with acclaimed author Louise Erdrich. Key topics include the staggering number of books published in 2025 (and what that says about self-publishing and AI in literature), recent adaptation announcements, copyright lawsuits, and the creative process behind Erdrich’s new short story collection, Python’s Kiss.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Podcast Housekeeping & Upcoming Content

• Upcoming Author Interviews: Rebecca and Jeff highlight the rarity of author interviews on the show and express excitement for their joint conversation with Louise Erdrich about her new book, Python’s Kiss.
  • “She’s like, you know, in our pantheon. So I could feel us both the whole time trying to, like, manage our big excited energy…” (Rebecca, 01:41)
• Zero to Well Read:
  • Upcoming mailbag episode features listener questions on “sharpening reading skills” and how to approach DNFing books.
  • Mention of upcoming show on Forever by Judy Blume and an episode about Project Hail Mary.

“It’s very strange. Yeah. Like, we’re recording about a month in advance, and we also live in this publishing space of, like, looking at new books that are coming out several months in advance. I sort of like, I never really know what day it is now.” (Rebecca, 04:05)

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2. Oscar Updates & Pronunciation Pedantry

• Vineland Adaptation and Thomas Pynchon’s Name:
  • One Battle After Another adaptation sweeps the Oscars (Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Picture).
  • Revelation that "Pynchon" should be pronounced “Pin-shawn”, as confirmed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
  • Amused self-awareness about mispronunciations in literary circles:

    “If he wants us to pronounce his name correctly, maybe show up every 70 years to give an interview.” (Jeff, 06:40)

  • Discussion of how insular pronunciation errors propagate and the absence of correction from listeners.
• Val Kilmer & Deepfake Actors:
  • Debate over posthumous AI impersonation of celebrities (Val Kilmer), the comfort level of AI-driven performances, and ethical grey areas.

    “I had a visceral reaction to the story of Val Kilmer's likeness being uploaded... we don’t have the right verbs for this, Rebecca, to be manipulated.” (Jeff, 09:01)

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3. Adaptation News

• Project Hail Mary & Artemis:
  • Directors Lord and Miller planning to adapt Artemis by Andy Weir after Project Hail Mary’s success.
  • Signs of optimism for “moon heist” genre and Weir’s continued popularity.
• The Correspondent:
  • Jane Fonda to star in a film adaptation. Both hosts excited but muse about adaptation challenges (epistolary format) and predict limited box office appeal.

    “It looks very family friendly. Like, this is the thing that I would go see with my in-laws at the holidays.” (Rebecca, 13:45)

• Lord of the Flies:
  • Upcoming four-part Netflix series adaptation by Jack Thorne, airs May 4th stateside.
  • Music by Hans Zimmer, notably high production values.

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4. Publishing Industry News: "How Many Books Were Published in 2025?"

• The Big Number:
  • Over 4 million books received ISBN numbers in the US in 2025—a jaw-dropping 32% increase over the previous year.
  • Self-published titles comprise roughly 87% (~3.5 million) of the total.

    “That is so many books, Jeff.” (Rebecca, 23:08)

  • Only 642,242 traditionally published books (approx. 6% of the total).
• AI’s Role:
  • Massive uptick attributed partly to advances in self-publishing tech and AI—especially for genres like games, kids’ books, religion, and travel guides.
  • Speculation over the future of AI-generated content and possible consumer confusion or algorithmic feedback loops.
• Market Implications:
  • Concern about quality, discoverability, and the increasing dominance of AI and mass-production over craft:

    “If AI-generated books become essentially free to make... that will then evacuate the support for those [traditionally published] things.” (Jeff, 35:28)

  • Analogy: The mass-production of art vs. supporting local, “handcrafted” artists.

    “Most of the books on [casual readers’] shelves are going to be the ‘live laugh love’ pillow of books. And Rebecca Jeffy no likey situation.” (Jeff, 35:28)

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5. Notable Quotations & Memorable Moments

• On the Plagiarism Lawsuit:

  • Judge’s quip about YA tropes:

    “Hot sexy Dangerous Boys Central to Virtually all young adult romance novels cannot be copper[copyrighted].” (Judge Colleen McMahon, quoted, 18:07)

  • Hosts riff on the ubiquity of certain character tropes and the futility of copyright claims over genre conventions.

• On AI in Publishing:

  • Listener email that “terrifies” the hosts about AI-generated fiction supplanting mass-market paperbacks:

    “Books written by real artists will be more expensive because, because the publishing industry will have to jack up the prices to support it.” (Rebecca, 38:21)

• Nostalgic Tangent:

  • Brief but vivid recollection of 90s fashion and the death of genuinely unironic cigarette rolls in t-shirts.

    “Do you think there’s anyone out there doing that unironic—who’s the last person to do that unironically?” (Jeff, 29:58)

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6. Frontlist Picks & Recent Reads

• The Complex by Karan Mahajan
  • Rebecca’s reaction: difficult, darker than expected, and thematically tangled. Not an easy recommendation.
• London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
  • Jeff: A blend of true crime and socio-political journalism, widens from an individual mystery into an exploration of London society, Russian oligarchs, and urban dysfunction.
• True Colors by Kory Stamper
  • Jeff: A word-nerd’s delight; about lexicography and the challenge of defining color in dictionaries.

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7. Python’s Kiss – The Louise Erdrich Interview

Interview Timeframe: [56:29]–[84:32]

Collaboration with Her Daughters

• Daughter narrated the audiobook, another illustrated each story; intention was to make the book an “art object.”

  “I wanted... an art object as a book so that this book would be something very special...” (Louise, 57:36)

The Role of Short Stories in Her Career

• Shifted from embedding short stories within novels to wanting standalone stories.

  “I wanted to have standalone short stories, short stories that really were short stories and didn’t gesture to the novel…” (Louise, 60:16)

Creative Process

• Some stories drafted over a decade, others written in a “storm of inspiration.”
• Stories “stand in” for the poetry she isn’t writing as much anymore.

Editing & Repetition

• Praises New Yorker editor Deborah Treisman and longtime copyeditor Trent Duffy for excellent feedback, especially noting how each book secretly “repeats” a word reflecting authorial concerns at the time (e.g., “merciless,” “little”).

  “There’s always a word that you repeat in a book... that has something to do with what I think of as the unconscious either insecurity of the writer or the meaning of the landscape…” (Louise, 67:41)

Reader Response

• More feedback from novels than stories; wishes she could reply to every letter. Prefers succinct, no-reply-necessary notes.

Entry Points for New Readers

• Recommends The Night Watchman (“centered this book on a person with... human decency,” 71:12), and The Sentence (“I got into that voice and I couldn’t stop,” 73:02) as starting points—over the more trauma-filled Justice Trilogy (Plague of Doves, The Round House, LaRose).

On Sliding Between Genres

• Some Python’s Kiss stories enter near-future, AI-infused afterlives.

  “These two stories that are about an afterlife controlled by... seven giant corporations is really starting to feel more and more not science fiction...” (Louise, 74:09)

• Has plans but is unsure about writing a full-length speculative work.

On the Snoring Story

• Lovingly draws on personal and familial experience with snoring, using the mundane as fantastically strange literary material.

  “I can’t out anybody else... Let me just say that I know this very well, you know.” (Louise, 76:28)

• “Snoring enters your dreams... influences this relationship in a whole different way, where the dreams become very dangerous.” (Louise, 77:31)

What Endings Make Her Cry?

• Most endings, especially “The Hollow Children” and “Python’s Kiss.”

On Work, Kindness, and Retail Experience

• Grounding influence of working in food service and retail—teaches empathy and is invaluable for writers and real-life connections.

  “Retail jobs are invaluable—they really mean a lot to people who come into stores... It’s a low-risk social moment for people.” (Louise, 82:30)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Louise Erdrich interview: 56:29–84:32
• 01:10 – Anticipating Erdrich interview
• 06:40 – Oscar news and Vineland adaptation
• 10:59 – Adaptation updates: Project Hail Mary, The Correspondent, Lord of the Flies
• 21:59 – "How Many Books Were Published in 2025?"
• 29:00 – AI's impact on art/literature & “mass produced” vs. “handcrafted”
• 38:21 – Market forces, value, and the fate of human-created books
• 57:36 – Erdrich’s collaborative process for Python's Kiss
• 60:16 – Short stories vs. novels in Erdrich’s practice
• 67:41 – The magic of repeated words and the crucial role of editors/copyeditors
• 71:12 – Where to start with Erdrich’s books
• 74:09 – Genre-bending stories and speculative fiction
• 76:28 – The "snoring" story’s real-life inspiration
• 82:30 – The value of retail/service work for life and literature

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Final Notes

• Python’s Kiss is available as of March 24th.
• The interview with Louise Erdrich is a must-listen for fans of her work, literary craft, and the emotional depths of short fiction.
• The hosts maintain their trademark warmth, humor, and engagement with the realities—and oddities—of the modern reading world.

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Contact:
Questions/comments: [e-mail]
More episodes & show notes: bookriot.com/listen

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Transcript

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We're gonna do a shorty, kind of a new segment today because on the back half of the episode, we have the great, the immortal Louise Erdrich. Rebecca and I got to talk to her. Have we ever talked to an author together before about a book? Have we ever done that?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

A few times. We talked to Florence Williams about heartbreak together, I believe.

[Louise Erdrich]

Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We've done it a couple of times, but since we don't do many author interviews here historically. And then you were running First Edition as your, you know, Jeff sidequest side quest.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And I tend to do some on my own, so this was. It was memorable. And we were. She's like, you know, in our pantheon. So I could feel us both the whole time trying to, like, manage our big excited energy about how stoked we were to be talking with her. It was such a treat.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And she. She gave us some fun stuff and a delight to talk to, and we really like her book. Pythons Kiss is what she's talking to us about. And then, of course, we talked about her experience as a writer and reader and a few tasty little nuggets for those of you who like to hear about books and reading.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

She even recommends where to start with her books, which is she's one of the authors we get questions about the most frequently for. You know, there are so many Louise Erdrich books. Where should I start? They're so different, so you can hear it straight from her.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I don't know what brand of narcissism it is that I was delighted to hear that her two choices were the two that I would choose.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Validation.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, I don't know what to do with that, Rebecca. I guess I'm a small man, but I will take my validation where I get them. Speaking of other things, us talking about other books next week in the feed, there'll be a Zero to well Read that. I was working on some notes for it this morning and getting choked up while doing it. So if you want to hear us try to fail to not get choked up talking about a book together, tune into Zero to well Read next week.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, that's actually the one that's going to choke us up is like, oh,

[Jeff O'Neill]

it's in three weeks.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm sorry, it's airing in April. But Forever by Judy Blume is up in the Zero to well Read feed. And as you are listening to this on Monday, our mailbag episode will be coming out on Tuesday. So it's our first mailbag of Zero to well Read. We got some really great listener questions about ways to sharpen your reading skills, how to know when to DNF a book or like, when should you stick it out just to prove that you can? A whole bunch of other great feedback.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm gonna be out on vacation next week. Rebecca and Vanessa will be seeing and reacting to and then recording those reactions for an episode on Project Hail Mary that's going to appear in the feed Wednesday next week, a little earlier for all you Patreon folks out there. And then she and then Vanessa is going to be captaining a new show because you're going to be traveling a little bit as well. So that's what's coming attractions on this. You can hear us over on Zero to well Read. I'm never going to get used to that. The the show were prepping for is not the next episode we do. And it's been very good. You've been wonderful about getting us scheduled ahead of time and keeping us ahead of the game, which is the right thing to do. But the general Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and podcasting doesn't like it because my brain doesn't like to handle it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's very strange. Yeah. Like, we're recording about a month in advance, and we also live in this publishing space of, like, looking at new books that are coming out several months in advance. I sort of like, I never really know what day it is now. I never really know what podcast episode is coming out.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. Let's do our first spons a break and we'll get into some news.

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

[e-mail] the biggest news story of the week really is book adjacent and we have a mea culpa. Actually, I guess I think we pronounce it Mia Ya Kopa because we've been pronouncing Thomas Pinchin wrong because we pinch now Listen to me, Rebecca Schinsky, in my own. In our own defense, if he wants us to pronounce his name correctly, maybe show up every 70 years to give an interview.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So this comes by way of the fact that one battle after another won big at the Oscars. It got Best Adapted Screenplay. Paul Thomas Anderson picked up Best Director. It was voted Best Picture. And it's, of course, based on the book Vineland by the man we have been calling Thomas Pynchon, that everyone calls Thomas Pynchon. But in both his Golden Globe speech and his Academy Awards speech, Paul Thomas Anderson, who I assume has actually talked to this man who never gives interviews. Oh, you're assuming that he thanked Thomas Pynchon. Like, I think they must have had some conversation because Vineland gets, like, its name checked on the screen. Pynchon has a writing credit on the movie. Whether that's like that. He actually. I don't think he actually worked on it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I guess someone had to sign the deal, like, because they. I'm saying, to buy the rights. I never really. I guess I didn't think about that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, some. Some conversation happened. Somewh. And so I'm going to assume that Pynchon, you know, would rather have his privacy than be out here correcting all of us on how to pronounce his name. And the longer I looked at it, the more I was like, yeah, this looks kind of French. Maybe we should have known that we were putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, maybe. I don't know. And we've been talking about that book all season on this feed and the other. And in the past. And like, no one's ever emailed to correct us. And believe me, our listeners would correct us if someone thought or knew.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We've got corrections about much more insignificant things.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Y. So there we go. I'm just going to say right now, I'm not going to get this right. I'm going to have to, like, translate it from my original. It's now in part of my hardware. The firmware on the pronunciation of Thomas Pinchon in an organic setting is going to fail. And I will do my best, but that's how we do to that point where some of these things aren't going to change. Especially since, you know, he's a hermit.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, he, like, literally has not given an interview in his literary publishing career. So we'll probably never know.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Probably never know.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's great mystery.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Maybe when he dies in his estate, sells his likeness to some AI company to make a documentary about his life. Did you see anything about Val Kilmer? I gagged at the Internet and I do. I sometimes do. But I had a visceral reaction to the story of Val Kilmer's likeness being uploaded to whatever cloud to. I don't even know what that we don't have the right verbs for this Rebecca to be manipulated. His image is manipulated in a generative AI and the state is on board with it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. It's a movie that he had agreed to be in before he died. And I think that he was theoretically on board with some of this AI use. He did give permission for Top Gun Maverick to use AI to generate his voice. But this is a whole movie where his entire presence in the movie will be AI generated, pulled from that model, will be fed by past Val Kilmer performances, which is not a thing that I want. I'm not here for this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I don't like it anyway. So, yeah, as you said, one battle, another wins. Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Picture. And then quite well as well. Cinematography, Best Actor, Best Screenplay. They didn't quite split it down the middle because I think Director, picture are the. The two big prizes. Picture for sure. But nice to see Michael B. Jordan recognized.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There as well. You know, it was fun night at the Oscars.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It was Coogler. Ryan Coogler picked up Best Original Screenplay. And then the cinematographer from Sinners, Autumn Dural Arpa was the first woman in the history of the Oscars to win Best Cinematography. So an incredible first that took way

[Jeff O'Neill]

too long to see that. Yeah, so there's that. I'm not sure we have much else to say in that regard about those movies.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We'll have a link in the show notes for books to read. If you loved Sinners that we had out on the site last summer when the movie came out, but we're pulling that back out. So if you've been seeing Sinners and looking for books that have that vibe, you can just scroll on into the show notes wherever you're listening.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Let's do a couple other adaptation things quickly. One that I didn't put in the show notes because I just saw it a few minutes ago, is that Lord and Miller seem to be doing a little early victory lap on the project Hail Mary. They're the director of Project Hail Mary and they had already bought the rights to Artemis, which is Weir's second book, and now they're out there saying they fully intend to make that movie. Now they can intend everything all they want, but that suggests to me quite a bit of good buzz and Sign and juice with the developmental powers that be that maybe can get that movie made. If, you know, if this has a billion dollars globally, they'll be able to make whatever they want. And maybe they'll want to make another space moon heist. Well, not another, but another space project, but this one a moon heist.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We love a heist.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We love a heist. So there's that hot on the heels of the hot list, honestly, when we were talking about the Correspondent for Virginia Evans, really just confirming, I think, its placement and inclusion on that list. The deal for Jane Fonda to star and an adaptation of the Correspondent. Jane Fonda, who quite winningly and also annoyingly was pissed that she didn't get to give the Robert Redford Memorial talk that Streisand gave. She's like, I was in four movies and I. And I told Michelle she also didn't sing the Way We Were. So that's. Them's the breaks. Jane, who I really enjoy and has had a late, not a late career revival, but her career just keeps going with Grayson, frankly, which is a show I know you and I both enjoy over there, I think. Great. I want to see this movie made. Whatever. It's mostly letter writing. So I guess we're gonna have a bunch of voiceover with, like, what's going on in the letter appearing on the screen. So there's gonna be a bit of an adaptation challenge to do here, but there is enough implied or narrated in the course of a letter action to see.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So it might, like, be little vignettes that show us the things that happen. I'm gonna read this before the adaptation comes out now. Like, I think I'm just gonna save it for that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, for those of you seen, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, that's epistolary as well. And they basically just take that and put it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't think I ever saw that adaptation. All right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It is fine. It's fine. Yeah. So this is a film, by the way. I thought this was limited series. Had limited series written all over it. Maybe it will so go straight to streaming. Oh, the modern comp for this movie is. What is it? That. Because that was a Netflix streamer. But, like, what theatrical movie is this? Like the Friend by Sigrid Nunes, which I saw and was perfectly fine, starring Bill Murray and Naomi Wach, who I thought was quite good in that. But I guess this is for. I mean, frankly, probably older people that will go see old people in movies, which maybe they're going to go to theaters. And do $28 million in box office. It's not going to cost a billion dollars to make.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It looks very family friendly. Like this is the thing that I would go see with my in laws at the holidays. So maybe it'll be a Thanksgiving or Christmas kind of release. A feel good, affirming sort of story. Be interesting to see. But with the announcement coming out now and they're already doing casting, I guess we'll see this in 2028.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Probably it might be next year. Could be faster because it's not going to take a lot of CGI or production or anything like that. We've got cast, we've got got an executive producer, we've got a script writer. I think the most interesting thing to me here is the production company's hidden pictures who is fresh off their success with the Housemaid. So they have just made a ton of money off a book sensation and made it on a relatively modest budget. And it doesn't have to do $200 million. You could make this for 10 or $15 million I guess. Jane Fonda's I would guess would be the most expensive piece of this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think that's right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

In relatively contemporary time. So it feels to me like a very moneybally kind of deal to be made.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So I was so excited to see this come across this morning and then bummed that the Correspondent came out last year because this would be so nice to have in our fantasy league.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes it would, it would. Things that are coming and that are out now, my son just actually read Lord of the Flies for class and did an honors project on it. So I'd have been occasion to think about Lord of the Flies of late. There is a new adaptation by Jack Thorne. Jack Thorne, now best known for writing Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I would say he's also, he also wrote those Enola Holmes movies starring Millie Bobby Brown which has done quite well.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And he wrote for Adolescence.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Wrote for adolescence. So this is a Netflix limited. Wait, is this a series?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's a four part. It's a four part limited series for Lord of the Flies. It hits Netflix on May 4th.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Looks like it's shot on location. Music by Hans Zimmer. They spent some money on this. Rebecca.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Music by Hans Zimmer. Yeah, like they, they did spend some music or some money on it. It aired on the BBC in the UK in February, but we'll be getting it here in the US on May 4th.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So that's something to look out for it. I read the Lord of the Flies in middle school and haven't touched it since. And so when James was talking about I was like, conceal piggy, you know,

[Rebecca Schinsky]

sucks to your Asmar.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that's kind of it. I've got like one index card with three bullet points on it. Interesting to revisit.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, you'll be shocked to know it's on the long list for zero to well read.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, 1954 when I was a kid and that came out, I felt like you could have told me that came out in 1911. Like it feels like it's been around for a long time, but it's really just, you know, it's not even. It's not close to 100 years, a couple decades to go there. You got to use you got gifted a newsletter subject line yesterday. Would you like to walk us through what what leads us to the phrase hot sexy dangerous boys cannot be copyrighted.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I would love nothing more than to tell you about this, Jeff. So there has been a plagiarism lawsuit going on in the Southern District of New York between a writer named Lynn Freeman, who has alleged that Tracy Wolf, the author of a YA fantasy series called Crave, plagiarized from one of Freeman's unpublished manuscripts. And Crave has been quite successful. Freeman believes that Woolf stole her idea, so they go to court over it. The judge ruled this week that no plagiarism was present. Freeman, of course, alleged that the series was substantially similar to her unpublished manuscripts, and the publisher entangled got all involved in it as well. Universal Studios has the film rights to the first to the first installment of the series. So Judge Colleen McMahon wrote that Freeman's novel and Wolf's Crave novels are indeed similar, but only in the ways that all young adult romantasy fiction novels are similar to each other. You could have a field day dissecting that statement alone. And we had a little bit of a field day on our company chat with it. Like, how many romantasy fiction novels has this judge read? Shots fired at Romantasy. The assumption that all of them are similar in some ways. But then she goes on to add Hot, sexy Dangerous Boys Central to Virtually all young adult romance novels cannot be copper copyrighted.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I guess my take here is that Judge McMahon has painted with far too broad a brush. But this is also probably the right ruling because just because virtually all and many does the same work. When it would come to the case, as I understand it here, which is I have not read both of these books. I followed a little bit. I think we covered the original lawsuit and like this is winded its way through the courts, which takes eons to do, but it does. To me, as someone who has not read the books but read Synopses and some Discourses, yeah, they seem kind of similar, but they are within a genre that has some that have some tropes that get recycled. Right. I think probably the closest thing I could think of to take it out of this genre would be like, you know, a disgraced former cop who's turned into a PI but he's got a heart of gold.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

How many of those are in mystery thrillers? Like, not all of them, but it's around enough that if you have not an original with a heart of gold, you can't really. You can't really claim copper infringement from someone else because there have been so many of them. And there's some. There's some behind. Not behind the scenes, but there's some paper trail stuff about who knew what when that makes it sort of plausible that someone could have seen this and pass the idea along. Off along. I, you know, in. But. But a wonderful phrase and I think I made the point is I don't know what area of human endeavor in which Hot young sexy boys would be a novel. Copyrightable inclusion into culture because the ancient Greeks got there first and all that is way outside of copyright.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I just loved Hot sexy dangerous Boys. Like, this is presumably a serious person. She is a judge. She's been hearing the facts of this case. It makes me wonder if somewhere in the arguing of the case there was a like. But this guy is hot and sexy and dangerous and my character was hot and sexy and dangerous. And therefore just like I would like kind of all the backstory. I would. I'd like all the backstory to be downloaded into my brain, but I don't want to have to like go find out all of those details. But one of the great gifts, probably the best phrase that we'll read in bookish news all year.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Does seem like maybe the judge was a little annoyed by having to make this case. Yeah, they're similar. Little salty similarity. You know, you have to. You have to claim a lot more novelty that I'm not a copyright lawyer. But the. The world's most reasonable man agrees here with Judge McMahon insofar as he understands the case. So I. You made the point. I should have saved this for the show because this is a great. Rebecca, guess the number. But maybe we can play with the listeners here for a second. Rebecca, because here, let's do it. You know, you're not gonna be able to respond to this, but you can on the honor system. You're driving along in your Kia Sorento, going to where we were going right now. The game is this. How many books were published in the US in 2025? Meaning what do we mean by published and the bear. The barrier here, Rebecca, is that they were given an ISBN number. So they had to have applied for an ISBN number. You know that some of that can be self published, a lot of it isn't. But like you have to go to this one step of getting an ISBN, which I think counts, right in the world of self publishing and indie publishing. What else? I don't know how else you would do it. Do you count every single thing that someone made available to read for free? I don't even know how you'd count that. But that is our barrier here. I will tell you. I will give people. Well, let's, let's do name that number and I'll give us a series of hints. So listener, come up with a number to yourself right now. How many books do you think were given an ISB number in 2025? There's your three count. One, two, three. Okay, I will allow you to revise your number yourself with the following statistic is that the 2025 number is up 32% over 2024, which we are going to talk about that number and where that might be in just a minute. Give you a three count to revise. Okay. The increase was led by self published works and those works soared 3.38.7%. So grew faster than the whole number. And I will also I'll give you one more thing, is that self published works account for 87ish percent. If I'm doing the math right here, of all the total number. Okay, Rebecca, is there any other hints we want to give people as they come up with their number?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't think so. I mean, I'm imagining that we were playing this game where I was having to guess and I don't know that any of those details you just gave would actually have helped me arrive.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, I want them to fail. I want them to be wrong. It's not fun to feel like, you know, I nailed that one.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, it's, it's a big number.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So with that said, there were more than 4 million books published in 2025 with an ISBN number. Of those, 642,242 were traditionally published.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That is so many books, Jeff.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I know there are a lot of books, Rebecca. And yet my eyes did the cartoon wolf seeing like a steak on a platter eyeball emoji when this I. I don't know if I was in denial or I haven't thought about in a while, but 642,000. It's 6%.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. That is wild. And I don't know where most of these are getting listed or advertised because when we go through catalogs from traditional publishers, we're going through mostly the big five. But I don't think it all adds up to more than half a million a year that we're scrolling through. Thank goodness. This makes me feel like the fire hose I think I'm drinking from when I'm going through titles is actually just a little drop. And then that it's three and a half million self published works came out in 2025 and were assigned ISBNs. Three and a half million.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's like up one million from 2024.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like more than one percent of like if it's one book per author, which I'm just guessing, that's more than one like 1% of the US population out there self publishing books. It's really, you know, I'm sure a smaller number doing more. But that's wild. And we're only going to see it go up as technology enables self publishing and AI starts to infiltrate self publishing as well.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think that has to be the number because it's a big number to start out with and you get a 30%, 38% increase. And they suggest here that there was a rebound in the number of self published works. 20 from 2022 to 2024. Sorry, stayed about flat from 2022 to 2024 over that 3 year period. 2.45, 2.54 and then a jump right. It actually shrunk 2023, 2024. And that is in the age of chat GBT like people were out, those tools were available. Whatever, whatever confluence events has happened here, I think AI is probably driving some of it. I don't know what the rest might be. If you happen to know, shoot us. Email podcastriot.com but traditionally published books being up 6.6% is nothing. Just needs that either. That's about 15 to 1700 new traditionally published books coming out every single day in the year.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And we do know from our catalog experience like a lot of these are, I mean like lifestyle cookbooks. There's a ton of those.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Education kids books. There's a lot.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Religion.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Golly miss religion.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There's a. There's a ton of you know, religious Christianity, Bibles were a bestseller last year, but that's 4 million. 4 million. So the thing we've been saying for our entire careers about how there are too many books and we'll never get to all of them. And like, if publishing stopped creating new books tomorrow, we would still have more than we could ever read in our lifetime. It's truer than ever.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Games and activities books are the third largest. 354,000 those self published, I should say. Okay, fiction, juvenile nonfiction, games, activities, juvenile fiction, and then travel. That's those.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Travel has been really subject to AI travel guides, and I think that's probably what's going on there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Scraping a bunch of blog posts and putting them into here's what to go see and Caledonia or something like this. Well, I told the story. I was. I got hoodwinked by an AI generated SAT study guide. And I can, you know that. I'm sure that was new this year.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There was a piece, I can't remember where I read it last week, about how online travel recommendations and travel writing are pretty broken now because of AI and things scraping. And two weeks ago I was on a plane doing the thing that I do, which is if your laptop is out and you're sitting next to me, I am definitely looking at what you're doing. Like, I will read your slide deck. And a woman sitting next to me was on ChatGPT asking for like undiscovered gems along the coast in California where I was headed. And ChatGPT was giving them to her and I wanted to be like, if ChatGPT knows about them, they are not undiscovered.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That is really interesting. So this has happened before the era of AI, but we're seeing it happen all the time where the algorithm will overload on a particular thing because it becomes popular and then everyone knows it, right? Like, like there's a reason we all had tight rolled jeans and frosted tips in the 80s and 90s. Like, it has its own weight. AI is just accelerating. But I think it also may cement it in a fascinating way. What's like, how will that cycle get broken, right? Because once the large lingual module, then people are referring to that and then using that to spit out new content. It's sort of the end of history when it comes on to, to that kind of writing, that kind of experience. The other thing is that this sounds silly to say, but the, the globe is bounded, right? There is. There's like, like only so many places that you can write about. So at some point you're going to reinvent the world in travel writing. And you're back to the beginning where how do you curate and do things like that? But in the late 19th into early 20th century, Baedeker's travel guide became the de facto travel guide for Americans going abroad. And they'd go on the grand tour and they'd go to all those places and then now we go to all those places because that's where you go like it has this self fulfilling effect fact. It's so fascinating to see what the long term results of that might be too. So be buyer beware if you're dialing up some. If you're on Amazon, especially where most people go to put their self published books, that's where the buyer are be careful about your buying. You might see is this a real publisher? Is this a real writer? Go take a look out there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I have to go back and ask an important question.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Did you have frosted tips in the 90s?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I. I started losing my hair when I was nine years old. So I never had the occasion. No, I never had frosted my hair. I had sort of a was ready to be just delighted dirty blonde, Brillo pad sort of hair situation. It was not, you know, only certain kinds of hair more amenable to frosted tips. In my. I did not have a Caesar cut. I didn't have a puka shell Netflix necklace.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's a good Freudian slip.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I, I did, I did. Yeah. I did wear a long sleeve white T shirt under single color pocket.

[Louise Erdrich]

Oh yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

T shirts.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's what you did.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Khakis.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's what we did.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So that's very important to talk.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay. All right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But I did tight roll my jeans.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Just wanted to make sure that if there were pictures of Jeff o' Neill with frosted tips somewhere in the world I was not missing out on that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was thinking about this the other day, Rebecca, you know how there's a cliche of like the. The 50s greaser with the roll the cigarettes rolled into their short sleeve?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. The James Dean thing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do you think there's anyone out there doing that unironic. Who's the last person to do that un. Ironically. Is that completely.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Probably James Dean.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Once there was a picture of him doing it that that was over. You couldn't do it without self. Like once Grease came out in movie theaters, you could no longer do stuff like that unironically.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney. Let's go get ready for a new case.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home. Zootopia 2 now available on Disney plus rated PG and right now you can get Disney plus and Hulu for just 4.99amonth for three months with a special limited time offer ends March 24th. After three months, plan auto renews at 12.99amonth. Terms apply.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I didn't expect this. TikTok has more short dramas than I could ever finish. Each episode leaves you wanting the next. Download TikTok now and try it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think that's probably fair. Let's do I got it. I got the most terrifying email from a listener who I don't think even knew they were terrifying me. It says this and Kyla, I'm gonna say it's okay to use your name because you didn't say otherwise. Love the show and catching up after missing a few weeks. I'm listening to your episode about that article in the romance quote unquote. Author. I love the quotations here. Using AI to generate her books. Just wanted to share my thoughts. Prediction at this point. Cats out of the bag and sadly some don't care. That being said, my guess it's going to become like mass produced art. Sure, some people buy that print from Target that everyone else has, but few would argue it is art or as is art or investment. I think books will become the same way. I don't think any generated books will be given the same prestige, value or consideration as actual human created books. Even that individual didn't argue that her books were good or any kind of merit. Sherry, they were entertaining, sold, and could be produced quickly. I could rant for longer, but that's just.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is terrifying.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I. I think I this is not because I think Kyla is wrong. I think Kyle is very astute and

[Rebecca Schinsky]

thinking closely, Kyla might be right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I did not. I did not preview this. Rebecca Are we scared for the same reasons about this or why does this one scare you?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, this one. So this future that Kyle is predicting, which I do think is really possible, where this author argues that they were entertaining, they sold and they could be produced quickly. Like. Like if that is the thing that most book consumers, which are casual customers want, then this will become much more popular. Like what you're describing here, entertaining, sold and can be produced quickly is like what we think of as like airport fiction now. And a lot of airport fiction props up the publishing industry. Like I can't tell you how many debut novels and like experimental poets Hachette is able to publish because they have James Patterson.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And so if that creation comes off of humans and moves over to AI generated stuff that mainstream publishers are probably not going to want to deal with, it will satisfy, I think you're right, a certain and potentially large segment of readers who are just. This is the I just want a good story crowd. I just want to like pick the first thing that comes up in Kindle Unlimited and is free, don't care, as long as it's going to be entertaining for my six hour flight or whatever that does. I think she's right here about the distinction. Like people probably won't confuse those things as art. I'd be very surprised if in our lifetimes we have like an argument about whether an AI book can be considered for say like the National Book Award or whether they'll even, you know, be capable of reaching that level of artistic achievement. But most people who read are not reading with concern to the artistic achievement already.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So if the thing that they want becomes more mass producible for less money, that's a market force that can be taken advantage of and have potentially really negative consequences. Is that where you are too?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Along the same lines, I came out slightly different through a side door, which is ask the listeners of the show, when's the last time they bought a work of art from an artist they actually that's alive and that they know know that they know the name of? I think the implication of this is most of our stuff that hangs on our walls now include myself though. We have bought work from living artists that are not mass produced, but they're extraordinarily expensive. It's a little bit of a different game, but I think the principles still apply is that most people have a cheap photo, a cheap out of public, in public domain Monet thing on their wall wall or they've got some Ansell Adams ripoff black and white Eiffel Tower, like most people's art that is on their wall is what you're talking about. And if that is a world that means most of the books on their shelves are going to be the live Laugh Love pillow of books. And Rebecca Jeffy no likey situation.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Likey no.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So I think the thing that Kyla is on to here from a this could happen versus a well, people just won't think about it the same way is actually the disaster. Because the other implication where Rebecca said especially is that the if you don't have the cash in those big James Patterson's, the Freedom Faddens, the Romantasy books, if those become essentially free to make because Ellen's are good at making them right, that will then evacuate the support for those things. The things that aren't that will collapse. The subsidies for the things that aren't that will collapse because there'll be no margin for a publisher to pick up. And then eventually the things that we do ascribe some value to, like, well, let's take Lord of the Flies, I don't know when William Golding dies, but that will become the public domain. And his death plus 75 years, eventually there will not. There will only be the remnant things that people know about the Monets and the Van Goghs and the Georgia o'. Keeffes. And this is something I really try to do and I have to do it. Like I try to learn about living artists, not just the stuff that's in the Louvre that people have been looking at since the Baedekers I was just talking about.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right, yeah, well, and I think like the point that you made there about, about that it can be quite expensive to purchase from living artists, but it doesn't have to be. There are working living artists in all of our communities. Like looking above my desk is a painting that I bought in a like nonprofit's local silent auction as a fundraiser. It was a couple hundred bucks. That's more than you're gonna pay at Target. It's more than I would have paid at different times in my life. You know, all of the caveats about lucky to be able to do that, but you can support individual local artists who are selling things on Etsy. They're not all terribly expensive. In fact, many of them are quite affordable for about the same budget that you could like you can support a real human person for about the same budget that you would spend walking into Target or like ordering something on Bed Bath and Beyond. But there's. That takes an extra level of Work. There's less friction if you're just going through these, like mass produced art succeeds by virtue of being mass produced because it's easy to access. I think that this is a real warning shot that Kyla sent us here. Maybe unknowingly, yes, but a real encouragement, like to seek these things out the same ways that we think about wanting books by real humans, like art from real humans as well. And that, that's a, that's sort of a collected value that applies to all of the stuff you consume in your life.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, it's weird if that's an, it's an odd, It's a cool thought, Rebecca. Like, you know, because if you expand like you just did, to like arts and crafts, like durable goods, not just fine art on the walls. You know, we have coffee mugs and lamps and planters and things that we've bought from local artisans here in, in Portland. It's weird. Is it, is it utopian or dystopian? It feels like something you do in Station 11 where like your local artisan novelist, are you buying a copy of their book for 200 bucks and there's like 70 of them?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I mean, if it goes the way that Kyla is predicting, then the stuff, the books written by real artists will be more expensive because, because the publishing industry will have to jack up the prices to support it. And we're already seeing, I think some of this is tariffs and production costs. I was looking at my hardcover of Python's Kiss by Louise Erdrich. It's like a 200 page hardcover, $32.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, we've broken the $30 mark quietly on, you know, commercial, I mean commercial big, traditionally published hardcovers at the same time. The thing that would give me pause about this, and again, we're gonna, we're gonna do horseshoe theory all the way back. The thing that was magic about type going back to Gutenberg, really even before, is that a work of art was reproducible because the thing that was being produced was in the reader's mind. Right? Like that was just code so you could make a bunch of copies of something even if it was nine scribes. It's a lot easier to make nine of that that way than sort of have to make, forge a whole bunch of horseshoes to continue that. And then so we have these mass produced objects, but the work of art itself is handcrafted, which is the miracle of books, frankly. And the handcraftedness is what makes it special to me. And the mass produced is what makes it accessible. An LLM AI generated thing in all the arts. Frankly, anything that can turn electrons into art or substitutes of art or you know, aspartame of art, art pertain, they're all, those are all in danger. And I don't know that we have a good sense of how this will go down. There was a really good piece in the Atlantic about how LLMs have not gotten any better and maybe have gotten worse at creative fiction. I'll try to find a link in the show notes to put it in. But some of that is the incentives, like they actually don't want to be. They don't want to be making that stuff. That's not what they're trying to do right now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's infiltrating the places where mass distribution is most beneficial. So social media, there are AI generated influencers now this is also a thing happening in the travel space especially it's impacting real travel influencers. And like there's talk of will there be AI actresses? Like what do you even call that? There are a few that have been created, but the studios don't want to take that on because the real people in Hollywood object to it so strenuously. So probably what actually happens then is that folks who aren't going to pay to go to the movies or pay for streaming services will start to have options that are cheap or free where they can watch movies and TV shows with AI generated characters, AI generated actors. And these, the human generated stuff I think still exists, but will become harder to access and more expensive over time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I mean we're old enough to have seen waves of this, right, Where TV dinners didn't wipe out. In fact, they created a bigger than a subculture but a meaningful counter consumer that will buy from their csa or they'll buy organic, people will buy records, they'll buy CDs, people will go to rep theaters that go to theater. So I think those will be, they'll be niches for that. And books, books and reading, especially the kind that we enjoy and that we stand for, are already niche pursuits. I would really, I would really be sad to see them be Nichier to see them be fewer. On the other hand, maybe we could do less than 642,000 traditionally published books in the year. Maybe, maybe, maybe a great culling of 80% of books going away. Would I even notice? Rebecca, now there's an interesting question.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean we have not yet noticed at the moments where publishing has had consolidation and has maybe produced fewer books. Like I have never felt that as a reader I've not yet had a year in my reading life where I thought there weren't enough books available.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm all caught up, guys. Nothing on my TBR that I'd like to get to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right inbox.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. TBR zero. Not gonna happen. Speaking of thrift books, talk about a way to make your TBR your physical. One literal one longer is to get your book from Thriftbooks because They've got a 19 million and counting new and used titles. You can get a copy of Lord of the Flies, I looked a couple of minutes ago for like six bucks. You got your additions to pick from. Oh, baby. Do you? Because it's been out so long. And a perennial middle school and high school favorite. Go over there. Check out thriftbooks.com you get free shipping on orders over 15 bucks. And each purchase gets you closer to a free book. Redemption through the reading rewards program. We've been doing a lot of zero to well read. I'm getting ready for some travel, so I'm taking kin with me. But I've got a couple things to report on. What do you have to report on, Rebecca?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I have the Complex by Karin Mahajan.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Fascinating.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. His. His previous novel, the association of Small Bombs, I think was about 10 years ago. It was a finalist for some of the awards. I really, I remember really liking it. This, the title is a play on words. This is about a large Indian family in Delhi. They live in a complex. The situation is complex.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Many of them, I see what they did there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Many of them have complexes. And the pitch for it sounded to me like it might be a read alike for Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor. Because the pitch was like, like big Indian family. You're dealing with like dirty politics and maybe the mafia and some wheeling and dealing and all sorts of stuff. And I loved Age of Ice. It's one of the best books you've ever recommended to me. That was a big fun read. That is not what the Complex by Karen Mahajan is, but it's also, it's still very good. He's an excellent writer. So we get this kind of. The centerpiece of the story is one couple who meet and marry in India, but come to the US in the 70s. They have the immigrant experience. They're dealing with sort of that difficulty being like fish out of water outside Detroit, but not quite wanting to come back to India because they had enough distance from their family that they've now become very annoyed that like everyone is in their business all the time. One of the uncles is a kind of shady dealer, you know, a little greasy, who's, like, involved in everything always, you know, trying to get his next cockamamie plan off the ground. But that guy is also really gross. House and rapes the main. The wife in the main couple multiple times. And so it's just. And it's like, passed off, like, she's upset about it, obviously. And it. It's kind of passed off as, like, he doesn't think that that's what's happening. He, like, where we get to be in his head too, about, like, what's happening in the relationship. It's very strange. Just tonally, I don't know what to do with this book. I almost put it down several times, and I just kept being like, how is he gonna resolve this and where is it going to go? What kept me going through it was the sentence level craft and this, like, interest in this big, messy family. Messy in all of the ways, but it was a lot darker than I expected it to be. And, like, obviously trigger warnings and like, I. I think I will be interested in what Mahajan does next, but this was just not the experience I thought I was signing up for. It just went to a lot of places that I was not expecting. And I also feel like I'm not positioned well to judge some of the cultural particularities of the stories. Like, one of the pieces of context around that rape is that the main couple have not successfully gotten pregnant. They've been trying to have kids and they can't. And this uncle and his wife had cooked up a plan of, like, well, maybe I can get her pregnant. Pregnant. And Right. Like, you just raised your eyebrows. It's. But they also refer to. The text refers to, like, and this is a thing that happens in some families. And I was like, that may be true, or it might have been true at some points in some cultures. It's also not something you don't have,

[Jeff O'Neill]

like, the horizon to see. Are we going upside down here? Right?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, I just. Yeah, I just didn't know, like, how mad am I supposed to be at this guy? And how bad of a bad guy is he? He's clearly the bad guy. But, like, he's not. He's not ostracized from the family. I couldn't quite get my arms around it, but that made me want to keep going. So I. I don't know. It's a tough one to recommend for all of those reasons. I've read some really glowing reviews. It was one of the more anticipated books of the year on a lot of lists. But I just, I kind of, I don't know what to do with it. So that's, that's where I know what you mean.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean one thing that I think we have been welcomely reminded of in doing zero to well read over the last six, nine months or whatever is to hold our own political ideological judgments in abeyance at least for a little while or you know, keep them in, do not jettison them but like hold them next to rather than mapping directly on to the text at all time and see what's on unravels and what the text may be doing and think about it other than, you know, withhold that judgment so you have some time to experience and see maybe the text itself is complicating or commenting on it may not be as simple as the plain text reading reading but that doesn't necessarily mean that every text is going to do that. And then it's even more difficult as you say, when you are in unfamiliar territory and perhaps you are reacting to extant culture ideas that you want to be careful about judging those on their own terms or maybe you're not and that's that uncertainty can be quite difficult. So I. That is sounds like a very strange experience. Yeah, I've got a couple that aren't out yet or at least one that's not out yet. These are audiobook corners. London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe I think I said before that I was listening to it. I finally finished I think I actually finished it before I was talking about Tom Gennad's in the days of my youth I was told what means to be man but I was so excited to talk about that I skipped over it. This is Patrick Radden Keefe's new long sustained investigative journalism piece. It does Patrick Radden Keefe things did I will say when I read the blurb and then the first part of this I don't know how long Rebecca I'd say it felt a little true crimey for Patrick Radden Keefe because it follows the death of a 19 year old upper middle class young man in London. I think it's 2019 or so is when this actually happens and I, I've got nothing against true crime but like the particular homicide, maybe death of an individual person, I try not to dwell in those spaces. I don't, I don't like it. It's not that and there's other places people could go for that but I gave it credit because of the brand of PRK and I was right to do so because it becomes an, a way of seeing into this particular part of London society in this particular time. Especially the influence of giant oligarchical fortunes coming in from Russia and the way that money has distorted the real estate markets, the social fabric, the school, these, these elite school systems, social media and then regular old family and individual dysfunction and growing and rebellion all at the same culminating in. And this is not spoiling it because this is told to us pretty quickly. This young man in the, in the middle of night is caught on cameras going over the side of an apartment building on the Thames and going into the River Thames and his body's found I think a few days later or there's no other person there, he's not pushed. So what happened? Why did this person come to have do this thing, choose this way? I don't even want to say they were committing suicide because even that was problematized about what he's actually maybe was actually going on there. But the investigation of what their family was trying to do to figure out what was happening, how the police works, where the money goes, the effect of social media on this kid and seeing all these rich and famous as people do things around you and then you may be you wanting to be a part of that. The difference between real and fake. I thought, you know, shock, it was awesome. By the end I will say, and I don't know this is what I want. If I want true crime, this is what I want. I found it. I the say nothing stuff about the Irish troubles is just the nuns robbing banks. Like it's hard to get, it's hard to clone that. And I think the characters in that and these are real people, I shouldn't call them characters. The figures in that are more sort of globally interesting. Like we're talking about people who become eventually the president of Sinn Fein and like negotiate the peace. But these are real people and there's a real mystery. There's an emotional mystery and a psychological mystery insofar there's also a forensic mystery. So anyway, if you like Patrick Radencrief, it's terrific if you like true crime, but you're looking for something that really leans into like the sociology and urbanology and geopolitics, it's terrific. So that my full throated support of London Falling, but if you, if it does feel more true crimeing than you yourself would like for a little bit, I hear you, I see you, I'm one of you. But it, it does widen and complexify and deepen from there. Let's see True Color by Corey Stamper. Corey Stamper. I think I interviewed her a long time ago for her first book. Word by Word was about the dictionary. She's a lexicologist, worked for the Merriam Webster's Dictionary, and as part of writing Word by Word, she even said this to me when I was interviewing her for Word by Word that she already knew with her next book was going to be out. It was going to be about color. And I was like, whoa, okay, color. And we talked about that for a few minutes. But she uncovered this story of when the third edition of the Merriam Webster was being written. She was involved in that. But like, there was a. There was a really important edition of the dictionary when the science of color was really coming to the forest right around World War I. And the uses of color and trying to systemize it and describing it became a scientific pursuit. And then updating the dictionary definitions of color became loaded and fraught and super interesting. And this is the account of a couple of people trying to define color. It has never dictionary occurred to me

[Rebecca Schinsky]

that there were dictionary definitions of colors.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh yeah, yeah. Define purple. Weird, right? Yeah, it's kind of. It's fascinating and it's really entertaining. If you're a word nerd, a history buff, or you're just interested in like the history of ideas and the history of human thought, it's pretty great. And she's an engaging, witty and erudite scholar, researcher and writer. And the her I did on audio and. And she narrates the audio. But her infectious enthusiasm and consternate. The delightful consternation at how we got to understand color and how we still don't understand color. And like she even walks through like the, the very early in college bull session of like, does anyone see orange? Like I do. You don't even have to do like a Michael Pollan type Friday night to do that kind of experience that you still have it anyway. But it was really great, so that's true. Color by Corey Stamper.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Delightful consternation is a mode that I would like more people to work in more time, I think.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Louise Erdrich]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This is so dumb and I love it at the same time, I guess also. Rebecca, should we talk about Python's kiss just for a quick moment as prep.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, let's talk about it. Oh, we talked about it last week. We. We both talked about it in our front list for you, I guess. Let's tell the people. It's a wonderful collection of short stories that Louise Erdrich wrote between, I think 2012 and 2024 or that's when they were published. Many of them were published in the New Yorker. One was published in a. An anthology called Anonymously Sex that Hillary Jordan had edited. There's a follow up to that. And they really span. Like, some of them are in the Louise Erdrich the genre. You expect, like, people in the upper Midwest dealing with family stuff, and then a couple of them stray into sort of techno futurist territory. I think our shared favorite was the. There's one about snoring.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This family in which all the women all are like legendary snorers. And the descriptions of what. What it's like to try to fall asleep in a house where at night all of these women start snoring and they sound like different power tools and maybe it's gonna ruin a marriage. It's just so. She just brings people so richly to life, but she slides between realism and surrealism. So just elegantly, where all of a sudden you're like, oh, oh, we're in a school bus. And now the school bus is not in the real world anymore.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes. Or we're in the metaverse Afterlife for two stories. Yeah. I wasn't quite expecting to have a real hard. A pretty hard reset between stories. Like, it's nothing. It's not an indictment of the book. If anything, I like it. But I did need to be like, okay, that story is over. And now I need to open myself back in and try to reorient myself into whatever this is going to be. An interesting contrast I found with Brawler by Lauren talked about. About which it felt more of a smear between. It felt like it's more of a consistent tone, vantage point, and concern with Erdrick. I feel like it is more dynamics. Not the right word, but not the wrong word. Rebecca, I don't know if I can do any more.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, we talked with her a little bit about the role that short stories. Or she talked to us about the role that short stories play in her writing life. Like, when is she going to write a story versus when is it time to write a novel? Her answer to that was really interesting. Just such a thoughtful. Like, exactly what we expected based on her books. But that's not always the case. Sometimes there's a real divide between what you would think from a book and what the person actually is like, but just grounded, thoughtful, really wise and funny. It was a real treat to get to talk with her. So we hope y' all as listeners will enjoy it as well.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right. With that, I think that brings us the End of this shownotes bookright.com listen stick around the interview podcastookright.com for emails and I'll be back in a little while. You'll hear me over zero to well read. Rebecca will be she'll be radioing in from a different galaxy for Project Hail Mary with Vanessa next week. And until next time, stick. Here comes the Pythons Kiss interview with Luis Erdrich. Rebecca, thank you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We are so thrilled to be joined today by Louise Erdrich. Longtime listeners know that Jeff and I are huge fans, longtime readers. Thank you so much for joining us as you are promoting Python's Kiss, your new collection of short stories.

[Louise Erdrich]

I am delighted to be here and I must say I wouldn't be here without my daughter palace, who has read the audiobook for this, for this Python's Kiss and my daughter Aza, who has done the art as you don't have a finished copy yet, but, but every single story has a great visual and she did.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

She does, yes.

[Louise Erdrich]

And the COVID too.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. That was actually something I was going to ask you about, so I guess we can just jump right into that. The COVID of this is so beautiful. And then Asa provided illustrations for every story. Some of them are standalone, some look more like cells from a graphic novel almost. And it's something that I've never seen in a short story collection before. How did that collaboration between the two of you come about?

[Louise Erdrich]

Well, I wanted, and both my daughters wanted to make a sort of an art object as a book so that this book would be something very special and something that you don't normally see and that there would be something to figure out out visually in the book. And the art is included at the end of the audiobook. There's a way to access the art. And that's a new thing too.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I found myself on each story. The the art starts and then I would come back after because I'd like try to guess what the story was going to be like based on the art and then come back. And usually I was sort of wrong ish and rightish at the same time. Did you get, did they give you drafts? Did you get veto power over, over your daughter's art or was it a collaborative process or how did it work to actually decide, yes, this looks good for this story and we're all happy with it?

[Louise Erdrich]

Oh, it was collaborative in many ways, but it was her ultimate decision because some of them I couldn't have thought up, you know, and some of them also, I have a, I do have a wonderful editor and Jonathan Burnham and he mentioned exactly what you just said, that would this be like the books of fairy tales we used to read as kids and you. Or, or maybe you know, something different. But every book. Just read Charlotte's Pig to one of my grandsons and we had to look back at the art every time there was an illustration.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes.

[Louise Erdrich]

And we had had to pick out everything we saw in the, in the illustration. And these aren't exactly illustrations. There's something else. But looking back into the art was something that he remembered and I remembered. And it really is true. You have to look at the art with the book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, they really are some kind of representation. But yeah, illustration doesn't feel like it captures the whole thing. I wanted to ask about short stories in general for you because you're body of work is so remarkable. Dozens of books from novels to nonfiction to poetry and even children's books. And Python's Kiss is just the second short story collection in your career. So we're really curious about where does short story writing sit inside your writing practice? How does that come up?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, how do you know it's not a novel? How do you know a novel's not a short story? Like, do you run out? Like, how does it turn into one versus the other?

[Louise Erdrich]

You know, that's really strange because I used to write short stories and be surprised that they could be included in a novel and that to be one of the pleasures of writing the novel was they were. I would get to a place where, oh, this is what I was writing this piece for. And that just stopped happening. I just started writing short stories and I sort of didn't want to do that anymore. I wanted to have standalone short stories, short stories that really were short stories and didn't gesture to the novel or feel like they were part of a novel. I could, I think I could have, I could have done that before, but maybe I didn't have the confidence. These, these were stories I really believed in as short stories. And it's interesting, I haven't written much poetry for a while, but these stories were stand ins for writing a poem. A lot of them I kept working on over 10 years, you know, just doing sentence by sentence or adding a paragraph, getting an idea for where it would go. And then some of them were like little storms of inspiration where I wanted to write the entire, entire thing all at once.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So is the. This the inspiration and execution as various as the stories themselves? It seems like there kind of germinates a couple different ways and they're not all the same. And they're not all different necessarily.

[Louise Erdrich]

Right. I don't know how they could be because they really. Each one is so different. And each one of them, I know where I was when I was writing them. I see I have a visual image that's different from the images that my daughter drew, but I know the way. You know where you were when you were reading certain books that you love.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Louise Erdrich]

You know that, that, that comes with the reading or the experience of reading. I know where I was when I wrote those stories or when I came into some deeper understanding of a story

[Rebecca Schinsky]

that sounds like a magical experience.

[Louise Erdrich]

You could say that. Yeah. You could say that it was. And having a magical experience doesn't always happen with writing at all. You have to slog through it a lot of the time. And I always think, if I'm slogging, this is not good. This is not going to be good for the reader. If I can't feel this excitement and joy, then how is the reader going to feel? But actually it's sometimes the opposite where I'm surprised at that, that sometimes what you think you're slogging through the reader. Sometimes readers tell me that's a favorite part. So I don't, I don't think it always tracks.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It does not necessarily correlate to how easily something came out to how smoothly or organically it feels as a reading experience, necessarily.

[Louise Erdrich]

Right. Right. It's hard for me to trust what a reader's going to think, but I usually think that when I'm in a groove that the reader is going to like it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It.

[Louise Erdrich]

But it's not always the case that that even makes it to the last cut.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That reminds me of something I was going to ask about. The difference between publishing a short story even in the foremost. In America, at least the foremost venue for writing a short story, which is the New Yorker, which the preponderance of these have appeared in, Versus a standalone novel that you do a book tour on. Like, what's your response with readers for a short story that appears in the New Yorker versus when one of your novels comes out, do you hear from people with the short stories as they come out out? Is it a different kind of reaction? I'm very curious about this cadence too. And like, even the editing process for, you know, you turn into Navio publisher, then you have some back and forth. Is that similar for you at the New Yorker? What is that experience like of like bringing one of these. Your pen stops moving for you and then you're bringing the world in a different way?

[Louise Erdrich]

I don't you. I don't hear from very many people when short story is published, but I do hear from people when a novel is published and I hear from people years after they encountered one of the books. One of the biggest, I should say one of the things I really hate is I can't answer every letter right. And I have, I really, I really feel, feel bad about it because of course I wanted to to but it's.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You could spend your whole day doing it. You spend your whole life doing it.

[Louise Erdrich]

I would, yeah. And I, I apologize to anyone who's listening. But once in a while I will get to letters and then I always hear back from the people who I've, you know, who I've answered. So how interesting.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like what kind of are there kinds of letters you tend to respond to? Like, I don't want to give people how hacks to like get Louise Eric to write back to them. Don't use this as. But certain kinds of things that stick out. I'm sure you get a lot of similar. But what kind of things jump out to you when someone writes to you that you really, you know, spend. Even if you don't write back to them, you spend a second moment on that reaction.

[Louise Erdrich]

Well, if someone says, you don't have to answer this letter, I just wanted to make this clear to you. I really appreciate that. And sometimes it makes me answer, but

[Rebecca Schinsky]

it's a good trick.

[Louise Erdrich]

I really try to answer letters that come from. I have a children's book series and I try to answer from classes. I don't want to discourage kids and oh, I was going to talk about editing too because you mentioned and I thank Deborah Treisman in this the acknowledgments because she is just an excellent editor. She's profoundly excellent. She's so good at what she does. I trust what she does. I don't always agree and it's up to me, but I have a lot of trust in Deborah's eye and ear.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Could you say a little bit more about that? I think that's one piece of the publishing process that a lot of serious rank and file readers know exists. But when you say she's an excellent editor, what does that specifically look like to you? If you don't mind saying what, what habits or what kinds of feedback or the attitude because this is one thing we hear a lot from readers is like this book wasn't edited very well versus this one does. And I think that's very difficult for someone like Rebecca and I are a reader to See what's valuable to a reader. And I know it's different for all authors, but in this specific. Like, what do you. What does she do that you value so much?

[Louise Erdrich]

Well, okay. There's several levels of editing in both novels and short stories. And one is a literary editor. That's Deborah. And the next level is a copy editor.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right.

[Louise Erdrich]

And both are so important. Deborah, because she sees certain. Certain things that don't track with a character that aren't quite what the character might think or do. And that's very important. Me, I can't always see that. You know, maybe I'm too close. Or she sees something that has something as mundane as repeating a lot of word. There's always a word that you repeat in a book or a short story, and it always has something to do with what I think of as the unconscious either insecurity of the writer or the meaning of the landscape of. Of a book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So that changes for you, book to book. It'll be a different word that you're repeating from book to book or phrase.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Always.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's so interesting.

[Louise Erdrich]

So interesting usually that I have. I have worked with the same copy editor almost all of my life in public publishing. His name is Trent Duffy, and he lives in New York. And he's known as the best copy editor. And he. He knows what. Which word I always say. I don't. I can't see it. What's the word in this one? And it might be something as like merciless.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, really? Yeah.

[Louise Erdrich]

Hard book. Or it might be something. It might be the word. I think it was the word little in one of the books where I was kind of. I was kind of talking about a lot about diminutive things, I guess, or in a story. It was. It will be one word that would

[Jeff O'Neill]

be a fascinating document if you had like a list of your. Here was my word for a roundhouse or plague of doves or like, we're the words for these books.

[Louise Erdrich]

What was the words. Word I should write down?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

What an interesting way to have your. To have yourself reflected back to you by someone else.

[Louise Erdrich]

Well, right, isn't it? And one time the word was blank,

[Jeff O'Neill]

as though I was like, oh, boy, oh, boy. Take that one to therapy.

[Louise Erdrich]

Exactly.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't know. Do you need a therapist when your copy editor can search?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Right. Is he licensed in Oregon? Because I need some. Some of this.

[Louise Erdrich]

Oh, yeah, He's a licensed copy editor. Therapist. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Wow, what a revelation. That is terrific. You were speaking a few minutes ago about hearing from readers more when you write a novel than with a short story, which I think makes sense to me, knowing about the publishing landscape.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You go check it out from the library, they sit by themselves on the bookshelf. They just have a different aftermath.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. But we often talk to readers and listeners about using short stories as an entry point for a writer because it gives you a chance to get a sense of what are the issues that they're concerned with. What is their voice like? In the case of a collection like this, you can really see the breadth of a writer's interests and capacities. So I might talk about Python's Kiss in the future as a good Louis Zurdric entry point. But I'm curious, curious. Are there particular ones of your books that you would recommend a reader who hasn't discovered you yet? Start with.

[Louise Erdrich]

I usually recommend. I recommend one of the books that has the least amount of physical trauma in it because I feel like that can be hard for a reader who has. Who doesn't know where I might be going in it and why I'm writing this. So and so I don't. There's what people have called. I don't call it the Justice Trilogy, the Plague of Doves, the Roundhouse, and, And Larose. And there is a lot of physical trauma in. But it's. They're also probably the ones that people mention to me as their favorite books, you know, so. And I don't have. I'm not, you know, a violent writer by at large, but, you know, know, the Night Watchman has a very. It's, it's a, it's a true. Based on my grandfather's fight for justice again. But, but his fight. And so I, I really wrote about. For the. Maybe for the first time I centered this book on a person with what's hardest to write. Human decency is very hard, hard to write in a, in a novel. And, And I would, I would recommend that to people first now. But also I recommend the sentence.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes, yes.

[Louise Erdrich]

Because I. Along with the Roundhouse, the, the. It's a first person narrator. And those were. I got on that. I got into that voice and I couldn't stop. And that's. That is the most wonderful experience for a writer when you just can't stop writing it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And it's.

[Louise Erdrich]

And you think about it, you know,

[Rebecca Schinsky]

it's such a fun reading experience, that book. And it veers into the zany a little bit like there's a ghost in the bookstore store. That was unexpected for us from having read your past work. And that was Also a fun thing about reading Python's Kiss was seeing you go into some weirder and more genre infused registers. There's a little bit of science fiction, futuristic flavor to some of these stories. Do you have any plans to do, I don't know, a book length work that's a little more genre in the future? What's that experimentation feeling like to you?

[Louise Erdrich]

Well, these two stories that are about an afterlife controlled by, I think seven giant corporations is really starting to feel more and more not science fiction, you

[Rebecca Schinsky]

know, like it feels totally possible.

[Louise Erdrich]

Yeah. Right. And afterlife. And so I, my eventual. I have, you know, I have a lot of this mapped out, but I don't know if I'll write it. But it included giant data centers all through. And these were written, gosh, a long time ago when that seemed like.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh yeah, right.

[Louise Erdrich]

Why would that be necessary? So it included giant data centers and it included. Included people who were harnessed to their jobs for all their lives in order to make enough money to even be considered as candidates for an afterlife. And living as people do now who are firmly of the belief that there is an afterlife life. That.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that this is, this is a down payment for something that's coming later essentially.

[Louise Erdrich]

Right. So they, but, and, and they have to make that down payment in money instead of in what they've done to be considered for an afterlife in other ways now. So I don't know if I'll ever do it, but I have con. I have thought about that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, because we get to set in the same world, which is, I mean that's a little unusual in a short story collection. Have two in the middle and I, I get, you know how these are put together. But they were set in the same world and I found that kind of thrilling. Oh, I get to spend a little more. A longer moment because it's a quickly developed world. I've got a very close to my heart question to ask you about one of the stories. So if this makes everyone uncomfortable, let me know. Who in your life is a snorer? Because I come from a family of snorers and I've never seen, I've never seen snoring representation like this. Louise, how did the snoring centered short story story come about?

[Louise Erdrich]

Okay, I cannot out anybody else.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. To protect the, to protect the nose forward.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We can neither confirm nor deny.

[Louise Erdrich]

But let me just say that I know this very well, you know.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Louise Erdrich]

So thank you for telling me that. And I like that you were just right out there, you know, with this

[Jeff O'Neill]

look, the more we talk about it, the more it's normalized, you know, the more we can, you know, and. Yeah, yeah, well, because that's so. I'm not going to give away the story, but essentially that it's like missing in many things in art. It's both itself and representative. Something else. But essentially that snoring be. Snoring can be something that can interrupt a relationship and my relationship, but I won't name any names here. Changed meaningfully when I got a snore guard in. That actually helped my snoring and my partner slept better and we all feel better, but it went longer than it should have as a thing between us.

[Louise Erdrich]

Ah, ah, ah. And also, you know, what I like about this snoring is that enters your dreams. You know, it enters. It enters dreams and so sort of influences this relationship in a whole different way, where the dreams become very dangerous in a way. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I loved the detail in that story of there being frost on the inside of the walls and a kid asking, what is this on the walls? And one of the men says, it's last night. Snores, like, just so inventive for something. All of this us have either snored or been in the room with someone.

[Louise Erdrich]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Snoring. And to take such a mundane, a mundane thing and turn it into something whimsical and strange, really.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And also the kind of thing you get to say to your kid when they're young as a dad, like, yeah, those are the snores that frosted on the windows. Your kid has a moment of like, is that right? That's not right, is it?

[Louise Erdrich]

It's so believable.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's so believable.

[Louise Erdrich]

You would grow up as a kid thinking, ah, ah. Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

As we go ahead, as we, you know, we have a few minutes left here as we get ready to wrap up. You're just setting off on press tour for Python's Kiss. Is there anything that you're really hoping to be asked about or that you would just like to take an opportunity to talk about with the collection? Now, here at the beginning.

[Louise Erdrich]

Oh, I would like to be asked what ending in the story made you cry?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Can you tell us now or do we have to stop recording so you don't spoil it? Because now I want to know the answer to that. You can't just say, that's the question we'll be asked. I just asked you that. I'll ask. I just asked you. There it is.

[Louise Erdrich]

Yeah. You know, in almost every ending.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, really?

[Louise Erdrich]

Yeah. And I think especially the Hollow Children. And. But almost every ending, because I get to this, this emotional moment where I know the story is going to end and I've been with these people all along and how is it going to end? You know, and the one that. And Pythons kiss the story. Yeah, yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So it's funny you mentioned decency, because I was going to ask you. This will be the last question for me if Rebecca has something else. I was thinking of when you said that the story that Amelie popped to mind was the astoria. Melissa in Mr. Ponath, I believe, is the character in that.

[Louise Erdrich]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Was decency in the front of your mind for thinking about that character? Because it's about that, but also about something else, which I'll leave to readers to discover. But a particularly gentle, interesting soul created there who dresses up like the Colonel to visit the kfc.

[Louise Erdrich]

Right. And you know, that is based on my own experience. So people, people often say, you, you write so much about being a waitress. But I will never stop writing about being a waitress because there is no end to the experience. The experience is one of those things in, in hiring for a bookstore that I look for if you've been in food service, you know, a level of humanity that few people know and know how to work, work devilishly hard and you know how to handle stress. So I write a lot about it. And kfc. KFC was a low stress waitress thing. So it does say, like, there were only a few things, you didn't have to deliver them.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. Yeah.

[Louise Erdrich]

But I did have a man, this was in my hometown, who came in dressed as the Colonel.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Amazing.

[Louise Erdrich]

And there was another man in town who belonged to the Odd Fellows Club, which is a club club that was active in my town. And he offered to pay for my college tuition. Yeah. But I didn't do it. And I kind of, you know, I'm

[Rebecca Schinsky]

so nervous for past you. Like, is there a catch here?

[Louise Erdrich]

Not at all. I, you know, it was just as a good person. So. So I suppose this was based somewhat on. On the. The people I would meet in my town that I wouldn't have met otherwise. The people who came in to a restaurant, who are the regulars?

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, it's interesting you said it. I was talking to someone recently whose son is getting ready to start applying to colleges. And one thing they said that is underrated in college applications is real world retail experience. You know, working at the Gap or working at McDonald's. McDonald's, where you just, you have to work with other people and you've got to interact with people that you wouldn't interact. You just have to do it like there's no choice. You have to figure out some way to be in the world with people that you kind of maybe don't want to be around. Honestly, a lot of the time.

[Louise Erdrich]

Exactly. Yes, yes. And these are, these are jobs that I mean as we are shrinking in a human to human retail world and they're really invaluable. They, they really mean a lot to people who come into stores. And, and that kind of interaction, there's some name for it, but it's kind of a low risk social moment for people.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think they call it micro interactions

[Louise Erdrich]

that it's a. Oh, that's perfect.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Or someone. I, I just some psycho. I think it was Adam Grant, a psychologist was talking about these micro interactions and that just talking with the person, person who's checking out your groceries at the grocery store instead of being on your phone the whole time. It's good for your happiness, it's good for theirs. It teaches us all how to be people in the world.

[Louise Erdrich]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one of the things I, I love about, about life is, are these small interactions with people. And living in Minneapolis, there are a lot of those. I think it's true in almost every, every, every city that we have these have, have something to talk about with

[Jeff O'Neill]

almost everybody and wonderful fodder for future short story writing to do some time on frontline retail and dealing with gen general population. Well, the unending strangeness we bring to bear on each other.

[Louise Erdrich]

Stories that are set in the bookstore.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I love that we're coming around to this and ending on this note because it does feel really representative of your work to me this interest in a grounded connection to humanity and in small moments between people that can turn into something really big and really meaningful. Louise Erdrich, thank you so much.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Thank you so much.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This was tremendous today listeners. Python's Kiss is out tomorrow. As you are listening to this March 24th. You can pick it up wherever book books are sold. You know we'll be continuing to tell you to read it. Thank you again, Louise.

[Louise Erdrich]

Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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