We walk Austin's Boggy Creek Trail with acclaimed memoirist Lauren Hough — from a childhood spent in a cult to Air Force vet to ex-cable technician; and now, she's the writer whose viral essay about fixing people's cable got read 8 million times in a single weekend. Lauren's backstory is so enormous it usually eats a whole interview: she grew up in the Children of God, got run out of the military under Don't Ask Don't Tell (they torched her car), flipped a coin between Atlanta and DC, and told dumb cable-guy stories at the Iron Bear until one of them turned into a book. That book, LEAVING ISN'T THE HARDEST THING, made her a New York Times bestseller and got Cate Blanchett to narrate the audiobook — and, yes, she brought Cate to the Iron Bear.

Now book two, MONSTER OF A LAND, is days from release and Lauren is, in her words, throwing up about it. We get into the terror of the follow-up, why she loaded her very cute dog Woody Guthrie into a Dodge van and drove the country like Steinbeck's TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY, and what she actually found out there — not the screaming internet, but hunters in Georgia helping a stranger find a campsite and neighbors defending neighbors when ICE rolled into Minneapolis. Along the way: the cult was boring (too many guitars, bad Bob Dylan rip-offs, one paragraph of hard-won Civil War research), the octagon on the White House lawn is sponsored by Monster Energy, and the cure for all of it might just be to log off and go hang out. Plus: worry monsters in a little free library, why she can't stop muttering about that octagon, and why chasing one good sentence feels like a serial killer chasing a high.

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Becoming the podcast people they used to heckle at the Iron Bear 01:48 Your family's not gonna read your book 04:05 Meet Lauren Hough, and the David Sedaris comparison 05:06 The cult, the military, and Don't Ask Don't Tell 08:33 They torched my car — getting out and landing in DC 15:37 The cable guy essay that 8 million people read 16:31 Bringing Cate Blanchett to the Iron Bear 18:40 Why nonfiction, and modeling the book on Travels with Charley 21:04 Capturing the Friedmans and stories that take a U-turn 24:20 "I remember needing to pee" — the detail that unlocks an essay 29:27 The cult was boring: diapers, Singin' in the Rain, bad Bob Dylan 32:32 Second-book terror (and throwing up) 33:57 Woody Guthrie, the Dodge van, and no Subaru sponsorship 36:00 Texas Highways vs. the conversations she actually wanted 39:17 What she found on the road: kindness, Minneapolis, Georgia hunters 41:38 Log off and go hang out — screens broke our brains 42:05 The AI fight: her brother, ChatGPT, and what actually matters 44:37 Nine months in Durham where nobody pet the dog 46:18 Boggy Creek Trail — stick libraries and worry monsters 49:00 Between therapists, courtesy of the VA 50:44 There's an octagon on the White House lawn (it's Idiocracy) 52:07 The Fox News callback from the cable essay 54:08 Lightning round: Bourdain as the gateway drug 55:42 Advice for writers, and Austin's book crew 59:29 Pop-Tarts, and a great place to end