Min Jin Lee is the author of the best-selling novel Pachinko. She’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and the recipient of South Korea's Manhae Grand Prize for Literature. In Pachinko, she tells a sweeping, multi-generational story of a Korean family that moves to Japan. Pachinko is an international best-seller, named one of the best books of 2017 by the New York Times, the BBC, the New York Public Library, and more. In 2022, it was adapted into an Emmy-nominated television series on Apple TV+. In this episode, Min talks to Book Exploder host Susan Orlean about a passage from Chapter 4 of Pachinko: a pivotal scene that takes place in June 1932, in a small fishing village in Korea.
This week the boys are joined by Kenny DeForest (@kennydeforest, Late Night with Seth Meyers, Late Late Show) to talk about the gruff yet poetic songs of Tyler Childers. Specifically, we focus on "All Your'n," one of his catchiest tunes (and with a very psychedelic video). We also talk Childers' incredible ability to capture struggle, debauchery, and love through his poetic lyrics, and how he made a protest album with almost no words sung.
Get bonus episodes, blog posts, and more by supporting us on Patreon HERE! (The more patrons we have, the more bonus episodes we release!)
Wanna hear more Tyler Childers but don't know where to start? Try these songs, recommended by Kenny, Danny, and Tyler:
This is the official announcement that episode one hundred and fifty-one will be up in precisely one week. I’ve just finished recording it, and am now in the process of recording episodes one hundred and fifty-two through one hundred and fifty-four while Tilt edits one hundred and fifty-one. For those of you who are Patreon backers, the Patreon-only Q&A is up now.
This will be the start of season four, which is going to work slightly differently from previous seasons, because of the time off I gave myself. I now have a better idea of how much work I can do in parallel, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the most sustainable release pattern is going to be two weeks on, one week off, so you’ll be getting four episodes every six weeks. I will still release Patreon bonuses on the weeks I don’t release a mainline episode.
The episodes are going to be written and recorded in batches of four, and the general plan is going to be that every batch of four will have a long episode — a ninety-minute or two-hour one — a short half-hour episode, and two other episodes which will probably be about an hour but can vary depending on time constraints. In this batch, episode 151 is going to be the long one, episode 154 the shortest, and the two in the middle will be middling length.
So, join us back here in a week, for the ghost of James Dean, a prediction of the future, and the start of the summer of love.
Kae Tempest is a songwriter, rapper, an award-winning poet, and best-selling novelist. They’ve been nominated for the UK’s Mercury Prize and Brit Award. Their most recent album is The Line is a Curve, which came out earlier this year. It was executive produced by legendary producer Rick Rubin. Kae made the album alongside their longtime collaborator, producer Dan Carey. I talked to Kae and Dan talk about the song "Move." You’ll hear the first demo they made, which sounds almost nothing like the final version. In this episode, they talk about how the track evolved over several sessions, months apart. Kae’s own life changed a lot during that period. They came out as trans and non-binary in 2020, and this song, in part, helps tell the story of what they were going through.
On this week's episode, Danny and Tyler share one of Emmylou Harris' signature tunes, "Feelin' Single - Seein' Double." The boys also discuss on Harris' evolution from Greenwich Village folkster to country music living legend, her impressive catalog of collaborators, and which country supergroups we've been leading up to featuring on future episodes!
Get bonus episodes, blog posts, and more by supporting us on Patreon HERE! (The more patrons we have, the more bonus episodes we release!)
New to Emmylou Harris? We've got a very abridged list of recommendations for you!
Introducing a new miniseries: Book Exploder, where authors break down a passage from one of their books, and discuss the creative process that went into writing it. Every other week, in between episodes of Song Exploder, you’ll hear from a new author, in conversation with host Susan Orlean. But for this first episode of the series, Susan is interviewed by Hrishikesh Hirway about her own book, The Library Book.
Susan Orlean is the author of twelve books, including The Orchid Thief (which inspired the Oscar-award winning film Adaptation), a staff writer at The New Yorker . Published in 2018, The Library Book became a New York Times Best Seller and named a Washington Post Top 10 Book of the Year. The book tells the story of the 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Central Library. In this inaugural episode, Susan discusses a passage from her book, which details the blaze itself.
After adding 30 songs to our Ultimate Country Playlist, Danny and Tyler are back with a new Catch-Up and Mustard! As usual with our special Catch-up and Mustard episodes, we do a quick check in, let you know what's coming up, and play some country music games! This month we are playing another round of WHO DUNNIT (as voted by our wonderful patrons over at Patreon!), and we close it out with our third installment of IS IT COUNTRY?—featuring songs from The Shins, The Replacements, Bon Jovi, and more.
While I’m still on hiatus, I invited questions from listeners. This is an hour-long podcast answering some of them. (Another hour-long Q&A for Patreon backers only will go up next week).
Sudan Archives is a singer, songwriter, producer, and violinist. She grew up in Cincinnati before moving to LA. Her music has been called "viscerally gorgeous" by The Guardian, and "stunning" by Pitchfork, who gave her in ‘Best New Music.’ This year, she’s releasing her second album, and one of the tracks on it is "Selfish Soul." She told me the idea for this song started when she asked her boyfriend, James (who is the rapper Nocando) to shave her head. Cutting off her hair made her reflect on her whole hair story, from experiences she had as a kid, to the cultural and racial issues that have historically surrounded Black women's hair.
This week Danny and Tyler are joined by comedian Dewey Lovett to discuss the Queen Of Country Pop, and the top-selling female country artist of all time, Shania Twain! It's hard to narrow down which of Shania's many, many bangers to include on the playlist, but we decided to go with her breakthrough crossover hit, "Any Man of Mine." On this episode we cover Shania's true rags to riches story, her music's themes of empowerment and feminism, and how her collaboration with producer and then-husband Mutt Lange changed radio country forever (for better, or for worse?).
