Month: November 2020

Ireland itself is a main character in Kevin Barry's new short story collection, That Old Country Music. He brings the western regions to life in stories set firmly in Ireland's present day but with an ancient, magical past lingering in the background. A pregnant teenager waits for her robber boyfriend, a factory worker falls for a Polish waitress, and a police officer seeks a known criminal, in stories set amidst wild and flourishing countryside.

The concrete walls and tower blocks of Peckham in south London are not often the subject of poetry. For his debut collection, Poor, Caleb Femi pays tribute to the streets that shaped him as a child. He brings to life the schoolboys, rappers, artists, pastors and gentrifying neighbours of Peckham, an area where it is possible to walk two and a half miles through an estate of 1,444 homes without a single step on the ground.

Daisy Johnson became the youngest ever Booker Prize nominee with her debut novel, Everything Under, and quickly established herself as a master of creepy locations. Her new novel, Sisters, is a gothic tale set on lonely Yorkshire moors, while her short story series The Hotel, available now on BBC Sounds, looks at the unsettling, waterlogged Norfolk Fens, a place where dead bodies float back up to the surface.

Producer: Hannah Sander

Andy talks about what should be happening with the presidential transition right now in terms of managing the pandemic. Former Trump VA Secretary David Shulkin provides expertise on how a typical transition goes — and the cost of President Trump’s refusal to concede. David was there for the Obama-Trump transition and details how he sees today's norm-shattering process playing out. The saving grace, as Andy points out, is that President-Elect Biden knows his way around the White House blindfolded. 

Keep up with Andy on Twitter @ASlavitt and Instagram @andyslavitt.

Follow David Shulkin on Twitter @DavidShulkin.

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• Livinguard masks have the potential to deactivate COVID-19 based on the testing they have conducted from leading universities such as the University of Arizona and the Free University in Berlin, Germany. Go to shop.livinguard.com and use the code BUBBLE10 for 10% off.

Check out these resources from today’s episode: 

• Watch President George H. W. Bush’s full concession speech: https://www.c-span.org/video/?34051-1/george-h-w-bush-concession-speech
• Order David’s book, It Shouldn't Be This Hard to Serve Your Country: Our Broken Government and the Plight of Veterans: https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/david-shulkin/it-shouldnt-be-this-hard-to-serve-your-country/9781541762657/ 
• Read an excerpt from David’s book about that unorthodox job interview he had in Trump Tower: https://time.com/5701364/david-shulkin-donald-trump/
• Check out The Shulkin Blog, where David shares news insights about COVID-19: https://shulkinblog.com/ 
• Pre-order Andy’s book, Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response, here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250770165 

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