In his new book The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past, Nate DiMeo does what he has been doing in audio form for years: telling small, true stories about the past in resonant ways. The book serves as an excellent example of public history, showcasing how historical events can be retold and made relevant to contemporary audiences. It features many beloved stories from DiMeo’s podcast of the same name, reflecting a trend among podcasters have followed by writing companion books. While some of these books largely retell stories from their podcasts, others complement their shows in unique ways.
In this spirit, as one who listens to a lot of podcasts and reads a lot of books, here’s a list of some recent books written by radiomakers. Some of them are adaptations of their podcasts while others are very different takes on the same subject. Some can even best be described as spinoffs. But in each case, they demonstrate why the creator is such a good storyteller, and capture the same spark that makes each podcast work so well.
Seduction: Sex, Lies and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood by Karina Longworth
Those who know and love You Must Remember This will recognize Karina Longworth’s signature approach in her book Seduction. While ostensibly about Howard Hughes, the book focuses more on the women whose lives intersected with his, including Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, Jane Russell, Ida Lupino, and Ginger Rogers, both before and after Hughes came into their lives.
Longworth is one of our great film historians and cultural critics, and Seduction is among her best work. The book illuminates the lives of women in the Hollywood studio system in the twentieth century, showing how they exercised their agency as well as how often it was robbed from them. The book ends up being not just insightful but a disturbingly relevant account of what has – and hasn’t – changed in Hollywood’s relationship to power, and gender over the decades.
Much like the 99% Invisible podcast, the book The 99% Invisible City is all about design, specifically design of the cityscape. But while it might cover some of the material that the podcast explores, the book stands on its own, taking advantage of its format by showing design elements with illustrations by Patrick Vale – I think these images are as essential to the book as the podcast’s music is to the show.
The 99% Invisible City walks the reader through a city in a somewhat organized way, looking at architecture, geography, and infrastructure, and taking a close look at the design and history of everything from rotary junctions and drinking fountains to historic preservation and growth patterns. The book shares a tone with the show: knowledgeable, bemused, and full of wonder. It’s hard to imagine anyone who likes one not liking the other.
The Hilarious World of Depression by John Moe
First with the podcast The Hilarious World of Depression and more recently with Depresh Mode, John Moe has managed to find ways to talk about mental health that are revealing, moving, and different from how these issues were discussed just a decade or two ago. If you’re a listener of Moe’s podcasts, you’ll be familiar with the tone here, but compared to his shows, which tend to focus on interviews, the book takes on new terrain in a format that’s part memoir and part investigation into depression and mental health issues. I won’t say that everyone will find it hilarious – though I did – but like Moe, my mind is also trying to kill me, and it’s meant a great deal to have a book this revealing and comforting about what depression is and can be.
Alone: A Love Story by Michelle Parise
Alone: A Love Story, based on the CBC podcast by longtime journalist Parise, recounts love and parenthood as well as sex, dating after divorce, and the fallout from infidelity. Filled with raw, heartbreaking honesty, just like the show, the book is insightful and laugh-out-loud funny. Parise is savage and insightful when she writes about other people – but just as tough and as sharp when she turns that gaze on herself. It’s impressive how she manages to get so deep and personal about her own life even as she manages to be almost sociological in how she approaches many of these issues that arise in such insightful and detailed ways. I’m surprised that the book hasn’t had a bigger impact; though, if I’m honest, I prefer the podcast just because I keep hearing the book in her voice.
Limetown: A Novel by Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie and Cote Smith
I still remember where I was when I listened to the final episode of Season 1 of Limetown on the day it was released. The wait for the follow-up was interminable – but there was this novel, co-written by series creators Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie and prose writer Cote Smith, to tide me over. Limetown: A Novel came out before the second season and television show debuted.
The novel detailed some of the backstories of the characters and gave a sense of the larger world that the second season would be jumping into, even as the book resisted spoilers. A far more intimate story than would be easy to do in a podcast, the book manages to be a deeply emotional and exciting tale in its own right, even if I don’t think it would have the same impact or resonance for someone with no knowledge of the show.
Adventure Zone by Clint, Griffin, Justin, and Travis McElroy and Carey Pietsch
The podcast Adventure Zone comes from the McElroy Family – known for My Brother, My Brother and Me and many other podcasts – who play Dungeons and Dragons together while sharing occasional banter. (Or the McElroys banter and occasionally play D&D, depending on the episode and the listener’s perspective.) Their campaigns have been adapted into a series of graphic novels published by First Second Books with help from cartoonist Carey Pietsch.
It’s a cliche to say that the art in a comic brings the story to life, but Pietsch’s stunning artwork, which manages the very hard task of capturing the fantastic elements of the stories, conveys the characters and the world in exquisite detail, all the while never sacrificing the humor of the stories makes the books singular works.
You Feel It Just Below the Ribs: A Novel by Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson
I’m cheating a little with this final entry. There are many fiction podcasts out right now and many of them have become novels. I could have listed one of the three Welcome to Nightvale books by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, or Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink, to say nothing of other books related to fictional podcasts like Eleanor Amplified and The Trouble with Mind Control by John Sheehan, which was a prequel to Sheehan’s podcast for kids, Eleanor Amplified, or the graphic novel Bubble, which adapted the podcast of the same name.
Instead, I picked You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, a novel from the creators of Within the Wires. Like the podcast, the novel weaves a layered, intentionally crafted story with another narrative beneath it. While I’m not sure I’d pick up such a dystopian tale today, the richness of the characters — on both page and audio — makes it hard to put down and worth multiple readings or listenings.
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Alex Dueben has written for The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, The Comics Journal, The Paris Review, The Poetry Foundation, The Rumpus, and many other publications. More of his work can be found at alex-dueben.com and @alexdueben