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Episode 98: Rodney Ascher

Rodney Ascher is an American film director, best known for Room 237 (2012), A Glitch in the Matrix (2021) and The Nightmare (2015).

Episode 97: Spencer Kornhaber

Spencer Kornhaber is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Before joining The Atlantic as an editor in 2011, he was a staff writer at OC Weekly, an editor at Patch, and a freelancer for Spin and The A.V. Club. In 2019, he won the Excellence in Column Writing Award from NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists. At The Atlantic, he covers pop culture and music. He is the author of On Divas: Persona, Pleasure, Power.

Episode 96: A. L. Kennedy

A. L. Kennedy is a Scots writer, academic and stand-up comedian. She writes novels, short stories and non-fiction, and is known for her dark tone and her blending of realism and fantasy. She contributes columns and reviews to European newspapers. 

 

 

Episode 95: Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is a Canadian former sprinter. During the 1987–88 season he held the title of the world's fastest man, breaking both the 100m and the 60m indoor World Records. He won the 100 metres at the 1987 World Championships in Athletics; and at the 1988 Summer Olympics, but was disqualified for doping and stripped of the gold medal.

Episode 94: Michael Azerrad

Michael Azerrad is an American author, music journalist, editor, and musician. A graduate of Columbia University, he has written for publications such as Spin, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times. Azerrad's 1993 biography Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana was named by Q as one of the 50 greatest rock books ever written.

Episode 93: Andrew Hammel

Andrew Hammel holds law degrees from the University of Houston and Harvard Law School and was admitted to the bar of the State of Texas in 1996. He is a former death-row defense lawyer and law professor. He is the author of Ending the Death Penalty: The European Experience in Global Perspective (2010) and many scholarly articles. He is fluent in English and German. His long-form journalism on famous true crime cases has appeared in Quillette, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Berliner Zeitung, and other outlets.

Episode 92: Ric Burns

Ric Burns is an American documentary filmmaker and writer. He has written, directed and produced historical documentaries since the 1990s, beginning with his collaboration on the celebrated PBS series The Civil War (1990), which he produced with his older brother Ken Burns and wrote with Geoffrey Ward.

Episode 91: Nick McDonell

Nick McDonell is an American writer who has worked as a journalist, screenwriter, producer, novelist and researcher.

Episode 90: Kim Cross

Kim Cross is a New York Times best-selling author and journalist known for meticulously reported narrative nonfiction. A full-time freelance writer, she has bylines in the New York Times, Nieman Storyboard, Outside, Bicycling, Garden & Gun, CNN.com, ESPN.com, and USA Today.

Episode 89: Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New York University and a senior researcher at the University of Ljubljana's Department of Philosophy.