River Rose Lullaby by Kelly Clarkson

Big Oil and Gas Versus Democracy&mdash;Winner Take All &#160; In 2010, the words &ldquo;earthquake swarm&rdquo; entered the lexicon in Oklahoma. That same year, a trove of Michael Jackson memorabilia&mdash;including his iconic crystal-encrusted white glove&mdash;was sold at auction for over $1 million to a guy who was, officially, just the lowly forestry minister of the tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea. And in 2014, Ukrainian revolutionaries raided the palace of their ousted president and found a zoo of peacocks, gilded toilets, and a floating restaurant modeled after a Spanish galleon. Unlikely as it might seem, there is a thread connecting these events, and Rachel Maddow follows it to its crooked source: the unimaginably lucrative and equally corrupting oil and gas industry. With her trademark black humor, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe, revealing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas along the way, and drawing a surprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. She deftly shows how Russia&rsquo;s rich reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia&rsquo;s rot into its rivals, its neighbors, the West&rsquo;s most important alliances, and the United States. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, most notably ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson. The oil and gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, according to Maddow, &ldquo;like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can&rsquo;t really blame the lion. It&rsquo;s in her nature.&rdquo; Blowout is a call to contain the lion: to stop subsidizing the wealthiest businesses on earth, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of the world&rsquo;s most destructive industry and its enablers. The stakes have never been higher. As Maddow writes, &ldquo;Democracy either wins this one or disappears.&rdquo;

Blowout by Rachel Maddow, read by Rachel Maddow

Like a lot of people, lockdown has made us think about intimacy. As separation from our loved ones drags on, we're all having to find different ways to connect, and in this socially distant reality, intimacy feels more necessary than ever - however we can get it (hot tip: books are good!). Writing and reading can be intimate acts, so for this episode we'll be discussing what intimacy means in literature, which writers - from Henry James to Sally Rooney to Maggie Nelson - have been able to capture it, and what it means to write in an intimate way. Our guest this month is Garth Greenwell, a writer whose work chronicles and explores intimacy in many forms, so he couldn't be a better person to talk to. His second book, Cleanness, follows an American teacher living in Sofia, Bulgaria as he navigates relationships with his students, love and sex. Listen in for our interview with Garth, our thoughts about intimacy in literature, and all the usual recommendations. Come closer, let us put our arms around you, and get enveloped for the next hour by Literary Friction. 

Recommendations on the theme, Intimacy: 
Octavia: The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/argonauts
Carrie: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/573/57368/giovanni-s-room/9780141186351.html

General Recommendations:
Octavia: This Brutal House by Niven Govinden https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/niven-govinden/this-brutal-house/9780349700687/
Garth: Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/594959/where-reasons-end-by-yiyun-li/
Carrie: The Years by Annie Ernaux https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/the-years

Email us: litfriction@gmail.com
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This episode is sponsored by Picador https://www.panmacmillan.com/picador

Literary Friction - Intimacy With Garth Greenwell

We're still on our summer break, so we wanted to use this chance to bring you a re-run of one of our favourite shows from our archive. In 2018, we spoke to Thomas Page McBee about his book Amateur, which tells the true story of his quest to become the first trans man to box at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The theme of the show is Masculinity: what makes a man? Why do men fight? Is there a crisis of masculinity? These are some of the questions that authors from Ernest Hemingway to Grayson Perry have asked, and questions that Thomas Page McBee addresses head on in his searching, beautiful and wise book.

Literary Friction - RE-RUN: Masculinity with Thomas Page McBee

OPRAH&rsquo;S BOOK CLUB PICK &bull;&#160;The Pulitzer Prize&ndash;winning, bestselling author of&#160;The Warmth of Other Suns&#160;examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions. &#160; &ldquo;An instant American classic.&rdquo;&mdash;Dwight Garner, The New York Times &ldquo;As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power&mdash;which groups have it and which do not.&rdquo; &#160; In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. &#160; Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people&rsquo;s lives and behavior and the nation&rsquo;s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people&mdash;including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball&rsquo;s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others&mdash;she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. Beautifully written, original, and revealing,&#160;Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents&#160;is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

Caste (Oprah's Book Club) by Isabel Wilkerson, read by Robin Miles

Listen to an excerpt from ANXIOUS PEOPLE by Fredrik Backman and read by Marin Ireland

ANXIOUS PEOPLE Audiobook Excerpt

Listen to an excerpt from BLACKOUT by Candace Owens and read by Candace Owens

BLACKOUT Audiobook Excerpt

From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin' and The Best Cook in the World, a collection of his irresistible columns from Southern Living and Garden &amp; Gun A collection of wide-ranging and endearingly personal columns by the celebrated author, newspaper columnist, and Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg, culled from his best-loved pieces in Southern Living and Garden &amp; Gun. From his love of Tupperware ("My Affair with Tupperware") to the decline of country music, from the legacy of Harper Lee to the metamorphosis of the pickup truck, the best way to kill fire ants, the unbridled excess of Fat Tuesday, and why any self-respecting southern man worth his salt should carry a good knife, Where I Come From is an ode to the stories and the history of the Deep South, written with tenderness, wit, and deep affection--a book that will be treasured by fans old and new.

Where I Come From by Rick Bragg, read by Rick Bragg

Listen to an excerpt from FORTUNE AND GLORY by Janet Evanovich and read by Lorelei King

FORTUNE AND GLORY Audiobook Excerpt

From the author of the bestselling More Beautiful Than Before comes an inspiring book about loss based on his most popular sermon. As the senior rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in the world, Steve Leder has learned over and over again the many ways death teaches us how to live and love more deeply by showing us not only what is gone but also the beauty of what remains. This inspiring and comforting book takes us on a journey through the experience of loss that is fundamental to everyone. Yet even after having sat beside thousands of deathbeds, Steve Leder the rabbi was not fully prepared for the loss of his own father. It was only then that Steve Leder the son truly learned how loss makes life beautiful by giving it meaning and touching us with love that we had not felt before. Enriched by Rabbi Leder's irreverence, vulnerability, and wicked sense of humor, this heartfelt narrative is filled with laughter and tears, the wisdom of millennia and modernity, and, most of all, an unfolding of the profound and simple truth that in loss we gain more than we ever imagined. Available for purchase at: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08D8J4D8Z?tag=randohouseinc7911-20">Amazon</a><a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/?ean=9780593187562">Barnes & Noble</a><a href="http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-8373827-10747236?SID=PRHD39095A662--9780593187562&url=http://www.booksamillion.com/p/9780593187562">Books A Million</a><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/2186/9780593187555?prhc=PRHD39095A662">Bookshop.org</a><a href="http://www.hudsonbooksellers.com/book/9780593187555?utm_source=prh&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_term=301&utm_content=PRHD39095A662--9780593187555&utm_campaign=9780593187555">Hudson Booksellers</a><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780593187555?aff=penguinrandom">IndieBound</a><a href="http://www.powells.com/book/-9780593187555?utm_source=randomhouse&utm_campaign=randomhouse&utm_content=PRHD39095A662--9780593187555">Powell's</a><a href="http://goto.target.com/c/128773/81938/2092?subId1=PRHD39095A662--9780593187555&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.target.com%2Fs%3FsearchTerm%3D9780593187555">Target</a><a href="https://www.walmart.com/search/?query=9780593187555">Walmart</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1524211087?at=11l3IH&ct=PRHD39095A662--9780593187562">Apple Books</a><a href="https://google.prf.hn/click/camref:1011ld4r/pubref:PRHD39095A662--9780593187562/destination:https://play.google.com/store/search?q=9780593187562&c=books">Google Play Store</a><a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=VD9*lkiWNd8&offerid=258185.12829781935712206&type=2&u1=PRHD39095A662--9780593187562}&murl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kobo.com%2Fsearch%3FQuery%3D9780593187562">Kobo</a>

The Beauty of What Remains by Steve Leder, read by Steve Leder

Listen to an excerpt from DARK TIDES by Philippa Gregory and read by Louise Brealey

DARK TIDES Audiobook Excerpt

Penguin Random House Audio is the market leader for adult and children's audiobook publishing. Follow us on Twitter @PRHAudio.

Where I Come From by Rick Bragg, read by Rick Bragg

PRH Audio