A New Oral History of HBO

David Hastings is a retired business executive on a grim mission: He’s going to end his life.That’s the dramatic setup of Emma Cline’s latest novel, “Switzy.”When the story opens, David is on a plane, traveling to Europe. Throughout his life, he sacrificed friendship and family t ...  Show more

Halloween is the season for scary stories, but what actually makes a book frightening? And where should you start if you’re not already a horror reader?This week on “The Book Review” podcast, Gilbert Cruz talks with two writers who know their way around the genre. Leigh Bardugo i ...  Show more

After spending more than three years working on his latest book, “Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers,” replete with 757 interviews, Origins host Jim Miller decided he hadn’t had enough, and has returned with new interviews to further explore one of the world’s mos ...  Show more

HBO has brought us nearly 50 years of riveting movies and TV shows; the behind-the-scenes stories are equally compelling. Journalist James Andrew Miller, who has written definitive oral histories of media institutions like Saturday Night Live and ESPN, tells Recode’s Peter Kafka ...  Show more

James Andrew Miller, author of the new HBO oral history "Tinderbox," shares what he learned through his interviews with five decades of network executives, stars and producers. HBO created a "whole new pathway for people to experience television," he says. But now it is under tre ...  Show more