Kazuo Ishiguro - 'Living'

The hugely inventive young Japanese-born director and producer reflects on how he began his career making music videos and installations, and then transitioned to longer-form projects; his special friendship and collaboration with Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino, which include ...  Show more

The actor and rising star who plays Dr. Langdon on HBO Max's Emmy-winning drama series reflects on the years of personal and professional ups and downs that preceded him landing that role at 35; how his theater experience, real-life dynamic with Noah Wyle and battles with addicti ...  Show more

It's the season finale, so obviously I insisted our last guest be a Nobel Prize winner and...HERE HE IS! Kazuo Ishiguro, arguably one of our greatest writers of contemporary fiction, and a very lovely man to boot. His most famous book, The Remains of the Day, was written when Ish ...  Show more

Today we’re talking about the 1930s and 40s in Japan—fascism, World War II, and the American Occupation.In particular, how did 20 years of censorship shape Japanese literature?We're also taking a look at the life and work of Akiyuki Nosaka, whose novella, Grave of the Fireflies, ...  Show more

It's alternate universes, murderous plots, and ghostwritten novels all the way down this week—1Q84 is Andrew's first Haruki Murakami novel, and there's a lot of good stuff here even if the book could stand to shed a couple hundred pages. Come for the book talk, stick around for r ...  Show more

In this episode, we’re laughing and crying to the sweet melodies of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2008 film Tokyo Sonata, and its social commentary on the Japanese nuclear family in the midst of a financial crisis. 

We explore the film’s construction of a patriarchal nuclear famil ...