The Getting Lit Podcast
Casual yet stimulating talks about books and media.
Episodes
This week we are joined by Passage Prize winner Michael Button to discuss Alice Munro's short story cycle, Who Do You Think You Are? (aka The Beggar Maid in the US).
Follow Michael on X: https://x.com/Michaelknife1
Music: Time Fades Away by Neil Young
This week Fresta talks to Will Samson about Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Bend Sinister and the Fall record of the same name. As Fresta and Will are both avant-garde music-spazz’s the conversation ends up in a discussion about other artists such as The Country Teasers, Lana Del Rey, Kanye, Pere Ubu, The Melvins, Townes Van Zandt, Oasis, Throbbing Gristle, Roky Erickson and The Kinks.
Note: there are a couple of audio issues...
Bigmac McCarthy joins Fresta (who is hosting solo this ep) to talk about Haruki Murakami’s surrealistic tome The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as well as some music nerd talk at the end.
Mac’s Twitter: https://x.com/bigmac_mccarthy?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Mac’s music, Heavy Body: https://heavybody.bandcamp.com/
Country Teasers episode with Fresta on Mac's podcast, Nice: https://open.spotify....
Zach Langley Chi Chi joins us once again to talk about William Shakespeare's final play, The Tempest, as well as Julie Taymor's 2010 film adaptation starring Helen Mirren as a gender-swapped Prospero.
Subscribe to Zach's wonderful podcast, I'm So Popular: https://www.patreon.com/imsopopular
And for a special episode of Back Matter where a lot of tea is spilled, subscribe to our Patreon: https://www....
Our guest this week is David Mamet, Pulitzer Prize Winner and America's foremost playwright, known for such plays as American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, and movies such as Oleanna, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and The Untouchables.
He joins us to talk about his masterful new novel, Some Recollections of St. Ives, which poses as a memoir of a teacher at an idyllic private school.
We have a wide-ranging chat ab...
This is a snippet from the Patreon-exclusive aftershow, Back Matter, where our guest this week, Emmalea Russo, reads Sini's astrological chart. Later, we discuss the 2024 film, The Uninvited, directed by Nadia Conners and starring Walton Goggins, Elizabeth Reaser, Pedro Pascal.
To listen to full episodes of Back Matter, get access to the full archive and other special episodes, subscribe on Patreon at https://www....
On this episode we talk to poet, author, and astrologer Emmalea Russo about her new novel, Vivienne. We talk about the "cancellation novel", women artists, astrology, hippie women, Catholicism, and porting poetic structural techniques onto the novelistic form. A great discussion!
And over on the paid aftershow at Patreon, Emmalea reads Sini's natal chart (so much Gemini!) and we discuss the 2024 film, T...
This is part two of a collaboration with Book Club From Hell, another great Australian book podcast. Head over to their feed for part one where we discuss the classic Australian psychological thriller novel, Wake In Fright by Kenneth Cook (1961).
And on this episode we will be discussing the almost lost forever film version from 1971, starring Donald Pleasance and Chips Rafferty.
This is a fun one folks, and painfully A...
On this special episode of Back Matter, Psi from Rare Candy podcast and Cody LaDuke join Sini and Fresta to discuss George Lucas' Revenge of the Sith, and nerd out on all things Star Wars.
This is a preview. To get the full episode, and more details about Sini's visit to the set of Attack of the Clones, subscribe to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/GettingLit
Subscribe to Rare Candy here:
This week, Sini is joined by his friend Lucas out at a bar one Saturday night to discuss Camille Paglia's book on art history and visual culture, Glittering Images.
Follow Lucas on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifetothose.shadows/
And over on paid feed, we have a special episode of Back Matter featuring Cody LaDuke and Psi from Rare Candy podcast who join Sini and Fresta to discuss George Lucas' Reveng...
Returning guest Alex speaks with us about The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City: what makes it so narratively compelling and different to other shows in this franchise, as well as the character dynamics, novelistic elements, soap influences, and much more. We also talk about the unique charm of the strivers on this show.
Meanwhile, over on the Patreon, we talk about the state of sex in current popular culture. Subscrib...
Melbourne writer Tobe Ellen joins us to talk about his upcoming podcast, The Barrow, where he documents his process of co-writing a memoir with his mother. We talk about podcasting as a writer, memoir writing, the importance of implication in narrative, political correctness, sensitivity readers and much more.
Follow The Barrow on
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebarrowpod/
Substack: https://substack.com/@thebarro...
This week, we're talking to New York playwright and novelist Matthew Gasda about his new novel, The Sleepers, one of the best treatments of millennial generational malaise. We talk about the Dimes Square New York scene, the internet and culture, ideology vs art, masculinity and femininity, defiantly staging theatre during the lockdowns, and much more.
Buy The Sleepers here: https://www.amazon.com/Sleepers-Novel-Ma...
This week we're joined by the "Ern Malley of the 21st Century," Jasper Ceylon, who has pranked multiple poetry journals by posing as vogueish identities while submitting terrible poems.
Jasper successfully published poems that were intentionally bad to woke journals more interested in an author's pronouns, sexuality and racial characteristics than talent.
This satirical "performance art" pi...
This episode, we talk to Jared Klickstein about his amazing memoir of drug addiction and homelessness, Crooked Smile. We also chat about the underground classic Australian film, Pure Shit (Bert Deling, 1978).
Buy Crooked Smile here: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0CWZ1GHLW?ref_=mr_referred_us_au_au
Reading isn't dead - our attention spans have just been hijacked by phones and social media. Inspired by an essay Fresta wrote on how to read last year, we discuss practical strategies to reclaim your reading habit and rediscover the joy of getting lost in a good book.
Check out Fresta's essay on Rare Candy's substack with more detailed reading tips and strategies: https://rarecandy.substack.co...
J David Osborne joins us once more, this time to talk about his new psychedelic cyberpunk epic novel, Gods Fare No Better.
We talked about spirituality, cyberpunk, science fiction, and the impact of various media on JDO's work, as well as book marketing strategies, industry challenges, and the importance of creativity and playfulness in literature and art.
Buy Gods Fare No Better here:
This week, we chat about an ancient classic, Medea by the Athenian tragedian Euripides.
We also discuss Lars Von Trier's 1988 TV movie adaptation of the play, written by Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Sini also published a well-received essay on men reading books on podcasts at Unherd, which you can read here:
https://unherd.com/2025/04/the-literary-man-isnt-dead/
This week, a triple crosspost collaboration with Agitator and Bistro Californium, where we discuss the remasters of the Legacy of Kain videogame series. We talk about the game's mechanics, story progression, incredible voice acting and sound design, character development, themes of free will, spiritualism, and the liminal space between analog and digital technology and much more.
Subscribe to Agitator here: h...
For full episode, go to https://www.patreon.com/c/GettingLit
This week, we have compiled all four episodes of our Book of the New Sun series we did in 2023 into one massive 8.5 hour journey. Join Sini, J David Osborne and Kelby Losack as they unpack Gene Wolfe's masterwork of science fiction.
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