At first glance, the question about whether you’d ever call a friend out of the blue is pretty low-stakes. But as it turns out, this is a topic that’s extremely divisive. Host Greta Johnsen talks to New York Magazine’s Kathleen Walsh, who recently wrote an essay for The Cut called “I Should Be Allowed to Cold-Call My Friends.” The episode also includes virulent opinions from a handful of Happy To Be Here listeners! This is a conversation about phone etiquette and generational differences, yes. But it’s also about connection, friendship, and how we show up for others.

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This month's GRETAGRAM book club selection is Exit Party, the new novel from Station Eleven author Emily St. John Mandel.

Like her other novels, this is a story that spans genre and time. It opens with Ari Waker, the villain from Emily's novel The Singer's Gun, as she goes to a party at the end of the world. Some very strange things happen at that party, and Ari is haunted by them for decades to come.

In this spoiler-free interview, host Greta Johnsen talks with Emily about her inspiration for the novel, her writing process, and how she keeps track of all the interconnected characters from her books.

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The September GRETAGRAM book club selection is Mary H.K. Choi’s Pool House, an exquisitely claustrophobic novel about a TV family and the mess that lies just under the surface.

Host Greta Johnsen unpacks the novel with Inkoo Kang, a TV critic for The New Yorker. She brought many wonderful insights to the book, including this one:

“We’re coming out of this era of increased representation of diversity in Hollywood, and that has been really nice,” Inkoo said. “But a lot of it has been really sanitized. So reading something where the motivations seem really human and the author seems so wonderfully unconcerned with how likeable the characters are was incredibly refreshing to me.”

Greta and Inkoo talk about the book as a coming of age story, the themes of surveillance and identity, and, yes, that ending.

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