This episode contains both parts of a two-part show featuring novelist and short story writer Sameer Pandya on his newest novel, Our Beautiful Boys. It is receiving enthusiastic reviews as well as both popular and critical attention. Pandya’s cultural criticism has appeared widely, including in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Atlantic, Salon, and Sports Illustrated. Our Beautiful Boys is a simultaneously insightful sociological study and tantalizing mystery story set in an affluent community where football, family, social media, status, ethnicity, teenage jargon and identity offer clues meant to explore conflict and consider ethical behavior, easy expectations and difficult, complicated realities. With humor and empathy, and sharp insights into class and culture, Our Beautiful Boys is an unsparing if also empathetic study of aspiration, hypocrisy, and the struggles which some adults seem to pass on to their children. The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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