The Paris Review
Episodes
Inside the Issue | “I Don’t Do Innocents: A Radio Play in One Act” by Anne Carson
04 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A special production of Anne Carson’s “I Don’t Do Innocents," which first appeared in issue no. 253 (Fall 2025). Produced by Complicité for The...
Inside the Issue | "My Life, By Barbara Rosenberg," by Jordy Rosenberg
17 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jordy Rosenberg reads his story “My Life, by Barbara Rosenberg,” from issue no. 253 (Fall 2025), told from the perspective of Barbara, a mother fr...
Personals | “I Got Snipped”
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Joseph Earl Thomas reads his essay “I Got Snipped: Notes after a Vasectomy,” about the best sexual decision he ever made.This episode was produced...
Personals | "Two Strip Clubs, Paris and New Hampshire"
29 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Lisa Carver reads an essay about visiting two strip clubs with her French husband: first the Moulin Rouge, then a dive bar in Bedford, New Hampshire. ...
Personals | “Wax and Gold and Gold," by Mihret Sibhat
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mihret Sibhat reads her essay “Wax and Gold and Gold,” about a friendship she formed with a prostitute in Addis Ababa while attempting to teach he...
Personals | “What I Want to Say About Owning a Truck,” by J. D. Daniels
15 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“When people see your truck, they tend to see what you can do for them,” J. D. Daniels writes in his essay about a black Nissan hardbody pickup he...
Personals | “The Smoker,” by Ottessa Moshfegh
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ottessa Moshfegh reads her essay “The Smoker,” about renovating a house soaked in nicotine—and a haunting encounter with its former owner.This e...
Trailer: The Paris Review presents "Personals," a new audio series
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Personals” is a new audio series from The Paris Review, featuring writers reading first-person essays. Featuring essays from Ottessa Moshfegh, Mi...
S4E12 | Concerning the Future of Souls, by Joy Williams
20 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Joy Williams reads entries from “Concerning the Future of Souls” (issue no. 247, Spring 2024),...
S4E11 | Trial Run
13 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Zach Williams’s “Trial Run” (issue no. 239, Spring 2022), an employee is subjected to two coworkers’ conspiracy theories when their office ...
S4E10 | Foley’s Pond
21 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“We were thirteen and conspiratorial and what was said is now out of reach.” Jim Fletcher reads Peter Orner’s “Foley’s Pond” (issue no. 20...
S4E9 | “The Victim” by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
14 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The legendary actor George Takei reads one of the oldest stories in the Review’s archive. Published by the magazine in 1957, “The Victim” is Iv...
S4E8 | The Walk Book
24 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sean Thor Conroe shares entries from “The Walk Book”—his meticulous, funny travelogue about his 2014 attempt to walk across the United States—...
S4E7 | Olga Tokarczuk’s Divine Cosmos
17 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Nobel Prize–winning Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk discusses the souls of animals, discovering feminism, and her home in the village of Krajanów ...
S4E6 | About Ed
10 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“We needed erotic touch to tell us what we were.” Robert Glück reads from About Ed, a memoir about his relationship with his former partner Ed Au...
S4E5 | Scenes from an Open Marriage
20 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
“Nothing reifies a romance like proximate disaster.” Seated at her kitchen table, Jean Garnett reads her essay “Scenes from an Open Marriage” ...
S4E4 | Bob Ross Paints Your Portrait
13 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
“The only colors we’re going to use will be blacker than most blacks. Mm-kay.” Terrance Hayes reads his poem, “Bob Ross Paints Your Portrait.”...
S4E3 | The I is Made of Paper
22 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Sharon Olds discusses sex, religion, and writing poems that "women were definitely not supposed to write,” in an e...
S4E2 | The Same IKEA Bed
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A stealth poetry reading inside a bustling IKEA. Poet Maggie Millner reads her own poem (Issue no. 239, Spring 2022), as well as two more from the arc...
S4E1 | “This is Everything There Will Ever Be” by Rivers Solomon
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Actor, producer, and screenwriter Lena Waithe reads Rivers Solomon’s “This Is Everything There Will Ever Be,” which was published in issue no. 2...
Season 4 Trailer: The Paris Review Podcast
01 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Paris Review Podcast returns with a new season on November 15, 2023. Selections of interviews, fiction, essays, and poetry from America’s most ...
S3E5 | A Strange Way to Live (with Phoebe Bridgers, Connor Ratliff, Joan Didion, Natalie-Scenters Zapico, Bud Smith, Jericho Brown, Jessica Hecht, Avery Trufelman)
24 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Our Season 3 finale opens with “The Trick Is to Pretend,” a poem by Natalie Scenters-Zapico, read by the singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers: “I c...
S3E4 | Form and Formlessness (with Rachel Cusk, Aisha Sabatini Sloan, Allan Gurganus, Deborah Landau)
17 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In an essay specially commissioned for the podcast, Aisha Sabatini Sloan describes rambling around Paris with her father, Lester Sloan, a longtime sta...
S3E3 | Without Malice, Without Triumph (with Edward P Jones, Hilton Als, Amber Gray)
10 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This episode focuses exclusively on the work of fiction writer Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Known World and All Aunt Hagar’...
S3E2 | A Gift for Burning (with Monica Youn, Molly McCully Brown, Venita Blackburn, George Saunders)
03 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
George Saunders, in an excerpt from his Art of Fiction interview, explains how his teenage job delivering fast food prepared him to write fiction; Mon...
S3E1 | A Memory of the Species (with Robert Frost, Yohanca Delgado, Antonella Anedda)
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Frost defines modern poetry in an excerpt from his [Art of Poetry interview](https://urldefense.com/v3/ https://www.theparisreview.org/intervie...
Season 3 Trailer: The Paris Review Podcast Returns
04 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The celebrated podcast returns for its third season. Join us on an audio odyssey through the pages of The Paris Review, featuring the best fiction, po...
Celebrating N. Scott Momaday
23 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A special bonus episode of The Paris Review Podcast celebrating N. Scott Momaday, the winner of the Review’s 2021 Hadada Award, which recognizes a d...
A Tree Grows Live in Brooklyn (A Live Recording at On Air Fest 2020)
07 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A special bonus episode, recorded live at On Air Fest on March 8, 2020 (just before social distancing sent everyone home), featuring a crowded room of...
S2E5 | Odd Planets (with Charlotte Rampling, Simone de Beauvoir, Danez Smith, Griffin Dunne, Henry Green, Sarah Manguso, and WS Merwin)
20 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The final episode of Season 2. The incomparable Charlotte Rampling reenacts Simone de Beauvoir’s classic 1965 Paris Review interview; Danez Smith re...
S2E4 | Lift and Fall (with Tennessee Williams, Charles Wright, Bill Callahan, J.M. Holmes, Anne Sexton, and Jenny Slate)
13 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Singer/songwriter Bill Callahan reads “Laguna Blues,” a poem by former U.S. poet laureate Charles Wright; J.M. Holmes reads his Pushcart Prize–w...
S2E3 | Memory, Rich Memory (with Dylan Thomas, Salman Rushdie, Sharon Olds, Alexandra Kleeman, Devendra Banhart, and Paulé Bártón)
06 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Salman Rushdie reads an apologetic letter written by Dylan Thomas to his editor; poet Sharon Olds identifies “The Solution” to America’s problem...
S2E2 | Making Light (with Philip Roth, Jason Alexander, Lucille Clifton, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Brenda Shaughnessy)
30 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Actor Quincy Tyler Bernstine revisits one of the most unsettling scandals of the nineties with her reading of Lucille Clifton’s poem “lorena”; J...
S2E1 | Before the Light (with Toni Morrison, Molly Ringwald, Mary Terrier, Alex Dimitrov)
23 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Legendary novelist and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison explains why beauty is absolutely necessary in an interview from the magazine’s archives; Molly ...
Season 2 Trailer: The Paris Review Podcast Returns
26 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The celebrated podcast from the legendary literary magazine returns! Join us for new audio adventures through The Paris Review's fiction, poetry, inte...
Time Has Stood Still: Philip Roth (1933–2018)
23 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Before Philip Roth was an American icon, he published one of his first short stories in The Paris Review in 1958. In 2010 he received the Hadada, our ...
S1E12 | Thunder, They Told Her (with Jamaica Kincaid, James Salter, Dick Cavett, Sadie Stein, Frederick Seidel, Robert Bly, and Caitlin Youngquist)
21 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The final episode of Season 1. Jamaica Kincaid in conversation and reading her short story WHAT I HAVE BEEN DOING LATELY; James Salter’s story BANGK...
S1E11 | Tomorrow's Reason (with Hunter S. Thompson, George Plimpton, Terry McDonell, Pablo Neruda, Antonio Gueudinot, Amie Barrodale, Paul Heesang Miller)
14 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Shotguns, peacocks, golf, acid. Editor Terry McDonell recounts his 1984 visit, along with George Plimpton, to Hunter S. Thompson's home in Colorado, i...
S1E10 | The Occasional Dream (with Frank O'Hara, David Sedaris, Joy Williams, Mary-Louise Parker, Roberto Bolaño, Dakota Johnson, John Ashbery, Steve Gunn, John Jermiah Sullivan, Robert Johnson)
31 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
David Sedaris reads Frank O'Hara; Mary-Louis Parker reads Joy Williams; Dakota Johnson reads Roberto Bolaño; John Ashbery is scored by musician Steve...
S1E9 | God, Etc. (with Jesse Eisenberg, Benjamin Nugent, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Kristen Dombek)
24 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A frat boy encounters the divine in Benjamin Nugent's story GOD, performed by Jesse Eisenberg; Rowan Ricardo Phillips examines the difference between ...
S1E8 | Questionable Behavior (with Dorothy Parker, Stockard Channing, Anna Sale, Alexia Arthurs, Helga Davis, Blair Fuller, John Guare, Idra Novey, Elena Wilkinson, Jeff Gleaves)
17 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Stockard Channing and Anna Sale recreate the Review's 1956 interview with Dorothy Parker; writer Idra Novey talks about the taste of the letter "H"; H...
S1E7 | The Listening Forest (with Eudora Welty, George Plimpton, Denise Levertov, Ottessa Moshfegh, Glynis Bell)
10 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Denise Levertov's poem SOUND OF THE AXE, read by actor Glynis Bell; Eudora Welty tells George Plimpton about the time Henry Miller visited her in Jack...
S1E6 | The Beetle and the Butterfly (with David Sedaris, Eudora Welty, George Plimpton, Sharon Olds, Peter Ho Davies)
20 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Eudora Welty recalls the time her mother saved Dickens; David Sedaris ponders the unsettled dead in his essay LETTER FROM EMERALD ISLE; Nadja Spiegelm...
S1E5 | To See You Again (with Lucia Berlin, Alison Fraser, Brian Cullman, Eileen Myles, Caleb Crain)
13 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Acclaimed poet Eileen Myles reads SWEET HEART; two-time Tony nominee Alison Fraser lends her voice to Lucia Berlin's story B.F. AND ME; author Caleb C...
S1E4 | Missed Connections (with Marc Maron, Sam Lipsyte, Robert Pattinson, James Wright, Sadie Stein, George Plimpton)
06 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Marc Maron reads THE WORM IN PHILLY, a story by Sam Lipsyte; Robert Pattinson reads a poem by James Wright; George Plimpton recalls a boxing match in ...
S1E3 | I Was There (with James Baldwin, LeVar Burton, Morgan Parker, Dorothea Lasky, Dakota Johnson, Raymond Carver)
22 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
LeVar Burton recreates the Review's Art of Fiction interview with James Baldwin; Morgan Parker reads her poem HOTTENTOT VENUS; Dakota Johnson reads a ...
S1E2 | Always Leaving (with Jack Kerouac, Hailey Gates, Erica Ehrenberg, Shelly Oria, Donnetta Lavinia Grays)
15 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A visit to Jack Kerouac’s house ends with the story of Buddha; Hailey Gates reads a poem by Erica Ehrenberg about love and moving on; and MY WIFE, I...
S1E1 | Times of Cloud (with Eileen Myles, Wallace Shawn, Maya Angelou, Sadie Stein)
08 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Poet and downtown icon Eileen Myles reading a poem by James Schuyler; archival tape of Maya Angelou interviewed by George Plimpton, the founding edito...
Coming soon: The Paris Review Podcast
24 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The world's most legendary literary magazine invites you on an audio odyssey through fiction, archival tape, interviews and late nights with the like...