The New Schedule for America This Week

Apologies to all, and to Walter, for a two-week hiatus. Announcing a new schedule for America This Week, with some format changes

America This Week will be back Monday after a two-week break. As before, there will be one live show on Monday, and one taped episode that comes out Friday morning. But there will be two changes.

First, the Monday live show will now be held at 4 p.m. Eastern Time. We’ll send out links for the episode Monday morning.

We added an evening show on Mondays with a Mystery Science Theater motif last year with the aim of summing up developments in a historic presidential race. The idea was to have live sarcastic look-ins at mainstream campaign coverage, and live commentary during or after events like debates. Two factors conspire to undermine that format. One, the mainstream press died. Second, the campaign ended. So we’re moving the time and tweaking the format.

Second: I saw speculation that we’re eliminating the short story discussions. In fact, we’re expanding to novels. The first entry will be Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, which we’ll cover in parts (a book of that length might take two weeks, or four segments). It’s asking more of ATW audiences, but each segment will include recaps, and we’re going to try opening the floor at the end, like a book club. We’ve had so much fun talking about stories, and I wanted to find a way to include great books Walter and I reference often, from Catch-22 to 1984 to Slaughterhouse-Five and beyond.

I apologize to readers for the long hiatus. Talking to my friend Walter Kirn twice a week is one of the few things that keeps me sane, and I know that for some listeners, tuning in offers a similar reprieve. The interruption is all on me, down to a story that came up suddenly that sent me on the road and made it impossible to re-start today. But we’ll be back Monday at 4 p.m., with some new bells and whistles.

Have a good weekend, everyone.