Steve Almond: Bad Stories

In Deep with Angie Coiro: Interviews

Show #212 | Guest: Steve Almond | Show Summary: We’re thrilled to bring Steve Almond back to our In Deep audience, but it won’t be an easy conversation. Like so many of us, he spent the weeks after the 2016 election lying awake, in a state of dread and bewilderment. He heard no coherent explanation why America had elected this man to the Presidency. Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country is his effort to make sense of this historical moment.
Steve argues that Trumpism arises directly from the bad stories we tell ourselves. He says we have to confront our cultural delusions: our obsession with entertainment, sports, and political parody; the degeneration of our free press into a for-profit industry, our enduring pathologies of race, class, immigration, and tribalism. By the end of our hour, we may not be awash in solutions, but we’ll have new insights on what went so wrong. And that’s a start.
Steve Almond last joined us with his book Against Football. His first bestseller was Candyfreak. He’s a widely-published essayist; he teaches at the Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard, and hosts the New York Times podcast “Dear Sugars” with fellow writer Cheryl Strayed.