Mythili G. Rao

Recent reviews and interviews: Fiction by Marlon James; nonfiction by Jill Lepore, Catherine Carr, Sarah O’Connor, Charlotte Proudman, Rebecca Solnit, and Siri Husvedt; plus, “Severed Minds,” an Audible Original

It’s been a busy and productive summer and autumn! Since June, I’ve been working with The Economist’s excellent podcast team (if you haven’t heard this three-part series on Tommy Robinson— which I didn’t work on but strongly recommend– don’t miss it, it’s very good). You can hear a bit of what of what I’ve been up to with the Checks & Balance gang in the run up to the midterms here.

I’ve also carried on with other freelance work. For Intelligence Squared I interviewed:

Marlon James about The Disappearers. (the book Dwight Garner called “the novel of the decade and possibly of the century”). We talked about Nirvana, Toni Morrison, the AIDS epidemic, and the Jamaica he left behind.
Jill Lepore about The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State. We talked about Elon Musk’s grandfather, the long line of dystopian fiction that foretells this current moment, and why she’s optimistic about the artificial state’s impending fall.
Catherine Carr about Who’s the Favourite? We talked about the time I vomited Frooti Mango onto my brother in the early 90s and the richness of sibling bonds.
Charlotte Proudman about He Said She Said. We talked about her stark assessment of systemic injustices in the family court system, and the sexism she’s faced as a barrister.
Rebecca Solnit about The Beginning Comes After the End. We talked about why I struggled to connect with Hope in the Dark ten years ago, how to understand the destruction of democratic institutions, and why she remains so focused on celebrating the accretion of slow wins in social movements.
Siri Husvedt about her memoir Ghost Stories. We talked about her fourty-three year literary romance with husband Paul Auster, personal and political grief, Nöel Coward, and the cigarettes and leather jackets of 80s literary New York.

For The Guardian I reviewed:

Finally: At long last, the six-part documentary series I wrote and produced for Audible with the fabulous podcast department at RAW is out in the world!

Hosted by mental health activist Niall Breslin (who also composed its aching piano score), Severed Minds is the story of the doctor who popularized the procedure, Walter Freeman, and one of his patients, Gretchen Reb.

In the years when the procedure was popular, more women were lobotomized than men, but their stories have largely been lost. Most of them weren’t famous, and they certainly weren’t in positions of power.

The detailed records Gretchen left behind—diaries, scrapbooks, and letters which her daughter Roberta so carefully preserved and organized—made it possible to tell a different kind of story about lobotomy.

It’s a heartbreaking story, but an astonishing one, too. I came away from this project with so much admiration for vibrant Gretchen and tenacious Roberta. (Also: renewed respect for archival librarians!)

If you listen I’d love to know what you think.

One last thing to share: This summer, a documentary based on a podcast series I edited and executive produced at the Guardian in 2022 was released in theaters. The teams at Bellingcat and KEO who made the film “Killing Anna” have done a tremendous job; catch it on Channel 4.

Recent interviews and reviews: Nonfiction by Ece Temelkuran, Fatima Bhutto, Daniel Hahn, Suzanne Simard, and Rebecca Solnit; Fiction by Brandon Taylor

For Intelligence Squared, I spoke with:

For the Guardian, I reviewed:

For the Literary Review, I wrote about:

Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor

More 2025 interviews and reviews: Deborah Baker’s Charlottesville, Yael van der Wouden’s Safekeep, Raymond Antrobus’s Quiet Ear, Olivia Laing’s Silver Book, Helen Carr’s Sceptred Isle, Malala Yousafzai’s Finding My Way, Simon Jenkins’ Short History of America, Susan Orlean’s Joyride

As the year comes to a close, time for a little round-up!

In the second half of 2025, I’ve had the pleasure of turning my attention to a number of good new books.

For Intelligence Squared, I interviewed:

historian Deborah Baker about her book on the events preceding the 2017 Unite the Right rally, Charlottesville: An American Story (and how neither of us hail from “FFV”s)
Women’s Prize winning author Yael van der Wouden about her novel The Safekeep (and what the millenial fantasy of homeownership has to do with the Netherlands’ WWII secrets)
historian Helen Carr about Sceptred Isle: A New History of the Fourteenth Century (and why Richard III was such a weirdo)
author Olivia Laing about their novel The Silver Book (and why 1970s Italian cinema speaks to the current political moment)
poet Raymond Antrobus– in a live conversation at the Kiln Theatre— about his memoir The Quiet Ear (and why he is very grateful to have grown up in Tony Blair’s Britain)
Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins about his Short History of America from the Tea Party to Trump (and why he’s so invested in the continued success of the American experiment)

And for the Guardian, I reviewed two memoirs:

Finding My Way by Malala Yousafzai; and

Joyride by Susan Orlean

If there’s any one theme that runs across these books, I think it might have to do with the nature of history and how the past lives on with us.

It’s a theme that also runs through the podcast series I’ve been working on since June– a project that’s deepened my appreciation for the work archivists do to preserve the historical record. The subject matter is heavy (so heavy!), but it’s been a dream of a production with a wonderful team, and I look forward to sharing all six episodes in late 2026.

Until then, as we close out one year and start another: Happy reading, listening, and reflecting (and resting!).

Recent reviews and interviews: Nonfiction by Jérôme Sueur, Pico Iyer, Emma Barnett, and Nathan Lents; plus a conversation with Alice Mah

In the first half of 2025, I wrapped up a year-long podcast contract with Bloomberg Green— a few final production highlights included:

For the Washington Post, I reviewed two new soulful, searching books on silence: Aflame by Pico Iyer and A Natural History of Silence by Jérôme Sueur.

For the Guardian I reviewed Emma Barnett’s (disappointing) Maternity Service and The Sexual Evolution, Nathan Lent’s provocative consideration of how and why animals do it.

For the Intelligence Squared podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Alice Mah about her book Red Pockets— a genre-defying memoir of tomb sweeping, pollution in the villages of rural China, spiritual and material debts, and eco-anxiety.

I also started a new contract with the lovely podcast team at Raw, where I’m working on a series for Audible. But more on that later!

Finally: Last year, I spent some time helping the BBC Sounds innovation team pilot a new show. The idea was to find a way to bring the deeply-sourced beat reporting of local radio reporters around the UK to a true-crime-loving podcast audience.

That series has since been greenlit, and though I didn’t have a hand in producing the new series, it’s exciting to see Strange But True Crime out in the world.

Second half of 2024: Reviews, interviews, podcasts

As the year comes to a close, here’s a quick round-up of a few projects I’ve worked on over the last six months.

For the the Financial Times, I reviewed Rejection by Tony Tulathiamutte.
For the Guardian I reviewed Breakthrough by William Pao.
For Intelligence Squared, I interviewed Amorina Kingdon about her book Sing Like Fish and Ferris Jabr about his book Becoming Earth.

Finally, working on Zero’s COP29 coverage for Bloomberg Green was a big end-of-year highlight. A few of the half-dozen episodes I produced:

First, a look at the opening of the conference— which reminded me of Girl Scout Thinking Day.
Here’s an interview with ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods taped in front of a live audience in Baku, Azerbaijan (extra context about that appearance in The New York Times here).
Also taped live on stage in Baku: A conversation with the Biden administration’s outgoing climate tzar, Ali Zaidi
And here, I help break down what COP29’s final deal actually achieved.

Recent book reviews: fiction by Walter Kempowski, Camilla Grudova, Andrey Kurkov; nonfiction by Michel Faber, Caspar Henderson, Arash Azizi, and Yuan Yang (plus, podcasts)

I’ve fallen behind on updating this site! Some recent (well, from the last six-ish months) book reviews and podcast projects below.

For the Financial Times:

I reviewed An Ordinary Youth by Walter Kempowski, a 1971 autobiographical German novel now available in English for the first time (translated by Michael Lipkin). It’s a book about the language used by a society complicit in genocide—but also about the sensory experience of childhood. (Some say it’s timely.)
I reviewed The Coiled Serpent, a new collection of creepy short stories by Camilla Grudova, one of Granta’s Best Young British novelists for 2023. (Pairs well with Paula Rego’s paintings.)
I reviewed Andrey Kurkov’s new crime novel, The Silver Bone, a historic crime novel set in wartime Ukraine translated by Boris Dralyuk. It made me consider Kurkov’s fear that the war might destroy Ukrainians’ connection to the language he loves.
I also reviewed Real Americans by Rachel Khong, an ambitious novel about money, migration, dreams, secrets and the lure of scientific progress.

For the Washington Post:

I reviewed two new books about sound—Listen by Michel Faber and A Book of Noises by Caspar Henderson. (They made me think about the relationship the protagonist of The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks has with sound, so I wrote about that too.)

For the Guardian:

I reviewed What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom by Arash Azizi. As a follow-up, Intelligence Squared invited me to interview him; you can hear our conversation here.
I reviewed Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China by Yuan Yang. It’s a wonderful book, and these women’s stories have stayed with me. (Pairs well with The Economist’s excellent Drum Tower podcast.)

A few other projects: The final series I was responsible for overseeing at Novel late last year, a sprawling investigation into wildlife trafficking called “The Wild Life” is now out. It’s built on hundreds of hours of undercover recordings from the spy who brought down one of the biggest African wildlife trafficking syndicates—and so much more. It’s also the first time I’ve shared a production credit with Drake (yes, that Drake).

Also now out in the world is a local news/true crime hybrid pilot I worked on for BBC Sounds. It’s the story of the long, colorful career of a fraudster named David Levi from the town of Lytham St. Annes near Blackpool. Over the years he’s dabbled in eBay phishing, cannabis shipping, and cruise-ship credit card fraud, but in his latest scam, he pocketed hundreds of thousands of pounds impersonating the sacred British icon Pudsey Bear.

And in March, I started a new job as the producer of Zero! It’s a terrific show about the policies, tactics, and technologies taking us to a future of zero emissions. A few highlights have included this barn-burner of an interview with former Conservative MP Chris Skidmore (which caught the attention of the FT) and taking a turn on-mic in this conversation about Microsoft’s rising emissions.

Running memoirs: Reviews of new books from Lauren Fleshman, Kara Goucher, and Caster Semenya

Earlier this year I got to review two new memoirs by Lauren Fleshman and Kara Goucher for the Washington Post. I’ve admired and followed the careers of both for a long time, so it was eye-opening and instructive to find out what they’d really experienced.

Last month, I also had the pleasure of reviewing Caster Semenya’s powerful new memoir for the Guardian as well.

An economist at home in many cultures

My latest piece for the Washington Post was this review of Home in the World: A Memoir by Amartya Sen, a lovely account of the economist’s early years:

After he was awarded the Nobel Prize, the Nobel Foundation asked Sen to provide two objects to be displayed in the Nobel Museum in Stockholm. Sen chose a copy of “Aryabhatiya,” a classical Sanskrit work on mathematics, and his first bicycle, an Atlas he regularly rode from 1945 to 1998 — first as a schoolboy and later as a researcher pedaling village to village to gather data on the impact of the Bengal famine on gender inequality. His message, once again, was clear: For all his studies and travels, the source of the rigor of his thinking and his methodology could be traced back to a few sturdy gifts from his upbringing.

A plan to make feminism better: Make it less White

I reviewed Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria for the Washington Post– and just so happened to be in D.C. the day it was published. Read the whole piece here.

Excitement, glamour and occasional gunfire: The life of a Pan Am stewardess

My review of Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan-Am by Julia Cooke recently ran in the Washington Post. A bit about the book:

In the earliest days of commercial air travel, cabin attendants were exclusively male, but by the 1950s, growing competition among carriers changed that: “Each airline tried to convince customers that it had the highest level of luxury and service, and the women who served a predominantly male clientele became a particular selling point,” Cooke writes. Pan Am — at the time, the only American airline to fly exclusively international routes — had a particular reputation for sophistication to maintain. “We must add to [our excellence] ‘a new dimension’ — that is, emphasis on what pleases people. And I know of nothing that pleases people more,” chief executive Najeeb Halaby would later explain, “than female people.”