This week, I talk to fiction writer Rion Amilcar Scott about his extraordinary fiction collection, The World Does Not Require You. We discuss the academic world, African-American folklore, religion, music, science fiction, and post-modernism.

This week's show features another pair of episodes from Miami Book Fair International.

On today's show, I share two interviews. The first is with the fiction writer and memoirist Tim O'Brien about how to live in this world.

The second is with the comic creator Chris Ware and his editor at Pantheon Books, Chip Kidd, with whom we discussed how design meshes with the content of a story.

In our discussion, Vanessa Blakeslee and I manage to talk about yuletide fellowship, hallucinogens, the possibility of St. Patrick's Day cookies, and other perennial holiday topics.