iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 09/08/2025

On the podcast feed: another E Street Shuffle—in fact the first of TWO Born to Run episodes! Join Greg McGrath and @ethanwarrenauthor.com to discuss…the greatest album of all time? We’re just asking questions. Get it where you pod! (🎨: @vanessamckee.bsky.social!) www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

The podcast tile for the E Street Shuffle (by Vanessa McKee)

The cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 02/08/2025

New today on the podcast feed: @justinh94.bsky.social and @ethanwarrenauthor.com talk through chapters 4 and 5 of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland! Search Broad Sound Podcast wherever you pod! www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 02/08/2025

Coming soon: we made you a mix tape

The title of a Spotify playlist: the Broad Soundtrack - August 2025

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 01/08/2025

New today on the podcast feed: on the E Street Shuffle, @ethanwarrenauthor.com is joined by Morris Shamah to discuss The Wild the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. Search Broad Sound Podcast wherever you pod! www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

The podcast tile for The E Street Shuffle: A Broad Sound Podcast

The cover to Bruce Springsteen’s The Wild the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 25/07/2025

New today: on the podcast feed: the premiere of the E Street Shuffle, a Springsteen listen-through podcast, with Frank Falisi and @ethanwarren.bsky.social discussing Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ. Search Broad Sound podcast wherever you pod! Art by @vanessamckee.bsky.social

The cover for the podcast The E Street Shuffle

The cover for the Bruce Springsteen album Greetings from Asbury Park NJ

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 23/07/2025

New today on the podcast feed: another Eye of the Beholder with @eyeoftheduckpod.com co-host @adamvole.com discussing the perfection of the Unicorns’ Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? Available wherever you pod! www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

The cover of the Unicorns’ Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 19/07/2025

The sky is dark, because all the stars are on the Broad Sound Book Club this week—join @justinh94.bsky.social and @ethanwarren.bsky.social plus special guests @danklain.bsky.social and @dodgyboffin.com, to discuss Chapters 2 and 3 of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland! www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

A variant cover of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 15/07/2025

New today on the podcast feed: Jameson Draper joins @ethanwarren.bsky.social to discuss the perfection of American Movie on a new Eye of the Beholder www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

A still from American Movie (1999). A stocky man with long curly hair and a mustache plus tie dye shirt reclines in a lawn chair next to a tall man with long hair, big glasses, and a goatee. The second man sits cross legged in his own lawn chair.

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 09/07/2025

New on the podcast feed: a new Eye of the Beholder in which Greg White and @ethanwarren.bsky.social discusses the perfection of Sideways (2004) www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

In a still from Sideways (2004) four people picnic in a field at dusk

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 01/07/2025

New today on the podcast feed: on a new Eye of the Beholder, @cmcrockford.bsky.social joins @ethanwarren.bsky.social to discuss the 1986 miniseries The Singing Detective www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

The cover art for the BBC miniseries The Singing Detective. It shows a painted hardboiled noir tableau.

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 30/06/2025

New today on the site: another selection from our The Sunset Tree at 20 special edition - it’s the Broad Sound interview with John Darnielle of @themountaingoats.bsky.social - art by @vanessamckee.bsky.social broadsoundmag.com/2025/06/30/t...

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 28/06/2025

Today on the podcast feed: @mr-e-motion.bsky.social and @ethanwarren.bsky.social wrap up their White Noise miniseries with a deep dive on the adaptational choices in Noah Baumbach’s White Noise (2022) www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

The central family of White Noise (2022) dances through a brightly colored supermarket

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 28/06/2025

For anyone conscientiously objecting to our provider of physical copies, both "The Sunset Tree at 20" special editions are now available as downloadable PDFs at broadsoundstore.com

The cover of Broad Sound Spotlights: The Sunset Tree at 20. It features a watercolor painting of a tree at sunset against a tan background

The cover for Broad Sound's Come Come to the Sunset Tree at 20. It features a color-inverted black-and-white image of a tree at sunset against a white background

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 28/06/2025

@directorsclub.substack.com writes on “Song for Dennis Brown” and the day his own lung collapsed

Song for John Darnielle
Jim Laczkowski
On the day my lung collapsed, a doctor told my parents
that despite removing the basal segment of the left lower lobe
of my lung, the disease was still spreading and could reach my
heart. I might not survive despite their best efforts. My father
fainted in the hospital hallway, and my mom began trembling
as she attempted to catch his fall.

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/06/2025

And as a final note, Emily Worrell presents a play in one act inspired by The Sunset Tree

What We Remember
A Play in One Act
Inspired by the Album The Sunset Tree
by the Mountain Goats
Emily Worrell
CHARACTERS
DYLAN — 32, M. The oldest sibling. Drunk, sad, and angry.
MARGARET — 29, F. The middle sibling. Trying to keep
everyone and everything together.
THEO — 24, M. The baby of the siblings. The only one who
had anything good to remember about their dad.
SETTING
Exterior and interior of Margaret’s house, the evening after
their father’s funeral.
NOTE
When dialogue is blocked off by side-by-side rectangles, like
this…
CHARACTER A
What?
CHARACTER B
Seriously?
…this signifies that the dialogue on the left and the dialogue
on the right are being said at the same time.

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/06/2025

And wrapping up the track list, @bebravebird.bsky.social offers a raw, riveting epistolary piece

Elegy for the Garden You Made Me
Melissa Hayden
When you died, a part of me did too, but not in the way
you think. I have a lot of rotting pieces, bits I needed as a kid
but don’t as an adult, so they just kinda hang there. Most of
them you helped plant, taught me to water, showed me the way
to fertilize. Most of them want me dead, the way you talked as
though you wanted me dead, the way you are dead now.

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/06/2025

For "Love Love Love," Emmy Brett offers a short memoir

Despedida
Emmy Brett
King Saul fell on his sword when it all went wrong
The night the largest migrant shelter in El Paso shut down,
I was next door at a karaoke bar listening to “Party in the
U.S.A.”

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/06/2025

Next, @carmenchloie.bsky.social takes a shot at undressing the metaphors in "Magpie"

One for Sorrow
Carmen Paddock
In a 2005 interview with Willamette Week—one in which all
answers took the form of haikus—John Darnielle was asked
what the titular Magpie, in the tenth track of The Sunset Tree,
was. His answer:
Only a traitor
undresses his metaphors
As if they were whores

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/06/2025

Sam Dauer considers "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?" alongside "Wolf in White Van" and more

Me, God, and the Tetrapod
Sam Dauer
And then I’m awake and I’m guarding my face
Hoping you don’t break my stereo
Because it’s the one thing that I couldn’t live without
And so I think about that and then I sorta black out
— The Mountain Goats, “Hast Thou Considered the
Tetrapod”
In 2010, at a show in Leeds, John Darnielle introduced the
song “Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod” as one of tentative
optimism—of living in a home marked by violence and “not
knowing for sure that that’s how it’s going to turn out, but
hoping nervously that it will.” At a 2012 show in Sydney, he
described it as “a true story about how you learn what things
you want to protect from a catastrophe that happens every four
or five days.”

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/06/2025

After that, a stark and vivid comic by @goblins.download interpreting “Lion’s Teeth”

A comic featuring the text of the first lines of the Mountain Goats song “Lion’s Teeth” against the image of a young person before the wall of a suburban home

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/06/2025

Our second pseudonymous piece is written by a political opposition researcher, who sees a lot to howl about professionally, and in “Up the Wolves”

Howling
Kalyani Rao
The Ancient Roman story of Romulus and Remus goes
something like this: their birth mother, Rhea Silvia, was forced
by an evil king to give up her children to the river Tiber. The
river god saved the twins, floating them to safety, where they
were found and suckled by the she-wolf Lupa. Eventually, a
shepherd and his wife, Acca Larentia, adopted the twins and
raised them.

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/06/2025

Then we have @mr-e-motion.bsky.social on “Dinu Lipatti’s Bones” and John Darnielle’s falsetto

John Darnielle’s Falsetto
Danny Cohen
John Darnielle sings most of “Dinu Lipatti’s Bones” in
falsetto. “Falsetto” is one of those terms like “hip-hop” or
“polyamory”; ask ten people to define it and you’ll hear ten
definitions, all stated with total confidence. I’m not interested
in trying to nail it down, or in speaking with any kind of global
authority. I’m going to use the term here to mean anything that
isn’t chest voice. It’s high up, it sounds different, don’t
overthink it.

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/06/2025

From there, Nick Anderson finds the resonance between “Dance Music” and “Stoner”

A Tonic for the Special Secret Sickness
Nick Anderson
In the 1965 novel Stoner by John Williams, young William
Stoner has a conversation with a cynical acquaintance, Dave
Masters, who’s getting his doctorate in literature alongside
Stoner at the University of Missouri. Masters says that Stoner
is damned to be unfulfilled because he wants something out of
the program, and the world, that isn’t there. “You think there’s
something here, something to find … Because you’d always
expect the world to be something it wasn’t, something it had
no wish to be.” He thinks what Stoner wants is a spiritual
rebirth, a dive into the stuff of meaning, whatever that is, that
can be removed from the reality of Stoner himself. Masters
proceeds to join the army on a lark during World War I, and
gets killed in combat in the first wave of casualties.

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/06/2025

Next is something very special: a “Dilaudid”-inspired work of short fiction by @dodgyboffin.com

Stay Sweet
Sarah Welch-Larson
The reception’s gotten fuzzy
I’m dreaming about you the way I have all summer, the
way a thirsty man dreams about water, the way a drowning man
dreams about solid ground. I didn’t know what a firm
foundation felt like before I drifted into town and found you.
Maybe there hasn’t been much of a foundation here, either, but
it’s the best I’ve known in a while now.

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/06/2025

From there, @ludditerobot.bsky.social took on the daunting task of writing the "This Year" essay and hit it out of the park

Something Even Like a Prayer
Rick Kelley
Since its release, The Sunset Tree has played an outsized role
in my life. As with any record that stays with you, my
relationship to the Mountain Goats’ masterpiece has shifted
over the years. This is even more true of fan-favorite track
“This Year,” a song that trailed me across the country, through
relationships, across addictions and into sobriety, and accrued
layers of meaning along the way.

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/06/2025

Next, we have one of two pseudonymous pieces, this one by a very talented writer exploring their personal reflections on "Broom People"

Flares Into Floodlights
Briar Greenwood
When you live in a house with all the lights switched off,
your eyes conjure visions in the dark. Kaleidoscopic bursts of
color and pattern push out all other senses, a hypnosis the body
inflicts on itself. But they aren’t real—and they don’t stop the
bruising on your skin when furniture strikes out at your shins.
Since I moved out of my family home, I’ve begun shaking
off those illusions and reminding myself that they were false
from the start. A liberated childhood; a healthy capacity for
emotional regulation and relationship building; an authentic
and guiltless grounding in faith—all were gifts I thought I’d
received in my upbringing. It’s not a mirage I could’ve blinked
away on my own. Sometimes you need someone who’s stepped
into the light to look back and find you in the shadows,
especially when those shadows get too comfortable.

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/06/2025

Next, @notrockyhorror.bsky.social offers analysis and context for the opening Track, "You or Your Memory"

The Confessional Turn
Richard O’Brien
John Darnielle never checked into a bargain-price room on
La Cienega—or if he did, he didn’t write a song about it. One
online database, the Annotated Mountain Goats, laconically
notes that “John has clarified that the motel in this song, the
Royal Hawaiian, is not actually located on La Cienega,” a major
road in Los Angeles, on at least four separate occasions. The
Sunset Tree, the album that “You or Your Memory” introduces,
is often billed as the songwriter’s most overtly self-revealing. It
opens with a stark a cappella vocal run—an exposed singing
style that itself sets up the idea of intimate disclosure—but
what the first lyric we hear tells us is not exactly the truth. It’s
a small decision that immediately complicates the idea of
“confession,” creating a space for larger questions about the
mysterious processes of both art and healing.

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/06/2025

First on the table of contents: a new edition of the Broad Sound interview with the man himself, John Darnielle (with a new portrait by @vanessamckee.bsky.social)

A pencil illustration of John Darnielle by Vanessa McKee

EW: Would you tell me about a work of art that you
fell in love with when you were very young?
JD: I mean, childhood is long, right? But The Magician’s
Nephew by C.S. Lewis came along at a time in my life—my
father and I were reading the entire Chronicles of Narnia together,
and I liked that one better than he did. He liked The Voyage of
the Dawn Treader a lot, but I thought that was a little long, and
The Magician’s Nephew was kind of mean. And if you’re a child
reading Lewis, you begin to really sense the big places that art
can go. The scene where they crucify Aslan, when the mice
come to chew away at the ropes? Mind you, I haven’t read this
book since I was seven years old, and I didn’t see any of the
movies because there shouldn’t be movies of these books.

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/06/2025

Now available in paperback: a collection of critical essays, personal reflections, short fiction, drama, and a comic, all inspired by the Mountain Goats’ masterpiece. It’s “Broad Sound Spotlights: The Sunset Tree at 20” a.co/d/7OxVcnF

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 26/06/2025

Tomorrow on the site: Robert Rockwell explains why “Willy’s Wonderland” is the best video game movie—despite not being based on a video game

A bearded Nic Cage grimaces while wearing by a lightly blood-spattered T-shirt that reads “Willy’s Wonderland”

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 25/06/2025

Coming this August to the Broad Sound podcast feed: 21 studio LPs. 6 months of podcasting. An incredible roster of guests. A miniseries that's born to run. 🎨 by @vanessamckee.bsky.social

A square tile sporting a black and white watercolor portrait of 1975 Bruce Springsteen and the words "The E Street Shuffle: A Broad Sound Podcast"

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 25/06/2025

"What’s so compelling about Thunder Road is the way in which @jimmycthatsme.bsky.social insists on humanizing his character. Jim may be a laughable American archetype. But he isn’t drawn as a caricature, as he so easily could have been." - @adambonfanti.bsky.social broadsoundmag.com/2025/06/23/a...

A black and white drawing of Jim Cummings’ protagonist in Thunder Road (2018). He wears a police uniform and points his arms upwards with impressionistic blobs swirling behind him.
A black and white drawing of Jim Cummings’ protagonist in Thunder Road (2018). He wears a police uniform and points his arms upwards with impressionistic blobs swirling behind him.

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 25/06/2025

Newly arrived in the Broad Sound offices: Cathy Loosemore’s contribution to our forthcoming Exercises in Thunder Road

A collage portrait of 1975 Bruce Springsteen

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 23/06/2025

New today on the site: “Thunder Road (2018) is not a comedy, or at least not quite. In fact, one of the small miracles of the film is that even as we are laughing with it, we find ourselves sincerely moved by its depth of feeling.” - @adambonfanti.bsky.social broadsoundmag.com/2025/06/23/a...

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 23/06/2025

But before we tape those… Tomorrow on the Broad Sound Podcast mainfeed: Duck Amuck with @theoscargoff.bsky.social And tomorrow on Patreon: The Singing Detective (1986) with @cmcrockford.bsky.social

A still from Duck Amuck. Daffy looks weird.

The cover art for The Singing Detective (1986)

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 23/06/2025

We’ll be wrapping this season of Eye of the Beholder after July. But not before we tape episodes on… Sideways (2004) Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio The Unicorns’ Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone Bon Iver’s SABLE fABLE Sounds pretty perfect

The theatrical poster for Sideways (2004)

The Penguin Classics cover for Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio

The cover for the Unicorns album Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 22/06/2025

Tomorrow on the site: @adambonfanti.bsky.social on @jimmycthatsme.bsky.social’s Thunder Road (2018) (art by Lydia Silver)

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 21/06/2025

New today on the podcast feed: crack open a new season on the Broad Sound Book Club as @justinh94.bsky.social and @ethanwarren.bsky.social discuss Chapter 1 of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

A hardcover edition of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 20/06/2025

Starting tomorrow on the podcast feed: a new season of the Broad Sound Book Club

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 17/06/2025

Today on the podcast feed: a new Eye of the Beholder, in which @bcwallin.com joins @ethanwarren.bsky.social to discuss the perfection of the Disney Channel series Phineas and Ferb www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

A still from Phineas and Ferb—in a backyard, various cartoon children jump in the air while a teenage girl looks on disapprovingly and a platypus stares into the middle distance

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 14/06/2025

New today on the podcast feed: @mr-e-motion.bsky.social and @ethanwarren.bsky.social pedal across the highway to discuss the last three chapters of Don DeLillo's White Noise. Get it wherever you pod: www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

A line drawing of a tricycle in front of the partially cut-off words "Penguin Classics"

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 10/06/2025

New today on the podcast feed: @dodgyboffin.com joins @ethanwarren.bsky.social for an Eye of the Beholder discussion on the perfection of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. Get it wherever you pod: www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

The cover of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 07/06/2025

New today on the podcast feed: it's the penultimate episode of the White Noise miniseries, as @mr-e-motion.bsky.social and @ethanwarren.bsky.social discuss chapters 34 - 37 www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

A paperback cover of Don DeLillo's White Noise, depicting a car abandoned in a hazy downtown intersection

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 03/06/2025

Now available on the podcast feed: a new Eye of the Beholder, with @ethanwarren.bsky.social and Celeste Amidon discussing the perfection of Norman Jewison's adaptation of Jesus Christ Superstar www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

Judas (Carl Anderson) and his backing angels sing in front of ruins wearing white and silver regalia with big bright shining crosses illuminated behind them

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 03/06/2025

“Broad Sound Spotlights The Sunset Tree at 20” is a hardback volume comprising one piece of work for every track off the Mountain Goats’ The Sunset Tree, along with a new interview with John Darnielle and more. Preorder now, going live soon: broadsoundstore.com/products/bro...

The cover of a hardback book. It reads Broad Sound Spotlights, then features a watercolor of a bare tree at sunset, and then reads The Sunset Tree at 20

Table of Contents
Letter from the Editor
The Broad Sound Interview: John Darnielle The Confessional Turn (Richard O’Brien) Flares Into Floodlights (Briar Greenwood) Something Even Like a Prayer (Rick Kelly) Stay Sweet (Sarah Welch-Larson)
A Tonic for the Special Secret Sickness (Nick Anderson)
John Darnielle’s Falsetto (Danny Cohen) Howling (Kalyani Rao)
Tiger’s Teeth (Kī Anthony)
Me, God, and the Tetrapod (Sam Dauer)
One for Sorrow (Carmen Paddock)
Song for John Darnielle (Jim Laczkowski)
Despedida (Emmy Brett)
Elegy for the Garden You Made Me (Melissa Hayden)
What We Remember (Emily Worrill)
Contributors

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 31/05/2025

New today on the podcast feed: things go from bad to worse for the Gladney family in chapters 30 - 33 of Don DeLillo’s White Noise with @mr-e-motion.bsky.social and @ethanwarren.bsky.social www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

A paperback cover of Don DeLillo’s White Noise

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 27/05/2025

New today on the podcast feed: @danklain.bsky.social joins @ethanwarren.bsky.social to discuss the perfection of the first season of The OC in a new episode of Eye of the Beholder www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

Ryan carries Marissa in his arms down a Tijuana alley in The OC

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 25/05/2025

Now on the podcast feed: @mr-e-motion.bsky.social and @ethanwarren.bsky.social attack chapters 26 - 29 of Don DeLillo’s White Noise www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 22/05/2025

"Everything in my life is better because of Tyrese Haliburton. I wake up happier, the grass during the winter is still green, and the sun even shines a little stronger each day." - @danklain.bsky.social broadsoundmag.com/2024/08/01/p...

Tyrese Haliburton shouts in some sort of moment of intense basketball

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Broad Sound @broadsoundmag.com · 20/05/2025

Today on the podcast feed: it’s a new Eye of the Beholder, in which @cairdiul.bsky.social and @ethanwarren.bsky.social discuss the perfection of Tarsem’s The Fall www.buzzsprout.com/2389600/epis...

Lee Pace in The Fall stands before a red backdrop with a blood-soaked hand

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