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Third Person Limited

@thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social
62 followers 89 following 152 posts

We are a podcast about books and culture with hosts Nathan Pensky and Mason Stockstill. Our chats include book reviews, author interviews, very funny jokes, and also less funny jokes. thirdpersonlimited.com

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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Then, Mason reviews the late author James Sallis’s final novel 'Backwater', and our hosts ponder whether it subverts subversive expectations or is just a meandering story of small-town cop life that doesn’t do much of anything, but does it pretty well.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The inimitable Paige Lewis, “poet who wrote a novel,” joins us to discuss their critically lauded and popular-with-this-podcast’s-hosts epic prose poem 'Canon', as well as their writing processes and Simpsons fanaticism. You don’t want to miss this one, unless you dislike good things.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Here's Episode 31, "Paige Lewis and Posthumous Crime Novel 'Backwater'". www.thirdpersonlimited.com/episodes/epi...
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Then: How dare an expert on The Odyssey (8th Century BCE) have opinions about The Odyssey (2026) that don’t align with those of fans of The Odyssey (2026). We critique the critics criticizing a critic.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
George’s attention to realism and reflecting the world as it is makes him one of the greats in this genre (even though he killed off so many characters on The Wire).
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Crime fiction legend George Pelecanos sat down with us to talk about his latest novel 'The Blue Flame', and his approach toward writing for the page and screen.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Here's Episode 30, "George Pelecanos and 'The Odyssey'". www.thirdpersonlimited.com/episodes/epi...
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Then, Nate must grapple with the reality that his book was, in fact, published earlier this year, forever changing our relationship with Shakespeare, Descartes, and early modern philosophy.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
You will not be surprised to learn that we think this process is pretty successful when Steven Spielberg is the director.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
It’s a books-to-movies summer blockbuster episode! We’re joined by author and (former?) podcaster Mike Vago to talk about what works when translating literature to film, and what falls flat...
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Here's Episode 29: "Mike Vago Talks Books as Movies". (@mikevago.bsky.social) www.thirdpersonlimited.com/episodes/epi...
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
The inimitable cast of stylized characters swim against an undercurrent of noir cynicism that finally defeats them all. Plus, it's got a cool statue of a bird.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
It's the big one here: Our discussion of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and 'The Maltese Falcon'. With this classic, Hammett pushed himself and the boundaries of the hardboiled genre he'd already mastered to create a gem of a novel that still resonates today, nearly 100 years after its publication.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Here's Episode 28 "The Maltese Falcon". www.thirdpersonlimited.com/episodes/epi...
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
T.C. Boyle talks with us about point of view and narrative structure.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Then, Nathan explains why he doesn't like the Black Eyed Peas, but isn't mad about it, either. Maybe we should all aspire to such equanimity.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
...which he has chronicled extensively in his fiction, and some less depressing thoughts about his approach to the craft of writing.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
We welcomed legendary novelist and short story writer T.C. Boyle to the show, to discuss his latest novel, 'No Way Home'. T.C. also shared some very depressing thoughts about environmental catastrophe...
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Here's Episode 27: "T.C. Boyle and the Black Eyed Peas". www.thirdpersonlimited.com/episodes/epi...
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
If Daniel Kraus himself says it's not a gimmick, then it's not a gimmick.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
We also dug into 'Angel Down', the most recent Pulitzer winner for fiction, and found this story of a celestial being who is dragged through the muck of World War I’s trenches compelling in spite of the gimmick that Nate didn’t like.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
The San Francisco-based Op delivered a hardboiled fist to the drawing rooms, tea parties, and other twee scenarios that constituted detective fiction before his advent, changing the face of the genre forever.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
We launch the Summer of Dashiell Hammett with our deep dive on the Continental Op, the unnamed private investigator who starred in 28 stories and two novels.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Here's Episode 26: "The Summer of Dashiell Hammett Begins!" www.thirdpersonlimited.com/episodes/epi...
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Novelist Willy Vlautin talks with us about the capacity for fiction to teach readers how to empathize.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Hammett might not be on the New York Times’ “Best Summer Reads” list, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t curl up on a beach towel with his highly polished stories of violence, irony, and bootleg whiskey.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Then, what’s it like to read everything a single author wrote over just one summer? For us, of course, this means tackling crime fiction master Dashiell Hammett’s entire output.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Willy covered his influences, why it was great to discover that some random lady hates him, and the interplay between his career as a songwriter and writer of fiction.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
We were excited to have novelist and musician Willy Vlautin join us for a discussion about his career in both fields and his newest novel, 'The Left and the Lucky', which John Mulaney called “electric.”
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Here's Episode 25 "Willy Vlautin and Dashiell Hammett". www.thirdpersonlimited.com/episodes/epi...
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Then, we put 'The Catcher in the Rye' on trial. Does it deserve its vaunted position in the high school curriculum? And what do we want high schoolers reading, anyway, you big phony?
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Ed helps us figure out why the legend of Faust still feels fresh in our world today, where nobody ever makes short-sighted deals that turn out badly in the end.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
We’re going to Hell with literary man-about-town Ed Simon, founder of the Pittsburgh Review of Books (with which our podcast is affiliated) and author of 'Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain'.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Here's Episode 24: "Deals with the Devil (with Ed Simon) and Firing Holden Caulfield". www.thirdpersonlimited.com/episodes/epi...
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Reposted by Third Person Limited
Mason @stockstill.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
This great article on why Claude is not conscious, by author Ted Chiang, raises this point covered by Paul Carr’s novel The Confessions: that when we outsource decision making and even ethical reasoning to chatbots, we atrophy our moral reasoning. #booksky www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2...
theatlantic.com
No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious
Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking is absurd—and damning.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
In Alice Martin's new novel 'Westward Women', American women begin feeling an uncontrollable urge to leave their jobs and families to migrate west. In our interview, Martin likens this urge to the cultural exhaustion felt by many in America in the 1970s, when the idealism of the 60s had worn off.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
This was followed by some deep thoughts about exposition in fiction, such as “what is it” and “is it for girls?” Turns out it’s for everyone, but there may be some expectations about how manly men writers don’t do much of it, because it’s not masculine to tell people what you’re thinking, I guess?
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
that’s among the best books we’ve read this year. We were lucky to have Alice as a guest.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Women everywhere have an indescribable urge to get up and go west. That would be weird if it was real; in the hands of Alice Martin, author of the novel 'Westward Women', it’s not only weird but an incredible conceit for a thoughtful work of literary fiction...
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Here's "Episode 23: Alice Martin, and Is Exposition Gendered?" www.thirdpersonlimited.com/episodes/epi...
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Here Mason talks about reading the wrong translation of 'Crime and Punishment' in a class as an undergrad.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
In this clip, Nina McConigley (@ninamcconigley.bsky.social) talks about her new book 'How To Commit a Post-Colonial Murder' and the overlap between environmental extraction and colonial exploitation.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
(Note to translators: We think you are cool and the above scenario is purely hypothetical.)
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Then, how can you tell if a translated work is good when you don’t know the author’s language? Maybe the translator created something great that isn’t really true to the original version, or brought down a great work with their bad translation.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Nina shared with us her thoughts on how colonialism divided not only countries but selves, and where characters (and real people) find themselves within those divides.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
We had a great time with Nina, author of the new novel 'How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder', which hits all the beats you want from a book where a character named Agatha Krishna says, “We blame the British.”
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Here's "Episode 22: Nina McConigley" (@ninamcconigley.bsky.social). www.thirdpersonlimited.com/episodes/epi...
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Author Jared Lemus tells us the harrowing real-life story of being robbed in Guatemala, which provided the basis for his short story "Saint Dismas", appearing in his award-winning collection 'Guatemalan Rhapsody'.
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
We were fortunate to have Jared, author of the story collection 'Guatemalan Rhapsody', join us to discuss masculinity and empathy in fiction. Jared recently won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut story collection, and he was also once Nate’s co-worker (which is also a noteworthy achievement).
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Third Person Limited @thirdpersonlimited.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Here's "Episode 21: Jared Lemus". www.thirdpersonlimited.com/episodes/epi...
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