We love Read This

Two years ago, some of our colleagues had the idea to start a show about books. The result was Read This – a weekly podcast about the books we love and the stories behind them. In each episode, host Michael Williams speaks to an author about their work and their life. 

It’s a favourite show of everyone on the 7am team and as it finishes up as a Schwartz Media podcast, we wanted to pay tribute to our colleagues who make this show so special. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, Staniel James here. Two years ago, some of our
colleagues had the idea to start a show about books
and the people behind them. It would be a show
for book tragics, for people who wanted to know how
the stories they love came to be, who were curious
about the process of writing great literature, but also about
the lives that inform the stories our great writers tell.

(00:22):
It would actually be a show with many of the
hallmarks of a great book absurdity, tragedy, comedy, and family.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
My grandmother, in some ways, even though we were close
and had a fairly open relationship, she was also quite
secretive and in some ways quite mysterious. She had a
tatoo of a broken heart on her shoulder that she
would never speak about how or why she got it
or when she got it.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Read This was named for the enthusiasm and the light
that comes from pushing your favorite book into your friend's hands.
Read this so we can talk about it. Read this
because I know you'll love it. At seven am and
we tell a lot of stories about all the things
that go wrong in the world. But read this as
an antidote to all that. It's a pleasure to listen

(01:07):
to a favorite podcast of ours and for thousands of
listeners around the world. It's the type of show that
makes orange juice tastes like champagne as you listened to it.
And the thing that really makes read this special is
its host, Michael Williams. I'm going to be completely honest.
If I visit your house, I'm one hundred percent having
a furtive berth at what's on your bookshelves. Michael is

(01:30):
the book Tragic's tragic. He reads hundreds of books a year,
and he's a champion of the people who write them.
Whether he's speaking with national treasures like Alexus Wright, Tim
Winton or Helen Ghana, or international superstars like George Saunders
and Enwright, Colson Whitehead or Roxane Gay, or whether he's
introducing you to an emerging writer. He may be talking

(01:52):
about their work publicly for the very first time. Michael
brings his empathy, his charm, and his humor the conversations
that are revealing and surprising. Sincerity is comedy minus time.
Oh that's great.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Oh my god, I got to write that one down.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
First of all, my agent said, I'm begging you not
to write a book in the second person. I can't sell.
Your agent's a coward. I'm going to say it right now, Chris,
if you're listening, please don't find me. There's a level
that I feel underappreciated, soladly, poor, poor, underappreciated, and you

(02:30):
have no idea how I suffer. Honestly, it's become a
little tiresome to hear writers say some version of this
in every episode. That's a beautiful question, mate, you know,
that's such a good question. Truly, those are a great questions.
Good question, good question, such a writer's question. That's a
beautiful question. What a good question.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Choose my words carefully here, that's a great question.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
That's such a brilliant, strong question to open up with
a really lovely question. I don't think I've been asked
that before. Writers who have spent years thinking about and
carefully crafting their stories often find them I was thinking
about their work in new ways. Well, I've never thought
of it like. That's very interesting you say that, that
was a really interesting idea. I don't think I've ever
thought about it in quite those terms. Read This has
been produced by Clara Ames, with editing by Clara and

(03:13):
Sarah mcvee. It's been mixed by Travis Evans, and the
beautiful compositions featured on the show are made by Zoltnfeccho.
Each of these people have bought their creativity and their
care and to Read This over the past two years,
particularly Clara, who has led the show since almost the
beginning and is thoughtful, creative and incredibly kind. Schwartz Media

(03:34):
has made the decision to stop producing Read This. It's
a sad byproduct to the sale of seven AM and
their decision as a company to get out of audio
all together. But Read This is beloved, has a loyal
audience and will hopefully find a new home. We at
seven AM will be listening to Read This wherever we can,
because we love it. In the meantime, there are almost

(03:58):
one hundred brilliant barring for funny and timeless episodes waiting
for you wherever you listen to podcasts. Bring on the
next hundred. We were in an Apple store the other
day and my fourteen year old went to all the
devices in the shop and subscribed to Read This on
the podcast app on them and did automatic download just
to get the numbers up. That's what he's done for me.

(04:19):
What have you done lately,