Episodes

  • Erum Shazia Hasan

    Erum Shazia Hasan
    Jul 23 2024

    For this episode, Red is joined by Canadian author Erum Shazia Hasan, whose compelling debut novel, "We Meant Well," explores the complex moral and emotional landscape of international aid work.

    Set in an unnamed post-colonial failed state, the book grapples with timely questions about what it means to be charitable, who deserves what, and who gets the power to decide.

    With her background as a Sustainable Development Consultant for various UN agencies, it’s a world that Erum is well qualified to discuss. Join Red and Erum as they explore the contradictions and consequences of Western intervention in the developing world.

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    56 mins
  • Tyler LeBlanc

    Tyler LeBlanc
    Jul 8 2024
    PAGING ALL BOOK LOVERS! Join writer, broadcaster and blind adventurer Red Széll for the latest episode of AMI-audio’s My Life in Books. Each fortnight, Red invites you to join him in conversation with a renowned author about their work and the books that inspired them to write. Tyler LeBlanc was working as a bicycle tour guide when a chance encounter led him to look into the history of his name. Growing up on the south shore of Nova Scotia, he’d been unaware of his Acadian roots. But the discovery that he could trace his family all the way back to the Acadian Expulsions parked a curiosity that has transformed the way he views identity, family and the place he calls home. Painstakingly researched, his book, Acadian Driftwood, pieces together the lives of his ancestors after they were shattered by their enforced removal from their homeland by the British in 1755. Join Tyler and Red as they explore the history behind and legacy of Le Grand Dérangement.
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    56 mins
  • Rebecca Thorne

    Rebecca Thorne
    Jun 17 2024
    Join writer, broadcaster and blind adventurer Red Széll for the latest episode of AMI-audio's My Life in Books. Each fortnight, Red invites you to join him in conversation with a renowned author about their work and the books that inspired them to write. A week-long retreat on a beautiful country estate with no phones and no wi-fi might sound like the perfect getaway, but not in Rebecca Thorne's book. The Grief House is a spine-chilling mystery that blends psychological suspense with supernatural terror. Cut off from the outside world, a small group of guests and the couple who run the retreat find themselves battling not only their own demons but rising flood waters and a sense of menace that threatens to engulf them. As the reader is led deeper into the recesses of each character's mind, we too discover that "There is nothing like the cold that freezes from within." Join Rebecca and Red as they discuss the psychology of fear and the realm of spiritualism in the lives and literature of those who dare to explore them. My Life in Books airs Mondays at 1 p.m. Eastern on AMI-audio, or download the podcast from your favourite podcast provider.
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    56 mins
  • Femi Kayode

    Femi Kayode
    May 20 2024
    Join writer, broadcaster and blind adventurer Red Széll for the latest episode of AMI-audio’s My Life in Books. Each fortnight, Red invites you to join him in conversation with a renowned author about their work and the books that inspired them to write. Femi Kayode’s debut novel, Lightseekers, introduced the world to Philip Taiwo, a U.S.-trained forensic psychologist investigating crime and corruption in Nigeria. It became an international bestseller and its sequel has been eagerly anticipated. Gaslight certainly doesn’t disappoint. Like Lightseekers, it’s a tense thriller inspired by real events, this time revolving around a Nigerian megachurch with a global reach. By turns hard-hitting and emotionally sensitive, the book not only probes the underbelly of Nigerian society but also explores wider questions of faith and identity. Join Femi and Red as they discuss the corruption of power and the portrayal of diversity in fiction.
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    56 mins
  • John Vaillant

    John Vaillant
    May 6 2024
    Join writer, broadcaster and blind adventurer Red Széll for the latest episode of AMI-audio’s My Life in Books. Each fortnight, Red invites you to join him in conversation with a renowned author about their work and the books that inspired them to write. It was the most costly and destructive disaster in Canada’s history. The 2016 Fort McMurray Wildfire reduced Alberta’s fourth-largest city to ash, displaced 90,000 people and took 15 months to put out. Miraculously the death toll was extremely low, but as John Vaillant argues in his internationally best-selling book, Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, the inferno that consumed Fort McMurray is a harbinger of our near future. Combining a flair for storytelling that reads like the screenplay of a disaster movie, and a searing examination of mankind’s exploitation of fire and the fossil fuels that feed it, John explains how we have supercharged our atmosphere and now live in a world that is more explosively flammable than at any time in human history. Join Red and John as they discuss the history of fire, the role of the fossil fuel industry in global warming, and some of the extraordinary stories of those caught up in the Fort McMurray fire.
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    56 mins
  • Sylvie Bigar

    Sylvie Bigar
    Apr 15 2024
    Join writer, broadcaster and blind adventurer Red Széll for the latest episode of AMI-audio’s My Life in Books. Each fortnight, Red invites you to join him in conversation with a renowned author about their work and the books that inspired them to write. In 2008, award-winning food and travel writer Sylvie Bigar accepted an assignment to write about cassoulet, France’s ancestral bean and meat stew. Little did she know that this seemingly bland story would lead her to re-examine her privileged but dysfunctional childhood in Switzerland and force her to reckon with her identity and her own dramatic family history. Her resulting memoir, Cassoulet Confessions: Food, France, Family and The Stew that Saved My Soul, has garnered rave reviews around the world. And with three recipes for the famed French stew, it’s a feast for the body and the mind. Join Sylvie and Red as they discuss heritage, heartache and beans!
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    56 mins
  • N.V. Peacock

    N.V. Peacock
    Apr 1 2024
    Join writer, broadcaster and blind adventurer Red Széll for the latest episode of AMI-audio’s My Life in Books. Each fortnight, Red invites you to join him in conversation with a renowned author about their work and the books that inspired them to write. For this episode, Red is joined by N.V. Peacock, who by her own admission has "a curiously dark mind" that is driven by a fascination with the "What if" question. In her latest thriller, The Brother, she asks, what if you found out you were adopted and that one of your blood brothers was a serial killer? What follows is a fast-paced game of cat and mouse, as her protagonist tries to establish which of her new-found siblings is a murderer. It’s full of twists and turns and references to the true crime cases that first inspired Nicky Peacock to pick up the pen. And with dual first-person narratives, it’s ideally suited for audio. Join Red and Nicky as they discuss the fascination of true crime, and the power of psychological profiling and forensic genealogy to solve cases.
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    56 mins
  • Christine Higdon

    Christine Higdon
    Mar 18 2024
    Join writer, broadcaster and blind adventurer Red Széll for the latest episode of AMI-audio’s My Life in Books. Each fortnight, Red invites you to join him in conversation with a renowned author about their work and the books that inspired them to write. For this episode Red is joined by Christine Higdon, a Canadian author whose latest novel, "Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue," is a vivid portrayal of life in Vancouver during the early 1920s. It tells the story of four working-class sisters living in the wake of the First World War and the ensuing Spanish flu pandemic that robbed them of their only brother. It’s a man’s world of speakeasys and strict codes of conduct, bootleggers and back-room abortions, where having a child out of wedlock or being gay is considered a crime. As the sisters struggle to find justice, agency, and love in this often hostile world, Christine Higdon invites us to examine questions of choice and inclusion in our society 100 years later. Join Christine and Red as they discuss the power of historical fiction to cast light on contemporary issues, and the place of talking animals in literature!
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    55 mins