Audiobooks narrated by John Hodgman

A hilarious, biting satire of the United States and its unpredictable leader from the best-selling author of The Circle The grand ship Glory has been skilfully captained for years, but when its well-loved old skipper decides to step down, a new leader thrusts himself forward and a new era begins. The new Captain is vulgar, bumbling and inexplicably confident. With no knowledge of nautical navigation or maritime law - nor even, as he has repeatedly remarked, a particular liking for boats - he solemnly swears to shake things up. Together with his band of petty thieves and confidence men known as the Upskirt Boys, the Captain enthralls his passengers: writing his dreams and notions on the cafeteria whiteboard, boasting of his exemplary anatomy, devouring cheeseburgers, and tossing anyone who dissatisfies him overboard. Until one day a famous pirate, long feared by passengers of the Glory but revered by the Captain for how phenomenally masculine he looks without a shirt while riding a horse, appears on the horizon . . . "A funny, macabre, and inspired modern fable about a boat and its captain. If there is any further metaphor involved, though, it is totally lost on me." BJ NOVAK "A shattering, hilarious, spellbinding siren call from the deck of one of our greatest storytellers and prophets" EVE ENSLER "Utterly hysterical. This book gets it exactly right - the tone, the form, the kind of naive narrative that implies that all this is perfectly normal. I laughed out loud so frequently I was amazed, because I'm not that easy to make laugh out loud. Bravo." ERIC IDLE "Completely absurd and true. As funny as it is scarily reflective of our times." TOMMY ORANGE Dave Eggers is the author of twelve books, including The Monk of Mokha; The Circle; Heroes of the Frontier; A Hologram for the King, a finalist for the National Book Award; and What Is the What, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of France's Prix Médicis Etranger. He is the founder of McSweeney's and the co-founder of 826 Valencia, a youth writing centre that has inspired similar programs around the world, and of ScholarMatch, which connects donors with students to make college accessible. He is the winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and is the co-founder of Voice of Witness, a book series that illuminates human rights crises through oral history.

Dave Eggers (Author), John Hodgman (Narrator)

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Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms

"[An] affecting and hilarious meditation on fame and prestige as seen through the lens of an airline loyalty program." -The AV Club A hilarious and honest new book in which John Hodgman, New York Times bestselling author of Vacationland, leaves vacation behind and gets back to work as a still somewhat famous person . . . and then loses his job After spending most of his twenties pursuing a career as a literary agent, John Hodgman decided to try his own hand at writing. Following an appearance to promote one of his books on The Daily Show, he was invited to return as a contributor. This led to an unexpected and, frankly, implausible career in front of the camera that has lasted to this very day, or at least until 2016. In these pages, Hodgman explores the strangeness of his career, speaking plainly of fame, especially at the weird, marginal level he enjoyed it. Through these stories you will learn many things that only John Hodgman knows, such as how to prepare for a nude scene with an oboe, or what it feels like to go to a Hollywood party and realize that you are not nearly as famous as the Property Brothers, or, for that matter, those two famous corgis from Instagram. And there are stories about how, when your television gig is canceled, you can console yourself with the fact that all of that travel that made your young son so sad at least left you with a prize: platinum medallion status with your airline. Both unflinchingly funny and deeply heartfelt, Medallion Status is a thoughtful examination of status, fame, and identity--and about the way we all deal with those moments when we realize we aren't platinum status anymore and will have to get comfortable in that middle seat again.

John Hodgman (Author), John Hodgman (Narrator)

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Raised in Captivity: Fictional Nonfiction

Microdoses of the straight dope, stories so true they had to be wrapped in fiction for our own protection, from the best-selling author of But What if We're Wrong? A man flying first class discovers a puma in the lavatory. A new coach of a small-town Oklahoma high school football team installs an offense comprised of only one, very special, play. A man explains to the police why he told the employee of his local bodega that his colleague looked like the lead singer of Depeche Mode, a statement that may or may not have led in some way to a violent crime. A college professor discusses with his friend his difficulties with the new generation of students. An obscure power pop band wrestles with its new-found fame when its song 'Blizzard of Summer' becomes an anthem for white supremacists. A couple considers getting a medical procedure that will transfer the pain of childbirth from the woman to her husband. A woman interviews a hit man about killing her husband but is shocked by the method he proposes. A man is recruited to join a secret government research team investigating why coin flips are no longer exactly 50/50. A man sees a whale struck by lightning, and knows that everything about his life has to change. A lawyer grapples with the unintended side effects of a veterinarian's rabies vaccination. Fair warning: Raised in Captivity does not slot into a smooth preexisting groove. If Saul Steinberg and Italo Calvino had adopted a child from a Romanian orphanage and raised him on Gary Larsen and Thomas Bernhard, he would still be nothing like Chuck Klosterman. They might be good company, though. Funny, wise and weird in equal measure, Raised in Captivity bids fair to be one of the most original and exciting story collections in recent memory, a fever graph of our deepest unvoiced hopes, fears and preoccupations. Ceaselessly inventive, hostile to corniness in all its forms, and mean only to the things that really deserve it, it marks a cosmic leap forward for one of our most consistently interesting writers. Read by Chuck Klosterman, James Urbaniak, Bill Wise, Eddie Huang, Jon Wurster, H. Jon Benjamin, Jon Dolan, Mike Birbiglia, Kurt Loder, John Hodgman, Sloane Crosley, Chris Gethard, Will Brill, Dennis Boutsikaris, Melissa Maerz, Jeremy Bobb, Scott Shepherd, Brent Musburger, and Vincent Kartheiser

Chuck Klosterman (Author), , Bill Wise, Chris Gethard, Chuck Klosterman, Eddie Huang, H. Jon Benjamin, James Urbaniak, John Hodgman, Jon Dolan, Jon Wurster, Kurt Loder, Mike Birbiglia, Sloane Crosley, Various, Will Brill (Narrator)

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Little Owl's Audiobook Collection: Little Owl's Night; Little Owl's Day; Little Owl's Snow

Little Owl's Night (narrated by Janet Varney): It's evening in the forest and Little Owl wakes up from his day-long sleep to watch his friends enjoying the night. Hedgehog sniffs for mushrooms, Skunk nibbles at berries, Frog croaks, and Cricket sings. A full moon rises and Little Owl can't understand why anyone would want to miss it. Could the daytime be nearly as wonderful? Mama Owl begins to describe it to him, but as the sun comes up, Little Owl falls fast asleep. Little Owl's Day (narrated by Dave Hill): Chikit-chikit-chik! A squirrel is chittering. Bees are buzzing. The sun is high in the sky. And Little Owl is supposed to be asleep, but when he wakes up early, he's just too curious to close his eyes again. The forest he knows so well at nighttime is completely different-and exciting-in the day! After watching butterflies dance, wolf pups play, and then his very first rainbow, Little Owl returns to his tree. He has many new stories for his mama. Little Owl's Snow (narrated by John Hodgman): 'Winter's almost here!' says Little Owl, as he observes leaves falling, animal friends hibernating, and a chill from his feathers to his feet. And just as he and his friend raccoon are watching their breath make fog in the cold air, it happens: Snow!

Divya Srinivasan (Author), Dave Hill, Janet Varney, John Hodgman (Narrator)

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Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches

Although his career as a bestselling author and on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart was founded on fake news and invented facts, in 2016 that routine didn't seem as funny to John Hodgman anymore. Everyone is doing it now. Disarmed of falsehood, he was left only with the awful truth: John Hodgman is an older white male monster with bad facial hair, wandering like a privileged Sasquatch through three wildernesses: the hills of Western Massachusetts where he spent much of his youth; the painful beaches of Maine that want to kill him (and some day will); and the metaphoric haunted forest of middle age that connects them. Vacationland collects these real life wanderings, and through them you learn of the horror of freshwater clams, the evolutionary purpose of the mustache, and which animals to keep as pets and which to kill with traps and poison. There is also some advice on how to react when the people of coastal Maine try to sacrifice you to their strange god. Though wildly, Hodgmaniacally funny as usual, it is also a poignant and sincere account of one human facing his forties, those years when men in particular must stop pretending to be the children of bright potential they were and settle into the failing bodies of the wiser, weird dads that they are.

John Hodgman (Author), John Hodgman (Narrator)

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After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

The definitive novel of today's Silicon Valley, After On flash-captures our cultural and technological moment with up-to-the-instant savvy. Matters of privacy and government intrusion, post-Tinder romance, nihilistic terrorism, artificial consciousness, synthetic biology, and much more are tackled with authority and brash playfulness by New York Times best-selling author Rob Reid. Meet Phluttr - a diabolically addictive new social network and a villainess, heroine, enemy, and/or bestie to millions. Phluttr has ingested every fact and message ever sent to, from, and about her innumerable users. Her capabilities astound her makers - and they don't even know the tenth of it. But what's the purpose of this stunning creation? Is it a front for something even darker and more powerful than the NSA? A bid to create a trillion-dollar market by becoming "The UberX of Sex"? Or a reckless experiment that could spawn the digital equivalent of a middle-school mean girl with enough charisma, dirt, and cunning to bend the entire planet to her will? Phluttr has it in her to become the greatest gossip, flirt, or matchmaker in history. Or she could cure cancer, bring back Seinfeld, then start a nuclear war. Whatever she does, it's not up to us. But a motley band of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and engineers might be able to influence her. After On achieves the literary singularity - fusing speculative satire and astonishing reality into a sharp-witted, ferociously believable, IMAX-wide view of our digital age. Narrated by Sean Kenin and January LaVoy, with: Felicia Day: NETGRRRL.COM Patrick Rothfuss: Special Field Operative Brock Hogan John Hodgman: Charles Henry Higgensworth III Tom Merritt: voice of The New York Times Jesse Cox: Whistle Blowings Blog Leo Laporte: voice of the San Francisco Chronicle

Rob Reid (Author), , Felicia Day, January Lavoy, Jesse Cox, John Hodgman, Leo Laporte, Patrick Rothfuss, Rob Reid, Sean Kenin, Tom Merritt (Narrator)

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Normal: A Novel

This program is read by John Hodgman. A smart, tight, provocative techno-thriller straight out of the very near future--by an iconic visionary writer Some people call it "abyss gaze." Gaze into the abyss all day and the abyss will gaze into you. There are two types of people who think professionally about the future: Foresight strategists are civil futurists who think about geoengineering and smart cities and ways to evade Our Coming Doom; strategic forecasters are spook futurists, who think about geopolitical upheaval and drone warfare and ways to prepare clients for Our Coming Doom. The former are paid by nonprofits and charities, the latter by global security groups and corporate think tanks. For both types, if you're good at it, and you spend your days and nights doing it, then it's something you can't do for long. Depression sets in. Mental illness festers. And if the abyss gaze takes hold there's only one place to recover: Normal Head, in the wilds of Oregon, within the secure perimeter of an experimental forest. When Adam Dearden, a foresight strategist, arrives at Normal Head, he is desperate to unplug and be immersed in sylvan silence. But then a patient goes missing from his locked bedroom, leaving nothing but a pile of insects in his wake. A staff investigation ensues; surveillance becomes total. As the mystery of the disappeared man unravels in Warren Ellis's Normal, Adam uncovers a conspiracy that calls into question the core principles of how and why we think about the future--and the past, and the now.

Warren Ellis (Author), John Hodgman (Narrator)

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You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • "A must-read…Phoebe Robinson discusses race and feminism in such a funny, real, and specific way, it penetrates your brain and stays with you." –Ilana Glazer, co-creator and co-star of Broad City A hilarious and timely essay collection about race, gender, and pop culture from upcoming comedy superstar and 2 Dope Queens podcaster Phoebe Robinson Being a black woman in America means contending with old prejudices and fresh absurdities every day. Comedian Phoebe Robinson has experienced her fair share over the years: she's been unceremoniously relegated to the role of "the black friend," as if she is somehow the authority on all things racial; she's been questioned about her love of U2 and Billy Joel ("isn’t that . . . white people music?"); she's been called "uppity" for having an opinion in the workplace; she's been followed around stores by security guards; and yes, people do ask her whether they can touch her hair all. the. time. Now, she's ready to take these topics to the page—and she’s going to make you laugh as she’s doing it. Using her trademark wit alongside pop-culture references galore, Robinson explores everything from why Lisa Bonet is "Queen. Bae. Jesus," to breaking down the terrible nature of casting calls, to giving her less-than-traditional advice to the future female president, and demanding that the NFL clean up its act, all told in the same conversational voice that launched her podcast, 2 Dope Queens, to the top spot on iTunes. As personal as it is political, You Can't Touch My Hair examines our cultural climate and skewers our biases with humor and heart, announcing Robinson as a writer on the rise. Read by the Author, and featuring additional narration by Jessica Williams and John Hodgson.

Jessica Williams, Phoebe Robinson (Author), Jessica Williams, John Hodgman, Phoebe Robinson (Narrator)

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Iterating Grace: Heartfelt Wisdom and Disruptive Truths from Silicon Valley's Top Venture Capitalist

What is this tiny audiobook? Who is this Koons Crooks? With its privately-printed, anonymously-produced 140-copy first printing, Iterating Grace became the talk of summer 2015 in the tech world. From Buzzfeed to Tumblr to Fusion, people were puzzled and enthralled by the story of Koons Crooks, a young man who took the Twittered musings of the Silicon Valley elite to heart-and ended up on a profoundly unexpected path, leaving behind only the lovingly hand-calligraphed tweets that had meant so much to him. His story struck an immediate chord. There were competing efforts to identify the author of Iterating Grace; blog posts and lengthy comment threads pointed finger at writers all over the country, from Robin Sloan to Susan Orlean to Dave Eggers. Other early theories supposed it was the tip of an elaborate marketing scheme, and soon all would be revealed. But gradually it became clear that it was simply this: a small piece of literary art, perfectly pitched and driven by a Twain-like bemused outrage, by a creator who did not want to be identified, and would not explain anything beyond what the satirical fable said for itself. Disruptive innovators whose tweets are illustrated in Iterating Grace include: Austen Allred, cofounder of Grasswire; Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator; Marc Andreessen, coauthor of Mosaic, cofounder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz; Jeff Bussgang, VC at Flybrige Capital; Tony Conrad, cofounder and CEO of about.me; Benedict Evans, VC at Andreessen Horowitz; Brad Feld, VC at Foundry Group-and many more.

Anonymous, Koons Crooks (Author), John Hodgman (Narrator)

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That Is All

John Hodgman-bestselling author, The Daily Show's "Resident Expert", minor television celebrity, and deranged millionaire-brings us the third and final installment in his trilogy of Complete World Knowledge. In 2005, Dutton published The Areas of My Expertise, a handy little book of Complete World Knowledge, marked by the distinction that all of the fascinating trivia and amazing true facts were completely made up by its author, John Hodgman. At the time, Hodgman was merely a former literary agent and occasional scribbler of fake trivia. In short: a nobody. But during an interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, an incredible transformation occurred. He became a famous minor television personality. You may ask: During his whirlwind tornado ride through the high ether of minor fame and outrageous fortune, did John Hodgman forget how to write books of fake trivia? The answer is: Yes. Briefly. But soon, he remembered! And so he returned, crashing his Kansas farmhouse down upon the wicked witch of ignorance with More Information Than You Require, a New York Times bestseller containing even more mesmerizing and essential fake trivia, including seven hundred mole-man names (and their occupations). And now, John Hodgman completes his vision with That Is All, the last book in a trilogy of Complete World Knowledge. Like its predecessors, That Is All compiles incredibly handy made-up facts into brief articles, overlong lists, and beguiling narratives on new and familiar themes. It picks up exactly where More Information left off-specifically, at page 596-and finally completes COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE, just in time for the return of Quetzalcoatl and the end of human history in 2012. 16 Hours, Read by Dick Cavett, Patton Oswalt, Jon Hamm, Paul Rudd, Sarah Vowell, Brooke Shields, Scott Adsit,. Robin Goldwasser, Jonathan Coulton, John Roderick, Rachel Maddow, Wyatt Cenac, Stephen Fry, Paul F. Tompkins, Prominent Ragnarok Denier Dr. Elliott Kalan. Music by Jonathan Coulton, John Roderick, John Flansburgh, John Darnielle, Cynthia Hopkins

John Hodgman (Author), John Hodgman, Various Readers (Narrator)

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Year Zero

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An alien advance party was suddenly nosing around my planet. Worse, they were lawyering up. . . . In the hilarious tradition of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Rob Reid takes you on a headlong journey through the outer reaches of the universe - and the inner workings of our absurdly dysfunctional music industry. Low-level entertainment lawyer Nick Carter thinks its a prank, not an alien encounter, when a redheaded mullah and a curvaceous nun show up at his office. But Frampton and Carly are highly advanced (if bumbling) extraterrestrials. And boy, do they have news. The entire cosmos, they tell him, has been hopelessly hooked on humanitys music ever since "Year Zero" (1977 to us), when American pop songs first reached alien ears. This addiction has driven a vast intergalactic society to commit the biggest copyright violation since the Big Bang. The resulting fines and penalties have bankrupted the whole universe. We humans suddenly own everything - and the aliens are not amused. Nick Carter has just been tapped to clean up this mess before things get ugly, and hes an unlikely galaxy-hopping hero: Hes scared of heights. Hes also about to be fired. And he happens to have the same name as a Backstreet Boy. But he does know a thing or two about copyright law. And hes packing a couple of other pencil-pushing superpowers that could come in handy. Soon hes on the run from a sinister parrot and a highly combustible vacuum cleaner. With Carly and Frampton as his guides, Nick now has forty-eight hours to save humanity, while hopefully wowing the hot girl who lives down the hall from him. "Hilarious, provocative, and supersmart, Year Zero is a brilliant novel to be enjoyed in perpetuity in the known universe and in all unknown universes yet to be discovered." - John Hodgman, resident expert, The Daily Show with Jon StewartFrom the Hardcover edition.

Rob Reid (Author), John Hodgman (Narrator)

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More Information Than You Require

Welcome to the paperless (or "audiobook") edition of More Information Than You Require, a further compendium of COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE assembled and illumined by John Hodgman, a Famous Minor Television Personality. It contains all of the half-truths, fake trivia, amazing made-up facts, and molemanic lore as the paper edition, narrated here almost entirely by Resident Expert John Hodgman, occasionally interrupted by this veritable extravaganza of illustrious and sometimes presumptuous guests: Dick Cavett, Jonathan Coulton, Zach Galifianakis, Ricky Gervais, Ira Glass, Robin Goldwasser, Rachel Maddow, Paul Rudd, Paul F. Tompkins, and Sarah Vowell.

John Hodgman (Author), John Hodgman (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by John Hodgman