The Lit Show.

A 30,000km trip around Australia was the journey Monica Tan took to discover who she was in relation to the country she lived in, Australia. From the role Chinese Australians played in colonisation to segregation in Australia in the 70s and how Australia history is taught now, Monica's novel Strange Country explores all facets of Monica's identity as a Australian Born Chinese person and she shares what she has learned with host Angela Ledgerwood.

Presenting an avatar of virtuousness online instead of presenting your real self is a danger to exploring the nuances of life and how people think, and that's what Bret Easton Ellis calls out in his first non-fiction book White. Bret explores the fame that he gained from American Psycho with host Angela Ledgerwood and how it informed his understanding of people as well as the narrative media build around celebrities. He also discusses why he believes that novels lead to a greater understanding of people than what you can get from their 'real life' on social media.

In the novel Daisy Jones & The Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid wanted to build a female character who was not conditioned to be pleasing and likeable and would react and say things that Taylor could never say herself. Taylor chats to host Angela Ledgerwood about how important female friendships build the frameworks for relationships and how some people enjoy the feeling of shame and self-sabotage.

In a world of click bait and jarring headlines journalist Hermione Hoby believes that the key to empathy and connection is in reading novels and getting the entire character of a person in order to understand their actions. Hermione speaks to host Angela Ledgerwood about her debut novel Neon in Daylight, the boundaries to searching for someone's humanity and the strange world of dialling up your specific fantasies through craigslist.

Finding meaning in sadness, defining the different types of love and looking at the complexities of masculinity, are the overarching themes in Trent Dalton's novel, Boy Swallows Universe. Trent shares with host Angela Ledgerwood how he used this book to put a positive spin on some of the sadness of his past and how he used his character, Eli, to explore what a do-over on his life would have looked like.