Authors, unhurried, on the lives behind the books.
Mike Carlin sits down with authors each week to trace how a book actually came to exist. The conversations wander through memory, belief, research and reinvention, staying curious about what an experience felt like from the inside rather than how it reads on a jacket flap.
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Uncorking a Story is a weekly conversation between Mike Carlin and the people who write books. The format is simple and the effect is cumulative. An episode opens with a light thematic hook, then slides into the guest's life. From there the questions run long and open. Carlin repeats a phrase back, paraphrases an idea, and lets the guest keep going. That habit of following the emotionally alive detail is the show's actual method. The subjects range widely. Nick Kemp discusses compiling a book about ikigai and pushing to include an entry he found most fascinating of all — a Japanese friend who admitted he enjoys his life and feels content, but does not feel ikigai, because for him it would mean having a child he does not have. Kemp argues there is nothing negative in that honesty. The disagreement over whether the book should stay relentlessly positive becomes a small window into how books get made. Priya Hutner remembers a community shaped by a loud, ostentatious Western guru from Brooklyn, an ashram unlike any other, with television and forced meditation and, in one chapter, a dead body. She is funny about it and serious about it in the same breath. Christian Toms-Arbel talks about reading criminal-profiling books decades ago and drawing on that world for fiction, noting that true crime often stops at bullet points where a longer story can go deeper. Jane Loeb Rubin describes writing scenes she sees cinematically — clothing, smells, tenements without heat or running water — and folding a healthcare background into the medical reality her characters faced. Her figures land hard: a life expectancy under fifty, one in five children lost before their first year, a mother who said every family lost at least one. Trauma, faith, class and homecoming surface often, but the register never turns clinical. Carlin stays companionable even when the material is grave. Guests do most of the talking, and the show is built that way on purpose. Craft questions are here — structure, adaptation, research, what a manuscript owes to the truth — yet they arrive through story rather than as a checklist. The result suits anyone who reads with curiosity about the person behind the page. Each episode closes with the same small ritual and an invitation to come back the following week for a new story uncorked. Episodes carry promotion from the podcast network behind the show, which is worth knowing before the first listen.
Made for: Readers who want the person behind the book — writers, book-club regulars, and anyone drawn to long, patient conversations about memory, belief and craft. It suits listeners who prefer a guest given room to wander over a tightly clipped interview.
What sets it apart: Rather than treating each book as a promotional peg, the show follows the guest's life until the book explains itself — spiritual communities, immigrant history, criminal psychology, and grief all get equal airtime with craft. The measured, warm-toned questioning lets guests contradict themselves and think out loud, which is where the best material tends to surface.
Listen in to Uncorking a Story, where we pop the cork on hidden narratives and delve deep into the brilliant minds of your favorite authors. Get ready to unlock the magic behind your favorite books, one unforgettable story at a time. Hit that subscribe button and never miss a sip of inspiration!
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Mike Carlin uses conversations about books to examine the decisions behind a working life. Uncorking a Story moves from writing craft and editorial compromise to purpose, leadership, and the relationship between professional ambition and family life.
Mad Libs on a hijacked plane: your idea of an author interview may need adjusting.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A thoughtful look at ikigai that sets career purpose beside contentment, family, and cultural expectation.
Nick Kemp's conversation about ikigai takes a familiar workplace question and lets it become something more human. The most revealing moment is the book entry he fought to keep: a Japanese friend saying he enjoyed life and felt content, yet did not feel ikigai, because for him…
A Florida RV memorial turns the guest's strangest memory into the episode's clearest link between life and writing.
The episode works best when it lets the guest's odd, specific memories carry the review of her own material. Her story begins in a central Florida ashram shaped by an unconventional community and a guru from Brooklyn, then settles into the scene that gives the conversation its…
A crime-thriller craft conversation on emotional abuse, character origins, and the shaping of a killer.
Christian Toms-Arbel's conversation with Mike Carlin looks at crime-thriller craft through the making of an antagonist, with childhood history treated as more than backstory.
Tenement history becomes a study of infrastructure, illness, work, and fragile hope.
The review treats history as a lived-in setting, and it works best when physical detail does the carrying. Crowded tenements without heat, running water, toilets, or electricity become more than backdrop; they make the public-health stakes immediate.
A grave first-person account of captivity, held together by care, fear, and the work of endurance.
Surviving Hijacking is anchored in a hostage's memories of captivity: planes blowing up, despair closing in, and hope treated less as comfort than as a way to keep going. Its strongest passages come through small acts of care.
A purpose-led view of leadership connects work, family, and community without treating title as the measure.
Leadership lands here as a matter of proportion: how someone can pursue real purpose at work without losing track of family, community, and the quieter duties that give a life its shape.
A reflective memoir of spiritual betrayal finds a hard-won idea of freedom on the Pacific.
The episode turns disillusionment into a searching account of what freedom can cost. After rebuilding a boat, the speaker recalls facing gales on a Pacific crossing and believing she might die; later, watching Spike Lee's Malcolm X helped her rethink a master who had abandoned…
Jonquilyn Hill chases one listener question per episode to the experts who can answer it.
Hard conversations, patiently held, with room to laugh.
Fearne Cotton interviews guests like Boy George and Bryony Gordon about mental health and identity.
Dr. Joy Harden Bradford pairs therapy insight with Black TV recaps, maternal health, and history.
Virginia DeLuca discusses how she turned personal heartbreak into comedic material and a successful stand-up career.
Karen Rands discusses building wealth with purpose and passion through investing and entrepreneurship.
Host Mike Carlin interviews Deborah Rudell about her memoir 'Grit and Grace'.
Dr.
Sal Amato’s debut novel, Hidden Powers Disclosure from Within, uses an alleged 1954 Eisenhower meeting as the basis for a story about power and disclosure.
Ikigai gets a careful, slightly uneasy treatment here.
Priya tells Mike Carlin on Uncorking a Story how Chasing Nirvana grew out of leaving a Florida ashram and rebuilding a life in Tahoe.
["Christian Toms Arbel says The Mannequins uses a dual timeline to follow a detective and trace how a fictional serial killer is formed.", "He links that book to a childhood spent with talipes, repeated hospital care, and an electric typewriter he got at age eight.", "An A-level English teacher's praise pushed him into creative writing, and his parents told him to 'do what makes your heart sing.'", "He also describes a \u00a31,500 publishing scam, a bank fraud refund, 40 to 50 ARC readers, and 300 indie sales."]
This episode is a promotional segment for the MPN Podcast Awards and MPN Studios, not the actual interview with Leigh Shalloway.
Kris Land discusses the concept of souls, cheat codes, and the game of life in a spiritual and philosophical context.
Jane Loeb Rubin traces her author career to a 2009 ovarian cancer diagnosis, a genetic defect, and a self-published memoir that began as "a few big swords" on her computer.
Mimi Nichter, a University of Arizona anthropology professor emerita, connects her memoir Hostage to a 1970 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacking and a later career in cultural anthropology.
An interview with Jude Berman about her book 'A Dictionary of the Lost'.
Rob Tonkin shares his personal journey of healing and hope through music after surviving a traumatic event.
Author Jacqueline Friedland discusses her novel 'Moving Forward and Counting Backwards', exploring themes of time travel and personal growth.