Open Book

Episode 3: Scaachi Koul

June 25, 2025

Slate writer Scaachi Koul (Sucker Punch) reveals her delinquent beginnings as a serious reader and which reading behavior she finds inexcusable. Plus, Elena unpacks “hysterical realism” as a literary genre, and Scaachi explains why the Bible's biggest sin isn't its content.

Show Notes

Scaachi Koul hosts the podcast Scamfluencers and is the author of Sucker Punch and One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays.

She was also recently a guest on Live Wire: Episode 664.

Books on Scaachi’s to-read list:

• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (recently on Live Wire!)

• Martyr by Kaveh Akbar

• Liquid: A Love Story by Mariam Rahmani

Treasured books that Scaachi would never let you borrow from her:

• Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

• A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

• Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart

• Heartburn by Nora Ephron

• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

• Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me: Depression in First Person by Anna Mehler Paperny

• Books by authors David Sedaris, Jhumpa Lahiri, and David Rakoff

One book that Scaachi would also never let you borrow, but she doesn’t recommend reading it:

• SeinLanguage (1993) by Jerry Seinfeld

Authors referenced

• Authors David Sedaris, Jhumpa Lahiri, David Rakoff

Elena talks about hysterical realism, which is a literary genre that rose to prominence in the early 2000s, with works characterized by a confessional, absurd quality. She mentions writers David Sedaris, Dave Eggers, and Zadie Smith as examples.

• Full Transcript

  Elena Passarello: Hi there, I'm writer Elena Passarello, and this is Open Book, a literary podcast from Live Wire Radio brought to you by Powell's Books, where we talk to writers about their reading habits. When I'm not having fun as Live Wire's announcer, writing is my job. I'm the author of two nonfiction books, I am currently writing a third, and outside my own writing projects, I teach writing in an MFA program here in Oregon. So all of this is to say that books are, without exaggeration, my whole life. If you come stay at my house, you need to know that the guest bed is just a futon resting on top of a few dozen Joan Diddy and hardbacks. Just a FYI. This week we're talking to writer Scaachi Koul. She's a senior writer at Slate, where she writes about everything from the sexual and gender politics of the Girl's Gone Wild franchise? To some really solid advice for J.Lo about what she should do post-Bennifer 2.0. She's also the co-host of the Ambi Award-winning podcast, Scam Fluencers, and the Emmy-nominated Netflix series, Follow This. She is also, also incredibly good at naming books. Her best-selling debut, One Day Will All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, was the New York Times editor's choice. She also has her own sub-stack called Hater Nation. Her latest collection of essays, Sucker Punch, examines what happens when the life you thought you'd be living radically changes course. I honestly had kind of a tough time talking to Scaachi just because I was laughing so hard it was difficult to keep my microphone steady. She's got this lightning quick wit and it was such a blast to share book tour horror stories with her. Stay tuned if you wanna hear about the greatest humiliation I ever sustained in a book signing line. Okay, let's get to it. This is Scaachi Koul on Open Book. Welcome to Open Book. [Scaachi: Thanks.] Thank you. Okay, my first question. Do you set reading goals for yourself? 

  Scaachi Koul: Every year I say I'm gonna read a book a week. [Elena: What?] Every year, I say, I'm going to do it. And I never do it, I get into the thirties. 

  Elena Passarello: So that's maybe two books a month, maybe. 

  Scaachi Koul: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get into the into the mid thirties or three. Yeah. I mean, there's just always like a month or two where I can't read. Something happens this year. It's been January, February and March that I have been completely capable of reading. I don't know. I feel like maybe there was an election that made things a little challenging for me cognitively, but I always have goals. I write every book down that I read. I write down lists of books I want to read in my notebook. Like, I'm actually kind of fastidious about it. I'm just negligent. 

  Elena Passarello: What's on your list right now, once you get back into the swing of things? 

  Scaachi Koul: I actually, I have to read Omar's book, Omar El Akkad, who's, he won the Giller. 

  Elena Passarello: Giller prize-winning author, Omar El Akkad. 

  Scaachi Koul: But I have to read his latest book. I have, um, Martyr also sitting on my bedside table that I have to read and then there's another book and I can't remember the name of it, but the cover is like an Excel spreadsheet with like an old Indian drawing on it. What does it call something? It's going to come to me in like a fever dream, but it's like on in the window everywhere. I need to read it. 

  Elena Passarello: Like a novel or? So two novels in a nonfiction book. 

  Scaachi Koul: Yeah, I mostly read fiction. 

  Elena Passarello: Why do you think that is? 

  Scaachi Koul: Because I write non-fiction and I don't want to hear anybody else do it. I already have to do it so much. Like, I already deal so often in reality, I'm tired and I'm really open to hearing someone lie to me for 400 pages. 

  Elena Passarello: So reading for you, or at least this kind of list-based reading maybe that you're setting your goals around, a majority of it or a significant portion of it is something that's running counter to the work that you are doing as a writer. 

  Scaachi Koul: It took me like years to read that G.D. Sackler book, because I was like, I know it's good. I can't do it. Like, what is it gonna tell me? Everything bad? I know. [Elena: Yes.] So that's stuff I find genuinely challenging, because I have to read non-fiction all day. I read the news and I read court reports and transcripts. And so by that point, I'm pretty fried. I grew up reading a lot of fiction. My mom's a big reader. Like that was just how. You know, we did leisure time. So I still like reading, but I get tired. 

  Elena Passarello: Do you remember a book that your mother read when you were young? Your mother is a prominent part of this new fantastic book, Sucker Punch. Do you Remember her reading a book and then you reading it, either stealing it from her or sharing it with you, something in that. 

  Scaachi Koul: When I was like 12, she wrote a fine balance. So then I read a Fine Balanced and that book is hard to read. [Elena: Yes. Misty mystery.] A mystery. Yeah. Rohinton Mistry. Um, yeah, I attempted that and did not understand a word of it. It was like during a phase of my life where I was kind of stealing books from a lot of people that I knew and reading them and was not equipped to read them, like I took a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, which is Dave Eggers' book and I wrote about that Sucker Punch. That was my brother's copy, took it from him, tried to read it, had no idea what I was reading, really liked it, didn't know why. 

  Elena Passarello: It came out like 2000 maybe? 

  Scaachi Koul: 2001. Yeah, so 2001 I was 10. 

  Elena Passarello: Huh, because your brother, as we learn in the memoir, is older or... [Scaachi: He's 12 years older than me.] 12 years old. 

  Scaachi Koul: So he had actually received the book because he just graduated law school. And so he's reading it as this like kind of semi-new adult in the world. And I'm like, I know, I'm gonna read it. This book that is like inexplicable, even if you have an adult brain, it has like two beginnings. It's dual sided, there's cartoons. It's really graphic. It's bizarre. Yes. This was my farm. 

  Elena Passarello: That's how you started. I feel like the beginning of it is like just a budget for the whole book. 

  Scaachi Koul: Yeah. There's, there's so much like weird publishing stuff in there. And the thing I remember most viscerally is how much he describes the bile coming out of his mom's body. [Elena: Right. Cause his mother...] She has cancer. [Elena: That's right.] That's how it starts is she's sick. And I so distinctly remember reading that and being like, Oh, cool. That's so cool. I want to do that. [Elena: Cool that he described it.] It was just, I liked the way he wrote it down. Yeah. And I didn't know that could be a job. Like you, your job is that you just write what how bilious people are, that sounds amazing. I'm still waiting for that job. I kind of have it, but in a different way. 

  Elena Passarello: But that's interesting, you know what? I think writers learn maybe to be writers based on the way that they learn about reading or the way they develop as readers. 

  Scaachi Koul: I don't trust writers who say they don't read. I think that's very ooky spooky. 

  Elena Passarello: No, I mean, how would you how would you know how to do it? 

  Scaachi Koul: There are a lot of them who don't read. 

  Elena Passarello: Wow. I mean, except for January, February, March of this year, which everyone gets a pass. 

  Scaachi Koul: And those two months of this year, which I think we all gotta repass. 

  Elena Passarello: Yes, you can do whatever you want. 

  Scaachi Koul: I'm a pretty good reader. But in those three months, I didn't read fiction. I read every news report and article. And again, like court transcript, deposition record, interview transcript. So I was doing reading. It just sucked. It's the worst kind. And that reading is dispiriting. And then when you crack open a book, you're like, well, my brain is soft and now I don't have room for this thing that I wanna read. 

  Elena Passarello: Yeah. Do you switch mediums like tech, like phone, ebook, print book in order to make that escape happen? 

  Scaachi Koul: I only read books. Paper books. I don't have an e-reader. I don't read the iPad. I sometimes subscribe to certain magazines or I will buy them if there's a big article that I want to read. I don't like reading on the internet, which is unfortunate because I only work for websites. Noted slate. Noted internet writer does not like reading the internet. I will, but I like books. I like carrying one around. I like dropping it in the pool. I like having to dry it out later. I like giving them away. I don't take care of my books. I'm not protective over them except for maybe five or six of them. And I'm happy to loan them out. I think people who are defensive about their books are weird. That said, if someone dog ears a book from me, death penalty. 

  Elena Passarello: That's what I was going to ask. [Scaachi: We're never speaking again.] So you don't dog your your own books? [Scaachi: No, no, no.] And if you lend a book, it better come back undogged. 

  Scaachi Koul: It actually, I don't even care if it comes back. It's not about that. I'm offended that you would do it. Like I'm offended by the decision-making to dog your the book. You can burn the book, I don't really care what happens to it. I'm offended by the fact that you couldn't find a receipt. 

  Elena Passarello: Or like the do not disturb sign of the hotel. 

  Scaachi Koul: Or just remember the page number. What do you mean? Like how many books could you be reading that you don't know loosely where you are? 

  Elena Passarello: I did that when I was reading your book this week. 

  Scaachi Koul: You dogeared it. 

  Elena Passarello: No, no, I remembered page 33. I was like, Oh, Jesus's death year. That's where I need to come back to. [Scaachi: Yeah, correct. Yeah, great. See? ] Do you not write in your books? Hmm. 

  Scaachi Koul: No, I also think that's weird. I don't want, like, I didn't know. I get mad when I buy a book that's used and someone has written notes in there. I'm like, I didn't ask for you. Like who are you, Trevor? Like 1999 Trevor, $2 at whatever vintage store that I popped into. I don't like that either. 

  Elena Passarello: This is a terrible story that has nothing to do with you, so I'm gonna tell it, but my, I've written two books, and my first book, somebody brought me to a signing, they said, well, I got this used, is it okay if you still sign it? I said, fine. And I opened it up, and the person who had read it before wrote on the part one page, overall disappointing. That is so funny. So the second person who bought it was just mortified. I took like a million pictures of it, I was like, this is the best day of my life. That's all. So what would you do if somebody brought you back a book that said overall disappointing in it? 

  Scaachi Koul: People are happy to tell me that they don't like my writing. So, okay, like what's the difference between a ghost in a book saying it and like some lady telling me to my face. 

  Elena Passarello: Okay, what about the five, there are five books that you care very deeply about, you said, that you will not loan out or that it are not, that are precious. I have. 

  Scaachi Koul: I still have my brother's copy of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I will not give that to anybody. I have a signed first edition of that book as well. [Elena: Whoa.] That I don't know what to do with, but I probably wouldn't loan it either. I don't loan out any of the books that I read when I was really young. So I have a bunch of David Sedaris' that I got from like Costco when I was 13. Because that's how I found out about him. Cause Costco started selling Sedaris books en masse. Good on them. In like 2004 in Canada. So they had all of them. And then I have, um, John Stewart wrote a book called Naked Pictures of Famous People that I read 400 times when I was a kid. It's like a comedy book, but I couldn't stop reading it. Won't loan that out. I have my brother's original copy of a sign language, which is Jerry Seinfeld's book, terrible. It's not good. It's no funny. It's deeply terrible, but it's just this little wretched paperback that like would melt, I think, if it exited my possession. It's probably like some sort of cursed. Horcrux, I haven't decided yet. [Elena: But you can't.] I can. It's not even like, oh, the book's like super important. It's like, what will happen to the recipient? So it's for the sake of other people. Yeah, I want to protect strangers from whatever these books are. 

  Elena Passarello: But would you say that's kind of your sentimental education as the person now who has these books and this podcast and this short form writing career, reading these like essays like David Sedaris and these kind of, I don't know what you would call the memoir, kind of like, I think they used to call it back in the day, David Eggers, they called him. [Scaachi: Confessional?] No, gosh, what is the, it's the, oh, hysterical realism. Was what they called, like, him and Zadie's. Yeah, because, you know, magic realism was, you know, the Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But this idea of kind of, like being super confessional, but also being really experimental. Does that feel like a part of, or do you see that kind of lineage in the work that you produce? 

  Scaachi Koul: Yeah. I mean, like I had the tastes of a 27 year old white guy who like dropped out of brown. I don't know what was going on with me in my preteen years. A babysitter perhaps could have solved this for me instead of me being left alone for so long. But yeah, I mean they were, that's how I learned how to write is I read all this stuff and I was like, this is funny. Oh, these people are writing about their families. Cool. Like I also loved reading and Jhumpa Lahiri, I won't give those books out either. Because those books were, I mean, not quite how I write, but she was talking about these family dynamics that I recognize so much. So did David Sedera, so did David Rakoff, his books I won't loan out. [Elena:Yes, me too.] Like he's one of my favorite writers. Like there was something there that was like crackly to me that I liked. And I was like, oh, okay, maybe I can mimic it. 

  Elena Passarello: I like that crackly. 

  Scaachi Koul: Yeah, there's something like effervescent about the way that they were writing that was different than a lot of the other kind of confessional work I had read. Or work that is confessional but pretending to be fiction, which is the thing that a lot books kind of do. Hartburn does that, which I write about in Sucker Punch. Yeah, she's pretending that's fiction. It's not. That's what happened. 

  Elena Passarello: Right. 

  Scaachi Koul: That's what he did to her. So whether she threw a cake on him or not, I don't know, probably worse. But yeah, I recognized it. 

  Elena Passarello: Have you not felt compelled to put that mask on? Do you think that's a generational thing? Perfection? Yeah, I like it too. 

  Scaachi Koul: Oh, I'm just not good at it. 

  Elena Passarello: I think anybody would read it. 

  Scaachi Koul: And be like, who's this little performance for? That's the point. 

  Elena Passarello: Better to just kind of tell the story as you would tell the story. 

  Scaachi Koul: Yeah, I would just be dissing. 

  Elena Passarello: As yourself. So, okay, back to reading. So now we know all about your past. What's in the future for you as a reader? Once you're done with your book tour, you're on tour right now. Let's say you get like 96 hours off and you're somewhere really relaxing. What are you bringing with you? 

  Scaachi Koul: I always like to read a book about a family in disarray. 

  Elena Passarello: When you're when you're relaxed. 

  Scaachi Koul: Yeah. That's like my favorite thing to read. So like, if I can, I remember going on vacation. I think I went to Cuba for like four days and I brought, I think, all of Franzen's books, because I just hadn't read any of them. Like I brought like three or four. [Elena: That's a big suitcase.] Yeah. I read all of them very well. I'm a fast reader. Once I'm going to read, I'm gonna read it. And I sent her and read it and I was with my ex and he was like, this is what you want to read on vacation? I'm like, yeah, I love it. These white people, they can't get it together. I love it so much, but that's my favorite. Yeah, families in chaos. 

  Elena Passarello: Multiple characters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

  Scaachi Koul: Yeah, I like a multi-generational arcs. Not a lot of people pull it off, but I still like reading it. 

  Elena Passarello: It is like, you get this thing that you can never get in real life, which is like the dollhouse. You can see every room in the house and then they get so kind of intimate. Like the corrections is like that. 

  Scaachi Koul: That's such a good book and I mean that's really good too because it's fun to read those books and then like grow Empathetic towards different characters as you're reading it and less empathetic towards others. Yeah, I like it. Yeah That's the kind of writing I wish I could do. Yeah and I can't but I wish it could 

  Elena Passarello: One thing that you are, I think you could probably do it, but I think that you were already amazing at titles. Do you have a book title that you're like, oh yeah, game, recognize game. That's a really good one. 

  Scaachi Koul: Yeah, there is a book by a Canadian writer, Anna Mellor Paperny, I think is her name, and it's called, Hello, I Want to Die, Please Fix Me, which I think it's like, it's a book about suicidal ideation and depression, like, but what a good title. [Elena: Yes.] What a good title. 

  Elena Passarello: Did you have any pushback or anything about your first book? I want to make sure I get this title perfectly right. One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter. Did that sail through? 

  Scaachi Koul: Yeah. I mean, that was the subtitle of the book for a long time. So it was originally going to be called, I can't even remember something very different. And then while we were working on it, I was like, I don't think this makes a lot of sense. And so we changed it and nobody fought me on it. And then the second title, I couldn't, I could not think of what Sucker Punch needed to be called. It was called all these different things for a long time I was calling it. I hope lightning falls on you, which is like a rough translation of an insult. My mom always says to us, like, and has said to us since we were kids. It didn't make sense as I was trying to get through the book. And then my book editor's husband came up with the title, which filled me with rage that like my friend's loser husband is the one who came out and he's like, never going to let me forget it. He brings it up all the time. I want him dead. It sucks. Anybody else. It could have been my ex-husband. He could have emailed me directly and been like, what about Sucker Punch? That would have been less offensive. 

  Elena Passarello: Would have been better than this. 

  Scaachi Koul: Then Michael Goldless, God. 

  Elena Passarello: The next book, I think, is going to be called Suck It, Michael Goldless. 

  Scaachi Koul: Yeah, eat shit, Mike. That's book three. 

  Elena Passarello: I was very excited to ask you this question, Scaachi. Are you an acknowledgement section reader, even if you don't know the author? 

  Scaachi Koul: First thing I read. 

  Elena Passarello: What are we looking for? I am too. I love to... 

  Scaachi Koul: I like to see if I recognize anybody, because that's like when you're a writer, you get the privilege of being like, Oh, they know that guy, everybody knows that guy or like, you know, that guy that guy's so I love reading the acknowledgments and I love seeing how much people like each other or don't. 

  Elena Passarello: Every once in a while, there's an acknowledgement section where you feel like some of those thank yous are pretty forced. 

  Scaachi Koul: Like they're being held hostage to say thank you. And I was my favorite. 

  Elena Passarello: It's like, gratitude to, and you're like, mm-hmm. 

  Scaachi Koul: My thanks. My thanks? My thanks, too. 

  Elena Passarello: Yikes. No adjectives, no subject to the sentence. That person must have really hurt you. Or then there are the acknowledgments that are just like a hundred pages long. 

  Scaachi Koul: Effusive. 

  Elena Passarello: Yeah. It's hard to, but it's hard when you, when you want to acknowledge people for helping you with your books. 

  Scaachi Koul: You just got it. It's a list of names. Keep it moving. 

  Elena Passarello: It's like, but I turned to it first as well. I feel like it's kind of like when you go on social media, when you look at someone's account to see who else they're friends with, it's like an opportunity to kind of get excited by their followers or who they're following. What about the difference between an acknowledgement section of one's first book versus an acknowledgments question of one second book? 

  Scaachi Koul: I hope somebody. Somewhere who is sick, mentally ill person, compares who I think to my first book and my second. I'm open to hearing that. 

  Elena Passarello: Well, it is a book about a change, like a major change between the first and the second. 

  Scaachi Koul: Yeah. And there's some people who didn't make it, you'll notice. And there are several people who have not made it to book three whenever that comes out already. We're already seeing how they won't make. 

  Elena Passarello: Good to know. You could just tell them, text them, you're out of the acknowledgement section for book three. I already know, they know. 

  Scaachi Koul: I already know, they know, we don't, it's everybody accepts fate. 

  Elena Passarello: Okay, last question. This is the last question every time we do this podcast. We would love to hear if you have one, a controversial book opinion. 

  Scaachi Koul: I think the pages in the Bible are too thin. And I think it makes for kind of an odious reading experience. And that's probably my main issue with the Bible, other than all the raping. But it's really the onion thin pages. 

  Elena Passarello: Number two is the super thin pages. It is true that it makes you kind of, you don't like tear through the Bible because you would literally tear through the Bible. 

  Scaachi Koul: That you would have to tear through the Bible. Yeah, I just think it's kind of a weak read. 

  Elena Passarello: So if somebody ever asks to have one of your books printed on onion skin pages, that's going to be a hell no. 

  Scaachi Koul: Like I said, I don't care what you do, buy it. You can do whatever you want after. You want an onion thin page? Buy it $400. 

  Elena Passarello: You could write it on an actual onion. Actually, that would be kind of cool. Stay tuned for Scaachi Koul's next book. Edible. Edible onion. And the acknowledgement section is going to be brutal. Very soon. Thank you so much for talking to us, and congratulations on the book. Thanks for having me. That was writer Scaachi Koul on Open Book. Her latest collection of essays is Sucker Punch, and you can get it at Powells.com. Thanks for listening to Open Book, I'm Elena Passarello, your host. Our executive producer is Laura Hadden, and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Eben Hoffer is our technical director, Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid is our mixer, A Walker Spring composed our theme song, and Ashley Park is our social media marketer. A big thanks to the entire staff at Live Wire Radio, the fine folks at PRX, and of course, Powell's Books for sponsoring this podcast.