Brendan Francis Newnam has spent a lot of time recording himself in conversation with cultural luminaries like Al Pacino, Viola Davis, Scarlett Johansson and Gloria Steinem. He’s also helped create and build pioneering (and award-winning) podcasts like The Dinner Party Download and The Paris Review Podcast that have been download over 40 million times. In addition he writes about travel, food and design and has appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times Magazine to Saveur, and co-authored “Brunch is Hell”, a book cited by the New Yorker as a contributing factor in the decline of said hybrid-mealed terror threatening our cities. And yet despite all of these accomplishments, despite having been a quickfire judge on Top Chef Masters and writing a fiction podcast in which Neal DeGrasse Tyson appeared as himself and Nick Offerman played a wolf named ‘Nick Offerman,’ and despite earning a law degree, being named a ‘style icon’ by the national fashion website Racked and being called the “luckiest man alive” by Fast Company for his role in overseeing Audible and Intercontinental Hotel’s literary concierge program, despite all of that, he is proudest of having elicited a formal apology from the Swedish government after writing about a bad martini he was once served in Stockholm. He can be contacted at bnewnam@gmail.com