I'd Rather Be Reading

About I'd Rather Be Reading

A podcast about the best nonfiction books hitting shelves today, hosted by journalist Rachel Burchfield.

Publisher

I'd Rather Be Reading

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

2 Jun 2021

Latest episode

20 Sept 2025

Latest episodes

1 of 327 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   20 Sept 2025

   Erin Claire Jones on Our Human Design Type, Strategy, and Authority—and How It Impacts Our Lives

   We’ve got a special bonus episode of season 16 for you—I’m chatting with Erin Claire Jones, author of the new book How Do You Choose?: A Human Design Guide to What’s Best for You at Work, in Love, and in Life, which came out on May 13. I am big on self-awareness, and I absolutely love learning more about myself and those I love, so I was drawn to this book after hearing Erin describe Human Design in a number of podcast interviews. She is here on the show today to chat about what Human Design is and about our Human Design type, strategy, and authority, which can be determined not through a lengthy personality test but by inputting our birthday, birth time, and birth location. The inputting to find out your type is so simple and takes under a minute to do—and I’ll link where you can do that in the show notes. A big crux of Human Design is learning how you best make decisions, hence the title of Erin’s book; we talk about the five types of Human Design on the show today (I am a Generator!), our strategy, and our authority, which is further explained in How Do You Choose?. We talk about how important it is to not just know your own type, but the types of others you love, as well; what Human Design can bring to a life; how to begin to incorporate this into our lives; and what she’d say to skeptics of all of this. Erin is a leading expert in Human Design whose work through coaching, content, and digital products exists to empower hundreds of thousands of people to overcome their biggest obstacles and find their flow at work, in love, and in life. She has spoken on stages across the world and has appeared in Forbes, Vogue, Allure, Nylon, The Sunday Times, and more. How Do You Choose?: A Human Design Guide to What’s Best for You at Work, in Love, and in Life (https://www.amazon.com/How-Do-You-Choose-Design/dp/0063412772) by Erin Claire Jones You can find out your Human Design blueprint at humandesignblueprint.com (http://humandesignblueprint.com)!

2. 

   6 Sept 2025

   Dr. Sparky Reardon on His Legendary Career as Dean of Students at Ole Miss

   As we close season 16, I have a guest today that goes all the way back to season one of the show—well, actually, for me personally he goes back way further than that, but more on that in a moment. Dr. Sparky Reardon was one of my very first guests on season one of I’d Rather Be Reading, and I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode from 2021 if you enjoy this conversation, which I know you will. I have said this on the show before—I am originally from Kansas, and when I moved to Oxford, Mississippi to go to graduate school and work at the University of Mississippi, better known as Ole Miss, I didn’t know what to expect. Back when I was a very junior graduate assistant working in Greek life at Ole Miss, Sparky was my boss’s boss’s boss. Despite that, he was friendly, approachable, and quickly became like a father figure to me. I’m not alone. As his new book The Dean: Memoirs and Missives shows, Sparky tends to have that paternal effect on the hundreds of thousands of students he interacted with during his time as Dean of Students at Ole Miss. When it comes to Oxford and Ole Miss, Sparky is about as legendary as they come. He’s, in my mind anyway, on the level of the Mannings or any other beloved Ole Miss figure. I met Sparky in 2009, and we have kept in touch even after I moved from Oxford in 2013. We went out for brunch maybe a couple of years ago, and it was like going to brunch with a famous person for how many people came up to the table to say hello. He is like everyone’s favorite mayor, minus the politics of it all. I think you listeners will enjoy Sparky’s Southern drawl and his endless stories, many of which are captured in The Dean. I stayed up late—a rarity for me these days—and could not put this book down. Sparky is originally from Clarksdale, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta, if you’re not familiar; after serving at Ole Miss for years, he became Dean of Students in 2000, a position he held until his retirement in 2014. You can imagine the thousands of stories Sparky collected in that role over all of those years, from the hilarious to the tragic. He is a deeply, deeply talented writer—more than your average memoirist—and myself and so many others have been begging him to write this book for years. I am so glad it’s finally out in the world, and I’m thrilled to talk to him about it. When he’s not writing bestselling books and going on tour to support it, he enjoys his porch in Taylor, Mississippi—which is a beautiful porch, I might add—a good cigar, a sip of scotch, and the occasional poker game. You’ll love him, just like we all do. The Dean: Memoirs and Missives (https://www.amazon.com/Dean-Memoirs-Missives-Sparky-Reardon/dp/1949455696) by Dr. Sparky Reardon

3. 

   17 Aug 2025

   Jay Busbee on the Iron Bowl, the Alabama Versus Auburn College Football Rivalry, and How It Shaped the SEC and the South

   The kickoff of college football, blessedly, is just around the corner, something I’ve been waiting for since January and the end of the last college football season. College football is jam-packed with rivalries, and one of the most heated among them is the rivalry between the University of Alabama Crimson Tide and the Auburn Tigers. Both teams are located, of course, in Alabama, where I lived—Birmingham specifically—for nearly 11 years, so this is a rivalry I know well. Their annual matchup every November is called the Iron Bowl, and today on the show I have decorated sportswriter Jay Busbee here to talk about it and his new book, Iron in the Blood: How the Alabama vs. Auburn Rivalry Shaped the Soul of the South, which is out August 26. Today on the show Jay and I discuss how vicious the hatred actually is between these two teams, why the Iron Bowl is called as such, what rivalries mean to college football, the infamous Kick Six play and whether Jay thinks that is the best Iron Bowl moment of all time, what his favorite tradition is from each school—both schools are filled with traditions—and so much more. By the way, this book is a great companion piece to Netflix’s new docuseries SEC Football: Any Given Saturday, which my husband and I just binged. Jay is a senior writer for Yahoo Sports and has covered the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the Masters, the World Series, the Daytona 500, the Kentucky Derby, and, you guessed it, the Iron Bowl. He hosts the travel and history show Home Turn for NASCAR Studios and has a Substack about Southern culture, “Flashlight & A Biscuit.” In addition to Iron in the Blood, Jay has written the book Earnhardt Nation, a biography of NASCAR’s Earnhardt family, and, according to his biography, he “worships at the church of SEC football.” He has written everywhere from ⁠ESPN.com⁠ (http://espn.com) to Esquire, USA Today, The Washington Post, and more. ⁠Iron in the Blood: How the Alabama vs. Auburn Rivalry Shaped the Soul of the South⁠ (https://www.amazon.com/Iron-Blood-Alabama-Auburn-Rivalry/dp/1637747160) by Jay Busbee

Inside a recent episode

Ann Shoket on The Big Life, Badass Babes, and Knowing You're Meant for More

Published 5 Feb 2022 · Transcript excerpt

[…] I would never have chosen it but I learned so much. And so put yourself in an experience where you can learn because that's not your life forever, right? That was just a stepping stone, but I got such a great education. And who wants to speak in their first job anyway? That's so cool. I think everybody wants the dream job. And in fact, one of the important chapters of the big life is don't get hung up on this idea of the dream job, right? I have a quote at the beginning. that says, be fearless, try everything and don't plan too much. You don't know what opportunities are coming around the corner for you. […]

Who has been a guest on I'd Rather Be Reading

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Scott Ellsworth
• Dr Michael Norton
• Nora Princiotti
• Megan Hellerer
• Dr Judith Joseph

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.3 / 5

29 ratings

Spotify

4.3 / 5

12 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 53 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

74

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

81

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