What happens when distance changes the way we see the world—and ourselves?

Inspired by Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, we explore the Overview Effect: the profound shift astronauts describe after seeing Earth from space. From there, the conversation expands into borders, war, loneliness, mortality, perspective, and the relief that can come from stepping back.

Along the way, we discuss the International Space Station, the former Yugoslavia, Viktor Frankl's Man’s Search for Meaning, climate anxiety, AI and art, social media, body image, and why some books help us see familiar things from a completely different angle.

📚 BOOKS MENTIONED:
• Training for the Uphill Athlete by Steve House, Scott Johnston, and Kilian Jornet
• Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
• Orbital by Samantha Harvey
• In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
• Awe by Dacher Keltner
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
• The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
• Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

💌 Our Substack & Show Notes:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/

📚 Read Ksenija’s Novels:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications

📚 Ksenija on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449766.Ksenija_Popovi_

🎙️ ABOUT TRANSATLANTIC BOOKMARKS

Hosted by European novelist Ksenija Popović and American engineer Sue Graham Johnston, Transatlantic Bookmarks uses books as the starting point for conversations about culture, history, psychology, morality, politics, and the questions hiding between the lines.

New episodes every Saturday.

👉🏻 CHAPTERS

00:00 Intro
00:25 What We’re Reading
08:03 The Overview Effect
19:14 Isolation vs. Connection
26:09 When Borders Disappear
33:46 Judging from a Distance
39:05 Above Situationalists
48:26 Literature and Human Empathy
52:39 Literature, Climate, and the Earth
59:08 Mortality, Meaning, and Daily Life
01:01:40 Body Image and Beauty Standards
01:08:08 Book Recommendations

What makes a book dangerous?

In this episode of Transatlantic Bookmarks, we discuss banned books, censorship, school libraries, Pride Month, LGBTQ literature, free speech, and the role books play in helping us understand lives different from our own. From John Steinbeck and Upton Sinclair to Alice Walker and Andrew Sean Greer, we explore why certain books become cultural battlegrounds and who gets to decide what belongs on the shelf.

We also discuss book bans in the United States, the difference between age-appropriate reading and censorship, the role of librarians, LGBTQ representation in literature, and why societies often seem more comfortable with violence than with sex. At the center of the conversation is a simple question: what do we lose when access to books becomes restricted?

📚 BOOKS MENTIONED:
• No Shortcuts to the Top by Ed Viesturs (with David Roberts)
• Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Das Kapital by Karl Marx
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
• The Works of Immanuel Kant
• Less by Andrew Sean Greer
• The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer
• The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
• The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
• Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
• The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker

💌 Our Substack & Show Notes:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/

📚 Read Ksenija’s Novels:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications

📚 Ksenija on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449766.Ksenija_Popovi_

🎙️ ABOUT TRANSATLANTIC BOOKMARKS

Hosted by European novelist Ksenija Popović and American engineer Sue Graham Johnston, Transatlantic Bookmarks uses books as the starting point for conversations about culture, history, psychology, morality, politics, and the questions hiding between the lines.

New episodes every Saturday.

👉🏻 CHAPTERS

00:00 Intro
02:49 What We’re Reading
05:21 The Fear of a Different Opinion
08:54 The Role of Literature in Critical Thinking
09:20 Pride Month and LGBTQ Representation
16:23 Cultural Divides in America
21:23 Book Banning in the United States
25:55 The Case for Censorship
33:46 The Hypocrisy of Censorship
38:03 Censoring Socialism
43:36 LGBTQIA+ in the Balkans
49:28 Unexpected Events and Personal Stories
51:13 Pride Marches: Corporate Influence vs. Authenticity
52:45 The Role of Librarians in Democracy
56:13 Both Sides Are Banning

What happens to a book when it crosses a border?

In this episode of Transatlantic Bookmarks, we discuss translation, multilingualism, dialects, cultural context, and whether it is ever possible to experience a book exactly as its author intended. Ksenija shares her experience writing a novel in English rather than her native language, the politics of language in the former Yugoslavia, and the disastrous translation that nearly ruined Steinbeck for her forever.

Along the way, we explore translated literature, Asian fiction, letter writing, the global dominance of English, the challenge of translating poetry, and the books that helped us understand cultures far beyond our own.

📚 BOOKS MENTIONED:
• The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
• Orbital by Samantha Harvey
• Fathers Before Sons by Ksenija Popović
• Commissario Montalbano by Andrea Camilleri
• Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en
• Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino
• The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano

💌 Our Substack & Show Notes:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/

📚 Read Ksenija’s Novels:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications

📚 Ksenija on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449766.Ksenija_Popovi_

🎙️ ABOUT TRANSATLANTIC BOOKMARKS

Hosted by European novelist Ksenija Popović and American engineer Sue Graham Johnston, Transatlantic Bookmarks uses books as the starting point for conversations about culture, history, psychology, morality, politics, and the questions hiding between the lines.

New episodes every Saturday.

👉🏻 CHAPTERS

00:00 Intro
07:57 The Football World Cup
10:49 What We’re Reading
12:32 How Many Languages Do Ksenija (and Melania Trump) Speak?
19:08 The Challenges of Writing in a Foreign Language
24:57 Accents and Dialects
34:15 The Woes of Reading in Translation
41:25 The United States and the Hegemony of English
49:36 Asian Literature
55:48 Why Ksenija Talks (a Lot!)
58:15 Getting a Sense of Place Through Literature
1:03:05 The Translator from Hell
1:06:18 Translating Poetry
1:08:20 Examples of Translation Gems
1:10:07 Book Banning in the United States
1:12:44 Book Recommendations
1:14:29 Setting the Record Straight on Tolstoy