Huh. Have you ever wondered what a sandwich sounds like?

Not much to it, is there?

Unless, of course, it's a Walker's sandwich.

Mmm, that is good.

Now that's what Asani should sound like.

Go all crisp in with walkers.

Delicious.

Hi there, I'm Jason Gautz and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast.

We are all of us held together by words, and when words go, nothing much remains.

That's Martin Amos, writing about his father, Kingsley,

toward the end of his life. And it's true, of course, isn't it? But how many of us are ready

to locate ourselves in the language that we have at our command? I guess all writers live by the

pen, or maybe the pixel these days. But like two of his literary heroes, Shakespeare and

Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Amos belongs to what in every generation feels like a vanishing breed,

the writer with an almost cabalistic reverence for the power of words themselves.

In Amos' novels and essays, this often translates into intense, photographic lucidity.

Other times we get the verbal shiv, a wickedly hilarious twist of the knife in the gut of something

bloated and stupid, like the present American moment.

His newest collection of essays is The Rub of Time, Bello, Nabakov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump, Essays and Reportage, 1994 to 2017.

Its subjects include porn, John Travolta, tennis, Saul Bello, and the strange business of literary interviews like this one.

Welcome to think again, Martin.

Thank you.

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