Truth and Lies with James Frey

Fail Better with David Duchovny

Grace Cohen-Chen

Society & Culture

4.6 • 534 Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In his aimless youth, the author James Frey yearned to be the Sex Pistols of literature. Then he learned to be careful what you wish for. His memoir, A Million Little Pieces, shot to the top of bestseller lists, thanks in part to Oprah's endorsement. Then fact-checkers unmasked its fabrications, and James found himself being more of an outcast than he’d planned for. Nearly 20 years later, when the line between fact and fiction is more blurred than ever, Frey may seem like more of a pioneer than a pariah. Together, we reflect on what it was like to face and overcome this public pain, and the inspiration behind his new novel Next to Heaven, a provocative murder mystery skewering the wealthy New England town he calls home. Fail Better is now on YouTube! Watch this episode here. Follow me on Instagram at @davidduchovny. Find more video podcasts on our YouTube channel. Stay up to date with Lemonada on X, Facebook and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia. Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our shows and get bonus content. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and every other Lemonada show, go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's morning in New York.
0:02.8	Oh, God.
0:06.2	Hey, everybody.
0:07.3	I'm Mandy Patinkin.
0:08.7	And I'm Catherine Grady.
0:09.8	And we have a new podcast.
0:11.7	It's called Don't Listen to Us.
0:14.1	Many of you've asked for our advice.
0:16.1	Tell me, what is wrong with you people?
0:19.2	Don't listen to us.
0:20.3	Our Take It or Leave a Adv Device show every Wednesday, out now.
0:24.7	A Lemonada Media Original.
0:37.0	I'm David Dukovni, and this is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are.
0:44.0	James Fry is a writer whose best-selling memoir, A Million Little Pieces, caused quite a stir in the early 2000s.
0:51.1	The book, which details his struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, was an initial
0:54.9	success. That says a lot because it was rejected 17 times before it got picked up by a publisher.
1:00.8	Sales then skyrocketed after it was added to Oprah's book club, although I think he says
1:05.4	in this interview that it was doing quite well even before that. James then found himself
1:09.3	in the middle of a controversy in 2006
1:11.5	after being accused of fabricating parts of the memoir, which he later owned up to and publicly
1:16.6	apologized, and we get into that. We get into that. And his take on that is strong, and I think
1:24.5	interesting. Stay tuned for that. James is no stranger to failure. He's pretty
	...

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