Ep 69: What’s With Baum - Book Discussion

Hey folks! It is I, Donald Wunder, flying solo for a very long-awaited discussion on Woody Allen’s first novel: What’s With Baum? — released last year in 2025.

Yup, that’s right — at the age of 89, after more than 50 films, numerous plays, collections of short stories and an autobiography, Woody Allen finally did something he’d never done before: he published his first novel.

And saying that just feels odd! It really feels like he’s always had a novel out there in some form, but nope… this is the first — and hopefully not the last!

Now, of course, us being THE WARP, we were always gonna do a podcast on it. The original plan was for myself and James to have this discussion together, as we both did with Woody’s memoir, but unfortunately… BLAME JAMES LOL… things just kept getting delayed. So I’m doing this podcast solo, and hopefully we’ll get James’s take on the book whenever he eventually completes it!

By the by — did you see our new podcast artwork, new logo and email address?

We’ve got a whole bunch of new updates as we officially begin the third and final phase of the show — stay tuned!

Anyway…  In this special solo edition of WARP, I start things off with my normal introduction before getting into my thoughts on the book. I also really wanted you guys to actually hear Woody himself talking about What’s With Baum?, but finding a substantial interview where he discusses the novel proved surprisingly difficult. So I’ve spliced together some of the best parts I could find from a much longer interview, which you’ll hear during the episode.

I then give my spoiler-free review, get our trusty podcast assistant to take the temperature of both the reader and professional critical response to the book, and finally end things with my FULL SPOILER thoughts.

I will say that I rather enjoyed the audiobook version of the novel, voiced by Woody himself, and I implore you all to check that version out. You can pretty much listen to it for free using Audible’s one-month free trial — all the relevant links are below. And looking ahead…

NEXT MONTH — SEPTEMBER 2026 — me and James are figuring out a way to do something LIVE where we can properly interact with our followers.

It may be a YouTube livestream, possibly Twitch (doubtful 😂) or I may even open up an online radio feed that anyone can jump onto.

For more information on our SEPTEMBER 2026 plans, please join our new YouTube channel, where I’ll be leaving Community updates as we figure everything ou