JPR Music

For Brandi Carlile, solitude is overrated

XPN | By Raina Douris,

Kimberly Junod

Published October 24, 2025 at 8:02 PM PDT

You need to learn to be alone with your thoughts. You need to be able to entertain yourself. You need to take solo time to recharge. Or do you?

As far as Brandi Carlile is concerned, solitude isn't all it's cracked up to be. Carlile has just released a new album called Returning to Myself and today, she'll talk about how being alone after a very busy few years working with other artists like Joni Mitchell, Elton John and Lucius helped her realize just how much she loves being around other people.

This new album was a team effort with contributions from The National's Aaron Dessner, Justin Vernon and Andrew Watt. We talk about making the album, plus Carlile opens up about her friendship with Mitchell and how she keeps it together when the world starts to feel like too much.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. Our digital producer is Miguel Perez. World Cafe's engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

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Raina Douris

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She is also involved with Canada's highest music honors: Since 2017, she has hosted the Polaris Music Prize Gala, for which she is also a jury member, and she has also been a jury member for the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.

Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).