A.A. Milne's famous bear is almost ninety years old. The first collection of Winnie-the-Pooh stories was published in 1926, yet many of us first traveled to the Hundred Acre Wood via the many cartoons and movies released by Disney.

In this week's episode, we discuss the first appearances of all your old favorites: Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, and more. Tune in to learn about Bears of No Brains At All, sad birthday parties, and how to save a Piglet in a rainstorm.​

Max Brooks' World War Z, soon to be a not-awesome-looking motion picture, takes an interesting approach to the zombie apocalypse story: it's told through interviews with multiple survivors of a global conflict, rather than viewing an outbreak through the eyes of a handful of people.

Brooks also uses the story to comment on American warmongering, deep-seated conflicts between countries, and the psychological impact of war. Even if you don't like zombie fiction, this one's worth a try.​

Whether or not you’ve read The Elements of Style, the writing rules and techniques you learned in grade school likely came from Strunk and White’s “little book.” 

Craig had never read the book, and he thought chatting up Andrew – who gets paid to put words on the Internet – about S&W’s various axioms might prove entertaining.

Join us as we (dis)agree on a few key rules, chat incessantly about segues/segways, and tie ourselves in linguistic knots.

When you talk about a witch-hunt, you aren't normally referring to sane, procedural, and fair trials. You're talking about a fear-driven investigation driven by suspicions rather than facts, where personal agendas can be more influential than ​alibis and evidence.

That's the thrust of Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible, which Andrew read this week. We also talk about how the events of the play reflect the then-current Red Scare, and how witch-hunt mentality continues to persist even today.

Ernest J. Gaines' Pulitzer-nominated novel A Lesson Before Dying​ takes place in 1940s Jim Crow Louisiana, where a black schoolteacher is asked to visit a young man on death row.

Similar to last week's episode, the discuss leans toward the serious - racism, cultural divisions, and one's duty to his community - but our fervent desire to remain politically correct should help lighten the mood. ​

Breaking a three-show "books from circa 1900" streak, Andrew tackles Jeffrey Eugenides' Pulitzer Prize winning Middlesex​​, a tale of love, incest, time-jumping, emigration, and hermaphroditism.

Like the book itself, this show tackles some fairly heavy topics while still keeping things light and conversational. Join us for a discussion of duality, transformation, and just why "normal" isn't really a thing.​

You've probably seen the movie, but have you read the book? L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz certainly follows the same basic pattern as the (much later) Judy Garland film, but there are lots of differences.

Did you know how the Tin Man came to be? Oh man. Just you wait.

What makes a good ghost story? If you said creepy children, gothic architecture unreliable narrators, then Henry James has you covered The Turn of the Screw​. 

This week Andrew mangles words, Craig gets lost in James' Victorian prose, and the two solve the mystery surrounding the ghosts of Bly.

Good science fiction uses fantastical characters, locations, and technology to comment intelligently on problems that we face in the real world, but the best science fiction can also do this in a suspenseful, entertaining, adventuresome way. ​​​Frank Herbert's Dune gets most of the way there, but Andrew can't help but wish he had read it for the first time as a teenager instead of an adult.