Special guest Jake Hurwitz (of Jake and Amir, If I Were You, and Headgum fame) joins us this week to talk about Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, one of the very earliest examples of the modern novel.
Along the way, we discuss the ins and outs of being stuck on a desert island, the many ways in which this years-old story is pretty racist, and just how long the REAL title of the book is.
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For January's bonus episode, we put together a sci-fi double feature: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin and The Forbidden Words of Margaret A. by L. Timmel Duchamp. Both are short stories of speculative fiction, and both are incredibly clever bummers.
When not despairing at the states of humanity and journalism, we lighten the mood with some horrifying mouth noises, David Brooks articles, and Andrew's campaign for Sexiest Man Alive.
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Widely regarded as one of the best, and most important books, of the last half-century, Toni Morrison's Beloved is an unflinching examination of how the past can enslave just as painfully as a yoke or a whip - and how our inability to wrestle with the past begets wrongdoing for generations to come.
Listen in as we discuss full-contact sports, the myth of the well-meaning slave-owner, hauntings, and Craig's quest to find #achairformyandrew.
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This week's book manages to combine eerily accurate biology with a Margaret Atwood-esque dystopia, a potent mixture that you need to read to believe.
We also dive deep into our mailbag, discuss the recent blizzard, and put some basketball jokes in the place you would LEAST expect.
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In A Canticle for Leibowitz, the 1959 post-apocalyptic classic by Walter M. Miller, Jr., a secluded order of future monks have dedicated themselves to preserving knowledge that predates an apocalyptic event several centuries prior. But what to do when people come asking for it? Is mankind doomed to repeat its mistakes forever?
This week we're doomed to chat about cyclical history, the first rule of improv, space monks and desert priests, and Casey Kasem's Roaring 20s.
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Good Omens was written by a sort of science fiction supergroup, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. It's one of those books where it's as fun to chew on the turns of phrase as it is to find out what happens, which is pretty amazing since it's literally about the end of the world.
Join us for a chat about humanity's innate goodness and evilness, a moratorium on Serial jokes, and some sleepy giggles.
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Odd's fish! It's time to reveal the identity of The Scarlet Pimpernel, the hero of Baroness Emma Orczy's 1908 novel.
(No seriously, we're going to tell you who he or she is.)
Other spoilers during our Reign of Terror include what finally tipped the public against Robespierre, some truly terrible accents, and secret identities stretching from Batman to Zorro.
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This month, first-ever patron guest host Asma walks us through Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, a story about upper-class people of marriageable age in 19th-century New York City.
It's not the harshest criticism that Wharton ever wrote about the upper crust (that would be The House of Mirth, published earlier), but the book still isn't overly kind to these people and their rigid hierarchies.
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What exactly IS a Cormoran Strike? Did J.K. Rowling's publisher leak her pen name to make big big bucks? To answer these questions and more, we invited on friend of the show Margaret H. Willison to talk The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling.)
Other mysteries solved include the origins of Godbucks, the power of Reddit detectives, and how much Andrew likes Bones.
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Welcome to the wild world of movie novelizations! This week, we read Todd Strasser's (mostly) faithful novelization of the hit 1990 family comedy Home Alone.
Join us for an occasionally musical discussion of Krampus, taking ideas from the page to the screen and back again, the realities of being hit in the head with an iron, and the Wet Bandits' branding issues.
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