Episode 05: Literature for Aliens and Being Perfect
President Jimmy Carter’s death reminds us of the Voyager spacecraft, specifically its “golden record” — a recording of scientific information about Earth and some of our planet’s greatest art. But it has no literature on it! Nate and Mason conspire to add some works of fiction for when aliens stumble upon Voyager’s husk floating in the distant galactic reaches. Nate also reviews Michael Schur’s How to Be Perfect, in which the The Good Place creator explores different schools of philosophical ethics in his quest to become a better person. We can relate.
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President Jimmy Carter’s death reminds us of the Voyager spacecraft, specifically its “golden record” — a recording of scientific information about Earth and some of our planet’s greatest art. But it has no literature on it! Nate and Mason conspire to add some works of fiction for when aliens stumble upon Voyager’s husk floating in the distant galactic reaches. Nate also reviews Michael Schur’s How to Be Perfect, in which the The Good Place creator explores different schools of philosophical ethics in his quest to become a better person. We can relate.
Works Cited this episode:
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
Twilight, Stephenie Meyer
Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
Contact, Carl Sagan
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss
Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss
Fox in Socks, Dr. Seuss
Bridgerton series, Julia Quinn
The Shawshank Redemption, dir. Frank Darabont
The Magic Flute, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
The Art of War, Sun Tzu
Galaxy Quest, dir. Dean Parisot
King Lear, William Shakespeare
How to be Perfect, Michael Schur
Aristotle’s Ethics
The Apology of Socrates, Plato
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, dir. Ed Solomon
The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’Oh of Homer, William Irwin, Mark T. Conrad and Aeon J. Skoble, editors
Chicken Soup for the Soul, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, editors
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
Episode 04: Erin Lyndal Martin
Writer Erin Lyndal Martin joins the show to inform us that Saddam Hussein wrote a romance novel, but only after we wondered if Joe Rogan could do it. Other topics include whether men should read more literature (spoiler: yes) and whether doing so would make the world a better place (debatable). Also, what to do about books that are capital-I Important but maybe not so great?
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Writer Erin Lyndal Martin joins the show to inform us that Saddam Hussein wrote a romance novel, but only after we wondered if Joe Rogan could do it. Other topics include whether men should read more literature (spoiler: yes) and whether doing so would make the world a better place (debatable). Also, what to do about books that are capital-I Important but maybe not so great?
Some of Erin’s recent work includes “If Sylvia Plath wrote ‘Wild Geese’ ” in Electric Literature and “Carillon” in Maudlin House. Visit her at erinlyndalmartin.com.
Works Cited this episode:
“After the Election” by Sarah Messer
Angels in America by Tony Kushner
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Molly by Blake Butler
Ulysses by James Joyce
Boring Girls by Sara Taylor
Don Quixote by Kathy Acker
Great Expectations by Kathy Acker
“The Promise of American Poetry” by Bob Hicok
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
Confronting the Presidents: No Spin [sic] Assessments from Washington to Biden by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
Zabibah and the King by Anonymous (attributed to Saddam Hussein)
A Message to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Ep. 03: Dan Eastman
We were joined by author and poet Dan Eastman for a discussion about confessional poetry, second-person POV, and the best memes. I ask you: should poems mention Facebook? P.S. We didn’t even have a name for the podcast yet when we recorded this one.
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We were joined by author and poet Dan Eastman for a discussion about confessional poetry, second-person POV, and the best memes. I ask you: should poems mention Facebook? P.S. We didn’t even have a name for the podcast yet when we recorded this one.
Dan Eastman is the author of Watertown and the second-person POV story “Parris Enflames.”
Works Cited this episode:
Pudd’nhead Wilson, Mark Twain
“Winesburg, Ohio,” Sherwood Anderson
A Nightmare on Elm Street, dir. Wes Craven
Human Acts, Han Kang
Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney
“Orientation,” Daniel Orozco
Slacker, dir. Richard Linklater
The Choose Your Own Adventure series
“Cormac McCarthy’s Secret Muse Breaks Her Silence After Half a Century,” Vanity Fair, by Vincenzo Barney
Dutch, Edmund Morris
“A Debate Recap with Song, Dance, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt,” The New York Times, video by The Gregory Brothers
Natural Born Killers, dir. Quentin Tarantino
The People vs. Larry Flynt, dir. Miloš Forman
Episode 02: MFA Authors
Or: Can Nate and Mason guess whether an author has an MFA simply by reading the first page of their novel?
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Nate and Mason both have MFAs, but do they go around telling everyone and demanding book deals because of it? Well, yes, if you’re offering. But anyway, a social media firestorm about a take about Sally Rooney not having an MFA got us thinking: Are They Good and Should Anyone Care?
Works Cited this episode:
“A Roon with a View,” Bookforum, Brandon Taylor
Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
Colored Television, Danzy Senna
“How has the MFA Changed the Contemporary Novel?,” The Atlantic, Richard Jean So and Andrew Piper
The Killer is Dying, James Sallis
All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
“Flings,” Justin Taylor
In Five Years, Rebecca Serle
Blade, dir. Stephen Norrington
“Liking, Wanting, and the Incentive-Sensitization Theory of Addiction,” American Psychologist, Kent C. Berridge and Terry E. Robinson
The Zone of Interest, dir. Jonathan Glazer
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), created by Joss Whedon
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Shawshank Redemption, dir. Frank Darabont
Pulp Fiction, dir. Quentin Tarantino
Billy Madison, dir. Tamra Davis
A Strangeness in my Mind, Orhan Pamuk
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Memento, dir. Christopher Nolan
Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy
Henry Danger, created by Dan Schneider
Ninjago, The Lego Group
Episode 01: Is Reading Good?
We hit the big topic in our first episode. And: why are there so many orphans in YA novels?
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Specifically, is reading fiction inherently good, as well as instrumentally good (meaning, it’s good for some other reason, like making you smarter)? We grapple with this, mostly by talking. Also: Why do so many YA novels use orphans as protagonists?
Works Cited in this episode:
The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
Impossible Creatures, Katherine Rundell
“Can 35 Million Book Buyers be Wrong? Yes,” Harold Bloom, The Wall Street Journal
“I said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let me Explain,” Martin Scorsese, The New York Times
The Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Pricksongs and Descants, Robert Coover
Moonrise Kingdom, dir. Wes Anderson
Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
“The Pleasures of Tragedy,” Susan Feagin, American Philosophical Quarterly
Prisoners, dir. Denis Villeneuve
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
“Lemon of Troy,” The Simpsons
The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
Finding Nemo, dir. Andrew Stanton
Bambi, Walt Disney
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
The Hooded Hawk Mystery, Franklin W. Dixon