About this podcast
A podcast in which we discuss high-craft works of popular culture
Episodes
The newest 20 of 118 episodes
- Episode 106: “The Wages of Spin,” or John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle · Season 4 Episode 6Chris and Jesse devour Steinbeck's 1936 novel In Dubious Battle, which follows a group of communist agitators who try to establish a strike in California's Torgas Valley. The…
- Episode 104: ‘Everything but the Squeal,’ or Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle · 60 min · Episode 104Upton Sinclair spent about seven months in the Chicago stockyards, dressed as worker, making notes about poor working conditions, corrupt bosses, unsanitary conditions, and…
- Episode 104: “Get Me The Graduate II!” or Larry Peerce’s 1969 Film Goodbye, Columbus · 44 min · Season 4 Episode 5The lads follow up Phillip Roth's 1959 eponymous novel with Larry Peerce's 1969 film version. The film was the 10th highest grossing film of 1969, which is quite an achievement…
- Episode 103: “A Pleasurable Disgust,” or Philip Roth’s Goodbye Columbus · 1 h 9 min · Season 4 Episode 4Roth's 1959 novella begins with an account of the protagonist, Neil Klugman watching the lovely Brenda swim while he holds her glasses. Immediately, we're transported to the…
- Episode 102: “The Biggest Iceberg in Film,” or Claire Denis’ Beau Travail · 57 min · Season 4 Episode 3Chris and Jesse watch one of Chris' favorite films: Claire Denis' 1999 masterpiece Beau Travail, starring Denis Lavant and Colin Gregoire. The film is plot-light but…
- Episode 101: ‘What Thrums Below,’ or Herman Melville’s Billy Budd · 59 min · Episode 101Herman Melville's Novella Billy Budd, Sailor was not published until 1924, thirty-three years after his death. The literary world was in the midst of the Melville revival…
- Episode 100: “Dutiful Dreams,” or Project Hail Mary 2026 Film · 54 min · Season 4 Episode 100Chris and Jesse are BACK! And the lads return with the first episode in Chris' series called "This Came From That?" where we consider both a piece of source material and its…
- Project Hail Mary Part I (REPOST) · 1 h 14 min · Season 3 Episode 32We go all the way back to episode 17, in honor of the release of the major motion picture, starring Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace. Our part 1 was originally titled Bromancing the…
- Episode 99: More Robot Friends!: Isaac Asimov’s ‘Robot Visions’ Part 1 with Justin Reich. · 54 min · Season 3 Episode 31Isaac Asimov doesn’t PERFECTLY predict today’s era of anxiety and excitement around AI. But he does pretty well for somebody writing eighty years ago. In this 1990 collection of…
- Episode 98: ‘Minor League Stew,’ or John Feinstein’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name, Part II · 52 minThe second half of Feinstein’s book of minor league baseball stories and characters feels very much like the first half. The reporting is extensive, and Feinstein has a knack for…
- Episode 97: “Baseball’s Ballast,” or John Feinstein’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in The Minor Leagues of Baseball · 59 min · Season 3 Episode 29John Feinstein’s baseball writing is as sharp as ever, the anecdotes of Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball portraying a desperate but determined…
- Episode 96: “The Clustercus,” or David Halberstam’s The Amateurs, Part II · 1 h 22 min · Season 3 Episode 27In the second half of Halberstam's nonfiction account of the 1984 sculling Olympic trials, we go to the Olympics, to see how Biglow, Lewis, Wood, et al fare at the world's most…
- Episode 95: “Don’t Catch Crabs,” or David Halbertstam’s The Amateurs, Part I · 1 h 13 min · Season 3 Episode 26We continue Bagg’s “Revenge of the Jock-Nerds” series (the last series of Season Three!), with David Halberstam’s The Amateurs, which tells the story of four men competing for…
- October 6th: Live Draft Coming Soon! · 2 minOn October 6th, Dukes and Bagg invite you to join us for the Season 4 Live Draft. We will tape an episode live on a video call, and you can join as our loyal live audience…
- Episode 94: “Chewing Glass” or Tim Krabbe’s The Rider · 1 h 15 min · Season 3 Episode 25Tim Krabbe's novel is barely a novel. It is a thinly veiled autobiogrpahical essay, with fictional details and composite characters, allowing the author to navigate his story…
- Episode 94: “A Swiftly Flattening Universe,” or Cixin Liu’s Death’s End, Part II · 1 h 27 min · Season 3 Episode 25The lads wrap up Cixin Liu’s sprawling and massive Three Body Trilogy, building something that somehow seems to transcend traditional literary structures and devices. We look…
- Episode 93: “Post Humanity Blues,” or Cixin Liu’s Death’s End Part I · 1 h 22 min · Season 3 Episode 24The final installment in Cixin Liu’s trilogy is long. And strong. We begin in the “deterrence” era, in which humans and Trisolarans enjoy a truce enforced by mutually ensured…
- Episode 92: “It’s So Dark,” or Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest, Part II · 1 h 29 min · Season 3 Episode 23The boys carve through the second half of Cixin Liu’s sprawling, imaginative, and haunting The Dark Forest. Bagg has questions about how much we can trust our author and the…
- Episode 91: “All Chess Pieces, No Chess,” or Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest, Part I · 56 min · Episode 22The premise of the Dark Forest, that Humanity must make a secret plan stored in our hidden thoughts to defeat an enemy that can spy on our every move, is wonderful. But the lads…
- Episode 90: “An Egg Slicer Through a Supertanker,” or Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem, Part II · Season 3 Episode 21The lads host their first UMB Official Sports Update as Jesse manages to survive a weekend of ultimate frisbee before getting into the second half of Cixin Liu’s sprawling and…
