Upper Middlebrow

Project Hail Mary Part I (REPOST)

12 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

We 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 origi...

Episode 99: More Robot Friends!: Isaac Asimov’s ‘Robot Visions’ Part 1 with Justin Reich.

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Isaac Asimov doesn’t PERFECTLY predict today’s era of anxiety and excitement around AI. But he does pretty well for somebody writing eighty years ...

Episode 98: ‘Minor League Stew,’ or John Feinstein’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name, Part II

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The second half of Feinstein’s book of minor league baseball stories and characters feels very much like the first half. The reporting is extensive,...

Episode 97: “Baseball’s Ballast,” or John Feinstein’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in The Minor Leagues of Baseball

04 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

John Feinstein’s baseball writing is as sharp as ever, the anecdotes of Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball portrayi...

Episode 96: “The Clustercus,” or David Halberstam’s The Amateurs, Part II

23 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 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 a...

Episode 95: “Don’t Catch Crabs,” or David Halbertstam’s The Amateurs, Part I

10 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We continue Bagg’s “Revenge of the Jock-Nerds” series (the last series of Season Three!), with David Halberstam’s The Amateurs, which tells th...

October 6th: Live Draft Coming Soon!

01 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On 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 ou...

Episode 94: “Chewing Glass” or Tim Krabbe’s The Rider

22 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tim Krabbe's novel is barely a novel. It is a thinly veiled autobiogrpahical essay, with fictional details and composite characters, allowing the auth...

Episode 94: “A Swiftly Flattening Universe,” or Cixin Liu’s Death’s End, Part II

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The lads wrap up Cixin Liu’s sprawling and massive Three Body Trilogy, building something that somehow seems to transcend traditional literary struc...

Episode 93: “Post Humanity Blues,” or Cixin Liu’s Death’s End Part I

18 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The final installment in Cixin Liu’s trilogy is long. And strong. We begin in the “deterrence” era, in which humans and Trisolarans enjoy a truc...

Episode 92: “It’s So Dark,” or Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest, Part II

25 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 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...

Episode 91: “All Chess Pieces, No Chess,” or Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest, Part I

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 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,...

Episode 90: “An Egg Slicer Through a Supertanker,” or Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem, Part II

26 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 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 ...

Review: John Scalzi’s “When the Moon Hits Your Eye”

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jesse Dukes offers a quick review of popular science fiction writer John Scalzi's newest novel, "When the Moon Hits Your Eye". While he initially put ...

Episode 89: “A Creeping Awareness” or Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem, Part I

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Three Body Problem begins with an inexplicable series of tragic mysteries, most notably, that physics as we know it has stopped working. Slowly, t...

Episode 88: “Creation’s Folly,” or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Part II

05 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The boys wrap up their discussion of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and come away somewhat ambivalent: this is clearly a work of importance, imaginati...

Digression: Solo Canoe Sailing on Long Lake

02 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friend of the show Justin shares another update, as well as his foray into what he terms Contemporary Victorian Episolary Short Travel Non-Fiction. Ju...

Digression, From the North Woods with Justin Reich

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We reach Upper Middlebrow education expert Justin Reich on the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, at the edge of mobile phone reception. He gives us a disp...

Episode 87: “A Dude who Made a Dude,” or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Part I

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mary Shelley was 18 when she started writing Frankenstein, which many consider the first science fiction novel. Over the next twenty years, she revise...

Episode 86: “A Study in Structure,” or Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The lads go bananas over Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes mystery, "A Study in Scarlet," published in 1887. We meet the mercurial Sherlock H...

Ep 85, “Science vs. Evil” or Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”, Part II

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bram Stoker arrays his crew of brave companions against what they've finally realized is an ancient un-dead evil. And the author seems to be elling us...

Save the Date: The Talented Mr. Ripley, Live Taping, with Jeph Wilkinson.

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Join us Thursday, May 19th at 4pm PDT / 7 PM EDT for a live viewing and taping of Anthony Minghella's 1999 masterpiece, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Dukes...

Episode 84: “Unnatural Intimacy,” or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Part I

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Neither of the lads had read Stoker’s classic gothic novel, published in 1897, and they suspect that many readers are in the same boat. Over 100 yea...

Episode 83: “I Made a Friend, and Now He’s Dead” or Liliana Calvani’s Ripley’s Game

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Chris and Jesse watched this movie together nearly 20 years ago, and it made an impression, due to John Malkovich's memorable, creepy, and charming ta...

Episode 82: “Cocaine was Invented for Times Like These,” or Roger Spotiswoode’s Ripley, Underground

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The lads get all aughty with Roger Spotiswoode’s charming and unthreatening Ripley, Underground, where Tom Ripley is a glib opportunist instead of t...

Episode 81: “LA Light, LA Darkness,” or Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye w/Professor Peter Lunenfeld

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

UCLA professor Peter Lunenfeld joins us to talk about Robert Altman's neo-noir based on Raymond Chandler's novel. Some reviewers call the film "satiri...

Episode 80: “Frames, Trains, and Burning Automobiles” or Wim Wenders The American Friend

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The American Friend is loosely based on Patricia Highsmith’s third Tom Ripley novel Ripley’s Game. But Wim Wenders plays fast and loose with the s...

Episode 79: “A Creeping Tom,” or René Clement’s Plein Soleil

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Chris and Jesse charge into our next group of works, Ripley en Filmes, beginning with René Clement's visually stunning 1960 film Plein Soleil, an ada...

Episode 78: “Our Robot Friends, Part II,” or Ted Chiang’s Exhalation

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Our favorite education researcher joins us to talk about Ted Chiang’s collection Exhalation, which includes the story “The Life Cycle of Software ...

Episode 77: “A Soup of Dreams,” or James S.A. Corey’s Leviathan Wakes, Part II

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Lads finish out James S.A. Corey's 2011 novel Leviathan Wakes, a huge success that powered The Expanse, the SyFy and then Amazon Prime space opera...

Episode 76: Philip Marlow in Space or James S.A. Corey’s Leviathan Wakes Part 1

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Leviathan Wakes is cracking good solar system space opera, combined with very strong elements of noir. The lads think that at moments, the prose is re...

Episode 75: “It Was Capitalism All Along!” or China Miéville’s The City and The City, Part II

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The lads continue to admire China Miéville's genius premise for this novel, but will the second half of the book escape the issues we've seen in the ...

Episode 74: “Our Robot Friends (and Enemies),” with Leah Jones

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We invite podcast buddy Leah Jones from Finding Favorites to follow up on a recommendation she made to Dukes last year: to watch the film M3gan. We th...

Episode 73: “Crosshatched,” or China Mieville’s The City and the City Part I

02 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The City and the City has a wholly original premise, and the pleasure of the book comes from the dawning realization of exactly what is going on betwe...

Episode 72: “Red Herringfest?” or Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest

23 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The boys hop to it, chum, and talk about Dashiell Hammett's 1929 debut novel Red Harvest. While the socialist connotations of the title never truly ma...

Episode # 71 The Night of a Thousand Crimes, or Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye” Part II.

12 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dukes and Bagg were both a little disappointed with how LONG the second half of The Long Goodbye is, with a rather Byzantine and confusing series of p...

Episode 69: “A Surfeit of Injustice,” or Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, Part I

02 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The lads kick off this series of Chris' called "Relativistic Noir" with Raymond Chandler's remarkable 1959 The Long Goodbye. Both Chris and Jesse are ...

Episode 68: “From Fiends to Friends,” or Gary Shteyngart’s Our Country Friends, Part II

21 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Gary Shteyngart’s overtly Chekhovian novel ends in a distinctly non–Chekhovian manner, with hope. However, the hope is dearly earned, as one of th...

Episode 67: Revenge of the Jock-Nerds (Season 3 DRAFT)

04 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

With a small but loyal Zoom audience, Dukes and Bagg propose TWELVE new series, and pick five, including a LISTENER'S CHOICE series. Throughout, they ...

Episode 66: “Russia With Love (Nesting Dolls),” or Gary Shteyngart’s Our Country Friends Part I

31 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Gary Schteyngart’s 2021 pandemic novel is overtly Chekhovian, and the lads love it. A group of friends and family gather in the Hudson valley during...

Episode 65: “Our Play with Louis,” or Louis Malle’s Vanya on 42nd Street

21 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Bagg and Dukes watch Louis Malle's wild 1994 film that takes, as its subject, a rehearsal of Andre Gregory's..."performance" of Anton Chekhov's Uncle ...

Episode 64: “A Cloud on a String,” or Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya

07 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Anton Chekhov's 1897 play is in many ways even more minimalistic and sad than The Cherry Orchard. Dukes once again struggles to imagine the three dime...

Uncle Baggya Previews the Live Draft

30 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

UMB Theater presents Dr. Dukesimov and his old friend Baggya, commiserating about dreary life, and looking forward to the Upper Middlebrow LIVE Draft....

Episode 63: “Cherries, Anyone?” or The National Theatre’s Production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard

23 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The National Theatre production glimmers with an excellent cast, including Zoe Wanamaker and Conleth Hill. Dukes finds that the performances and the d...

Episode 62: “To Sell or Not to Sell…Is That Really the Question?” or Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Part I

09 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The UMBers sit down with a play that Bagg has read a million times and that Dukes is visiting for the first time. The lads discuss what this work is l...

Episode 61: “Mathematical” Courage or Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner Part II

02 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After Dukes summarizes the plot of Beverly Hills Cop for Bagg, the UMBs get down to business. The second half of The Kite Runner fulfills its promises...

Episode 60: “Zero Sum Narrative,” or Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.

19 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Bagg and Dukes haven’t read this 2003 bestseller, and confess to a little snobbishness about a book that is ubiquitous at airport books stores. But…...

Episode 59: “The Bathetic Fallacy,” or Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

05 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The UMBers tackle Ray Bradbury’s 1950s classic novella and are impressed by how much influence this book has had on other writers and the intellectu...

Episode 58: “The Deus is in the Details,” or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Part II

22 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The lads marvel at Margaret Atwood’s delicate prose and “lighter than air” narrative, in which sparse poetic writing conveys an alternative futu...

Episode 57: “Highest Stakes Scrabble,” or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Part I

11 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Handmaid’s Tale is set in a speculative near future that feels disturbingly familiar. The lads marvel at Atwood’s ability to vividly describe ...

Episode 56: “Philosophial Poetry,” or Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

04 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Bagg and Dukes finally get around to reading Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, and both are impressed by Morrison's craft, purpose, and ability to keep ...

“The Curious Case of the Beard and the Mustache,” or our final Ripley coda

13 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We spend a few final minutes with Steve Zaillian's Ripley, wondering if the resemblance between Inspector Ravini and Peter Seller's Inspector Clouseau...

Episode 54: “A Brilliant Disguise,” or Steve Zaillian’s Ripley, Part II

06 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dukes and Bagg wonder if Tom Ripley’s “disguise” (as himself) is meant to be as clumsy as it appears and if the show is wandering too close to t...

Episode 53: “Watch Out for Busts,” or Steve Zaillian’s Ripley

23 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Bagg and Dukes return to the source material that launched Upper Middle Brow, in the production of Ripley, directed by Steve Zaillian and (quixoticall...

TEASER: Steve Zallian’s (and Netflix’s) Ripley

13 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dukes and Bagg are taking a break from books to talk about Netflix’s Ripley created by Steve Zailian. Having watched the first episode, it’s obvio...

Digression: Black Chicago’s Influence on Everything with Arionne NettlesDigression:

02 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Arionne Nettles joins to talk about her new book We Are The Culture: Black Chicago's Influence On Everything, as well as to recommend a couple of nove...

REPOST: Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, Part II

29 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On our FOURTH EVER episode, Dukes and Bagg explore why they have different emotional responses to Tom Ripley, and how Patricia Highsmith might have ra...

Episode 51: The Talented Mr. Ripley, Part I (REPOST)

18 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Netflix’s new Ripley series has critics musing on why Tom Ripley is such a persistent character in our day and age. Patricia Highsmith created a cha...

Episode 50: “Nothing is More Important,” or Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, Part II

08 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Sympathizer is brought to a powerful, if occasionally puzzling conclusion, with the narrator returning to his home country for a series of misadve...

Digression: Underdogs, Comebacks, and Seafood Substitutes, or Baseball Movies with Jason Herbert

28 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Jason Herbert, from the Historians at the Movies community and podcast, joins us to talk about favorite baseball films. We share an uncomfortable mome...

Episode 48: “So Long, and Thanks for All The Squid,” or Viet Than Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, Part I

18 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s narrator tells us right off the bat that he’s a sympathizer. He can see any issue from “both sides,” he claims, a dubious ...

Digression: Literary Theologies with Beatrice Marovich

04 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Theologian Beatrice Marovich reacts to our discussions of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, exploring the relationship between theology and fic...

Episode 46: “Yelling ‘Racism’ in a ‘Post-racist’ World,” or Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, Part II

22 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The second half of The Sellout does feature a MacGuffin and resolution of sorts, although the plot is minimal compared to the satire and world buildin...

Episode 44: “Faintly Dickensian?” or Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, Part I

12 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Chris and Jesse are thrown into Paul Beatty's 2015 Man Booker Prize Winner The Sellout, because this novel seems to try to take the upper hand with it...

Episode 44: “Put On Your Seatbelt,” or Alexander Payne’s Sideways

01 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A rebroadcast of our Live recap and discussion of Alexander Payne’s Sideways (2004). The UMB’s admire Miles’ Saab, la costa perdida, and enjoy t...

Digression: Demented Whimsy with Joshua Mohr.

25 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Writer Joshua Mohr joins us to talk shop about his recent book Farsickness. The idea began with watching his daughter and her friends create short dra...

Episode 42: “Waiting for Prima,” or Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci’s Big Night

18 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The UMBs went in expecting a quietly great film, and their expectations were exceeded. Big Night is at times BIG and LOUD, even though the characters ...

Coming Soon: A Live Discussion of Sideways!

08 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On Thursday, January 11th, join Upper Middlebrow for a live (independent) watch party. We'll all watch the movie starting at 4:05PM PST, and then our ...

Episode 41: “Borrowing the Bigness,” or Sandra Nettlebeck’s Mostly Martha

01 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sandra Nettlebeck’s 2001 film is beautifully shot and carries its narrative in a bucket effectively, following its fiery protagonist into the thicke...

Episode 40: “All’s Well That Tastes Well,” Or Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman

21 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ang Lee’s 1994 family drama/comedy is a sprawling epic, set in 1990s Taipei, about an aging chef, his three daughters, and the big themes of love, l...

Episode 39: “A Fistful of Noodles,” or Juzo Itami’s Tampopo

11 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Juzo Itami’s brilliant 1986 film combines elements of Greek theater, the American Western, vaudeville, silent movies, French Noir, and other eclecti...

Episode 38: “Michael a l’Orange,” or Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

30 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Peter Greenaway’s film feels like an opera. It even features some operatic singing, but more to the point, its pleasures are more sensual than story...

Episode 37: “Maxing Out the Turtle Budget,” or Axel Gabriel’s Babette’s Feast

20 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Axel Gabriel’s 1986 Danish film deservingly makes many people’s Foodie Top 10s, and we can see why. We LOVE this film, which not only shows some h...

Digression II: Foodie Films Preview with Chewing host Monica Eng

16 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The UMBers sit down with Monica Eng, co-host of the podcast Chewing, to discuss our upcoming "Foodie Films" series. Monica and Jesse educate Chris abo...

Season Two Trailer!

13 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We are almost one year old! Our first episode, on Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, launched almost exactly a year ago, and we are so excited to be headin...

Episode 35: “DON’T Save the Cat!” or Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, Part II

06 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The UMBs have ANOTHER thorough conversation about the novel’s sexual politics, and Mandella’s low key homophobia, asking whether the protagonist’...

Episode 34: “Einstein, Hemingway, and Vietnam,” or Joe Haldeman’s Forever War, Part I

26 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Forever War is widely regarded as an analogy for America’s involvement in Vietnam, and an anti-war novel, but we’re not so sure it’s firmly ...

Episode 33: “Real Sheep Don’t Buy Themselves,” or Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Part II

16 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rick Deckard spends much of the second half pondering Rachael Rosen’s girlish legs, and his growing feelings of empathy to the Androids, before deci...

Episode 32: “Keeping up with the Jetsons,” or Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Part I

05 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Fill out our LISTENER SURVEY!! Dick’s famous novel begins… weird. And the weirdness continues. Dick orients his readers to a world in which fal...

Episode 31: “Frogmarched to the Head,” or William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Part II

25 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Chris and Jesse are in the same meatspace in Maine, but still talking about cyberspace in…space. As the two microphone jockeys wrap up William Gibso...

DIGRESSION I: Pas de Joie de Neuromancer

18 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Our friend Lindsay Lajoie saw that we were considering William Gibson’s Neuromancer on the podcast, and admitted on her Instagram that it’s one of...

Episode 29: “Blind Animal Panic,” or William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Part I

11 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dukes and Bagg return to William Gibson’s groundbreaking 1984 novel, that popularized the cyberpunk genre. The reviews are mixed. There are moments ...

Episode 28: “Tales of Teachers,” with Educator Justin Reich

28 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As students, parents, and teachers happily (or wrenchingly) return to school, we invite our resident education specialist, Justin Reich, to talk about...

Episode 27: “Don’t Believe your Eyes,” or Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist, Part II

14 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Whitehead’s neo-noir crashes to a climax, but does it stick the landing? In the end, the Dukes and Bagg wonder if the weight of the the author’s a...

Episode 26: “Uplift!” or Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist

31 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The lads are quite impressed with Colson Whitehead’s debut novel, which packs an allegory about race, class, and futurism into a unique take on hard...

Episode 25: “Deus Ex Rockina,” or N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, Part II

17 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jemisin weaves three major threads into one in the second half of The Fifth Season, but the lads take issue with some of the convenient plot wrapping....

Episode 24: “How to Make a Pangea Omelette,” or N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season

06 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Fifth Season is… a lot. Fantasy? Sure. Sci-fi? Maybe. Allegory? Definitely. The first half introduces us to three apparently different protagon...

Episode 23: “In Search of the Perfect Read, Part III,” or “Baseball, Massholes, and Interspecies Dorking”

26 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We hear from you! We share listener summer read recommendations in the form of voicemails and texts. Dukes + Bagg each share a summer reading recommen...

Episode 22: “In Search of the Perfect Read, Part II” or “Summer Reading for Grown Ups.”

15 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We’re joined by two journalists and avid readers, Susie An and Arionne Nettles, both former colleagues of Jesse’s from WBEZ in Chicago. Susie and ...

Episode 21: “In Search of the Perfect Read, Part I” or “Summer Reading for Teens”.

05 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We’re joined by two veteran high school English teachers, each with a summer reading recommendation for a teenager. We talk about about how speculat...

Episode 20: “The Eye of the Speculator,” or Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Part II

25 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lauren Olamina leaves her ruined home in the second half of Octavia E. Butler's 1993 novel/theology document/allegory/philosophical text, heading for ...

Episode 19: “A Wizard of Earthseed,” or Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Part I

15 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Parable of the Sower purports to be a work of speculative fiction, but Bagg points out that “speculative” is in the eye of the speculator. Dukes c...

Episode 18: “No Apocalypse,No Foul,” Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary, Part II

04 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dukes and Bagg’s challenge each other to recap the second half in three and a half sentences before diving into what makes Weir’s hard sci-fi nove...

Episode 17: “Bromancing the Stone Carapace,” or Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary

24 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Many many many many writers take on “hard” science fiction, and get lost in the science, leaving behind such niceties as plot, character developme...

Episode 16: “Big Claws! Big MECHANICAL Claws!” or Jonathan Lethem’s The Arrest, Part II

13 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jonathan Lethem’s climax is fun, exciting, and surprises both Bagg and Dukes by not requiring much action from its already largely inactive protagon...

Episode 15: “Big Tank! Big NUCLEAR Tank!” Jonathan Lethem’s The Arrest, Part I

03 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jonathan Lethem imagines not so much an apocalypse, but a kind of slow pause of most (but not all) advanced technologies, he calls “The Arrest”. D...

Episode 14: “The Impervious Battleship Egan,” or A Visit From the Goon Squad, Part II

23 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the second half of Goon Squad, many of the characters end up…surprisingly OK, especially when you consider their struggles and self-destructive c...

Episode 13: “Time the Ravager” or Jennifer Egan’s 2010 A Visit From the Goon Squad, Part I

13 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

After a camel cricket update (!), Jesse and Chris try to untangle the conga line of affection and destruction that forms the structure of Egan's remar...

Episode 12: “Hitler’s Springtime + Ziegfried’s Follies,” or Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, Part III

03 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Play along with Dukes and Bagg as we play Neal Stephenson Bingo. We find that the final third does pick up a bit, with Goto Dengo’s story in particu...

Episode 11: “The Utopia of Fresno” or Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, Part II

24 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dukes and Bagg wonder about the length of the middle section of the book, which as far as they can tell, only establishes one major plot point. And th...