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Overdue
We go out in the wilderness for this month's bonus episode, living off the land and making friends with animals and playing homemade flutes with our new bestest buddy Bando. We also talk about our secrets, the ways an adult should respond when presented with a 12-year-old who appears to be homeless, and a whole lot more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Coming-of-age novels are a dime a dozen, but Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret is one of the best known. It's such a significant work that we invited our pal Margaret H. Willison back to help us through it—she is, obviously, an expert on all things Margaret. This week we talk about our changing bodies, running for no reason, and some truly horrifying bra shopping experiences. Enjoy!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Margaret Edson's rewarding play Wit (sometimes spelled W;t) is not light, boulevard comedy fare. Inspired by Edson's time in a Washington, D.C. research hospital, the play tackles death from a number of angles including cancer treatments and 17th-century poetry. But what makes it such an enduring entry into the modern canon is how Edson handles these subjects with surprising humor and, well, wit. (Sorry.) Discussion points include legacy, favorite teachers from our childhood, and what we lose as we fight to stay alive.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Most people familiar with C.S. Lewis' work will have come to him via the Chronicles of Narnia, a series of fantasy books that's defined for better or worse by its heavy-handed Biblical allegory. Till We Have Faces, Lewis' last novel, certainly deals with some of the same themes. But it's also a retelling of the classic Cupid and Psyche myth that originally appeared in Apuleius' The Golden Ass in the late 2nd century. Join us as we talk about the myth retold, Lewis' Christian roots, and what happens when Heaven and Hell host the Olympics. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is a modernist classic. Rich in lyrical prose and unrelenting streams of conciousness, Lighthouse set a standard for peering into characters' heads and hearts and relaying the contents back to the reader. It also closely mirrors portions of Woolf's life - particularly her summers in St. Ives and the devastating loss of her mother at a young age. Discussion points this week include bag shoes, second helpings of soup, and the difficulties of conveying via podcast this book's lasting appeal. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
YOU: An intrepid spaceboy, graduating at the top of your class at Space Academy. YOUR MISSION: Find and destroy the evil space vampire at any cost! Our fourth Choose Your Own Adventure outing takes us into deep space and beyond—join us as we hijack advanced spacecraft, evade arrest, and drift through the vast inky void of space. Will we catch that nefarious SPACE VAMPIRE? There's only one way to find out!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Harlan Ellison is a man whose reputation precedes him. His long and storied career as a sci-fi and speculative fiction writer is peppered with curmudgeonly diatribes and public incidents, many as interesting as the best of the thousand or so stories he churned out across books, television and film. His classic story A Boy and His Dog takes quite a dim view of a post-WW3 apocalypse, so buckle up for another week spent discussing the depth's of humanity's depravity. In an attempt to lighten the mood, we also talk about dog literacy and allow Andrew's cat Newman to make a cameo.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
What would you do for a better life? Where would you go? Who would you leave behind? And what does "better" mean, anyway? Reyna Grande poses these questions with great poise and power in her debut novel, Across a Hundred Mountains. This week, we talk border crossings, panda bears, Chicana feminism, and the ingenuity of Days of Our Lives.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Cormac McCarthy is a writer in the vein of Hemingway or Faulkner, a person whose prose you can spot from a mile away. That can be a good or a bad thing, as we discuss in our show on his 1985 book Blood Meridian.Join us for a discussion of scalping, war, and the special Internet that only Cormac McCarthy knows about.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
What better way to discuss Diana Gabaldon's genre-straddling, time-traveling historical fiction novel Outlander than by confining ourselves to the same room? Live (not really) from Craig's kitchen, we're happy to bring you an episode chockablock with bad Scottish accents, interdimensional romance, and plenty of Highland sex tips.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Hey, jabronis! This week we finally read our first Brontë book, thanks to one of our Patreon supporters! Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is considered to be "one of the first sustained feminist books," and though many of the sensibilities of early-to-mid-19th-century England are present here, we see the typical marriage and courtship rituals through a darker lens.Contemporary readers were scandalized by the things this book depicted, including but not limited to (1) a woman leaving a man and (2) a man being a loutish alcoholic and cheating on his wife. Join us for a discussion of all that plus some tips on safe high-fiving.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Craig tackles Jorge Luis Borges this week, and what results is a pile of conversations about fake novels and encyclopedias, WIkipedia hoaxes, the way that reviews work, and thoughts on which fast food franchises make the best (and worst) road trips. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
This is our first monthly bonus episode, brought to you by our supporters on Patreon! If you want these shows one week earlier than everyone else, visit patreon.com/overduepod for details.It's Children's Book Week again, and just like last year we're using it as an excuse to read things that Lil' Craig and Lil' Andrew never got around to reading. Craig reads Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater, a story of a negligent husband and father who lets penguins into his house. Andrew read The Borrowers, the tale of teeny tiny people who swipe things they don't think you'll miss when you aren't looking. Kids' books can take you to some weird places.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
Why do we let the messy implications of our beliefs keep us from shouting them the rooftops?Why is it difficult for a movement like feminism to be both strong and inclusive?Why don't chickens feature more prominently in the Nativity?Friend of the show Katherine Fritz joins us this week to answer these questions and discuss Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist. This 2014 bestseller features selected essays from throughout Gay's career, which includes pieces on The Help, the Internet outrage cycle, and the need for more diverse voices.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Overdue
At this point we've read a lot of novels, but we haven't tried to write our own just yet. Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman's 2008 anti-guidebook How Not To Write A Novel has shown us a lot of the stuff we should try to avoid if we ever decide to put pen to paper.We also devote a substantial chunk of this week's episode to listener mail from our Looking for Alaska episode, specifically responses to our questions about why people read young adult fiction well into regular adulthood. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.