Podcast Episodes

Writing Back: Guerilla Texts, BTS, and Gaye

Is that blank page paralyzing your activism?

Is your irony a mask for your complicity? We’re using William James and David Foster Wallace to inter…

2 months, 2 weeks ago

The Ethics of Reading: Frictional Thoughts

Is your reading just an “escape”??

Your favorite “escape” read might be a gated community for your conscience. Today, we interrogate the “Catharsi…

2 months, 3 weeks ago

Roman Plow, Sovereign Tree: Seneca and Zhuangzi

Can Stoicism answer our dilemma?

Is the suffering child a product of a world that demands every second and every soul be “useful”  to the state? B…

3 months ago

The Original Omelas: The Case of the Animals vs. Man

And when the child cannot speak for itself?

Humanity’s first global lawsuit! In this 10th-century Islamic fable, animals put mankind on trial for …

3 months, 1 week ago

The Tyranny of Chance: Assis, Borges, and the Randomized Bargain

We’ve turned the basement into a casino!

A man who turns to fortune-telling to assuage his conscience. A society that chooses its victims through …

3 months, 2 weeks ago

Waypoint – “The Fortune Teller”

10 April 2026

Waypoint - “The Fortune Teller” by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis is perhaps the greatest writer of B…

3 months, 3 weeks ago

Failures of Imagination: We and Flatland

The “Hideous Bargain” is no longer just about one child’s pain . . .

We investigate the “Euclidean Mind” that seeks to flatten our messy humanity …

3 months, 4 weeks ago

Utopia’s Spare Parts: Star Trek & Ishiguro

The “Hideous Bargain” moves from metaphor to the operating table.

In this episode, we let loose the bonds of metaphor in Le Guin’s “Omelas” and mee…

4 months, 1 week ago

The Architecture of the Dungeon: Toni Morrison and the 13th Amendment

The Omelas basement has a physical address in America: the prison-industrial complex. 

This week, we use the lens of Toni Morrison’s literary critic…

5 months ago

Wandering Stars: Tommy Orange and the Sovereign Center

What happens to the story when the ‘object’ of our sympathy looks back and refuses the role we’ve written for them?

The allegory of the ‘Suffering C…

5 months, 1 week ago