John McCoy and a guest host read books you might have been assigned in high school, or college, or other stuff you might have read when you were a kid. The theming is loose!
Reading the feed…
What’s life without choices? How about books that are nothing but choices? Ross Cleaver discusses the choose-your-own genre with examples from both the U.S. and the U.K.: Edward Packard’s The Cave of Time (1978) and Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson’s The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (1982)....
Which detective is better, Edgar Allan Poe’s Auguste Dupin or Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes? I mean it’s obviously Holmes but that won’t stop Jacob Haller discussing two genre defining stories, Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) and Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” (1892)....
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our podcasts. First-time co-host Tim Read discusses William Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy, Hamlet (c. 1600)....
Zut alors! Ross Cleaver returns to discuss the totally historically accurate Asterix and Cleopatra (Astérix et Cléopâtre) by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo (serialized starting in 1963)....
Storkin’ it up! First-time co-host Jill Hoffman discusses Meindert De Jong’s Newbury-winning book, The Wheel on the School (1954)....
Jelani Sims returns to talk about Mildred D. Taylor’s heartbreaking Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1977)....
boss these podcasts are getting out of hand the other day i heard dan mccoy and his much older brother discussing archy and mehitabel by which i mean the column by don marquis that started in 1916 and then was collected into a book if you could call it that in 1927...
Love of wisdom means never having to say you’re sorry. Professor Marina McCoy joins her husband to discuss Plato’s The Apology (c. 399-90 BCE)....
First-time co-host Daniel Heddendorf joins in to discuss clocks and jellybeans in Harlan Ellison’s short story, “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” (1965)....
I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it where I like. Shaenon K. Garrity returns to discuss Flan O’Brien’s enigmatic The Third Policeman (written 1940, published 1967)....
Hope you’re not lactose intolerant! Matt Skuta returns to discuss John Cormier’s I am the Cheese (1977)....
What, the one as big as me? Marina McCoy makes her holiday return to discuss Mário de Andrade’s sweet-and-salty “A Christmas Turkey” (1956)....
Who watches the Watch House? Not us, the book is better. Ross Cleaver returns to discuss Robert Westall’s The Watch House (1977)....
The answer, my friend…is not a lyric in the any of the songs the McCoy Brothers discuss. For this annual drunk Thanksgiving Special, Rob, Dan, and John talk about Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, One Tin Soldier, and Alice’s Restaurant....
Podcasts could happen to anyone. David Loehr discusses exits and entrances in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (first performed 1966, published 1967)....
Don’t it allways seem to go, you don’t know what unicorns you got til they’re gone. Kathy Campbell discusses Peter S. Beagle’s 1968 The Last Unicorn....
BEEP boop what is… love? Well, we don’t figure this out, but John Siracusa does return to Sophomore Lit to discuss Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. (1920), the origin of the word “robot.”...
Brush up on the Large Object Theory of History. Shaenon K. Garrity returns to discuss Jean Merrill’s The Pushcart War (1964)....
If you’re suffering from Quiet Desparation, why not listen to the not-so-quiet voices of Dan Daughhetee and me discussing Henrey David Thoreau’s Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854)?...
Somebody loves us all. Rosalynde Vas Dias discusses three poems by Elizabeth Bishop: “Sestina” (1956), “Filling Station” (1956), and “Crusoe in England” (1971)....
Podcasts are the original voices in your head. David Dredrick discusses John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids (1955)....
Make money fast with this one weird trick. Glenn Fleishman discusses Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play The Visit (1956)....
And indeed there will be time to discuss this, the most mid-life white-guy crisis poem of all. Lisa Schmeiser discusses T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)....
I’ve heard it said by men of wide experience that podcasts used to be better in the old days. Kieran Healy discusses three short stories by Frank O’Connor: “First Confession,” “The Majesty of the Law,” and “Guests of the Nation.”...
Forever is composed of podcasts. Caroline Fulford discusses selected poems by Emily Dickinson (c. 1860-65)....
