Show of hands who all was aware that Hobby Lobby did a crime of smuggling antiquities out of Iraq? Because I remembered when this story broke and was thus distantly aware of HobLob’s weird antiquities situation, but I mentioned it to Friend of the Podcast Ashley and she was flabbergasted. However, HobLob’s religious agenda for America — including but not limited to their smuggling of antiquities — is the subject of my latest nonfiction read, Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby, so strap in. Candida Moss and Joel Baden break down four areas in which the family that…
Leave a CommentAuthor: Gin Jenny
Remember the time I claimed to be a feminist and an SF fan but then I reached an advanced old age without ever reading a super foundational SF text by a nineteenth-century feminist author? WELL THAT TIME IS ONGOING but fortunately my friend Alice has extended the hand of mercy unto me and proposed a co-hosting of a Frankenstein readalong in the month of May. Even more excitinger, there exists a new annotated edition of Frankenstein, published by the good folks at Liveright, and I am here to report that it is amahzing. The annotations (from what I can tell…
1 CommentIt is a true blessing when havers of fancy knowledge, persons whose knowledge of a given complicated subject is at a ten, are willing and able to take time out of their busy schedules to explain their complicated subject to people whose starting level of knowledge is at a zero or one. Robert Sapolsky, fancy scientist and author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, is a person like this. Behave ranks up with Daniel Kahneman’s superb Thinking Fast and Slow for explaining complicated science to a lay reader. Sapolsky explores the regions of the brain…
Leave a CommentWelp, this is going to be hard to review without spoilers. But I’ll do my best to segregate the spoilers from the non-spoilers in a secure bunker where contamination won’t be possible. (That’s a humorous This Mortal Coil joke for you.) Catarina Agatta has spent the last two years fending for herself after the dangerous corporation Cartaxus showed up and took away her only companions: Lachlan Agatta the world’s leading gene-coder and may be the planet’s only hope for wiping out the deadly Hydra virus. Then a supersoldier named Cole arrives at Cat’s house with the news that her father…
Leave a CommentCan you believe it’s been 100 episodes? Whiskey Jenny and I cannot, such that we spent several minutes of our lives exclaiming about the mysterious way in which our podcast seems both new and eternal. But we are celebrating with a Patreon launch (!!!), and you can check that out here. The gist is that if you want to give us a small amount of money each month to help cover podcast costs, we will be delighted and grateful.
We’re also doing a giveaway to celebrate our 100th episode, and it features several items that I wanted to keep so badly I had to wrap them up and hide them from myself. To wit: A set of bookish stationery, two pocket-size journals from the inimitable Rifle Paper Co., some charming page flags, and a copy of Alfred Lansing’s genuinely marvelous book Endurance.
This giveaway is open internationally, and there are many ways to enter.
After some persistent jokes that we should have the 100th episode just be a clip show, we have made an episode of the podcast that is all the regular qualities of the podcast, intensified. Which is to say there are two games, more giggling than is probably reasonable, and a very deep dive into the Endurance expedition of Ernest Shackleton. You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below, or download the file directly to take with you on the go!
Here are the time signatures if you want to skip around!
3:29 – What we’re reading
8:33 – Podcast announcements
15:56 – Diamond Jubilee games!
36:37 – Endurance, Alfred Lansing
1:12:46 – What we’re reading for next time
Here are some Adelie penguins saying “Clark.” Here are some more Adelie penguins saying “Clark.” Here are some pictures from the Endurance expedition. We urge you, in particular, to look at how heavy these lifeboats are to haul, yet how tiny to contemplate using them to sail upon the infinite seas.
This is a leopard seal. I oppose it and all its works and ways.
Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating!) or Patreon (all support hugely appreciated).
Credits
Champagne sound is by Andi Roselund (Sangwha Comm)
Photo by: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcript is under the jump.
Leave a CommentSomeone recently described the type of fiction that What We Lose is as “modular.” I am in love with this vocabulary word, and I might be at least moderately in love with modular fiction. It’s the kind of story (let’s see if I can actually describe it) that leaves your imagination to fill in some (or lots) of the connective tissue of the plot. Chapters are of varying length — some as short as a few sentences — and may not be strictly chronological. It is a type of storytelling at which fanfiction writers excel, so perhaps that is the…
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