Waywords Studio Full Slate: Recent Episodes
Steve Chisnell
This is the full slate of programs offered by Waywords Studio, specializing in literary podcasts whether audio fiction or criticism. Go to WaywordsStudio.com to Follow or Subscribe to individual programs.
How does the map overwrite the physical territory it claims to represent?
Today we look at literary simulations, from the bedroom of Victor Hugo to the Orlando welter of parks and rides. Guided by the semiotics of Umberto Eco, the simulation theory of Jean Baudrillard, and the urban critiques of Sam Jacob, we investigate the social construction of experience environments and what creates our preference for them over the raw experience.
Resources:
- Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation, 1994.
- Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project, 1999.
- Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality: Essays, 1986.
- Jacob, Sam. “Vriesendorp Syndrome.” Perspecta 41: Grand Tour, 2008.
- MacLeod, Nicola E. Literary Fiction Tourism: Understanding the Practice of Fiction-Inspired Travel, 2021.
- Melton, Jeffrey Alan. “Keeping the Faith: Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad.” South Atlantic Review, 1996.
- Montgomery, L. M. The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career, 1917.
- Montgomery, L. M. The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery, 1985-2004.
- Twain, Mark. Roughing It. American Publishing Company, 1872.
- Tuan, Yi-Fu. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. Columbia University Press, 1990
Episode 7.08 –Building FantasiesGlossaryThe Absolute Fake: An engineered, hyperreal reproduction or simulation that seeks to completely replace reality, offering a polish that works to eliminate the traveler’s desire for the messy or difficult original.
Touristic Faith: The psychological suspension of disbelief where travelers willingly dismiss their own skepticism and actively collude with the tourist industry to pretend they are gaining an “authentic” experience.
Vriesendorp Syndrome: The construction of spaces where the sheer number and juxtaposition of cheap, mass-produced replicas separates our idea of place from its physical reality, turning place into a frictionless, standardized “flavor.”
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. When we look at a clean replica or model, what do our minds do to judge it more informative than a weathered original? 2. How does the metaphor of a map “generating” a territory change how we think about our expectations for a space? 3. When we observe a reflection or a photo of a landscape, how does that visual frame change our view of the physical environment behind it? 4. In what ways do curated soundscapes, scents, and climate controls shape our willingness to accept an artificial room as a valid space? 5. How does remembering a past journey alter what we experienced in the physical moment?
Skeptical Pilgrim Challenges: * The Grand Tour – PDF * Packing Lists – PDF * Author Footprints – PDF * Mapping Dreams – PDF * Building Fantasies – PDF
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/
CHAPTERS00:00 Leaving the Road Behind
06:49 Intro Theme
07:25 All the Flavors
17:49 Lake Tahoe on Fire
22:46 Pilgrim Exercises Pt 5
24:31 Montgomery’s Lost Island
30:17 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Full Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/7-08-building-fantasies
New to Literary Nomads?
Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Want to Comment? Literary Nomads Mailbag
===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “7.08 Building Fantasies. ” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 07 August 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/
How do we navigate the space between the curated tourism experience and the raw concrete of the world beneath it?
We investigate the “imaginative geographies” we project onto other lands, examining how Italo Calvino’s semiotic cities, Arthur Conan Doyle’s romanticized London, and Mathieu Kassovitz’s brutalist Paris reveal the ethical tensions of the traveler’s gaze. We look into our habit of cropping out infrastructure and ask whether reading the raw city makes us better travelers or something worse. Bloomsday in Dublin and Iain Sinclair’s London Orbital are also considered.
Resources:
- Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities, 1974.
- Doyle, Arthur Conan. “A Study in Scarlet,” 1930.
- Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, 1989.
- Joyce, James. Ulysses, 1922.
- Kassovitz, Mathieu, director. La Haine, 1995.
- Said, Edward W. Orientalism, 1978.
- Sinclair, Iain, and Chris Petit, directors. London Orbital, 2002.
- Sinclair, Iain. London Orbital: A Walk Around the M25, 2002.
Episode 7.07 –Mapping DreamsGlossaryImaginative Geography: The thought process, according to Edward Said, where we build a mental conception of a foreign landscape through literature, art, and personal or cultural desire long before we physically arrive, pre-determining and replacing the actual physical geography with a commodified myth. See Edward Said’s Orientalism, 1978.
Staged Authenticity: The socio-spatial phenomenon where tourism operators construct aesthetically controlled “front stages” (such as curated landmarks or replica villages) to satisfy the consumer/tourist’s desire for an authentic encounter, even while actively concealing the “back-stage” realities of local labor, economic extraction, and physical infrastructure.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. When you crop a travel photograph to remove a power line, parking lot, or trash can, what reality are you trying to erase? 2. How does Sherlock Holmes’s cocaine addiction or Leopold Bloom’s alienation ruin the versions of London and Dublin sold by tourism? 3. How has Edward Said’s “imaginative geography” worked on your travel expectations in the past? 4. Do you watch fictional films or read books about urban decay or poverty? For what reasons? 5. Which of the two Calvino cities featured most resonate with you, Tamara or Zaira? Why?
Skeptical Pilgrim Challenges: * The Grand Tour – PDF * Packing Lists – PDF * Author Footprints – PDF * Mapping Dreams – PDF
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/
CHAPTERS00:00 PEI and Tamara
04:26 Intro Theme
05:03 My PEI Failures
13:49 The Unhandy Embrace
20:51 Some Skeptical Exercises (Pt 4)
23:37 Zaira and Hard Spaces
36:45 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Full Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/7-07-mapping-dreams
New to Literary Nomads?
Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Want to Comment? Literary Nomads Mailbag
===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “7.07 Mapping Dreams. ” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 31 July 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/
What happens to a real, working community when a fictional landscape is physically constructed on top of it?
We discover the socio-economic friction behind literary travel, contrasting the magical ideals of Gabriel García Márquez’s Macondo with the unpaved streets of Aracataca, Colombia. Behind the “front stage” of tourist attractions are bulldozers, evictions, and even a violent army. We learn about the history of PEI National Park expropriations, the 1928 Banana Massacre, and how to critically read tourist destinations beyond the gift shop facade.
Resources:
- García Márquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1967.
- Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space, 1991.
- Montgomery, Lucy Maud. Anne of Avonlea, 1909.
- Montgomery, L. M. The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery, Volume V: 1935–1942, 2004.
- Steele, Fiona, host. “Painting the Gables ‘Green’.” The Hidden Island, Season 3, Episode 5, 12 Sept 2022.
Episode 7.06 –Author Footprints Pt. 2 – The Aracataca ParadoxListener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. When you encounter a perfectly preserved historical landmark, what omissions or missing community details must you ignore to maintain your feeling of nostalgia? 2. How does the presence of a corporate licensing agreement or trademark boundary alter an author’s legacy? 3. When local residents invent fictional anecdotes or point to fake historical spots for visiting pilgrims, who is truly controlling the performance of the tourist site? 4. In what ways does buying a mass-produced souvenir act as a buffer against the uncomfortable economic disparities of the places we visit? 5. If every tourist destination is a manufactured “front stage,” what active choices can a wayfarer make to step off the guided path and read the real location?
Skeptical Pilgrim Challenges: * The Grand Tour – PDF * Packing Lists – PDF * Author Footprints – PDF
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/
CHAPTERS00:00 A Quick Review
00:38 A Broader Context
00:03 Intro Theme
03:52 The Magic and the Austerity
09:19 Plenty of Masks to Go Around
21:51 The Earth Paved Over
32:09 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Full Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/7-06-author-footprints-pt-2
New to Literary Nomads?
Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Want to Comment? Literary Nomads Mailbag
===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “7.06 Author Footprints Pt. 2 – The Aracataca Paradox. ” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 24 July 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/
Why do we drive thousands of miles just to touch the wooden beams of an author’s birthplace?
From Poe’s Baltimore to PEI and Waywords’s own Waterford, MI, we consider what it takes to build a literary destination and how this works to undermine the very real need for we travelers to cross the threshold from the literary into the physical. Is there a way to thwart the hucksters of simulations? Perhaps!
Resources:
-
- Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space, 1969.
- Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” 1969.
- MacLeod, Nicola E. Literary Fiction Tourism: Understanding the Practice of Fiction-Inspired Travel, 2024.
- Montgomery, Lucy Maud. The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career, 1917.
- Tuan, Yi-Fu. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values, 1990
Episode 7.05 –Author Footprints Pt. 1 – Aura & ReliquaryGlossary:Topophilia: The real and physical human desire to meet authentic space and map our emotions onto the physical earth.
Heterotopia: A specially-created “other space” or place of difference that exists wholly outside of ordinary daily life. In the context of literary tourism, an arranged, static attraction designed that offers the idea of a flawless, isolated world in contrast to our own.
Aura: The unique, irreplaceable physical presence and authority of an original work/art that is weakened by mass reproduction.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. When you feel a sudden wave of awe while standing inside a historical building, are you emotionally connecting to the long-dead occupant, or are you reacting to the architectural cues—the lighting, the placards, the quiet—designed to trigger a posture of reverence? 2. Consider the threshold of a museum’s velvet rope: how does the act of cordoning off a mundane everyday item (like an author’s writing desk or an antique bookcase) alter your perception of its value compared to an identical item sitting in a thrift store? 3. If our internal imagination requires us to ground ourselves in physical landmarks to feel a text’s “authenticity,” what does that suggest about the limitations of our minds to hold abstract ideas without a concrete, material anchor? 4. Reflect on the psychological role of the gift shop at the end of an historic tour: how does buying a plastic replica or a themed postcard serve as a physical mechanism for our emotions? 5. Think about your own home or neighborhood using the metaphor of a flawless diorama: what details, chores, or structural flaws would you have to entirely censor or rope off to make your daily space look like an arranged attraction for an outside visitor?
Skeptical Pilgrim Challenges:
- The Grand Tour – PDF
- Packing Lists – PDF
- Author Footprints – PDF
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/
CHAPTERS00:00 Genuine Impulse
07:29 Intro Theme
08:06 Blueprint of a Shrine
18:19 Simulating Simulations
23:05 The Decay of Aura
30:00 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Full Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/7-05-author-footprints-pt-1
New to Literary Nomads?
Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Want to Comment? Literary Nomads Mailbag
===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “7.05 Author Footprints Pt 1 – Aura & Reliquary. ” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 17 July 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/
Who carries the weight of our leisure?
Some readings from the past by thoughtful and resilient women! Take in some early writing of place and circumstance, journals and reflections which reflect the jarring collisions between our travel expectations and the realities we meet. More, we learn that an adaptable attitude and skeptical eye are essential tools.
Readings from:
-
- Dorothy Wordsworth – “The Highland Hut” from Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A.D. 1803
- Mary Seacole – Chapter III from Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, 1857
- Sei Shōnagon – “182. The House Had a Spacious Courtyard,” from The Pillow Book, c. 1002
Episode 7.04 –Packing Lists Pt. 2 – Stalwart WomenOther Resources: MacLeod, Nicola E. Literary Fiction Tourism: Understanding the Practice of Fiction-Inspired Travel*, 2024.
Glossary:Compartmentalized World: A theoretical concept from Frantz Fanon which describes how the colonial world is divided into two distinct species: the wealthy, secure sector of the colonizer and the impoverished, exploited sector of the colonized. In the context of travel, we ask who is permitted to move safely through a space, and who is forced to serve as manual labor, landscape, or a prop for the comfort of others.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. When you examine your expectations which you pack for a highly anticipated trip, what do they suggest about the kind of difficulties or travel challenges you most dislike? 2. Consider the physical metaphor of a curtain: if your travel planning and packing keep the “raw” destination apart from you, what boundaries have you created between your leisure and local survival? 3. From Dorothy Wordsworth’s smoky chimney-corner to a modern climate-controlled resort lounge, how has our idea of safety changed and why? 4. Consider when a text presents you with an offensive historical slur or an ugly, uncomfortable truth: does that sudden friction cause you to see the history more clearly or does your mind want to censor and buffer that discomfort away? 5. If “roughing it” or traveling “close to the ground” is also a stylized, performative lifestyle choice, what signals do we project to those who observe us?
Skeptical Pilgrim Challenges:
- The Grand Tour – PDF
- Packing Lists – PDF
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/
CHAPTERS00:00 Where We’ve Been
01:20 Stalwart Women
03:02 Intro Theme
03:38 Dorothy Wordsworth: “The Highland Hut”
08:07 Mary Seacole: The Chaos of Cruces
22:02 Sei Shonagon: “The Exorcism”
28:39 Sovereign but Skeptical
29:45 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Full Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/7-04-packing-lists-pt-2/
New to Literary Nomads?
Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Want to Comment? Literary Nomads Mailbag
===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “7.04: Packing Lists Pt. 2 – Stalwart Women,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 10 July 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/
Did your horse throw ya, buddy?
We investigate what we hope to achieve by literary travel . . . and why our packing cannot prepare us for it!
While the global tourism industry spends billions to shape our eager expectations, what is it that we’re actually so anxious to see? And whatever it is, how likely are we to find it? In this first of two parts, we ask if what we pack in anticipation is to better guarantee our success or to ward us from disappointment. As an example, we read an excerpt from Isabella Bird’s 1879 travelogue, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. And we hear from philosopher/critics Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger along the way. Will we find an answer? Maybe not, but we will be better prepared to understand the questions.
Episode 7.03 –Packing Lists Pt. 1: Dreams and DirtReadings & Resources: Bird, Isabella L. A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. 1879. * Montgomery, L. M. The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career. 1917. * Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. 1999. * MacLeod, Nicola E. Literary Fiction Tourism: Understanding the Practice of Fiction-Inspired Travel*, 2024.
Glossary:The Broken Tool (Zuhandenheit): Martin Heidegger’s term explaining how we remain unconscious of our protective equipment and infrastructure—our constructed “World”—until the moment it fails us, forcing a sudden encounter with raw nature, or the “Earth.”
The Comfort Trap: A psychological defense mechanism in which a reader or traveler seeks “comfort,” “tidiness,” or “closure” to avoid intellectual or moral discomfort. We passively accept a safe, frictionless experience—or a text’s status quo—specifically to avoid confronting nuance or complication in a situation and one’s own possible complicity in it.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. When you look at the very bottom of your daily commuter bag or travel pack, what do you discover that you find most intolerable? 2. Consider the physical metaphor of a “portable fortress.” How accurate is this to describe your approach to travel? 3. In tracking the transition from a 19th-century carpetbag to a modern multi-compartment backpack, what has changed in our definition of what an adventure is supposed to feel like? 4. Think about when some gear or device failed you. How did you respond: the “stripped gear in the brain?” Or did you see the physical earth more clearly? Why? 5. In our travel behavior and packing lists, who are we performing for?
Skeptical Pilgrim Challenges:
- The Grand Tour – PDF
- Packing Lists – PDF
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/
CHAPTERS00:00 The Infrastructure of Dreams
05:22 Intro Theme
05:58 Industrialized Travel
13:57 Isabella Bird & the “Ill-Found” Expedition
22:50 Skeptical Pilgrim Exercises: Counter-weights
28:11 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Full Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/7-03-Packing-Lists-1
New to Literary Nomads?
Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Want to Comment? Literary Nomads Mailbag
===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “7.03: Packing Lists Pt. 1 – Dreams and Dirt,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 3 July 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/
What’s the difference between being a passive tourist and a wayfarer?
Follow the 17th-century footsteps of Matsuo Basho to interrogate the gap between curated tourist destinations and the open-ended, ego-stripping realities of true travel. By contrasting the lush, internal landscapes of L.M. Montgomery with the skeletal prose of classical Japanese travel sketches, we ask: Can we ever truly encounter a sovereign landscape, or do our books merely wrap the earth in a comforting postcard illusion?
Along the way, we look at the haiku in its haibun form and use Martin Heidegger’s classic distinction between ‘Earth’ and ‘World.’ Can Basho’s haiku lessons rescue us from our egos. Maybe, but 400 years later, other writers have their own responses to him!
Episode 7.02 –Grand Tours Pt 2: Bat on the Narrow RoadReadings & Resources: Bashō, Matsuo. The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches. Translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa. * Montgomery, L. M. The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career. 1917. * Montgomery, L. M. The Blue Castle. 1926. * Downer, Lesley. On the Narrow Road to the Deep North: Journey into a Lost Japan, 1989 * Flanagan, Richard. The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Knopf, 2014. * Goldberg, Natalie. Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku, 2020. * Merton, Thomas. The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton*, 1973.
Glossary:Wayfaring: A mode of travel in which the journey itself becomes the destination and concept of home, characterized by a constant, open-ended wandering rather than arriving at a fixed point.
Haibun: A traditional Japanese literary form that intricately blends prose and haiku poetry so that the two distinct modes of writing interact and illuminate each other.
Noncompletion: An ongoing, unresolved state of existing “between” spaces or ideas, embraced by the wayfarer as the permanent, true condition of a journey that has no final destination.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. When you observe a natural setting, how have books influenced your conception of it? 2. Consider the difference between a destination that promises modern amenities and an open-ended un-curated route with no final stop: how does the presence or absence of structural comforts affect your attitude? 3. In tracking your own neighborhood’s daily life, how might an ordinary object to become a site of specific poetic meaning rather than clutter? 4. How does treading a travel guide affect your ability to sit with the silent, un-responding aspects of a foreign town? 5. If you strip your travel history of its status landmarks and souvenirs, what remains?
Skeptical Pilgrim Challenges 1: The Grand Tour – PDF Download
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/
CHAPTERS00:00 Where We’ve Been
01:12 Field Notes and the East
07:20 Intro Theme
07:55 Wayfaring and The Bat
15:26 Earth vs World in the Haibun
23:41 Reversing the Narrow Road
28:11 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Full Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/7-02-Grand-Tours-2
New to Literary Nomads?
Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Want to Comment? Literary Nomads Mailbag
===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “7.02: Grand Tours Pt 2: Bat on the Narrow Road,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 26 June 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/
Are we consuming an authentic place, or are we willingly participating in a beautifully staged performance designed around our own expectations?
In this opening episode of Journey 7, we begin our exploration of literary tourism. When we travel to the places that inspired our favorite books, whose landscape are we actually stepping into? Today. we cross the eight-mile concrete expanse onto Prince Edward Island to investigate the massive, multi-million dollar infrastructure designed to capitalize on Anne of Green Gables. Along the way, we unpack our collective urge to buy raspberry cordials and straw hats.
Along the way, we discover the strange history of the historical Grand Tour, and we investigate the “tourist gaze” and how the global tourism industry packages our favorite books into easily consumed souvenirs. If you love travelogues, literary history, or exploring the real-world histories behind famous books like Anne of Green Gables, this episode will challenge the way we view our next vacation destination.
Episode 7.01 –Grand Tours Pt 1: The Postcard IllusionReadings & Resources: Montgomery, Lucy Maud. Anne of Green Gables. 1908 * Montgomery, Lucy Maud. Anne of the Island. 1915 * Montgomery, Lucy Maud. Anne’s House of Dreams. 1917 * Montgomery, Lucy Maud. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston * Montgomery, Lucy Maud. The Story Girl. 1911 * MacLeod, Nicola E. Literary Fiction Tourism: Understanding the Practice of Fiction-Inspired Travel.* Routledge, 2024
Glossary:Grand Tour: A traditional, multi-year journey across continental Europe that served as a mandatory educational rite of passage for upper-class, wealthy young men from the 17th to the mid-19th centuries. Officially intended to complete a gentleman’s classical education by exposing him to the art, architecture, and polite society of the Old World, it also provided a socially acceptable escape from parental control to pursue worldly pleasures and construct an elite “martial masculinity.”
Tourist Gaze: How travelers view and consume a destination, shaped by what guidebooks and the tourism industry have conditioned them to expect to see.
Skeptical Pilgrim: A traveler who deeply loves a literary work or historical destination but adopts a critical, questioning posture, refusing to passively accept the fictionalized, manufactured reality that a tourist destination attempts to sell them.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. When you select a specific souvenir from a location, how does that physical object alter or secure the memory of the real space you left behind? 2. Consider the texts you choose to read versus the places you choose to visit; what makes a comforting historical fiction preferable to a reality of contemporary labor? 3. In analyzing your own home, what is the process of selection behind the display pieces on your shelves, and how do they perform an identity for visitors? 4. How does the presence of a guidebook or a digital travel route affect your ability to notice the un-curated, raw elements of a new place? 5. If you map your immediate neighborhood purely through your senses rather than visual landmarks, how does that shift your understanding of who owns and occupies that space?
Skeptical Pilgrim Challenges 1: The Grand Tour – PDF DownloadComplete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/CHAPTERS00:00 Field Notes & Trailhead 0:00:0.000000
05:35 Intro Theme
06:11 Montgomery and Two Worlds
10:53 The Grand Tour and the Invention of the Gaze
17:57 Tourist Gazing
25:40 Skeptic Pilgrim Challenges
28:28 Screens and Modern Escapes
32:54 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Full Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/7-01-Grand-Tours-1New to Literary Nomads?Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Want to Comment? Literary Nomads Mailbag===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:Chisnell, Steve. “7.01: Grand Tours Pt 1: The Postcard Illusion,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 19 June 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
Welcome to the summer trailhead!
Join Journey 7 of Literary Nomads as we explore the secrets of literary tourism and travel writing. Discover how authors like L.M. Montgomery constructed the identity of Prince Edward Island, unpack the cultural legacy of Anne of Green Gables, and learn how to look past the postcard illusions of modern historic landmarks.
Episode 7.00 –Literary Tourism Trailer : Anne of Green GablesReading Highlights Ahead: Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Anne of Green Gables Series, personal Journals, The Haunted Wood, The Alpine Path, Among the Shadows * Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth (“The Highland Hut”) by Dorothy Wordsworth * Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (“The Chaos of Cruces”) by Mary Seacole * A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (“The ‘Ill-Found’ Expedition,” by Isabella Bird * “The Exorcism” by Sei Shōnagon * To the River by Olivia Laing * Gabriel García Márquez’s Aracataca / Macondo texts * “The Mark on the Wall” by Virginia Woolf * Indigenous Australian Songlines (e.g., the Seven Sisters myth) * Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino * “The Garden of Forking Paths” by Jorge Luis Borges * English Eccentrics* by Edith Sitwell
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/CHAPTERS00:00 Trailer
===
Transcript and Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/7-00-literary-tourismNew to Literary Nomads?Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Want to Comment? Literary Nomads Mailbag===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:Chisnell, Steve. “7.00: Literary Tourism Trailer” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 5 June 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
We are left on the precipice of a severe, unavoidable aporia: when the Empire can absorb and commercialize our very language of protest, the only true ethical act of agency is to stop performing the script, reject the easy answer, and step directly out into the unimaginable dark .
We challenge the profound hypocrisy of our own reading habits, and confront the uncomfortable idea that our graduate seminars, book clubs, and elite cultural critiques often function as a highly managed form of otium—a beautifully curated performative space that we purchase with company-backed grants to feel virtuous while leaving our agency for change behind. Consider the collision between Le Guin’s unmapped wilderness, Mark Fisher’s capitalist realism, Roger Waters’ scathing critique of economic indifference in “Us and Them,” and Ivan Karamazov’s terrifying refusal to accept a universe founded on unavenged tears: we wrestle with the limits of systemic tolerance and our only steps forward.
Episode 6.37 –Nomadic DeparturesReadings & Resources: Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov, 1879. * Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? 2009. * Gainsborough, Thomas. Mr and Mrs Andrews. c. 1750, oil on canvas. * James, William. “The Will to Believe.” The New World, 1896. * Le Guin, Ursula K. “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, Harper & Row, 1975, pp. 275-284. * Pink Floyd. The Dark Side of the Moon, 1973. * Popper, Karl. The Open Society and Its Enemies*, 1945.
Glossary:Aporia: A state of being deadlocked in an unresolvable contradiction or paradox where we can go no further in our knowing. It is often a productive, discomfiting space of uncertainty that forces an individual to make a choice, interpret, and step forward without the comfort of easy answers or absolute truths.
Capitalist Realism – The stifling, pervasive illusion that the current capitalist economic system is the only practical, applicable order in the world and is therefore entirely inescapable . It acts as a neutralizing force that absorbs attempts at resistance by convincing people that imagining viable alternatives is impossible, romantic, or overly dramatic. Follow-up Reading: Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
Transactional Morality – An ethical framework rooted in the logic of economics, where moral choices are based entirely on the utility of exchange and trade-offs. Critiqued heavily by thinkers like Georges Bataille, this mindset operates on the assumption that every action, suffering, or sacrifice must be made in exchange for some advantage, effectively commodifying human relationships .
The Willing Victim – A profound moral paradox wherein a scapegoat voluntarily consents to their own suffering in order for the larger society or “edifice” to prosper. Such consent shatters straightforward moral outrage, complicating the ethics of resistance by forcing onlookers to question whether rejecting such a system is a genuine act of rebellion or an act of moral cowardice that ignores the victim’s agency.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. When you engage in a passionate debate about political or literary theory, are you genuinely trying to cause a local disruption, or are you just running a competitive performance to elevate your own cultural status? 2. Look at the daily economic suffering, homelessness, or systemic extraction happening at your neighborhood borders . Do you quickly sanitize that reality by telling yourself “there’s only so much one ordinary person can do?” 3. How has your regular leisure time (otium) or your personal reading routine been subtly gamified or turned into a data point by online platforms to ensure you stay productive 24/7? 4. Think about the local first responders, teachers, or high-risk laborers who routinely absorb physical, mental, and economic precarity to keep your community stable . Does their “voluntary sacrifice” clear your conscience, or does it heighten your structural accountability? 5. What is the precise moral principle or systemic threshold that would finally force you to drop your unearned luxuries, reject your lifestyle, and walk completely away from a toxic compromise?
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/CHAPTERS00:00 A Little Drama
02:05 Intro Theme
02:42 Victims, Objects, Predators
08:23 The Global Basement
16:47 The Baggage We Carry: Maya
22:33 The Ultimate Aporia
30:22 Manipulations: Finn
38:02 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-37-nomadic-departuresNew to Literary Nomads?Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Want to Comment? Literary Nomads Mailbag===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:Chisnell, Steve. “6.37: Nomadic Departures,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 29 May 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
Is our intellectual exercise just an expensive lifestyle brand that keeps our hands clean?
In this raw, self-interrogating mailbag episode, we turn the lens inward for a vulnerability audit of our own political battles and pedagogical failures. Let’s try and bridge the gap between literary theory and civic praxis, how public school teachers, students, and lifelong readers can navigate the intimidation of administrative bureaucracy, fight censorship, and reclaim accountability. Let’s get past passive book consumption and embrace “Writing Back” to structurally alter our local communities.
Episode 6.36 –What I Get Wrong: Intimidation & InterpretationReadings & Resources: Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970. * Giroux, Henry A. Theory and Resistance in Education: A Pedagogy for the Opposition*, 1983.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. When we use academic language or literary analysis to describe a social injustice, does that lead to eventual action or as insulation or safety from responsibility to act? 2. Why are we so obsessed with making every book or public issue “relatable” to our own personal lives? How might relatability cause us to miss the writer’s message? 3. Think about a time you noticed a business or organization involved in sketchy or unlawful behavior. Did the sheer size of the bureaucracy intimidate you into staying silent? 4. Why does it feel so terrifying to admit an intellectual error or show people a real-world project where you failed? Why do we think hiding our mistakes makes us look more qualified? 5. If you had to stop just talking about this season’s ideas and actually go disrupt a local system this week, which specific “space of authority” would you have to walk into?
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/CHAPTERS00:00 The Praxis of Complicity
09:24 Intro Theme
09:59 Messy Dialogues: Our Mailbag
11:12 -Ben: Escapist Privilege
14:10 -Aakash: Measuring Otium
18:13 -Jim: Just Mirrors
21:45 -Sarah: Empathy Trouble
24:46 -Kendall & NLH: Fear of Disruption
30:04 What I Get Wrong
37:27 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-36-what-i-get-wrongNew to Literary Nomads?Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Want to Comment? Literary Nomads Mailbag===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:Chisnell, Steve. “6.36: What I Get Wrong: Intimidation & Interpretation,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 22 May 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
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 interrogate the “sneer trap” of modern irony. From Marvin Gaye’s soulful protests to BTS’s radical solidarity after the Sewol Ferry tragedy, we consider how “New Sincerity” and “Guerilla Texts” can unsettle the status quo and physically alter the world.
Episode 6.35 –Writing Back: Guerilla Texts, BTS, and GayeReadings & Resources: Gaye, Marvin. “What’s Going On.” What’s Going On, 1971. * BTS. “Spring Day.” You Never Walk Alone, 2017. YouTube, https://youtu.be/xEeFrLSkMm8. * James, William. “Is Life Worth Living?” The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, 1897. * Wallace, David Foster. “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction.” Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1993. * Hesse, Hermann. Demian*, 1919.
Some Key Terms from this episode: Precursive Faith: The pragmatic belief that the very act of speaking out helps create the reality of that change * New Sincerity: A subversive posture of absolute, vulnerable earnestness that rejects the irony weaponized by our modern media economy. * Guerilla Text:* An improvisational, unsanctioned piece of public writing that operates outside the status quo
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. The Nature of the Blank Page: When you think about speaking out against injustice, does the desire for a “guarantee of success” act as a barrier to your first step or as a tool for planning? 2. The Armor of Irony: Thinking about your most recent social media posts or public opinions, how often have you used irony as a kind of armor? 3. The Process of Sincerity: How does the chance of being labeled “cringe” for an honest belief influence the way you choose to share your thoughts in public spaces? 4. The Texture of Solidarity: If Le Guin’s “walking away” is re-storied as a group action rather than a lonely departure, how does that shift the perceived cost of leaving? 5. The Logic of Occupation: When you use the “Emperor’s tools”—like social media platforms—to voice a protest, are you participating in the system or engaging in a “tactical occupation” of the space?
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/CHAPTERS00:00 The Blank Page and Precursive Faith
07:27 Intro Theme
08:05 World Alterations
10:45 Anti-Rebels and New Sincerity
15:54 Earnest Pleas from Marvin Gaye
20:55 The Sewol Ferry Tragedy: BTS
29:06 Guerilla Texts
34:34 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-35-guerilla-texts-btsNew to Literary Nomads?Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Want to Comment? Literary Nomads Mailbag===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:Chisnell, Steve. “6.35: Writing Back: Guerilla Texts & BTS,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 15 May 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
Is your reading just an “escape”??
Your favorite “escape” read might be a gated community for your conscience. Today, we interrogate the “Catharsis Commodity” and ask if our reading habits are just another layer of the Hideous Bargain. Explore the ethics of reading and the “Empathy Trap” in this look at the arguments of Suzanne Keen and Louise Rosenblatt.
We expand the “Hideous Bargain” to include the very act of consuming this podcast and the literature it discusses. We ask if we are truly “walking away” from the bargain, or if we are merely co-authoring the child’s abuse through passive, frictionless consumption.
Episode 6.34 –The Ethics of Reading: Frictional ThoughtsReadings & Resources: Felski, Rita. The Limits of Critique, 2015. * Keen, Suzanne. Empathy and the Novel, 2007. * Nussbaum, Martha C. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, 1992. * Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader, The Text, The Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work, 1978. * Achebe, Chinua. Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays, 1989. * Kutz, Eleanor, and Hephzibah Roskelly. An Unquiet Pedagogy: Transforming Practice in the English Classroom, 1991. * Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Writers in Politics: Essays, 1981. * Suvin, Darko. “Estrangement and Cognition.” Strange Horizons*, 2014. https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/non-fiction/articles/estrangement-and-cognition/
Some Key Terms from this episode: Cognitive Estrangement: Intellectualizing emotional experience using new or unfamiliar concepts to force readers to critically examine and make connections to their lived reality. * Unquiet Pedagogy: An educational philosophy and practice that deliberately disrupts reader comfort by compelling learners to engage difference and to recognize the non-neutral nature of their learning. * Transaction (Aesthetic Transaction): For Rosenblatt, the messy, active dialogue between the reader and the text where meaning is not passively received, but frictionally constructed by the reader. * Frictional Reading:* From Steve Chisnell, the act of slowing our reading to examine difference, to consider significance, and to carry that meaning-making to the larger world.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. The Nature of the Escape: When you reach for a book to “hide from the world,” what specific “outside” noise or responsibility are you most afraid will follow you into the garden? 2. The Transaction of Tears: If you could no longer use a character’s suffering as a “pressure-release valve” for your own emotions, how would your choice of what to read change? 3. The Cognitive Friction: Why does the prospect of “not thinking”—even for a moment during a leisure activity—feel like a luxury rather than a surrender of your humanity? 4. The Path to Praxis: If the energy from your next “frictional” read had to be used to “Write Back” to the world, what is the first letter, essay, or conversation you would be compelled to start?
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/CHAPTERS00:00 The Walled Garden of Consumption
08:28 Intro Theme
09:05 The Empathy Trap
19:14 Empathy Traps Undone
22:44 Social Action?
27:04 Educators and Narrative Complicity
32:18 Civic Acts
37:15 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-34-ethics-of-readingNew to Literary Nomads?Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Want to Comment? Literary Nomads Mailbag===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:Chisnell, Steve. “6.34: The Ethics of Reading: Frictional Thoughts,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 8 May 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
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? By comparing the “Roman Plow” of duty to the “Sovereign Tree” of uselessness, we ask if our participation in the “Achievement Society” is actually what pays for global injustice and inequity.
Compare Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life with the Zhuangzi in this reflection on Stoicism vs. Daoism. Learn why “uselessness” is a survival strategy against the “Extraction Economy” and how Cincinnatus’s Roman Plow creates a utilitarian trap. Oh, and how The Expendables does, too.
Episode 6.33 –Roman Plow, Sovereign Tree: Seneca and ZhuangziReadings & Resources: Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. “On the Shortness of Life.” Gareth Williams, trans., 2003. * Zhuangzi. The Zhuangzi. Martin Palmer et. al., trans. 2020. * Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De Officiis (On Duties). Walter Miller, trans., 1913. * Han, Byung-Chul. The Burnout Society. Stanford University Press, 2015. * Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority*. Translated by Alphonso Lingis, Duquesne University Press, 1969.
Some Key Terms from this episode: Otium honestum: “Honest Leisure.” Tactical rest that must still serve the state—for Cicero, a productive leisure * Wuwei: (woo-way) – “Actionless action” that uses radical uselessness as a survival strategy against the empire. * Budeyi:* (boo-day-yee) – Acting only when compelled by necessity, without ego or the desire to “fix” the world.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. The Price of Being Useful: If you were only valued for what you could do for your community, what parts of your “inner calm” would you have to sacrifice? 2. The Survival of the Gnarled: Zhuangzi’s tree survives because it is too twisted to be turned into a boat or a coffin. What “useless” traits have protected you from being used by others? 3. The Chisel of Kindness: The emperors killed Hundun by trying to give him a “normal” face. Where have we tried to “fix” someone else’s life using our own standards, only to realize we were ignoring who they actually were? 4. The Stolen Leisure: Seneca says we don’t have a short life, we just waste a lot of it. In a world where even our relaxation is “bought and sold,” how do you find time that truly belongs to you?. 5. The Fluid Response: If you stopped acting out of “duty” and started acting out of “fluid response,” would you still work to end injustice? How differently?
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/CHAPTERS00:00 The Beach, The Ships, The Trap of Time
08:42 Intro Theme
09:18 Seneca: “On the Shortness of Life”
15:14 Negotium and Utilitarian Traps
23:30 The Garden Wrecker: Zhuangzi
31:44 The Emperor’s Chisel
37:47 I’ll Exploit Myself, Thank You
41:45 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-33-seneca-and-zhuangziNew to Literary Nomads?Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Want to Comment? Literary Nomads Mailbag===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:Chisnell, Steve. “6.33: Roman Plow, Sovereign Tree: Seneca and Zhuangzi,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 1 May 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
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 the crimes of the extraction economy. We unsettle the habitus of human exceptionalism to ask: would we change the story’s ending because we couldn’t handle our own complicity?
Discover the original Omelas in “The Case of the Animals versus Man.” It’s early Iraq and modern ethics, Peter Singer’s speciesism, Haraway’s companion species, and the colonizing “thingification” of nature. Was Le Guin’s story about animal rights? Or, are animal rights linked to our ideological privileging and moral shame?
Episode 6.32 –The Original Omelas: The Case of the Animals vs. ManReadings & Resources: Ikhwān al-Safā’ – “The Case of the Animals Versus Man Before the King of the Jinn” (Classical Astrologer pdf) (10th century) * Le Guin, Ursula K. – The Word for World Is Forest (1972) * Le Guin, Ursula K. – The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975) * Le Guin, Ursula K. – “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow,” The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975) * Achebe, Chinua – Hopes and Impediments (1989) * Aristotle – Politics, Book 1 (~330 BCE) * Bacon, Francis – The New Organon (1620) * Cavarero, Adriana – Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence (2009) * Césaire, Aimé – Discourse on Colonialism (1950) * Derrida, Jacques – The Animal That Therefore I Am (2008) * Fanon, Frantz – The Wretched of the Earth (1961) * Haraway, Donna – The Companion Species Manifesto (2003) * Singer, Peter – Practical Ethics* (1979)
Some Key Terms from this episode: Speciesism: Systematic discrimination against an “other” based solely on the generic characteristic of their species. Follow-up Reading: Peter Singer, Practical Ethics. * Thingification: The psychological and economic process of conditioning an oppressor to see a living, feeling being as a mere inanimate object that exists solely for utility. Follow-up Reading: Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism. * L’inerme* (The Defenseless): The completely unarmed, helpless being attacked with deliberate violence. Follow-up Reading: Adriana Cavarero, Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. The Evidence of Excellence: The humans in the trial list their architecture, sciences, and religions as proof that they “own” the world. If you were the judge, would you see these accomplishments as evidence of human greatness, or simply as a list of things we’ve built using stolen materials? 2. The Purpose of Pain: We often tell ourselves that animals (or even other people) don’t really “feel” their suffering because they aren’t smart enough to understand it. When we tell ourselves that someone is “too ignorant to know real joy,” are we describing their reality, or are we just making ourselves feel better about the bargain we’ve made? 3. The Master’s Logic: In the episode, we look at Aristotle’s idea that “the lower is for the sake of the higher.” If you truly believed that your comfort was the highest purpose of the natural world, what part of your own empathy would you have to switch off to keep living that way? 4. The Power of the Silence: The original story ends not with a victory for humans, but with a saint who recognizes the value of all worthy thought. Why is it so much harder for us to accept an ending where no one is “the boss” than one where we are clearly the winners? 5. The Hidden Price: If you found out that the “mathematically infallible happiness” of your city required you to ignore the cries of the things that feed and clothe you, would you try to change the system, or would you try to erase those cries from your mind so you could keep enjoying the peace?
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/CHAPTERS00:00 Trials and Tribulations
02:52 Intro Theme
03:28 10th Century Courtrooms
17:04 Bacon, Extraction Economies, and the Voices of L’inerme
26:49 Speciesism, Le Guin, and Peter Singer
33:57 19th Century Crimes
41:48 Synthesis & Superiority
45:13 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/original-omelas-case-animals-vs-manNew to Literary Nomads?Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:Chisnell, Steve. “6.32: The Original Omelas: The Case of the Animals vs. Man,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 18 April 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
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 a lottery. Does “mathematical fairness” absolve the citizens of Omelas, or does it simply creates a more sophisticated illusion of justice?
Today it’s the dark philosophy of Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Lottery in Babylon” and Machado de Assis’s “The Fortune-Teller.” How do we use fate, destiny, and algorithms to justify systemic inequality and sacrifice, unsettling our modern reliance on “chance” to explain the suffering of others?
Episode 6.31 –Tyranny of Chance: Assis, Borges, and the Randomized BargainReadings & Resources: Assis, Machado de. “The Fortune-Teller” (“A Cartomante”). Gazeta de Notícias, (1884). [Waywords PDF] * Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Lottery in Babylon” (“La lotería en Babilonia”), (1941). [Internet Archive PDF] * Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). * Bataille, Georges. On Nietzsche, (1944). * Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice*, (1971).
Some Key Terms from this episode: Capitalist Realism – The internalization of an exploitative system—such as Babylon’s lethal lottery or modern economic structures—so completely that citizens cannot even imagine a viable alternative reality. * Democratic Scapegoat – Definition: The process of sanitizing our guilt by mathematically equalizing the probability of suffering across everyone, masking deliberate, systemic violence as a fair game of chance. * Will to Chance –* Radical embrace of the absolute unknown that rejects utilitarian exchange, according to Bataille.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. When you encounter a story of someone else’s “luck,” does your mind look for a pattern of justice, or does it shrug at a meaningless universe? 2. How does the process of “outsourcing” a decision to an algorithm or a coin toss change the physical sensation of responsibility in your body? 3. In what ways does the concept of “equal opportunity” prevent us from seeing any actual human extraction suffered? 4. If the suffering of a victim is determined by a “bad draw,” does that change the moral outrage to demand a change in the system? 5. What parts of your own daily “certainties” are actually just “bullseyes” you’ve painted around the random bullet holes of your experience?
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/CHAPTERS00:00 Games of Chance
03:01 Intro Theme
03:36 Borges, Assis, Le Guin
07:45 The Failure of Reason: “The Fortune Teller”
14:20 Borges, Rawls, and the Democratic Scapegoat
25:20 Accountability 201
28:18 Institutionalized Chaos
33:08 Narrative Hypnosis
36:12 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-31-tyranny-chance-assis-borges/New to Literary Nomads?Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:Chisnell, Steve. “6.31: The Tyranny of Chance: Assis, Borges, and the Randomized Bargain,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 13 April 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
10 April 2026
Waypoint – “The Fortune Teller” by Joaquim Maria Machado de AssisJoaquim Maria Machado de Assis is perhaps the greatest writer of Brazil. In “The Fortune-Teller,” a secret affair driven by anonymous threats pushes a committed skeptic toward a dingy attic and a deck of cards. It is a study in how easily we trade our reason for a comfortable prophecy, and a reminder that the future rarely negotiates with the stories we tell ourselves. As a setting for our discussion on the role of chance, fate, and destiny against moral accountability, we might find few better examples.
Chapters
00:00 Waypoint Introduction
00:14 Title: “The Fortune Teller” by Machado de Assis
00:33 Reading: “The Fortune Teller”
26:01 Outro
Reflection Questions:
- How does the physical weight of a “secret” alter the way your mind perceives the “random” events of the day?
- In the moment Camillo enters the fortune-teller’s house, is he seeking a discovery of the future, or a sanctuary from the present?
- How does the “logic” of a skeptic become the primary tool for their own self-deception?
- If the fortune-teller “guessed” his secret, does that validate the magic, or does it simply expose the transparency of a guilty mind?
- When we outsource our moral outcomes to “Fate,” what part of our own agency and accountability do we leave behind?
https://waywordsstudio.com
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
TRANSCRIPT: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/waypoint-reading-of-the-fortune-teller
Literary Nomads is the primary program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material frequently, with deep-dive examinations of literature surrounded by smaller episodes which explore related texts, topics, and strategies for thinking.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Social Media: @WaywordsStudio
YouTube: Waywords Studio
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “Reading of ‘The Fortune Teller’ by Machado de Assis,’” Waywords Studio, 10 April 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/waypoints/.
The “Hideous Bargain” is no longer just about one child’s pain . . .
We investigate the “Euclidean Mind” that seeks to flatten our messy humanity into a spreadsheet of “mathematically infallible happiness.” Unsettle the sterile peace of the OneState and the rigid hierarchy of Flatland to ask: Is your imagination a gift, or a disease the state is currently curing?.
An interrogation of the “Iron Cage” of rationality and the death of imagination in a social order of mathematical logic. We negotiate the intersection of Weberian sociology and Zamyatin’s thermodynamic dialectic—Energy vs. Entropy—to re-story the act of writing as an inherently subversive, antientropic resistance.
Episode 6.30 –Failures of Imagination: We and FlatlandReadings & Resources: Abbott, Edwin A. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884) * Weber, Max. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (1922) * Zamyatin, Yevgeny. We* (1924) * Dostoevsky, Fyodor. “The Grand Inquisitor.” The Brothers Karamazov (1879) (pdf)
Some Key Terms from this episode: The Iron Cage – Ideological and cognitive lockdown—the endpoint of extreme rationality—where a society or individual relies solely on the safe, structured pronouncements of authority rather than independent, critical reason. See Max Weber’s sociological writings on bureaucracy and rationality. * Credulity vs. Credibility – An epistemological distinction about how we acquire knowledge: credulity demands blind faith in the dogma of ruling authorities (the “Circle Priests”), whereas credibility requires that beliefs and leaps of imagination be rigorously tested and anchored by reason. For the historical backdrop of this debate in Abbott’s time, see Jonathan Smith, Lawrence I. Berkove, and Gerald A. Baker’s “A Grammar of Dissent: Flatland, Newman, and the Theology of Probability.” * Entropy / Antientropic –* Borrowed from thermodynamics, entropy represents the State’s desire for blissful, dogmatic stasis and ideological closure. Antientropic is the vital, disruptive force of heretical, imaginative energy that true art and literature must inject into society to prevent its spiritual death. See Yevgeny Zamyatin’s essay “On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters.”
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. When we prioritize “predictability” in our daily routines or digital feeds, what higher dimensions of experience or thought do we “flatten” out of importance? 2. In what ways does our internal “Iron Cage” make us the principal figures in charge of our own subjugation? 3. If “reason” is used to justify the “Great Operation” on our imaginations, does the bargain remain “rational,” or has the language of logic been colonized by power? 4. How does the act of “writing back” disrupt the thermodynamic entropy of a sterile society? 5. If we are “Numbers” in a system that values only efficiency, what “irrational” parts of our humanity are worth preserving as heretical?.
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/CHAPTERS00:00 Certainty and Less Than
08:27 Intro Theme
09:03 The Monster “State”
15:23 The Geometry of Bigotry: Geometry
26:19 “We” and the Shattered Conduit
32:37 Glass Cities
41:08 The Treason of Writing
52:02 Aporia and . . .
55:30 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-30-failures-of-imagination-we-flatlandNew to Literary Nomads?Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:Chisnell, Steve. “6.30: Failures of Imagination: We and Flatland,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 3 April 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
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 meet the visceral reality of clinical labor. We examine how the “Sanitization of Language” allows societies—from the United Federation of Planets to modern biotechnology markets—to rebrand human suffering as a “sacred honor” or a “net gain”.
“We explore the “clinical labor” of Star Trek and Never Let Me Go. We re-story the “Redshirt” trope through the lens of necropolitics and the ethical extractions of the modern bioeconomy.
Episode 6.29 –Utopia’s Spare Parts: Star Trek & IshiguroReadings & Resources: Ishiguro, Kazuo – Never Let Me Go (2005) * “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach,” Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Season 1, Episode 6 (2022) * Mbembe, Achille – Necropolitics (2019) * Scarry, Elaine – The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (1985) * Waldby, Catherine & Melinda Cooper – Clinical Labor: Tissue Inventory and the Embodied Economies of Regenerative Medicine (2014) * Singer, Peter – Practical Ethics (2011) * Haraway, Donna – “A Cyborg Manifesto” (found in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women*, 1991)
Some Key Terms from this episode: Clinical Labor – The extraction of biological value (tissues, organs, experimental data) from the human body as an economic resource. * Habitus – Our “social autopilot,” the internalized set of habits and worldviews, shaped by our upbringing, that makes certain paths feel “natural” while others remain literally unthinkable * Homo Sacer – [Homo SAH-cher], An individual reduced to “bare life”; excluded from legal protection and able to be killed without it being a crime. * Necropolitics – The use of social and political power to dictate how some people may live and how some must die. * Sanitization of Language –* The use of euphemisms (e.g., “completion” instead of death) to make unethical systems palatable.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. When we encounter a “sanitized label” like “economic downsizing,” what physical extractions are hidden by the syntax? 2. In what ways does our own “habitus” make social sacrifices feel like inevitable “canon events” rather than choices? 3. If a “docile body” accepts its own exploitation/extraction, does that change the nature of the bargain, or just the visibility of our choices? 4. How does the concept of “clinical labor” reframe the human body as a “mathematical” utilitarian equation? 5. If empathy has “limits” within a walled ideological system, what other strategies may help us overcome those walls?
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/CHAPTERS00:00 Crewman, We Hardly Knew You
07:43 Intro Theme
08:19 Extractions of Labor
14:49 Star Trek Meets Le Guin
28:10 Ishiguro and the Quiet Bureaucracy
37:16 Utilitarian Defense
43:18 The Flesh and the Machine
48:10 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-29-utopia-spare-partsNew to Literary Nomads?Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag: https://forms.gle/WKGp1YWrazNZ3TLt8 ===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:Chisnell, Steve. “6.29 Utopia’s Spare Parts: Star Trek & Ishiguro,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 20 March 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
The Omelas basement has a physical address in America: the prison-industrial complex.
This week, we use the lens of Toni Morrison’s literary criticism to interrogate the 13th Amendment and the ‘Hideous Bargain” of mass incarceration. If the basement is built into our laws, can we ever truly ‘walk away’?
We analyze Toni Morrison’s book Playing in the Dark and the prison-industrial complex through the documentary film 13th. We discuss the ‘Architecture of the Dungeon,’ and the ‘Hideous Bargain’ of American systemic racism. We discuss how ‘white silence’ sustains the Omelas basement and why dismantling the ‘Utopia Illusion’ requires an open and strenuous engagement with marginalized narratives and those of the Western white canon.
The Omelas framework is both the literal and literary architecture of the American dungeon: the prison-industrial complex. We identify the 13th Amendment’s ‘punishment clause’ as the legal anchor for the ‘Hideous Bargain,’ where the civil liberties of the majority are tethered to the systemic extraction of life from the imprisoned. Through Morrison’s lens, we recognize that ‘white silence’ acts as the mortar in these walls, sustaining a ‘Utopia Illusion’ that requires the intentional obliviousness of the privileged class.
Episode 6.28 –The Architecture of the Dungeon: Toni Morrison and the 13th AmendmentReadings & Resources: DuVernay, Ava, 13th (documentary film, 2016) * Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination* (1992) * Morrison, Toni. “Recitatif.” (1983)
Some Key Terms from this episode: Africanism (or Africanist Presence): Fabricated, denotative, and connotative blackness that African peoples have come to signify within Eurocentric thought; a backdrop against which white identity and freedom are constructed. * Copaganda: Portmanteau of “cop” and “propaganda,” coined by Alec Karakatsanis, describing media that shows policing, state violence, and the criminal justice system as inherently fair, noble, and necessary. * 13thism:* A historical paradigm and narrative trope which argues that the Reconstruction era did not end slavery, but instead used the Thirteenth Amendment’s exception clause as the legal foundation for the mass re-enslavement of African Americans.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. How does the presence of a “legal exception” for slavery in the 13th Amendment shift our perception of the Constitution from a ‘Declaration of Freedom’ to a ‘Manual for Management’? 2. If we consider ‘silence’ as a physical building material, what structures in your immediate community appear to be supported by what is not being said? 3. In what ways does the ‘psychological manufacture’ of a criminal’s identity serve to protect the moral comfort of mainstream society? 4. If the ‘Garden Walls’ of our reading choices seal us in with our own illusions, what specific ‘frictions’ are required to break them? 5. How does the ‘Extraction of Labor’ from the marginalized physically manifest in the ‘Abundance’ of our modern digital and physical harvests?
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/CHAPTERS00:00 Advisory
01:51 Turning the Camera Around
07:24 Intro Theme
07:59 Personae
19:20 Studies in Morrison
26:18 Legal Loopholes: 13th
38:39 Spare Parts
41:01 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Bibliography (most accurate): https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-28-morrison-and-13thNew to Literary Nomads?Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag: https://forms.gle/WKGp1YWrazNZ3TLt8 ===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:Chisnell, Steve. “6.28 The Architecture of the Dungeon: Toni Morrison and the 13th Amendment,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 27 February 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
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 Child’ is a powerful challenge, but it creates its own blind spots: it can turn a living history into a static prop. This week, we use Tommy Orange’s Wandering Stars to break that Omelas mirror. We explore the ‘Sovereign Center’—a reality where trauma is not a relic in a basement, but an active, intergenerational authorship that demands a more strenuous engagement than simply ‘walking away.’
We also consider the legacy of the Carlisle Indian Boarding School, the Sand Creek Massacre, and the concept of ‘Survivance’ as a rejection of static victimhood. And we wonder if Renya Ramirez’s ‘Native Hub’ theory explains how Louise Erdrich and Tommy Orange use narrative power to challenge the ‘Bureaucracy of Erasure’ and the Omelas dilemma.
Episode 6.27 –Wandering Stars: Tommy Orange and the Sovereign CenterReadings & Resources: Erdrich, Louise: The Night Watchman, Love Medicine (expanded editions) * Harjo, Joy. “I Give You Back.” from She Had Some Horses (1983) * Momaday, N. Scott. “The Man Made of Words.” (1997) * Ortiz, Simon: “Towards a National Indian Literature” (essay), from Sand Creek (poetry) * Orange, Tommy: There There (2018) and Wandering Stars (2024) * Vizenor, Gerald. Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance.*
Some Key Terms from this episode: Native Hub: A concept by Renya Ramirez describing the urban center not as a place of cultural loss or assimilation, but as a dynamic network where Indigenous culture is collected, maintained, and reinvented through “intertribal” connection. * Survivance: Gerald Vizenor’s term for an “active sense of presence” that renounces the static narratives of tragedy and victimhood, combining survival with resistance to create a continuous, evolving Indigenous identity. * The Loop* (vs. Linearity): A temporal structure used by Tommy Orange to describe both the repetitive cycle of addiction and the non-linear nature of Indigenous history, where past traumas and present realities occur simultaneously, even internally, contrasting with the “settler time” of linear progress.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. How does the transition from viewing an individual as a “subject of care” to an “agent of sovereignty” alter the ethical requirements of the observer? 2. In the context of “intergenerational trauma,” what are the implications of treating time as a toroidal loop rather than a linear sequence of events? 3. How might the “Native Hub” model challenge traditional Western definitions of “citizenship” or “territory”? 4. Consider the linguistic friction in the term “Emancipation” when applied to “Termination”—how does the misuse of language facilitate ontological erasure? 5. If we reject the binary choice of “Stay or Walk Away,” what is the intellectual cost of “Adding oneself back” to a fractured history?
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/CHAPTERS00:00 Breaking the Mirror of Omelas
04:18 Intro Theme
04:51 Some Spatial Theory
17:19 Monsters Within
21:02 Survivance
23:57 Theories of Time: Toruses and Loops
26:56 Literature from Our Margins
29:03 Closing Credits
===
Transcript and Bibliography (most accurate): https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-27-wandering-stars-orangeNew to Literary Nomads?Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag: https://forms.gle/WKGp1YWrazNZ3TLt8 ===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:Chisnell, Steve. “6.27 Wandering Stars: Tommy Orange and the Sovereign Center,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 20 February 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
Your Interpretation is Colonial.
When we turn Zen into a pop-culture vibe or a totem pole into a corporate metaphor, we aren’t learning; we’re committing interpretative violence.
Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman and Simon Ortiz’s “Towards a National Indian Literature” confront the “Bureaucracy of Erasure.” We ditch the linear “vanishing Indian” myth for the Torus—a non-linear, sovereign loop of survival where the ghosts of the past still speak in the official transcripts of the present. Along the way, we learn about MMIWR (see below) and the 1953 Termination Act (House Concurrent Resolution 108).
In this episode, we apply the Omelas Framework to that historical policy, identifying it as a state-sponsored “Hideous Bargain”. The US government used the euphemism of “Emancipation” to market the erasure of Indigenous tribes as a “deal” for full equality, effectively seeking to “prosper” by silencing the sovereignty of the victim. Rather than “walking away” from this systemic injustice, Erdrich’s protagonist, Thomas Wazhashk, uses the “Emperor’s tools”—the English language and parliamentary procedure—to “write back” against the bureaucracy, transforming the narrative from one of passive suffering into one of active, sovereign “survivance”.
Episode 6.26 –The Bureaucracy of Erasure: Erdrich’s The Night WatchmanReadings & Resources: Erdrich, Louise: The Night Watchman, Love Medicine (expanded editions) * Ortiz, Simon: “Towards a National Indian Literature” (essay), from Sand Creek* (poetry) * MMIWR + Not Our Native Daughters: https://notournativedaughters.org + National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center: https://www.niwrc.org
Some Key Terms from this episode: Torus: A doughnut-shaped continuous surface used by Erdrich as a spatial metaphor for Indigenous time, a non-linear, cyclical reality where the “tribal private” core remains protected from the settler state’s linear mapping. * Catachresis: The rhetorical abuse or misuse of a word (e.g., using “Emancipation” to name a bill that enacts “Termination”), which is the primary linguistic weapon of the “Hideous Bargain” in the 1950s. Here, “euphemism” is a kind of catachesis. * Survivance*: Gerald Vizenor’s term describing an “active sense of presence” that rejects the binary of “dominance/victimhood,” allowing indigenous peoples to use colonial tools (like English or bureaucracy) to ensure continuity rather than assimilation.
Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions1. In what ways do we unknowingly use “museum culture” logic to view marginalized communities as static relics of the past rather than evolving, modern identities? 2. Can you identify a “Hideous Bargain” in your own local or national community where the prosperity of many relies on the “euphemized” erasure of another group 3. How does the metaphor of the Torus—time and space as a looping, overlapping substance—change your perspective on historical traumas like boarding schools? 4. If language is a tool for both “colonization” and “liberation,” how can we consciously “write back” against systems that profit from silence 5. What “monsters” in our current systems are we failing to name because our language has been sanitized by bureaucratic euphemisms?
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/CHAPTERS00:00 My Own Monsters
06:17 Intro Theme
06:50 The Bureaucracy of Erasure
16:08 Erdrich and the Emancipation Trap
23:01 Turning Back Upon Ourselves: MMIWR
26:05 Donuts & Time
41:03 Killing Metaphysics
44:42 The “Suffering Child” Who Won’t Stay Dead
50:25 Closing Credits
===
New to Literary Nomads?Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag: https://forms.gle/WKGp1YWrazNZ3TLt8 Transcript and Bibliography (most accurate): https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-26-erdrich-the-night-watchman===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:Chisnell, Steve. “6.26 The Bureaucracy of Erasure: Erdrich’s The Night Watchman,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 13 February 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
Akwaeke Emezi demonstrates how Nigeria’s contemporary writers turn our conceptual realities around. They offer a YA novel that doesn’t condescend, but more, one which shows that we should not “walk away” from Omelas, but perhaps “Stay and Hunt.”
This is also the final of three episodes which offers a broader look at the history and newer trends in Nigerian literature along with recommendations for reading. Part 1 discussed Dear Ijeawele by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Part 2 explored Wole Soyinka’s play, The Trials of Brother Jero.
Episode 6.25 –Words from Nigeria 3 – Emezi’s Pet & Hunters for TruthFull list of African writers with sample works I recommend:
- Abani, Chris (Nigeria): Graceland, The Secret History of Las Vegas
- Achebe, Chinua (Nigeria): Things Fall Apart, The Anthills of Savannah, Arrow of God, Hopes and Impediments
- Adeyemi, Tomi (Nigeria): Children of Blood and Bone
- Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi (Nigeria): Dream Count, The Thing Around Your Neck, Americanah, Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, Dear Ijeawele
- Agualusa, José Eduardo (Angola): A General Theory of Oblivion
- Armah, Ayi Kwei (Ghana): The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
- Bâ, Mariama (Senegal): So Long a Letter
- Braithwaite, Oyinkan (Nigeria): My Sister the Serial Killer
- Cole, Teju (Nigeria): Open City, Tremor, Known and Strange Things, Every Day Is For a Thief
- Dangarembga, Tsitsi (Zimbabwe): Nervous Conditions, The Book of Not
- Djebar, Assia (Algeria): Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
- El Saadawi. Nawal (Egypt): Woman at Point Zero
- Emezi, Akwaeke (Nigeria): Pet, The Death of Vivek Oji, Freshwater, Dear Senthuran, You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
- Farah, Nuruddin (Somalia): Sweet and Sour Milk, Secrets
- Forna, Aminatta (Sierra Leone): The Memory of Love
- Gordimer, Nadine (South Africa): The Conservationist, July’s People
- Gurnah, Abdulrazak (Tanzania): Paradise, Desertion
- Gyasi, Yaa (Ghana): Transcendent Kingdom, Homegoing
- Head, Bessie (Botswana/South Africa): A Question of Power
- Iyay, Festus (Nigeria): Violence
- La Guma, Alex (South Africa): Time of the Butcherbird
- Mabanckou, Alain (Republic of the Congo): Black Moses, Broken Glass
- Makumbi, Jennifer Nansubuga (Uganda): Kintu; The First Woman; A Girl Is a Body of Water
- Marechera, Dambudzo (Zimbabwe): The House of Hunger
- Mbue, Imbolo (Cameroon): How Beautiful We Were
- Mujila, Fiston Mwanza (DR Congo): Tram 83
- Nwapa, Flora (Nigeria): Efuru, This is Lagos and Other Stories
- Okorafor, Nnedi (Nigeria): Noor, Death of the Author, Binti
- Okri, Ben (Nigeria): The Famished Road, Starbook
- Owuor, Yvonne Adhiambo (Kenya): Dust
- Salih, Tayeb (Sudan): Season of Migration to the North
- Saro-Wiwa, Ken (Nigeria): Sozaboy
- Sarr, Mohamed Mbougar (Senegal): The Most Secret Memory of Men.
- Sembène, Ousmane (Senegal): God’s Bits of Wood
- Serpell, Namwani (Zambia): The Old Drift
- Soyinka, Wole (Nigeria): A Shuttle in the Crypt, The Trials of Brother Jero, Kongi’s Harvest, The Lion and the Jewel, A Play of Giants
- Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ wa (Kenya): A Grain of Wheat, Petals of Blood, and Wizard of the Crow
- African Instapoetry: Lebo Mashile (South Africa), Titilope Sonuga (Nigeria-Canada), Dike Chukwumerije (Nigeria), Yrsa Daley-Ward (Nigeria-UK), Upile Chisala (Malawi)
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/
CHAPTERS
00:00 Barbarians Block the Gate
06:06 Intro Theme
06:42 Exploding Canons
18:03 The Power of YA and Queer Ontology
25:48 Evasion Modeling
32:46 Reading Differently
36:33 Closing Credits
===
New to Literary Nomads?
Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag: https://forms.gle/WKGp1YWrazNZ3TLt8
Transcript and Bibliography (most accurate): https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-25-nigeria-3-emezi
===
Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and BlueSky: @WaywordsStudio
===
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “6.25 Words from Nigeria 3 – Emezi’s Pet & Hunters for Truth,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 30 January 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
Why have so few read Soyinka? And can we find hope through his cynical dramas?
I admit I am a victim of the myth-making around me which has made Soyinka and other African writers largely invisible. Let’s see why.
Episode 6.24 –Words from Nigeria Pt 2: Soyinka’s Tiger & Brother JeroAfrican writers named in this episode and some of the most rewarding reads:
- Soyinka, Wole: The Trials of Brother Jero, Kongi’s Harvest, The Lion and the Jewel, A Play of Giants
- Achebe, Chinua: Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, The Anthills of Savannah
- Cole, Teju: Open City, Known and Strange Things
- Emezi, Akwaeke: Pet, Freshwater
- Nwapa, Flora: Efuru, This is Lagos and Other Stories
- Saro-Wiwa, Ken: Sozaboy
- Iyay, Festus: Violence
- Okorafor, Nnedi: Binti, Noor, Death of the Author
- Braithwaite, Oyinkan: My Sister the Serial Killer
- Okri, Ben: The Famished Road, Starbook
- Abani, Chris: Graceland, The Secret History of Las Vegas
Western writers from this episode:
- Kipling, Rudyard: Kim, The Jungle Book, “White Man’s Burden”
- Haggard, H. Rider: King Solomon’s Mine
- Cary, Joyce: Mister Johnson
- Ballyntine, R. M.: Coral Island
- Collins, Wilkie: Moonstone
- Boulle, Pierre: Planet of the Apes
- Burroughs, Edgar Rice: A Princess of Mars
- Cameron, James: Avatar
- Cooper, James Fenimore: The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder
- Heinlein, Robert: Starship Troopers
- Longyear, Barry B.: Enemy Mine
- Verne, Jules: Master of the World, The End of Nana Sahib
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/
CHAPTERS
00:00 My White Mythology
08:35 Intro Theme
09:08 Tigritude
13:24 Frictions and Flux
21:58 The Text: The Trials of Brother Jero
29:53 The Trickster and False Omelas
37:38 From Satire to Ontology
38:50 Closing Credits
===
New to Literary Nomads? Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag: https://forms.gle/WKGp1YWrazNZ3TLt8
Transcript: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-24-nigeria-2-soyinka
===
Literary Nomads is the primary program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, and LinkedIn: @WaywordsStudio
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “6.24 Words from Nigeria Pt 2: Soyinka’s Tiger & Brother Jero,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 23 January 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
What sort of literature is this, anyway?
Today we introduce some approaches to Nigerian literature, offer a bevy of African writers, and explore how one of Nigeria’s most powerful authors can write her own modest letter to humanity. Also, we learn about hostile architecture from one of our listeners.
Episode 6.23 –Words from Nigeria Pt 1: Adichie and the Literary ManifestoAfrican writers from this episode and some of the most rewarding reads:
- Achebe, Chinua (Nigeria): Things Fall Apart, The Anthills of Savannah, Arrow of God, Hopes and Impediments
- Adeyemi, Tomi (Nigeria): Children of Blood and Bone
- Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi (Nigeria): Dream Count, The Thing Around Your Neck, Americanah, Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, Dear Ijeawele
- Armah, Ayi Kwei (Ghana): The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
- Cole, Teju (Nigeria): Open City, Tremor
- Dangarembga, Tsitsi (Zimbabwe): Nervous Conditions, The Book of Not
- Emezi, Akwaeke (Nigeria): Pet, The Death of Vivek Oji
- Farah, Nuruddin (Somalia): Sweet and Sour Milk, Secrets
- Forna, Aminatta (Sierra Leone): The Memory of Love
- Gordimer, Nadine (South Africa): The Conservationist, July’s People
- Gurnah, Abdulrazak (Tanzania): Paradise, Desertion
- Gyasi, Yaa (Ghana): Transcendent Kingdom, Homegoing
- La Guma, Alex (South Africa): Time of the Butcherbird
- Mbue, Imbolo (Cameroon): How Beautiful We Were
- Nwapa, Flora (Nigeria): Efuru, This is Lagos and Other Stories
- Okorafor, Nnedi (Nigeria): Noor, Death of the Author
- Okri, Ben (Nigeria): The Famished Road, Starbook
- Salih, Tayeb (Sudan): Season of Migration to the North
- Soyinka, Wole (Nigeria): A Shuttle in the Crypt, The Trials of Brother Jero
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/
CHAPTERS
00:00 Where is African Literature?
07:09 Intro Theme
07:45 Why Listen to White Boy Talk?
10:50 Nigerian Frictions, Flux, and Future 1
18:06 Adichie: Intimacy and “Author”-ity
26:56 The Banality of Sexism
31:06 Writing Back: Our Turn
37:05 Closing Credits
===
New to Literary Nomads? Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag: https://forms.gle/WKGp1YWrazNZ3TLt8
Transcript: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-23-nigeria-1-adichie
===
Literary Nomads is the primary program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, and LinkedIn: @WaywordsStudio
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “6.23 Words from Nigeria Pt 1: Adichie and the Literary Manifesto,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 16 January 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
And what if nobody listens?
Yes, entering our calls for justice into public space carries no small amount of anxiety. And the poster-child for being unheard, the Trojan princess and priestess Cassandra, may–if we read our mythology carefully–provide us some clues to our purpose and goals in writing as anti-epic heroes, wielding language as our weapons.
Episode 6.22 –Cassandra: Uncertain StepsTexts from this episode:
- Aeschylus: Agamemnon
- Euripides: Trojan Women
- Schwarz, Hans: Kassandra
- Smale, Holly: The Cassandra Complex
- Wolf, Christa: Cassandra
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/
CHAPTERS
00:00 The Morning After
04:36 Intro Theme
05:11 Cassandra, You Shifty Rabble Rouser
11:18 The Medial Woman
15:47 Privilege and the Apollonian Collective
20:31 The “Anti-Epic Hero”
25:10 Still Anxious
31:02 Methods of Repair: Neurath’s Boat
35:32 Closing Credits
===
New to Literary Nomads? Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag: https://forms.gle/WKGp1YWrazNZ3TLt8
Transcript: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-22-cassandra-uncertain-steps
===
Literary Nomads is the primary program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, and LinkedIn: @WaywordsStudio
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “6.22 Cassandra: Uncertain Steps,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 09 January 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
26 Dec 2025
Episode 6.21 –Writing Back: Letters to HumanityA different sort of New Year Resolution, moving us from personal improvement to public advocacy! Let’s write an essay of address, framing our passions into a perspective that would make Le Guin proud!
Texts from this episode:
- Nazim Hikmet: Letters to Taranta-Babu, 1935
- Aimé Césaire: Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, 1939
- Walt Whitman: various poems from Leaves of Grass, 1855
- Mahmoud Darwish, “Identity Card,” 1965
- Chimamanda Adichie: Dear Ijeawele, 2017
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/
CHAPTERS
00:00 New Years, New Laments
06:16 Intro Theme
06:50 Why Write Back
12:06 Our Writing Prompt: Anchor & Sting
21:34 Topics, Topics, Topics
26:21 I’m Writing, Too
37:30 Closing Credits
===
New to Literary Nomads? Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag: https://forms.gle/WKGp1YWrazNZ3TLt8
Transcript: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-21-writing-back-letters-to-humanity
===
Literary Nomads is the primary program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, and LinkedIn: @ Waywords Studio
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “6.21 Writing Back: Letters to Humanity,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 26 Dec 2025, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
19 Dec 2025
Episode 6.20 –The Great Societies: Lowry’s The GiverAnother thorny utopia, Lowry’s Community practices a different kind of strategy to the Hideous Bargain: ethical evasion, a too tempting strategy for all of us. Political? Yes. But also a YA fantasy vision of what some of the latest writers and thinkers believe we’re doing already.
Texts from this episode:
- Lois Lowry, The Giver, 1993
- Rabih Alameddine, Comforting Myths, 2024
- Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, 2025
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/
CHAPTERS
00:00 Choosing Ugliness
05:45 Intro Theme
06:19 Evasion Modeling
11:40 Meaning and Politics in The Giver
20:58 Price Tags for Blissful Ignorance
25:00 At Stake: The Sanitation of Memory
33:30 Where To?
36:44 Closing Credits
===
New to Literary Nomads? Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/
Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag: https://forms.gle/WKGp1YWrazNZ3TLt8
Transcript: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-20-the-great-societies-the-giver/
===
Literary Nomads is the primary program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, and LinkedIn: @ Waywords Studio
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “6.20 The Great Societies: Lowry’s The Giver,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 19 Dec 2025, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
12 Dec 2025
Episode 6.19 –The Great Societies, Pt 2: Metropolis & The Ways of MeaningWe finish our discussion of the silent film Metropolis and answer our question of art and politics by examining the text, context, and reader meaning-making.
Discussed in the episode:
- A definition of Context:
- with / accompanying / outside of (traditional definitions)
- as a Limitation
- as Dialogue
- as Horizon
- as Motive
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/
CHAPTERS
00:00 Art Against the Emperor
04:37 Intro Theme
05:12 Reading the Text: Architecture pf Exploitation
15:38 Blinding Ourselves with Plot
22:03 Reading Context
30:51 Revisionism and Metropolis
36:56 Reader Readings
45:39 Accountability for Politics and Arts
49:27 Closing Credits
===
New to Literary Nomads? Check out episode 5.00 to find out what we’re all about: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords_podcast/an-introduction-and-irony/
Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag: https://forms.gle/WKGp1YWrazNZ3TLt8
Transcript: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-19-the-great-societies-pt-2/
===
Literary Nomads is the primary program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, and LinkedIn: @ Waywords Studio
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “6.19 The Great Societies, Pt 2: Metropolis & The Ways of Meaning,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 12 Dec 2025, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
5 Dec 2025
Episode 6.18 –Is All Art Political? The Great Societies, Pt. 1: MetropolisIt seems everything is politics these days. But at least can’t we keep art pure? You know, art for art’s sake? I offer my thoughts on the topic while we examine the classic silent film, Metropolis (1927).
In the process, we discuss an indigenous protest against American Art, the nature of ideology, an opening definition of a Great Society, and the four areas of inquiry we must pursue to answer the question, “Is All Art Political?”
- The Author’s Intention
- The Text Itself
- The Context Around the Text
- The Reader’s Thinking
This Part 1 considers the first of these by asking what we know about the creators of the German silent film; Part 2 will look at the next three approaches.
Some links to items mentioned:
- An Indigenous Takeover of the MET: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/an-indigenous-takeover-of-the-met-asks-who-should-be-writing-art-history-1234757699/
- Metropolis (1927): https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFzHH9EL9x0
Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/
CHAPTERS
00:00 Great Garden Walls
09:03 Intro Theme
09:38 Framing the Talk
19:18 Some Metropolis Backstory
29:58 Harbou and Lang: Artist’s Intent
37:30 Author Trouble
48:38 Where This Leaves Us
52:49 Closing Credits
===
New to Literary Nomads? Check out episode 5.00 to find out what we’re all about: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords_podcast/an-introduction-and-irony/
Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag: https://forms.gle/WKGp1YWrazNZ3TLt8
Transcript: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-18-the-great-societies-pt-1/
===
Literary Nomads is the primary program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.
Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.
Website: https://waywordsstudio.com
Newsletter: https://waywordsstudio.kit.com/
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, and LinkedIn: @ Waywords Studio
CREDITS:
Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)
Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski
USING THIS WORK:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.
MLA CITATION:
Chisnell, Steve. “6.18 Is All Art Political? The Great Societies, Pt. 1: Metropolis,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 5 Dec 2025, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.
We finish our side trail on the implications of Poe's horror by stepping more deeply into our own capacity to violence, reaching finally to Le Guin's own direction: look to our modern political scene and the impulse to annihilation.
We say Poe has influence the genre of horror, but have we really considered what that influence has revealed to us across the generations? What happens when we tell stories of a culture that has abandoned its moral foundations?
There really isn't that much to say about Poe, is there? He's just creepy. But wait. What if we could explain the supposed madness in all these stories?
Another Halloween treat from Poe, a reading of this lesser-known tale. And follow the podcast for some ways to think about it and "The Tell-Tale Heart"!
This story, a quintessential Poe classic, is perfect not only for its conception of the psychology of horror, but for our larger discussion in Le Guin's Journey 6.
What is this podcast? I recommend you start here, with this introduction to Literary Nomads and get a taste of what the larger series offers!
What is this podcast? I recommend you start here, with this introduction to Literary Nomads and get a taste of what the larger series offers!
What is this podcast? I recommend you start here, with this introduction to Literary Nomads and get a taste of what the larger series offers!
Now that we've wrestled in and with Omelas for a bit, what questions remain for us to take forward on our journey? We're walking away from Omelas, but let's have an idea where we're going.
Listeners offer their questions from narrator trust to activism to teaching controversy. I rant--or respond--back.
Can we pull this utopia dilemma together? Or will we add even more levels of complication?
Sure, the Omelas dilemma is tough, but at least we have our narrator as ally, right? Right? Perhaps the real horror in Omelas has less to do with the child at its center.
Is this story really about that suffering child? Or is it more about how we wall its suffering out, then invite it back in?
At last we settle in to think about Le Guin's Omelas story and set aside some common approaches to it. The first of several parts.
Let's niche down into a small sub-genre of fantasy and explore our desire for it, the classic utopia!
Riddle: What do Beowulf, Palmolive dish liquid, and Sarah Maas have in common? Hint: Ursula K. Le Guin knows!
What do a children's story and horror film have in common? Maybe our Suffering Child question, with very different approaches to it.
This is getting challenging. What are we to do with the Suffering Child question? And on which form of suffering do I plant my flag of resistance? Dostoevsky and Langston Hughes both offer clues.
Still another famous writer has posed the Le Guin question, and he did it in one of Russia's most famous novels, The Brothers Karamazov. Here it is.
Le Guin leans on an essay by William James, but what does that have to do with all our garden talk? It's about our blind spots and our privilege.
Speaking of links back to Andrew Marvell's poetry--weren't we?--we expose some of our misapprehensions about nature, leisure, and work. And we read Marvell's poem "The Garden" while we think green thoughts about it.
What does it mean to embrace "Other"? And how might we understand carpe diem if we truly had "world enough and time?" Le Guin shows us in her famous science fiction short story.
Looking ahead at Season 6: Ursula K. Le Guin's story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," and all the wrestling we do with dilemmas of ethics.
We finish a carpe diem journey and I reflect back on what I've learned, what I believe, and where we are going next.
It's time for the end of our carpe diem journey, and we celebrate with a congratulatory essay! Hey, why so glum?
Sure we can philosophize, but what happens when we put carpe diem to the test in the modern world of capital?
What is required of us to find the power and meaning in art? in poetry? Is it related to carpe diem? And does it give us any guidance in how to approach meaningful lives?
Can an ancient Roman poet illuminate the concept of carpe diem? Perhaps, but then again . . .
Writing back to authors and their works is essential to the literary culture; it also helps us answer our essential questions. Let's do some of that, then!
Where do we find people to talk to about our reading? And what do we say when we find them?
What did Marvell know and how did he use it? We look at the sexism in the poem and discover how this provocation is hardly unique in the carpe diem tradition.
A Winter Solstice tale of a peculiar kind of terror, this story was recently discovered (2011) among a collection of du Maurier's works completed around the age of 21. This story has mature themes.
What do we do with--how do we read--can we make us of--a classic and famous metaphysical poem which is also misogynistic?
Carol Pearson's work following Carl Jung offers us a way to transform our understanding of our own lives, and also how we read the narratives we have so long been taught. I review her strategies for using the archetypes and review her online assessment tool, the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator.
A reading of "Clarimonde," an appropriately creepy story befitting the tradition of Winter Solstice ghost stories. This story in French is titled "La Morte Amoureuse."
Are writers responsible or accountable for what they write? What about readers for what we interpret? How a writer's use of narration can create irony.
How do digital art experiences change our reading of original works? Should they be considered a new genre to read?
How do digital art experiences change our reading of original works? Should they be considered a new genre to read?
Why do we defend a canonical "original?" Where does such an idea come from? We discuss what we mean to place a text with authority and visit The Lord of the Rings and "Fur Elise" along the way.
How does one read a story which creates its own rules? What else should we ever do? A sociological look at Adichie's intersectionality.
How do we determine the meaning of a work which has no author? And what responsibility is there in authoring our own interpretation? We examine the potential meanings of this poem, dig at length into the different ideas of medieval authorship, and find we may have not have wandered yet that far, at all.
Full Members Bonus Episode: Digging further into post-structural questions offered by the story.
A reading of the short story in anticipation of our first full episode on the Kate Chopin short. story. “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully.”