Show overview
Literary Nomads has been publishing since 2021, and across the 5 years since has built a catalogue of 86 episodes. That works out to roughly 55 hours of audio in total. Releases follow a monthly cadence, with the show now in its 6th season.
Episodes typically run thirty-five to sixty minutes — most land between 32 min and 50 min — though episode length varies meaningfully from one episode to the next. None of the episodes are flagged explicit by the publisher. It is catalogued as a EN-US-language Education show.
The show is actively publishing — the most recent episode landed 3 days ago, with 20 episodes already out so far this year. The busiest year was 2025, with 49 episodes published. Published by Steve Chisnell.
From the publisher
Join me, Steve Chisnell, as we find and lose meaning across modern and classic tales, through ancient and distant verse, atop everything in our many cultures which might be read. For teachers, students, and lovers of reading, we will discover new paths to understanding!
Latest Episodes
View all 86 episodesGrand Tours Pt 2: Bat on the Narrow Road
Grand Tours Pt 1: The Postcard Illusion
Literary Tourism Trailer
Nomadic Departures
What I Get Wrong: Intimidation & Interpretation
Writing Back: Guerilla Texts, BTS, and Gaye
The Ethics of Reading: Frictional Thoughts
Roman Plow, Sovereign Tree: Seneca and Zhuangzi
The Original Omelas: The Case of the Animals vs. Man
The Tyranny of Chance: Assis, Borges, and the Randomized Bargain
Waypoint – “The Fortune Teller”
Failures of Imagination: We and Flatland
The “Hideous Bargain” is no longer just about one child’s pain . . . We investigate the “Euclidean Mind” that seeks to flatten our messy humanity 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 […]
Utopia’s Spare Parts: Star Trek & Ishiguro
The “Hideous Bargain” moves from metaphor to the operating table. In this episode, we let loose the bonds of metaphor in Le Guin’s “Omelas” and 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 […]
The Architecture of the Dungeon: Toni Morrison and the 13th Amendment
The Omelas basement has a physical address in America: the prison-industrial complex. This week, we use the lens of Toni Morrison’s literary 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 […]
Wandering Stars: Tommy Orange and the Sovereign Center
What happens to the story when the ‘object’ of our sympathy looks back and refuses the role we’ve written for them? The allegory of the ‘Suffering 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 […]
S6 Ep 73The Bureaucracy of Erasure: Erdrich’s The Night Watchman
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.
Words from Nigeria 3 – Emezi’s Pet & Hunters for Truth
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 […]
Words from Nigeria Pt 2: Soyinka’s Tiger & Brother Jero
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 Jero African writers named […]
Words from Nigeria Pt 1: Adichie and the Literary Manifesto
  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 […]
Cassandra: Uncertain Steps
  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 […]