
Subtext: Conversations about Classic Books and Films
173 episodes — Page 2 of 4

The Weight of Memory in Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” (1940)
Alfred Hitchcock’s first American film—part love story, part ghost story, part courtroom melodrama—centers on a poor, timid young woman who falls in love with wealthy aristocrat Maxim de Winter, a widower tortured over the death of his first wife. When the young woman becomes the second Mrs. De Winter and moves into Maxim’s estate, she finds her predecessor’s initials stamped all over the house, and its staff in thrall to her beautiful, vibrant memory. But at the heart of the first Mrs. De Winter’s legacy lies a rot, and just what that rot represents in the film—be it the oppressions of vitality and ambition, the wages of class mobility, the unruly desires of sexuality, or the latent evidence of civilizational decline—is our subject today. Wes & Erin discuss the 1940 Best Picture winner “Rebecca,” starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier. Upcoming Episodes: Emily Dickinson, Rosemary’s Baby. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Possibility and Loss in the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (Part 2)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “You Who Never Arrived” and “Be Ahead of All Parting” (II.13 from his “Sonnets to Orpheus”), and whether—as Rilke suggests—death can be put in service of life, and suffering sourced as the principal wellspring of a joyful existence. Upcoming Episodes: Rebecca (1940), Dickinson. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Possibility and Loss in the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
In his poem “You Who Never Arrived,” Rainer Maria Rilke suggests that we can mourn love as an unrealized possibility, and see this loss signified everywhere in the ordinary objects of the external world. In “Be Ahead of All Parting” (II.13 from his “Sonnets to Orpheus”), he seems to claim that poetry has the capacity to redeem such losses—and retrieve them, so to speak, from their underworld. Wes & Erin discuss these two classics, and whether—as Rilke suggests—death can be put in service of life, and suffering sourced as the principal wellspring of a joyful existence. Upcoming Episodes: Rebecca (1940), Dickinson. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Irony as Anesthetic in Robert Altman’s “M.A.S.H” (1970) – Part 2
Wes & Erin continue their discussion the 1970 classic “M.A.S.H,” and whether irony ought always to be our anesthetic, when confronted with traumas that are otherwise unspeakable. Upcoming Episodes: Rilke, Rebecca (1940), Dickinson. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Irony as Anesthetic in Robert Altman’s “M.A.S.H” (1970)
It begins with the “stupidest song ever written,” as Robert Altman called it, and ends with a self-referential jab at the very idea of finding comic relief in the tragedy of war. But it is equally unserious, the film “M.A.S.H” seem to suggest, to take seriously the authority of war-making institutions, and their pretense to putting violence in service of an ideal. And so morality succumbs to mockery, love to hedonism, and military rank to the form of authority immanent in the power to save lives. Yet suicide is not in fact painless, if it means robbing others of our presence, or ridding ourselves of the capacities for grief and earnestness. Wes & Erin discuss the 1970 classic “M.A.S.H,” and whether irony ought always to be our anesthetic, when confronted with traumas that are otherwise unspeakable. Upcoming Episodes: Rilke, Rebecca (1940), Dickinson. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Aesthetic Humility in Marianne Moore’s “The Jerboa” (Part 2)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Marianne Moore’s poem, “The Jerboa,” first published in 1932, and whether power and wealth might paradoxically prove less abundant than the strictures of form and necessity. Upcoming Episodes: M*A*S*H, Rilke, Dickinson. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Aesthetic Humility in Marianne Moore’s “The Jerboa”
Of all the great American Modernists, the poetry of Marianne Moore is perhaps the most idiosyncratic, even the most radical, of them all—no small feat in a group of friends and admirers that included Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, e. e. cummings, and HD. Moore’s preferred form was a syllabic stanza bespoke to each poetic occasion, like the unique shell of each individual snail or paper nautilus, and often containing rhyme. In these stanzas, Moore hid behind her virtuosic performance of deflection and difficulty and, of course, revealed herself in it, much as one of her pet-subjects, the exotic animal-portrait, contained a self-portrait at its heart. In her poem on the jerboa, Moore contrasts the desert mouse’s decorousness with the decadence of empire, and in so doing, distinguishes her ideal of true artistry—a vigorous, humble, and ultimately liberated response to one’s natural and formal limitations—with a false art which oppresses the natural in service of the powerful. Wes & Erin discuss Marianne Moore’s poem, “The Jerboa,” first published in 1932, and whether power and wealth might paradoxically prove less abundant than the strictures of form and necessity. Upcoming Episodes: M*A*S*H, Rilke, Dickinson. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Word and Image in “Sunset Boulevard” (1950) – Part 2
What can the contrast between silent and talking pictures teach us about the nature of film itself? And how might it reflect the age-old rivalries between word and image, movement and stasis, the living and the dead? Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Billy Wilder’s 1950 masterpiece, “Sunset Boulevard.” Upcoming Episodes: Marianne Moore’s “Jerboa,” M*A*S*H. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Word and Image in “Sunset Boulevard” (1950)
When the film starts, its two leads are already dead, more or less. Silent Screen legend Norma Desmond’s career is dead, and because she’s nothing more than her career, the best she can do is linger in the tomb of her former glory, hoping for a resurrection. And failed screenwriter Joe Gillis quite literally enters the film as a corpse, so, as the film’s narrator, he has no choice but to tell his story in flashback. Thus, it’s safe to say that both Norma and Joe are, well, fatally disadvantaged in the realization of their respective dreams. And yet, both achieve a kind of post-mortem success—Norma as the star of one last film, and Joe as the writer of one last, great, highly-personal tale. (In an expression of what might be the screenwriter’s secret fantasy, he even gets to star in it, to boot.) How is such life after death possible? Arguably only through the magic of celluloid, a medium ghoulishly capable of preserving humans precisely as they are—which all too soon becomes as they were. What can the contrast between silent and talking pictures teach us about the nature of film itself? And how might it reflect the age-old rivalries between word and image, movement and stasis, the living and the dead? Wes & Erin discuss Billy Wilder’s 1950 masterpiece, “Sunset Boulevard.” Upcoming Episodes: Marianne Moore’s “Jerboa,” M*A*S*H. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

The Sublime Mundane in Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin” (Part 2)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin,” and whether humanity’s religious impulses can be fully compensated with an aesthetic or ironic relation to nature and cosmic scale. Thanks to our sponsor GiveWell, an organization that would provide rigorous, transparent research about the best opportunities for charitable giving. If you’ve never used GiveWell to donate, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org, pick “Podcast,” and enter “SUBTEXT Literature and Film Podcast” at checkout. Upcoming Episodes: Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin,” “Sunset Boulevard,” Marianne Moore’s “Jerboa.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

The Sublime Mundane in Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin”
Where the repetitions of ordinary life threaten to overwhelm any sense of the sublime, the poet Conrad Aiken seems to suggest that they can be transformed into a way of being connected to it. The mundane order is, after all, just a part of the cosmic. When we get ready to go to work, it is on a “swiftly tilting planet” that “bathes in a flame of space.” The sun is “far off in a shell of silence,” but its light decorates the walls of our homes. We might wonder, in light of modernity’s crisis of faith, if the sublime is meant to replace the divine, and if so whether what Aiken calls “humble offerings” to a “cloud of silence” are enough. Wes & Erin discuss Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin,” and whether humanity’s religious impulses can be fully compensated with an aesthetic or ironic relation to nature and cosmic scale. Thanks to our sponsor GiveWell, an organization that would provide rigorous, transparent research about the best opportunities for charitable giving. If you’ve never used GiveWell to donate, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org, pick “Podcast,” and enter “SUBTEXT Literature and Film Podcast” at checkout. Upcoming Episodes: Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin,” “Sunset Boulevard,” Marianne Moore’s “Jerboa.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

The Aesthetics of Death in “Beetlejuice” (1988) (Part 2)
Wes and Erin continue their discussion of “Beetlejuice,” and what its battle royale between conflicting aesthetic sensibilities—rustic, gothic, and avant-garde—has to say about the connections between love, mortality, and the many pitfalls of growing up. Thanks to our sponsor GiveWell, an organization that would provide rigorous, transparent research about the best opportunities for charitable giving. If you’ve never used GiveWell to donate, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org, pick “Podcast,” and enter “SUBTEXT Literature and Film Podcast” at checkout. Upcoming Episodes: Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin,” “Sunset Boulevard,” Marianne Moore’s “Jerboa.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

The Aesthetics of Death in “Beetlejuice” (1988)
Adam and Barbara Maitland are dead, but their troubles have just begun. The farmhouse decor of their home is under threat from the pretentious modernism of Delia Deetze, and her plan to remake it in her own image could turn their post-life purgatory into earthbound hell. Solving this problem leaves them with an impossible choice between figuring out how to navigate an intractable netherworld bureaucracy, or seeking the help of a renegade demon whose perverse remedies are worse than what they’re supposed to cure. Their way out of this impasse involves teaming up with Delia’s step-daughter Lydia, whose goth style seems to lend itself to communicating with the dead. Wes and Erin discuss “Beetlejuice,” and what its battle royale between conflicting aesthetic sensibilities—rustic, gothic, and avant-garde—has to say about the connections between love, mortality, and the many pitfalls of growing up. Thanks to our sponsor GiveWell, an organization that would provide rigorous, transparent research about the best opportunities for charitable giving. If you’ve never used GiveWell to donate, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org, pick “Podcast,” and enter “SUBTEXT Literature and Film Podcast” at checkout. Upcoming Episodes: Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin,” “Sunset Boulevard,” Marianne Moore’s “Jerboa.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

A Strange Fashion of Forsaking in the Poetry of Thomas Wyatt (Part 2)
Wes & Erin discuss Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee from Me.” Thanks to our sponsor, the incredible online language school Lingoda. Save up to 50 percent on your language course by going to https://try.lingoda.com/Subtext50 and using code SUBTEXT50 at checkout. When you sing up for the seven day trial, you can attend three small group classes and one private class completely free! Upcoming Episodes: “Beetlejuice,” Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin,” “Sunset Boulevard.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

A Strange Fashion of Forsaking in the Poetry of Thomas Wyatt (Part 1)
As an advisor to Henry VIII and ambassador to France and Italy, poet Thomas Wyatt was something of a professional court-surfer, practiced in riding the peaks and troughs of royal favor. Such were his verbal and diplomatic gifts that, though twice accused of and imprisoned for treason, he was twice released. His poetry reflects all the intrigue, paranoia, airlessness, and downright cruelty of the Tudor Court, where a misplaced word or an ill-timed look might see you not just out of favor, but a head shorter. In two of his most celebrated poems—which might draw upon the affair he might have had with Anne Boleyn—certainty is suspect, irony thick, allegiance changeable, and hunters apt to find they’ve become the hunted. Wes & Erin discuss Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee from Me.” Thanks to our sponsor, the incredible online language school Lingoda. Save up to 50 percent on your language course by going to https://try.lingoda.com/Subtext50 and using code SUBTEXT50 at checkout. When you sing up for the seven day trial, you can attend three small group classes and one private class completely free! Upcoming Episodes: “Beetlejuice,” Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin,” “Sunset Boulevard.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Formal Meets Feral in “A New Leaf” (Elaine May, 1971) – Part 2
Henry Graham belongs to the most exclusive clubs, dines regularly at the most lavish restaurants, drives a Ferrari, employs a butler, and owns something called a Montrazini—in short, he capitalizes fully on his inheritance, despite having little understanding of what “capital” actually is. The very ignorance of practicality that his wealth affords turns out to be his undoing, as soon finds that he’s run out of money and must bid goodbye to the high life—unless, that is, he can find a single, wealthy, isolated woman to marry and, for the sake of preserving his refined, hermetically-sealed existence, murder. Enter Henrietta Lowell. Similarly stunted by her own inheritance, she’s friendless, awkward, and utterly helpless: the perfect mark… But Henry soon discovers that protecting his own interests also means protecting hers, that competence can grow out of the exigency incompetence creates, and that practicing love for someone turns out to be just as good as actually loving them. Wes & Erin continue their discussion of the 1971 film “A New Leaf,” written and directed by Elaine May. Thanks to our sponsor, the incredible online language school Lingoda. Go to https://try.lingoda.com/Subtext and use code SUBTEXT to save 20 EUR (or equivalent in your currency) when signing up. Upcoming Episodes: “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice,” Conrad Aiken (“Senlin” Section 2 of II. His Futile Preoccupations). Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Formal Meets Feral in “A New Leaf” (Elaine May, 1971) – Part 1
Henry Graham belongs to the most exclusive clubs, dines regularly at the most lavish restaurants, drives a Ferrari, employs a butler, and owns something called a Montrazini—in short, he capitalizes fully on his inheritance, despite having little understanding of what “capital” actually is. The very ignorance of practicality that his wealth affords turns out to be his undoing, as soon finds that he’s run out of money and must bid goodbye to the high life—unless, that is, he can find a single, wealthy, isolated woman to marry and, for the sake of preserving his refined, hermetically-sealed existence, murder. Enter Henrietta Lowell. Similarly stunted by her own inheritance, she’s friendless, awkward, and utterly helpless: the perfect mark… But Henry soon discovers that protecting his own interests also means protecting hers, that competence can grow out of the exigency incompetence creates, and that practicing love for someone turns out to be just as good as actually loving them. Wes & Erin discuss the 1971 film “A New Leaf,” written and directed by Elaine May. Thanks to our sponsor, the incredible online language school Lingoda. Go to https://try.lingoda.com/Subtext and use code SUBTEXT to save 20 EUR (or equivalent in your currency) when signing up. Upcoming Episodes: “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice,” Conrad Aiken (“Senlin” Section 2 of II. His Futile Preoccupations). Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Love Dishonored in Euripides’ “Medea” (Part 6)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Ancient Greece’s most notorious battle of the sexes, and Euripides’ rumination on the question of whether the Athenian ideals of rationality and moderation sufficiently honor the instinctual side of human nature. Thanks to our sponsor, the incredible online language school Lingoda. Go to https://try.lingoda.com/Subtext and use code SUBTEXT to save 20 EUR (or equivalent in your currency) when signing up. Upcoming Episodes: “A New Leaf” (Elaine May), “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Love Dishonored in Euripides’ “Medea” (Part 5)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Ancient Greece’s most notorious battle of the sexes, and Euripides’ rumination on the question of whether the Athenian ideals of rationality and moderation sufficiently honor the instinctual side of human nature. Upcoming Episodes: “A New Leaf” (Elaine May), “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Love Dishonored in Euripides’ “Medea” (Part 4)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Ancient Greece’s most notorious battle of the sexes, and Euripides’ rumination on the question of whether the Athenian ideals of rationality and moderation sufficiently honor the instinctual side of human nature. Upcoming Episodes: “A New Leaf” (Elaine May), “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Love Dishonored in Euripides’ “Medea” (Part 3)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Ancient Greece’s most notorious battle of the sexes, and Euripides’ rumination on the question of whether the Athenian ideals of rationality and moderation sufficiently honor the instinctual side of human nature. Upcoming Episodes: “A New Leaf” (Elaine May), “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Love Dishonored in Euripides’ “Medea” (Part 2)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Ancient Greece’s most notorious battle of the sexes, and Euripides’ rumination on the question of whether the Athenian ideals of rationality and moderation sufficiently honor the instinctual side of human nature. Upcoming Episodes: “A New Leaf” (Elaine May), “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Love Dishonored in Euripides’ “Medea” (Part 1)
Known for casting mythical heroes in human proportions, Eurpides has his hands full with Medea—homocidal sorcerous, granddaughter of the sun, and a woman who does not take betrayal lightly. Nevertheless, the poet is able to capture the agony of someone who has given up everything for love—family, home, and homeland—only to find her passion disregarded, and her sacrifices unappreciated, by a man who robotically puts practicality above all else. But can we sympathize with a woman who would kill her own children, just for spite? Wes & Erin discuss Ancient Greece’s most notorious battle of the sexes, and Euripides’ rumination on the question of whether the Athenian ideals of rationality and moderation sufficiently honor the instinctual side of human nature. Upcoming Episodes: “A New Leaf” (Elaine May), “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Love and Loneliness in “Arthur” (1981) – Part 2
It’s awful being alone, according to millionaire playboy Arthur Bach, and nobody should be alone. And so he forestalls this feeling by getting drunk, picking up prostitutes, and laughing at his own jokes. Yet love in its true form can be a lonely business, as his servant Hobson reminds him, because it involves growing up, getting serious, and taking care of someone other than oneself … only to lose them—in one way or another—to the inevitable advance of time. What is it about working class Linda Marolla, whom Arthur first encounters in the process of shoplifting a tie for her father’s birthday, that gets him beyond this impasse? Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Steve Gordon’s 1981 romantic comedy “Arthur,” and why, if you want to learn to become independent, sometimes the best that you can do is to fall in love. Upcoming Episodes: Medea (Euripides), A New Leaf (Elaine May), “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt) Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Love and Loneliness in “Arthur” (1981) – Part 1
It’s awful being alone, according to millionaire playboy Arthur Bach, and nobody should be alone. And so he forestalls this feeling by getting drunk, picking up prostitutes, and laughing at his own jokes. Yet love in its true form can be a lonely business, as his servant Hobson reminds him, because it involves growing up, getting serious, and taking care of someone other than oneself … only to lose them—in one way or another—to the inevitable advance of time. What is it about working class Linda Marolla, whom Arthur first encounters in the process of shoplifting a tie for her father’s birthday, that gets him beyond this impasse? Wes & Erin discuss Steve Gordon’s 1981 romantic comedy “Arthur,” and why, if you want to learn to become independent, sometimes the best that you can do is to fall in love. Upcoming Episodes: Medea (Euripides), A New Leaf (Elaine May), “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt) Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Courtly Reciprocity in “Laustic” and “Guigemar” by Marie de France (Part 2)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of two of Marie de France’s most famous lais—”Laustic” and “Guigemar”—and how their narratives marry the “flesh” of text, art, and symbology, to the “spirit” of the spoken word (via dialogue, oaths and covenants, and authorial commentary), in order, perhaps, to communicate something of the mysterious and dangerous union that is romantic love. Upcoming Episodes: Arthur (1981), Medea (Euripides), A New Leaf (Elaine May). Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Courtly Reciprocity in “Laustic” and “Guigemar” by Marie de France (Part 1)
The lai, a short narrative poem from the Middle Ages that treats themes of courtly love, was originally accompanied by music and sung by minstrels. But in the 1170s, poet Marie de France translated a series of Breton lais into French and, in so doing, converted an oral tradition into text. It’s no wonder, then, that her lais’ narratives are so often preoccupied with methods of communication: both the spoken word, with its spiritual, incantatory, or even magical qualities, and the written word—physical, embodied, and analogous to the art object (particularly and, appropriately, the textile, a medium associated since antiquity with female artistry). Wes & Erin discuss two of the poet’s most famous lais—”Laustic” and “Guigemar”—and how their narratives marry the “flesh” of text, art, and symbology, to the “spirit” of the spoken word (via dialogue, oaths and covenants, and authorial commentary), in order, perhaps, to communicate something of the mysterious and dangerous union that is romantic love. Upcoming Episodes: Arthur (1981), Medea (Euripides), A New Leaf (Elaine May). Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Sight and Solitude in Le Samouraï (1967) by Jean-Pierre Melville (Part 2)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 noir thriller “Le Samouraï,” and the surprising power of love to capture its fugitives, even if it means finding them in the most shadowy of underworlds. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Sight and Solitude in Le Samouraï (1967) by Jean-Pierre Melville (Part 1)
Jef Costello is a hit-man with airtight alibis, impeccable style, and a strict code of honor. Add to this a masterful ability to evade his pursuers, mobsters and authorities alike, and a simple but effective home alarm system in the form of a bird. But what he cannot orchestrate, control, or evade is the improvisational nature of a genuine encounter with another person, which he unexpectedly finds with the jazz musician who witnesses him leaving the scene of one of his crimes. Wes & Erin discuss Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 noir thriller “Le Samouraï,” and the surprising power of love to capture its fugitives, even if it means finding them in the most shadowy of underworlds. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

“Notes from the Underground” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: An Anatomy of Human Self-Destructiveness (Part 2)
What is the cause of human self-destructiveness? Wes & Erin continue their discussion of “Notes from the Underground,” and its agonized rumination on whether freedom can be reconciled with love, individuality with virtue, and action with reflection. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

“Notes from the Underground” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: An Anatomy of Human Self-Destructiveness (Part 1)
What is the cause of human self-destructiveness? According to Dostoyevkys’s underground man, this “most advantageous advantage” is designed to save freedom from the constraints of rationality, and vitality from the quiescence that follows success. Yet he himself finds freedom only in spite and fantasy, while in real life he oscillates between failed and humiliating attempts to dominate or ingratiate himself with other people. Wes & Erin discuss “Notes from the Underground,” and its agonized rumination on whether freedom can be reconciled with love, individuality with virtue, and action with reflection. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Staking Claims in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948) (Part 2)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion John Huston’s 1948 classic, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Staking Claims in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948) (Part 1)
It’s considered the definitive film on greed, a demonstration of just what the lust for gold can do to a man’s heart. Fred C. Dobbs starts out as a down-on-his-luck panhandler in a poor Mexican town and comes into a fortune of over $100,000 before the film’s end. Yet, in more ways than one, Dobbs never stops panhandling, never stops being subject to the vagaries of fate, to forces that might just as soon give as take away his fortune, and to the darkness within himself that he can neither understand nor control. Perhaps the film doesn’t chart his moral corruption and gradual descent into greed-fueled madness so much as it critiques the system that turned Dobbs into a beggar in the first place—a system which, the film might argue, teaches all of us to stick out our hands (and our necks) in the pursuit of profit. Wes & Erin discuss John Huston’s 1948 classic, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Psychedelic Regrets in “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (Part 6)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/subtextapps for free appetizers for life. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Psychedelic Regrets in “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” Part 5
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/subtextapps for free appetizers for life. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Psychedelic Regrets in “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (Part 4)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/subtextapps for free appetizers for life. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Psychedelic Regrets in “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (Part 3)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Psychedelic Regrets in “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (Part 2)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Psychedelic Regrets in “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
The ancient Mariner kills his Albatross with a carelessness that stands in stark contrast to his impulse for confession. For several days he and his shipmates feed the albatross, play with it, and treat it as if it were inhabited by a “Christian soul.” The mariner never tells the wedding guest why it is that he kills the bird, but the casual and seemingly unmotivated act is followed by a psychedelic nightmare that gives us some clues. Why do we rebel against our position within the natural world, even to the point of self-destruction? What is required to restore us? Wes & Erin discuss Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/subtextsweet for free dessert for life. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Sins of Omission in “On the Waterfront” (1954) (Part 2)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of “On the Waterfront.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Sins of Omission in “On the Waterfront” (1954) (Part 1)
Terry Malloy and his fellow longshoremen on the New York docks are witnesses to union corruption under labor boss Johnny Friendly, but won’t testify against him because of his violent intimidation tactics, which ensure that union members remain “D and D”—that is, deaf and dumb—to any illegal activity. When Terry’s collaboration with Friendly results in the death of his friend Joey Doyle, and when Terry subsequently falls in love with Joey’s sister, Edie, he’s forced to reckon with this D and D policy, as well as his own passivity, guilt, and naivete. Wes & Erin discuss Elia Kazan’s 1954 film On the Waterfront, which might be said to dramatize the so-called “sin of omission” while asserting that its opposite, truth-telling, can be a radical and perhaps even a strangely physical form of heroism. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Consciousness Bemoaned in “Aubade” by Philip Larkin (Part 2)
In the medieval tradition of courtly love, the aubade inverts the serenade. Where one heralds an evening arrival, the other laments a morning departure. In John Dunne’s famous poetic contribution to the genre, he chastises the sun for waking and so separating lovers, but consoles us with the notion that the power of the sun is ultimately subordinate to the imperatives of love. More bleak, Philip Larkin’s poem “Aubade” seems to abandon this indictment on behalf of love for one on behalf of self-love, perhaps even on behalf of life itself. Morning awakens us to both workaday drudgery and an awareness of our own mortality. As a consequence, life is harder to live by the light of day, the consolations of philosophy and religion notwithstanding, and vitality is confined to the sorts of evening revelry that make waking all the harder. Wes & Erin discuss whether life (and love) can be reconciled with human self-consciousness and all that it entails. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Consciousness Bemoaned in “Aubade” by Philip Larkin (Part 1)
In the medieval tradition of courtly love, the aubade inverts the serenade. Where one heralds an evening arrival, the other laments a morning departure. In John Dunne’s famous poetic contribution to the genre, he chastises the sun for waking and so separating lovers, but consoles us with the notion that the power of the sun is ultimately subordinate to the imperatives of love. More bleak, Philip Larkin’s poem “Aubade” seems to abandon this indictment on behalf of love for one on behalf of self-love, perhaps even on behalf of life itself. Morning awakens us to both workaday drudgery and an awareness of our own mortality. As a consequence, life is harder to live by the light of day, the consolations of philosophy and religion notwithstanding, and vitality is confined to the sorts of evening revelry that make waking all the harder. Wes & Erin discuss whether life (and love) can be reconciled with human self-consciousness and all that it entails. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Identity and Infamy in “Citizen Kane” (1941) (Part 2)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane.” Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/subtextfree and use code subtextfree for free breakfast for life. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Identity and Infamy in “Citizen Kane” (1941) (Part 1)
It’s a film bursting with objects—the treasure troves of Xanadu, a snowglobe, jigsaw puzzles, a winner’s cup, the famous sled. Even the conceptual elements of the film’s plot are expressed tangibly. Kane’s mind-boggling wealth isn’t an abstraction, but a list of concrete holdings—gold mines, oil wells, real estate. And the news Kane controls and manipulates, when yoked to another noun, is something one can hold in one’s hands: a newspaper. Kane, too, is described as the incarnation of several abstractions. As his obituary tells us, he himself was “news,” as well as the embodiment of whole years in a swath straddling the 19th and 20th centuries. One might call him the American idea personified. But what these terms really mean and how they’re made manifest in Kane is hard to pin down. At times, he seems to be no more than a vast, empty planet around which objects swirl. What’s at his core, then? What did his life mean? One reporter searching for the secret of Kane bets that just one fact—the identity of “Rosebud”—would explain his whole life. Another suggests that it’s in the sum total of his possessions. Yet another thinks, curiously, that even Kane’s actions won’t tell us who he really was. So what, then, determines his or any identity? What’s the measure of a person? The objects they possess? The abstract ideals they claim to stand for? Their actions? Or something still deeper? Wes & Erin discuss possibly the greatest film ever made: from 1941, Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 6)
Part 6 of Wes & Erin’s discussion of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale.” Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, St. John’s College. Learn more about undergraduate–and graduate–Great Books programs at St. John’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland at sjc.edu/subtext. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 5)
Part 5 of Wes & Erin’s discussion of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale.” Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, St. John’s College. Learn more about undergraduate–and graduate–Great Books programs at St. John’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland at sjc.edu/subtext. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 4)
Part 4 of Wes & Erin’s discussion of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale.” Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/subtextfree and use code subtextfree for free breakfast for life. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 3)
Part 3 of Wes & Erin’s discussion of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale.” Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, St. John’s College. Learn more about undergraduate–and graduate–Great Books programs at St. John’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland at sjc.edu/subtext. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website

Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 2)
Part 2 of Wes & Erin’s discussion of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale.” Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, St. John’s College. Learn more about undergraduate–and graduate–Great Books programs at St. John’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland at sjc.edu/subtext. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website