Podcasts about Fates

Without the edit, there is no film. Without Marcia Lucas, there is no Star Wars.Sideway's video Why the Music of Rise of Skywalker Felt Misleading is absolutely fantastic - also give his video on Cats a watch too if you were raised Catsolic by a Cats loving mother and have a lot of thoughts about the musical crimes of that film which are hard to share in polite company.We have a Patreon — if you're a hog and this is your slop, step up to the trough and full your snough.Matt Smith can still email me at goingroguetansy@gmail.comGuest Starring:Grace Koh as Maryann BrandonAbigail Nussbaum as Kathleen KennedyChristian Byers as Chris Terrio Kim Ho as Joseph Campbell, a man so racist people assumed he was doing a bitCLIPS Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the ClonesStar Wars Episode IV: A New HopeStar Wars Episode VI: Return of the JediStar Wars Episode VIII: The Last JediStar Wars Episode IX: The Rise of SkywalkerRaiders of the Lost ArkThe Skywalker LegacyStar Wars Icons Unearthed Unplugged: Marcia Lucas Full Interview (Nacelle Company)Rough Cut Podcast: Star Wars - The Rise of SkywalkerThe Art of the Cut Episode 28: “Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker” Editor Maryann Brandon, ACEDolby Creator Talks Episode 62 - The Sound of Star Wars: The Rise of SkywalkerMUSICDuel of the Fates, Fanfare and Prologue from Star Wars Episode IX,  We Go Together & A New Home - John WilliamsAvalon - Benny Goodman“Loopster”, “Industrial Cinematic”, “Drums of the Deep”, “Groove Grove”, “Crypto”, “Stormfront”,  “Sneaky Adventure”, “Thinking Music”, “Showdown”, “Vanishing”, “Decisions”, “Floating Cities”, “Lost Frontier”, “Oppressive Gloom”, “Bleeping Demo”, “Enter the Maze”, “Secret of Tiki Island”, “Smoking Gun”, “Anguish”, “Thunder Dreams”& “Myst on the Moor” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)“Suspended Animation” & “Synapse” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com"Romeo & Juliet"  by PM Music“Venus” & “Mars” from Holst's The Planets, as performed by USAF Heritage of America BandLicensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This week in the Horror House, host Chris takes us through horror collecting. From beginner's ins and outs to FOMO to guessing prices of screen used props and much more! Plus the reading of our "Last Will and Testament" brings up a new game, the Wheel of Fates spins for the next host, and of course...Tangents and chaos!You can join us LIVE every Thursday at 8:30 PM/EST, be part of the show and chat with us! twitch.tv/horrorhousepodcast

*Your results may vary.Season 8, Episode 2 is here! We talk about some of the upcoming horror movies of 2026, give some box office predictions, crack some jokes, get WAY to hyped up over some topics, and finally we spin the Wheel of Fates to decide who is hosting next week - enjoy!You can join the fun LIVE every Thursday at 8:30 PM EST, chat with us about all things horror during the broadcast! twitch.tv/horrorhousepodcast

There are movie characters that deserve to die and then there are those that don't AND their deaths do NOT advance the plot. Contains an impromptu quiz and HEAVY SPOILERS. Thanks for listening!  @orwhatevermovies 818-835-0473 orwhatevermovies@gmail.com www.orwhatevermovies.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jace and Rocky break down the DC Comics releases for May 20, 2026, with discussion of Batman/Superman: World's Finest #51 revisiting Skartaris and the origin of Tyrant while Mark Waid continues modernizing classic DC concepts, Sirens: Love Hurts #4 wrapping with Horoscope defeated, Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance's wedding, and the various couples baskign in the romance, Wonder Woman #33 sending Diana and Steve Trevor into the underworld where Superman dies from kryptonite poisoning and Diana seeks the Fates after Matriarch's devastating victory, Absolute Flash #15 expanding the Absolute Universe mythology through Ray Palmer, Silas Stone, S.T.A.R. Labs, the Still Place, and Wally's disturbing visions of the future, Batwoman #3 raising questions about Kate Kane's behavior after she attacks Renee Montoya while Darkseid-connected forces appear to be circling her, Catwoman #87 escalating Black Mask's attack on Selina by using an imposter Catwoman convincing enough to fool Holly Robinson while Maggie's trauma remains tied to Black Mask, Deathstroke the Terminator #3 continuing Slade Wilson's mission with Death Blow and Deadshot brought into the conflict, End of Life #4 focusing on Eddie's complicated relationship with his father while the kidnapping storyline moves forward, Lobo #3 delivering an origin-heavy chapter for the Main Man, New Titans #35 continuing the Alpha Energy fallout while Stephanie Brown takes on a surprising leadership role, Nightwing #138 bringing Starfire to Blüdhaven for a Psion-related story that also moves the Witch of Blüdhaven plot forward while Barbara remains in Supermax, Superman Unlimited #13 using Beppo, excess Kryptonite, Tomorrow Man, young Jon Kent's Ultraman nightmare, and Lois trying to help her superpowered son to deepen the question of whether this young Jon is the real deal, and Absolute Green Arrow #1 launching a mystery-driven reinvention involving Dinah Lance, Oliver Queen, Hector Hammond, missing memories, and the question of who is really under the hood. They also cover the week's facsimiles, reprints, and collected editions, including Batman #244 Facsimile Edition, Gotham Central Compact Comics, DC Finest: Sgt. Rock of Easy Company, Superman Omnibus Vol. 1: Elseworlds, Absolute Blackest Night, and Teen Titans: The Bronze Age Omnibus, before ranking every book and naming their respective Books of the Week.

Jeff and Rebecca wrap up recommendation season. Discussed in this episode: The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders Julie Otsuka Susan Choi How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu The Hike by Drew Magary The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy Kin by Tayari Jones, go back to Fates & Furies by Groff Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf Pachinko by Min Jin Lee Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson Siracusa by Delia Ephron Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman From Scratch by Tembi Locke Beautiful Runs by Jess Walter A Room with a View by E.M. Forster Go Like Hell The Tusk That Did the Damage by Tania James By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Hemingway The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Unbound by Steph Jagger Riverman by Ben McGrath In the Shadow of the Mountain So Old, So Young by Grant Ginder Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham Life in the Three Dimensions by Shegihiro Oishi So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport Congratulations, By the Way by George Saunders Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke The List of Things That Will Not Change The Vanderbeerkers of 141st Street By Karina Yan Glaser Dragon Pearl The Eyes of the Impossible Daughter of the Deep The Story That Cannot Be Told Who is Government by Michael Lewis Two Women Living Together by Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reily The Sparrow, Wild Dark Shore Whidbey The Dream Hotel The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan The Pirate Queen by Ariel Lawhon On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon Interpreter of Maladies, Tenth of December Almost Famous Women Lost in the City by Edward P Jones The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler Eat a Peach by David Chang Life is Meals by James & Kay Salter Chocolat by Joanne Harris Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J Ryan Stradal Go Gentle by Maria Semple Less by Andrew Sean Greer Pincher Martin by William Golding Black No More by George Schuyler Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino The English Understand Wool by helen dewitt Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel Still Life with Woodpecker by Tim Robbins Transcription by Ben Lerner Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy Butcher's Crossing by John Williams This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks to our sponsor, Merit Beauty. Right now, Merit Beauty is offering our listeners their Signature Makeup Bag with your first order at meritbeauty.com. Head to quince.com/bookriot for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The morning of Thursday, November 20, 1969 started with a bang for the islanders on the Windward coast of Saint Vincent Island. For some, it was like the gods had finally gotten around to answering their prayers. A huge party broke out on the beach shortly after sunrise.And within hours, it spread to dozens of nearby villages.  But as the weekend progressed, the locals realized that something was horribly wrong, and that the once-in-a-lifetime windfall was actually a curse in disguise.  Cultural BackgroundSt. Vincent and the Grenadines, or SVG, is located in the southwestern Caribbean between Saint Lucia to the north and Barbados and Grenada to the south. The country is made up of 32 islands and cays and only has about 150 square miles (390 square km) of territory – most of which is on the northernmost island of Saint Vincent. Saint Vincent is also home to the capital of Kingstown – not to be confused with Kingston, Jamaica, which is nearly 1,100 miles (1,770 km) to the northwest.  In the late 1960s, SVG had a population of about 95,000 residents – about two-thirds of whom were natives of African descent. By some estimates, nearly three-quarters of the population worked in banana production which accounted for the lion's share of the country's economy. The locals worked hard on their small family plots and eked out comfortable if modest livings. And when it was time for recreation, they usually engaged in the island's most quintessential pastime – liming. In layman's terms, liming is slang for relaxing, gossipping, and enjoying the pleasant weather and beautiful scenery with friends and family.  And sometimes, they threw in another element – uber-strong island “overproof” rum called Jack Iron. And by strong, we're talking about 150 to 180-proof.  To put that into perspective, most spirits like Scotch, vodka and American bourbon are 80-proof, or 40% alcohol by volume. By comparison, 180-proof Jack Iron is more than twice as strong – or about 90% alcohol by volume.  And unlike Scotch and Bourbon, it's clear because the locals drink it immediately after distillation instead of aging it in oak barrels. Most Jack Iron is produced in small home stills where quality control is minimal. And due to its potency, it smells more like an industrial solvent than an intoxicating beverage fit for human consumption. As for how it got its name, one common explanation is that consuming it makes drinkers feel like they've been whalloped in the head with an iron car jack. Then again, the “iron” may be a reference to masculine constitution. As in, you pretty much have to be made of iron to drink it because it packs such a punch. From the immediate numbing of the lips and mouth, to the face-twisting throat burn to the final kick in the abdomen when the liquid finally enters the stomach, the experience is nothing short of unforgettable.  In fact, Jack Iron is so entrenched in the local culture that islanders usually pour a small portion of every new bottle onto the ground so deceased ancestors can enjoy it too. And fishermen, laborers and banana farms often take a few nips before starting their day as a way of fortifying themselves against the strenuous work ahead. But as ubiquitous as Jack Iron is, the islanders generally disapprove of public drunkenness. Actually, they revere drinkers who can hold their liquor. The goal is to consume just enough to get a jolt before work or to take the edge off while liming away a lazy afternoon. But when the conditions are just right – like they were in the fall of 1969 – the islanders aren't afraid to let loose and throw caution to the wind.Shipwreck On the night of Wednesday, November 19, the 90-ton schooner, Ruth 114, was traveling from Trinidad to Martinique carrying a dozen casks of Jack Iron, 100 drums of methanol – or wood alcohol – and 150 drums of aviation fuel called avgas. Before continuing on, it's worth pointing out that the drums of fuel and methanol were marked with big, red “DANGER” warnings. Anyway..the storm got so bad by 3:00 the following morning that the schooner sustained serious sail and rudder damage, sprung a leak, and began filling up with seawater. The eight-man crew tried in vain to save the vessel and its valuable cargo. But before long, Captain Kenneth Richardson saw the writing on the wall and ordered everyone to abandon ship. At the time, they were within sight of the beach at Colonarie on Saint Vincent's Windward coast.The crew launched a lifeboat, rowed to shore safely and watched the listing schooner disappear into the darkness. After that, it drifted in the heavy seas before turning landward and running aground at Big Level Beach near the village of Sandy Bay.And when the sun came up, curious villagers waded out into the surf, climbed aboard, inspected the damaged vessel and quickly began relieving it of its precious cargo. By then, Captain Richardson had alerted the police and told them where he thought the schooner would be. Two vessels from Kingstown were dispatched to locate the Ruth 114 shortly thereafter, but they never found it. PartyLuckily, the hardest part of the salvage operation was getting the drums and casks over the gunwale and into the surf.And since the drums floated, it was just a matter of pushing them toward land and rolling them onto the beach. In less than an hour, dozens of drums and casks were lined up just waiting to be tapped. And before long, word spread to nearby villages like Owia, Sandy Bay, Rose Bank and Orange Hill that there was enough Iron Jack rum to keep everybody buzzed for weeks on end.  Within the hour, the beach was crowded with hundreds of locals intent on getting their fair share. For many, it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime “Manna from Heaven” moment. Or in local terms, a gift from the sea. There was also a sense of urgency, because everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the police showed up, confiscated the cargo and brought the impromptu party to a grinding halt.  As such, the wood casks containing the Jack Iron rum were immediately tapped. It's unclear if it turned into a free-for-all or if the locals who made the discovery managed to maintain some semblance or order. Whatever the case, the villagers began filling up everything from coffee cups and teapots to glass jars and empty soda bottles. And in the chaos, they also opened the metal drums and began consuming the avgas and methanol– even though they were clearly marked with big warning signs and ominous red Xs. Like Jack Iron, avgas and methanol are usually relatively clear. So in the heat of the moment, it's not that surprising that they didn't notice they weren't drinking the real thing. Of course, the question was, couldn't they taste and smell the difference?  After all, avgas is a lot like gasoline. And methanol has even more of a kick than Jack Iron. Nonetheless, they apparently weren't aware that they were consuming potentially deadly substances. And by then, some of them had already consumed real Jack Iron which lowered their inhibitions, numbed their taste beds, and made their noses far less sensitive than they would have otherwise been. As for the methanol and avgas, some of the partiers turned it into punch by adding sugar, water and lime juice which masked the taste and smell even more. In the early going, the grateful revelers felt like they always did after drinking intoxicating spirits..warm, tipsy, and downright jovial.With so many drums, the party continued throughout the day, into the night and well into the weekend. That said, the furor eventually died down as the crowd dispersed.  And at that moment, the islanders who found the schooner decided that they had a rare opportunity to make some serious money. And with that, they began selling what was left.After that, the buyers took what they thought was bona fide Jack Iron rum back to their homes and businesses where they consumed it, sold it, and gave it to close friends and family members in their own villages and other villages up and down the coast.  Aftermath/Medical ResponseThe fun and festive atmosphere took an alarming and unexpected turn about a day later. By then, many of the formerly happy villagers were experiencing serious symptoms including dizziness, loss of motor skills, stomach cramps, nausea and vomiting, as well as blurry vision like they were viewing their surroundings through a blinding snowstorm. Interestingly, not everyone who came down with these symptoms drank that much. At that point, they had no idea what was happening. But below the surface, their bodies were busy metabolizing the methanol and avgas into toxic formaldehyde and formic acid. Patients began showing up at local clinics en masse on November 22 and 23. And by the following day, ambulances from all over the island began arriving at Kingstown General Hospital. In a matter of hours, the facility and its woefully unprepared staff were dealing with hundreds of sick patients, many of who were teetering on the edge of death. Writhing, moaning, vomiting, and in some cases comatose islanders were crammed into every nook and cranny. Many were relegated to straw mats on both sides of the already-cramped corridors because the rooms were totally full. By then, the hospital staff knew about the shipwreck and the liquid from the metal drums that the sick patients consumed. The problem was, they had no way of knowing if they drank straight methanol or avgas which was actually a mixture of fuel, methanol and other toxic hydrocarbons.And to make matters worse, they couldn't pump the pati

Written by Corniconichttps://brett-schumacher-shop.fourthwall.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CreepyGhostStories?sub_confirmation=1Welcome to Creepy Ghost Stories, your ultimate horror podcast for the strange, the bizarre, and the unexplained.Hosted by author and narrator Brett Schumacher, this channel is the premier destination for scary stories designed to chill you to the bone or help you drift off to sleep. We specialize in high-quality narrations ranging from viral creepypasta legends to true horror stories submitted by real people.What you can expect on the channel:• Folk Horror: Unsettling tales from the Appalachian Mountains and deep woods.• High Strangeness: Bizarre glitch in the matrix accounts and alien horror.• Supernatural: The best haunted stories and paranormal stories from around the world.• Real Encounters: Real horror experiences from night shifts, lonely roads, and closed locations.Whether you are a fan of Reddit horror or classic folklore, Creepy Ghost Stories brings these terrors to life with immersive audio.Subscribe now and turn on notifications for your daily dose of ghost stories.

 What happens when an author writes an intense epic fantasy and collapses exhausted at the end?  She writes a romantasy trilogy, of course! Listen in as Demi Griffin and I chat about her newest series and why you should read it (I can't wait!) note: links may be affiliate links that provide me with a small commission at no extra expense to you.  Okay, stop right now and head over and check out the hardback cover! Isn't it FABULOUS?? EEEP! This series has everything I think people are looking for, fantasy and romance combined without all the "spicy smut." Add faith and... WHEEEEEEEEE! Cerulean Rose by Demi Griffin EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORNS. Hidden in a tiny cottage away from the ordinary existence of Cerulean's citizens, Aural lived a simple life with her father in Sabean Woods. When he is struck by a serious illness, that ordinary life suddenly became extraordinary. In search of a physician, Aural breaks her promise never to leave the woods. When her path crosses with a Mystic, the manipulative Duchess, and the Prince of Cerulean, Aural realizes something beyond her simple quest to help her dying father has mapped out her journey. An ancient legend about a brotherly rivalry that resulted in tragedy stirs up the Fates guarding Cerulean. If the Cerulean Rose doesn't bloom again, the kingdom is destined to perish. A wild path filled with romance, mystery, and intrigue shapes Aural's heart in ways she could not have imagined as she gets sucked into the legend. Would it be enough to restore the foundation of true love that established the kingdom of Cerulean hundreds of years ago? Could a simple girl satisfy the Fates, capture a prince's heart, overcome a king's prejudice, and save Cerulean's Rose?  Learn more about Demi on her  WEBSITE and follow her on GoodReads and BookBub. Like to listen on the go? You can find Because Fiction Podcast at: Apple Castbox Google Play Libsyn RSS Spotify Amazon and more!

Ian Buruma details the Soviet occupation of Berlin, characterized by mass looting and rape. He tracks the fates of his book's protagonists: his father Leo narrowly escaped execution by a Russian soldier, while resistance leader Borchardtwas tragically killed by a stray shot after liberation. (8/16)1939

Highlights of what's new in streaming for the week of May 9, 2026. Netflix The Roast of Kevin Hart (May 10 at 8 p.m. ET) Pop Culture Jeopardy, season 2 (May 11) Devil May Cry, season 2 (May 12) Marty: Life Is Short (May 12) Untold UK: Jamie Vardy (May 12) Between Father and Son, season 1 (May 13) The Bus: A French Football Mutiny (May 13) Perfect Match, season 4 (May 13) GOAT (May 14) Nemesis, season 1 (May 14) Soul Mate (May 14) The Crash (May 15) Kartavya (May 15) Money Heist: Berlin and the Lady with an Ermine (May 15) The Wonderfools, season 1 (May 15) Disney+ The Punisher: One Last Kill (May 12) Tucci in Italy, season 2 (May 12) Battle of Fates, season 1 (May 13) HBO Max US Against the World: Four Years with the Men's National Soccer Team (May 12) On the Roam, season 2 (May 14) Paramount+ Tyler Perry's Zatima, season 4, part 2 (May 12) Couples Therapy, season 5 (May 15) Dutton Ranch, season 1 (May 15) Prime Video Good Omens, season 3 (May 13) Off Campus, season 1 (May 13) Hallmark+ All's Fair in Love and Mahjong (May 9)

The Season 1 finale of STAR WARS: MAUL - SHADOW LORD delivered everything we hoped for: emotional betrayals, jaw-dropping visuals, terrifying horror vibes, and the long-awaited confrontation between Maul and Darth Vader. Richard and Sarah break down Chapters 9 and 10, from Dryden Vos and Crimson Dawn connections to Devon's tragic fall toward the dark side, and the MANY deaths along the way. Did Brander Lawson survive? We want your opinion, because Richard and Sarah are split! MAUL - SHADOW LORD composers Kevin, Deana, and Sean Kiner sneak in many musical references to "Duel of the Fates," "Battle of the Heroes," and "Anakin's Dark Deeds," all from the Prequel trilogy. We analyze how each of these callbacks help the overall storytelling of this series.  One of the standout elements of the finale is Vader himself. His silent entrance through the misty forest instantly joins the ranks of iconic Vader reveals from A New Hope, Rogue One, and even Splinter of the Mind's Eye. The horror-inspired music, jump scares, and brutal fighting style made Vader feel unstoppable. Meanwhile, Maul manipulated events exactly as planned, allowing Devon's rage over Master Daki's death to push her into becoming his apprentice. The symbolism throughout the finale — broken bridges, collapsing temples, and fractured Jedi ideals — gave the battle emotional weight beyond the lightsaber clashes. We get into all of it! Is this the first Maul vs Vader battle in Star Wars history?While it's their first major onscreen showdown, the two previously dueled in the 2001 comic Star Wars Tales #9. Richard and Sarah explore that deep-cut Expanded Universe story.  PODCAST SPONSORS Small World Vacations is an official sponsor of Skywalking Through Neverland. Contact them for a no obligation price quote at www.smallworldvacations.com. Tell them Skywalking Through Neverland sent you.

The Season 1 finale of STAR WARS: MAUL - SHADOW LORD delivered everything we hoped for: emotional betrayals, jaw-dropping visuals, terrifying horror vibes, and the long-awaited confrontation between Maul and Darth Vader. Richard and Sarah break down Chapters 9 and 10, from Dryden Vos and Crimson Dawn connections to Devon's tragic fall toward the dark side, and the MANY deaths along the way. Did Brander Lawson survive? We want your opinion, because Richard and Sarah are split! MAUL - SHADOW LORD composers Kevin, Deana, and Sean Kiner sneak in many musical references to "Duel of the Fates," "Battle of the Heroes," and "Anakin's Dark Deeds," all from the Prequel trilogy. We analyze how each of these callbacks help the overall storytelling of this series.  One of the standout elements of the finale is Vader himself. His silent entrance through the misty forest instantly joins the ranks of iconic Vader reveals from A New Hope, Rogue One, and even Splinter of the Mind's Eye. The horror-inspired music, jump scares, and brutal fighting style made Vader feel unstoppable. Meanwhile, Maul manipulated events exactly as planned, allowing Devon's rage over Master Daki's death to push her into becoming his apprentice. The symbolism throughout the finale — broken bridges, collapsing temples, and fractured Jedi ideals — gave the battle emotional weight beyond the lightsaber clashes. We get into all of it! Is this the first Maul vs Vader battle in Star Wars history?While it's their first major onscreen showdown, the two previously dueled in the 2001 comic Star Wars Tales #9. Richard and Sarah explore that deep-cut Expanded Universe story.  PODCAST SPONSORS Small World Vacations is an official sponsor of Skywalking Through Neverland. Contact them for a no obligation price quote at www.smallworldvacations.com. Tell them Skywalking Through Neverland sent you.

This week kicks off Star Wars Month, and your favorite hosts are diving deep into the life and career of Dave Filoni, the current President and Chief Creative Officer of Lucasfilm. The most pivotal moment discussed is how Filoni originally got hired by George Lucas in 2005: instead of just asking about animation skills, Lucas challenged him on the themes of "The Phantom Menace," specifically the "Duel of the Fates." Ashley praises Filoni for his dedication to continuity, noting that his projects rarely have the plot holes or contradictions that plague other parts of the franchise.Produced by: Limitless Broadcasting Network.For more info, merch, and all the other podcasts, visit: www.limitlessbroadcastingnetwork.comCheck out Ashley's Disney deep dives at: pixiedustfiles.wordpress.comFollow your new Disney besties on Instagram @pixiedusttwinspodcastFollow Dan, honorary third host of the "Pixie Dust Twins" Podcast, and King of the Manifestos: @Dantaastic on Instagram and YouTubeMentioned in this episode:Canvas & Crime: Turning True Crime into Quirky CharactersGet your own notorious shot glass or art print at www.canvasandcrime.com! You can also find Elizabeth on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/eak.creations and on Instagram @eakcreations. She also has a YouTube channel https://youtube.com/@canvasandcrime where you can see creativity in action.

My colleague Oliver Traldi recently published an essay called ‘Jane Austen's Virtuous Liberalism'. It's a very nice discussion of the ways in which Austen understand the challenges of character formation.Virtue, as Austen sees it, faces two tough challenges. First, people whose characters are not yet formed must see how to be virtuous rather than vicious. Then, the virtuous must somehow find a way to succeed in their struggles against the vicious without adopting vicious means.In this episode, Oliver and I discussed Austen's ideas of virtue, what that has to do with liberalism, the relationship between philosophy and literature more broadly, as well as poetry and ideas about the Great Books. We also talked about the Keira Knightly Pride and Prejudice. Yes, we both liked it. Here is why Oliver thinks Jane Austen is so popular among philosophers.TRALDI: And so I do think that even though she's not making arguments, she's not laying out philosophical theories, there is a level of precision in her thinking about virtue, which I do think is something that it took me a little aback.And I think it's part of why—one person who quote-tweeted my article was Daniel Kodsi, who's a friend of our colleague John Maier and his coauthor often. And he runs this magazine called The Philosophers' Magazine, which I had written before. And Daniel quote-tweeted my article with something like, “Add Oliver to the list of all the philosophers who love Austen.”OLIVER: And it's a long list.TRALDI: And I think it's a long list. And I do think this precision is part of it that she does, that it is—again, it's not like a philosophy journal article, but it is an intellectual sophistication that is often not present in novelists that we really appreciate.And here is an extract about Austen, Smith, and the wonderfully fertile period at the end of the eighteen century.TRALDI: But yes, I think it's obvious—without knowing the background, I'm sure there are scholarly questions about, how much Smith did Austen read? And they're both 250th—a lot was happening in 1775 and 1776.OLIVER: Those were great years. Those were the good old days.TRALDI: They were great years. In the great books syllabus, you get to the end of the 1700s and suddenly there's this—you have Smith, you have Kant, you have the American Revolution, you have the French Revolution, you have Burke. Rousseau is right before, Montesquieu is right before. I mean, it was a real—OLIVER: It's a great time.TRALDI: It was a great time. A lot was being done. And obviously, you know, I love the 1800s. I love the Romantics. But you could teach a whole great books course from 1750 to 1800, probably.OLIVER: You've also got all the dictionaries and all that kind of work going on as well. It's a very, very fertile—explorations.TRALDI: Yes, yes. There's all sorts of—yes, it was an amazing time.OLIVER: So did you, having read these two, Austen and Smith, close together—TRALDI: Yes, and I should say that my reading of Austen was much more careful than my reading of Smith.OLIVER: Sure, but you wrote this before you read Smith.TRALDI: Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: Or at least you fully conceived it. Do you see a lot of Smith in Austen?TRALDI: “A lot” might be—This was my favourite bit.TRALDI: Yes. But this is one of the great—I know we talked about this, but it's one of the great—you see this in Smith, you see this in Austen—commerce has its own virtues, and they are very traditional virtues. You have to be trustworthy. You have to be pleasant. You can't really be wholly self-interested in every moment because people have to be willing to deal with you given your—I mean, think about Yelp reviews or even just word of mouth. “Oh, that person screwed me over.”OLIVER: There's a discussion in one of Hayek's papers, which is—it's a very Smithian point he makes about, the nature of the knowledge problem means that it's not so much that I'm trying to get information about the thing you're trying to sell me, but I'm really trying to get information about you and whether you are someone I should be buying from. Which is exactly the project that the novelists and Smith—there's a sort of period between Smith and the early novelists, running through Austen to George Eliot, when they're all working on that problem together.TRALDI: Yes. I do think in Austen, it's often—the real puzzle is, how do you make out somebody else's character?OLIVER: Exactly.TRALDI: This is a phrase that Lizzy Bennet does use with regard to Darcy. And how do we actually figure out who the trustworthy and untrustworthy people are?OLIVER: And if you're too philosophical about that, in the sort of analytic sense, I think you can end up not paying enough attention to the particulars of that question.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Because when you actually try and do it, it's really, really hard.TRALDI: Yes. And I think this is the sort of—reading Austen, you get a sense of—and there are very few philosophy papers on things like this. Reading Austen, you get a sense of, what sorts of details in a normal life are the ones that I can extract information from to make out somebody else's character?Oliver is an analytical, political philosopher. You can find out more about his work here. Here he is on Twitter. His Substack is orting. You can watch the episode on YouTube here.TranscriptHENRY OLIVER: Today I am talking to Oliver Traldi. Oliver is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Toledo in Ohio. He is my colleague on the Emerging Scholars Program at the Mercatus Center, and he's written a book about political beliefs as well as many other articles for magazines, online.He's got a Substack. He's maybe the most prominent political and epistemological young philosopher of his generation. [laughter] But most importantly for us, he is interested in Jane Austen and the idea of virtue. Oliver, welcome.OLIVER TRALDI: Thank you so much for having me.Reading Austen as a PhilosopherOLIVER: Let's just start—before we get to this article you've written, tell me about being a philosopher but reading Jane Austen, because she's often read and commented on by people who are not philosophers or who are only philosophers by acquaintance or whatever.TRALDI: Right.OLIVER: Is it different reading as a philosopher, do you think?TRALDI: I think yes and no. One thing as a philosopher, there are—contemporary philosophy, we have very exacting standards of rigor and clarity. And when we look for a theory, we want something that's been improved by hundreds of people and thousands of journal articles.And so, if you were to simply extract a theory of virtue from a novel and say, “Does this—is this the end-all, be-all of moral thinking?” obviously you're going to be disappointed. So I think as a philosopher, you have to look for other types of things, other types of sensitivities rather than logical sensitivity.You have to say, how sensitive is the author to the different types of situations where people's virtue can be exhibited or challenged? Or how sensitive is the author to the different types of pressures that a character's convictions can be put under, or the different sorts of compromises that they might have to make, or the different sorts of people who might not be virtuous who they might have to interact with and sort of, you know, contract with or avoid? And what are going to be the impacts of different kinds of choices in those situations?So the novelists, I think, tend—if they do it well, a novelist who's interested in morality will understand living morally probably better than a philosopher, while maybe not understanding, say, arguments about whether morality supervenes on reality or vice versa, or what grounds morality, or different theories of meta-ethics or whatever.OLIVER: I mean, there are obviously some novelists who do have a better appreciation of those things than others, we should say.TRALDI: Yes, I think that's absolutely true. And as I wrote in my article, I do think Austen in particular had an appreciation for this issue that you might call moral disarming or unilateral disarming. You know, does the moral person put themselves at a disadvantage relative to the immoral person? And then how do we actually help—how does morality survive?So that's a kind of philosophical question, but I tend to think—I taught last year—I think we've talked about this a bit. I taught in a great books program at Tulsa.OLIVER: This is the Jennifer Frey program.TRALDI: This is the ill-fated Jennifer Frey program. Jennifer—I don't know if you've met her, but she's an incredibly charismatic person. But somehow the program, despite being enormously successful, did not survive. You know, I was there for a year, and they decided that was long enough.OLIVER: [laughs] You don't think your arrival was the—TRALDI: No, no. I hope not. I most certainly hope not.OLIVER: No. General problems of higher education prevailed. Yes.TRALDI: Yes, many, many problems of higher education these days. But yes, so I think—what was I saying?OLIVER: Well, I think we're getting to this question of, you are not just a philosopher; you teach the great books.TRALDI: Right, exactly. The great books. That's where I was. Yes.Philosophy and the Great BooksOLIVER: So, one thing I'm interested in is that, you know, reading as a philosopher, you get a slightly different perspective on Austen. When you read other fiction, poetry, whatever, is there a benefit to you as a philosopher? Does it broaden you in some way?TRALDI: Yes. I think absolutely, it's broadening, but it's also focusing in a different way. You know, contemporary philosophy is often described or captured with the word epicycles. So what we mean when we say epicycles is, you have some major theory, which is supposed to answer some big question. And then your career as a philosopher—you're like three layers deep in the theory, in some sub-debate, and you're making some really fine-grained distinctions.And if you can make those distinctions successfully, you've had a really great career. But I think it's easy to forget, why are we doing—you know, what attracted us to philosophy? Why are we doing this to begin with?And the great novels, great books in general—one example I always use is the Book of Job. It doesn't really—it's not doing clear philosophy on the question of why do bad things happen to good people. But when you read it, you feel the question, why do bad things happen to good people? You get it, you know? You get why this is a question that people have worried about for thousands of years. You get why it calls out for an answer.You know, there's a lot of truth out there. I'm looking at a set of coat hangers, and I could count the coat hangers. But if you were given the decision, would I rather have an answer to how many coat hangers are across the room from me, or why do bad things happen to good people? You'd probably go with the latter one. There's somehow some kind of depth or importance to that question, right?And I think there's—a great novelist can often generate some vividity to these questions. They can show how these questions are part of a good life, asking these questions, trying to have these questions answered—or a not-so-good life.Certainly in Austen there are a lot of characters who learn to be more virtuous. Probably Emma is the clearest example. But you might also think of Marianne Dashwood. Really—OLIVER: Lizzy Bennet.TRALDI: Lizzy Bennet really learns to be a better person. I actually think her character is rather close to Emma in a lot of ways.OLIVER: Yes, I think Emma's sort of a clear rewrite of Lizzy in some—yes, yes.TRALDI: Yes, and in some ways more evocative, actually. Yes. I mean, we can talk about all these books. But yes, I think there's these things, even—obviously qua literature, they have other virtues, right? Which much philosophy doesn't have; very little philosophy has the literary virtues.But the philosophical virtue that a lot of literature does have is you see, okay, these are the—this is what a life is like. This is what making choices is like. These are the big questions when you decide how to live your life and what kinds of choices to make.And I think Austen—these questions are all through Austen, even though nobody has to murder anybody in Austen. Nobody has to make decisions about war and peace or about, you know, civilizational decline or civilizational progress or anything like that. These people making these small choices in a lot of ways. But those are the lives that most of us lead. And when you read Austen, you think, “Oh, okay, there's a virtuous and a vicious way to lead this kind of rather normal life.”The Good LifeOLIVER: The question of what is a good life, or what is a good life in a commercial society, maybe, is the sort of bedrock of what she's doing.TRALDI: Yes, I think so. And that's why I think Austen—you know, Austen wasn't on our syllabus at Tulsa, but she was certainly discussed. And the “what is a good life” question—to me, it's the big question that a great books program for college students should always come back to.If I didn't know what else to talk about, I would just say, “Well, we just read this book.” You know, we read these old biographies of Charlemagne from, like, Einhard—Notker the Stammerer and Einhard, his adopted son or whatever. I don't remember. But this is like 800s. I'm sure you know more about this stuff than I do.And I wasn't quite sure what to do with them because what do I know about Charlemagne? So I just said, “Does it seem like Charlemagne lived a good life?” And you know, you're off to the races. And I think that's important at that age, because that's the age at which—OLIVER: For the undergraduates?TRALDI: Yes. I think that's the age at which you're starting to make your own big decisions about what sort of life to lead. And I think for me, looking back to myself at that age, I think one thing I did wrong—at Tulsa I was in some ways as much a student as a teacher. I was rereading a lot of this stuff for the first time in decades. And some of it I was reading for the first time. As I told you, I was reading a lot of Austen for the first time for this essay.OLIVER: Right, right.TRALDI: And yes, it was stuff that I had thought about at a theoretical level, you know, like what are the ins and outs of this theory or this philosophical move or something like that. But you feel the question a bit differently when you're like, “Okay, I'm an adult. I have to decide whether to live in this way or that way.”The world is open to you. You could convert to Thomism [laughter] like so many have tried to have me do, or you could become a merchant after reading The Wealth of Nations. Or you could become a revolutionary after reading Marx, or you could become a Nietzschean. You know, there are all these choices open to you.OLIVER: Please don't become a Nietzchean.TRALDI: No, no. That is, I'm a—OLIVER: Keep your children out of school if that's going to be the result. [laughs]TRALDI: Yes. I'm a committed moralist, so I cannot, but he is—he made a comeback, that's for sure.Philosophy and PoetryOLIVER: Now, there's this obviously sort of long-running question in philosophy about, what is the relationship between philosophy and poetry? Are they antagonists, or are they in some way, you know, twins, and each provides one half of what is needed for a complete way of understanding the world? Do you have a position on this?TRALDI: Yes, I mean, I think they're what the kids call twinning.OLIVER: Twinning? [laughs]TRALDI: I think they're twinning. No, no, I think that means something different. I think that means when you're wearing the same outfit or something like that.OLIVER: So we're almost twinning with our stripes—yes, I see.TRALDI: We're almost. We actually—we are stripes and blue. Yes, we're closer than I would've expected.I would say closer to twins. There are a lot of claims that philosophy is at odds somehow with this or that. There's also this—certain people will say, “Well, ever since Socrates, philosophy has been at odds with politics.” And a big part of philosophy is, how do you survive? Well, I don't know. Nobody's trying to kill me. I think of myself as a decently committed philosopher.OLIVER: It seems to me this changed fundamentally in the Enlightenment and with the Romantics, and they see it all much more joined up. It's a sort of ancient-and-modern dynamic.TRALDI: Yes, there may be an ancient-and-modern distinction there. But yes, for me I don't see any kind of contradiction. Now, there are—and I think this comes out of what I said before—philosophical attempts to understand poetry. And certain kinds of literary and aesthetic devices do sometimes fall a little flat.The philosophical literature on metaphor, for instance—I think some theories of metaphor really don't get why people use metaphors. [laughter] So one of the most important theories of metaphor is that they're all just false, that it's like everybody who uses a metaphor is lying. This isn't the full theory. There are bells and whistles added.OLIVER: Sure, sure.TRALDI: But yes, so I think there's no contradiction. But at the same time, they are different modes in some ways, and people who do the one are often trying to do something different than the other.I do think that the desire for rigor and precision and clarity that philosophers have can be a little maddening to nonphilosophers, who see the pull of philosophical questions like, “What sort of life I should lead?” and then see, what do philosophers actually do?And we're doing all this modal logic and all these truth tables and all this very technical stuff that looks like math. And they say, “That can't possibly be the right way to think about how to live.” And it's true that there are these studies of—that suggest ethicists aren't actually very good people and things like that, although you have to wonder what is the background ethical theory that went into evaluating them.So yes, I don't think there's really a contradiction between philosophy and anything else. But certainly, there was a point in my life where I always come back to trying to write poetry and do poorly and then stop. But it was always something where I would say, “Okay, if I'm doing philosophy in the afternoon, I better wait till the evening to write poetry.” You have to sort of reboot and get into a different mode.OLIVER: Iris Murdoch used to write philosophy in the morning and novels in the afternoon. That kind of thing.TRALDI: Yes, I think that's very sensible.OLIVER: And she was upstairs for the one and downstairs for the other.TRALDI: Yes. That's even better, you know?Favorite PoetsOLIVER: Which poets do you like?TRALDI: Geez, I guess for an American, I like Wallace Stevens. I wasn't expecting this question. For a Brit, you know, I actually like Philip Larkin a lot.OLIVER: Oh, yes?TRALDI: I know—what is the opinion of Larkin? Is he considered—OLIVER: Very high.TRALDI: Very high? Okay.OLIVER: Some—there are some dissenters, but basically he's the guy.TRALDI: He's the guy, okay. Yes.OLIVER: Twentieth-century English poetry is like Auden, Larkin, Betjeman.TRALDI: Yes, Auden is—actually, my friend Jane Cooper just wrote something about Auden.OLIVER: Yes, Jane is excellent.TRALDI: Yes, Jane is really great.OLIVER: That was in the New Statesman if you want to look it up.TRALDI: That was in the New Statesman. Yes, yes, yes. But Auden, I don't know quite as well.I mean, poetry is—I think it's interesting the way that we receive poetry now. I think you were talking about this a few days ago, about things like poems appearing as inspirational quotes on social media or something like that, and whoever is the most quotable. And you felt like maybe Dostoevsky is very quotable.OLIVER: Dostoevsky has a sort of screenshot quality.TRALDI: Yes, yes.OLIVER: As does Martin Amis.TRALDI: Yes. So I—OLIVER: Whereas Philip Larkin in a funny way—you know, he has very short poems. You can get the whole poem on Twitter. Like, Robert Frost has that. But something like “The Whitsun Weddings,” it's quite hard to just take three lines out. The whole thing works as a—and that, so that poem gets less—TRALDI: Yes. Which is what you would expect from a good poem, really, that it would form a kind of whole.OLIVER: Exactly. If it's a three-page ode, it should have a continuous quality.TRALDI: Yes, it should have a kind of internal structure. Yes.OLIVER: There are some one-line things and—but I think it's notable that a poet like Wordsworth doesn't seem to get a lot of social media play. And I think probably that's one reason.TRALDI: So yes, I think Larkin is somebody who, I did see some shorter references to him, and I thought I'd better just go and look up a ton of poems by this guy. And Stevens was the same way.Death and Philip LarkinOLIVER: So, which Larkin do you like?TRALDI: You're really putting me on the spot here. [laughter] It has been a little while.OLIVER: I lied to you and said it would be about Jane Austen.TRALDI: Yes, now I'm completely screwed. Well, he has a bunch about death. He has one where death is a ship following you. And he has one where death is, like, a fruit that gets picked or something.OLIVER: Apple?TRALDI: Might be an apple.OLIVER: He decides not to throw the apple.TRALDI: There's one with sweetbreads in it. And now I'm really—OLIVER: The ship one, “Next, Please”—that's excellent.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: He sees the—it's like hearing the music coming, and then the ship.TRALDI: I forgot that that was the title. I forgot that that was the title.OLIVER: And then as the ship goes past, it leaves nothing in its wake. It's very sort of—very gloomy.TRALDI: It's very gloomy, yes. I think I read Larkin in a gloomy phase; it was like Larkin and Radiohead or something.OLIVER: But he's a good example of what you were saying before, that he won't think propositionally. He's logical in the sense that he's sort of orderly, and he goes from one thing to the next. But he's not being a philosopher.TRALDI: No, of course. Yes.OLIVER: But he's very preoccupied with the sorts of questions that philosophers are probing, but has a sort of very meaningful treatment of them.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: And I think in a way, the sharp response that you want from the reader in those questions, Larkin is better at provoking than someone like Bertrand Russell or some other contemporary of his.TRALDI: Yes, yes.OLIVER: Bertrand Russell's a bit earlier, but you know what I mean.TRALDI: No, I think that's exactly right. And I think that is why I'm a fan of the great books pedagogically and not—I don't know if Larkin will be called a great, you know, like, who knows? I don't really understand that designation, but tings like poetry and novels.OLIVER: The biggest dissenter was Harold Bloom, who said Philip Larkin's just a period piece. And he doesn't understand why everyone likes him.TRALDI: Oh, yes, well, I'm not on board with everything. Oh, I've also been—OLIVER: No, you're not very Bloomian.TRALDI: I'm not very Bloomian, I don't think.OLIVER: Either Allan or Harold.TRALDI: Yes. Well, I actually—this is very embarrassing, but I've actually never read The Closing of the American Mind, which I know is—OLIVER: But why should you? I'm not sure it's retained its—TRALDI: Well, it's certainly been received into my circle. But it is like a classic of anti-ideological—OLIVER: Sure. Have you read Adler, How to Read a Book, that kind of great books stuff?TRALDI: No. There's so many things that I haven't read. I mean, I'm just learning how to read. I learned how to read in Tulsa last year, [laughter] in Oklahoma, which is not where most people would go to learn how to read.Jane Austen and the Problem of MoralityOLIVER: So let's move to Jane Austen. Your thesis basically is, many moral theories face this problem that if I believe XYZ theory and you don't believe it, you can get the advantage of me. Because I'll always stick to my principles and you can just be a bad guy.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: So is morality screwed? This is what people say about liberalism. This is what you're arguing. And you think Jane Austen's got an answer to that?TRALDI: Yes, I think she has a kind of answer. And again, one decision I had to make while writing the essay was, am I going to go super—this is a completely philosophically rigorous and respectable answer? Or am I just going to kind of sketch it?OLIVER: Slum it in literary criticism? [laughter]TRALDI: Yes, I wouldn't put it quite that way, but—and I think I went for the latter, where I just wanted to kind of evoke the answer. And I think the answer has something to do with living in a large enough society where—and Austen I think is not the only person to give this answer. But you live in a large enough society where, when people see you acting well and somebody else acting poorly, the disadvantage that you have in that one interaction is outweighed by the advantages you have from the society that you gain from being seen to act well by many others.So one thing I didn't mention here, but a connection I made when I was first coming up with this idea, is that it's actually a lot like what Martin Luther King Jr. says about civil disobedience. So he says, you might think, if you're out there and the police are coming at you with bats, or the white supremacists are coming at you with bats or whatever, weapons or whatever, you might think, “I'm on the losing end of this interaction.”But actually what will happen is that this interaction will be seen by many others. And you, by keeping your calm, will be seen to be the virtuous one, and they, by being violent, will be seen to be the vicious ones. And this can only help your political cause. I'm probably abstracting some of the details of King's presentation.OLIVER: In a vulgar sense, this is the sort of “be the change you want to see” approach.TRALDI: Yes, but also, be the change you want other people to see. You know? Because that's how it gets saved from—and again, one of the ways in which this is not quite philosophically rigorous is because the philosopher can say, “Well, what about an example where nobody's going to see it? Or what about an example where the situation is set up that in doing the right thing, you're perceived to have done the wrong thing?” And you get back into tough problems. And that's why we have philosophy. You know, there's always going to be these puzzles.OLIVER: But we don't get the—I think this is what the novelists are helpful for. We don't get to set the conditions in our lives. You know, when you're doing a philosophical problem, you can just say, “Well, these are the conditions. What happens then?” And what Jane Austen is so good at is saying, “I'm going to take her and drop her in this house, and that's life. And she's just going to—she won't even know what the conditions are for a long time.” That's the novelist's preoccupation.TRALDI: Yes. Yes. It's interesting what you said about not even knowing what the conditions are. It's one thing I love, which is there in, I think, a lot of Austen—and it's done by a lot of my favorite novelists. I think Kazuo Ishiguro is really good at this. It's just novels where you see the characters' growing awareness of their circumstances and—OLIVER: Like in Klara and the Sun or something.TRALDI: Yes, or I think certainly in Never Let Me Go and in Remains of the Day, a lot of the action is in a situation where you understand what's going on better than the characters do.Clues and GamesTRALDI: And I think we talked about this the other day. In Austen, Emma, for example, is this sort of, like, halfway detective where she sees a lot of clues that could help her understand the nature of the life she's leading and the circumstances she's in, but she always misinterprets the clues. But on the other hand, it's not like she misses them entirely. She's kind of on the right track, and at least she's trying.OLIVER: And what I think Austen does so well in that book—I think it's her most important book—is that by putting us, without quite realizing it, with Emma's blinkers on, as it were, and only allowing our perspective to be her perspective, she makes us the detective.But whereas in a detective novel, you know, there's a funny little man and he is a detective, and he says, “Oh, there's a clue in this novel,” the read of—on the first read very often goes straight past what they must later realize to be a clue. And that is such a normal condition of life, that, “Oh, actually, that was one of the conditions, but you couldn't have known it. Sorry.” And you can only work it out in retrospect.TRALDI: Yes. In modern love, these are sometimes called red flags. [laughter] I think it's not quite a precise analogy, but yes, I think it's right. And I certainly—I had read Emma years ago and didn't really notice. As you say, on my first read, I didn't really notice, even having watched—I think it was the, what is it, the Kate Beckinsale version maybe, from ITV in like 1996 or something.It was really in reading it for this essay that I noticed that this feature that, starting on page 30 or 40 or so, there's a—and they're often in games. The clues are often in games. So very early on, Elton is playing some sort of poem game with Emma.OLIVER: The riddles, yes.TRALDI: The riddle game. And you know, Emma already misinterprets his riddles as being about Harriet rather than about her. But then there's also—the riddles also have some relation to things that happen much later.OLIVER: Then there's the anagram game at the end.TRALDI: There's the anagram game at the end. Yes, it's the—and I don't think there are many games like that in any of the other Austen.OLIVER: People play games, but we're not taken into them and have them narrated in that way.TRALDI: And they're not word games in general. There's card games and things like that. And you know, in Pride and Prejudice, Wickham has all these gambling debts and things like that.OLIVER: Yes.TRALDI: You know, in—I don't know if you know Whit Stillman, but for the same magazine a couple years ago I wrote about Whit Stillman, who's a sort of conservative filmmaker who's a huge Austen fan and brings in Austenian themes to a lot of his movies, but writes them about characters in the 1960s and '70s. And one of them was called The Last Days of Disco, for example, about—and some of the broader social themes he talks about are also there in Austen.So one thing that was just on the edges of my consciousness as I read through the novels for this essay was the question of the noble man versus the working man, which I think is very present in Austen and has something to do with her conception of virtue: that the virtuous person will be engaging in commerce in some way.OLIVER: Those moments of the noble and the virtuous man or whatever often take place in a shop, like the drapier in Emma or the jewelry shop in Sense and Sensibility.TRALDI: That's interesting. That's interesting.OLIVER: She's very careful to take us into a commercial situation and contrast.TRALDI: See, that is the sort of detail that I think a philosopher—I think we—the mere—the vibe of, “You're in a shop, and this means something.” I think this is something philosophers are—we can watch for the action; we can judge the characters' actions. But then there are these questions of atmosphere and milieu. And certain things happen in a shop; certain things happen at the seaside. In Persuasion there's an injury by the seaside.OLIVER: Yes. That's one of the most exciting scenes in Austen. Very dramatic.TRALDI: Yes, yes. I think actually Persuasion in some ways is quite different than her other books. It has a sort of—you know, in some ways it feels a little more like Frankenstein or Wuthering Heights at points. There's a little bit of a windblown, dark quality to it at times. It's a little bit bleaker. It's a little hard to explain why, but that's just a feeling that I had reading it that maybe had changed with some of the other literary tastes of the time.Artlessness in Austen's HeroinesOLIVER: Now, the quality that you focus on in the heroines, in this question of virtue defending itself against bad actors who break the rules, is artlessness.TRALDI: Yes. So this is a term Austen uses quite a bit, and almost always, she very much picks and chooses the characters who are going to receive this term. And I thought that this is like—it's not only her artless characters who face this question about how can morality survive, or how can virtue prevail, but I think they're the limit point.Like, if you really are unwilling to use—and I mentioned in the essay, when Darcy describes—I forget what; maybe it's him describing how he found Lydia and Wickham, or it's something to do with Wickham—he said, “I had to resort to arts.” So it must be, the “arts” back then means—one of the meanings of the term is dishonesty or subterfuge or something.OLIVER: Yes, if someone was artful, it could have—TRALDI: Yes, like the Artful Dodger.OLIVER: Exactly. Could have negative connotations for sure.TRALDI: Yes. And so the artless one, you know, they're missing something.So it's the question of, if you view—morality in a way means you're missing something, right? You've taken arts out of your arsenal. You've taken tools that could deal with certain situations, and you've just decided not to use them. So the question is, how can it be an advantage to have less tools?You know, we're here at Mercatus; the economists would tell you it's never advantageous to have fewer choices, right? There's no paradox of choice. It's never advantageous to have fewer choices. And so I think this is the—if morality is a kind of unilateral disarmament, artlessness is the clearest case of that.OLIVER: And you're seeing that in Fanny Price, Elinor—TRALDI: You see that in Fanny Price. You see that in Elinor. Harriet Smith is described as artless over and over again. And then there are these other characters who are described as artful, or other things that are mentioned as arts.I think Harriet, in a lot of ways, is the one who's most often described this way. And it's interesting because you think of Emma changing a lot in Emma, but Knightley actually shifts in his evaluation of Harriet, who he thought of as sort of an unserious person. And Knightley himself comes to recognize her artlessness as a kind of seriousness which makes her a good match, not ultimately for him, but for his dude, Robert.OLIVER: The farmer.TRALDI: The farmer, yes.OLIVER: He doesn't change his view of her social position, though.TRALDI: No, certainly not. But he does change his view of her character, basically. You know, her artlessness is not silliness. It has a sort of depth to it.And yes, certainly Fanny. In the Whit Stillman movie Metropolitan that's part of what set me on this, there's this whole discussion of the book Mansfield Park and this old Lionel Trilling essay about it where he says, how is it—there's this question about how modern people can even like Mansfield Park because we've sort of lost the notion of virtue being exciting or something.One of the most provocative lines to me in Austen was in Sense and Sensibility where it says that Elinor glories in Edward's integrity, which is an odd thing to glory in. You don't glory—nobody is on Instagram showing off their integrity, you know?OLIVER: It's like that René Gerard quote people like to pass around: “Everyone is on diet pills and nobody wants to be a saint.”TRALDI: I like that. That is very Instagrammable.OLIVER: Exactly. Exactly.TRALDI: That's very good, actually. I like that. Yes, so there's something provocative about the notion that virtue can be exciting, and in particular can be romantically exciting.The Importance of IntegrityOLIVER: Or even less than that. One thing I think is difficult for people interpreting Austen today is that virtue, whether it's exciting or romantically exciting, or the notion of integrity is of interest for its own sake.There's a lot of—you know, we have integrity as an organization. It's very important for me to have integrity as a professional. But there's not as much a sense of, just having integrity is the good life. We don't need to be complicated about this. That's just—you should just do that. And Austen's very firm on that all the way through.And criticism wants to pull her towards sometimes feminism, sometimes discussions of slavery, sometimes various other things. And she's just constantly sort of resisting that by saying, “I like integrity. I like good people. I don't think it's that hard.” It's a good line you've picked up on, I think.TRALDI: There's a character in The Wire who says, “A man's gotta have a code.” I think he's Omar, who murders the drug dealers and steals from them.OLIVER: I haven't seen it.TRALDI: So he says, “A man's gotta have a code.” And I think there is a—even in a character who in some ways is bad, we admire the integrity of having a code and sticking to it.There is this debate, I guess in moral philosophy, or at least on the outskirts of moral philosophy, about, “Well, if your code is wrong, maybe it's better not to stick to it.” I don't share that perspective. I think part of the good life is holding yourself to certain standards. And if those standards turn out to be wrong, the holding yourself is still of moral value, right? Not allowing yourself—OLIVER: It doesn't mean they're not adjustable.TRALDI: Yes, no, of course. If you decide the standards are wrong, and in Austen—OLIVER: It's sort of implicit in the idea of having standards that you will be honest and therefore accept when your standards need to be improved or whatever. Right?TRALDI: Yes, I think that's absolutely right. And in Austen we certainly see people shifting their standards. And I think one thing that I—of course, modern readers and watchers of Austen do not quite understand some of these things. But I think in Pride and Prejudice in particular, we're supposed to feel that Lizzy Bennet is quite hard on people and has to learn to improve herself in that way.OLIVER: We're delighted with her when she does that because we think it's sassy.TRALDI: Yes, exactly. If you go on YouTube, you can see all these, like, “Lizzy Bennet owning people's lives for 50 minutes,” these compilations of clips from the various movies or whatever. And she's obviously very, very clever.But she realizes—after coming to understand who Wickham is and feeling that she might not have another chance with Darcy, she comes to realize that she has had certain prejudices, which have made her blind to the realities of the world and blind to what might be her best options.So yes, I was saying I believe in integrity; that's all I was saying. And integrity obviously is adjustable, but I tend to think that it's better—even if the rule is wrong, it's better for the person who has it to hold themselves to it, rather than to adjust to try to get an advantage.And in philosophy, we have all sorts of terminology for these sorts of questions: “Are you an internalist or an externalist about reasons or about rules or whatever?” I think the more literary way to say it would just be that integrity is a virtue. And people should stick to their codes unless they see a good reason to change them.Austen and Adam SmithOLIVER: Now, you have recently been reading Adam Smith.TRALDI: Yes, I did read a lot of Adam Smith for this debate we had last week. Although I did a poor job because I had forgotten that the debate was about whether Smith was a philosopher or an economist. [laughter] I thought it was simply, is he a philosopher or not? So I put myself in the odd position of arguing that Adam Smith is not an economist.But yes, I think it's obvious—without knowing the background, I'm sure there are scholarly questions about, how much Smith did Austen read? And they're both 250th—a lot was happening in 1775 and 1776.OLIVER: Those were great years. Those were the good old days.TRALDI: They were great years. In the great books syllabus, you get to the end of the 1700s and suddenly there's this—you have Smith, you have Kant, you have the American Revolution, you have the French Revolution, you have Burke. Rousseau is right before, Montesquieu is right before. I mean, it was a real—OLIVER: It's a great time.TRALDI: It was a great time. A lot was being done. And obviously, you know, I love the 1800s. I love the Romantics. But you could teach a whole great books course from 1750 to 1800, probably.OLIVER: You've also got all the dictionaries and all that kind of work going on as well. It's a very, very fertile—explorations.TRALDI: Yes, yes. There's all sorts of—yes, it was an amazing time.OLIVER: So did you, having read these two, Austen and Smith, close together—TRALDI: Yes, and I should say that my reading of Austen was much more careful than my reading of Smith.OLIVER: Sure, but you wrote this before you read Smith.TRALDI: Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: Or at least you fully conceived it. Do you see a lot of Smith in Austen?TRALDI: “A lot” might be—OLIVER: Primarily from Theory of Moral Sentiments.TRALDI: So I would say that the notion of sympathy as being fundamentally part of how you recognize a good person seems to me to be there in Austen. The characters are—OLIVER: And this is the thing about awareness of other people and learning from that awareness.TRALDI: Awareness of other people and learning from other people and feeling other people's emotions. One thing that is related to sympathy in an odd way—and I think actually Austen and Smith conceive of it a bit differently, but that is there for both of them, in particular in Sense and Sensibility—is this notion of self-control or self-command.OLIVER: Self command. Yes. Yes.The Importance of Self-CommandTRALDI: Now, Smith gives a really odd argument about self command, which is that if you don't have control over your emotions, you will end up feeling or expressing something that other people can't sympathize with. And this is bad because sympathy is good, or something like that. I actually think it's a rather confused argument.OLIVER: I think what he's saying is that if you display a lack of self-command, then no matter what you are feeling, people find it difficult to deal with that sort of uncontrolled behavior. It's not the particular expression of feeling; it's the fact that you are a little unstable or—TRALDI: Yes, I think that's right.OLIVER: —a bit extra.TRALDI: I think what Smith doesn't do is explain quite how that's bad. But what I think is that actually, in Sense and Sensibility, it's a little bit the reverse, where actually Elinor and their mother, they do sympathize with Marianne. They do feel what she's feeling after—who's the other, the w guy in Sense and Sensibility? They're all w's.OLIVER: Oh, Willoughby.TRALDI: Willoughby, right, right. Not Wickham, Willoughby. When Willoughby—OLIVER: You can just say “the cad.”TRALDI: The cad. There's always a cad. So when the cad leaves, Marianne has all these emotions, and you really feel them. And Marianne also has a lack of self-command when Willoughby is there. There's this whole episode, which I didn't quite make the most of but felt very important, where they go to the house of this woman. They just sort of barge into this house, Willoughby and Marianne.And this is really supposed to show something about the relationship. If you and your partner barge into somebody's house, it can't be a good relationship somehow because it's leading you into bad actions. That's my sense of what that episode is supposed to show from the highest possible remove.OLIVER: I think, yes, and I think there are several other instances of that: when they ride in the carriage together, unaccompanied.TRALDI: Right, right.OLIVER: And there's a sort of general consternation about this. And Marianne sort of says, “Oh, well, how can it be a problem?” And they—part of the consternation is, you're breaking the rules in a very flagrant way, but also that you are assuming that it's okay because you'll get married. And this assumption is a very big one.TRALDI: Yes. And obviously there is this assumption that—she doesn't recognize quite how—she thinks her position is much more secure than it actually is, which is how it turns out in the book. But I think we're supposed to think that even if she were right about Willoughby's affection, which in a sense, she—Willoughby—OLIVER: No. Even if they do get married, she's broken the rules in a way that—TRALDI: She's broken certain rules in a way that is—but I think what's different from Smith is, there is sympathy from her family even though she lacks self-command. But that is precisely—so it's sort of a different theory of why self-command is good. It's precisely because her emotional state is actually draining for her family.And then Elinor says—when she learns that Elinor has actually been going through something—OLIVER: The same.TRALDI: —very similar, and maybe even rougher, in this whole thing with Lucy Steele telling her about this, you know, blah, blah, blah.OLIVER: Which is a beautiful name—to steal. I mean, it's great.TRALDI: It's an amazing—honestly, in some ways Sense and Sensibility may have been my favorite. I think it's just lovely.OLIVER: If I just wanted to just read one for fun, that's what I go to. I do, yes.TRALDI: Yes. And there's a lot—none of these things are quite perfectly in there. But I think honestly, everything that's in the other novels has a little part to play in Sense and Sensibility. You know, I think if I were to recommend just one, if somebody was like, “I have time for just one,” I might recommend Sense and Sensibility.But in the end, Marianne says—again, it's one of these amazingly evocative lines. Elinor says, “You didn't act that badly. Do you compare your conduct with Willoughby's?” And she says, “No, I compare it with—Elinor, I compare it with your conduct. You have this self-command.”And it's precisely the fact—it's not—and I think this is why philosophers do like Austen, because it's not—it's still literary, but there is a precision to her moral evaluations. It's precisely the fact that Elinor knew that her family loved her and didn't want to burden—it's all quite conscious. She didn't want to burden her family with her emotions. But you actually see that Elinor has this family trait of having very strong sentiment, which Marianne does, and simply also has this virtue of self-command.And that is—there are film adaptations and TV adaptations that demonstrate self-command, but it's a very hard thing to film. It's something you feel inside. It's a very hard—the actors have to be very good for you to see—you see pieces of it in some of the adaptations of Persuasion and some of the adaptations of Sense and Sensibility, but self-command is very hard to find.Austen AdaptationsOLIVER: Which adaptations do you like the best?TRALDI: I'm forgetting—I often like the long ones that I think were for the British ITV. So I like the—I think Kate Beckinsale was in the Emma one. Although I think there was one of Persuasion, which was also quite good. I like the one of Northanger Abbey. I don't think it's that good, but it's kind of cute, which I think it's probably the cutest of her long novels.Whit Stillman did a very loose adaptation of Lady Susan, which is hilariously funny at times, and also has Kate Beckinsale and some other great actors in it.OLIVER: Did you see the new Persuasion on Netflix a couple of years ago?TRALDI: No. No.OLIVER: It has that—is it Dakota Johnson, the actress, who's famous for other non-Austenian—Fifty Shades of Grey or whatever.TRALDI: Yes, and isn't she one of the Avengers or something like that?OLIVER: Something like that. But everyone was very upset that it was this terrible adaptation.TRALDI: Oh, yes.OLIVER: Didn't—it sort of killed all of Austen's words. She looks at the camera; she drinks from the bottle. I actually thought it was quite fun. On the basis that all adaptations are bad—TRALDI: I think if you allow some looseness, it can be quite fun. So for example, the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, I think if you're just sort of like, “Well, this is just somebody who was inspired by Pride and Prejudice,” you can have a lot of fun with the movie.OLIVER: I think as an interpretation of the book, that film is quite bad.TRALDI: Oh, yes. I think it's absolutely missing the mark.OLIVER: But in terms of like, the countryside and the house and the geese and the food, it's fantastic.TRALDI: Oh, yes. It's lovely to look at.OLIVER: The dresses, right? The clothes are amazing.TRALDI: And a lot of the—and the cast is honestly like—OLIVER: Yes, it's great.TRALDI: The cast is really, really great. And the parts as they are—OLIVER: Rosamund Pike is maybe the best Jane on TV.TRALDI: She's terrific. And who's the one who plays Kitty?OLIVER: Yes.TRALDI: Who is in—and the father is the guy from The Hunger Games. I forget his name, but I think the father is excellent in that. But of course, it's not exactly the father from Austen.OLIVER: No, no, no.TRALDI: But as a movie itself—but yes, I like a lot of these longer TV versions.One odd thing—they make these choices. So there is some scholarly apparatus brought to bear on some of them. So I think maybe it's Persuasion that there were multiple versions of, and some of the adaptations use pieces from the unpublished version, which are interesting. And as I was reading it, I had to Google around a bit and figure out these things.Austen's Moral PrecisionTRALDI: I was going to say about Austen's moral precision, the other place where I think this comes in—and I wrote a bit about this in the essay—is near the end of Mansfield Park, when—the names are what I'm worst at—when Edmund, right, is finally disillusioned with—OLIVER: Mary.TRALDI: With Mary Crawford?OLIVER: Mm-hmm.TRALDI: It's because there was this affair. There's always a sibling or a cousin who makes some horrible mistake, you know? So there was this affair, and Mary Crawford can only criticize it by saying that they weren't very prudent, you know, in prudential terms. They took a big risk. They made a bad decision. You know, they really screwed themselves over.OLIVER: They could have made it work. Yes.TRALDI: Yes. And Edmund realizes that she lacks moral fervor because he thinks the appropriate criticism should be a moral one. And as a psychological matter, it shouldn't even enter your head, I think is the idea. I'm extrapolating a bit, but if you see somebody acting this badly, to then say, “Well, geez, you're doing something that isn't in your interest”—for that to be your first thought indicates that your priorities are highly misplaced in a way that, to him, is quite unattractive.And this also struck me as a moment of—this is something we philosophers talk about. What is the distinction between prudence and morality? They both tell you what you should do, in some sense, but there's different—the shoulds have different forces, right? So Edmund has a certain moral precision and sensitivity which, actually, Fanny is basically the only person he knows—not that everybody in the house is a bad person; his father is a decent guy, and one of the aunts is okay, I think.But yes, there's a real sophistication to this evaluation. And it's funny to me that she actually used this as the—I mean, I suspect that even at the time there were readers who were just like, “Wait, I really don't get what the nature of Edmund's problem is here,” because it's not like Mary—Mary's not like, “Oh, yes, I support infidelity.” You know? She's not like— it's if you blinked, you might miss it, the mistake that Mary has made.And so I do think that even though she's not making arguments, she's not laying out philosophical theories, there is a level of precision in her thinking about virtue, which I do think is something that it took me a little aback.And I think it's part of why—one person who quote-tweeted my article was Daniel Kodsi, who's a friend of our colleague John Maier and his coauthor often. And he runs this magazine called The Philosophers' Magazine, which I had written before. And Daniel quote-tweeted my article with something like, “Add Oliver to the list of all the philosophers who love Austen.”OLIVER: And it's a long list.TRALDI: And I think it's a long list. And I do think this precision is part of it that she does, that it is—again, it's not like a philosophy journal article, but it is an intellectual sophistication that is often not present in novelists that we really appreciate.Every Word MattersOLIVER: I mean, one way people talk about the great books is to say that every word matters. And a lot of novelists will say that about their own. Well, you know, Elizabeth Bowen used to say, “What you're doing is to make everything count.” Austen is one of the examples where it's actually true. Every word is being used carefully.TRALDI: Yes. It's funny, this bears on another Twitter argument I had recently about this phrase logographic necessity. Basically, every word in a great book is there for a reason. I think that's right. Although you have to be careful about—if you were to say, “Well, every word in Plato is there for a reason, so you can't really say he's wrong about every—” you would be kind of abandoning the philosophical mission.OLIVER: I mean it in the sense of what you might call the artistic or structural integrity of the book. Not everything has to tell in the meaning sense. But it all holds as a unit for some—TRALDI: Yes. I think everything is there—there is what we could call an internal reason for everything to be there. Everything is there to hold together—OLIVER: Like the making of a piece of furniture or something.TRALDI: And I think you hear—I think this is one thing that—and not all classical music, but I think it's one thing that distinguishes classical music even from very good contemporary pop music or jazz or rock music, is that you have this sense of, “Yes, every note I hear basically is holding up a larger structure of some sort.”OLIVER: Yes. And Jane Austen is very Mozart in that way.TRALDI: Yes, I think that's right. Yes.Austen's Place in Great Books ProgramsOLIVER: So should Jane Austen have a bigger place on great books programs, based on all these things you've said about her?TRALDI: Yes, this is—so, there was actually a debate—I did not write the piece in response to this debate, but this is—OLIVER: Tanner Greer.TRALDI: Yes, there was—Tanner Greer weighed in on this, and my friend Circe. I think—OLIVER: I think they're just desperately wrong.TRALDI: You think they don't—that she—OLIVER: I think Emma is obviously a book that should be on one of these syllabuses. Maybe Sense and Sensibility.TRALDI: Yes. I think the ones I would consider are Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park. I do think they're actually longer than I realized, which is always—I mean, there are these very practical concerns with putting together a syllabus.OLIVER: Sure, sure. Although I want to ask you about that, because my response to a lot of these debates, which is maybe just because of where I studied, but just make them read more. And if they don't do the reading, that's their, you know—TRALDI: That's true. Well, I don't want to get into this too much. We already make them read a lot compared to—so for example, a year ago, I had my students read two novels in a week, which is more than most courses make college students read.OLIVER: But that's by no means unreasonable.TRALDI: No, no, of course, of course.OLIVER: You know.TRALDI: Well, exigencies of the teenage mind aside—OLIVER: Because I often think this, when people debate how things should be taught and why it's so important to keep these programs, and they'll talk about the importance of writing essays. And then it turns out the students maybe write one essay a semester. And I sort of think, well, who cares? All this rhetoric for one essay.TRALDI: Yes. I don't know if I'm really ever going to assign essays again. It just is—the age of AI is upon us.OLIVER: Sure. But you see what I mean.TRALDI: No, yes, I know exactly what you mean. And I do think reading a lot is the main part of—and certainly, you know, when I read all seven of these in two weeks, that's much more reading than I normally do, as well, to write this essay.OLIVER: But you didn't have to lie on the sofa afterwards with a cold compress. You were fine.TRALDI: In a way it was a really good two weeks. If you get to read—I mean, this is why we have good lives, right? If you get to read Jane Austen and you call that work, it's a nice life.OLIVER: So yes, will you be putting Emma on your program?TRALDI: I would definitely consider Emma. I would definitely consider Sense and Sensibility. I would consider Mansfield Park. I think these are the ones that have—the moral element is very prominent. But it's obviously there in all of her books.OLIVER: You can have a really good moral discussion about Mansfield Park, which is a bigger, broader thing than Pride and Prejudice, for example.TRALDI: Yes, I think so. I would definitely consider—in the 1800s there were—obviously the British novel of the 1800s was a big deal, and there's—OLIVER: [laughs] We did quite well, yes.TRALDI: You all did quite well. So the ones we did at Tulsa—we had Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights and The Picture of Dorian Gray. And then we had one Irish, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. And I don't think anybody—if you replaced one of those with Emma or Mansfield Park, I don't think anybody would say, “Oh, you made a horrible call.”OLIVER: I think Tanner's point was that you simply don't have that many slots for an English novel that deals with these sorts of ideas, and that it should obviously be Middlemarch because that is the bigger novel. It's about bigger questions of society. It's about the whole—it's got more greatness in it, whereas Austen is sort of more about the individual.TRALDI: So I do think that this question of greatness—I think there are some people who read Austen and they think, “Well, this is—obviously it has all these sorts of themes, but it's not great. It has this littleness to it. It has this smallness to it.”OLIVER: It's domestic.TRALDI: That is not my reading of it. I think if that's the question, I don't feel that way. I think it pulls out these great themes about the nature of virtue and the nature of moral learning, becoming a better person, the nature of love. We read Sappho. We read the Symposium.To me, you read Wuthering Heights and you say, “Oh, this is a really big book because it's about society and how trauma gets passed down, and it has these horror elements, and it's very dark.” But actually, it's quite hard to figure out, how do we turn Wuthering Heights in a discussion about how to live? With Austen, it's just completely straightforward.OLIVER: [laughs] How not to live, maybe.TRALDI: Yes. In Austen, it's just completely straightforward. This is the discussion. This is what she had in mind as well, this question of how to live. So to me, Austen is completely—in terms of her successes as an artist, she belongs. In terms of her themes, she belongs. So I would not rule her out. I think she is absolutely a great, and who knows what that means, but I think she would be completely appropriate on any of these syllabi.Reading PlansOLIVER: Very good. And what will you read next?TRALDI: What will I read next? I mean, our—from the beginning, I'm thinking I should read some more poetry. It's been a while. Actually, speaking of—this is funny. Well, I want to get into William Empson. He had an odd life, which I think somebody should do like a movie about him or something.OLIVER: Yes, he'd make a great movie.TRALDI: I think Empson would be a good movie. So that might be—OLIVER: Are you going to read the poems or the criticism?TRALDI: Probably a little of both, but that's for a while from now. I think, you know, at the moment I'm back to reading philosophy. So what novel will I read next? That's a good question. What should I read next?OLIVER: If you like Jane Austen?TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Maybe read one of the people that she admired, like Samuel Richardson or Fanny Burney, someone like that.TRALDI: You know, I do think—you saying Samuel Richardson reminded me, I've read very little Samuel Johnson. I think reading some of the great critics, I think, writing this piece—OLIVER: Oh, Johnson, yes. You would like Johnson.TRALDI: I think I would like Johnson. I think I would like Empson. The history of literary criticism is something I have very, very little idea of.OLIVER: Oh, well, then, Johnson. I mean, he's the best.TRALDI: Yes, I think I should, I should definitely read Johnson.OLIVER: English literary criticism begins and ends with Samuel Johnson.TRALDI: You know what, this is a little different, but—I might have talked about this with you a little bit—I want to read The Fable of the Bees, Mandeville, because reading about Smith—a lot of the ideas that we think of as Smithian are actually Mandevillian, and he kind of moderated them.OLIVER: Well, he hated Mandeville.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Very hard on him.TRALDI: Yes. So a lot—like the invisible hand, it's only a small part of Smith's thinking, but it was like the entirety of Mandeville's thinking, this sort of dynamic.OLIVER: Well, I think it means different things for them. I think Mandeville, in a funny way, is more philosophical in the sense you were saying, and trying to make these propositions. And Smith was saying, “Well, what about feelings? What about all these funny things that we can't account for? Like, look around. It's too messy.”TRALDI: No, that makes sense to me. Yes, I think between Mandeville and Smith, Mandeville is somebody who thought virtue was sort of like a con.OLIVER: A fool's game.TRALDI: Exactly. You're sort of a sucker if you try to be virtuous.OLIVER: I think he also just assumed that if you were commercial, you were obviously on the get.TRALDI: Yes. But this is one of the great—I know we talked about this, but it's one of the great—you see this in Smith, you see this in Austen—commerce has its own virtues, and they are very traditional virtues. You have to be trustworthy. You have to be pleasant. You can't really be wholly self-interested in every moment because people have to be willing to deal with you given your—I mean, think about Yelp reviews or even just word of mouth. “Oh, that person screwed me over.”OLIVER: There's a discussion in one of Hayek's papers, which is—it's a very Smithian point he makes about, the nature of the knowledge problem means that it's not so much that I'm trying to get information about the thing you're trying to sell me, but I'm really trying to get information about you and whether you are someone I should be buying from. Which is exactly the project that the novelists and Smith—there's a sort of period between Smith and the early novelists, running through Austen to George Eliot, when they're all working on that problem together.TRALDI: Yes. I do think in Austen, it's often—the real puzzle is, how do you make out somebody else's character?OLIVER: Exactly.TRALDI: This is a phrase that Lizzy Bennet does use with regard to Darcy. And how do we actually figure out who the trustworthy and untrustworthy people are?OLIVER: And if you're too philosophical about that, in the sort of analytic sense, I think you can end up not paying enough attention to the particulars of that question.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Because when you actually try and do it, it's really, really hard.TRALDI: Yes. And I think this is the sort of—reading Austen, you get a sense of—and there are very few philosophy papers on things like this. Reading Austen, you get a sense of, what sorts of details in a normal life are the ones that I can extract information from to make out somebody else's character?In philosophy, we do ask, what is a good character and what is the good action in this sort of situation? What is the bad action in this sort of situation? But it's not for the philosopher to say, “Okay, in the sorts of situations you're likely to be in, what do you pay—where do you direct your attention to try to figure out these things about?”And it's not—I don't think Austen—it's not super subtle either. In Persuasion—I mentioned in the essay—in Persuasion, it starts out by saying Anne really cared about paying off the family's debts, and the rest of her family didn't give a s**t, you know? And it's sort of like, okay, so we just immediately are like, Anne's the sort of person who you might want to have a business transaction with because if she has a debt to you, she might actually pay it. And I forget if that's the exact detail, but it's something like that, you know?OLIVER: And there's also the novelist—Jane Austen is very good at what you don't see, which aga

Happy Star Wars Day! The new hit Star Wars series Maul - Shadow Lord has come to an end with an EPIC finale that is among the best episodes in Star Wars animation history. We discuss Maul's journey trying to rebuild his shadow empire, and what's going on with the mysterious Jedi Devin Izara, as well as a MAJOR Star Wars character appearing in the finale. Come hang out and share your thoughts and theories!(00:00:00) Intro(00:02:00) Whatcha Watchin?(00:10:00) Star Wars Day Announcements(00:14:00) Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord Season 1 Reactions(00:19:00) Maul - Shadow Lord Episode 7 Breakdown(00:23:00) Maul's ALMOST Redemption Attempt(00:25:00) Vader Arrives to Face Maul(00:29:00) Maul - Shadow Lord Ending Explained(00:30:00) Devon's Dual of the Fates(00:49:00) Will Devon Become Darth Talon Check out our interview with Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord Executive Producers Athena Yvette Portillo, Brad Rau, and Matt Michnovetz: https://youtu.be/86na6N-AldACheck out https://www.agentsoffandom.com for the latest TV and Movie reviews!

It's Star Wars Day! And to celebrate the GateCrashers crew gathered for a chaotic, rambling discussion about all things Galaxy Far, Far Away. From projects we want to see that Disney would definitely consider making, to a truly terrible Darth Maul impression, we really cover the full gamut of everything you could want to discuss about Star Wars! And if, after listening you're still in that May the Fourth mood for more Star Wars, why not check out some of our extensive writing on everyone's favourite space opera: Have you been wanting to get into Star Wars comics? Then check out our handy Crash Course! Wondering what everyone's favourite spiky Sith Lord is up to? Give a read of our Maul - Shadow Lord review! Harkening for the brilliance of Genndy Tartakovsky's 2D Clone Wars? Our retrospective is sure to remind you of the good times! Maybe you're looking for something more serious from the Galaxy Far, Far Away? In that case, our Andor review is the place to go! Did you play Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and wish there were even more characters to play as? Then our ranking of 25 Glup Shintos you can't play as is perfect for you! Ever wondered what Luke and Lando got up to between the Original and Sequel trilogies? Find out in our review of the game-changing Shadow of the Sith! Are you tired of annoying people on the internet constantly complaining about Rey being a Mary Sue? We agree! Do you love Doctor Aphra as much as we do? Our ode to everyone's favorite space thief/archaeologist/gay disaster is right here! Did you ever wonder what Colin Trevorrow's Duel of the Fates, the original finale to the Sequel Trilogy, might have looked like? Then check out our recap of the script! And lastly, make sure to listen to our homemade Star Wars audio adventure, Wild Space! All this and more can be found at our Star Wars landing page!  

Wake up with JOY Breakfast – the feel-good way to start your day. Join Mietta, Jason & Dr Cat as they unpack the stories everyone's talking about (and a few you didn't know you needed), from pop culture moments and internet buzz to politics, health and queer life. Each episode blends big headlines with sharp opinions, expert insights from Dr Cat, and plenty of laughs along the way. New episodes every Tuesday 7-9am This week's topics: Happy Trans Day of Visibility!! We sit down with the incredible Anastasia Le, a Vietnamese Australian social justice trailblazer and Victorian Women's Honour Roll inductee. We chat about her work with the Victorian Pride Centre and supporting inclusion for LGBTQIA+, migrant, and disability communities before she heads off to a massive day of speaking engagements. Also this week, we name our Crush of the Week and admit we are officially addicted to Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. We break down the drama that went down with Taylor. Things get mystical with a “Battle of the Fates” Tarot reading and Shamanic insights. We explore the future of 3D printing and programming your own personal AI pets using ChatGPT. Tech meets nature as we look at using Tamagotchis for high-tech plant care. We discuss the UK version of SNL and manifest a third season of Lisa Kudrow's The Comeback. Kylie Minogue is officially announced as the AFL Grand Final headliner. Taylor Swift dominates the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards with seven massive wins. We wrap up with the news that Victorian public transport is free through April to help with climbing fuel prices. Instagram: @joy949 @joybreakfast @miettahj_ @themelbourneurbanite (Jason) @nyuroscientist (Cat) The post Tuesday Breakfast – Episode 16 – with Mietta, Jason & Dr Cat appeared first on JOY Breakfast.

Rachel and Simon speak with the novelist and short-story writer Lauren Groff. Lauren is the bestselling author of the novels "The Monsters of Templeton", "Arcadia", "Fates and Furies", "Matrix" and "The Vaster Wilds", and the short-story collections "Delicate Edible Birds" and "Florida". "Fates and Furies", "Florida" and "Matrix" were all finalists for the National Book Award in the United States. In 2024 Lauren and her husband opened a bookshop, The Lynx, in Florida, which has an emphasis on books that are currently challenged or banned in the state. We spoke to Lauren about the position of short stories in the literary marketplace, working as a bookseller as well as an author, and her latest collection of stories, "Brawler". In addition to the standard audio format, the podcast is now available in video. You can check us out on YouTube under Always Take Notes.   We've also made (yet) another update for those ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠who support the podcast on the crowdfunding site Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. We've added a further 70 pages of new material to the package of successful article pitches that goes to anyone who supports the show with $5 per month or more, including new pitches to the New Yorker, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the Guardian Long Read. The whole compendium now runs to a magisterial 230 pages. For Patreons who contribute $10/month we're now also releasing bonus mini-episodes. Thanks to our sponsor, Scrivener, the first ten new signs-ups at $10/month will receive a lifelong license to Scrivener worth £55/$59.99 (two are left). This specialist word-processing software helps you organise long writing projects such as novels, academic papers and even scripts. Other Patreon rewards include signed copies of the podcast book and the opportunity to take part in a call with Simon and Rachel. A new edition of “Always Take Notes: Advice From Some Of The World's Greatest Writers” - a book drawing on our podcast interviews - is available now. The updated version now includes insights from over 100 past guests on the podcast, with new contributions from Harlan Coben, Victoria Hislop, Lee Child, Megan Nolan, Jhumpa Lahiri, Philippa Gregory, Jo Nesbø, Paul Theroux, Hisham Matar and Bettany Hughes. You can order it via ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Waterstones⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When he first heard that Lucasfilm would be making new Star Wars films, Colin Trevorrow knew he had been put in this earth to direct one of them...Guest StarringDavid Chen as Colin TrevorrowAlexei Toliopolous as George LucasAbigail Nussbaum as Kathleen KennedyAsher Elbein as the Crawl Jackson Ryan as the disembodied voice of the Lucasfilm PR departmentCLIPS USED: Happy Sad Confused: Colin Trevorrow, Sam RichardsonJurassic World (dir. Colin Trevorrow, 2015)Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi (dir. Rian Johnson 2017)The Clone Wars: The Secrets of MortisDisney Lucasfilm Purchase AnnouncementKathleen Kennedy ABC News InterviewMUSICDuel of the Fates, Main Title, Jurassic Park Theme & A New Home by John Williams“Stringed Disco”, “Backed Vibes Clean”, “Lithium”, “Rolling At 5”, “Phantom From Space”, “Evening Melodrama”, “Industrial Cinematic”, “Morgana Rides”, “Raw", “Chill Wave”, “Martian Cowboy”, “Prelude & Action”, “Echoes of Time v2”, “Controlled Chaos - no percussion", “Marty Gots A Plan”, “Dark Times", “Black Vortex”, "Peace of Mind", “This House”, “Quirky Dog”, “Drums of the Deep”, “Hero Down”, “The Dread”,  “Mystery Sax", "The Chamber", "Intrepid", "The Dread", "The Descent", "Lost Time", "Mistake the Getaway", "Hiding Your Reality", “Night Vigil”, “That Zen Moment”, "Deep Haze", "Covert Affairs", "Lost Frontier", "Hall of the Mountain King", "Leaving Home", & “Ever Mindful”Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)“Suspended Animation”, "Space Race", "The Paladin's Underworld", "Proxima Centuri", by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com"Sneaky Snooper", "Dark Mystery" & "Act Three" by Jason Shaw - Audionautix.com"Gravity" by James Richardson (kingjamesroyaltyfreemusic.blogspot.co.uk)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Ambient Songs:By CoAghttps://www.youtube.com/@co.agmusic1823Intro Theme by Swift Junai:https://www.instagram.com/swiftjunai/?hl=enhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6hf5nMJ8s6LJJfFR4OQ3lghttps://open.spotify.com/artist/1PoG2b18MHocWZA8zQgWjOWriters and researchers: Jay Adamshttps://instagram.com/jayadamsdigital?igshid=MzMyNGUyNmU2YQ==

A heist on a crime-syndicate planet, a “Duel of the Fates” needle drop that hasn't been heard since The Phantom Menace, and a Sith lord who barely has to break a sweat... Maul is off to a hell of a start. Matthew and Alex welcome TruStory FM co-owner Pete Wright to break down the first two episodes of the new animated series, set in the lawless underworld of Janix at the dawn of the Empire.The conversation covers the Blade Runner-meets-cop-noir world-building, the “sandwich prequel” problem of writing a character whose beginning and end we already know, and the big question: can Maul sustain eight episodes as a title character? Matthew makes the case that Maul is a Cassandra figure — he sees Palpatine's plan clearly and completely, but his methods mean no one will listen to him. Meanwhile, Pete brings a sharp outside perspective on what the show owes to Andor's willingness to let crime politics breathe.There's also spirited debate over Devin Izara and her Jedi master, whether the show's hallway fight scene has earned its place in a now-crowded genre, and where Crimson Dawn fits into Maul's long game — because Palpatine, as it turns out, is playing Candyland, and the outcome was never really in doubt.Star Wars Generations**************************************************************************This episode is a production of Star Wars Generations, an Ethical Panda podcast and part of the TruStory FM Entertainment Podcast Network. Check out our website to find out more about this show and our sister podcast Superhero Ethics.We want to hear from you! Keep up with our latest news and send us feedback, questions, or comments via social media or email.TikTok · Twitter/X · Instagram · Facebook · EmailTo learn more about co-host Erin and her incredible cosplay: Instagram · TikTokJoin the conversation in the Star Wars Generations and Superhero Ethics channels on the TruStory FM Discord.Want even more content while supporting the podcast? Become a member! For $5 a month or $55 a year you get access to bonus episodes and bonus content at the end of most episodes — and you can even give membership as a gift. Sign up here.You can also support us through our sponsors:Purchase a lightsaber from Level Up Sabers, run by friend of the podcast Neighborhood Master Alan.Use Audible for audiobooks. Sign up for a one-year membership or gift one through this link.Purchase any media discussed this week through our sponsored links.

The long wait is over — Maul: Shadow Lord is here, and episodes one and two make one thing clear: this is not a redemption arc. Matthew and Erin bring their first reactions to a Star Wars series that plants its villain firmly at the center, broken and dangerous, with Sam Witwer delivering a performance that is already carrying the whole show.The hosts dig into a surprisingly grounded world: a cop-dad navigating custody and local crime politics, a droid turf war between Two Boots and Spybot, and a young Jedi prisoner who knew Maul's name the second he walked in — sparking discussion about just how notorious Maul actually was at this point in the timeline. Meanwhile, Erin zeroes in on Maul's recruitment pitch and the gap between what he tells his prisoner (“it's not as simple as good and evil”) and what he admits to his Mandalorian ally (“I will mold her into something powerful”). The show is already playing with a fascinating central question: can someone who has already started bending the Jedi code to survive really resist what Maul is offering?Whether the prisoner turns out to be Darth Talon or someone else entirely, both hosts are hooked — and ready to find out how this broken, revenge-obsessed man tries to rebuild an empire from scratch.Mentioned in This EpisodeStar Wars Content DiscussedThe Clone Wars (referenced throughout, particularly the Shadow Collective arc and Season 7)Star Wars Rebels (Maul's appearances referenced)Andor (compared to Shadow Lord's local law enforcement storytelling)Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (the Duel of the Fates theme moment)LinksConnect with Matthew: matthew@theethicalpanda.com · TikTok · Facebook · Instagram · Twitter/XConnect with Erin: Instagram · TikTok**************************************************************************This episode is a production of Star Wars Generations, an Ethical Panda podcast and part of the TruStory FM Entertainment Podcast Network. Check out our website to find out more about this show and our sister podcast Superhero Ethics.We want to hear from you! Keep up with our latest news and send us feedback, questions, or comments via social media or email.TikTok · Twitter/X · Instagram · Facebook · EmailTo learn more about co-host Erin and her incredible cosplay: Instagram · TikTokJoin the conversation in the Star Wars Generations and Superhero Ethics channels on the TruStory FM Discord.Want even more content while supporting the podcast? Become a member! For $5 a month or $55 a year you get access to bonus episodes and bonus content at the end of most episodes — and you can even give membership as a gift. Sign up here.You can also support us through our sponsors:Purchase a lightsaber from Level Up Sabers, run by friend of the podcast Neighborhood Master Alan.Use Audible for audiobooks. Sign up for a one-year membership or gift one through this link.Purchase any media discussed this week through our sponsored links.

Perhaps the most significant piece of Star Wars music of the prequel trilogy, "Duel of the Fates" for chorale and orchestra boldly captures the struggle between light and darkness. We discuss the personal influences that composer John Williams brings to his compositions, and do a full musical analysis of the concert arrangement of this dynamic and exciting piece. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us Fan MailThis week on The Book Fix, Yajaira and Cheli are diving into A Crown of Oaths and Curses by J Bree—a dark, epic romantasy packed with brutal politics, ancient magic, and a very inconvenient fated-mates situation.We follow Rookesbane Eveningstar, a powerful Witch of the Woods who has already lost everything in service to a king who was never hers. With the war between fae and witches tearing the world apart, Rook is forced to seek out the Savage Prince—heir to the Southern Lands' high-fae throne, infamous for his cruelty and cold heart.The problem? He's her Fates-blessed mate. And she's his greatest enemy. Dun dun DUN! Support the showOur Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thebookfix?utm_source=linktree_admin_sharebecome our Patron ♡ https://www.patreon.com/BookFixbuy us a book ♡ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thebookfixBusiness Inquiries: thebookfixpodcast@gmail.comfollow us on Tiktok! ♡  https://www.tiktok.com/@thebookfix

Host Jason Blitman talks to Lauren Groff about her new story collection, Brawler. This conversation was recorded live at Warwick's in San Diego. Conversation highlights include:

3. Cline examines the varying fates of Egypt and emerging Levantine groups after the collapse. Egypt is described as "merely coping," struggling with internal anarchy and a delayed reaction to regional droughts while retreating from its previous international prominence. Conversely, the power vacuum allowed smaller entities like the Israelites and Philistines to flourish. Cline discusses the archaeological debate regarding whether the Israelites were local highland dwellers who transformed or external migrants. He also identifies the Philistines as part of the Sea Peoples, noting recent DNA evidence from Ashkelon that confirms their mixed ancestry and Mediterranean origins. (3)

Episode 233 of "TMNT - The Talk" in English. I am talking about TMNT#14 and TMNT#15 by IDW Comics. Check out the website at https://www.tmnttalk.com/ or send me an e-mail at tmnttalk1984@gmail.com.

This week we watch 7 x 7 introductions. Did I mention we watched 49 introductions! Join us as we discuss Shamans. Saki. Tarot and many more topics we are very qualified to discuss on Battle of the Fates on Hulu. S01E01 || Theme Song: "Crooked Mile (slinky rock mix)" by Hans Atom || Outro: "I dunno" by grapes || Next week: Maxxed Out S01E01

Today I'm reviewing Alchemy of Secrets by Stephanie Garber—a lush, twisty fantasy filled with dangerous bargains, glittering illusions, and secrets that refuse to stay buried.Garber leans into her trademark atmospheric storytelling, blending romance, high-stakes magic, and morally complicated characters navigating a world where trust is fragile and power always comes at a cost. It's dramatic, immersive, and layered with mystery.

Join us for this special Purim episode of the Toras Chaim podcast. In keeping with the theme of Season 3, we examine the historical context and significance of the special reading for Purim-Megilas Esther. In doing so we discover that things are not always what they seem and G-d is always working behind the scenes. SPECIAL REQUEST: Our Shul, The Community Shul of Los Angeles, is currently running its annual fundraiser. This podcast is part of the work we do to educate and elevate Jewish Life. If you appreciate our work, please help by supporting TCS. Any amount helps. https://causematch.com/shul26/561633If you enjoy the Toras Chaim Podcast, please help us spread the word! You can share a link on social media, leave a review or rating on your favorite podcast platform, or best of all, discuss what you've learned at the shabbos table!We love to hear from our listeners. Be it comments, questions or critique. You can send an email to overtimecook@gmail.com or via instagram @OvertimeCook or @Elchonon.

Acclaimed TC contributor Lauren Groff speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her new story collection, Brawler, out this month from Riverhead, and her origins as a writer at Amherst College, where The Common is based. She also discusses how a story collection comes together over many years, how working with her longtime agent Bill Clegg has shaped her work, and what she's working on now and next. Groff's work appears most often in The New Yorker these days, but The Common published a story of hers in Issue 01, more than 15 years ago. Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won the Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2024 she was named one of the “TIME 100 most influential people.” Groff's work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Her work has been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, where she and her husband run an independent bookstore, The Lynx. ­­Read Lauren Groff's story “Exquisite Corpse” in The Common here. Learn more about Brawler and order it here. Find out more here. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine here, and follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her 2025 debut novel All That Life Can Afford was a Reese's Book Club pick, and her work has appeared in The New York Times Modern Love column, the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Acclaimed TC contributor Lauren Groff speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her new story collection, Brawler, out this month from Riverhead, and her origins as a writer at Amherst College, where The Common is based. She also discusses how a story collection comes together over many years, how working with her longtime agent Bill Clegg has shaped her work, and what she's working on now and next. Groff's work appears most often in The New Yorker these days, but The Common published a story of hers in Issue 01, more than 15 years ago. Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won the Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2024 she was named one of the “TIME 100 most influential people.” Groff's work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Her work has been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, where she and her husband run an independent bookstore, The Lynx. ­­Read Lauren Groff's story “Exquisite Corpse” in The Common here. Learn more about Brawler and order it here. Find out more here. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine here, and follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her 2025 debut novel All That Life Can Afford was a Reese's Book Club pick, and her work has appeared in The New York Times Modern Love column, the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Star Wars Episode 9 Duel of the Fates original script by Colin Trevorrow is being created now by Star Wars fans like this scene here created by Skywalker_Stories What do you think about it? Do you think Star Wars content like this in the hands of the fans is a good thing? THEORY SABERS - https://theorysabers.com/ Best sellers: Ani III - The Chosen One - https://www.theorysabers.com/product/hilt-ani3 Prodigal Son V1 (Affordable Version) - https://www.theorysabers.com/product/hilt-lukev1 HATS and MERCH - https://www.theorysabers.com/products-3?category=Accessories&subcategory=Merch Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61577224659532 SPOTIFY Daily Podcast Episodes - https://open.spotify.com/show/1j8jTU5OgOsi7o18Zo7Jn6 Apple Podcasts Star Wars Theory - https://apple.co/3Z0qBQE Twitter - https://twitter.com/realswtheory Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/star.wars.theory/ TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@starwarstheory66 Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8CbFnDTYkiVweaz8y9wd_Q/join Become a Patron to support future content - https://www.patreon.com/StarWarsTheory Chat with the community on my personal Star Wars Theory Forums https://starwarstheory.com/THEORY/posts DISCORD - https://discord.gg/starwarstheory Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One false move and you just might be sucked into one of AEW's perilous black holes. Psy White presents the 7 Worst Possible Fates To Suffer In AEW...ENJOY!Follow us on Twitter:@Psyniac_123@WhatCultureWWEFor more awesome content, check out: whatculture.com/wwe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, I review Our Infinite Fates, by Laura Steven!Goodreads/Fable: Ellie ManoTikTok/Instagram: @hookofabookEmail: hookofabookpodcast@gmail.com

Last February, having just inherited the title of Black Lens programmer at Milwaukee Film, Ty Williams absolutely nailed his selections for a series showing off the range of Black stories that have come to the big screen over the years.Now, he's putting that UW-Milwaukee film degree to good use once again. This time, however, he pulled in his picks around a particular theme. “Afrofuturism: Fates Beyond Fiction” includes six works — two short films and four full-length features — that jump from comic books to sci-fi horror to just plain weird.As you'll hear Williams explain in this episode, what unifies his selections are how they “focus on the concept of dreaming a better future or a different world than the one we live in now.” That comes across in a bunch of different ways during the series, including the bad-assery of Wesley Snipes in Blade, the code-switching absurdity of Sorry to Bother You, and the messianic star turn by music legend and generally far-out dude Sun Ra in Space Is the Place.You'll get to hear Williams and our trusty co-hosts talk about how he put together the full lineup, as well as how generally awesome the theater staff are at the Oriental and Downer theaters, and whether the third movie in a trilogy is ever the best one.#####Cinebuds is sponsored by Joe Wilde Garage Door Company.

Send us a textOn this episode, I'm joined by the most prominent sports lawyer that you've probably never. Heard of. His name is Jay Reisinger, and he has represented some of the highest-profile professional athletes in the country in league disciplinary cases, salary, arbitration cases, and crisis management.If you're a pro athlete and you're in trouble, he's the man to see. Jay joins the pod to talk about the Stefan Diggs and Christian Barmore criminal charges, whether they might be suspended during the NFL playoffs or the off-season, and he gives a behind the scenes look at how the leagues investigate and punish athletes.Thank you for listening! For the latest in sports law news and analysis, you can follow Gabe Feldman on twitter @sportslawguy .

Ambient Songs:By CoAghttps://www.youtube.com/@co.agmusic1823Intro Theme by Swift Junai:https://www.instagram.com/swiftjunai/?hl=enhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6hf5nMJ8s6LJJfFR4OQ3lghttps://open.spotify.com/artist/1PoG2b18MHocWZA8zQgWjOWriters and researchers: Jay Adamshttps://instagram.com/jayadamsdigital?igshid=MzMyNGUyNmU2YQ==Jordan Gottschick https://www.youtube.com/@DerpsWithWolves/playlists

On this episode of Currently Reading, Kaytee and Meredith are taking a look back at their favorite reads of 2021. This was one of the best reading years. This was also the year we added the superlatives which everybody loved! Most of these books should be available for you to grab if any interest you after hearing us rave about them! Show notes are time-stamped below for your convenience. Read the transcript of the episode (this link only works on the main site) .  .  .  2:38 - Our Top 10 Reads of 2021 12:35 - Legendborn by Tracy Deonn (Kaytee #10) 12:39 - Season 3: episode 40 14:09 - Currently Reading Patreon 16:39 - Fablehaven by Brandon Mull  16:52 - A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus (Meredith #10) 18:50 - The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood (Kaytee #9) 21:25 - Furyborn by Claire Legrand 21:36 - Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo  21:56 - A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas (Meredith #9) 22:21 - A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas 23:01 - A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas 23:46 - The Day The World Came to Town by Jim DeFede (Kaytee #8) 23:50 - Season 4: Episode 14 25:32 - Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May (Meredith #8) 25:41 - Season 3: Episode 41 29:03 - Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (Kaytee #7) 29:25 - Season 3: Episode 42 31:41 - State of Terror by Hilary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny (Meredith #7) 34:22 - Intermission: Lowest Rated Books 34:58 - Roar by Cecilia Ahern (Kaytee) 35:41 - Atomic City Girls by Janet Beard (Kaytee) 36:48 - Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay (Meredith) 37:30 - Survive the Night by Riley Sager (Meredith) 38:25 - Meredith and Kaytee's Top 10 Books of the Year cont'd 38:36 - Love Lives Here by Rowan Jette Knox (Kaytee #6) K NOTE: while I do think it's clear that I love my sister dearly here, I want to be extra super clear that when I say "love covers all manner of sins" I am referring to the ways we as her family fail at times to do the best we can. I am not in any way referring to her gender identity as a sin. My sister knows this, but I want to be sure that anyone else who hears me, hears me correctly as well. 40:25 - Pony by R.J. Palacio (Meredith #6) 40:50 - Page & Palette Bookshop 42:05 - Wonder by R.J. Palacio 43:01 - The Guncle by Steven Rowley (Kaytee #5) 43:04 - Season 3: Episode 45 44:29 - The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (Meredith #5) 47:46 - Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston (Kaytee #4) 47:51 - Season 3: Episode 35 47:56 - Bookshelf Thomasville 48:47 - Blackwell's 49:05 - Nevermoor by Jessica Townsend 49:06 - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling 49:28 - 56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard  49:37 - The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard (Meredith #4) 53:14 - Intermission: The Books that Surprised Us Most in 2021 53:44 - Season 3: Episode 34 53:50 - The Black Count by Tom Reiss (Kaytee) 55:38 - Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Meredith) 59:25 - Meredith and Kaytee's Top 10 Books of the Year cont'd 59:50 - How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith (Kaytee #3) 59:56 - Season 4: Episode 19 1:01:37 - Fabled Bookshop 1:01:39 - We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker (Meredith #3) 1:04:52 - Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby (Kaytee #2) 1:04:56 - Season 4: Episode 2 1:07:18 - Matrix by Lauren Groff (Meredith #2) 1:07:59 - Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff 1:11:14 - All The Lonely People by Mike Gayle (Kaytee #1) 1:11:22 - Season 4: Episode 12 1:11:38 - Minisode w/Mike Gayle 1:14:09 - A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (Meredith #1) 1:15:42 - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 1:22:48 - Reflections from the 2021 Reading Year 1:24:25 - Pony by R.J. Palacio 1:24:45 - Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston   Support Us: Become a Bookish Friend | Grab Some Merch Shop Bookshop dot org | Shop Amazon Bookish Friends Receive: The Indie Press List with a curated list of five books hand sold by the indie of the month. December's IPL is a recap of the year with Kaytee and Meredith. Love and Chili Peppers with Kaytee and Rebekah - romance lovers get their due with this special episode focused entirely on the best selling genre fiction in the business.  All Things Murderful with Meredith and Elizabeth - special content for the scary-lovers, brought to you with the behind-the-scenes insights of an independent bookseller From the Editor's Desk with Kaytee and Bunmi Ishola - a quarterly peek behind the curtain at the publishing industry The Bookish Friends Facebook Group - where you can build community with bookish friends from around the globe as well as our hosts Connect With Us: The Show: Instagram | Website | Email | Threads The Hosts and Regulars: Meredith | Kaytee | Mary | Roxanna Production and Editing: Megan Phouthavong Evans Affiliate Disclosure: All affiliate links go to Bookshop unless otherwise noted. Shopping here helps keep the lights on and benefits indie bookstores. Thanks for your support!

Ambient Songs:By CoAghttps://www.youtube.com/@co.agmusic1823Intro Theme by Swift Junai:https://www.instagram.com/swiftjunai/?hl=enhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6hf5nMJ8s6LJJfFR4OQ3lghttps://open.spotify.com/artist/1PoG2b18MHocWZA8zQgWjOWriters and researchers: Jay Adamshttps://instagram.com/jayadamsdigital?igshid=MzMyNGUyNmU2YQ==Jordan Gottschick https://www.youtube.com/@DerpsWithWolves/playlists

"Some of the best decisions I've made in my life have been rooted in faith where I couldn't give a guarantee but I had faith and some of the worst decisions I've made in my life were rooted in fear.” Governor Wes Moore In this inspiring and wide-ranging conversation, Maryland Governor Wes Moore joins The Pivot Podcast to discuss leadership, purpose, and the personal journey that shaped his historic path to the governor's office. Moore opens up to Ryan, Channing and Fred about his upbringing, his time in the military, and the pivotal moments that pushed him toward public service. He reflects on the challenges of leading a state during times of rapid change, the responsibilities of being Maryland's first Black governor, and his commitment to expanding opportunity for all communities. Going in-depth, Moore shares the story behind writing his best-selling novel shaped how he views the world, based on the experience of 2 men with the same name who lived two different fates: one ended up doing life in prison while the other was a road scholar who became Governor. A journey rooted in faith not fear, Moore shares the key choices he made over his lifetime to give him the courage and strength to emphasize service over self. Throughout the episode, Moore's trademark energy and clarity shine as he talks about balancing ambition with humility, the importance of mentorship, and what it means to create lasting impact. He shares his inspiring love story with wife Dawn, raising a family in the public eye while emphasizing the values that built their marriage, the support they've given each other through demanding careers, and the joy and purpose he finds in being a husband and father. And of course we talk football! From Maryland sports to the Baltimore Ravens to the AFC North to the true spirit and rivalry of the Army Navy game. Whether you're interested in politics, personal growth, or stories of resilience, this conversation offers a thoughtful look at one of the country's most dynamic political leaders. Pivot Family, tap in, like, hit subscribe and comment, we love hearing from you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WCW: The land of treacherous dark matches, viagra and Yetis that aren't actually yetis. Simon Miller presents 10 Worst Possible Fates To Suffer In WCW...ENJOY!Follow us on Twitter:@SimonMiller316@WhatCultureWWEFor more awesome content, check out: whatculture.com/wwe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.