Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed We’ve turned the basement into a casino! A man who turns to fortune-telling to assuage his conscience. A society that chooses its victims through a lottery. Does “mathematical fairness” absolve the...
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed 10 April 2026 Waypoint - “The Fortune Teller” by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis is perhaps the greatest writer of Brazil. In “The Fortune-Teller,” a secret affair driven...
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed The “Hideous Bargain” is no longer just about one child’s pain . . . We investigate the “Euclidean Mind” that seeks to flatten our messy humanity into a spreadsheet of “mathematically...
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed The “Hideous Bargain” moves from metaphor to the operating table. In this episode, we let loose the bonds of metaphor in Le Guin’s “Omelas” and meet the visceral reality of clinical labor. We...
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed The Omelas basement has a physical address in America: the prison-industrial complex. This week, we use the lens of Toni Morrison’s literary criticism to interrogate the 13th Amendment and the ‘Hideous...
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed What happens to the story when the ‘object’ of our sympathy looks back and refuses the role we’ve written for them? The allegory of the ‘Suffering Child’ is a powerful challenge, but it creates its...
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