Episodes 83
Avg. Duration 41m
Activity Highly Active
Apple Rating 5.0 (2)
Since Aug 2021
Latest Episode May 2026

Publishing Details

Schedule
Weekly
Format
Episodic
Consistency
59%
Hosting
waywordsstudio.com

Contact & Outreach

About This Podcast

Join me, Steve Chisnell, as we find and lose meaning across modern and classic tales, through ancient and distant verse, atop everything in our many cultures which might be read. For teachers, students, and lovers of reading, we will discover new paths to understanding!

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Recent Episodes

Nomadic Departures

May 29, 2026 39m

We are left on the precipice of a severe, unavoidable aporia: when the Empire can absorb and commercialize our very language of protest, the only true ethical act of agency is to stop performing the…

What I Get Wrong: Intimidation & Interpretation

May 22, 2026 38m

Is our intellectual exercise just an expensive lifestyle brand that keeps our hands clean? In this raw, self-interrogating mailbag episode, we turn the lens inward for a vulnerability audit of our…

Writing Back: Guerilla Texts, BTS, and Gaye

May 16, 2026 35m

Is that blank page paralyzing your activism? Is your irony a mask for your complicity? We’re using William James and David Foster Wallace to interrogate the “sneer trap” of modern irony. From Marvin…

The Ethics of Reading: Frictional Thoughts

May 11, 2026 38m

Is your reading just an “escape”?? Your favorite “escape” read might be a gated community for your conscience. Today, we interrogate the “Catharsis Commodity” and ask if our reading habits are just…

Roman Plow, Sovereign Tree: Seneca and Zhuangzi

May 01, 2026 43m

Can Stoicism answer our dilemma? Is the suffering child a product of a world that demands every second and every soul be “useful”  to the state? By comparing the “Roman Plow” of duty to the…

The Original Omelas: The Case of the Animals vs. Man

Apr 21, 2026 46m

And when the child cannot speak for itself? Humanity’s first global lawsuit! In this 10th-century Islamic fable, animals put mankind on trial for the crimes of the extraction economy. We unsettle the…

The Tyranny of Chance: Assis, Borges, and the Randomized Bargain

Apr 14, 2026 37m

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…

Waypoint – “The Fortune Teller”

Apr 10, 2026 26m

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…

Failures of Imagination: We and Flatland

Apr 03, 2026 56m

The “Hideous Bargain” is no longer just about one child’s pain . . . We investigate the “Euclidean Mind” that seeks to flatten our messy humanity into a spreadsheet of “mathematically infallible…

Utopia’s Spare Parts: Star Trek & Ishiguro

Mar 21, 2026 49m

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…

The Architecture of the Dungeon: Toni Morrison and the 13th Amendment

Mar 01, 2026 42m

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…

Wandering Stars: Tommy Orange and the Sovereign Center

Feb 21, 2026 30m

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…

S6E73 The Bureaucracy of Erasure: Erdrich’s The Night Watchman

Feb 13, 2026 51m

Your Interpretation is Colonial. When we turn Zen into a pop-culture vibe or a totem pole into a corporate metaphor, we aren’t learning; we’re committing interpretative violence.  Louise Erdrich’s…

Words from Nigeria 3 – Emezi’s Pet & Hunters for Truth

Jan 30, 2026 37m

Akwaeke Emezi demonstrates how Nigeria’s contemporary writers turn our conceptual realities around. They offer a YA novel that doesn’t condescend, but more, one which shows that we should not “walk…

Words from Nigeria Pt 2: Soyinka’s Tiger & Brother Jero

Jan 24, 2026 40m

Why have so few read Soyinka? And can we find hope through his cynical dramas? I admit I am a victim of the myth-making around me which has made Soyinka and other African writers largely invisible.…

Words from Nigeria Pt 1: Adichie and the Literary Manifesto

Jan 16, 2026 38m

What sort of literature is this, anyway? Today we introduce some approaches to Nigerian literature, offer a bevy of African writers, and explore how one of Nigeria’s most powerful authors can write…

Cassandra: Uncertain Steps

Jan 09, 2026 36m

And what if nobody listens? Yes, entering our calls for justice into public space carries no small amount of anxiety. And the poster-child for being unheard, the Trojan princess and priestess…

Writing Back: Letters to Humanity

Dec 27, 2025 38m

26 Dec 2025 Episode 6.21 – Writing Back: Letters to Humanity A different sort of New Year Resolution, moving us from personal improvement to public advocacy! Let’s write an essay of address, framing…

The Great Societies: Lowry’s “The Giver”

Dec 19, 2025 38m

19 Dec 2025 Episode 6.20 – The Great Societies: Lowry’s The Giver Another thorny utopia, Lowry’s Community practices a different kind of strategy to the Hideous Bargain: ethical evasion, a too…

The Great Societies, Pt 2: Metropolis & The Ways of Meaning

Dec 12, 2025 50m

12 Dec 2025 Episode 6.19 – The Great Societies, Pt 2: Metropolis & The Ways of Meaning We finish our discussion of the silent film Metropolis and answer our question of art and politics by…

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How many episodes does Literary Nomads have?

Literary Nomads has published 83 episodes since August 2021, covering topics in Arts, Books.

Is Literary Nomads still active?

Literary Nomads is currently highly active with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 41m.

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