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Episode 101: ‘What Thrums Below,’ or Herman Melville’s Billy Budd
Herman Melville's Novella Billy Budd, Sailor was not published until 1924, thirty-three years after his death. The literary world was in the midst of the Melville revival, suggesting that his themes…
S4E100 Episode 100: “Dutiful Dreams,” or Project Hail Mary 2026 Film
Chris and Jesse are BACK! And the lads return with the first episode in Chris' series called "This Came From That?" where we consider both a piece of source material and its later adaptation. For our…
S3E32 Project Hail Mary Part I (REPOST)
We go all the way back to episode 17, in honor of the release of the major motion picture, starring Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace. Our part 1 was originally titled Bromancing the Stone Carapace,…
S3E31 Episode 99: More Robot Friends!: Isaac Asimov’s ‘Robot Visions’ Part 1 with Justin Reich.
Isaac Asimov doesn’t PERFECTLY predict today’s era of anxiety and excitement around AI. But he does pretty well for somebody writing eighty years ago. In this 1990 collection of Asimov’s classic…
Episode 98: ‘Minor League Stew,’ or John Feinstein’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name, Part II
The second half of Feinstein’s book of minor league baseball stories and characters feels very much like the first half. The reporting is extensive, and Feinstein has a knack for the well described…
S3E29 Episode 97: “Baseball’s Ballast,” or John Feinstein’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in The Minor Leagues of Baseball
John Feinstein’s baseball writing is as sharp as ever, the anecdotes of Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball portraying a desperate but determined subculture of…
S3E27 Episode 96: “The Clustercus,” or David Halberstam’s The Amateurs, Part II
In the second half of Halberstam's nonfiction account of the 1984 sculling Olympic trials, we go to the Olympics, to see how Biglow, Lewis, Wood, et al fare at the world's most famous sports event. 5…
S3E26 Episode 95: “Don’t Catch Crabs,” or David Halbertstam’s The Amateurs, Part I
We continue Bagg’s “Revenge of the Jock-Nerds” series (the last series of Season Three!), with David Halberstam’s The Amateurs, which tells the story of four men competing for the single solo…
October 6th: Live Draft Coming Soon!
On October 6th, Dukes and Bagg invite you to join us for the Season 4 Live Draft. We will tape an episode live on a video call, and you can join as our loyal live audience. Drafts are where we…
S3E25 Episode 94: “Chewing Glass” or Tim Krabbe’s The Rider
Tim Krabbe's novel is barely a novel. It is a thinly veiled autobiogrpahical essay, with fictional details and composite characters, allowing the author to navigate his story just to one side of the…
S3E25 Episode 94: “A Swiftly Flattening Universe,” or Cixin Liu’s Death’s End, Part II
The lads wrap up Cixin Liu’s sprawling and massive Three Body Trilogy, building something that somehow seems to transcend traditional literary structures and devices. We look back at how far this…
S3E24 Episode 93: “Post Humanity Blues,” or Cixin Liu’s Death’s End Part I
The final installment in Cixin Liu’s trilogy is long. And strong. We begin in the “deterrence” era, in which humans and Trisolarans enjoy a truce enforced by mutually ensured destruction. But all…
S3E23 Episode 92: “It’s So Dark,” or Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest, Part II
The boys carve through the second half of Cixin Liu’s sprawling, imaginative, and haunting The Dark Forest. Bagg has questions about how much we can trust our author and the characters he uses to…
Episode 91: “All Chess Pieces, No Chess,” or Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest, Part I
The premise of the Dark Forest, that Humanity must make a secret plan stored in our hidden thoughts to defeat an enemy that can spy on our every move, is wonderful. But the lads find the action in…
S3E21 Episode 90: “An Egg Slicer Through a Supertanker,” or Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem, Part II
The lads host their first UMB Official Sports Update as Jesse manages to survive a weekend of ultimate frisbee before getting into the second half of Cixin Liu’s sprawling and ambitious The Three…
Review: John Scalzi’s “When the Moon Hits Your Eye”
Jesse Dukes offers a quick review of popular science fiction writer John Scalzi's newest novel, "When the Moon Hits Your Eye". While he initially put the book down after reading the first chapter,…
S3E20 Episode 89: “A Creeping Awareness” or Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem, Part I
The Three Body Problem begins with an inexplicable series of tragic mysteries, most notably, that physics as we know it has stopped working. Slowly, the reader is given enough clues to start to…
S3E19 Episode 88: “Creation’s Folly,” or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Part II
The boys wrap up their discussion of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and come away somewhat ambivalent: this is clearly a work of importance, imagination, and invention, but it feels…unfocused. We posit…
Digression: Solo Canoe Sailing on Long Lake
Friend of the show Justin shares another update, as well as his foray into what he terms Contemporary Victorian Episolary Short Travel Non-Fiction. Justin is paddling a solo canoe (and often carrying…
Digression, From the North Woods with Justin Reich
We reach Upper Middlebrow education expert Justin Reich on the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, at the edge of mobile phone reception. He gives us a dispatch, mid journey, from a rather literary…
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Upper Middlebrow has published 113 episodes since November 2022, covering topics in Arts, Books.
Upper Middlebrow is currently active with new episodes every 2 weeks. Average episode length is 1h 11m.
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