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

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 setting.

Mary Shelley was 18 when she started writing Frankenstein, which many consider the first science fiction novel. Over the next twenty years, she revised the book several times, and the version she left

The lads go bananas over Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes mystery, "A Study in Scarlet," published in 1887. We meet the mercurial Sherlock Holmes and his by turns skeptical then credulous bi

Bram Stoker arrays his crew of brave companions against what they've finally realized is an ancient un-dead evil. And the author seems to be elling us something about the nature of the human capacity

Join us Thursday, May 19th at 4pm PDT / 7 PM EDT for a live viewing and taping of Anthony Minghella's 1999 masterpiece, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Dukes and Bagg think of this as the BEST of the many ex

Neither of the lads had read Stokers classic gothic novel, published in 1897, and they suspect that many readers are in the same boat. Over 100 years of vampiric pop culture have made Stokers master

Chris and Jesse watched this movie together nearly 20 years ago, and it made an impression, due to John Malkovich's memorable, creepy, and charming take on Tom Ripley. Director Calvani seems to enjoy

The lads get all aughty with Roger Spotiswoodes charming and unthreatening Ripley, Underground, where Tom Ripley is a glib opportunist instead of the darker, unpredictable Ripleys. The result is an e

UCLA professor Peter Lunenfeld joins us to talk about Robert Altman's neo-noir based on Raymond Chandler's novel. Some reviewers call the film "satirical" but we argue, it's more a riff than a satire.