Upper Middlebrow

Upper Middlebrow


Latest Episodes

Episode 91: “All Chess Pieces, No Chess,” or Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest, Part I
July 10, 2025

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 the

Episode 90: “An Egg Slicer Through a Supertanker,” or Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem, Part II
June 26, 2025

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 Lius sprawling and ambitious The Three Body

Review: John Scalzi’s “When the Moon Hits Your Eye”
June 23, 2025

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, due

Episode 89: “A Creeping Awareness” or Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem, Part I
June 16, 2025

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 suspec

Episode 88: “Creation’s Folly,” or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Part II
June 05, 2025

The boys wrap up their discussion of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein, and come away somewhat ambivalent: this is clearly a work of importance, imagination, and invention, but it feelsunfocused. We posit

Digression: Solo Canoe Sailing on Long Lake
June 02, 2025

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
May 22, 2025

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.

Episode 87: “A Dude who Made a Dude,” or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Part I
May 19, 2025

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

Episode 86: “A Study in Structure,” or Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet
May 09, 2025

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

Ep 85, “Science vs. Evil” or Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”, Part II
April 28, 2025

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