❮ Poetry & Prose ❮ Books / People

Audio files

Radio play my favorite song Radio, radio Radio I’m alone Radio, radio Please don’t go radio I peer through curtains on empty streets Behind a wall of caller ID No one’s out there To hear if I care About the troubles in the air

This section provides audio files (podcasts etc.) and links to quality long form content.

01. — Rabbit Hole
02. — Caliphate
03. — 1619
04. — “The Significance of Literature”

— § —

01. — Rabbit Hole

01. — Rabbit Hole
02. — Caliphate
03. — 1619
04. — “The Significance of Literature”

§ / Rabbit Hole
What is the internet doing to us? The New York Times, explores what happens when our lives move online. investigated by and narrated by Kevin Roose. It suggests how the internet is changing, and how we’re changing along with it. (May, 2020)

01 of 09. – Introduction

What is the internet doing to us?

02 of 09. – Wonderland

Caleb was a young man who never felt like he fit in — until he discovered YouTube. The video platform became his place for both escape and direction. Kevin Roose follows his journey into its universe. (This episode is the first in a three-part segment on Caleb.)

03 of 09. – Looking Down

Caleb Cain plunges deeper into YouTube, with the help of its powerful algorithm. Kevin Roose traces his descent, inch by inch. What was he watching? And why was it so transfixing? (This episode is the second in a three-part segment on Caleb, a young man who was pulled into a vortex on YouTube and found himself transformed.)

04 of 09. – Mirror Image

After years of morphing through a never-ending tunnel on YouTube, Caleb Cain sees a new kind of recommendation emerge in his sidebar. We follow where this discovery takes him — and where he is now. (This episode is the third in a three-part segment on Caleb, a young man who was pulled into a vortex on YouTube and found himself transformed.)

05 of 09. – Headquarters

After tracing a young man’s dizzying evolution through an internet rabbit hole, Kevin Roose turns to the woman who oversees the world’s largest and most influential video empire: Susan Wojcicki, the chief executive of YouTube. As the platform is overrun with misinformation and extreme content, what is she doing to clean it up? Kevin Roose visits the headquarters to find out.

06 of 09. – The Accidental Emperor

How does a Swedish gamer with a webcam become the biggest YouTuber in the world? His name is Felix Kjellberg but he goes by PewDiePie (rhymes with “cutie pie”). By 2013, he had the most subscribed-to channel in YouTube’s history. We follow his path to megastardom — and the war that unfolds when his reign is threatened. (This episode is the first in a two-part segment on PewDiePie.)

07 of 09. – Impasse

After escalating into historic-level stardom, PewDiePie gets entangled in a series of crises that blur the lines between the internet and the real world. But YouTube’s top creator wants to set the record straight. He sits down with our reporter to discuss how he’s grappling with his influence — and looking to the future. (This episode is the second in a two-part segment on PewDiePie.)

08 of 09. – ‘Where We Go One’

It began as a baseless conspiracy theory planted on a fringe corner of the internet. It swept through social media platforms and gained traction across the online world. QAnon believers say the planet is run by a deep, elite network of evildoers, and it’s their job to unspool their crimes. We look at how the QAnon community is scaling and evolving through the powers of the internet.

09 of 09. – ‘We Go All’

In the finale of the series, we hear from a woman who stumbled upon the “Q” community and found herself drawn in. We trace echoes of her story across the internet, and look at what our exploding culture of influencers, TikTok stars and information disseminators holds for the future.

**“Rabbit Hole”**
— Engaging, fascinating and, well, somewhat scary and sobering in outlook. In relation to this theme, see these posts: (1) “Intravenous” (about QAnon), (2) “Mask Wars” (on conspiracies etc.) and (3), “⁓Total Control⁓” (on social media dominance).

— § —

02. — Caliphate

01. — Rabbit Hole
02. — Caliphate
03. — 1619
04. — “The Significance of Literature”

§ / Caliphate
Rukmini Callimachi of The New York Times seeks to understand ISIS (داعش). ‘Caliphate’ is an audio series that follows Callimachi as she reports on the Islamic State and the fall of Mosul.

01 of 12. – The Mission

The war on terror has cost the U.S. billions and has been fought for nearly 20 years. Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi asks the question “Who are we really fighting?”

02 of 12. – The Reporter

Rukmini describes the reality of being on the terrorism beat and why she brings trash bags with her to the frontlines of the war against ISIS.

03 of 12. – Recruitment

Who is it that ISIS appeals to, and how? Rukmini speaks with a former ISIS member about how and why he joined the fold.

04 of 12. – The Arrival

ISIS turns fantasy into reality for a new recruit.

05 of 12. – Us vs. Them

A new recruit proves his worth and gets invited to a secret meeting.

06 of 12. – The Heart

The recruit carried out the killing. Then he questioned everything.

07 of 12. – Paper Trail

“Something was off.” Rukmini’s doubt fuels a quest to uncover the truth.

08 of 12. – Mosul

What did ISIS leave behind as their hold on Mosul crumbled?

09 of 12. – The Briefcase

We found a trove of secret documents after Mosul fell. It led us to the mother of an ISIS official.

10 of 12. – Prisoners

Slavery was enmeshed in the theology of ISIS. Rukmini speaks to an ISIS detainee who challenges her to find the girl he enslaved. She does.

11 of 12. – Prisoners (part two)

After three years in ISIS captivity, a young Yazidi girl returns to her family. Rukmini is there to witness it.

12 of 12. – One Year Later

What does the future hold for the ISIS returnee who confessed to murder? And what does he believe now?

**“Caliphite”**
— Profound, at times moving and, an excellent testament to fearless and favourless reportage.

— § —

03. — 1619

01. — Rabbit Hole
02. — Caliphate
03. — 1619
04. — “The Significance of Literature”

§ / 1619
“1619” is a New York Times audio series hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones. In August of 1619, a ship carrying more than 20 enslaved Africans arrived in the English colony of Virginia. America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the era of slavery that followed. On the 400th anniversary of this fateful moment (2019) it was time to tell the story.

01 of 07. – Introduction

In August of 1619, a ship carrying more than 20 enslaved Africans arrived in the English colony of Virginia. America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed.

02 of 07. – The Fight for a True Democracy

America was founded on the ideal of democracy. Black people fought to make it one.

03 of 07. – The Economy That Slavery Built

In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.

04 of 07. – The Birth of American Music

For centuries, black music has been an expression of artistic freedom. No wonder everybody is always stealing it.

05 of 07. – How the Bad Blood Started

In the United States, racial health disparities have been as foundational as democracy itself. See Toni Morrison’s work: Song of Solomon.

06 of 07. – The Land of Our Fathers (Part 1)

More than a century and a half after the promise of 40 acres and a mule, the story of black land ownership in America remains one of loss and dispossession.

07 of 07. – The Land of Our Fathers (Part 2)

In the final podcast, we hear the rest of the story, and its echoes in a past case that led to the largest civil rights settlement in American history.

**“1619”**
— A deeply moving podcast series that opened my eyes in more ways than one.

— § —

04. — “The Significance of Literature”

01. — Rabbit Hole
02. — Caliphate
03. — 1619
04. — “The Significance of Literature”

Whip /eye mean/ A W. I. P.

ENGLISH LIT.

English style guide
The English language
Booker / “Nobel” / Pulitzer
Elizabethan era / “Love letters”
“Definitive List of Literary Works”
French in English / Latin in English
Anthology / Chronology / Terminology
Phrases & idioms with their etymologies
Literary criticism: analysing poetry & prose
Glossary of works, writers and literary devices:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
📙 Books 📕 Poets 📗 Thinkers 📘 Writers

face-with-stuck-out-tongue-and-winking-eye

READING LISTS ETC.

WRITERS

POETS

PHILOSOPHERS

PSYCHOLOGISTS

POLITICAL FIGURES

BOOKS OF FICTION ^⅋

NON-FICTION BOOKS ^⅋

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) was a French writer, philosopher and political activist. She is known for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. — The Second Sex

A Room of one's own — A Room of One’s Own

War and Peace is the 1869 novel by Russian author Leo Tolstoy. It is regarded as a classic of world literature. (The novel chronicles the French invasion of Russia and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society through the stories of five Russian aristocratic families.) Tolstoy said War and Peace is "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle." Tolstoy regarded Anna Karenina as his first true novel. — War and Peace

The Trial, by Franz Kafka (1914 [1925]) -- A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis--an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life--including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door--becomes increasingly unpredictable. As K. tries to gain control, he succeeds only in accelerating his own excruciating downward spiral. — The Trial

Brave New World (1932) is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley. Set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist (one Bernard Marx). In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World at number five on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th c. — Brave New World

Beloved is a 1987 novel by the late American writer Toni Morrison. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 and, in a survey of writers and literary critics compiled by The New York Times, it was ranked the best work of American fiction from 1981 to 2006. The work, set after the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865, was inspired by the life of Margaret Garner, an African American who escaped slavery by crossing the Ohio River to Ohio, a free state. Garner was subsequently captured and decided to kill her infant daughter rather than have her taken into slavery. — Beloved

The Prophet “If you love somebody, let them go, if they don’t return, they were never yours.”	The Essential Rumi “Lovers do not finally meet somewhere. They are in each other all along.”
Ways of Escape: a journey of sorts A short excerpt from the book: “I was dead, deader than dead because, I was still alive.”	The Significance of Literature A podcast series that chronologically charts the key works of poetry and prose.