PODCAST

Upper Middlebrow

A podcast in which we discuss high-craft works of popular culture

arts books

All Episodes

59:06

Episode 97: “Baseball’s Ballast,” or John Feinstein’s...

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/11/04

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 professional baseball. The many characters of Feinstein’s book hunger to make it to the bigs, whether they are past their prime, approaching that point, or beginning to suspect that their prime won’t be good enough for that callup. It’s a heartbreaking and affecting yarn, but does some of the impact fade into

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1:22:25

Episode 96: “The Clustercus,” or David Halberstam’s...

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/10/23

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 major characters each have big stakes, and while the actual events cluster together, Halberstam keeps the reader focused on the drama. The results are predictably mixed, and one wonders if the work these Olympians go through is worth it. Structurally, the second half of the book remains tight, perhaps

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1:13:12

Episode 95: “Don’t Catch Crabs,” or David...

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/10/10

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 sculling spot on the 1984 Olympic team. Halberstam, who usually worked on more popular sports and in bigger political arenas, offers a nuanced glimpse into the small, hermetic, oral world of American rowing, where athletes compete in a sport where “the rewards cannot justify the efforts.”

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2:00

October 6th: Live Draft Coming Soon!

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/10/01

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 choose the next fifteen or so books or movies we'll discuss (nearly a year's worth of episodes). Dukes and Bagg each pitch eachother four series, and then each choose two. We will have doorprizes for EVERYBODY who comes, and you'll have a chance to vote on a Listener's Choice series. Watch this website for

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1:15:16

Episode 94: “Chewing Glass” or Tim Krabbe’s The Rider

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/09/22

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 fiction/nonfiction divide. The lads ponder why it does not fall into the "bike porn" genre, and why the images of teeth and glass continually emerge.

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1:27:36

Episode 94: “A Swiftly Flattening Universe,” or Cixin...

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/09/08

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 particular plot has wandered from whence it came, and both Jesse and Chris are impressed at Liu’s ability to continue adding obstacles and stakes without letting the book fall apart. Still, there is a lot of plot to find a way through—does the grandness of the project match the execution?

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1:22:39

Episode 93: “Post Humanity Blues,” or Cixin Liu’s...

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/08/18

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 things must pass, and when the truce breaks, humanity gazes at the possibility of its own destruction. Death’s End is part interstellar chase, part Cold War allegory and introduces a new anti-villian, Sophon, who is perhaps Liu’s greatest creation. Bagg finds the characters are less realistic humans, and

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1:29:14

Episode 92: “It’s So Dark,” or Cixin Liu’s The Dark...

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/07/25

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 make his plot work, while Dukes identifies the fact that the most important “character” in this novel is humanity itself. Regardless of your opinion of this quixotic book, you cannot dispute the ambition of its author—and his ability to transform his imagination into an ever-expanding epic.

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55:32

Episode 91: “All Chess Pieces, No Chess,” or Cixin...

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/07/10

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 first half a bit tepid, as Cixin Liu builds sets up the chess pieces we expect he’ll start knocking down in the second half of the book. There are some hot spots, and wonderful moments, including a depiction of the best group photo ever taken, but you have to read through a lot of narrative chaff to

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Episode 90: “An Egg Slicer Through a Supertanker,” or...

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/06/26

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 Body Problem. The UMBers revisit some of our old friends, like Neal Stephenson’s habit of setting up narrative chessboards for a long time and eventually letting the game unfold, examining if Liu’s narrative setups have plausible payoffs. They also identify some of the “hapless protagonist” effect they’ve

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10:06

Review: John Scalzi’s “When the Moon Hits Your Eye”

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/06/23

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 to frustration with the absurd premise, on a second read, Dukes found that the book has its charms.

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1:07:24

Episode 89: “A Creeping Awareness” or Cixin Liu’s The...

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/06/16

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 suspect various causes, although halfway through, we still don’t really know what’s going on. Dukes has read it before, and Bagg has not, so they lads compare notes as to their experience of the creeping awareness of the disturbing truth dawning on the characters.

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1:08:23

Episode 88: “Creation’s Folly,” or Mary Shelley’s...

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/06/05

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 that the undeserved press and social pressure clouds what is otherwise an incredible meditation on creation: what are a creator’s responsibilities to their creation, and what effect does the fulfillment (or neglect) of those responsibilities have upon the created?

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30:49

Digression: Solo Canoe Sailing on Long Lake

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/06/02

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 the canoe) along the 700 Mile Northern Forest canoe trail, and we are digressing from our regular programming to share his dispatches. We are pleased to include Justin's drawings of canoe sailings rigs including the standard rafted canoe rig. And the author's innovative solo canoe sailing

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43:11

Digression, From the North Woods with Justin Reich

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/05/22

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. Justin is finishing his sabbatical with nothing but a canoe, a backpack, a couple of paddles, and aluminum pole (for poling up river) and a canoe portage cart. The North Woods in May bring long days, rainy weather, and if you're lucky, few black flies, and reasonable water level. From the

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1:06:41

Episode 87: “A Dude who Made a Dude,” or Mary...

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/05/19

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 behind remains a remarkable work of imagination. Shelley is amazingly inventive and talented, but the lads find th novel to be hard going, and a slow starter. They wonder at the use of framed narratives, and how long the book takes to give Frankenstein’s creation a voice.

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1:00:38

Episode 86: “A Study in Structure,” or Arthur Conan...

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/05/09

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 biographer, Dr. John H. Watson, late of Afghanistan. The short novella or long short story wastes no time in driving towards the solving of its central mystery, but then makes a strange swerve into the American West and a bout of extended exposition. Chris and Jesse spend a rollicking hour discussing the

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1:17:57

Ep 85, “Science vs. Evil” or Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”,...

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/04/28

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 for scientific inquiry, and love.The lads detect a bit of the old "chessboard problem", the name we've given to an author's struggle to create a compelling third act while artfully tieing up all the character arcs and loose ends established in the first acts. But Bram Stoker's inventiveness and

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2:19

Save the Date: The Talented Mr. Ripley, Live Taping,...

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/04/24

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 excellent Tom Ripley films. It stars Matt Damon Tom Ripley, and the amazing cast includes Gwyneth Paltrow, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Jude Law, and Cate Blanchett. This event will be Live on Discord, which is something we've never tried before, so join us as we pioneer a new type of live podcasting

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1:05:53

Episode 84: “Unnatural Intimacy,” or Bram Stoker’s...

Upper Middlebrow ·

2025/04/17

Neither of the lads had read Stoker’s 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 Stoker’s masterful compiling of folklore fade into the background, but the book that launched a thousand bites is bracing, inventive, funny, haunting, and innovative. Chris and Jesse talk about atmosphere, forced intimacy, the anxieties of Victorian society, and the grand missed opportunity of Dracula’s cancelled

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Upper Middlebrow

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