CodEX Machina

In this episode, we dive into Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel — a sharp, thought-provoking novel that blends imagination with unsettling realism.

Join us as we unpack our impressions of the book and explore how its vision of AI, capitalism, and power imbalance mirrors our own world. From questions of who controls technology to what it means to be human in a data-driven age, this conversation looks at the future through the lens of literature — and asks whether it’s really as distant as it seems.

Tune in to reflect, question, and maybe even dream a little differently.

Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠YouTube ⁠⁠⁠and ⁠⁠⁠TikTok  ⁠⁠⁠for more pictures and videos of all things books that we discuss in the podcast!

Intro music by Leonardo Granados

This week, Dr. Jennifer Gouck joins us to unpack one of the most pressing issues in American literary culture today — book bans. What exactly are book challenges? Who’s behind them? And what might these bans mean for readers, educators, and publishers in today’s political and cultural climate?

Join us as we dig into the complex world of censorship, libraries, and the fight to keep stories accessible — and, as always, to remind everyone to read more books!

Resources and works mentioned:
📘 Unbecoming — Seema Yasmin (Simon & Schuster link)
📗 Banned Together — Edited by Ashley Hope Pérez, illustrated by Debbie Fong
🎥 Banned Together Documentary
📖 Forever... by Judy Blume (Wikipedia)
📚 WWU Münster — Banned Books Project
📸 Instagram post 1
📸 Instagram post 2
📖 Ex Marks the Spot — Goodreads
📖 Direbound — Goodreads

Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠YouTube ⁠⁠⁠and ⁠⁠⁠TikTok  ⁠⁠⁠for more pictures and videos of all things books that we discuss in the podcast!

Intro music by Leonardo Granados

Let's talk about banned books!

On this episode we discuss a novel Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (1970) by Judy Blume. It is a story of an 11 year-old-girl and her experiences with physical and spiritual changes, which is what led to the book being banned in some schools in the United States since its publication.

This is episode 6 in our Strange Land Book Club series.

Follow us on ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠, ⁠⁠YouTube ⁠⁠and ⁠⁠TikTok  ⁠⁠for more pictures and videos of all things books that we discuss in the podcast!

Intro music by Leonardo Granados

In this episode, Natalia, Bethany and Laura continue their discussion with Christina Neuwirth. We ask questions about their research of gender inequality in the Scottish literary scene, the culmination of which is the Quine Report, a public document that outlines the data used in their research, along with relevant insights.

Findings include datapoints such as “from 1919-2024, 12 Scottish literary prizes were won by men nearly twice as often as women” and “Scotland-based publishers published male authors 50% more than female authors in the years 2017-2019.”

https://quinereport.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-quine-report

https://quinereport.com/

Imagine you come to work one day and find your office flooded. Author Christina Neuwirth joins us in this discussion to disclose some secrets of their writing process and talk about writing, reading, and hydrating in the office!This is episode 5 in our Strange Land Book Club series.

Find Christina here.

Books mentioned: The Distance of the Moon by Italo Calvino

The Distance of the Moon read by Liev Schreiber

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠YouTube ⁠and ⁠TikTok  ⁠for more pictures and videos of all things books that we discuss in the podcast!

Intro music by Leonardo Granados

Chief editors of TXT Celine Kock and Lena Ryzhova joined us today to discuss their upcoming publication. On this episode we discussed what it's like to work on the journal and why community of memories is the topic for this years publication.

Visit this site to learn more about TXT!

Books mentioned:

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail BulgakovThe Enola Holmes Mysteries by Nancy Springer

A Sherlock Holmes Adventure Series by Bonnie McBird

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

Dua Lipa's book club https://www.service95.com/tag/book-club

Follow us on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok  for more pictures and videos of all things books that we discuss in the podcast!

Intro music by Leonardo Granados

How high are you ready to climb to knock on heaven's door?

On this episode Laura, Natalia and Bethany discuss Ted Chiang's short story The Tower of Babylon (1990).

This is episode 4 of our Strange Land Book Club series.

Time stamps:

Visit us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/codexmachina/?hl=en

 YouTube www.youtube.com/@CodEXMachina-u1t or TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@codexmachinapodcast

Intro music by Leonardo Granados

On this episode, Bethany and Laura discuss their experiences at the 2025 Thessaloniki Book Fair. Highlights include: a panel discussing the challenges of translating gender and queerness into smaller languages AND a visit to the Estonian booth, where they are celebrating 500 years since the first book was printed in the Estonian language.

We include a short interview with Priit-Hendrik Kaldma, a scholar and translator who works on Estonian-Greek-Estonian translations. On Making Book History, we discuss the Unbound fiasco and the difficulty of being an author in today’s world.

Links:

Thessaloniki Book Fair

https://www.thessalonikibookfair.gr/

500 Years of EstonianBooks

https://www.erm.ee/en/do-you-know-this-story

Our favorite translations:

Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Glennkill by Leonie Swann

From Merlin to mansions…the CodEX Machina crew discusses Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (quite exuberantly) on the latest installment of Strange Land Book Club. In Making Book History, we discuss the discovery of a fragment of the Suite Vulgate du Merlin (a contemporaneously popular 13th century French telling of the King Arthur saga) in, of all things, the binding of a 16th century archival registry. Hey, when you need paper, you grab the closestbook, right? This is episode 3 of our Strange Land Book Club series.

Modern Magic UnlocksMerlin’s Medieval Secrets

https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/merlin-manuscript-discovered-cambridge

Sex, Jealousy andGender: Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca 80 Years On

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/23/olivia-laing-on-daphne-du-mauriers-rebecca-80-years-on

Time stamps:

00:38 Making Book History

4:15 Main topic

Is serialization a thing of the past? Did authors and publishers indulge in publishing serialized novels only in Victorian times? How does digital world embrace serialized publications? Our guest Swara Shukla will take us on a journey across her research subject of Wattpad and serialized publications. Stay tuned!

Follow Swara here https://www.linkedin.com/in/swarashukla/?originalSubdomain=de

Follow us on ⁠Instagram https://www.instagram.com/codexmachina?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

⁠TikTok⁠ https://www.tiktok.com/@codexmachinapodcast/video/7496558590010871073?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7477588222714463766

⁠YouTube⁠ https://youtube.com/shorts/AOdLC1GoobA?feature=share

for more pictures and videos of all things books that we discuss in the podcast!

Intro music by Leonardo Granados