This is a reupload of a 2022 conversation between Anthony Etherin, Andrew Hugill, and Christian Bök.

In this episode, Anthony Etherin speaks with Andrew Hugill, author of ‘Pataphysics: A Useless Guide (MIT Press, 2012), and Christian Bök, author of ‘Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science (Northwestern University Press, 2001).

The three pataphysicians present an introduction to ‘Pataphysics, discussing its origins in the work of Alfred Jarry, its meaning and definitions, its key principles, and its various manifestations in science and the arts.

This is a reupload of a conversation between Anthony Etherin and Sasha Stiles from 2023.

Topics of conversation include AI-generated poetry, NFTs, transhumanism, and the future of poetry.

Sasha Stiles is an award-winning Kalmyk-American poet, artist, and AI researcher whose work uses language to explore what it means to be human in an increasingly more-than-human age.

Anthony Etherin and Christian Bök meet to discuss the completion of Christian’s Xenotext project, AI as a creative force, and the future of art.

Christian Bök is the author of Eunoia (Coach House Books, 2001) – a work of unorthodox literature, which has won the Griffin Poetry Prize. Bök has received worldwide attention for his ongoing project, The Xenotext (which requires him to encode poetry into the genome of a deathless bacterium). Bök has exhibited his artworks at more than fifty galleries around the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, the Power Plant in Toronto, and the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York. Bök is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and he works, as an artist, in Leeds.

This is a reupload of a conversation between Anthony Etherin and Anthony Horowitz from 2022.

Topics of conversation include wordplay and structure, genre and tradition, and adapting novels for film and TV.

Anthony Horowitz is a British novelist and screenwriter, best known for his popular children’s and young adult fiction as well as crime novels for adults. He is the creator of the Alex Rider series, which has sold millions of copies worldwide. For adult readers, he is acclaimed for the Hawthorne and Horowitz crime series and for writing new Sherlock Holmes novels, including The House of Silk. Horowitz has also had a major career in television, writing for series such as Foyle’s War and Midsomer Murders. He has won numerous awards and is one of the UK’s most successful contemporary writers across multiple genres.

Anthony Etherin and Rob Watts meet to discuss their mutual interests in linguistics and etymology, the success of Rob’s YouTube channel RobWords, and the future of YouTube as a platform.

Rob Watts runs the popular YouTube channel RobWords, where he tells stories about word origins and the quirks of the English language. Before becoming a full-time word nerd, he worked as a newsreader for the BBC in the UK and for Germany’s international TV station DW. He now lives in Berlin, from where he also writes a weekly newsletter and co-presents the Words Unravelled podcast with author Jess Zafarris.

This is a reupload of a conversation between Anthony Etherin and Jane Espenson from 2022.

In Episode 1 of Fate of the Arts, Anthony and Jane discussed the present and future of television.

In this more wordplay-focussed episode, topics include conceptual metaphor, sound symbolism, word games, literary constraints, branding, and ‘Buffy Speak’.

Jane Espenson is an Emmy-nominated and Hugo-award winning television writer best known for her work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, Game of Thrones, Battlestar Galactica, and Foundation, among other series. She is currently writing for Amazon’s hit series Fallout. Jane is best-known for witty dialogue, combining wordplay with idiomatic, informal speech. Jane did extensive graduate work at UC Berkeley, concentrated specifically on the burgeoning field of metaphor. Jane also does feature and pilot rewrites, as well as writing short fiction and comic books, and editing essay collections.

Anthony Etherin meets with Jane Espenson to discuss the ways new media and streaming have changed TV writing — and the innovations set to shape the future of television.

Jane Espenson is an Emmy-nominated and Hugo-award winning television writer best known for her work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, Game of Thrones, Battlestar Galactica, and Foundation, among other series. She is currently writing for Amazon’s hit series Fallout. Jane is best-known for witty dialogue, combining wordplay with idiomatic, informal speech. Jane did extensive graduate work at UC Berkeley, concentrated specifically on the burgeoning field of metaphor. Jane also does feature and pilot rewrites, as well as writing short fiction and comic books, and editing essay collections.