Because Cooley is busy getting the school year off to a good start and my daughter, Sydney, is heading to college, my going away gift became having my daughter as my co-host this week. Inspired by the piece "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid, Syd and I discuss all kinds of parental advice and all the ways society tries to get girls to behave themselves! If you want to skip right to the discussion of "Girl", it begins at 28:55. Hope you enjoy this meandering and maternal Back to School Special!

If you like your hosts a little EXTRA, you'll love this episode. Cooley and Herrick crack each other up while discussing gold chain-wearing mobster wasps sending bee body parts through the mail to threaten their little chubby neighbors. In the end, we wonder if we should pursue anarchy or just follow along with the rest of the hive. Mix up a tasty Bee Sting Cocktail and join us for much silliness as we enter the tiny world of mapmaking wasps and really rebellious bees.

This time it's Herrick's turn to surprise Cooley with a tale, and it is "Horror Story" by Carmen Maria Machado. This beautifully written piece uses horror tropes to express the fear of lost connection and passion. So if you've ever misplaced your saffron only to find the remnants in your bra or discovered that your bottle of One A Days was filled with nails, then boy are you going to relate!

Text of "Horror Story": https://granta.com/horror-story/

This week, Cooley offers up the short story "Once Upon a Time" by Nadine Gordimer, a modern fairytale about the self-destructive nature of cloaking fear in fantasy. Cooley and Herrick discuss the human compulsion to build beautiful facades around ugly truths, how a particular use of "they" can reveal more than your typical pronoun, and the dangers of mixing fluffy kittens, imaginative little boys, and razor-sharp barbed wire fencing.

Intro & Outro music: "grapes_-_I_dunno" byspinning merkaba

Herrick and Cooley discuss the life and death stakes of crappy parenting, gender politics, and lion musk while unpacking the ghoulish tale of The Veldt, a story of kids gone bad. Really, really bad. Also, they chug Carlsberg beer because it gets hot on the African veldt and nothing refreshes quite like some colonialist brew.

Cooley and Herrick dive right into sexual politics as they discuss this coded conversation between two lovers and wonder when exactly doctors started telling pregnant ladies to ease off the booze! In a nod to the Ebro setting, they drink Kalimotxos, a uniquely Basque cocktail that combines equal parts red wine and Coke-- weirdly wonderful, especially with a squeeze of lime. So pour yourself this simple concoction, listen along, and reflect on why this tortured story dialogue feels somehow familiar.

The hosts, Herrick and Cooley, discuss why they decided to start a literary podcast. They tell you a little about them as well as explain the format for the show. Most importantly, they will list the short stories that will be discussed on upcoming full-length pods.