In this episode, Hà Trang brings in Farid Hamka, founder of @jakartabookhive in Jakarta, Indonesia to talk about his recent obsession with trees. Through a reading of Richard Powers' The Overstory and Catherine Pierce's poem "High Dangerous," the two explore how humans and flora interact and co-exist. 

A crucial question comes up during the chat: in order to raise public awareness of the importance of trees and promote a non-human-centric viewpoint, should we describe beings as they are or should be personify them to highlight their close connection with us humans?

What is the value of something that has lasted a thousand years?  

Today, Hà Trang and Kim discuss the weight and importance of traditions. Through Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," Kim draws similarities between Jackson's chilling human sacrifice ritual with the recent Grindadrap in Faroe Islands, where over 1400 dolphins were killed in the name of tradition. It begs the question: is the preservation of our own identities worth the rejection, erasure, and even life, of others?  

Similarly, Hà Trang reads Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" and ponders about what exactly are we walling out, and more importantly, what are we so bent on walling in? How much of our identity is based upon the continuation of these collective cultural practices and memory? Will we, and our culture, become obsolete if we discard a tradition that has largely become obsolete?

Disclaimer: this episode includes discussion of self-harm and physical violence.   

In this episode, Kim sits down with Lan Q. Vo - crime enthusiastic, MA candidate in Women’s Studies, and lover of cheesecake, to talk about Gillian Flynn’s debut book, Sharp Objects (2006), and violent women. As violence is often associated with men, the two discuss how Flynn creates a space for readers to explore women’s rage, violence, and subversion of the patriarchy.

Can women be violent? If so, what kind of violence do they perform? And how do Flynn’s characters subvert the many sexist tropes of the violent women? Using feminist theories, Kim and Lan take a look at how we, as a society, understand womanhood, femininity, motherhood, emotions, and of course, murderous urges.

Even though blues and jazz are world-wide adored music genres, not everyone knows the painful history behind such enchanting melodies: black people's struggle against oppression and fight for freedom. In today's episode, Hà Trang and Kim bring the discussion to Harlem where James Baldwin and Langston Hughes each tell their own story of blues. 

While Baldwin emphasizes music's power to heal and connect people in the short story "Sonny's Blues," Hughes paints a melancholic picture of Harlem at night in "The Weary Blues." Once again, history is one thing to remember beyond the mesmerizing rhythms: that black people have once fought, and are still fighting, for a life they deserve.

Both a new guest and a new literary genre are introduced in today's episode: PhD candidate in Theoretical Physics at King's College London Rob Jones and the biography. Together with Hà Trang, Rob discusses the relationships between science and art and science and religion through the first full biography of Nobel Prize winning physicist Paul Dirac by Graham Farmelo, The Strangest Man.

Rob believes that though pursuing distinctive disciplines, scientists, writers and religious leaders strive towards telling a convincing story so that the audience may want to come back to it over and over again. As for the art, his stance is clear: one can't be a scientist without being creative.

This week, Kim and Hà Trang dive into the unavoidable topic of war, going through what feels like the most intense thirty minutes so far on Lively Lit by Trạm Radio. Kim brings the discussion back in time through a reading of Book 11 in the infamous Odyssey by Homer, wherein Achilles reveals a conflicting viewpoint of war: he wishes he was a poor workman rather than a war hero, yet relishes at his son's glorious victory. The tension between promising romanticization and grim reality has been and is still a matter of heated debate when it comes to war, not excluding the current one against the pandemic.

Hà Trang takes up the talk with an excerpt from Novel Without A Name by Dương Thu Hương in which the portrayal of a war woman through the honest and respectful eye of a male soldier invites thoughts on lust, human nature and femininity. In the end, as two hosts note at the very beginning of the episode, quoting Thomas Hobbes, human war is "the war of all against all" where no parties win. 

In this episode, Kim welcomes writer and blogger Alina Martin (@accordingtoalina) to discuss all things fashion and consumer culture through a reading of Émile Zola’s The Ladies’ Paradise. The two talk about how our daily apparel choices relate to the construction of selfhood, regardless of gender or class.

Yet, susceptible as we are to advertising and the ready-made dream of an authentic self sold by designer houses, is the consumer always in control of their own choices? Are we the buyers or the products?

To celebrate Kim's belated birthday, the opening episode of Season 2 will veer towards birth, or specifically the relationship between a mother and her child. Kim begins the discussion with a long reading of excerpts from Behind The Scenes At The Museum by Kate Atkinson where the experience of conception and childbirth is told through the intensely biased and judgmental voice of the baby.

By contrast, Hà Trang takes up a more traditional approach with the perspective of the emotional mother. Both poems "Song For Baby-O, Unborn" by Diane Di Prima and "First Fall" by Maggie Smith unveil the mother's anxiety for the future. Whether toxic or not, the desperation for the child to live happily and love the world can't be more real.

What is the similarity between a nanny and a poet? Overlooked labour, or the topic Kim and Hà Trang engage in in today's episode. 

Hà Trang starts the conversation with extracts from the 2016 Prix Goncourt winner novel Lullaby by Leïla Slimani, which opens with the murder of two children by the family's nanny. Kim diverts from the traditional labour and delves into artistic labour with poem "Poet's Work" by Lorine Niedecker, asking whether poetry that sells should be so demoralized and so commenting on the famous example of Rupi Kaur. Although both agree that Kaur's poetry is not appealing to them, they cannot deny the fact that her work is widely appreciated all over the world.

It's July, it's summer, it's hot. Amidst the scorching heat, Kim and Hà Trang slip into a discussion about works whose settings are summertime, yet whose interpretation of summer is radically different. In extracts from Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman, the summer is ideally elitist and enchanting, one full of burning desire and coming-of-age infatuation. The high-class castle and white romance make up a Western tradition of secluded and sexual summertime.

By contrast, "Chinatown Diptych" by Jenny Xie presents a steaming July in Chinatown, where bangs are softened with grease and night shifts are followed by day shifts. This is what summer looks like to immigrant workers in the intensely hybrid Chinatown; you consume as much as you are consumed, and any effort to preserve your culture manifests into attempts to sell such exoticism in a Western world.