Second Stage Podcast

I love this time of year. The darker days in the evening, the cold, the need to draw together and warm ourselves. It gives us a chance to discuss the things that matter.

In this episode, my former student Hannah Randolph and I step into Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, a small play that holds a surprising amount of weight once you slow down and appreciate the details. What begins as a simple crime scene turns into a study of how people decide which details matter and which ones they ignore, and how those choices reveal more about them than the case itself. It’s Thanksgiving week, and we recorded on a busy school day that felt like it might run away from us, but that made me all the more grateful. For the classes I have, for the chance to talk plays during the day, and for the break that’s about to start! It reminded me why this work matters and why voices that notice the overlooked corners often understand the world better than the people in charge of it.

Second Stage is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find our show on Spotify alongside our other podcast, With Honors

on Spotify:

on Apple Podcasts:

on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCweufFHJbylu4tR598SDj5w

Also, throw some love at our brotherly podcast with Coach Haston, A Deadman’s Books. He’s on Spotify at

and Apple Podcasts:

as well as Haston Curation, on Spotify at

This episode’s music features “Caught in the Middle” by Amarent and “Flea Bop” by Mr. Smith, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

If you could seal up a single day from your old hometown into a time capsule for a hundred years, what would it look like?

For some folks, small-town life is not it. The kids I teach, plenty of them want out as soon as possible. But it’s also been my experience that plenty of them stay, and plenty of them that leave come back like swallows to Capistrano. Small Town, USA, isn’t perfect, but it isn’t always the dead zone people would make it out to be. It’s where our roots have crawled into the earth, reaching back for generations out of memory. It’s the ideal foundation. It’s the dream. And it’s the focus of Thornton Wilder’s classic play, Our Town.

This week, Kristin Benson and I discuss what made it such a classic play, why it faded from our high school theaters, and why now may be the perfect time for its return.

Second Stage is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find our show on Spotify alongside our other podcast, With Honors

on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0881bUWWdgkBdGzHlPNToi?si=b510a0cd363a4320

on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/with-honors/id1797115480

on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCweufFHJbylu4tR598SDj5w

Also, throw some love at our brotherly podcast with Coach Haston, A Deadman’s Books. He’s on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/show/4HtulwbO10pOjV5hbdWOty?si=a23d92c90128476e

and Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-deadmans-books/id1795582942

as well as Haston Curation, on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/show/3O8GDUtqshbxFF7gU2FMwM?si=d15c2539fadd40fc

This episode's music features “Caught in the Middle” by Amarent and “Flea Bop” by Mr. Smith, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

The world feels insane and more absurd every day. When I open the news, I’m hit again and again with scandal, affronts, chaos, ridiculous people in charge. When I open social media, I’m agog at the folks I associate with: “You really stand for this? You really want this in your life?! This is the kind of people you really are?!?” When I’m in the classroom, kids spit out gibberish like “Six seven!” or “He’s so aura’d right now, for real for real!!” and it can’t possibly be English they’re blabbering.

How can this be the normal world we were all living in?

When did things slide off the rails? Was it that election? Was it when they killed Harambe? Was there a point in time when we broke the universe and slid into the darkest timeline? Because everything — politics, social upheaval, pandemics, economic collapse, everything — everything since a certain point feels utterly absurd. And why, why, why can I not remember exactly when it happened? Am I just repeating the same mistakes over and again?

Such is Tom Stoppard’s classic play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. This week, my co-host and I are exploring the play’s ridicule of the absurdity in the world through the lens of Shakespeare’s two side characters from Hamlet.

Second Stage is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find our show on Spotify alongside our other podcast, With Honors

on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0881bUWWdgkBdGzHlPNToi?si=b510a0cd363a4320

on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/with-honors/id1797115480

on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCweufFHJbylu4tR598SDj5w

Also, throw some love at our brotherly podcast with Coach Haston, A Deadman’s Books. He’s on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/show/4HtulwbO10pOjV5hbdWOty?si=a23d92c90128476e

and Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-deadmans-books/id1795582942

as well as Haston Curation, on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/show/3O8GDUtqshbxFF7gU2FMwM?si=d15c2539fadd40fc

This episode also features “Caught in the Middle” by Amarent and “Flea Bop” by Mr. Smith, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

I was inspired to create this podcast by two, well three, main influences. One is, of course, my co-teacher, Drew Haston, who last year introduced me to the world of podcasting. The second, older influence was my college professor, Dr. Kurt Eisen at Tennessee Tech, who taught literature classes through the lens of plays. It was in his class that I first read this week’s play, and it stuck with me ever since. The third inspiration is my own selfish self. During the summer, when I’m driving or mowing for long periods of time, I want to listen to content that helps me learn and teach new works of literature in my upcoming classes. It can be hard to find recordings that walk you through the content in a real-world, intelligent way, let alone providing you angles for how to teach the work. I wanted to create a podcast for others (and myself) that would hit that angle.

This week, we’re covering Fences. It’s not an unknown play, but I would be surprised to learn it was taught in a majority of high school classes nationwide. But it’s a celebrated play with award-winning actors! Why doesn’t this play reach more classrooms? Why should it? And what would you do to teach this play?

Second Stage is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find our show on Spotify alongside our other podcast, With Honors

on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0881bUWWdgkBdGzHlPNToi?si=1HS8tQGXRyOgn1h5bs2pTg

on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/with-honors/id1797115480

on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCweufFHJbylu4tR598SDj5w

Also, throw some love at our brotherly podcast with Coach Haston, A Deadman's Books. He's on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/show/4HtulwbO10pOjV5hbdWOty?si=I5Tt07unQJWVhaFVsInP8A and Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-deadmans-books/id1795582942

as well as Haston Curation, on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/show/3O8GDUtqshbxFF7gU2FMwM?si=b38ac16d08374671

This episode features excerpts from stage performances of Fences with James Earl Jones and Denzel Washington. You can view the recordings on YouTube at

This episode also features "Caught in the Middle" by Amarent and "Flea Bop" by Mr. Smith, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.